“Don’t quarrel, Bertie,” Reine whispered in his ear.
“Quarrel! he is not worth quarrelling with. He is jealous, I suppose, because I am more important than he is,” Herbert said, stalking through the long passages which were still all bright with lights and flowers. Everard, hanging back out of hearing, followed the two young figures with his eyes through the windings of the passage. Herbert held his head high, indignant. Reine, with both her hands on his arm, soothed and calmed him. They were both resentful of his sour tone and what he had said.
“I dare say they think I am jealous,” Everard said to himself with a laugh that was not merry, and went away to his own room, and beginning to arrange his things for departure, meaning to leave next day. He had no need to stay there to swell Herbert’s triumph, he who had so long acted as nurse to him without fee or reward. Not quite without reward either, he thought, after all, rebuking himself, and held up his hand and looked at it intently, with a smile stealing over his face. Why should he interfere to save Herbert from his own vanity and folly? Why should he subject himself to the usual fate of Mentors, pointing out Scylla on the one side and Charybdis on the other? If the frail vessel was determined to be wrecked, what had he, Everard, to do with it? Let the boy accomplish his destiny, who cared? and then what could Reine do but take refuge with her natural champion, he whom she herself had appointed to stand in her place, and who had his own score against her still unacquitted? It was evidently to his interest to keep out of the way, to let things go as they would. “And I’ll back Giovanna against Sophy,” he said to himself, half jealous, half laughing, as he went to sleep.
As for Herbert, he lounged into the great hall, where some lights were still burning, with his sister, and found Miss Susan there, pale with fatigue and the excitement past but triumphant. “I hope you have not tired yourself out,” she said. “It was like those girls to lead you out into the night air, to give you a chance of taking cold. Their father would like nothing better than to see you laid up again: but I don’t give them credit for any scheme. They are too feather-brained for anything but folly.”
“Do you mean our cousins Sophy and Kate?” said Herbert with some solemnity, and an unconscious attempt to overawe Miss Susan, who was not used to anything of this kind, and was unable to understand what he meant.
“I mean the Farrel-Austin girls,” she said. “Riot and noise and nonsense are their atmosphere. I hope you do not like this kind of goings on, Reine?”
The brother and sister looked at each other. “You have always disliked the Farrel-Austins,” said Herbert, bravely putting himself in the breach. “I don’t know why, Aunt Susan. But we have no quarrel with the girls. They are very nice and friendly. Indeed, Reine and I have promised to go to them on Friday, for two or three days.”
He was three and twenty, he was acknowledged master of the house; but Herbert felt a certain tremor steal over him, and stood up before her with a strong sense of valor and daring as he said these words.
“Going to them on Friday—to the Farrel-Austins’ for three or four days! then you do not mean even to go to your own parish church on your first Sunday? Herbert,” said Miss Susan, indignantly, “you will break Augustine’s heart.”
“No, no, we did not say three or four days. I thought of that,” said Reine. “We shall return on Saturday. Don’t be angry, Aunt Susan. They were very kind, and we thought it was no harm.”
Herbert gave her an indignant glance. It was on his lips to say, “It does not matter whether Aunt Susan is angry or not,” but looking at her, he thought better of it. “Yes,” he said after a pause, “we shall return on Saturday. They were very kind, as Reine says, and how visiting our cousins could possibly involve any harm—”
“That is your own affair,” said Miss Susan; “I know what you mean, Herbert, and of course you are right, you are not children any longer, and must choose your own friends; well! Before you go, however, I should like to settle everything. To-night is my last night. Yes, it is too late to discuss that now. I don’t mean to say more at present. It went off very well, very pleasantly, but for that ridiculous interruption of Giovanna’s—”
“I did not think it was ridiculous,” said Herbert. “It was very pretty. Does Giovanna displease you too?”
Once more Reine pressed his arm. He was not always going to be coerced like this. If Miss Susan wants to be unjust and ungenerous, he was man enough, he felt, to meet her to the face.
“It was very ridiculous, I thought,” she said with a sigh, “and I told her so. I don’t suppose she meant any harm. She is very ignorant, and knows nothing about the customs of society. Thank heaven, she can’t stay very long now.”
“Why can’t she stay?” cried Herbert, alarmed. “Aunt Susan, I don’t know what has come over you. You used to be so kind to everybody, but now it is the people I particularly like you are so furious against. Why? those girls, who are as pretty and as pleasant as possible, and just the kind of companions Reine wants, and Madame Jean, who is the most charming person I ever saw in this house. Ignorant! I think she is very accomplished. How she sang last night, and what an eye she has for the picturesque! I never admired Whiteladies so much as this morning, when she took us over it. Aunt Susan, don’t be so cross. Are you disappointed in Reine, or in me, that you are so hard upon the people we like most?”
“The people you like most?” cried Miss Susan aghast.
“Yes, Aunt Susan, I like them too,” said Reine, bravely putting herself by her brother’s side. I believe they both thought it was a most chivalrous and high-spirited thing they were doing, rejecting experience and taking rashly what seemed to them the weaker side. The side of the accused against the judge, the side of the young against the old. It seemed so natural to do that. The two stood together in their foolishness in the old hall, all decorated in their honor, and confronted the dethroned queen of it with a smile. She stood baffled and thunderstruck, gazing at them, and scarcely knew what to say.
“Well, children, well,” she managed to get out at last. “You are no longer under me, you must choose your own friends; but God help you, what is to become of you if these are the kind of people you like best!”
They both laughed softly; though Reine had compunctions, they were not afraid. “You must confess at least that we have good taste,” said Herbert; “two very pretty people, and one beautiful. I should have been much happier with Sophy at one hand and Madame Jean on the other, instead of those two swells, as Sophy calls them.”
“Sophy, as you call her, would give her head for their notice,” cried Miss Susan indignant, “two of the best women in the county, and the most important families.”
Herbert shrugged his shoulders. “They did not amuse me,” he said, “but perhaps I am stupid. I prefer the foolish Sophy and the undaunted Madame Jean.”
Miss Susan left them with a cold good-night to see all the lights put out, which was important in the old house. She was so angry that it almost eased her of her personal burden; but Reine, I confess, felt a thrill of panic as she went up the oak stairs. Scylla and Charybdis! She did not identify Herbert’s danger, but in her heart there worked a vague premonition of danger, and without knowing why, she was afraid.
“Goingaway?” said Giovanna. “M. ’Erbert, you go away already? is it that Viteladies is what you call dull? You have been here so short of time, you do not yet know.”
“We are going only for a day; at least not quite two days,” said Reine.
“For a day! but a day, two days is long. Why go at all?” said Giovanna. “We are very well here. I will sing, if that pleases, to you. M. ’Erbert, when you are so long absent, you should not go away to-morrow, the next day. Madame Suzanne will think, ‘They lofe me not.’ ”
“That would be nonsense,” said Herbert; “besides, you know I cannot be kept in one place at my age, whatever old ladies may think.”
“Ah! nor young ladies neither,” said Giovanna. “You are homme, you have the freedom to do what you will, I know it. Me, I am but a woman, I can never have this freedom; but I comprehend and I admire. Yes, M. ’Erbert, that goes without saying. One does not put the eagle into a cage.”
And Giovanna gave a soft little sigh. She was seated in one of her favorite easy chairs, thrown back in it in an attitude of delicious easy repose. She had no mind for the work with which Reine employed herself, and which all the women Herbert ever knew had indulged in, to his annoyance, and often envy; for an invalid’s weary hours would have been the better often of such feminine solace, and the young man hated it all the more that he had often been tempted to take to it, had his pride permitted. But Giovanna had no mind for this pretty cheat, that looked like occupation.In her own room she worked hard at her own dresses and those of the child, but downstairs she sat with her large, shapely white hands in her lap, in all the luxury of doing nothing; and this peculiarity delighted Herbert. He was pleased, too, with what she said; he liked to imagine that he was an eagle who could not be shut into a cage, and to feel his immense superiority, as man, over the women who were never free to do as they liked, and for whom (he thought) such an indulgence would not be good. He drew himself up unconsciously, and felt older, taller. “No,” he said, “of course it would be too foolish of Aunt Susan or any one to expect me to be guided by what she thinks right.”
“Me, I do not speak for you,” said Giovanna; “I speak for myself. I am disappointed, me. It will be dull when you are gone. Yes, yes, Monsieur ’Erbert, we are selfish, we other women. When you go we are dull; we think not of you, but of ourselves, n’est ce pas, Mademoiselle Reine? I am frank. I confess it. You will be very happy; you will have much pleasure; but me, I shall be dull. Voilà tout!”
I need not say that this frankness captivated Herbert. It is always more pleasant to have our absence regretted by others, selfishly, for the loss it is to them, than unselfishly on our account only; so that this profession of indifference to the pleasure of your departing friend, in consideration of the loss to yourself, is the very highest compliment you can pay him. Herbert felt this to the bottom of his heart. He was infinitely flattered and touched by the thought of a superiority so delightful, and he had not been used to it. He had been accustomed, indeed, to be in his own person the centre of a great deal of care and anxiety, everybody thinking of him for his sake; but to have it recognized that his presence or absence made a place dull or the reverse, and affected his surroundings, not for his sake but theirs, was an immense rise in the world to Herbert. He felt it necessary to be very friendly and attentive to Giovanna, by way of consoling her. “After all, it will not be very long,” he said; “from Friday morning to Saturday night. I like to humor the old ladies, and they make a point of our being at home for Sunday; though I don’t know how Sophy and Kate will like it, Reine.”
“They will not like it at all,” said Giovanna. “They want you to be to them, to amuse them, to make them happy; so do I, thesame. When they come here, those young ladies, we shall not be friends; we shall fight,” she said with a laugh. “Ah, they are more clever than me, they will win; though if we could fight with the hands like men, I should win. I am more strong.”
“It need not come so far as that,” said Herbert, complaisant and delighted. “You are all very kind, I am sure, and think more of me than I deserve.”
“I am kind—to me, not to you, M. ’Erbert,” said Giovanna; “when I tell you it is dull, dull à mourir the moment you go away.”
“Yet you have spent a good many months here without Herbert, Madame Jean,” said Reine; “if it had been so dull, you might have gone away.”
“Ah, mademoiselle! where could I have gone to? I am not rich like you; I have not parents that love me. If I go home now,” cried Giovanna, with a laugh, “it will be to the room behind the shop where my belle-mère sits all the day, where they cook the dinner, where I am the one that is in the way, always. I have no money, no people to care for me. Even little Jean they take from me. They say, ‘Tenez Gi’vanna; she has not the ways of children.’ Have not I the ways of children, M. ’Erbert? That is what they would say to me, if I went to what you call ’ome.”
“Reine,” said Herbert, in an undertone, “how can you be so cruel, reminding the poor thing how badly off she is? I hope you will not think of going away,” he added, turning to Giovanna. “Reine and I will be too glad that you should stay; and as for your flattering appreciation of our society, I for one am very grateful,” said the young fellow. “I am very happy to be able to do anything to make Whiteladies pleasant to you.”
Miss Susan came in as he said this with Everard, who was going away; but she was too much preoccupied by her own cares to attend to what her nephew was saying. Everard appreciated the position more clearly. He saw the grateful look with which Giovanna turned her beautiful eyes to the young master of the house, and he saw the pleased vanity and complaisance in Herbert’s face. “What an ass he is!” Everard thought to himself; and then he quoted privately with rueful comment,—
“ ‘On him each courtier’s eye was bent,To him each lady’s look was lent:’
“ ‘On him each courtier’s eye was bent,To him each lady’s look was lent:’
“ ‘On him each courtier’s eye was bent,To him each lady’s look was lent:’
all because the young idiot has Whiteladies, and is the head of the house. Bravo! Herbert, old boy,” he said aloud, though there was nothing particularly appropriate in the speech, “you are having your innings. I hope you will make the most of them. But now that I am no longer wanted, I am going off. I suppose when it is warm enough for water parties, I shall come into fashion again; Sophy and Kate will manage that.”
“Well, Everard, if I were you I should have more pride,” said Miss Susan. “I would not allow myself to be taken up and thrown aside as those girls please. What you can see in them baffles me. They are not very pretty. They are very loud, and fast and noisy—”
“I think so too!” cried Giovanna, clapping her hands. “They are my enemies: they take you away, M. ’Erbert and Mademoiselle Reine. They make it dull here.”
“Only for a day,” said Herbert, bending over her, his eyes melting and glowing with that delightful suffusion of satisfied vanity which with so many men represents love. “I could not stay long away if I would,” said the young man in a lower tone. He was quite captivated by her frank demonstrations of personal loss, and believed them to the bottom of his heart.
Miss Susan threw a curious, half-startled look at them, and Reine raised her head from her embroidery; but both of these ladies had something of their own on their minds which occupied them, and closed their eyes to other matters. Reine was secretly uneasy that Everard should go away; that there should have been no explanation between them; and that his tone had in it a certain suppressed bitterness. What had she done to him? Nothing. She had been occupied with her brother, as was natural; any one else would have been the same. Everard’s turn could come at any time, she said to herself, with an unconscious arrogance not unusual with girls, when they are sure of having the upper hand. But she was uneasy that he should go away.
“I don’t want to interfere with your pleasures, Herbert,” said Miss Susan, “but I must settle what I am to do. Our cottage is ready for us, everything is arranged; and I want to give up my charge to you, and go away.”
“To go away!” the brother and sister repeated together with dismay.
“Of course; that is what it must come to. When you were under age it was different. I was your guardian, Herbert, and you were my children.”
“Aunt Susan,” cried Reine, coming up to her with eager tenderness, “we are your children still.”
“And I—am not at all sure whether it will suit me to take up all you have been doing,” said Herbert. “It suits you, why should we change; and how could Reine manage the house? Aunt Susan, it is unkind to come down upon us like this. Leave us a little time to get used to it. What do you want with a cottage? Of course you must like Whiteladies best.”
“Oh, Aunt Susan! what he says is not so selfish as it sounds,” said Reine. “Why—why should you go?”
“We are all selfish,” said Herbert, “as Madame Jean says. She wishes us to stay because it is dull without us (‘Bien, très dull,’ said Giovanna), and we want you to stay because we are not up to the work and don’t understand it. Never mind the cottage; there is plenty of room in Whiteladies for all of us. Aunt Susan, why should you be disagreeable? Don’t go away.”
“I wish it; I wish it,” she said in a low tone; “let me go!”
“But we don’t wish it,” cried Reine, kissing her in triumph, “and neither does Augustine. Oh, Aunt Austine, listen to her, speak for us! You don’t wish to go away from Whiteladies, away from your home?”
“No,” said Augustine, who had come in in her noiseless way. “I do not intend to leave Whiteladies,” she went on, with serious composure; “but Herbert, I have something to say to you. It is more important than anything else. You must marry; you must marry at once; I don’t wish any time to be lost. I wish you to have an heir, whom I shall bring up. I will devote myself to him. I am fifty-seven; there is no time to be lost; but with care I might live twenty years. The women of our house are long-lived. Susan is sixty, but she is as active as any one of you; and for an object like this, one would spare no pains to lengthen one’s days. You must marry, Herbert. This has now become the chief object of my life.”
The young members of the party, unable to restrain themselves, laughed at this solemn address. Miss Susan turned away impatient, and sitting down, pulled out the knitting of which lately shehad done so little. But as for Augustine, her countenance preserved a perfect gravity. She saw nothing laughable in it. “I excuse you,” she said very seriously, “for you cannot see into my heart and read what is there. Nor does Susan understand me. She is taken up with the cares of this world and the foolishness of riches. She thinks a foolish display like that of last night is more important. But, Herbert, listen to me; you and your true welfare have been my first thought and my first prayer for years, and this is my recommendation, my command to you. You must marry—and without any unnecessary delay.”
“But the lady?” said Herbert, laughing and blushing; even this very odd address had a pleasurable element in it. It implied the importance of everything he did; and it pleased the young man, even after such an odd fashion, to lay this flattering unction to his soul.
“The lady!” said Miss Augustine gravely; and then she made a pause. “I have thought a great deal about that, and there is more than one whom I could suggest to you; but I have never married myself, and I might not perhaps be a good judge. It seems the general opinion that in such matters people should choose for themselves.”
All this she said with so profound a gravity that the bystanders, divided between amusement and a kind of awe, held their breath and looked at each other. Miss Augustine had not sat down. She rarely did sit down in the common sitting-room; her hands were too full of occupation. Her Church services, now that the Chantry was opened, her Almshouses prayers, her charities, her universal oversight of her pensioners filled up all her time, and bound her to hours as strictly as if she had been a cotton-spinner in a mill. No cotton-spinner worked harder than did this Gray Sister; from morning to night her time was portioned out.
I do not venture to say how many miles she walked daily, rain or shine; from Whiteladies to the Almshouses, to the church, to the Almshouses again; or how many hours she spent absorbed in that strange matter-of-fact devotion which was her way of working for her family. She repeated, in her soft tones, “I do not interfere with your choice, Herbert; but what I say is very important. Marry! I wish it above everything else in life.” And having said this, she went away.
“This is very solemn,” said Herbert, with a laugh, but his laugh was not like the merriment into which, by-and-by, the others burst forth, and which half offended the young man. Reine, for her part, ran to the piano when Miss Augustine disappeared, and burst forth into a quaint little French ditty, sweet and simple, of old Norman rusticity.
“A chaque rose que je effeuilleMarie-toi, car il est temps,”
“A chaque rose que je effeuilleMarie-toi, car il est temps,”
“A chaque rose que je effeuilleMarie-toi, car il est temps,”
the girl sang. But Miss Susan did not laugh, and Herbert did not care to see anything ridiculed in which he had such an important share. After all it was natural enough, he said to himself, that such advice should be given with great gravity to one on whose acts so much depended. He did not see what there was to laugh about. Reine was absurd with her songs. There was always one of them which came in pat to the moment. Herbert almost thought that this light-minded repetition of Augustine’s advice was impertinent both to her and himself. And thus a little gloom had come over his brow.
“Messieurs et mesdames,” said Giovanna, suddenly, “you laugh, but, if you reflect, ma sœur has reason. She thinks, Here is Monsieur ’Erbert, young and strong, but yet there are things which happen to the strongest; and here, on the other part, is a little boy, a little, little boy, who is not English, whose mother is nothing but a foreigner, who is the heir. This gives her the panique. And for me, too, M. ’Erbert, I say with Mademoiselle Reine, ‘Marie-toi, car il est temps.’ Yes, truly! although little Jean is my boy, I say mariez-vous with my heart.”
“How good you are! how generous you are! Strange that you should be the only one to see it,” said Herbert, for the moment despising all the people belonging to him, who were so opaque, who did not perceive the necessities of the position. He himself saw those necessities well enough, and that he should marry was the first and most important. To tell the truth, he could not see even that Augustine’s anxiety was of an exaggerated description. It was not a thing to make laughter, and ridiculous jokes and songs about.
Giovanna did not desert her post during that day. She did not always lead the conversation, nor make herself so important in itas she had done at first, but she was always there, putting in a word when necessary, ready to come to Herbert’s assistance, to amuse him when there was occasion, to flatter him with bold, frank speeches, in which there was always a subtle compliment involved. Everard took his leave shortly after, with farewells in which there was a certain consciousness that he had not been treated quite as he ought to have been. “Till I come into fashion again,” he said, with the laugh which began to sound harsh to Reine’s ears, “I am better at home in my own den, where I can be as sulky as I please. When I am wanted, you know where to find me.” Reine thought he looked at her when he said this with reproach in his eyes.
“I think you are wanted now,” said Miss Susan; “there are many things I wished to consult you about. I wish you would not go away.”
But he was obstinate. “No, no; there is nothing for me to do,” he said; “no journeys to make, no troubles to encounter. You are all settled at home in safety; and when I am wanted you know where to find me,” he added, this time holding out his hand to Reine, and looking at her very distinctly. Poor Reine felt herself on the edge of a very sea of troubles: everybody around her seemed to have something in their thoughts beyond her divining. Miss Susan meant more than she could fathom, and there lurked a purpose in Giovanna’s beautiful eyes, which Reine began to be dimly conscious of, but could not explain to herself. How could he leave her to steer her course among these undeveloped perils? and how could she call him back when he was “wanted,” as he said bitterly? She gave him her hand, turning away her head to hide a something, almost a tear, that would come into her eyes, and with a forlorn sense of desertion in her heart; but she was too proud either by look or word to bid Everard stay.
This was on Thursday, and the next day they were to go to the Hatch, so that the interval was not long. Giovanna sang for them in the evening all kinds of popular songs, which was what she knew best, old Flemish ballads, and French and Italian canzoni; those songs of which every hamlet possesses one special to itself. “For I am not educated,” she said; “Mademoiselle must see that. I do all this by the ear. It is not music; it is nothing but ignorance. These are the chants du peuple, and I am nothingbut one of the peuple, me. I am très-peuple. I never pretend otherwise. I do not wish to deceive you, M. ’Erbert, nor Mademoiselle.”
“Deceive us!” cried Herbert. “If we could imagine such a thing, we should be dolts indeed.”
Giovanna raised her head and looked at him, then turned to Miss Susan, whose knitting had dropped on her knee, and who, without thought, I think, had turned her eyes upon the group. “You are right, Monsieur ’Erbert,” she said, with a strange malicious laugh, “here at least you are quite safe, though there are much of persons who are traitres in the world. No one will deceive you here.”
She laughed as she spoke, and Miss Susan clutched at her knitting and buried herself in it, so to speak, not raising her head again for a full hour after, during which time Herbert and Giovanna talked a great deal to each other. And Reine sat by, with an incipient wonder in her mind which she could not quite make out, feeling as if her aunt and herself were one faction, Giovanna and Herbert another; as if there were all sorts of secret threads which she could not unravel, and intentions of which she knew nothing. The sense of strangeness grew on her so, that she could scarcely believe she was in Whiteladies, the home for which she had sighed so long. This kind of disenchantment happens often when the hoped-for becomes actual, but not always so strongly or with so bewildering a sense of something unrevealed, as that which pressed upon the very soul of Reine.
Next morning Giovanna, with her child on her shoulder, came out to the gate to see them drive away. “You will not stay more long than to-morrow,” she said. “How we are going to be dull till you come back! Monsieur Herbert, Mademoiselle Reine, you promise—not more long than to-morrow! It is two great long days!” She kissed her hand to them, and little Jean waved his cap, and shouted “Vive M. ’Erbert!” as the carriage drove away.
“What a grace she has about her!” said Herbert. “I never saw a woman so graceful. After all, it is a bore to go. It is astonishing how happy one feels, after a long absence, in the mere sense of being at home. I am sorry we promised; of course we must keep our promise now.”
“I like it, rather,” said Reine, feeling half ashamed of herself.“Home is not what it used to be; there is something strange, something new; I can’t tell what it is. After all, though, Madame Jean is very handsome, it is strange she should be there.”
“Oh, you object to Madame Jean, do you?” said Herbert. “You women are all alike; Aunt Susan does not like her either, I suppose you cannot help it; the moment a woman is more attractive than others, the moment a man shows that he has got eyes in his head—But you cannot help it, I suppose. What a walk she has, and carrying the child like a feather! It is a great bore, this visit to the Hatch, and so soon.”
“You were pleased with the idea; you were delighted to accept the invitation,” said Reine, injudiciously, I must say.
“Bah! one’s ideas change; but Sophy and Kate would have been disappointed,” said Herbert, with that ineffable look of complaisance in his eyes. And thus from Scylla which he had left, he drove calmly on to Charybdis, not knowing where he went.
Therehad been great preparations made for Herbert’s reception at the Hatch. I say Herbert’s—for Reine, though she had been perforce included in the invitation, was not even considered any more. After the banquet at Whiteladies the sisters had many consultations on this subject, and there was indeed very little time to do anything. Sophy had been of opinion at first that the more gay his short visit could be made the better Herbert would be pleased, and had contemplated an impromptu dance, and I don’t know how many other diversions; but Kate was wiser. It was one good trait in their characters, if there was not very much else, that they acted for each other with much disinterestedness, seldom or never entering into personal rivalry. “Not too much the first time,” said Kate; “let him make acquaintance with us, that is the chief thing.” “But he mightn’t care for us,” objected Sophy. “Some people have such bad taste.” This was immediately after the Whiteladies dinner, after the moonlight walk and the long drive, when they were safe in the sanctuary of their own rooms. The girls were in their white dressing-gowns, with their hair about their shoulders, and were taking a light refection of cakes and chocolate before going to bed.
“If you choose to study him a little, and take a little pains, of course he will like you,” said Kate. “Any man will fall in love with any woman, if she takes trouble enough.”
“It is very odd to me,” said Sophy, “that with those opinions you should not be married, at your age.”
“My dear,” said Kate seriously, “plenty of men have fallen in love with me, only they have not been the right kind of men. I have been too fond of fun; and nobody that quite suited hascome in my way since I gave up amusing myself. The Barracks so near is very much in one’s way,” said Kate, with a sigh. “One gets used to such a lot of them about; and you can always have your fun, whatever happens; and till you are driven to it, it seems odd to make a fuss about one. But whatyouhave got to do is easy enough. He is as innocent as a baby, and as foolish. No woman ever took the trouble, I should say, to look at him. You have it all in your own hands. As for Reine, I will look after Reine. She is a suspicious little thing, but I’ll keep her out of your way.”
“What a bore it is!” said Sophy, with a yawn. “Why should we be obliged to marry more than the men are. It isn’t fair. Nobody finds fault with them, though they have dozens of affairs; but we’re drawn over the coals for nothing, a bit of fun. I’m sure I don’t want to marry Bertie, or any one. I’d a great deal rather not. So long as one has one’s amusement, it’s jolly enough.”
“If you could always be as young as you are now,” said Kate oracularly; “but even you are beginning to be passée, Sophy. It’s the pace, you know, as the men say—you need not make faces. The moment you are married you will be a girl again. As for me, I feel a grandmother.”
“Youareold,” said Sophy compassionately; “and indeed you ought to go first.”
“I am just eighteen months older than you are,” said Kate, rousing herself in self-defence, “and with your light hair, you’ll go off sooner. Don’t be afraid; as soon as I have got you off my hands I shall take care of myself. But look here! What you’ve got to do is to study Herbert a little. Don’t take him up as if he were Jack or Tom. Study him. There is one thing you never can go wrong in with any of them,” said this experienced young woman. “Look as if you thought him the cleverest fellow that ever was; make yourself as great a fool as you can in comparison. That flatters them above everything. Ask his advice you know, and that sort of thing. The greatest fool I ever knew,” said Kate, reflectively, “was Fenwick, the adjutant. I made him wild about me by that.”
“He would need to be a fool to think you meant it,” said Sophy, scornfully; “you that have such an opinion of yourself.”
“I had too good an opinion of myself to have anything to say tohim, at least; but it’s fun putting them in a state,” said Kate, pleased with the recollection. This was a sentiment which her sister fully shared, and they amused themselves with reminiscences of several such dupes ere they separated. Perhaps even the dupes were scarcely such dupes as these young ladies thought; but anyhow, they had never been, as Kate said, “the right sort of men.” Dropmore, etc., were always to the full as knowing as their pretty adversaries, and were not to be beguiled by any such specious pretences. And to tell the truth, I am doubtful how far Kate’s science was genuine. I doubt whether she was unscrupulous enough and good-tempered enough to carry out her own programme; and Sophy certainly was too careless, too feather brained, for any such scheme. She meant to marry Herbert because his recommendations were great, and because he lay in her way, as it were, and it would be almost a sin not to put forth a hand to appropriate the gifts of Providence; but if it had been necessary to “study” him, as her sister enjoined, or to give great pains to his subjugation, I feel sure that Sophy’s patience and resolution would have given way. The charm in the enterprise was that it seemed so easy; Whiteladies was a most desirable object; and Sophy, longing for fresh woods and pastures new, was rather attracted than repelled by the likelihood of having to spend the Winters abroad.
Mr. Farrel-Austin, for his part, received the young head of his family with anything but delight. He had been unable, in ordinary civility, to contradict the invitation his daughters had given, but took care to express his sentiments on the subject next day very distinctly—had they cared at all for those sentiments, which I don’t think they did. Their schemes, of course, were quite out of his range, and were not communicated to him; nor was he such a self-denying parent as to have been much consoled for his own loss of the family property by the possibility of one of his daughters stepping into possession of it. He thought it an ill-timed exhibition of their usual love of strangers, and love of company, and growled at them all day long until the time of the arrival, when he absented himself, to their great satisfaction, though it was intended as the crowning evidence of his displeasure. “Papa has been obliged to go out; he is so sorry, but hopes youwill excuse him till dinner,” Kate said, when the girls came to receive their cousins at the door. “Oh, they won’t mind, I am sure,” said Sophy. “We shall have them all to ourselves, which will be much jollier.” Herbert’s brow clouded temporarily, for, though he did not love Mr. Farrel-Austin, he felt that his absence showed a want of that “proper respect” which was due to the head of the house. But under the gay influence of the girls the cloud speedily floated away.
They had gone early, by special prayer, as their stay was to be so short; and Kate had made the judicious addition of two men from the barracks to their little luncheon-party. “One for me, and one for Reine,” she had said to Sophy, “which will leave you a fair field.” The one whom Kate had chosen for herself was a middle-aged major, with a small property—a man who had hitherto afforded much “fun” to the party generally as a butt, but whose serious attentions Miss Farrel-Austin, at five-and-twenty, did not absolutely discourage. If nothing better came in the way, he might do, she felt. He had a comfortable income and a mild temper, and would not object to “fun.” Reine’s share was a foolish youth, who had not long joined the regiment; but as she was quite unconscious that he had been selected for her, Reine was happily free from all sense of being badly treated. He laughed at the jokes which Kate and Sophy made; and held his tongue otherwise—thus fulfilling all the duty for which he was told off. After this morning meal, which was so much gayer and more lively than anything at Whiteladies, the new-comers were carried off to see the house and the grounds, upon which many improvements had been made. Sophy was Herbert’s guide, and ran before him through all the new rooms, showing the new library, the morning-room, and the other additions. “This is one good of an ugly modern place,” she said. “You can never alter dear old Whiteladies, Bertie. If you did we should get up a crusade of all the Austins and all the antiquarians, and do something to you—kill you, I think; unless some weak-minded person like myself were to interfere.”
“I shall never put myself in danger,” he said, “though perhaps I am not such a fanatic about Whiteladies as you others.”
“Don’t!” said Sophy, raising her hand as if to stop his mouth. “If you say a word more I shall hate you. It is small, to be sure; and if you should have a very large family when you marry”—shewent on, with a laugh—“but the Austins never have large families; that is one part of the curse, I suppose your Aunt Augustine would say! but for my part, I hate large families, and I think it is very grand to have a curse belonging to us. It is as good as a family ghost. What a pity that the monk and the nun don’t walk! But thereissomething in the great staircase. Did you ever see it? I never lived in Whiteladies, or I should have tried to see what it was.”
“Did you never live at Whiteladies? I thought when we were children—”
“Never for more than a day. The old ladies hate us. Ask us now, Bertie, there’s a darling. Well! he will be a darling if he asks us. It is the most delightful old house in the world, and I want to go.”
“Then I ask you on the spot,” said Herbert. “Am I a darling now? You know,” he added in a lower tone, as they went on, and separated from the others, “it was as near as possible being yours. Two years ago no one supposed I should get better. You must have felt it was your own!”
“Not once,” said Sophy. “Papa’s, perhaps—but what would that have done for us? Daughters marry and go away—it never would have been ours; and Mrs. Farrel-Austin won’t have a son. Isn’t it provoking? Oh, she is only our step-mother, you know—it does not matter what we say. Papa could beat her; but I am so glad, so glad,” cried Sophy, with aglow of smiles, “that instead of papa, or that nasty little French boy, Bertie, it is you, our cousin, whom we are fond of!—I can’t tell you how glad I am.”
“Thanks,” said Herbert, clasping the hand she held out to him, and holding it. It seemed so natural to him that she should be glad.
“Because,” said Sophy, looking at him with her pretty blue eyes, “we have been sadly neglected, Kate and I. We have never had any one to advise us, or tell us what we ought to do. We both came out too young, and were thrown on the world to do what we pleased. If you see anything in us you don’t like, Bertie, remember this is the reason. We never had a brother. Now, you will be as near a brother to us as any one could be. We shall be able to go and consult you, and you will help us out of our scrapes. I did so hope, before you came, that we should be friends; and now Ithinkwe shall,” she said, giving a little pressure to the hand which still held hers.
Herbert was so much affected by this appeal that it brought the tears to his eyes.
“I think we shall, indeed,” he said, warmly,—“nay, we are. It would be a strange fellow indeed who would not be glad to be brother, or anything else, to a girl like you.”
“Brother,notanything else,” said Sophy, audibly but softly. “Ah, Bertie! you can’t think how glad I am. As soon as we saw you, Kate and I could not help feeling what an advantage Reine had over us. To have you to refer to always—to have you to talk to—instead of the nonsense that we girls are always chattering to each other.”
“Well,” said Herbert, more and more pleased, “I suppose it is an advantage; not that I feel myself particularly wise, I am sure. There is always something occurring which shows one how little one knows.”
“Ifyoufeel that, imagine howwemust feel,” said Sophy, “who have never had any education. Oh yes, we have had just the same as other girls! but not like men—not like you, Bertie. Oh, you need not be modest. I know you haven’t been at the University to waste your time and get into debt, like so many we know. But you have done a great deal better. You have read and you have thought, and Reine has had all the advantage. I almost hate Reine for being so much better off than we are.”
“But, really,” cried Herbert, laughing half with pleasure, half with a sense of the incongruity of the praise, “you give me a great deal more credit than I deserve. I have never been very much of a student. I don’t know that I have done much for Reine—except what one can do in the way of conversation, you know,” he added, after a pause, feeling that after all it must have been this improving conversation which had made his sister what she was. It had not occurred to him before, but the moment it was suggested—yes, of course, that was what it must be.
“Just what I said,” cried Sophy; “and we never had that advantage. So if you find us frivolous, Bertie—”
“How could I find you frivolous? You are nothing of the sort. I shall almost think you want me to pay you compliments—to say what I think of you.”
“I hate compliments,” cried Sophy. “Here we are on the lawn, Bertie, and here are the others. What do you think of it? We have had such trouble with the grass—now, I think, it is rather nice. It has been rolled and watered and mown, and rolled and watered and mown again, almost every day.”
“It is the best croquet-ground in the county,” said the Major; “and why shouldn’t we have a game? It is pleasant to be out of doors such a lovely day.”
This was assented to, and the others went in-doors for their hats; but Sophy stayed. “I have got rid of any complexion I ever had,” she said. “I am always out of doors. The sun must have got tired of burning me, I am so brown already,” and she put up two white, pink-fingered hands to her white-and-pink cheeks. She was one of those blondes of satin-skin who are not easily affected by the elements. Herbert laughed, and with the privilege of cousinship took hold of one of the pink tips of the fingers, and looked at the hand.
“Is that what you call brown?” he said. “We have just come from the land of brown beauties, and I ought to know. It is the color of milk with roses in it,” and the young man, who was not used to paying compliments, blushed as he made his essay; which was more than Sophy, experienced in the commodity, felt any occasion to do.
“Milk of roses,” she said, laughing; “that is a thing for the complexion. I don’t use it, Bertie; I don’t use anything of the kind. Men are always so dreadfully knowing about young girls’ dodges—” The word slipped out against her will, for Sophy felt that slang was not expedient, and she blushed at this slip, though she had not blushed at the compliment. Herbert did not, however, discriminate. He took the pretty suffusion to his own account, and laughed at the inadvertent word. He thought she put it in inverted commas, as a lady should; and when this is done, a word of slang is piquant now and then as a quotation. Besides, he was far from being a purist in language. Kate, however, the unselfish, thoughtful elder sister, sweetly considerate of the young beauty, brought out Sophy’s hat with her own, and they began to play. Herbert and Reine were novices, unacquainted (strange as the confession must sound) with this universally popular game; and Sophy boldly stepped into thebreech, and took them both on her side. “I am the best player of the lot,” said Sophy calmly. “You know I am. So Bertie and Reine shall come with me; and beat us if you can!” said the young champion; and if the reader will believe me, Sophy’s boast came true. Kate, indeed, made a brave stand; but the Major was middle-aged, and the young fellow was feeble, and Herbert showed an unsuspected genius for the game. He was quite pleased himself by his success; everything, indeed, seemed to conspire to make Herbert feel how clever he was, how superior he was, what an acquisition was his society; and during the former part of his life it had not been so. Like one of the great philosophers of modern times, Herbert felt that those who appreciated him so deeply must in themselves approach the sublime. Indeed, I fear it is a little mean on my part to take the example of that great philosopher, as if he were a rare instance; for is not the most foolish of us of the same opinion? “Call me wise, and I will allow you to be a judge,” says an old Scotch proverb. Herbert was ready to think all these kind people very good judges who so magnified and glorified himself.
In the evening there was a very small dinner-party; again two men to balance Kate and Reine, but not the same men—persons of greater weight and standing, with Farrel-Austin himself at the foot of his own table. Mrs. Farrel-Austin was not well enough to come to dinner, but appeared in the drawing-room afterward; and when the gentlemen came upstairs, appropriated Reine. Sophy, who had a pretty little voice, had gone to the piano, and was singing to Herbert, pausing at the end of every verse to ask him, “Was it very bad? Tell me what you dislike most, my high notes or my low notes, or my execution, or what?” while Herbert, laughing and protesting, gave vehement praise to all. “I don’t dislike anything. I am delighted with every word; but you must not trust to me, for indeed I am no judge of music.”
“No judge of music, and yet fresh from Italy!” cried Sophy, with flattering contempt.
While this was going on Mrs. Farrel-Austin drew Reine close to her sofa. “I am very glad to see you, my dear,” she said, “and so far as I am concerned I hope you will come often. You are so quiet and nice; and all I have seen of your Aunt Susan I like, though I know she does not like us. But I hope, my dear,you won’t get into the racketing set our girls are so fond of. I should be very sorry for that; it would be bad for your brother. I don’t mean to say anything against Kate and Sophy. They are very lively and very strong, and it suits them, though in some things I think it is bad for them too. But your brother could never stand it, my dear; I know what bad health is, and I can see that he is not strong still.”
“Oh, yes,” said Reine eagerly. “He has been going out in the world a great deal lately. I was frightened at first; but I assure you he is quite strong.”
Mrs. Farrel-Austin shook her head. “I know what poor health is,” she said, “and however strong you may get, you never can stand a racket. I don’t suppose for a moment that they mean any harm, but still I should not like anything to happen in this house. People might say—and your Aunt Susan would be sure to think—It is very nice, I suppose, for young people; and of course at your age you are capable of a great deal of racketing; but I must warn you, my dear, it’s ruin for the health.”
“Indeed, I don’t think we have any intention of racketing.”
“Ah, it is not the intention that matters,” said the invalid. “I only want to warn you, my dear. It is a very racketing set. You should not let yourself be drawn into it, and quietly, you know, when you have an opportunity, you might say a word to your brother. I dare say he feels the paramount value of health. Oh, what should I give now if I had only been warned when I was young! You cannot play with your health, my dear, with impunity. Even the girls, though they are so strong, have headaches and things which they oughtn’t to have at their age. But I hope you will come here often, you are so nice and quiet—not like the most of those that come here.”
“What is Mrs. Austin saying to you, Reine?” asked Kate.
“She told me I was nice and quiet,” said Reine, thinking that in honor she was bound not to divulge the rest; and they both laughed at the moderate compliment.
“So you are,” said Kate, giving her a little hug. “It is refreshing to be with any one so tranquil—and I am sure you will do us both good.”
Reine was not impressed by this as Herbert was by Sophy’spretty speeches. Perhaps the praise that was given to her was not equally well chosen. The passionate little semi-French girl (who had been so ultra-English in Normandy) was scarcely flattered by being called tranquil, and did not feel that to do Sophy and Kate good by being “nice and quiet” was a lofty mission. What did a racketing set mean? she wondered. An involuntary prejudice against the house rose in her mind, and this opened her eyes to something of Sophy’s tactics. It was rather hard to sit and look on and see Herbert thus fooled to the top of his bent. When she went to the piano beside them, Sophy grew more rational; but still she kept referring to Herbert, consulting him. “Is it like this they do it in Italy?” she sang, executing “a shake” with more natural sweetness than science.
“Indeed, I don’t know, but it is beautiful,” said Herbert. “Ask Reine.”
“Oh, Reine is only a girl like myself. She will say what she thinks will please me. I have far more confidence in a gentleman,” cried Sophy; “and above all in you, Bertie, who have promised to be a brother to me,” she said, in a lower tone.
“Did I promise to be a brother?” said poor, foolish Herbert, his heart beating with vanity and pleasure.
And the evening passed amid these delights.
INEEDnot follow day by day the course of Herbert’s life. Though the brother and sister went out a good deal together at first, being asked to all the great houses in the neighborhood, as became their position in the county and their recent arrival, yet there gradually arose a separation between Herbert and Reine. It was inevitable, and she had learned to acknowledge this, and did not rebel as at first; but a great many people shook their heads when it became apparent that, notwithstanding Mrs. Farrel-Austin’s warning, Herbert had been drawn into the “racketing set” whose headquarters were at the Hatch. The young man was fond of pleasure, as well as of flattery, and it was Summer, when all the ills that flesh is heir to relax their hold a little, and dissipation is comparatively harmless. He went to Ascot with the party from the Hatch, and he went to a great many other places with them; and though the friends he made under their auspices led Herbert into places much worse both for his health and mind than any the girls could lead him to, he remained faithful, so far, to Kate and Sophy, and continued to attend them wherever they went. As for Reine, she was happy enough in the comparative quiet into which she dropped when the first outbreak of gayety was over. Miss Susan, against her will, still remained at Whiteladies; against her will—yet it may well be supposed it was no pleasure to her to separate herself from the old house in which she had been born, and from which she had never been absent for so much as six months all her life. Miss Augustine, for her part, took little or no notice of the change in the household. She went her way as usual, morning and evening, to the Almshouses. When Miss Susan spoke to her, as she did sometimes, about the cottage which stood all this time furnished and ready for instant occupation,she only shook her head. “I do not mean to leave Whiteladies,” she said, calmly. Neither did Giovanna, so far as could be perceived. “You cannot remain here when we go,” said Miss Susan to her.
“There is much room in the house,” said Giovanna; “and when you go, Madame Suzanne, there will be still more. The little chamber for me and the child, what will that do to any one?”
“But you cannot, you must not; it will be improper—don’t you understand?” cried Miss Susan.
Giovanna shook her head.
“I will speak to M. Herbert,” she said, smiling in Miss Susan’s face.
This then was the position of affairs. Herbert put off continually the settlement between them, begging that he might have a little holiday, that she would retain the management of the estate and of his affairs, and this with a certain generosity mingling with his inclination to avoid trouble; for in reality he loved the woman who had been in her way a mother to him, and hesitated about taking from her the occupation of her life. It was well meant; and Miss Susan felt within herself that moral cowardice which so often affects those who live in expectation of an inevitable change or catastrophe. It must come, she knew; and when the moment of departure came, she could not tell, she dared not anticipate what horrors might come with it; but she was almost glad to defer it, to consent that it should be postponed from day to day. The king in the story, however, could scarcely manage, I suppose, to be happy with that sword hanging over his head. No doubt he got used to it, poor wretch, and could eat and drink, and snatch a fearful joy from the feasting which went on around him; he might even make merry, perhaps, but he could scarcely be very happy under the shadow. So Miss Susan felt. She went on steadily, fulfilled all her duties, dispensed hospitalities, and even now and then permitted herself to be amused; but she was not happy.
Sometimes, when she said her prayers—for she did still say her prayers, notwithstanding the burden on her soul—she would breathe a sigh which was scarcely a prayer, that it might soon be over one way or another, that her sufferings might be cut short; but then she would rouse herself up, and recall that despairingsigh. Giovanna would not budge. Miss Susan made a great many appeals to her, when Reine was straying about the garden, or after she had gone to her innocent rest. She offered sums which made that young woman tremble in presence of a temptation which she could scarcely resist; but she set her white teeth firm, and conquered. It was better to have all than only a part, Giovanna thought, and she comforted herself that at the last moment, if her scheme failed, she could fall back upon and accept Miss Susan’s offer. This made her very secure, through all the events that followed. When Herbert abandoned Whiteladies and was constantly at the Hatch, when he seemed to have altogether given himself over to his cousins, and a report got up through the county that “an alliance was contemplated,” as the Kingsborough paper put it, grandly having a habit of royalty, so to speak—between two distinguished county families, Giovanna bore the contretemps quite calmly, feeling that Miss Susan’s magnificent offer was always behind her to fall back upon, if her great personal enterprise should come to nothing. Her serenity gave her a great advantage over Herbert’s feebler spirit. When he came home to Whiteladies, she regained her sway over him, and as she never indulged in a single look of reproach, such as Sophy employed freely when he left the Hatch, or was too long of returning, she gradually established for herself a superior place in the young man’s mind.
As for Herbert himself, the three long months of that Summer were more to him than all the former years of his life put together. His first outburst of freedom on the Riviera, and his subsequent ramble in Italy, had been overcast by adverse circumstances. He had got his own way, but at a cost which was painful to him, and a great many annoyances and difficulties had been mingled with his pleasure. But now there was nothing to interfere with it. Reine was quiescent, presenting a smiling countenance when he saw her, not gloomy or frightened, as she had been at Cannes. She was happy enough; she was at home, with her aunts to fall back upon, and plenty of friends. And everybody and everything smiled upon Herbert. He was acting generously, he felt, to his former guardian, in leaving to her all the trouble of his affairs. He was surrounded by gay friends and unbounded amusements, amusements bounded only by the time that was occupied by them, and those human limitations which make it impossibleto do two things at once. Could he have been in two places at once, enjoying two different kinds of pleasure at the same time, his engagements were sufficient to have secured for him a double enjoyment. From the highest magnates of the county, to the young soldiers of Kingsborough, his own contemporaries, everybody was willing to do him honor. The entire month of June he spent in town, where he had everything that town could give him—though their life moved rather more quickly than suited his still unconfirmed strength. Both in London and in the country he was invited into higher circles than those which the Farrel-Austins were permitted to enter; but still he remained faithful to his cousins, who gave him a homage which he could not expect elsewhere, and who had always “something going on,” both in town and country, and no pause in their fast and furious gayety. They were always prepared to go with him or take him somewhere, to give him the carte du pays, to tell him all the antecedents and history of this one and that one, and to make the ignorant youth feel himself an experienced man. Then, when it pleased him to go home, he was the master, welcomed by all, and found another beautiful slave waiting serene to burn incense to him.
No wonder Herbert enjoyed himself. He had come out of his chrysalis condition altogether, and was enjoying the butterfly existence to an extent which he had never conceived of, fluttering about everywhere, sunning his fine new wings, his new energies, his manhood, and his health, and his wealth, and all the glories that were his. To do him justice, he would have brought his household up to town, in order that Reine too might have had her glimpse of the season, could he have persuaded them; but Reine, just then at a critical point of her life, declined the indulgence. Kate and Sophy, however, were fond of saying that they had never enjoyed a season so much. Opera-boxes rained upon them; they never wanted bouquets; and their parties to Richmond, to Greenwich, wherever persons of her class go, were endless. Herbert was ready for anything, and their father did decline the advantages, though he disliked the giver of them; and even when he was disagreeable, matrons were always procurable to chaperone the party, and preside over their pleasures. Everybody believed, as Sophy did, that there could be but one conclusion to so close an intimacy.
“At all events, we have had a very jolly season,” said Kate, who was not so sure.
And Herbert fully echoed the words when he heard them. Yes, it had been a very jolly season. He had “spent his money free,” which in the highest class, as well as in the lowest, is the most appropriate way in which a young man can make himself agreeable. He had enjoyed himself, and he had given to others a great many opportunities of enjoying themselves. Now and then he carried down a great party to Whiteladies, and introduced thebeau mondeto his beautiful old house, and made one of those fêtes champêtres for his friends which break so agreeably upon the toils of London pleasuring, and which supply to the highest class, always like the lowest in their peculiar rites, an elegant substitute for Cremorne and Rosherville. Miss Susan bestirred herself, and made a magnificent response to his appeals when he asked her to receive such parties, and consoled herself for the gay mob that disturbed the dignity of the old house, by the noble names of some of them, which she was too English not to be impressed by. And thus in a series of delights the Summer passed from May to August. Herbert did not go to Scotland, though he had many invitations and solicitations to do so when the season was over. He came home instead, and settled there when fashion melted away out of town; and Sophy, considering the subject, as she thought, impartially, and without any personal prejudice (she said), concluded that it must be for her sake he stayed.
“I know the Duke of Ptarmigan asked him, and Tom Heath, and Billy Trotter,” she said to her sister. “Billy, they say, has the finest moors going. Why shouldn’t he have gone, unless he had some motive? He can’t have any shooting here till September. If it isn’tthat, what do you suppose it can be!”
“Well, at all events we have had a very jolly season,” said Kate, not disposed to commit herself; “and what we have to do is to keep things going, and show him the country, and not be dull even now.” Which admirable suggestion they carried out with all their hearts.
Herbert’s thoughts, however, were not, I fear, so far advanced as Sophy supposed. It was not that he did not think of that necessity of marrying which Miss Augustine enforced upon him in precisely the same words, every time she saw him. “You arewasting time—you are wasting my time, Herbert,” she said to him when he came back to Whiteladies, in July. Frankly she thought this the most important point of view. So far as he was concerned, he was young, and there was time enough; but if she, a woman of seven-and-fifty, was to bring up his heir and initiate him into her ideas, surely there was not a moment to be lost in taking the preliminary steps.
Herbert was very much amused with this view of the subject. It tickled his imagination so, that he had not been able to refrain from communicating it to several of his friends. But various of these gentlemen, after they had laughed, pronounced it to be their opinion that, by Jove, the old girl was not so far out.
“I wouldn’t stand having that little brat of a child set up as the heir under my very nose; and, by Jove, Austin, I’d settle that old curmudgeon Farrel’s hopes fast enough, if I were in your place,” said his advisers.
Herbert was not displeased with the notion. He played with it, with a certain enjoyment. He felt that he was a prize worth anybody’s pursuit, and liked to hear that such and such ladies were “after him.” The Duke of Ptarmigan had a daughter or two, and Sir Billy Trotter’s sister might do worse, her friends thought. Herbert smoothed an incipient moustache, late in growing, and consequently very precious, and felt a delightful complaisance steal over him. And he knew that Sophy, his cousin, did not despise him; I am not sure even that the young coxcomb was not aware that he might have the pick of either of the girls, if he chose; which also, though Kate had never thought on the subject, was true enough. She had faithfully given him over to her younger sister, and never interfered; but if Herbert had thrown his handkerchief to her, she would have thought it sinful to refuse. When he thought on the subject, which was often enough, he had a kind of lazy sense that this was what would befall him at last. He would throw his handkerchief some time when he was at the Hatch, and wheresoever the chance wind might flutter it, there would be his fate. He did not really care much whether it might happen to be Sophy or Kate.
When he came home, however, these thoughts would float away out of his mind. He did not think of marrying, though Miss Augustine spoke to him on the subject every day. Hethought of something else, which yet was not so far different; he thought that nowhere, in society or out of it, had he seen any one like Giovanna.
“Did you ever see such a picture?” he would say to Reine. “Look at her! Now she’s sculpture, with that child on her shoulder. If the boy was only like herself, what a group they’d make! I’d like to have Marochetti, or some of those swells, down, to make them in marble. And she’d paint just as well. By Jove, she’s all the arts put together. How she does sing! Patti and the rest are nothing to her. But I don’t understand how she could be the mother of that boy.”
Giovanna came back across the lawn, having swung the child from her shoulder on to the fragrant grass, in time to hear this, and smiled and said, “He does not resemble me, does he? Madame Suzanne, M. Herbert remarks that the boy is not dark as me. He is another type—yes, another type, n’est ce pas!”
“Not a bit like you,” said Herbert. “I don’t say anything against Jean, who is a dear little fellow; but he is not like you.”
“Ah! but he is the heir of M. Herbert, which is better,” cried Giovanna, with a laugh, “until M. Herbert will marry. Why will not you marry and range yourself? Then the little Jean and the great Giovanna will melt away like the fogs. Ah, marry, M. Herbert! it is what you ought to do.”
“Are you so anxious, then, to melt away like the fog?—like the sunshine, you mean,” said the young man in a low voice. They were all in the porch, but he had gone out to meet her, on pretence of playing with little Jean.
“But no,” said Giovanna, smiling, “not at all. I am very well here; but when M. Herbert will marry, then I must go away. Little Jean will be no more the heir.”
“Then I shall never marry,” said the young man, though still in tones so low as not to reach the ears of the others. Giovanna turned her face toward him with a mocking laugh.
“Bah! already I know Madame Herbert’s name, her little name!” she cried, and picked up the boy with one vigorous, easy sweep of her beautiful arms, and carried him off, singing to him—like a goddess, Herbert thought, like the nurse of a young Apollo. He was dreadfully disconcerted with this sudden withdrawal, and when Miss Augustine, coming in, addressed him inher usual way, he turned from her pettishly, with an impatient exclamation:
“I wish you would give over,” he said; “you are making a joke of a serious matter. You are putting all sorts of follies into people’s heads.”
It was only at Whiteladies, however, that he entertained this feeling. When he was away from home he would now and then consider the question of throwing the handkerchief, and made up his mind that there would be a kind of justice in it if the petit nom of the future Mrs. Herbert turned out to be either Sophy or Kate.
Things went on in this way until, one day in August, it was ordained that the party, with its usual military attendants, should vary its enjoyments by a day on the river. They started from Water Beeches, Everard’s house, in the morning, with the intention of rowing up the river as far as Marlow, and returning in the evening to a late dinner. The party consisted of Kate and Sophy, with their father, Reine and Herbert, Everard himself, and a quantity of young soldiers, with the wife of one of them, four ladies, to wit, and an indefinite number of men. They started on a lovely morning, warm yet fresh, with a soft little breeze blowing, stirring the long flags and rushes, and floating the water-lilies that lurked among their great leaves in every corner. Reine and Everard had not seen much of each other for some time. From the day that he went off in an injured state of mind, reminding them half indignantly that they knew where to find him when he was wanted, they had met only two or three times, and never had spoken to each other alone. Everard had been in town for the greater part of the time, purposely taking himself away, sore and wounded, to have, as he thought, no notice taken of him; while Reine, on her part, was too proud to make any advances to so easily affronted a lover. This had been in her mind, restraining her from many enjoyments when both Herbert and Miss Susan thought her “quite happy”. She was “quite happy,” she always said; did not wish to go to town, preferred to stay at Whiteladies, had no desire to go to Court and to make her début in society, as Miss Susan felt she should. Reine resisted, being rather proud and fanciful and capricious, as the best of girls may be permitted to be under such circumstances; and she haddeterminedly made herself “happy” in her country life, with such gayeties and amusements as came to her naturally. I think, however, that she had looked forward to this day on the river, not without a little hope, born of weariness, that something might happen to break the ice between Everard and herself. By some freak of fortune, however, or unkind arrangement, it so happened that Reine and Everard were not even in the same boat when they started. She thought (naturally) that it was his fault, and he thought (equally naturally) that it was her fault; and each believed that the accident was a premeditated and elaborately schemed device to hold the other off. I leave the reader to guess whether this added to the pleasure of the party, in which these two, out of their different boats, watched each other when they could, and alternated between wild gayety put on when each was within sight of the other, to show how little either minded—and fits of abstraction.
The morning was beautiful; the fair river glided past them, here shining like a silver shield, there falling into heavenly coolness under the shadows, with deep liquid tones of green and brown, with glorified reflections of every branch and twig, with forests of delicious growth (called weeds) underneath its clear rippling, throwing up long blossomed boughs of starry flowers, and in the shallows masses of great cool flags and beds of water-lilies. This was not a scene for the chills and heats of a love-quarrel, or for the perversity of a voluntary separation. And I think Everard felt this, and grew impatient of the foolish caprice which he thought was Reine’s, and which Reine thought was his, as so often happens. When they started in the cooler afternoon, to come down the river, he put her almost roughly into his boat.
“You are coming with me this time,” he said in a half-savage tone, gripping her elbow fiercely as he caught her on her way to the other, and almost lifted her into his boat.
Reine half-resisted for the moment, her face flaming with respondent wrath, but melted somehow by his face so near her, and his imperative grasp, she allowed herself to be thrust into the little nutshell which she knew so well, and which (or its predecessors) had been called “Queen” for years, thereby acquiring for Everard a character for loyalty which Reine knew he did not deserve, though he had never told her so. The moment she hadtaken her place there, however, Reine justified all Everard’s sulks by immediately resuming toward him the old tone. If she had not thus recovered him as her vizier and right-hand man, she would, I presume, have kept her anxiety in her own breast. As it was, he had scarcely placed her on the cushions, when suddenly, without a pause, without one special word to him, asking pardon (as she ought) for her naughtiness, Reine said suddenly, “Everard! oh, will you take care, please, that Bertie does not row?”