“Very likely! You should have gone on, Everard. A little more money never comes amiss; and as you really like work—”
“When I am forced to it,” he said, laughing. “I am not forced now; that makes all the difference. You don’t expect a young man of the nineteenth century, brought up as I have been, to go to work in cold blood without a motive. No, no, that is too much.”
“If you please, ma’am,” said Martha, coming in, “Stevens wishes to know if the foreign lady and gentleman is staying over Sunday. And Cook wishes to say, please—”
A shadow came over Miss Susan’s face. She forgot the appearances which she had been keeping up with Everard. The color went out of her cheeks; her eyes grew dull and dead, as if the lifehad died out of them. She put up her hands to stop this further demand upon her.
“They cannot go on Sunday, of course,” she said, “and it is too late to go to-day. Stevens knows that as well as I do, and so do you all. Of course they mean to stay.”
“And if you please, ma’am, Cook says the baby—”
“No more, please, no more!” cried Miss Susan, faintly. “I shall come presently and talk to Cook.”
“You want to get rid of these people,” said Everard, sympathetically, startled by her look. “You don’t like them, Aunt Susan, whatever you may say.”
“I hate them!” she said, low under her breath, with a tone of feeling so intense that he was alarmed by it. Then she recovered herself suddenly, chased the cloud from her face, and fell back into the jaunty manner which had so much surprised and almost shocked him before. “Of course I don’t mean that,” she said, with a laugh. “Even I have caught your fashion of exaggeration; but I don’t love them, indeed, and I think a Sunday with them in the house is a very dismal affair to look forward to. Go and dress, Everard; there is the bell. I must go and speak to Cook.”
While this conversation had been going on in-doors, the two foreigners thus discussed were walking up and down Priory Lane, in close conversation still. They did not hear the dressing-bell, or did not care for it. As for Giovanna, she had never yet troubled herself to ask what the preliminary bell meant. She had no dresses to change, and having no acquaintance with the habit which prescribed this alteration of costume in the evening, made no attempt to comply with it. The child clung about M. Guillaume’s neck, and gave power to his arguments, though it nearly strangled him with its close clasp. “My good Giovanna,” he said, “why put yourself in opposition to all your friends? We are your friends, though you will not think so. This darling, the light of our eyes, you will not steal him from us. Yes, my own! it is of thee I speak. The blessed infant knows; look how he holds me! You would not deprive me of him, my daughter—my dear child?”
“I should not steal him, anyhow,” said the young woman, with an exultation which he thought cruel. “He is mine.”
“Yes, I know. I have always respected zight, chérie; youknow I have. When thy mother-in-law would have had me take authority over him, I have said ‘No; she is his mother; the right is with her’—always, ma fille! I ask thee as a favor—I do not command thee, though some, you know, might think—. Listen, my child. The little one will be nothing but a burden to you in the world. If you should wish to go away, to see new faces, to be independent, though it is so strange for a woman, yet think, my child, the little one would be a burden. You have not the habits of our Gertrude, who understands children. Leave thy little one with us! You will then be free to go where you will.”
“And you will be rid of me!” cried the young woman, with passionate scorn. “Ah, I know you! I know what you mean. To get the child without me would be victory. Ma belle-mère would be glad, and Gertrude, who understands children. Understand me, then, mon beau-père. The child is my power. I will never leave hold of him; he is my power. By him I can revenge myself; without him I am nobody, and you do not fear me. Give my baby to me!”
She seized the child, who struggled to keep his hold, and dragged him out of his grandfather’s arms. The little fellow had his mouth open to cry, when she deftly filled it with her handkerchief, and, setting him down forcibly on his little legs, shook him into frightened silence. “Cry, and I will beat thee!” she said. Then turning to the grandfather, who was remonstrating and entreating, “He shall walk; he is big enough; he shall not be carried nor spoiled, as you would spoil him. Listen, bon papa. I have not anything else to keep my own part with; butheis mine.”
“Giovanna! Giovanna! think less of thyself and more of thy child!”
“When I find you set me a good example,” she said. “Is it not your comfort you seek, caring nothing for mine? Get rid of me, and keep the child! Ah, I perceive my belle-mère in that! But it is his interest to be here. Ces dames, though they don’t love us, are kind enough. And listen to me; they will never give you the rente you demand for the boy—never; but if he stays here and I stay here, they will not turn us out. Ah, no, Madame Suzanne dares not turn me out! See, then, the reason of what I am doing. You love the child, but you do not wisha burden; and if you take him away, it will be as a burden; they will never give you a sous for him. But leave us here, and they will be forced to nourish us and lodge us. Ah, you perceive! I am not without reason; I know what I do.”
M. Guillaume was staggered. Angry as he was to have the child dragged from his arms, and dismayed as he was by Giovanna’s indifference to its fright and tears, there was still something in this argument which compelled his attention. It was true that the subject of an allowance for the baby’s maintenance and education had been of late very much talked of at Bruges, and the family had unanimously concluded that it was a right and necessary thing, and the letter making the claim had begun to be concocted, when Giovanna, stung by some quarrel, had suddenly taken the matter into her own hands. To take back the child would be sweet; but to take it back pensionless and almost hopeless, with its heirship rendered uncertain, and its immediate claims denied, would not be sweet. M. Guillaume was torn in twain by conflicting sentiments, his paternal feelings struggling against a very strong desire to make what could be honestly made out of Whiteladies, and to have the baby provided for. His wife was eager to have the child, but would she be as eager if she knew that it was totally penniless, and had only visionary expectations. Would not she complain more and more of Giovanna, who did nothing, and even of the child itself, another mouth to be fed? This view of the subject silenced and confounded him. “If I could hope that thou wouldst be kind!” he said, falteringly, eying the poor baby, over whom his heart yearned. His heart yearned over the child; and yet he felt it would be something of a triumph could he exploit Miss Susan, and transfer an undesirable burden from his own shoulders to hers. Surely this was worth doing, after her English coldness and her aristocratic contempt. M. Guillaume did not like to be looked down upon. He had been wounded in his pride and hurt in his tender feelings; and now he would be revenged on her! He put his hand on Giovanna’s shoulder, and drew closer to her, and they held a consultation with their heads together, which was only interrupted by the appearance of Stevens, very dark and solemn, who begged to ask if they were aware that the dinner-bell had rung full five minutes before?
Thedinner-table in the old hall was surrounded by a very odd party that night. Miss Susan, at the head of the table, in the handsome matronly evening dress which she took to always at the beginning of Winter, did her best to look as usual, though she could not quite keep the panting of her breast from being visible under her black silk and lace. She was breathless, as if she had been running hard; this was the form her agitation took. Miss Augustine, at the other end of the table, sat motionless, absorbed in her own thoughts, and quite unmoved by what was going on around her. Everard had one side to himself, from which he watched with great curiosity the pair opposite him, who came in abruptly—Giovanna, with her black hair slightly ruffled by the wind, and M. Guillaume, rubbing his bald head. This was all the toilet they had made. The meal began almost in silence, with a few remarks only between Miss Susan and Everard. M. Guillaume was pre-occupied. Giovanna was at no time disposed for much conversation. Miss Susan, however, after a little interval, began to talk significantly, so as to attract the strangers.
“You said you had not heard lately from Herbert,” she said, addressing her young cousin. “You don’t know, then, I suppose, that they have made all their plans for coming home?”
“Not before the Winter, I hope.”
“Oh, no, not before the Winter—in May, when we hope it will be quite safe. They are coming home, not for a visit, but to settle. And we must think of looking for a house,” said Miss Susan, with a smile and a sigh.
“Do you mean that you—you who have been mistress of Whiteladies for so long—that you will leave Whiteladies? They will never allow that,” said Everard.
Miss Susan looked him meaningly in the face, with a gleam of her eye toward the strangers on the other side of the table. How could he tell what meaning she wished to convey to him? Men are not clever at interpreting such communications in the best of circumstances, and, perfectly ignorant as he was of the circumstances, how could Everard make out what she wanted? But the look silenced and left him gaping with his mouth open, feeling that something was expected of him, and not knowing what to say.
“Yes, that is my intention,” said Miss Susan, with that jaunty air which had so perplexed and annoyed him before. “When Herbert comes home, he has his sister with him to keep his house. I should be superseded. I should be merely a lodger, a visitor in Whiteladies, and that I could not put up with. I shall go, of course.”
“But, Aunt Susan, Reine would never think—Herbert would never permit—”
Another glance, still more full of meaning, but of meaning beyond Everard’s grasp, stopped him again. What could she want him to do or say? he asked himself. What could she be thinking of?
“The thing is settled,” said Miss Susan; “of course we must go. The house and everything in it belongs to Herbert. He will marry, of course. Did not you say to me this very afternoon that he was sure to marry?”
“Yes,” Everard answered faintly; “but—”
“There is no but,” she replied, with almost a triumphant air. “It is a matter of course. I shall feel leaving the old house, but I have no right to it, it is not mine, and I do not mean to make any fuss. In six months from this time, if all is well, we shall be out of Whiteladies.”
She said this with again a little toss of her head, as if in satisfaction. Giovanna and M. Guillaume exchanged alarmed glances. The words were taking effect.
“Is it settled?” said Augustine, calmly. “I did not know things had gone so far. The question now is, Who will Herbert marry? We once talked of this in respect to you, Everard, and I told you my views—I should say my wishes. Herbert has been restored as by a miracle. He ought to be very thankful—he oughtto show his gratitude. But it depends much upon the kind of woman he marries. I thought once in respect to you—”
“Augustine, we need not enter into these questions before strangers,” said Miss Susan.
“It does not matter who is present,” said Augustine. “Every one knows what my life is, and what is the curse of our house.”
“Pardon, ma sœur,” said M. Guillaume. “I am of the house, but I do not know.”
“Ah!” said Augustine, looking at him. “After Herbert, you represent the elder branch, it is true; but you have not a daughter who is young, under twenty, have you? that is what I want to know.”
“I have three daughters, ma sœur,” said M. Guillaume, delighted to find a subject on which he could expatiate; “all very good—gentille, kind to every one. There is Madeleine, who is the wife of M. Meeren, the jeweller—François Meeren, the eldest son, very well off; and Marie, who is settled at Courtray, whose husband has a great manufactory; and Gertrude, my youngest, who has married my partner—they will succeed her mother and me when our day is over. Ma sœur knows that my son died. Yes; these are misfortunes that all have to bear. This is my family. They are very good women, though I say it—pious and good mothers and wives, and obedient to their husbands and kind to the poor.”
Augustine had continued to look at him, but the animation had faded out of her eyes. “Men’s wives are of little interest to me,” she said. “What I want is one who is young, and who would understand and do what I say.”
Here Giovanna got up from her chair, pushing it back with a force which almost made Stevens drop the dish he was carrying. “Me!” she cried, with a gleam of malice in her eyes, “me, ma sœur! I am younger than Gertrude and the rest. I am no one’s wife. Let it be me.”
Augustine looked at her with curious scrutiny, measuring her from head to foot, as it were; while Miss Susan, horror-stricken at once by the discussion and the indecorum, looked on breathless. Then Augustine turned away.
“Youcould not be Herbert’s wife,” she said, with her usual abstract quiet; and added softly, “I must ask for enlightenment.I shall speak to my people at the almshouses to-morrow. We have done so much. His life has been given to us; why not the family salvation too?”
“These are questions which had better not be discussed at the dinner-table,” said Miss Susan; “a place where in England we don’t think it right to indulge in expressions of feeling. Madame Jean, I am afraid you are surprised by my sister’s ways. In the family we all know what she means exactly; but outside the family—”
“I am one of the family,” said Giovanna, leaning back in her chair, on which she had reseated herself. She put up her hands, and clasped them behind her head in an attitude which was of the easiest and freest description. “I eat no more, thank you, take it away; though the cuisine is better than my belle mère’s, bon papa; but I cannot eat forever, like you English. Oh, I am one of the family. I understand also, and I think—there are many things that come into my head.”
Miss Susan gave her a look which was full of fright and dislike, but not of understanding. Everard only thought he caught for a moment the gleam of sudden malicious meaning in her eyes. She laughed a low laugh, and looked at him across the table, yawning and stretching her arms, which were hidden by her black sleeves, but which Everard divined to be beautiful ones, somewhat large, but fine and shapely. His eyes sought hers half unwillingly, attracted in spite of himself. How full of life and youth and warmth and force she looked among all these old people! Even her careless gestures, her want of breeding, over which Stevens was groaning, seemed to make it more evident; and he thought to himself, with a shudder, that he understood what was in her eye.
But none of the old people thought the rude young woman worth notice. Her father-in-law pulled her skirt sharply under the table, to recall her to “her manners,” and she laughed, but did not alter her position. Miss Susan was horrified and angry, but her indignation went no further. She turned to the old linendraper with elaborate politeness.
“I am afraid you will find our English Sunday dull,” she said. “You know we have different ideas from those you have abroad; and if you want to go to-morrow, travelling is difficult on Sunday—though to be sure we might make an effort.”
“Pardon, I have no intention of going to-morrow,” said M. Guillaume. “I have been thinking much—and after dinner I will disclose to Madame what my thoughts have been.”
Miss Susan’s bosom swelled with suspense and pain. “That will do, Stevens, that will do,” she said.
He had been wandering round and round the table for about an hour, she thought, with sweet dishes of which there was an unusual and unnecessary abundance, and which no one tasted. She felt sure, as people always do, when they are aware of something to conceal, that he lingered so long on purpose to spy out what he could of the mystery; and now her heart beat with feverish desire to know what was the nature of M. Guillaume’s thoughts. Why did not he say plainly, “We are going on Monday?” That would have been a hundred times better than any thoughts.
“It will be well if you will come to the Almshouses to-morrow,” said Miss Augustine, once more taking the conduct of the conversation into her hands. “It will be well for yourself to show at least that you understand what the burden of the family is. Perhaps good thoughts will be put into your heart; perhaps, as you are the next in succession of our family—ah! I must think of that. You are an old man; you cannot be ambitious,” she said slowly and calmly; “nor love the world as others do.”
“You flatter me, ma sœur,” said M. Guillaume. “I should be proud to deserve your commendation; but I am ambitious. Not for myself—for me it is nothing; but if this child were the master here, I should die happy. It is what I wish for most.”
“That is,” said Miss Susan, with rising color (and oh, how thankful she was for some feasible pretext by which to throw off a little of the rising tide of feeling within her!)—“that is—what M. Guillaume Austin wishes for most is, that Herbert, our boy, whom God has spared, should get worse again, and die.”
The old man looked up at her, startled, having, like so many others, thought innocently enough of what was most important to himself, without considering how it told upon the others. Giovanna, however, put herself suddenly in the breach.
“I,” she cried, with another quick change of movement—“I am the child’s mother, Madame Suzanne, you know; yet I do not wish this. Listen. I drink to the health of M. Herbert!”she cried, lifting up the nearest glass of wine, which happened to be her father-in-law’s; “that he comes home well and strong, that he takes a wife, that he lives long! I carry this to his health. Vive M. Herbert!” she cried, and drank the wine, which brought a sudden flush to her cheeks, and lighted up her eyes.
They all gazed at her—I cannot say with what disapproval and secret horror in their elderly calm; except Everard, who, always ready to admire a pretty woman, felt a sudden enthusiasm taking possession of him. He, oddly enough, was the only one to understand her meaning; but how handsome she was! how splendid the glow in her eyes! He looked across the table, and bowed and pledged her. He was the only one who did not look at her with disapproval. Her beauty conciliated the young man, in spite of himself.
“Drinking to him is a vain ceremony,” said Augustine; “but if you were to practise self-denial, and get up early, and come to the Almshouses every morning with me—”
“I will,” said Giovanna, quickly, “I will! every morning, if ma sœur will permit me—”
“I do not suppose that every morning can mean much in Madame Jean’s case,” said Miss Susan stiffly, “as no doubt she will be returning home before long.”
“Do not check the young woman, Susan, when she shows good dispositions,” said Augustine. “It is always good to pray. You are worldly-minded yourself, and do not think as I do; but when I can find one to feel with me, that makes me happy. She may stay longer than you think.”
Miss Susan could not restrain a low exclamation of dismay. Everard, looking at her, saw that her face began to wear that terrible look of conscious impotence—helpless and driven into a corner, which is so unendurable to the strong. She was of more personal importance individually than all the tormentors who surrounded her, but she was powerless, and could do nothing against them. Her cheeks flushed hot under her eyes, which seemed scorched, and dazzled too, by this burning of shame. He said something to her in a low tone, to call off her attention, and perceived that the strong woman, generally mistress of the circumstances, was unable to answer him out of sheer emotion. Fortunately, by this time the dessert was on the table, and she roseabruptly. Augustine, slower, rose too. Giovanna, however, sat still composedly by her father-in-law’s side.
“The bon papa has not finished his wine,” she said, pointing to him.
“Madame Jean,” said Miss Susan, “in England you must do as English ladies do. I cannot permit anything else in my house.”
It was not this that made her excited, but it was a mode of throwing forth a little of that excitement which, moment by moment, was getting to be more than she could bear. Giovanna, after another look, got up and obeyed her without a word.
“So this is the mode Anglaise!” said the old man when they were gone; “it is not polite; it is to show, I suppose, that we are not welcome; but Madame Suzanne need not give herself the trouble. If she will do her duty to her relations, I do not mean to stay.”
“I do not know what it is about,” said Everard; “but she always does her duty by everybody, and you need not be afraid.”
On this hint M. Guillaume began, and told Everard the whole matter, filling him with perplexity. The story of Miss Susan’s visit sounded strangely enough, though the simple narrator knew nothing of its worst consequences; but he told his interested auditor how she had tempted him to throw up his bargain with Farrel-Austin, and raised hopes which now she seemed so little inclined to realize; and the story was not agreeable to Everard’s ear. Farrel-Austin, no doubt, had begun this curious oblique dealing; but Farrel-Austin was a man from whom little was expected, and Everard had been used to expect much from Miss Susan. But he did not know, all the time, that he was driving her almost mad, keeping back the old man, who had promised that evening to let her know the issue of his thoughts. She was sitting in a corner, speechless and rigid with agitation, when the two came in from the dining-room to “join the ladies;” and even then Everard, in his ignorance, would have seated himself beside her, to postpone the explanation still longer. “Go away! go away!” she said to him in a wild whisper. What could she mean? for certainly there could be nothing tragical connected with this old man, or so at least Everard thought.
“Madame will excuse me, I hope,” said Guillaume blandly; “as it is the mode Anglaise, I endeavored to follow it, thoughit seems little polite. But it is not for one country to condemn the ways of the other. If Madame wishes it, I will now say the result of my thoughts.”
Miss Susan, who was past speaking, nodded her head, and did her best to form her lips into a smile.
“Madame informs me,” said M. Guillaume, “that Monsieur Herbert is better, that the chances of le petit are small, and that there is no one to give to the child the rente, the allowance, that is his due?”
“That is true, quite true.”
“On the other hand,” said M. Guillaume, “Giovanna has told me her ideas—she will not come away with me. What she says is that her boy has a right to be here; and she will not leave Viteladies. What can I say? Madame perceives that it is not easy to change the ideas of Giovanna when she has made up her mind.”
“But what has her mind to do with it,” cried Miss Susan in despair, “when it is you who have the power?”
“Madame is right, of course,” said the old shopkeeper; “it is I who have the power. I am the father, the head of the house. Still, a good father is not a tyrant, Madame Suzanne; a good father hears reason. Giovanna says to me, ‘It is well; if le petit has no right, it is for M. le Proprietaire to say so.’ She is not without acuteness, Madame will perceive. What she says is, ‘If Madame Suzanne cannot provide for le petit—will not make him any allowance—and tells us that she has nothing to do with Viteladies—then it is best to wait until they come who have to do with it. M. Herbert returns in May. Eh, bien! she will remain till then, that M. Herbert, who must know best, may decide.”
Miss Susan was thunderstruck. She was driven into silence, paralyzed by this intimation. She looked at the old shopkeeper with a dumb strain of terror and appeal in her face, which moved him, though he did not understand.
“Mon Dieu! Madame,” he cried; “can I help it? it is not I; I am without power!”
“But she shall not stay—I cannot have her; I will not have her!” cried Miss Susan, in her dismay.
M. Guillaume said nothing, but he beckoned his step-daughter from the other end of the room.
“Speak for thyself,” he said. “Thou art not wanted here, nor thy child either. It would be better to return with me.”
Giovanna looked Miss Susan fall in the eyes, with an audacious smile.
“Madame Suzanne will not send me away,” she said; “I am sure she will not send me away.”
Miss Susan felt herself caught in the toils. She looked from one to another with despairing eyes. She might appeal to the old man, but she knew it was hopeless to appeal to the young woman, who stood over her with determination in every line of her face, and conscious power glancing from her eyes. She subdued herself by an incalculable effort.
“I thought,” she said, faltering, “that it would be happier for you to go back to your home—that to be near your friends would please you. It may be comfortable enough here, but you would miss the—society of your friends—”
“My mother-in-law?” said Giovanna, with a laugh. “Madame is too good to think of me. Yes, it is dull, I know; but for the child I overlook that. I will stay till M. Herbert comes. The bon papa is fond of the child, but he loves his rente, and will leave us when we are penniless. I will stay till M. Herbert returns, who must govern everything. Madame Suzanne will not contradict me, otherwise I shall have no choice. I shall be forced to go to M. Herbert to tell him all.”
Miss Susan sat still and listened. She had to keep silence, though her heart beat so that it seemed to be escaping out of her sober breast, and the blood filled her veins to bursting.
Heaven help her! here was her punishment. Fiery passion blazed in her, but she durst not betray it; and to keep it down—to keep it silent—was all she was able to do. She answered, faltering,—
“You are mistaken; you are mistaken. Herbert will do nothing. Besides, some one could write and tell you what he says.”
“Pardon! but I move not; I leave not,” said Giovanna. She enjoyed the triumph. “I am a mother,” she said; “Madame Suzanne knows; and mothers sacrifice everything for the good of their children—everything. I am able for the sacrifice,” she said, looking down upon Miss Susan with a gleam almost of laughter—of fun, humor, and malicious amusement in her eyes.
To reason with this creature was like dashing one’s self against a stone wall. She was impregnable in her resolution. Miss Susan, feeling the blow go to her heart, pushed her chair back into the corner, and hid herself, as it were. It was a dark corner, where her face was in comparative darkness.
“I cannot struggle with you,” she said, in a piteous whisper, feeling her lips too parched and dry for another word.
“Goingto stay till Herbert comes back! but, my dear Aunt Susan, since you don’t want her—and of course you don’t want her—why don’t you say so?” cried Everard. “An unwelcome guest may be endured for a day or two, or a week or two, but for five or six months—”
“My dear,” said Miss Susan, who was pale, and in whose vigorous frame a tremble of weakness seemed so out of place, “how can I say so? It would be so—discourteous—so uncivil—”
The young man looked at her with dismay. He would have laughed had she not been so deadly serious. Her face was white and drawn, her lips quivered slightly as she spoke. She looked all at once a weak old woman, tremulous, broken down, and uncertain of herself.
“You must be ill,” he said. “I can’t believe it is you I am speaking to. You ought to see the doctor, Aunt Susan—you cannot be well.”
“Perhaps,” she said with a pitiful attempt at a smile, “perhaps. Indeed you must be right, Everard, for I don’t feel like myself. I am getting old, you know.”
“Nonsense!” he said lightly, “you were as young as any of us last time I was here.”
“Ah!” said Miss Susan, with her quivering lips. “I have kept that up too long. I have gone on being young—and now all at once I am old; that is how it is.”
“But that does not make any difference in my argument,” said Everard; “if you are old—which I don’t believe—the less reason is there for having you vexed. You don’t like this guest who is going to inflict herself upon you. I shouldn’t mind her,” he added, with a laugh; “she’s very handsome, Aunt Susan; butI don’t suppose that affects you in the same way; and she will be quite out of place when Herbert comes, or at least when Reine comes. I advise you to tell her plainly, before the old fellow goes, that it won’t do.”
“I can’t, my dear—I can’t!” said Miss Susan; how her lips quivered!—“she is in my house, she is my guest, and I can’t say ‘Go away.’ ”
“Why not? She is not a person of very fine feelings, to be hurt by it. She is not even a lady; and till May, till the end of May! you will never be able to endure her.”
“Oh, yes I shall,” said Miss Susan. “I see you think that I am very weak; but I never was uncivil to any one, Everard, not to any one in my own house. It is Herbert’s house, of course,” she added quickly, “but yet it has been mine, though I never had any real right to it for so many years.”
“And you really mean to leave now?”
“I suppose so,” said Miss Susan faltering, “I think, probably—nothing is settled. Don’t be too hard upon me, Everard! I said so—for them, to show them that I had no power.”
“Then why, for heaven’s sake, if you have so strong a feeling—why, for the sake of politeness!—Politeness is absurd, Aunt Susan,” said Everard. “Do you mean to say that if any saucy fellow, any cad I may have met, chose to come into my house and take possession, I should not kick him out because it would be uncivil? This is not like your good sense. You must have some other reason. No! do you mean No by that shake of the head? Then if it is so very disagreeable to you, let me speak to her. Let me suggest—”
“Not for the world,” cried Miss Susan. “No, for pity’s sake, no. You will make me frantic if you speak of such a thing.”
“Or to the old fellow,” said Everard; “he ought to see the absurdity of it, and the tyranny.”
She caught at this evidently with a little hope. “You may speak to Monsieur Guillaume if you feel disposed,” she said; “yes, you may speak to him. I blame him very much; he ought not to have listened to her; he ought to have taken her away at once.”
“How could he if she wouldn’t go? Men no doubt are powerful beings,” said Everard laughing, “but suppose the otherside refused to be moved? Even a horse at the water, if it declines to drink—you know the proverb.”
“Oh, don’t worry me with proverbs—as if I had not enough without that!” she said with an impatience which would have been comic had it not been so tragical. “Yes, Everard, yes, if you like you may speak to him—but not to her; not a word to her for the world. My dear boy, my dear boy! You won’t go against me in this?”
“Of course I shall do only what you wish me to do,” he said more gravely; the sight of her agitation troubled the young man exceedingly. To think of any concealed feeling, any mystery in connection with Susan Austin, seemed not only a blasphemy, but an absurdity. Yet what could she mean, what could her strange terror, her changed looks, her agitated aspect, mean? Everard was more disturbed than he could say.
This was on Sunday afternoon, that hour of all others when clouds hang heaviest, and troubles, where they exist, come most into the foreground. The occupations of ordinary life push them aside, but Sunday, which is devoted to rest, and in which so many people honestly endeavor to put the trifling little cares of every day out of their minds, always lays hold of those bigger disturbers of existence which it is the aim of our lives to forget. Miss Susan would have made a brave fight against the evil which she could not avoid on another day, but this day, with all its many associations of quiet, its outside tranquillity, its peaceful recollections and habits, was too much for her. Everard had found her walking in the Priory Lane by herself, a bitter dew of pain in her eyes, and a tremble in her lips which frightened him. She had come out to collect her thoughts a little, and to escape from her visitors, who sometimes seemed for the moment more than she could bear.
Miss Augustine came up on her way from the afternoon service at the Almshouses, while Everard spoke. She was accompanied by Giovanna, and it was a curious sight to see the tall, slight figure of the Gray sister, type of everything abstract and mystic, with that other by her side, full of strange vitality, watching the absorbed and dreamy creature with those looks of investigation, puzzled to know what her meaning was, but determined somehow to be at the bottom of it. Giovanna’s eyes darted a keen telegraphic communication to Everard’s as they came up. This glance seemed toconvey at once an opinion and an inquiry. “How droll she is! Is she mad? I am finding her out,” the eyes said. Everard carefully refrained from making any reply; though, indeed, this was self-denial on his part, for Giovanna certainly made Whiteladies more amusing than it had been when he was last there.
“You have been to church?” said Miss Susan, with her forced and reluctant smile.
“She went with me,” said Miss Augustine. “I hope we have a great acquisition in her. Few have understood me so quickly. If anything should happen to Herbert—”
“Nothing will happen to Herbert,” cried Miss Susan. “God bless him! It sounds as if you were putting a spell upon our boy.”
“I put no spell; I don’t even understand such profane words. My heart is set on one thing, and it is of less importance how it is carried out. If anything should happen to Herbert, I believe I have found one who sees the necessity as I do, and who will sacrifice herself for the salvation of the race.”
“One who will sacrifice herself!” Miss Susan gasped wildly under her breath.
Giovanna looked at her with defiance, challenging her, as it were, to a mortal struggle; yet there was a glimmer of laughter in her eyes. She looked at Miss Susan from behind the back of the other, and made a slow, solemn courtesy as Augustine spoke. Her eyes were dancing with humorous enjoyment of the situation, with mischief and playfulness, yet with conscious power.
“This—lady?” said Miss Susan, “I think you are mad; Austine, I think you are going mad!”
Miss Augustine shook her head. “Susan, how often do I tell you that you are giving your heart to Mammon and to the world! This is worse than madness. It makes you incapable of seeing spiritual things. Yes! she is capable of it. Heaven has sent her in answer to many prayers.”
Saying this, Augustine glided past toward the house with her arms folded in her sleeves, and her abstract eyes fixed on the vacant air. A little flush of displeasure at the opposition had come upon her face as she spoke, but it faded as quickly as it came. As for Giovanna, before she followed her, she stopped, and threw up her hands with an appealing gesture: “Is it then my fault?” she said, as she passed.
Miss Susan stood and looked after them, her eyes dilating; a kind of panic was in her face. “Is it, then, God that has sent her, to support the innocent, to punish the guilty?” she said, under her breath.
“Aunt Susan, take my arm; you are certainly ill.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, faintly. “Take me in, take me out of sight, and never tell any one, Everard, never tell any one. I think I shall go out of my mind. It must be giving my thoughts to Mammon and the world, as she said.”
“Never mind what she says,” said Everard, “no one pays any attention to what she says. Your nerves are overwrought somehow or other, and you are ill. But I’ll have it out with the old duffer!” cried the young man. They met Monsieur Guillaume immediately after, and I think he must have heard them; but he was happily quite unaware of the nature of a “duffer,” or what the word meant, and to tell the truth, so am I.
Miss Susan was not able to come down to dinner, a marvellous and almost unheard of event, so that the party was still less lively than usual. Everard was so concerned about his old friend, and the strange condition in which she was, that he began his attack upon the old shopkeeper almost as soon as they were left alone. “Don’t you think, sir,” the young man began, in a straightforward, unartificial way, “that it would be better to take your daughter-in-law with you? She will only be uncomfortable among people so different from those you have been accustomed to; I doubt if they will get on.”
“Get on?” said Monsieur Guillaume, pleasantly. “Get on what? She does not wish to get on anywhere. She wishes to stay here.”
“I mean, they are not likely to be comfortable together, to agree, to be friends.”
M. Guillaume shrugged his shoulders. “Mon Dieu,” he said, “it will not be my fault. If Madame Suzanne will not grant the little rente, the allowance I demanded for le petit, is it fit that he should be at my charge? He was not thought of till Madame Suzanne came to visit us. There is nothing for him. He was born to be the heir here.”
“But Miss Austin could have nothing to do with his being born,” cried Everard, laughing. Poor Miss Susan, it seemed thedrollest thing to lay to her charge. But M. Guillaume did not see the joke, he went on seriously.
“And I had made my little arrangement with M. Farrel. We were in accord; all was settled; so much to come to me on the spot, and this heritage, this old château—château, mon Dieu, a thing of wood and brick!—to him, eventually. But when Madame Suzanne arrived to tell us of the beauties of this place, and when the women among them made discovery of le petit, that he was about to be born, the contract was broken with M. Farrel. I lost the money—and now I lose the heritage; and it is I who must provide for le petit! Monsieur, such a thing was never heard of. It is incredible; and Madame Suzanne thinks, I am to carry off the child without a word, and take this disappointment tranquilly! But no! I am not a fool, and it cannot be.”
“But I thought you were very fond of the child, and were in despair of losing him,” said Everard.
“Yes, yes,” cried the old shopkeeper, “despair is one thing, and good sense is another. This is contrary to good sense. Giovanna is an obstinate, but she has good sense. They will not give le petit anything, eh bien, let them bear the expense of him! That is what she says.”
“Then the allowance is all you want?” said Everard, with British brevity. This seemed to him the easiest of arrangements. With his mind quite relieved, and a few jokes laid up for the amusement of the future, touching Miss Susan’s powers and disabilities, he strolled into the drawing-room, M. Guillaume preferring to take himself to bed. The drawing-room of Whiteladies had never looked so thoroughly unlike itself. There seemed to Everard at first to be no one there, but after a minute he perceived a figure stretched out upon a sofa. The lamps were very dim, throwing a sort of twilight glimmer through the room; and the fire was very red, adding a rosy hue, but no more, to this faint illumination. It was the sort of light favorable to talk, or to meditation, or to slumber, but by aid of which neither reading, nor work, nor any active occupation could be pursued. This was of itself sufficient to mark the absence of Miss Susan, for whom a cheerful light full of animation and activity seemed always necessary. The figure on the sofa lay at full length, with anabandonof indolence and comfort which suited the warm atmosphere andsubdued light. Everard felt a certain appropriateness in the scene altogether, but it was not Whiteladies. An Italian palace or an Eastern harem would have been more in accordance with the presiding figure. She raised her head, however, as he approached, supporting herself on her elbow, with a vivacity unlike the Eastern calm, and looked at him by the dim light with a look half provoking half inviting, which attracted the foolish young man more perhaps than a more correct demeanor would have done. Why should not he try what he could do, Everard thought, to move the rebel? for he had an internal conviction that even the allowance which would satisfy M. Guillaume would not content Giovanna. He drew a chair to the other side of the table upon which the tall dim lamp was standing, and which was drawn close to the sofa on which the young woman lay.
“Do you really mean to remain at Whiteladies?” he said. “I don’t think you can have any idea how dull it is here.”
She shrugged her shoulders slightly, and raised her eyebrows. She had let her head drop back upon the sofa cushions, and the faint light threw a kind of dreamy radiance upon her fine features, and great glowing dark eyes.
“Dull! it is almost more than dull,” he continued; though even as he spoke he felt that to have this beautiful creature in Whiteladies would be a sensible alleviation of the dulness, and that his effort on Miss Susan’s behalf was of the most disinterested kind. “It would kill you, I fear; you can’t imagine what it is in Winter, when the days are short; the lamps are lit at half-past four, and nothing happens all the evening, no one comes. You sit before dinner round the fire, and Miss Austin knits, and after dinner you sit round the fire again, and there is not a sound in all the place, unless you have yourself the courage to make an observation; and it seems about a year before it is time to go to bed. You don’t know what it is.”
What Miss Susan would have said had she heard this account of those Winter evenings, many of which the hypocrite had spent very coseyly at Whiteladies, I prefer not to think. The idea occurred to himself with a comic panic. What would she say? He could scarcely keep from laughing as he asked himself the question.
“I have imagination,” said Giovanna, stretching her arms.“I can see it all; but I should not endure it, me. I should get up and snap my fingers at them and dance, or sing.”
“Ah!” said Everard, entering into the humor of his rôle, “so you think at present; but it would soon take the spirit out of you. I am very sorry for you, Madame Jean. If I were like you, with the power of enjoying myself, and having the world at my feet—”
“Ah! bah!” cried Giovanna, “how can one have the world at one’s feet, when one is never seen? And you should see the shop at Bruges, mon Dieu! People do not come and throw themselves at one’s feet there. I am not sure even if it is altogether the fault of Gertrude and the belle-mère; but here—”
“You will have no one to see to,” said Everard, tickled by the part he was playing, and throwing himself into the spirit of it. “That is worse—for what is the good of being visible when there is no one to see?”
This consideration evidently was not without its effect. Giovanna raised herself lazily on her elbow and looked at him across the table. “You come,” said she, “and this ’Erbert.”
“Herbert!” said Everard, shading his head, “he is a sickly boy; and as for me—I have to pay my vows at other shrines,” he added with a laugh. But he found this conversation immensely entertaining, and went on representing the disadvantages of Whiteladies with more enjoyment than perhaps he had ever experienced in that place on a Sunday evening before. He went on till Giovanna pettishly bade him go. “At the least, it is comfortable,” she said. “Ah, go! It is very tranquil, there is no one to call to you with sharp voice like a knife, ‘Gi’vanna! tu dors!’ Go, I am going to sleep.”
I don’t suppose she meant him to take her at her word, for Giovanna was amused too, and found the young man’s company and his compliments, and that half-mocking, half-real mixture of homage and criticism, to be a pleasant variety. But Everard, partly because he had exhausted all he had got to say, partly lest he should be drawn on to say more, jumped up in a state of amusement and satisfaction with himself and his own cleverness which was very pleasant. “Since you send me away, I must obey,” he said; “Dormez, belle enchanteresse!” and with this, which he felt to be a very pretty speech indeed, he left the room more pleased with himself than ever. He had spent a most satisfactory evening, he hadascertained that the old man was to be bought off with money, and he had done his best to disgust the young woman with a dull English country-house; in short, he had done Miss Susan yeoman’s service, and amused himself at the same time. Everard was agreeably excited, and felt, after a few moments’ reflection over a cigar on the lawn, that he would like to do more. It was still early, for the Sunday dinner at Whiteladies, as in so many other respectable English houses, was an hour earlier than usual; and as he wandered round the house, he saw the light still shining in Miss Susan’s window. This decided him; he threw away the end of his cigar, and hastening up the great staircase three steps at once, hurried to Miss Susan’s door. “Come in,” she said faintly. Everard was as much a child of the house as Herbert and Reine, and had received many an admonition in that well-known chamber. He opened the door without hesitation. But there was something in the very atmosphere which he felt to daunt him as he went in.
Miss Susan was seated in her easy chair by the bedside fully dressed. She was leaning her head back upon the high shoulder of the old-fashioned chair with her eyes shut. She thought it was Martha who had come in, and she was not careful to keep up appearances with Martha, who had found out days before that something was the matter. She was almost ghastly in her paleness, and there was an utter languor of despair about her attitude and her look, which alarmed Everard in the highest degree. But he could not stop the first words that rose upon his lips, or subdue altogether the cheery tone which came naturally from his satisfied feelings. “Aunt Susan,” he cried, “come along, come down stairs, now’s your time. I have been telling stories of Whiteladies to disgust her, and I believe now you could buy them off with a small annuity. Aunt Susan! forgive my noise, you are ill.”
“No, no,” she said with a gasp and a forlorn smile. “No, only tired. What did you say, Everard? whom am I to buy off?” This was a last effort at keeping up appearances. Then it seemed to strike her all at once that this was an ungrateful way of treating one who had been taking so much trouble on her account. “Forgive me, Everard,” she said; “I have been dozing, and my head is muddled. Buy them off? To be sure, I should have thought of that; for an annuity, after all, though I have no right to give it, is better than having them settled in the house.”
“Far better, since you dislike them so much,” said Everard; “I don’t, for my part. She is not so bad. She is very handsome, and there’s some fun in her.”
“Fun!” Miss Susan rose up very tremulous and uncertain, and looking ten years older, with her face ashy pale, and a tottering in her steps, all brought about by this unwelcome visitor; and to hear of fun in connection with Giovanna, made her sharply, unreasonably angry for the time. “You should choose your words better at such a moment,” she said.
“Never mind my words, come and speak to her,” cried Everard. He was very curious and full of wonder, seeing there was something below the surface more than met his eyes, and that the mystery was far more mysterious than his idea of it. Miss Susan hesitated more than ever, and seemed as if she would have gone back before they reached the stairs; but he kept up her courage. “When it’s only a little money, and you can afford it,” he said. “You don’t care so much for a little money.”
“No, I don’t care much for a little money,” she repeated after him mechanically, as she went downstairs.
MISS SUSANentered the drawing-room in the same dim light in which Everard had left it. She was irritable and impatient in her misery. She would have liked to turn up all the lamps, and throw a flood of light upon the stranger whose attitude was indolent and indecorous. Why was she there at all? what right had she to extend herself at full length, to make herself so comfortable? That Giovanna should be comfortable did not do Miss Susan any further harm; but she felt as if it did, and a fountain of hot wrath surged up in her heart. This, however, she felt was not the way in which she could do any good, so she made an effort to restrain herself. She sat down in Everard’s seat which he had left. She was not quite sure whether he himself were not lingering in the shadows at the door of the room, and this made her difficulty the greater in what she had to say.
“Do you like this darkness?” she asked. “It is oppressive; we cannot see to do anything.”
“Me, I don’t want to do anything,” said Giovanna. “I sleep and I dream. This is most pleasant to me. Madame Suzanne likes occupation. Me, I do not.”
“Yes,” said Miss Susan with suppressed impatience, “that is one of the differences between us. But I have something to say to you; you wanted me to make an allowance for the child, and I refused. Indeed, it is not my business, for Whiteladies is not mine. But now that I have thought of it, I will consent. It would be so much better for you to travel with your father-in-law than alone.”
Giovanna turned her face toward her companion with again that laughing devil in her eye. “Madame Suzanne mistakes. The bonpapa spoke of his rente that he loves, not me. If ces dames will give me money to dress myself, to be more like them, that will be well; but it was the bon-papa, not me.”
“Never mind who it was,” said Miss Susan, on the verge of losing her temper. “One or the other, I suppose it is all the same. I will give you your allowance.”
“To dress myself? thanks, that will be well. Then I can follow the mode Anglaise, and have something to wear in the evening, like Madame Suzanne herself.”
“For the child!” cried the suffering woman, in a voice which to Everard, behind backs, sounded like low and muffled thunder. “To support him and you, to keep you independent, to make you comfortable at home among your own people—”
“Merci!” cried Giovanna, shrugging her shoulders. “That is the bon-papa’s idea, as I tell madame, not mine. Comfortable! with my belle-mère! Listen, Madame Suzanne—I too, I have been thinking. If you will accept me with bounty, you shall not be sorry. I can make myself good; I can be useful, though it is not what I like best. I stay—I make myself your child—”
“I do not want you,” cried Miss Susan, stung beyond her strength of self-control, “I do not want you. I will pay you anything to get you away.”
Giovanna’s eyes gave forth a gleam. “Très bien,” she said, calmly. “Then I shall stay, if madame pleases or not. It is what I have intended from the beginning; and I do not change my mind, me.”
“But if I say you shall not stay!” said Miss Susan, wrought to fury, and pushing back her chair from the table.
Giovanna raised herself on her elbow, and leaned across the table, fixing the other with her great eyes.
“Once more, très bien,” she said, in a significant tone, too low for Everard to hear, but not a whisper. “Très bien! Madame then wishes me to tell not only M. Herbert, but the bonne sœur, madame’s sister, and ce petit monsieur-là?”
Miss Susan sat and listened like a figure of stone. Her color changed out of the flush of anger which had lighted it up, and grew again ashy pale. From her laboring breast there came a great gasp, half groan, half sob. She looked at the remorseless creature opposite with a piteous prayer coming into her eyes.First rage, which was useless; then entreaty, more useless still. “Have pity on me! have pity on me,” she said.
“But certainly!” said Giovanna, sinking back upon her cushions with a soft laugh. “Certainly! I am not cruel, me; but I am comfortable, and I stay.”
“She will not hear of it,” said Miss Susan, meeting Everard’s anxious looks as she passed him, hurrying upstairs. “Never mind me. Everard, never mind! we shall do well enough. Do not say any more about it. Never mind! never mind! It is time we were all in bed.”
“But, Aunt Susan, tell me—”
“No, no, there is nothing to tell,” she said, hurrying from him. “Do not let us say any more about it. It is time we were all in bed.”
The next day M. Guillaume left Whiteladies, after a very melancholy parting with his little grandchild. The old man sobbed, and the child sobbed for sympathy. “Thou wilt be good to him, Giovanna!” he said, weeping. Giovanna stood, and looked on with a smile on her face. “Bon papa, it is easy to cry,” she said; “but you do not want him without a rente; weep then for the rente, not for the child.” “Heartless!” cried the old shopkeeper, turning from her; and her laugh, though it was quite low, did sound heartless to the bystanders; yet there was some truth in what she said. M. Guillaume went away in the morning, and Everard in the afternoon. The young man was deeply perplexed and disturbed. He had been a witness of the conclusive interview on the previous night without hearing all that was said; yet he had heard enough to show him that something lay behind of which he was not cognizant—something which made Miss Susan unwillingly submit to an encumbrance which she hated, and which made her more deeply, tragically unhappy than a woman of her spotless life and tranquil age had any right to be. To throw such a woman into passionate distress, and make her, so strong in her good sense, so reasonable and thoroughly acquainted with the world, bow her head under an irritating and unnecessary yoke, there must be some cause more potent than anything Everard could divine. He made an attempt to gain her confidence before he went away; but it was still more fruitless than before. The only thing she would say was, that shecould speak no more on the subject. “There is nothing to say. She is here now for good or for evil, and we must make the best of it. Probably we shall get on better than we think,” said Miss Susan; and that was all he could extract from her. He went away more disturbed than he could tell; his curiosity was excited as well as his sympathy, and though, after awhile, his natural reluctance to dwell on painful subjects made him attempt to turn his mind from this, yet the evident mystery to be found out made that attempt much harder than usual. Everard was altogether in a somewhat uncertain and wavering state of mind at the time. He had returned from his compulsory episode of active life rather better in fortune, and with a perception of his own unoccupied state, which had never disturbed him before. He had not got to love work, which is a thing which requires either genius or training. He honestly believed, indeed, that he hated work, as was natural to a young man of his education; but having been driven to it, and discovered in himself, to his great surprise, some faculty for it, his return to what he thought his natural state had a somewhat strange effect upon him. To do nothing was, no doubt, his natural state. It was freedom; it was happiness (passive); it was the most desirable condition of existence. All this he felt to be true. He was his own master, free to go where he would, do what he would, amuse himself as he liked; and yet the conclusion of the time when he had not been his own master—when he had been obliged to do this and that, to move here and there not by his own will, but as necessity demanded—had left a sense of vacancy in this life. He was dissatisfied with his leisure and his freedom; they were not so good, not so pleasant, as they had once been. He had known storm and tempest, and all the expedients by which men triumph over these commotions, and the calm of his inland existence wearied him, though he had not yet gone so far as to confess it to himself.
This made him think more of the mystery of Whiteladies than perhaps he would have done otherwise, and moved him so far as to indite a letter to Reine, in which perhaps more motives than that of interest in Miss Susan’s troubles were involved. He had left them when the sudden storm which he had now surmounted had appeared on the horizon, at a very critical moment of his intercourse with Reine; and then they had been cast altogetherapart, driven into totally different channels for two years. Two years is a long time or a short time, according to the constitution of the mind, and the nature of circumstances. It had been about a century to Everard, and he had developed into a different being. And now this different being, brought back to the old life, did not well know what to do with himself. Should he go and join his cousins again, amuse himself, see the world, and perhaps renew some things that were past, and reunite a link half broken, half unmade? Anyhow, he wrote to Reine, setting forth that Aunt Susan was ill and very queer—that there was a visitor at Whiteladies of a very novel and unusual character—that the dear old house threatened to be turned upside down—fourthly, and accidentally, that he had a great mind to spend the next six months on the Continent. Where were they going for the Winter? Only ladies, they say, put their chief subject in a postscript. Everard put his under care of a “By-the-bye” in the last two lines of his letter. The difference between the two modes is not very great.
And thus, while the young man meditated change, which is natural to his age, in which renovation and revolution are always possible, the older people at Whiteladies settled down to make the best of it, which is the philosophy of their age. To say the older people is incorrect, for it was Miss Susan only who had anything novel or heavy to endure. Miss Augustine liked the new guest, who for some time went regularly to the Almshouse services with her, and knelt devoutly, and chanted forth the hymns with a full rich voice, which indeed silenced the quavering tones of the old folks, but filled the chapel with such a flood of melody as had never been heard there before. Giovanna enjoyed singing. She had a fine natural voice, but little instruction, and no opportunity at the moment of getting at anything better in the way of music; so that she was glad of the hymns which gave her pleasure at once in the exercise of her voice, and in the agreeable knowledge that she was making a sensation. As much of a crowd as was possible in St. Austin’s began to gather in the Almshouse garden when she was known to be there; and though Mrs. Richard instinctively disapproved of her, the Doctor was somewhat proud of this addition to his service. Giovanna went regularly with her patroness, and gainedAugustine’s heart, as much as that abstracted heart could be gained, and made herself not unpopular with the poor people, to whom she would speak in her imperfect English with more familiarity than the ladies ever indulged in, and from whom, in lieu of better, she was quite ready to receive compliments about her singing and her beauty. Once, indeed, she sang songs to them in their garden, to the great entertainment of the old Almshouse folks. She was caught in the act by Mrs. Richard, who rushed to the rescue of her gentility with feelings which I will not attempt to describe. The old lady ran out breathless at the termination of a song, with a flush upon her pretty old cheeks, and caught the innovator by the arm.
“The doctor is at home, and I am just going to give him a cup of tea,” she said; “won’t you come and have some with us?”
Mrs. Richard’s tidy little bosom heaved under her black silk gown with consternation and dismay.
Giovanna was not at all willing to give up her al fresco entertainment. “But I will return, I will return,” she said.
“Do, madame, do,” cried the old people, who were vaguely pleased by her music, and more keenly delighted by having a new event to talk about, and the power of wondering what Miss Augustine (poor thing!) would think; and Mrs. Richard led Giovanna in, with her hand upon her arm, fearful lest her prisoner should escape.
“It is very good of you to sing to them; but it is not a thing that is done in England,” said the little old lady.
“I love to sing,” said Giovanna, “and I shall come often. They have not any one to amuse them; and neither have I,” she added with a sigh.
“My dear, you must speak to the Doctor about it,” said Mrs. Richard.
Giovanna was glad of any change, even of little Dr. Richard and the cup of tea, so she was submissive enough for the moment; and to see her between these two excellent and orderly little people was an edifying sight.
“No, it is not usual,” said Dr. Richard, “my wife is right; but it is very kind-hearted of madame, my dear, to wish to amuse the poor people. There is nothing to be said against that.”
“Very kind-hearted,” said Mrs. Richard, though with less enthusiasm. “It is all from those foreigners’ love of display,” she said in her heart.
“But perhaps it would be wise to consult Miss Augustine, or—any other friend you may have confidence in,” said the Doctor. “People are so very censorious, and we must not give any occasion for evil-speaking.”
“I think exactly with Dr. Richard, my dear,” said the old lady. “I am sure that would be the best.”
“But I have nothing done to consult about,” cried the culprit surprised. She sipped her tea, and ate a large piece of the good people’s cake, however, and let them talk. When she was not crossed, Giovanna was perfectly good-humored. “I will sing for you, if you please,” she said when she had finished.
The Doctor and his wife looked at each other, and professed their delight in the proposal. “But we have no piano,” they said in chorus with embarrassed looks.
“What does that do to me, when I can sing without it,” said Giovanna. And she lifted up her powerful voice, “almost too much for a drawing-room,” Mrs. Richard said afterward, and sang them one of those gay peasant songs that abound in Italy, where every village has its owncanzone. She sang seated where she had been taking her tea, and without seeming to miss an accompaniment, they remarked to each other, as if she had been a ballad-singer. It was pretty enough, but so very unusual! “Of course foreigners cannot be expected to know what is according to the rules of society in England,” Mrs. Richard said with conscious indulgence; but she put on her bonnet and walked with “Madame” part of the way to Whiteladies, that she might not continue her performance in the garden. “Miss Augustine might think, or Miss Susan might think, that we countenanced it; and in the Doctor’s position that would never do,” said the old lady, breathing her troubles into the ear of a confidential friend whom she met on her way home. And Dr. Richard himself felt the danger not less strongly than she.
Other changes, however, happened to Giovanna, as she settled down at Whiteladies. She was without any fixed principles of morality, and had no code of any kind which interfered with her free action. To give up doing anything she wanted to do becauseit involved lying, or any kind of spiritual dishonesty, would never have occurred to her, nor was she capable of perceiving that there was anything wrong in securing her own advantage as she had done. But she was by no means all bad, any more than truthful and honorable persons are all good. Her own advantage, or what she thought her own advantage, and her own way, were paramount considerations with her; but having obtained these, Giovanna had no wish to hurt anybody, or to be unkind. She was indolent and loved ease, but still she was capable of taking trouble now and then to do some one else a service. She had had no moral training, and all her faculties were obtuse; and she had seen no prevailing rule but that of selfishness. Selfishness takes different aspects, according to the manner in which you look at it. When you have to maintain hardly, by a constant struggle, your own self against the encroachments and still more rampant selfishness of others, the struggle confers a certain beauty upon the object of it. Giovanna had wanted to have her own way, like the others of the family, but had been usually thrust into a corner, and prevented from having it. What wonder, then, that when she had a chance, she seized it, and emancipated herself, and secured her own comfort with the same total disregard to others which she had been used to see? But now, having got this—having for the moment all she wanted—an entire exemption from work, an existence full of external comfort, and circumstances around her which flattered her with a sense of an elevated position—she began to think a little. Nothing was exacted of her. If Miss Susan was not kind to her, she was not at least unkind, only withdrawing from her as much as possible, a thing which Giovanna felt to be quite natural, and in the quiet and silence the young woman’s mind began to work. I do not say her conscience, for that was not in the least awakened, nor was she conscious of any penitential regret in thinking of the past, or religious resolution for the future; it was her mind only that was concerned. She thought it might be as well to make certain changes in her habits. In her new existence, certain modifications of the old use and wont seemed reasonable. And then there gradually developed in her—an invaluable possession which sometimes does more for the character than high principle or good intention—a sense of the ludicrous. This was what Everard meant when hesaid there was fun in her. She had a sense of humor, a sense of the incongruities which affect some minds so much more powerfully by the fact of being absurd, than by the fact of being wrong. Giovanna, without any actual good motive, thus felt the necessity of amending herself, and making various changes in her life.
This, it may be supposed, took some time to develop; and in the meantime the household in which she had become so very distinct a part, had to make up its mind to her, and resume as best it could its natural habits and use and wont, with the addition of this stranger in the midst. As for the servants, their instinctive repugnance to a foreigner and a new inmate was lessened from the very first by the introduction of the child, who conciliated the maids, and thus made them forgive his mother the extra rooms they had to arrange, and the extra work necessary. The child was fortunately an engaging and merry child, and as he got used to the strange faces round him, became the delight and pride and amusement of the house. Cook was still head nurse, and derived an increased importance and satisfaction from her supremacy. I doubt if she had ever before felt the dignity and happiness of her position as a married woman half so much as now, when that fact alone (as the others felt) gave her a mysterious capacity for the management of the child. The maids overlooked the fact that the child’s mother, though equally a married woman, was absolutely destitute of this power; but accuracy of reasoning is not necessary in such an argument, and the entire household bowed to the superior endowments of Cook. The child’s pattering, sturdy little feet, and crowings of baby laughter became the music of Whiteladies, the pleasant accompaniment to which the lives at least of the little community in the kitchen were set. Miss Susan, being miserable, resisted the fascination, and Augustine was too abstracted to be sensible of it; but the servants yielded as one woman, and even Stevens succumbed after the feeblest show of resistance. Now and then even, a bell would ring ineffectually in that well-ordered house, and the whole group of attendants be found clustered together worshipping before the baby, who had produced some new word, or made some manifestation of supernatural cleverness; and the sound of the child pervaded all that part of the house in which the servants were supreme. They forgave his mother for being there because she had brought him, andif at the same time they hated her for her neglect of him, the hatred was kept passive by a perception that, but for this insensibility on her part, the child could not have been allowed thus fully and pleasantly to minister to them.