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.
Winifred had kissed the young mother almost with emotion in the midst of her pleading; but somehow this return of the embrace gave a slight shock both to her delicacy and pride. She laughed a little and coloured when Miss Farrell, after the door closed, looked at her astonished. “You think I have grown into wonderful intimacy with Mrs. George?” she said.
“I do indeed, Winnie. My dear, I would not interfere, but you must not let your kind heart carry you too far.”
“Oh, my kind heart!” cried the girl, feeling a desperate irony in the words. “She suggests that they should live with me,” she added, turning her head away.
“Live with you? Winnie! my dear!” Miss Farrell gasped, with a sharp break between each word.
“She thinks it will arrange itself so, quite simply—oh, it is quite simple! Dear Miss Farrell, don’t say anything. I have been pushing it off. I have been pretending to be ill because I was miserable. Let me get up now—and don’t say anything,” she added after a moment, with lips that trembled in spite of herself. “There are no—letters; no one—has been here?”
“Nothing, Winnie.” Her friend did not look at her; she dared not betray her too profound sympathy, her personal anguish, even by a kiss.
When Winifred came downstairs she found Mr. Babington waiting for her. He was a very old acquaintance, whom she had not been used to think of as a friend; but trouble makes strange changes in the aspect of things aroundus, turning sometimes those whom we have loved most into strangers, and lighting up faces that have been indifferent to us with new lights of compassion and sympathy. Mr. Babington’s formal manner, his well-known features, so composed and commonplace, his grey, keen eyes under their bushy eyebrows, suddenly took a new appearance to Winifred. They seemed to shine upon her with the warmth of ancient friendship. She had known him all her life, yet, it seemed, had never known him till to-day. He came to meet her, holding out his hand, with some kind, ordinary questions about her health, but all the while a light put out, as it were, at the windows of his soul, to help her, another poor soul stumbling along in the darkness. It was not anything that he said, nor that she said. She did not ask for any help, nor he offer it; and yet in a moment Winifred felt herself, in her mind, clinging tohim with the sense that here was an old, old friend, somebody, above all doubt and uncertainty, in whom she could trust.
“Miss Winifred,” he said, “I am afraid, though you don’t seem much like it, that we must talk of business.”
“Yes; I wish it, Mr. Babington. I am only foolish and troubled—not ill at all.”
“I am not so sure about that; but still—Your brother Tom has been warning me, Miss Winifred—I hope to save you from a false step; that you are thinking of—going against your father’s will”—
“Did Tom tell you so, Mr. Babington?”
“He did. I confess that I was not surprised. I have expected you to do so all along; but so fine a fortune as you have got is not to be lightly parted with, my dear young lady. Think of all the power it gives you, power to do good, to increase the happiness, or at leastthe comfort, perhaps of hundreds of people. If it was in your brothers’ hands, do you think it would be used as well? We must think of that, Miss Winifred, we must think of that.”
“If it was in my power,” she said, looking at him wistfully, “I should think rather of what is just. Can anything be good that is founded upon injustice? Oh, Mr. Babington, put yourself in my place! Could you bear to take away from your brother, from any one, what was his by nature—to put yourself in his seat, to take it from him, to rob him?”
“Hush, hush, my dear girl! I am afraid I have not a conscience so delicate as yours. I could bear a great deal which does not seem bearable to you. And you must remember it is no doing of yours. Your father thought, and I agree with him, that you would make a better use of his money, and do more credit to his name, than either of your brothers. Itthrows a fearful responsibility upon you, we may allow; but still, my dear Miss Winifred”—
“Mr. Babington,” she cried, interrupting him, “you are my oldest friend—oh yes, my oldest friend! You know, if I am forced to do this, it will only be deceiving from beginning to end. I will only pretend to obey. I will be trying all the time, as I am now, to find out ways of defeating all his purposes, and doing—what he said I was not to do!”
Her eyes shone almost wildly through the tears that stood in them. She changed colour from pale to red, from red to pale; her weakness gave her the guise of impassioned strength.
“Miss Winifred,” said the lawyer very gravely, “do you know that you are guilty of the last imprudence in saying this, of all people in the world, to me?”
“Oh,” she cried, “you are my friend, my old friend! I never remember the time whenI did not know you. It is not imprudent, it is my only hope. Think a little of me first, whom you knew long before this will was made. Tell me how I can get out of the bondage of it. Teach me, teach me how to cheat everybody, for that is all that is left to me! how to keep it from them so as best to give it to them. Teach me! for there is no one I can ask but you.”
The lawyer looked at her with a very serious face. Her great emotion, her trembling earnestness, the very force of her appeal, as of one consulting her only oracle, hurt the good man with a sympathetic pain. “My dear,” he said, “God forbid I should refuse you my advice, or misunderstand you, you who are far too good for any of them. But, Miss Winifred, think again, my dear. Are you altogether a free agent? Is there not some one else who has a right to be consulted before you take astep—which may change the whole course of your life?”
Winifred grew so pale that he thought she was going to faint, and got up hurriedly to ring the bell. She stopped him with a movement of her hand. Then she said firmly, “There is no one; no one can come between me and my duty. I will consult nobody—but you.”
“My dear young lady, excuse me if I speak too plainly; but want of confidence between two people that are in the position of”—
“You mean,” she said faintly yet steadily, “Dr. Langton? Mr. Babington, he has no duty towards George and Tom. I love them—how can I help it? they are my brothers; but he—why should he love them? I don’t expect it—I can’t expect it. I must settle this by myself.”
“And yet he will be the one to suffer,” saidthe lawyer reflectively in a parenthesis. “My dear Miss Winifred, take a little time to think it over, there is no cause for hurry; take a week, take another day. Think a little”—
“I have done nothing but think,” she said, “since you told me first. Thinking kills me, I cannot go on with it; and you can’t tell—oh, you can’t tell how it harmsthem, what it makes them do and say! Tom”—(here her voice was stifled by the rising sob in her throat) “and all of them,” she cried hastily. “Oh, tell me how to be done with it, to settle it so that there shall be no more thinking, no more struggling!” She clasped her hands with a pathetic entreaty, and looked imploringly at him. And she bore in her face the signs of the struggle which she pleaded to be freed from. Her face had the parched and feverish look of anxiety, its young, soft outline had grown pinched and hollow, and all thecheerful glow of health had faded. The lawyer looked at her with genuine tenderness and pity.
“My poor child,” he said, “one can very well see that this great fortune, which your poor father believed was to make you happy, has brought anything but happiness to you.”
She gave him a little pathetic smile, and shook her head; but she was not able to speak.
“Then, Miss Winifred,” he said cheerfully, “since you are certain that you don’t want it, and won’t have it, and have made up your mind to do nothing but scheme and plot to frustrate the will, even when you are seeming to obey it,—I think I know a better way. Write down what you mean to do with the property, and leave the rest to me.”
She looked at him, roused by his words, with an awakening thrill of wonder. “Write down—what I mean to do? But that willmake me helpless to do it; that will risk everything; or so you said.”
“I said true. Nevertheless, if you are sure you wish, at the bottom of your heart, to sacrifice yourself to your brothers”—
She shook her head half angrily, with a gesture of impatience. “To give them back their rights.”
“That means the same thing in your phraseology. If that is what you really wish, do what I say, and leave the rest to me.”
She looked at him for a moment, bewildered, then rose up hastily and flew to the writing-table. How easy it was to do it! how blessed if only it were possible to throw this weight once for all off her shoulders, and be free!