GEORGE arrived by the next mail. He did not travel all night, but came in the evening, driving up the avenue with a good deal of noise and commotion, with two flys from the station carrying him and the two children and the luggage they brought, in addition to the brougham which had been sent out of respect to the lady. She occupied it by herself, for it was a small carriage, and she was a large woman, and thus was the first to arrive, stumbling out with a large cage in her hand containing a pair of unhappy birds with drooping feathers and melancholy heads. She would not allow any one to take them fromher hand, but stumbled up the steps with them and thrust them upon Winnie, who had come out to the door to receive her brother, but who did not at first realise who this was.
“Here, take ’em,” said Mrs. George; “they’re for you, and they’ve been that troublesome! I’ve done nothing but look after them all the voyage. I suppose you’re Winnie,” she added, pausing with a momentary doubt.
“I hope you are not very tired,” Winifred said, with that imbecility which extreme surprise and confusion gives. She took the cage, which was heavy, and set it on a table. “And George—where is George?” she said.
“Oh, George is coming fast enough; he’s in the first fly with the children. But you don’t look at what I’ve brought you. They’re the true love-birds, the prettiest things in the world. I brought them all the way myself. I trustedthem to nobody. George said you would think a deal of them.”
“So I shall—when I have time to think. It was very kind,” said Winnie. “Oh, George!” She ran down to meet him as he stepped out with a child on his arm.
George was not fat, like his wife, but careworn and spare.
“How do you do, Winnie?” he said, taking her outstretched hand. “Would you mind taking the baby till I get Georgie and the things out of the fly?”
The baby was a fat baby, and like his mother. He gazed at her with a placid aspect, and did not cry. There was something ludicrous in the situation, which Winifred faintly perceived, though everything was so serious. George was not like the long-lost brother of romance. He had shaken hands with her as if he had parted from her yesterday. He scarcely cast a glanceat the house to which he was coming back, but turned quickly to the fly, and lifted out first a little fat boy of three, then parcel after parcel, with a slightly anxious but quite business-like demeanour.
“The maid and the boxes can go round to the other door,” he said, paying serious attention to every detail. “I suppose I can leave these things to be brought upstairs, Winnie? Now, Georgie, come along. There’s mamma waiting.” He did not offer to take the baby, which was a serious weight upon Winifred’s slight shoulder, but looked with a certain grave gratification at his progeny. “He is quite good with you,” he said, with pleased surprise. There was nothing in the fact of his return home that affected George so much. “Look at baby, how good he is with Winnie! I told you the children would take to her directly.”
“Well, I suppose it’s natural your sistershould look to you first,” said the wife; “but I’ve taken a great deal of trouble bringing the birds to her, and she hasn’t given them hardly a glance.”
“It was very kind,” said Winnie; “but the children must come first. This is the way; don’t you remember, George? Bring your wife here.”
“I don’t believe she knows my name, or perhaps she’s proud, and won’t call me by it, George?”
“Winnie proud? Look how good baby is with her!” said George.
They discussed Winifred thus, walking on either side of her, while she tottered under the weight of the big baby, from which neither dreamt of relieving her. Winifred began to feel a nervous necessity to laugh, which she could not control. She drew a chair near the fire for her sister-in-law, and put down the good-humoured baby, in whose contact thereseemed something consolatory, though he was very heavy, on the rug. “I should like to give the other one a kiss,” she said—“is he George too?—before I give you some tea.”
“Yes, I should like my tea,” said Mrs. George; “I’m ready for it after that long journey. Have you seen after Eliza and the boxes, George? We’ve had a good passage upon the whole; but I should never make a good sailor if I were to make the voyage every year. Some people can never get over it. Don’t you think, Miss Winnie, that you could tell that old gentleman to bring the birds in here?”
“Is it old Hopkins?” said George. “How do you do, Hopkins? There is a cage with some birds”—
“I hope I see you well, sir?” said the old butler. “I’m glad as I’ve lived to see you come home. And them two little gentlemen,sir, they’re the first little grandsons? and wouldn’t master have been pleased to see them!” Hopkins had been growing feeble ever since his master’s death, and showed a proclivity to tears, which he had never dared to indulge before.
“Well, I think he might have been,” said George, with a dubious tone. But his mind was not open to sentiment. “They might have a little bread and butter, don’t you think?—it wouldn’t hurt them,—and a cup of milk.”
“No, George,” said his wife; “it would spoil their tea.”
“Do you think it would spoil their tea? I am sure Winnie would not mind them having their tea here with us, the first evening, and then Eliza might put them to bed.”
“Eliza has got my things to look to,” said Mrs. George; “besides being put out a little with a new place, and all that houseful ofservants. I shouldn’t keep up half of them, when once we have settled down and see how we are going to fit in.”
“Some one must put the children to bed,” said George, with an anxious countenance. This conversation was carried on without any apparent consciousness of Winnie’s presence, who, what with pouring out tea and making friends with the children, did her best to occupy the place of spectator with becoming unconsciousness. Here, however, she was suddenly called into the discussion. “Oh, Winnie,” said her brother, “no doubt you’ve got a maid, or some one who knows a little about children, who could put them to bed?”
“He is an old coddle about the children,” said his wife; “the children will take no harm. Eliza must see to me first, if I’m to come down to dinner as you’d wish me to. But George is the greatest old coddle.”
She ran into a little ripple of laughter as she spoke, which was fat and pleasant. Her form was soft and round, and prettily coloured, though her features, if she had ever possessed any, were much blunted and rounded into indistinctness. A sister is, perhaps, a severe judge under such circumstances; yet Winifred was relieved and softened by the new arrival. She made haste to offer the services of her maid, or even her own, if need were. The house was turned entirely upside down by this arrival. The two babies sent a thrill of excitement through all the female part of the household, from Miss Farrell downwards, and old Hopkins was known to have wept in the pantry over the two little grandsons, whom master would have been so proud to see. Winifred alone felt her task grow heavier and heavier. The very innocence and helplessness of the party whom she had thus taken in hand, and whom, afterall, she was likely to have so little power to help, went to her heart. She was not fitted to play the part of Providence. And certain looks exchanged between George and his wife, and a few chance words, had made her heart sick. They had pointed out to each other how this and that could be changed. “The rooms in the wing would be best for the nurseries,” George had said and “There’s just the place for you to practise your violin,” his wife had added. They looked about them with a serene and satisfied consciousness (though George was always anxious) that they were taking possession of their own house. Winifred felt as she came back into the hall, where Mrs. George’s present was still standing, the cage with the two miserable birds, laying their drooping heads together, that this simplicity was more hard to deal with than even Tom’s discontent and sullen anger. She felt that she hadcollected elements of mischief together with which she was quite unable to deal, and stood in the midst of them discouraged, miserable, feeling herself disapproved and unsupported. Not even Edward stood by her. Edward, least of all, whose want of sympathy she felt to her soul, though it had never been put into words. And Miss Farrell’s attempts to make the best were almost worse than disapproval. She was entirely alone with those contending elements, and what was she to do?
Tom had chosen to be absent when his brother arrived; he did not appear even at dinner, to which Mrs. George descended, to the surprise of the ladies, decked in smiles and in an elaborate evening dress, which (had they but known) she had spent all the spare time on the voyage in preparing out of the one black silk which had been the pride of her heart. She had shoulders and arms which wereworth showing had they not been a trifle too fat, so white and rosy, so round and dimpled. She made a little apology to Winifred for the absence of crape. “It was such a hurry,” she said, “to get away at once. George would not lose a day, and I wouldn’t let him go without me, and such things as that are not to be got on a ship,” she added, with a laugh. Mrs. George’s aspect, indeed, did not suggest crape or gloom in any way.
“No, I wouldn’t let him come without me,” she continued, while they sat at dinner. “I couldn’t take the charge of the children without him to help me, and then I thought he might be put upon if he came to take possession all alone. I didn’t know that Miss Winnie was as nice as she is, and would stand his friend.”
“She is very nice,” said Miss Farrell, to whom this remark was addressed, looking across the table at her pupil with eyes that glistened, thoughthere was laughter in them. The sight of this pair, and especially of the wife with her innocence and good-humour, had been very consoling to the old lady. And she was anxious to awaken in Winifred a sense of the humour of the situation to relieve her more serious thoughts.
“But then I had never seen her,” said Mrs. George; “and it’s so natural to think your husband’s sister will be nasty when she thinks herself a cut above the like of you. I thought she might brew up a peck of troubles for George, and make things twice as hard.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk so much,” her husband said under his breath.
“Why shouldn’t I talk? I’m only saying what’s agreeable. I am saying I never thought she would be so nice. I thought she might stand in George’s way. I am sure it might make any one nasty that was likely to marryand have children of her own, to see everything going past her to a brother that had behaved like George has done and taken his own way.”
This innocent conversation went on till Winifred felt her part become more and more intolerable. Her paleness, her hesitating replies, and anxious air at last caught George’s attention, though he had little to spare for his sister. “Have you been ill, Winnie?” he said abruptly, as he followed them into the drawing-room when dinner was over.
“Yes, George,” she put her hand on his arm timidly; “and I am ill now with anxiety and trouble. I have something to say to you.”
George was always ready to take alarm. He grew a little more depressed as he looked at her. “Is it anything about the property?” he said.
“I never thought to deceive you,” she cried,losing command of herself. “I did not know. I thought it would be all simple, George—oh, if you will hear me to the end! and let us all consult together and see what will be best.”
George did not make her any reply. He looked across at his wife, and said, “I told you there would be something,” with lips that quivered a little. Mrs. George got up instantly and came and stood beside him, all her full-blown softness reddening over with quick passion. “What is it? Have I spoke too fast? Is there some scheme against us after all?” she cried.
“George,” said Winifred, “you know I am in no scheme against you. I want to give you your rights—but it seems I cannot. I want you to know everything, to help me to think. Tom will not hear me, he will not believe me; but you, George!”
“Tom?” George cried. The news seemed so unexpected that his astonishment and dismay were undisguised. “Is Tom here?”
“I sent for you both on the same day,” said Winifred, bowing her head as if it were a confession of guilt.
“Oh,” he said; he did not show excitement in its usual form, he grew quieter and more subdued, standing in a sort of grey insignificance against the flushed fulness of his astonished wife. “If it is Tom,” he said, “you might as well have let us stay where we were. He never held up a finger for me when my father sent me away. You did your best, Winnie; oh, I am not unjust to you. Whatever it is, it’s not your fault. But Tom—if Tom has got it! though I thought he had been sent about his business too.”
“But, George, George!” cried his wife, almost inarticulate with eagerness to speak. “George,you’re the eldest son. I want to know if you’re the eldest son, yes or no? And after that, who—who has any right? I’m in my own house and I’ll stay. It’s my own house, and nobody shall put me out,” she cried, with a hysterical laugh, followed by a burst of tears.
“Stop that,” said George, with dull quiet, but authoritatively. “I don’t mean to say it isn’t an awful disappointment, Winnie; but if it’s Tom, why did you go and send for me?”
Winifred stood between the two, the wife sobbing wildly behind her, her brother looking at her in a sort of dull despair, and stretched out her hands to them with an appeal for which she could find no words. But at that moment the door opened harshly and Tom came in, appearing at the end of the room, with a pale and gloomy countenance, made only more gloomy by wine and fatigue, for he had riddenfar and wildly, dashing about the country to exhaust his rage and disappointment. All that he had done had been to increase both. “Oh, you have got here,” he said, with an angry nod to his brother. “It is a nice home-coming ain’t it, for you and me? Shake hands; we’re in the same boat now, whatever we once were. And there stands the supplanter, the hypocrite that has got everything!” cried the excited young man, the foam flying from his mouth. And thereupon came a shriek from Mrs. George, which went through poor Winifred like a knife. For some minutes she heard no more.
WINIFRED had never fainted before in her life, and it made a great commotion in the house. Hopkins, without a word to any one, sent off for Dr. Langton, and half the maids in the house poured into the room eagerly to help, bringing water, eau de Cologne, everything they could think of. Mrs. George’s hysterics fled before the alarming sight, the insensibility, and pallor, which for a moment she took for death, and with a cry of horror and pity, and the tears still standing upon her flushed cheeks, she flung herself on her knees on the floor by Winifred’s side. The two brothers stood and looked on, feeling veryuncomfortable, gazing with a half-guilty aspect upon the fallen figure. Would any one perhaps say that it was their fault? They stood near each other, though without exchanging a word, while the sudden irruption of women poured in. Winifred, however, was not long of coming to her senses. She woke to find herself lying on the floor, to her great astonishment, in the midst of a little crowd, and then struggled back into full consciousness again with a head that ached and throbbed, and something singing in her ears. She got to her feet with an effort and begged their pardon faintly. “What has happened?” she said; “have I done any thing strange? what have I done?”
“You have only fainted,” said Miss Farrell, “that is all. Miss Chester is better now. She has no more need of you, you may all go. Yes, my dear, you have fainted, that is all. Some girls are always doing it; but it never happenedto you before, and it ought to be a proof to you, Winnie, that you are only mortal after all, and can’t do more than you can.”
Winifred smiled as best she could in the face of her old friend. “I did not know I could be so foolish,” she said; “but it is all over now. Dear Miss Farrell, leave me with them. There is something I must say.”
“Oh, put it off till to-morrow,” said Mrs. George; “whether you’ve been our enemy or not, you are only a bit of a girl; and it can’t hurt to wait till to-morrow. I know what nerves are myself, I’ve always been a dreadful sufferer. A dead faint like that, it is very frightening to other people. Don’t send the old lady away.”
“I am going to stay with you, Winnie—unless you will be advised by me, and by Mrs. George, who has a kind heart, I am sure she has—and go to bed.”
Winifred placed herself in a deep easy-chair which gave her at least a physical support. She gave her hand to Miss Farrell, who stood by her, and turned to the brothers, who were still looking on uneasily, half-conscious that it was their fault, half-defiant of her and all that she could say. She lifted her eyes to them, in that moment of weakness and uncertainty before the world settled back into its place. Even their faces for a little while were but part of a phantasmagoria that moved and trembled in the air around her. She felt herself as in a dream, seeing not only what was before her, but many a visionary scene behind. She had been the youngest, she had always yielded to the boys; and as they stood before her thus, though with so few features of the young playfellows and tyrants to whom all her life she had been more or less subject, it became more and more impossible to her toassume the different part which an ill fate had laid upon her. As she looked at them, so many scenes came back. They had been fond of her and good to her in their way, when she was a child. She suddenly remembered how George used to carry her up and down-stairs when she was recovering from the fever which was the great event in her childish life, and in how many rides and rows she had been Tom’s companion, grateful above measure for his notice. These facts, with a hundred trivial incidents which she had forgotten, rushed back upon her mind. “Boys,” she said, and then paused, her eyes growing clearer and clearer, but tears getting into her voice.
“Come, Winnie,” said George, “Tom and I are a little too old for that.”
“You will never be too old for that to me,” she said. “Oh, if you would but look a little kind, as you used to do! It was against mywill and my prayers that it was left to me. I said that I would not accept it, that I would never, never, take what was yours. I never deceived him in that. Oh, boys! do you think it is not terrible for me to be put into your place, even for a moment? And that is not the worst. I thought when I sent for you that I could give it you back, that it would all be easy; but there is more to tell you.”
They looked at her, each in his different way. Tom sullenly from under his eyebrows, George with his careworn look, anxious to get to an end of it, to consult with his wife what they were to do; but neither said a word.
“After,” she said with difficulty, struggling against the rising in her throat, “after—it was found that I could not give it you back. If I did so, I too was to lose everything. Oh, wait, wait, till I have done! What am I to do? I put it in your hands. If I try to give you anypart, it is lost to us all three. What am I to do? I can take no advice from any but you. What I wish is to restore everything to you; but if I attempt to do so, all is lost. What am I to do? What am I to do?”
“Winnie, what you will do is to make yourself ill in the meantime.”
“What does it matter?” she cried wildly; “if I were to die, I suppose it would go to them as my heirs.”
The blank faces round her had no pity in them for Winnie. They were for the moment too deeply engrossed with the news which they had just heard. Miss Farrell alone stooped over her, and stood by her, holding her hand. Mrs. George, who had been listening, bewildered, unable to divine what all this could mean, broke the silence with a cry.
“She don’t say a word of Georgie. Is there nothing for Georgie? I don’t know what youmean, all about giving and not giving—it’s our right. George, ain’t it our right?”
“There are no rights in our family,” said George; “but I don’t know what it means any more than you.”
Here Tom stepped forward into the midst of the group, lifting his sullen eyebrows. “I know what it means,” he said. “It is easy enough to tell what it means. If she takes you in, she can’t take me in. I saw how things were going long ago. First one was got out of the house and then another, but she was always there, saying what she pleased, getting over the old man. Do you think if he had been in his right senses, he would have driven away his sons, and put a girl over our heads? I’ll tell you what,” he cried with passion, “I am not going to stand it if you are. She was there always at one side of him, and the doctor at the other. The daughter and the doctorand nobody else. Every one knows how a doctor can work upon your nerves; and a woman that is always nursing you, making herself sweet. If there ever was undue influence, there it is. And I don’t mean to stand it for one.”
George was not enraged like his brother: he looked from one to another with his anxious eyes. “If you don’t stand it, what can you do?” he said.
“I mean to bring it to a trial. I mean to take it into court. There isn’t a jury in England but would give it in our favour,” said Tom. “I know a little about the law. It is the blackest case I ever knew. The doctor, Langton, he is engaged to Winnie. He has put her up to it; I don’t blame her so much. He has stood behind her making a cat’s-paw of her. Oh, I’ve found out all about it. He belongs to the old family thatused to own Bedloe, and he has had his eye on this ever since we came here. The governor was very sharp,” said Tom, “he was not one to be beaten in the common way. But the doctor, that was always handy, that came night and day, that cured him—thefirsttime,” he added significantly.
Tom, in his fury, had not observed, nor had any of his agitated hearers, the opening of the door behind, the quiet entry into the room of a new-comer, who, arrested by the words he heard, had stood there listening to what Tom said. At this moment he advanced quickly up the long room. “You think perhaps that I killed him—the second time?” he said, confronting the previous speaker.
Winifred rose from her chair with a low cry, and came to his side, putting her arm through his.
“Edward! Edward! he does not know what he is saying,” she cried.
The other pair had stood bewildered during all this, Mrs. George gasping with her pretty red lips apart, her husband, always careworn, looking anxiously from one face to another. When she saw Winnie’s sudden movement, Mrs. George copied it in her way. She was cowed by the appearance of the doctor, who was so evidently a gentleman, one of those superior beings for whom she retained the awe and admiration of her youth.
“Oh, George, come to bed! don’t mix yourself up with none of them—don’t get yourself into trouble!” she cried, doing what she could to drag him away.
“Let alone, Alice,” he said, disengaging himself. “I suppose you are Dr. Langton. My brother couldn’t mean that; but if things are as he says, it’s rather a bad case.”
A fever of excitement, restrained by the habit of self-command, and making little appearance, had risen in Langton’s veins. “Winifred,” he cried, with the calm of passion, “you have been breaking your heart to find out a way of serving your brothers. You see how they receive it. Retire now, you are not able to deal with them, and leave it to me.”
She was clinging to him with both hands, clasping his arm, very weak, shaken both in body and mind, longing for quietness and rest; but she shook her head, looking up with a pathetic smile in his face.
“No, Edward,” she said.
“No?” he looked at her, not believing his ears. She had never resisted him before, even when his counsels were most repugnant to her. A sudden passionate offence took possession of him. “In that case,” he said, “perhaps it is I that ought to withdraw, and allow yourbrother to accuse me of every crime at his ease.”
“Oh, Edward, don’t make it harder! It is hard upon us all, both them and me. It is desperate, the position we are in. I cannot endure it, and they cannot endure it. What are we to do?”
“Nor can I endure it,” he said. “Let them contest the will. It is the best way; but in that case they cannot remain under your roof.”
“Who gave you the right to dictate what we are to do?” cried Tom, who was beside himself with passion. “This is my father’s house, not yours. It is my sister’s, if you like, but not yours. Winnie, let that fellow go; what has he got to do between us? Let him go away; he has got nothing to do here.”
“You are of that opinion too?” Langton said, turning to her with a pale smile. “Beit so. I came to look after Miss Chester’s health, not to disturb a family party.”
“Edward!” Winifred cried. The name he gave her went to her heart. He had detached himself from her hold; he would not see the hand which she held out to him. His ear was deaf to her voice. She had deserted him, he said to himself. She had brought insult upon him, and an atrocious accusation, and she had not resented it, showed no indignation, rejected his help, prepared to smooth over and conciliate the miserable cad who had permitted himself to do this thing. Beneath all this blaze of passion, there was no doubt also the bitterness of disappointment with which he saw the destruction of those hopes which he had been foolishly entertaining, allowing himself to cherish, although he knew all the difficulties in the way. He saw and felt that, right or wrong, she would give all away, that Bedloewas farther from him than ever it had been. He loved Winifred, it was not for Bedloe he had sought her; but everything surged up together at this moment in a passion of mortification, resentment, and shame. She had not maintained his cause, she had refused his intervention, she had allowed these intruders to regard him as taking more upon him than she would permit, claiming an authority she would not grant. He neither looked at her, nor listened to the call which she repeated with a cry that might have moved a savage. A man humiliated, hurt in his pride, is worse than a savage.
“Take care of her,” he said, wringing Miss Farrell’s hand as he passed her, and without another look or word went away.
Winifred, standing, following with her eyes, with consternation unspeakable, his departing figure, felt the strength ebb out of her as hedisappeared. But yet there was relief in his departure, too. A woman has often many pangs to bear between her husband and her family. She has to endure and maintain often the authority which she does not acknowledge, which in her right he assumes over them, which is a still greater offence to her than to them; and an instinctive sense that her lover should not have any power over her brothers was strong in her notwithstanding her love. Her agitated heart returned after a moment’s pause to the problem which was no nearer solution than before. She said softly—
“All that I can do for your sake I will do, whatever I may suffer. There is one thing I will not do, and that is, defend myself or him. If you do not know that neither I nor he have done anything against you, it is not for me to say it. It is hard, very hard for us all. If you will advise with me like friends what todo, I shall be very, very thankful; but if not, you must do what you will, and I will do what I can, and there is no more to say.”
The interruption, though it had been hard to bear, had done her good. She went back to her chair, and leant back, letting her head rest on good Miss Farrell’s faithful shoulder. A kind of desperation had come to her. She had sent her lover away, and nothing remained for her, but only this forlorn duty.
“Edward will not come back,” she said in Miss Farrell’s ear.
“To-morrow, my darling, to-morrow,” the old lady said, with tears in her eyes.
Winifred shook her head. No one could deceive her any more. She seemed to have come to that farthest edge of life on which everything becomes plain. After a while she withdrew, leaving the others to their consultation; they had been excited by Edward’s coming, but they were cowed by his going away. It seemed to bring to all a strange realisation, such as people so often reach through the eyes of others, of the real state of their affairs.
ENOUGH had been done and said that night. They remained together for some time in the drawing-room, having the outside aspect of a family party, but separated, as indeed family parties often are. Winifred, very pale, with the feeling of exhaustion both bodily and mental, sat for a time in her chair, Miss Farrell close to her, holding her hand. They said nothing to each other, but from time to time the old lady would bend over her pupil with a kiss of consolation, or press between her own the thin hand she held. She said nothing, and Winifred, indeed, was incapable of intercourse more articulate. On theother side of the fireplace George and his wife sat together, whispering and consulting. She was very eager, he careworn and doubtful, as was his nature. Sometimes he would shake his head, saying, “No, Alice,” or “It is not possible.” Sometimes her eager whispering came to an articulate word. Their anxious discussion, the close union of two beings whose interests were one, the life and expectation and anxiety in their looks, made a curious contrast to the exhaustion of Winnie lying back in her chair, and the sullen loneliness of Tom, who sat in the centre in front of the fire, receiving its full blaze upon him in a sort of ostentatious resentment and sullenness, though his hand over his eyes concealed the thought in his face. The only sound was the whispering of Mrs. George, and the occasional low word with which her husband replied. Further, no communication passed between the different members of thisstrange party. They separated after a time with faint good-nights, Mrs. George eager, indeed, to maintain the forms of civility, but the brothers each in his way withdrawing with little show of friendship. After this, Winifred too went upstairs. Her heart was very full.
“Did you ever,” she said to her companion “feel a temptation to run away, to bear no more?”
“Yes, I have felt it; but no one can run away. Where could we go that our duty would not follow us? It is shorter to do it anyhow at first hand.”
“Is it so?” said Winifred, with a forlorn look from the window into the night where the stars were shining, and the late moon rising. “‘Oh that I had the wings of a dove!’—I don’t think I ever understood before what that meant.”
“And what does it mean, Winnie? Thedove flies home, not into the wilds, which is what you are thinking of.”
“That is true,” said the girl, “and I have no home, except with you. I have still you”—
“He will come back to-morrow,” Miss Farrell said.
“No, he will not come back. They insulted him, and I—did not want him. That is true. I did not want him. I wanted none of his advice. I preferred to be left to do what I had to do myself. It is true, Miss Farrell. Can a man ever forgive that? It would have been natural that he should have done everything for me, and instead of that— Are not these all great mysteries?” said Winifred after a pause. “A woman should not be able to do so. She should put herself into the hands of her husband. Am I unwomanly?—you used to frighten me with the word; but I could not do it. I did not want him. Myheart rose against his interference. If I knew that he felt so to me, I—I should be wounded to death. And yet—it was so—it is quite true. I think he will never forgive me.”
“It is a mystery, Winnie. I don’t know how it is. When you are married everything changes, or so people say. But love forgives everything, dear.”
“Not that,” Winifred said.
She sat by her fire, when her friend left her, in a state of mind which it is impossible to describe in words. It was despair. Despair is generally tragical and exalted; and perhaps that passion is more easy to bear with the excitement that belongs to it than the quiet consciousness that one has come to a dead pause in one’s life, and that neither on one side or the other is there any outlet. Winifred was perfectly calm and still. She sat amid all the comfort of her chamber, gazing dimlyinto the cheerful fire. She was rich. She was highly esteemed. She had many friends. And yet she had come to a pass when everything failed her. Her brothers stood hostile about her, feeling her with justice to be their supplanter, to stand in their way. Her lover had left her, feeling with justice that she wronged his love and rejected his aid. With justice—that was the sting. To be misunderstood is terrible, yet it is a thing that can be surmounted; but to be guilty, whether by any fault of yours, whether by terrible complication of events, whether by the constitution of your mind, which is the worst of all, this is despair. And there was no way of deliverance. She could not make over her undesired wealth to her brothers, which had at first seemed to be so easy a way; and also, far worse, far deeper, far more terrible, she could not make Edward see how she could put him away from her,yet love him. She felt herself to sit alone, as if upon a pinnacle of solitude, regarding all around and seeing no point from which there could come any help. It is seldom that the soul is thus overwhelmed on all sides. When one hope fails, another dawns upon the horizon; rarely, rarely is there no aid near. But to Winifred it seemed that everything was gone from her. Her lover and friends stood aloof. Her life was cut off. To liberate every one and turn evil into good, the thing best to be done seemed that she should die. But she knew that of all aspirations in the world that is the most futile. Death does not come to the call of misery. Those who would die, live on: those who would live are stricken in the midst of their happiness. Perhaps to a more cheerful and buoyant nature the crisis would have been less terrible; but to her it seemed that everything was over, and life cometo a standstill. She was baffled and foiled in all that she wished, and that which she did not desire was forced upon her. There seemed no strength left in her to fight against all the adverse forces around. Her heart failed altogether, and she felt in herself no power even to meet them, to begin again the discussion, to hear again, perhaps, the baseless threat which had driven Edward away. Ah, it was not that which had driven him away. It was she herself who had been the cause; she who had not wanted him, who even now, in the bitterness of the loss, which seemed to her as if it must be for ever, still felt a faint relief in the thought that at least no conflict between his will and hers would embitter the crisis, and that she should be left undisturbed to do for her brothers all that could be done, alone.
Next day she was so shaken and worn out with the experiences of that terrible evening,that she kept her room and saw no one, save Miss Farrell. Edward made no appearance; he did not even inquire for her, and till the evening, when Mr. Babington arrived, Winifred saw no one. The state of the house, in which George and his family held a sort of encampment on one side, and Tom a hostile position on the other, was a very strange one. There was a certain forlorn yet tragi-comic separation between them. Even in the dining-room, where they sat at table together, Mrs. George kept nervously at one end, as far apart as she could place herself from her brother-in-law. The few words that were interchanged between the brothers she did everything in her power to interrupt or stop. She kept George by her side, occupied him with the children, watched over him with a sort of unquiet care. Tom had assumed his father’s place at the foot of the table before the others perceived whatthat meant. They established themselves at the head, George and his wife together, talking to each other in low voices, while there was no one with whom Tom could make up a faction. The servants walked with strange looks from the one end to the other, serving the two groups who were separated by the white stretch of flower-decorated table. Old Hopkins groaned, yet so reported the matter that the company in the housekeeper’s room shook their sides with mirth. “It was for all the world like one of them big hotels as I’ve been to many a time with master. Two lots, with a scoff and a scowl for everything that each other did.” Notwithstanding this disunion, however, the two brothers had several conferences in the course of the day. They had a common interest, though they thus pitted themselves against each other. It was Tom who was the chief spokesman in these almost stealthyinterviews. Tom was so sore and resentful against his sister, that he was willing to make common cause with George against her.
“If it is as she says,” he said, “there’s no jury in England but would find undue influence, and perhaps incapacity for managing his own affairs. We have the strongest case I ever heard of.”
“I don’t believe you’ll get a jury against Winnie,” said George, shaking his head.
“Why shouldn’t we get a jury against Winnie? She has stolen into my place and your place, and set the governor against us.”
“Perhaps she has,” said George; “but you won’t get a jury against her.”
“Why not? There is no man in the world that would say otherwise than that ours was a hard case.”
“Oh yes, it is a very hard case; but you would not get a jury against Winnie,” Georgerepeated, with that admirable force of passive resistance and blunted understanding which is beyond all argument.
This was what they talked of when they walked up and down the conservatory together in the afternoon. Tom was eager, George doubtful; but yet they were more or less of accord on this subject. It was a hard case—no one would say otherwise; and though George could not in his heart get himself to believe that any argument would secure a verdict against Winnie, yet it was a case, it was evident, in which something ought to be done, and he began to yield to Tom’s certainty. When Mr. Babington arrived, they both met him with a certain expectation.
“We can’t stand this, you know,” said Tom. “It is not in nature to suppose that we could stand it.”
“Oh, can’t you?” Mr. Babington said.
“Tom thinks,” his brother explained in his slow way, “that there has been undue influence.”
“The poor old governor must have been going off his head. It is as clear as daylight: he never could have made such a will if he hadn’t been off his head; and Winnie and this doctor one on each side of him. Such a will can never stand,” said Tom.
“But I say he’ll never get a jury against Winnie,” said George, with his anxious eyes fixed on Mr. Babington’s face.
The lawyer listened to this till they had done, and then he said, “Oh, that is what you think!” and burst into a peal of laughter. “Your father was the sort of person, don’t you think, to be made to do what he didn’t want to do? I don’t think I should give much for your chance if that is what you build upon.”
This laugh, more than all the reasoning inthe world, took the courage out of Tom, and George had never had any courage. They listened with countenances much cast down to Mr. Babington’s narrative of their father’s proceedings, and of how Winnie was bound, and how Mr. Chester had intended to bind her. They neither of them were clever enough to remark that there were some points upon which he gave them no information, though he seemed so certain and explicit. But they were both completely lowered and subdued after an hour of his society, recognising for the first time the desperate condition of affairs.
That evening, when Winnie, weary of her day’s seclusion, sick at heart to feel her own predictions coming true, and to realise that Edward had let the day pass without a word, was sitting sadly in her dressing-gown before her fire, there came a knock softly at her door, late in the evening, when the household ingeneral had gone to bed. She turned round with a little start and exclamation, and her surprise was not lessened when she perceived that her visitor was Tom. He came in with scarcely a word, and drew a chair near her, and sat down in front of the fire.
THERE is, among the members of many families, a frank familiarity which dispenses with all those forms which keep life on a level of courtesy with persons not related to each other. Tom did not think it necessary to ask his sister how she was, or to show any anxiety about her health. He drew his chair forward and seated himself near her, without any formulas.
“You know how to make yourself comfortable,” he said, with a glance round the room, which indeed was very luxuriously furnished, like the rest of the house, and with some taste, which was Winifred’s own. The tone in whichhe spoke conveyed a subtle intimation that Winifred made herself comfortable at his expense, but he did not say so in words. He stretched out his feet towards the fire. Perhaps he found it a little difficult to come to the point.
“I am sorry,” said Winifred, “to have been shut up here. If I had been stronger—but you must remember I have had an illness, Tom; and to feel that you were both against me”—
“Oh, it doesn’t matter about that,” said Tom, with a wave of his hand. Then, after a pause, “In that you’re mistaken, Winnie. I’m not against you. A fellow could not but be disappointed to find what a different position he was in, after the telegram and all. But when one comes to hear all about it, I’m not against you: I’m rather—though perhaps you won’t believe me—on your side.”
“Oh, Tom!” cried Winifred, laying her handupon his arm; “I am too glad to believe you. If you will only stand by me, Tom”—
“Oh yes,” he said, “I’ll stand by you. I’ve been thinking it over since last night. You want some one to be on your side, Winnie. When I saw the airs of—But never mind, I have been thinking it all over, and I am on your side.”
“If that is so, I shall be able to bear almost anything,” said Winifred faintly.
“You will have George to bear and his wife. They say women never can put up with other women. And, good heavens, to think that for a creature like that he should have stood out and lost his chances with the governor! I never was a fool in that way, Winnie. If I went wrong, it was for nobody else’s sake, but to please myself. I should never have let a girl stand in my way—not even pretty, except in a poor sort of style, and fat at that age.” HereTom made a brief pause. “But of course you know I shall want something to live on,” he said.
“I know that you shall have everything that I can give you,” Winifred cried.
“Ah! but that’s easier said than done. We must not run against the will, that is clear. I’ve been thinking it over, as I tell you, and my idea is, that after a little time, when you have taken possession and got out of Mr. Babington’s hands and all that, you might make me a present, as it were. Of course your sense of justice will make it a handsome present, Winnie.”
“You shall have half, Tom. I have always meant you should have half.”
“Half?” he said. “It’s rather poor, you’ll allow, to have to come down to that after fully making up one’s mind that one was to have everything!”
“But, Tom, you would not have left George out—you would not have had the heart!”
“Oh, the heart!” said Tom. “I shouldn’t have stood upon ceremony, Winnie; and besides, I always had more respect for the poor old governor than any of you. It suits my book that you should go against him, but I shouldn’t have done it, had it been me. Well, half! I suppose that’s fair enough. You couldn’t be expected to do more. But you must be very cautious how you do it, you know. It’s awfully unbusiness-like, and would have made the governor mad to think of. You must just get the actual money, sell out, or realise, or whatever they call it, and give it to me. Nothing that requires any papers or settlements or anything. You will have to get the actual money and give it me. You had better do it at different times, so many thousand now, and so many thousand then. It will feel awfully queer getting so much money actually in one’s hand—but nice,” Tom added, with a little laugh. Hegot up and stood with his back to the fire, looking down upon her. “Nice in its way, if one could forget that it ought to have been so much more.”
“Tom, you will be careful and not spend too much—you will not throw it all away?”
“Catch me!” he said. “I’ll tell you what I mean to do, Winnie. I’ll go on the Stock Exchange. The governor’s old friends will lend me a hand, thinking mine a hard case, as it is. And then it’s easy to make them believe I’ve been lucky, or inherit (as I believe I do) the governor’s head for business. It would be droll if some of us hadn’t got that, and I am sure it’s neither George nor you. Well, then, that’s settled, Winnie. It will be easy to find out from Babington what the half is: a precious big figure, I don’t doubt,” he added, with a triumph which for the moment he forgot to disguise. Then he added after a moment, in amore indifferent tone, “There is no telling what may happen when a man is once launched. If you give me your share to work the markets with, you can do anything on the Stock Exchange with a lot of money. I’ll double your money for you in a year or two, which will be as good as giving it all back.”
“I don’t know anything about the Stock Exchange, Tom; only don’t lose your money speculating.”
“Oh, trust me for that!” he said. “I tell you I am the one that has got the governor’s head.” Then it seemed to strike him for the first time that it would not be amiss to show some regard for his sister. He brought his hand down somewhat heavily on her shoulder, which made her start violently.
“Come,” he said, “you must not be down-hearted, Win. If I was a little nasty at first, can’t you understand that? And now I’vemade up my mind to it, there’s nothing to look so grave about. I’ll stand by you whatever happens.”
“Thank you, Tom,” she said faintly.
“You needn’t thank me; it’s I that ought to thank you, I suppose. I might have known you would behave well, for you always did behave well, Winnie. And look here, you must not make yourself unhappy about everybody as you do. George, for instance: I would be very careful of what I gave him, if I were you. Let them go out to their own place again, they will be far better there than here. And don’t give them too much money: enough to buy a bit of land is quite enough for them; and when the boys are big enough to help him to work it, he’ll do very well.” This prudent advice Tom delivered as he strolled, pausing now and then at the end of a sentence, towards the door. He was, perhaps, not very sure that it wasadvice that would commend itself to Winnie, or that it came with any force from his mouth; nevertheless he had a sort of conviction, which was not without reason, that it was sensible advice. “By the bye,” he added, turning short round and standing in the half dark in the part of the room which was not illuminated by the lamp—“by the bye, I suppose you will have to sell Bedloe, before you can settle with me?”
“Sell Bedloe!” Winifred was startled out of the quiescence with which she had received Tom’s other proposals. “Why should there be any occasion to do that, Tom?”
“My dear,” he said, with a sort of amiable impatience, “how ignorant you are of business! Don’t you see that before you halve everything with me as you promise, all the property must be realised? I mean to say, if you don’t understand the word, sold. That is the very first step.”
“Sell Bedloe?” she repeated. “Dear Tom, that is the very last thing my father would have consented to do. Oh no, I cannot sell Bedloe. He hoped it was to descend to his children, and his name remain in the county; he intended”—
“Do you think he intended to preserve the name of the Langtons in the county, Winnie? You can’t be such a fool as that. And, as I suppose your children, when you have them, will be Langtons, not Chesters”—
She interrupted him eagerly, her face covered with a painful flush. “I am going to carry out my father’s will against his will, Tom; and, oh, I feel sure where he is now he will forgive me. He has heirs of his own name— I mean them to have Bedloe. Where he is he knows better,” she said, with emotion; “he will understand, he will not be angry. Bedloe must be for George.”
Tom came forward close to her, within the light of the lamp, with his lowering face. “I always knew you were a fool, but not such a fool as that, Winnie. Bedloe for George! a fellow that has disgraced his family, marrying a woman that—why, even Hopkins is better than she is; they wouldn’t have her at table in the housekeeper’s room. I thought you were a lady yourself, I thought you knew—why, Bedloe, Winnie!” he seized her by the arm; “if you do this you will show yourself an utter idiot, without any common sense, not to be trusted. If you don’t sell Bedloe, how are you to pay me?” he cried, with an honest conviction that in saying this righteous indignation had reached its climax, and there was nothing more to add.
“Tom,” said Winifred, “leave me for to-night. I am not capable of anything more to-night. Don’t you feel some pity for me,” she cried, “left alone with no one to help me?”
But how was he to understand this cry which escaped from her without any will of hers?
“To help you? whom do you want to help you? I should have helped you if you had shown any sense. Bedloe to George! Then it is the half of themoneyonly that is to be for me? Oh, thank you for nothing, Miss Winnie, if you think I am to be put off with that. Look here! I came to you thinking you meant well, to show you a way out of it. But I’ve got a true respect for the governor’s will, if no one else has. Don’t you know that for years and years he had cut George out of it altogether, and that it was just Bedloe—Bedloe above everything—that he was not to have?”
Winifred shrank and trembled as if it were she who was the criminal. “Yes,” she saidalmost under her breath, “I know; but, Tom, think. He is the eldest, he has children who have done no wrong.”
“I don’t think anything about it,” said Tom. “The governor cut him out; and what reason have you got for giving him what was taken from him? What can you say for yourself? that’s what I want to know.”
“Tom,” said Winifred, trembling, with tears in her eyes, “there are the children: little George, who is called after my father, who is the real heir. His heart would have melted, I am sure it would, if he had seen the children.”
“Oh, the children! that woman’s children, and the image of her! Can’t you find a better reason than that?”
“Tom,” said Winifred again, “my father is dead, he can see things now in a different light. Oh, what is everything on the earth, poor bits of property and pride, in comparison with rightand justice? Do you thinktheydon’t know better and wish if they could to remedy what has been wrong here?”
“I don’t know what you mean bythey,” said Tom sullenly. “If you mean the governor, we don’t know anything about him; whether—whether it’s all right, you know, or if”—Here he paused for an appropriate word, but, not finding one, cried out, as with an intention of cutting short the subject, “That’s all rubbish! I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you go on with this folly, to drag the governor’s name through the mud, by Jove! I’ll tell Babington. I’ll put him up to what you’re after. Against my own interest? What do I care? I’ll tell Babington, by Jove! to spite you if nothing more!”
“I think you will kill me!” cried Winifred, at the end of her patience; “and that would be the easiest of all, for you would be my heirs, George and you.”
He stared at her for a moment as if weighing the suggestion, then, saying resentfully, “Always George,” turned and left her, shutting the door violently behind him. The noise echoed through the house, which was all silent and asleep, and Winifred, very lonely, deserted on all sides, leaned back in her chair and cried to herself silently, in prostration of misery and weakness. What was she to do? to whom was she to turn? She had nobody to stand by her. There was nothing but a blank and silence on every side wherever she could turn.
THIS interview did not calm the nerves of the agitated girl or bring her soothing or sleep. It was almost morning before the calm of exhaustion came, hushing the thoughts in her troubled brain and the pulses in her tired body. She slept without comfort, almost without unconsciousness, carrying her cares along with her, and when she awoke suddenly to an unusual sound by her bedside, could scarcely make up her mind that she had been asleep at all, and believed at first that the little babbling voice close to her ear was part of a feverish dream. She started up in her bed, and saw on the carpet close to her thelittle three-year-old boy, a small, square figure with very large wide-open blue eyes, who was altogether new to her experiences, and whom she only identified after a moment’s astonished consideration as little George, her brother’s child. The first clear idea that flashed across her mind was that, as Tom said, he was “the image of his mother,” not a Chester at all, or like any of her family, but the picture, in little, of the very overblown beauty of George’s wife. This sensation checked in Winifred’s mind, mechanically, without any will of hers, the natural impulse of tenderness towards the child, who, staring at her with his round eyes, had been making ineffectual pulls at the counterpane, and calling at intervals, “Auntie Winnie!” in a frightened and reluctant tone. Little George had “got on” very well with his newly-found relative on the night of his arrival, but to see an unknown lady in bed, with long hairframing her pale face, and that look of sleep which simulates death, had much disturbed the little boy. He fulfilled hisconsignewith much faltering bravery, but he did not like it; and when the white lady with the brown hair started up suddenly, he recoiled with a cry which was very nearly a wail. She recovered and came to herself sooner than he did, and, smiling, held out a hand to him.
“Little George, is it you? Come, then, and tell me what it is,” she said.
Here the baby recoiled a step farther, and stared with still larger eyes, his mouth open ready to cry again, the tears rising, his little person drawn together with that instinctive dread of some attack which seems natural to the helpless. Winnie stretched out her arm to him with a smile of invitation.
“Come to me, little man, come to me,” she cried. Tears came to her eyes too, and asoftening to her heart. The little creature belonged to her after a fashion; he was her own flesh and blood; he was innocent, not struggling for gain. She did not ask how he came there, nor notice the straying of his eyes to something behind, which inspired yet terrified him. She was too glad to feel the unaccustomed sensation of pleasure loosen her bonds. “It is true I am your Aunt Winnie. Come, Georgie, don’t be afraid of me. Come, for I love you,” she said.
Half attracted, half forced by the influence behind, which was to Winnie invisible, the child made a shy step towards the bed. “Oo send Georgie away,” he stammered. “Oo send Georgie back to big ship. Mamma ky. Georgie no like big ship.”
“Come and tell me, Georgie.” She leant towards him, holding out arms in which the child saw a refuge from the imperative signswhich were being addressed to him from behind the bed. He came forward slowly with his little tottering steps, his big eyes full of inquiry, wonder, and suspicion.
“Oo take care of Georgie?” he said, with a little whimper that went to Winifred’s heart; then suffered himself to be drawn into her arms. The touch of the infant was like balm to her.
“Yes, dear,” she cried, with tears in her eyes; “as far as I can, and with all my heart I will take care of Georgie.” It was a vow made, not to the infant, who had no comprehension, but to Heaven and her own heart.
But there was some one else who heard and understood after her fashion. As Winifred said these words with a fervour beyond description, a sudden running fire of sobs broke forth behind the head of her bed. Then with a rush and sweep something heavy and soft fell down byher side, almost crushing Georgie, who began to cry with fright and wonder.
“Oh, Miss Winnie! God bless you! I knew that was what you would say,” cried Mrs. George, clasping Winifred’s arm with both her hands, and laying down her wet, soft cheek upon it. “Hethought not; he said we should have to go back again in that dreadful ship; but oh, bless you! I knew you weren’t one of that kind!”
“Is it you, Mrs. George?” said Winifred faintly. The sudden apparition of the mother gave her a shock; and she began to perceive that the little scene was melodramatic, got up to excite her feelings. She drew back a little coldly; but the baby gazing at her between his bursts of crying, and pressing closer and closer to her shoulder, frightened by his mother’s onslaught, was no actor. She began to feel after a moment that the mother herself, cryingvolubly like a schoolgirl, and clutching her arm as if it were that of a giant, was, if an actor so very simple an actor, with devices so transparent and an object so little concealed, that moral indignation was completely misplaced against her artless wiles, and that nature was far stronger in her than guile. In the first revulsion she spoke coldly; but after a moment, with a truer insight, “Stand up,” she said. “Don’t cry so. Get a chair and come and sit by me. You must not go on your knees to me.”
“Oh, but that I will,” cried Mrs. George, “as if you were the Queen, Miss Winnie; for you have got our lives in your hands. Look at that poor little fellow, who is your own flesh and blood. Oh, will you listen to what worldly folks say, and send him away to be brought up as if he was nobody, and him your own nephew and just heir?—oh, I don’t mean that!It appears he’s got no rights, though I always thought—the eldest son’s eldest son! But no; I don’t say that. George pleased himself marrying me, and if he lost his place for that, ain’t it more than ever my duty to do what I can for him? And I don’t make no claim. I don’t talk about rights. You’ve got the right, Miss Winnie, and there’s an end of it. Whoever opposes, it will never be George and me. But oh,” cried the young woman, rising from her knees, and addressing to Winifred all the simple eloquence of her soft face, her blue eyes blurred with tears, which flowed in half a dozen channels over the rosy undefined outline of her cheeks,—“oh, if you only knew what life was in foreign parts! It don’t suit George. He was brought up a gentleman, and he can’t abear common ways. And the children!—oh, Miss Winnie, the little boys! Would you stand by and see them brought up to hold horses and torun errands—them that are your own flesh and blood?”
Little Georgie had ceased to whimper. The sight of his mother’s crying overawed the baby. He was too safe and secure in Winifred’s arms to move at once—but, reflecting in his infant soul, with his big eyes turned to his mother all the while she spoke, was at last touched beyond his childish capacity of endurance, forsook the haven in which he had found shelter, and, flinging his arms about her knees, cried out, “Mamma, don’t ky, mamma, me love you!” burying his face in the folds of her dress. Mrs. George stooped down and gathered him up in her arms with a sleight of hand natural to mothers, and then, child and all, precipitated herself once more on the carpet at the bedside.
Winifred, too, was carried out of herself by this little scene. She dried the fast-flowing tears from the soft face so near to her as if theyoung mother had been no more serious an agent than Georgie. “You shall not go back. You shall want nothing that I can do for you,” she cried, soothing them. It was some time before the tumult calmed; but when at last the fit of crying was over, Mrs. George began at once to smile again, with an easy turn from despair to satisfaction. She held her child for Winifred to kiss, her own lips trembling between joy and trouble.
“I don’t ask you to kiss me, for I’m not good enough for you to kiss; but Georgie—he is your own flesh and blood.”
“Do not say so,” said Winifred, kissing mother and child. “And now sit beside me and talk to me, and do not call me miss, for I am your sister. I am sure you have been a good wife to George.”
“I should be that and more: since he lost his fortune, and his ’ome, and all, for me,” she cried.
The scene which ensued was the most unexpected of all. Mrs. George placed the child upon Winifred’s bed and began, without further ado, a baby game of peeps and transparent hidings, her excitement turning to laughter, as it had turned to tears. Winifred, too, though her heart was heavy enough, found herself drawn into that sudden revulsion. They played with little Georgie for half an hour in the middle of all the care and pain that surrounded them, the one woman with her heart breaking, the other feeling, as far as she could feel anything, that the very life of her family hung in the balance—moving the child to peals of laughter, in which they shared after their fashion, as women only can, interposing this episode of play into the gravest crisis. It was only when Georgie’s laughter began to show signs of that over-excitement that leads to tears, that Winifred suddenly said, almost to herself,“But how am I to do it? how am I to do it?” with an accent of weary effort which almost reached the length of despair.
“Oh dear! you that are so good and kind,” cried Mrs. George, changing also in a moment, “just let us stay with you, dear Winnie—it’s a liberty to call you Winnie; but oh dear, dear! why can’t we just live all together? That would do nobody any harm. That would go against no one’s will. It wasn’t said you were not to give me and George and the children an ’ome. Oh, only think! it’s such a big, big house! If you didn’t like the noise of the children,—but you aren’t one of that sort, not to like the noise of the children, and so I told George,—they could have their nursery where you would never hear a sound. And George would be a deal of use to you in managing the estate, and I would do the housekeeping, and welcome, and save you any trouble. And why, why—oh,why shouldn’t we just settle down all together, and be, oh, so comfortable, Miss Winnie, dear?”
This suggestion, it need scarcely be said, struck Winifred with dismay. The face, no longer weeping, no longer elevated by the passionate earnestness of the first appeal, dropping to calculations which, perhaps, were more congenial to its nature, gave her a chill of repulsion while still her heart was soft. She seemed to see, with a curious second sight, the scene of family life, of family tragedy, which might ensue were this impossible plan attempted. It was with difficulty that she stopped Mrs. George, who, in the heat of success, would have settled all the details at once, and it was only the entrance of Miss Farrell, tenderly anxious about her pupil’s health, and astounded to find Mrs. George and her child established in her room, that finally delivered poor Winnie.
“You would have no need of strangers eating you up if you had us,” her sister-in-law said, as she stooped to kiss her ostentatiously, and held the child up to repeat the salute ere she went away.