As for Miss Susan, who had felt as though nothing could make her endure the presence of Giovanna, she too was affected unwittingly by the soft effects of time. It was true that no sentiment, no principle in existence was strong enough to make her accept cheerfully this unwelcome guest. Had she been bidden to do it in order to make atonement for her own guilt, or as penance for that guilt, earning its forgiveness, or out of pity or Christian feeling, she would have pronounced the effort impossible; and impossible she had still thought it when she watched with despair the old shopkeeper’s departure, and reflected with a sense of suffering intolerable and not to be borne that he had left behind him this terrible witness against her, this instrument of her punishment. Miss Susan had paced about her room in restless anguish, saying to herself under her breath that her punishment was greater than she could bear. She had felt with a sickening sense of helplessness and hopelessness that she could never go downstairs again, never take her place at that table, never eat or drink in the company of this new inmate whom she could not free herself from. And for a few days, indeed, Miss Susan kept on inventing little ailments which kept her in her own room. But this could not last. She had a hundred things to look after which made it necessary for her to be about, to be visible; and gradually there grew upon her a stirring of curiosity to see how things went on, withthatwoman always there. And then she resumed her ordinary habits, came downstairs, sat down at the familiar table, and by degrees found herself getting accustomed to the new-comer. Strangest effect of those calm, monotonous days! Nothing would have made her do it knowingly; but soft pressure of time made her do it. Things quieted down; the alien was there, and there was no possibility of casting her out; and, most wonderful of all, Miss Susan got used to her, in spite of herself.
And Giovanna, for her part, began to think.
Giovannapossessed that quality which is commonly called common-sense, though I doubt if she was herself aware of it. She had never before been in a position in which this good sense could tell much, or in which even it was called forth to any purpose. Her lot had always been determined for her by others. She had never, until the coming of the child, been in a position in which it mattered much one way or another what she thought; and since that eventful moment her thinkings had not been of an edifying description. They had been chiefly bent on the consideration how to circumvent the others who were using her for their own purposes, and to work advantage to herself out of the circumstances which, for the first time in her life, gave her the mastery. Now, she had done this; she had triumphantly overcome all difficulties, and, riding over everybody’s objections, had established herself here in comfort. Giovanna had expected a constant conflict with Miss Susan, who was her enemy, and over whom she had got the victory. She had looked for nothing better than a daily fight—rather enlivening, all things considered—with the mistress of the house, to whom, she knew, she was so unwelcome a guest. She had anticipated a long-continued struggle, in which she should have to hold her own, and defend herself, hour by hour. When she found that this was not going to be the case—that poor Miss Susan, in her misery and downfall, gave up and disappeared, and, even when she returned again to her ordinary habits, treated herself, Giovanna, with no harshness, and was only silent and cold, not insulting and disagreeable, a great deal of surprise arose in her mind. There were no little vengeances taken upon her, no jibes directed against her, no tasks attempted to be imposed. Miss Augustine, the bonne sœur, whono doubt (and this Giovanna could understand) acted from religious motives, was as kind to her as it was in her abstract nature to be, talking to her on subjects which the young woman did not understand, but to which she assented easily, to please the other, about the salvation of the race, and how, if anything happened to Herbert, there might be a great work possible to his successor; but even Miss Susan, who was her adversary, was not unkind to her, only cold, and this, Giovanna, accustomed to much rough usage, was not refined enough to take much note of. This gave a strong additional force to her conviction that it would be worth while to put herself more in accord with her position; and I believe that Giovanna, too, felt instinctively the influence of the higher breeding of her present companions.
The first result of her cogitations became evident one Winter day, when all was dreary out of doors, and Miss Susan, after having avoided as long as she could the place in which Giovanna was, felt herself at last compelled to take refuge in the drawing-room. There she found, to her great amazement, the young woman seated on a rug before the fire, playing with the child, who, seated on her lap, seemed as perfectly at home there as on the ample lap of its beloved Cook. Miss Susan started visibly at this unaccustomed sight, but said nothing. It was not her custom, now, to say anything she could help saying. She drew her chair aside to be out of their way, and took up her book. This was another notable change in her habits. She had been used to work, knitting the silent hours away, and read only at set times, set apart for this purpose by the habit of years—and then always what she called “standard books.” Now, Miss Susan, though her knitting was always at hand, knitted scarcely at all, but read continually novels, and all the light literature of the circulating library. She was scarcely herself aware of this change. It is a sign of the state of mind in which we have too much to think of, as well as of that in which we have nothing to think of at all.
And I think if any stranger had seen that pretty group, the beautiful young mother cooing over the child, playing with it and caressing it, the child responding by all manner of baby tricks and laughter, and soft clingings and claspings, while the elder woman sat silent and gray, taking no notice of them, hewould have set the elder woman down as the severest and sternest of grandmothers—the father’s mother, no doubt, emblem of the genus mother-in-law, which so many clever persons have held up to odium. To tell the truth, Miss Susan had some difficulty in going on with her reading, with the sound of those baby babblings in her ear. She was thunderstruck at first by the scene, and then felt unreasonably angry. Was nature nothing then? She had thought the child’s dislike of Giovanna—though it was painful to see—was appropriate to the circumstances, and had in it a species of poetic justice. Had it been but a pretence, or what did this sudden fondness mean? She kept silent as long as she could, but after a time the continual babble grew too much for her.
“You have grown very suddenly fond of the child, Madame Jean,” she said, abruptly.
“Fond!” said Giovanna, “that is a strange word, that English word of yours; I can make him love me—here.”
“You did not love him elsewhere, so far as I have heard,” said Miss Susan, “and that is the best way to gain love.”
“Madame Suzanne, I wish to speak to you,” said Giovanna. “At Bruges I was never of any account; they said the child was more gentil, more sage with Gertrude. Well; it might be he was; they said I knew nothing about children, that I could not learn—that it was not in my nature; things which were pleasant, which were reassuring, don’t you think? That was one of the reasons why I came away.”
“You did not show much power of managing him, it must be confessed, when you came here.”
“No,” said Giovanna, “it was harder than I thought. These babies, they have no reason. When you say, ‘Be still, I am thy mother, be still!’ it does not touch them. What they like is kisses and cakes, and that you should make what in England is called ‘a fuss;’ that is the hardest, making a fuss; but when it is done, all is done. Voilà! Now, he loves me. If Gertrude approached, he would run to me and cry. Ah, that would make me happy!”
“Then it is to spite Gertrude”—Miss Susan began, in her severest voice.
“No, no; I only contemplate that as a pleasure, a pleasure to come. No; I am not very fond of to read, like you, MadameSuzanne; besides, there is not anything more to read; and so I reflect. I reflect with myself, that not to have love with one’s child, or at least amitié, is very strange. It is droll; it gives to think; and people will stare and say, ‘Is that her child?’ This is what I reflect within myself. To try before would have been without use, for always there was Gertrude, or my belle-mère, or some one. They cried out, ‘G’vanna touch it not, thou wilt injure the baby!’ ‘G’vanna, give it to me, thou knowest nothing of children!’ And when I came away it was more hard than I thought. Babies have not sense to know when it is their mother. I said to myself, ‘Here is a perverse one, who hates me like the rest;’ and I was angry. I beat him—you would have beat him also, Madame Suzanne, if he had screamed when you touched him. And then—petit drôle!—he screamed more.”
“Very natural,” said Miss Susan. “If you had any heart, you would not beat a baby like that.”
Giovanna’s eyes flashed. She lifted her hand quickly, as if to give a blow of recollection now; but, changing her mind, she caught the child up in her arms, and laid his little flushed cheek to hers. “A présent, tu m’aimes!” she said. “When I saw how the others did, I knew I could do it too. Also, Madame Suzanne, I recollected that a mother should have de l’amitié for her child.”
Miss Susan gave a short contemptuous laugh. “It is a fine thing to have found that out at last,” she said.
“And I have reflected further,” said Giovanna—“Yes, darling, thou shalt have these jolies choses;” and with this, she took calmly from the table one of a very finely-carved set of chessmen, Indian work, which ornamented it. Miss Susan started, and put out her hand to save the ivory knight, but the little fellow had already grasped it, and a sudden scream arose.
“For shame! Madame Suzanne,” cried Giovanna, with fun sparkling in her eyes. “You, too, then, have no heart!”
“This is totally different from kindness, this is spoiling the child,” cried Miss Susan. “My ivory chessmen, which were my mother’s! Take it away from him at once.”
Giovanna wavered a moment between fun and prudence, then coaxing the child, adroitly with something else less valuable, got the knight from him, and replaced it on the table. Then she resumed where she had broken off. “I have reflected furtherthat it is bad to fight in a house. You take me for your enemy, Madame Suzanne?—eh bien, I am not your enemy. I do nothing against you. I seek what is good for me, as all do.”
“All don’t do it at the cost of other people’s comfort—at the cost of everything that is worth caring for in another’s life.”
This Miss Susan said low, with her eyes bent on the fire, to herself rather than to Giovanna; from whom, indeed, she expected no response.
“Mon Dieu! it is not like that,” cried the young woman; “what is it that I do to you? Nothing! I do not trouble, nor tease, nor ask for anything. I am contented with what you give me. I have come here, and I find it well; but you, what is it that I do to you? I do not interfere. It is but to see me one time in a day, two times, perhaps. Listen, it cannot be so bad for you to see me even two times in a day as it would be for me to go back to my belle-mère.”
“But you have no right to be here,” said Miss Susan, shaking her gray dress free from the baby’s grasp, who had rolled softly off the young woman’s knee, and now sat on the carpet between them. His little babble went on all through their talk. The plaything Giovanna had given him—a paper-knife of carved ivory—was a delightful weapon to the child; he struck the floor with it, which under no possibility could be supposed capable of motion, and then the legs of the chair, on which Miss Susan sat, which afforded a more likely steed. Miss Susan had hard ado to pull her skirts from the soft round baby fingers, as the child looked up at her with great eyes, which laughed in her angry face. It was all she could do to keep her heart from melting to him; but then,thatwoman! who looked at her with eyes which were not angry, nor disagreeable, wooing her to smile—which not for the world, and all it contained, would she do.
“Always I have seen that one does what one can for one’s self,” said Giovanna; “shall I think of you first, instead of myself? But no! is there any in the world who does that? But, no! it is contrary to reason. I do my best forme; and then I reflect, now that I am well off, I will hurt no one. I will be friends if Madame Suzanne will. I wish not to trouble her. I will show de l’amitié for her as well as for le petit. Thus it should be when we live in one house.”
Giovanna spoke with a certain earnestness as of honest conviction. She had no sense of irony in her mind; but Miss Susan had a deep sense of irony, and felt herself insulted when she was thus addressed by the intruder who had found her way into her house, and made havoc of her life. She got up hastily to her feet, overturning the child, who had now seated himself on her dress, and for whom this hasty movement had all the effect of an earthquake. She did not even notice this, however, and paid no attention to his cries, but fell to walking about the room in a state of impatience and excitement which would not be kept under.
“You do well to teach me what people should do who live in one house!” cried Miss Susan. “It comes gracefully from you who have forced yourself into my house against my will—who are a burden, and insupportable to me—you and your child. Take him away, or you will drive me mad! I cannot hear myself speak.”
“Hush, mon ange,” said Giovanna; “hush, here is something else that is pretty for thee—hush! and do not make the bonne maman angry. Ah, pardon, Madame Suzanne, you are not the bonne maman—but you look almost like her when you look like that!”
“You are very impertinent,” said Miss Susan, blushing high; for to compare her to Madame Austin of Bruges was more than she could bear.
“That is still more like her!” said Giovanna; “the belle-mère often tells me I am impertinent. Can I help it then? if I say what I think, that cannot be wrong. But you are not really like the bonne maman, Madame Suzanne,” she added, subduing the malice in her eyes. “You hate me, but you do not try to make me unhappy. You give me everything I want. You do not grudge; you do not make me work. Ah, what a life she would have made to one who came like me!”
This silenced Miss Susan, in spite of herself; for she herself felt and knew that she was not at all kind to Giovanna, and she was quite unaware that Giovanna was inaccessible to those unkindnesses which more refined natures feel, and having the substantial advantages of her reception at Whiteladies undisturbed by any practical hardship, had no further requirements in a sentimentalsort. Miss Susan felt that she was not kind, but Giovanna did not feel it; and as the elder woman could not understand the bluntness of feeling in the younger, which produced this toleration, she was obliged, against her will, to see in it some indication of a higher nature. She thought reluctantly, and for the moment, that the woman whom she loathed was better than herself. She came back to the chair as this thought forced itself upon her, and sat down there and fixed her eyes upon the intruder, who still held her place on the carpet at her feet.
“Why do you not go away?” she said, tempted once more to make a last effort for her own relief. “If you think it good of me to receive you as I do, why will you not listen to my entreaties, and go away? I will give you enough to live on; I will not grudge money; but I cannot bear the sight of you, you know that. It brings my sin, my great sin, to my mind. I repent it; but I cannot undo it,” cried Miss Susan. “Oh, God forgive me! But you, Giovanna, listen! You have done wrong, too, as well as I—but it has been for your benefit, not for your punishment. You should not have done it any more than me.”
“Madame Suzanne,” said Giovanna, “one must think of one’s self first; what you call sin does not trouble me. I did not begin it. I did what I was told. If it is wrong, it is for the belle-mère and you; I am safe; and I must think of myself. It pleases me to be here, and I have my plans. But I should like to show de l’amitié for you, Madame Suzanne—when I have thought first of myself.”
“But it will be no better for yourself, staying here,” cried Miss Susan, subduing herself forcibly. “I will give you money—you shall live where you please—”
“Pardon,” said Giovanna, with a smile; “it is to me to know. I have mes idées à moi. You all think of yourselves first. I will be good friends if you will; but, first of all, there isme.”
“And the child?” said Miss Susan, with strange forgetfulness, and a bizarre recollection, in her despair, of the conventional self-devotion to be expected from a mother.
“The child, bah! probably what will be for my advantage will be also for his; but you do not think, Madame Suzanne,” said Giovanna with a laugh, regarding her closely with a look which,but for its perfect good humor, would have been sarcastic, “that I will sacrifice myself, me, for the child?”
“Then why should you make a pretence of loving him? loving him! if you are capable of love!” cried Miss Susan, in dismay.
Giovanna laughed. She took the little fellow up in her arms, and put his little rosy cheek against the fair oval of her own. “Tu m’aimes à présent,” she said; “that is as it ought to be. One cannot have a baby and not have de l’amitié for him; but, naturally, first of all I will think of myself.”
“It is all pretence, then, your love,” cried Miss Susan, once more starting up wildly, with a sense that the talk, and the sight of her, and the situation altogether, were intolerable. “Oh, it is like you foreigners! You pretend to love the child because it is comme il faut. You want to be friendly with me because it is comme il faut. And you expect me, an honest Englishwoman, to accept this? Oh!” she cried, hiding her face in her hands, with a pang of recollection, “I was that at least before I knew you!”
Curious perversity of nature! For the moment Miss Susan felt bitterly that the loss of her honesty and her innocence was Giovanna’s fault. The young woman laughed, in spite of herself, and it was not wonderful that she did so. She got up for the first time from the carpet, raising the child to her shoulder. But she wanted to conciliate, not to offend; and suppressed the inappropriate laughter. She went up to where Miss Susan had placed herself—thrown back in a great chair, with her face covered by her hands—and touched her arm softly, not without a certain respect for her trouble.
“I do not pretend,” she said; “because it is comme il faut? but, yes, that is all natural. Yet I do not pretend. I wish to show de l’amitié for Madame Suzanne. I will not give up my ideas, nor do what you will, instead of that which I will; but to be good friends, this is what I desire. Bébé is satisfied—he asks no more—he demands not the sacrifice. Why not Madame Suzanne too?”
“Go away, go away, please,” cried Miss Susan, faintly. She was not capable of anything more.
Giovanna shrugged her handsome shoulders, and gave an appealing look round her, as if to some unseen audience. She feltthat nothing but native English stupidity could fail to see her good sense and honest meaning. Then, perceiving further argument to be hopeless, she turned away, with the child still on her shoulder, and ere she had reached the end of the passage, began to sing to him with her sweet, rich, untutored voice. The voice receded, carolling through all the echoes of the old house like a bird, floating up the great oaken staircase, and away to the extremity of the long corridor, where her room was. She was perfectly light-hearted and easy-minded in the resolution to do the best for herself; and she was perfectly aware that the further scheme she had concocted for her own benefit would be still more displeasing to the present mistress of the house. She did not care for that the least in the world; but, honestly, she was well-disposed toward Miss Susan, and not only willing, but almost anxious, so far as anxiety was possible to her, to establish a state of affairs in which they might be good friends.
But to Miss Susan it was absolutely impossible to conceive that things so incompatible could yet exist together. Perhaps she was dimly aware of the incongruities in her own mind, the sense of guilt and the sense of innocence which existed there, in opposition, yet, somehow, in that strange concord which welds the contradictions of the human soul into one, despite of all incongruity; but to realize or believe in the strange mixture in Giovanna’s mind was quite impossible to her. She sat still with her face covered until she was quite sure the young woman and her child had gone, listening, indeed, to the voice which went so lightly and sweetly through the passages. How could she sing—that woman! whom if she had never seen, Susan Austin would still have been an honest woman, able to look everybody in the face! Miss Susan knew—no one better—how utterly foolish and false it was to say this; she knew that Giovanna was but the instrument, not the originator, of her own guilt; but, notwithstanding the idea having once occurred to her, that had she never seen Giovanna, she would never have been guilty, she hugged it to her bosom with an insane satisfaction, feeling as if, for the moment, it was a relief. Oh, that she had never seen her! How blameless she had been before that unhappy meeting! how free of all weight upon her conscience! and now, how burdened, how miserable, how despotic that conscience was! and her good name dependent upon the discretionof this creature, without discretion, without feeling, this false, bold foreigner, this intruder, who had thrust her way into a quiet house, to destroy its peace! When she was quite sure that Giovanna was out of the way, Miss Susan went to her own room, and looked piteously at her own worn face in the glass. Did that face tell the same secrets to others as it did to herself? she wondered. She had never been a vain woman, even in her youth, though she had been comely enough, if not pretty; but now, a stranger, who did not know Miss Susan, might have thought her vain. She looked at herself so often in the glass, pitifully studying her looks, to see what could be read in them. It had come to be one of the habits of her life.
TheWinter passed slowly, as Winters do, especially in the silence of the country, where little happens to mark their course. The Autumnal fall of leaves lasted long, but at length cleared off with the fogs and damps of November, leaving the lawn and Priory Lane outside free from the faded garments of the limes and beeches. Slowly, slowly the earth turned to the deepest dark of Winter, and turned back again imperceptibly toward the sun. The rich brown fields turned up their furrows to the darkening damp and whitening frost, and lay still, resting from their labors, waiting for the germs to come. The trees stood out bare against the sky, betraying every knob and twist upon their branches; big lumps of gray mistletoe hung in the apple-trees that bordered Priory Lane; and here and there a branch of Lombardy poplar, still clothed with a few leaves, turning their white lining outward, threw itself up against the blue sky like a flower. The Austin Chantry was getting nearly finished, all the external work having been done some time ago. It was hoped that the ornamentation within would be completed in time for Christmas, when the chaplain, who was likewise to be the curate, and save (though Mr. Gerard mentioned this to no one) sixty pounds a year to the vicar, was to begin the daily service. This chaplain was a nephew of Dr. Richard’s, a good young man of very High Church views, who was very ready to pray for the souls of the Austin family without once thinking of the rubrics. Mr. Gerard did not care for a man of such pronounced opinions; and good little Dr. Richard, even after family feeling had led him to recommend his nephew, was seized with many pangs as to the young Ritualist’s effect upon the parish.
“He will do what Miss Augustine wants, which is what I never would have done,” said the warden of the Almshouses. “He thinks he is a better Churchman than I am, poor fellow! but he is very careless of the Church’s directions, my dear; and if you don’t attend to the rubrics, where are you to find rest in this world? But he thinks he is a better Churchman than I.”
“Yes, my dear, the rubrics have always been your great standard,” said the good wife; but as the Rev. Mr. Wrook was related to them by her side, she was reluctant to say anything more.
Thus, however, it was with a careful and somewhat anxious brow that Dr. Richard awaited the young man’s arrival. He saved Mr. Gerard the best part of a curate’s salary, as I have said. Miss Augustine endowed the Chantry with an income of sixty pounds a year; and with twenty or thirty pounds added to that, who could object to such a salary for a curacy in a country place? The vicar’s purse was the better for it, if not himself; and he thought it likely that by careful processes of disapproval any young man in course of time might be put down. The Chantry was to be opened at Christmas; and I think (if it had ever occurred to her) that Miss Augustine might then have been content to sing herNunc Dimittis; but it never did occur to her, her life being very full, and all her hours occupied. She looked forward, however, to the time when two sets of prayers should be said every day for the Austins with unbounded expectation.
Up to the middle of November, I think, she almost hoped (in an abstract way, meaning no harm to her nephew) that something might still happen to Herbert; for Giovanna, who went with her to the Almshouse service every morning to please her, seemed endowed with heavenly dispositions, and ready to train up her boy—who was a ready-made child, so to speak, and not uncertain, as any baby must be who has to be born to parents not yet so much as acquainted with each other—to make the necessary sacrifice, and restore Whiteladies to the Church. This hope failed a little after November, because then, without rhyme or reason, Giovanna tired of her devotions, and went to the early service no longer; though even then Miss Augustine felt that little Jean (now called Johnny) was within her own power, and could be trained in the way in which he should go; but anyhow, howsoever it was to be accomplished, no doubt the double prayers for the race would accomplishmuch, and something at the sweetness of an end attained stole into Augustine’s heart.
The parish and the neighborhood also took a great interest in the Chantry. Such of the neighbors as thought Miss Augustine mad, awaited, with a mixture of amusement and anxiety, the opening of this new chapel, which was said to be unlike anything seen before—a miracle of ecclesiastical eccentricity; while those who thought her papistical looked forward with equal interest to a chance of polemics and excitement, deploring the introduction of Ritualism into a quiet corner of the country, hitherto free of that pest, but enjoying unawares the agreeable stimulant of local schism and ecclesiastical strife. The taste for this is so universal that I suppose it must be an instinct of human nature, as strong among the non-fighting portion of the creation as actual combat is to the warlike. I need not say that the foundress of the Chantry had no such thoughts; her object was simple enough; but it was too simple—too onefold (if I may borrow an expressive word from my native tongue: ae-fauld we write it in Scotch) for the apprehension of ordinary persons, who never believe in unity of motive. Most people thought she was artfully bent on introducing the confessional, and all the other bugbears of Protestantism; but she meant nothing of the kind: she only wanted to open another agency in heaven on behalf of the Austins, and nothing else affected her mind so long as this was secured.
The Chantry, however, afforded a very reasonable excuse to Kate and Sophy Farrel-Austin for paying a visit to Whiteladies, concerning which they had heard some curious rumors. Their interest in the place no doubt had considerably died out of late, since Herbert’s amendment in health had been proved beyond doubt. Their father had borne that blow without much sympathy from his children, though they had not hesitated, as the reader is aware, to express their own sense that it was “a swindle” and “a sell,” and that Herbert had no right to get better. The downfall to Farrel-Austin himself had been a terrible one, and the foolish levity of his children about it had provoked him often, almost past bearing; but time had driven him into silence, and into an appearance at least of forgetting his disappointment. On the whole he had no very deadly reason for disappointment: he was very well off without Whiteladies, and had he got Whiteladies, he hadno son to succeed him, and less and less likelihood of ever having one. But I believe it is the man who has much who always feels most deeply when he is hindered from having more.
The charm of adding field to field is, I suppose, a more keen and practical hunger than that of acquiring a little is to him who has nothing. Poverty does not know the sweetness that eludes it altogether, but property is fully aware of the keen delight of possession. The disappointment sank deep into Farrel-Austin’s heart. It even made him feel like the victim of retributive justice, as if, had he but kept his word to Augustine, Herbert might have been killed for him, and all been well; whereas now Providence preserved Herbert to spite him, and keep the inheritance from him! It seemed an unwarrantable bolstering up, on the part of Heaven and the doctors, of a miserable life which could be of very little good either to its owner or any other; and Farrel-Austin grew morose and disagreeable at home, by way of avenging himself on some one. Kate and Sophy did not very much care; they were too independent to be under his power, as daughters at home so often are under the power of a morose father. They had emancipated themselves beforehand, and now were strong in the fortresses of habit and established custom, and those natural defences with which they were powerfully provided. Rumors had reached them of a new inmate at Whiteladies, a young woman with a child, said to be the heir, who very much attracted their curiosity; and they had every intention of being kind to Herbert and Reine when they came home, and of making fast friends with their cousins. “For why should families be divided?” Kate said, not without sentiment. “However disappointed we may be, we can’t quarrel with Herbert for getting well, can we, and keeping his own property?” The heroes who assembled at afternoon tea grinned under their moustachios, and said “No.” These were not the heroes of two years ago; Dropmore was married among his own “set,” and Ffarington had sold out and gone down to his estates in Wales, and Lord Alf had been ruined by a succession of misfortunes on the turf, so that there was quite a new party at the Hatch, though the life was very much the same as before. Drags and dinners, and boatings and races and cricket-matches, varied, when Winter came on, and according to the seasons, by hunting, skating, dancing, and every other amusement procurable, went on like clock-work,like treadmill work, or anything else that is useless and monotonous. Kate Farrel-Austin, who was now twenty-three in years, felt a hundred and three in life. She had grown wise, usual (and horrible) conclusion of girls of her sort. She wanted to marry, and change the air and scene of her existence, which began to grow tired of her as she of it. Sophy, on her way to the same state of superannuation, rather wished it too. “One of us ought certainly to do something,” she said, assenting to Kate’s homilies on the subject. They were not fools, though they were rather objectionable young women; and they felt that such life as theirs comes to be untenable after awhile. To be sure, the young men of their kind, the successors of Dropmore, etc. (I cannot really take the trouble to put down these young gentlemen’s names), did carry on for a very long time the same kind of existence; but they went and came, were at London sometimes, and sometimes in the country, and had a certain something which they called duty to give lines, as it were, to their life; while to be always there, awaiting the return of each succeeding set of men, was the fate of the girls. The male creatures here, as in most things, had the advantage of the others; except that perhaps in their consciousness of the tedium of their noisy, monotonous lot, the girls, had they been capable of it, had a better chance of getting weary and turning to better things.
The Austin Chantry furnished the Farrel-Austins with the excuse they wanted to investigate Whiteladies and its mysterious guest. They drove over on a December day, when it was nearly finished, and by right of their relationship obtained entrance and full opportunity of inspection; and not only so, but met Miss Augustine there, with whom they returned to Whiteladies. There was not very much intercourse possible between the recluse and these two lively young ladies, but they accompanied her notwithstanding, plying her with mock questions, and “drawing her out;” for the Farrel-Austins were of those who held the opinion that Miss Augustine was mad, and a fair subject of ridicule. They got her to tell them about her pious purposes, and laid them up, with many a mischievous glance at each other, for the entertainment of their friends. When Stevens showed them in, announcing them with a peculiar loudness of tone intended to show his warm sense of the family hostility, there was no one in thedrawing-room but Giovanna, who sat reclining in one of the great chairs, lazily watching the little boy who trotted about her, and who had now assumed the natural demeanor of a child to its mother. She was not a caressing mother even now, and in his heart I do not doubt Johnny still preferred Cook; but they made a pretty group, the rosy little fellow in his velvet frock and snow-white pinafore, and Giovanna in a black dress of the same material, which gave a most appropriate setting to her beauty. Dear reader, let me not deceive you, or give you false ideas of Miss Susan’s liberality, or Giovanna’s extravagance. The velvet was velveteen, of which we all make our Winter gowns, not the more costly material which lasts you (or lasted your mother, shall we say?) twenty years as a dinner dress, and costs you twice as many pounds as years. The Farrel-Austins were pretty girls both, but they were not of the higher order of beauty, like Giovanna; and they were much impressed by her looks and the indolent grace of her attitude, and the easy at-home air with which she held possession of Miss Susan’s drawing-room. She scarcely stirred when they came in, for her breeding, as may be supposed, was still very imperfect, and probably her silence prolonged their respect for her more than conversation would have done; but the child, whom the visitors knew how to make use of as a medium of communication, soon produced a certain acquaintance. “Je suis Johnny,” the baby said in answer to their question. In his little language one tongue and another was much the same; but in the drawing-room the mode of communication differed from that in the kitchen, and the child acknowledged the equality of the two languages by mixing them. “But mamma say Yan,” he added as an afterthought.
The two girls looked at each other. Here was the mysterious guest evidently before them: to find her out, her ways, her meaning, and how she contemplated her position, could not be difficult. Kate was as usual a reasonable creature, talking as other people talk; while Sophy was the madcap, saying things she ought not to say, whose luck it was not unfrequently to surprise other people into similar indiscretions.
“Then this charming little fellow is yours?” said Kate. “How nice for the old ladies to have a child in the house! Gentlemen don’t always care for the trouble, but where there are only ladiesit is so cheerful; and how clever he is to speak both English and French.”
Giovanna laughed softly. The idea that it was cheerful to have a child in the house amused her, but she kept her own counsel. “They teach him—a few words,” she said, making the w more of a v; and rolling the r a great deal more than she did usually, so that this sounded like vorrds, and proved to the girls, who had come to make an examination of her, that she knew very little English, and spoke it very badly, as they afterward said.
“Then you are come from abroad? Pray don’t think us impertinent. We are cousins; Farrel-Austins; you may have heard of us.”
“Yes, yes, I have heard of you,” said Giovanna with a smile. She had never changed her indolent position, and it gave her a certain pleasure to feel herself so far superior to her visitors, though in her heart she was afraid of them, and afraid of being exposed alone to their scrutiny.
Kate looked at her sister, feeling that the stranger had the advantage, but Sophy broke in with an answering laugh.
“It has not been anything very pleasant you have heard; we can see that; but we ain’t so bad as the old ladies think us,” said Sophy. “We are nice enough; Kate is sensible, though I am silly: we are not so bad as they think us here.”
“I heard of you from my beau-père at Bruges,” said Giovanna. “Jeanot! ’faut pas gêner la belle dame.”
“Oh, I like him,” said Kate. “Then youarefrom abroad? You are one of the Austins of Bruges? we are your cousins too. I hope you like England, and Whiteladies. Is it not a charming old house?”
Giovanna made no reply. She smiled, which might have been assent or contempt; it was difficult to say which. She had no intention of betraying herself. Whatever these young women might be, nothing could put them on her side of the question; this she perceived by instinct, and heroically refrained from all self-committal. The child by this time had gone to Sophy, and stood by her knee, allowing himself to be petted and caressed.
“Oh, what a dear little thing! what a nasty little thing!” said Sophy. “If papa saw him he would like to murder him, and so should I. I suppose he is the heir?”
“But M. Herbert lives, and goes to get well,” said Giovanna.
“Yes, what a shame it is! Quel dommage, as you say in French. What right has he to get well, after putting it into everybody’s head that he was going to die? I declare, I have no patience with such hypocrisy! People should do one thing or another,” said Sophy, “not pretend for years that they are dying, and then live.”
“Sophy, don’t say such things. She is the silliest rattle, and says whatever comes into her head. To be kept in suspense used to be very trying for poor papa,” said Kate. “He does not believe still that Herbert can live; and now that it has gone out of papa’s hands, it must be rather trying for you.”
“I am not angry with M. Herbert because he gets well,” said Giovanna with a smile. She was amused indeed by the idea, and her amusement had done more to dissipate her resentment than reason; for to be sure it was somewhat ludicrous that Herbert should be found fault with for getting well. “When I am sick,” she went on, “I try to get better too.”
“Well, I think it is a shame,” said Sophy. “He ought to think of other people waiting and waiting, and never knowing what is going to happen. Oh! Miss Susan, how do you do? We came to ask for you, and when Herbert and Reine were expected home.”
Miss Susan came in prepared for the examination she had to go through. Her aspect was cloudy, as it always was nowadays. She had not the assured air of dignified supremacy and proprietorship which she once had possessed; but the Farrel-Austins were not penetrating enough to perceive more than that she looked dull, which was what they scarcely expected. She gave a glance at Giovanna, still reclining indolently in her easy chair; and curiously enough, quite against her expectation, without warning or reason, Miss Susan felt herself moved by something like a thrill of pleasure! What did it mean? It meant that Farrel’s girls, whom she disliked, who were her natural enemies, were not fit to be named in comparison with this young woman who was her torment, her punishment, her bad angel; but at all events hers, on her side pitted with her against them. It was not an elevated sort of satisfaction, but such as it was it surprised her with a strange gleam of pleasure. She sat down near Giovanna, unconsciously ranging herself on that side against the other; and then she relapsed into commonlife, and gave her visitors a very circumstantial account of Herbert and Reine—how they had wished to come home at Christmas, but the doctors thought it more prudent to wait till May. Kate and Sophy listened eagerly, consulting each other, and comparing notes in frequent looks.
“Yes, poor fellow! of course May will be better,” said Kate, “though I should have said June myself. It is sometimes very cold in May. Of course he will always beverydelicate; his constitution must be so shattered—”
“His constitution is not shattered at all,” said Miss Susan, irritated, as the friends of a convalescent so often are, by doubts of his strength. “Shattered constitutions come from quite different causes, Miss Kate—from what you call ‘fast’ living and wickedness. Herbert has the constitution of a child; he has no enemy but cold, and I hope we can take care of him here.”
“Oh, Kate meant no harm,” said Sophy; “we know he could never have been ‘fast.’ It is easy to keep straight when you haven’t health for anything else,” said this well-informed young woman.
“Hush!” said her sister in an audible whisper, catching hold of the baby to make a diversion. Then Kate aimed her little broadside too.
“We have been so pleased to make acquaintance with madame,” she said, using that title without any name, as badly instructed people are so apt to do. “It must be nice for you to feel yourself provided for, whatever happens. This, I hear, is the little heir?”
“Madame Suzanne,” interrupted Giovanna, “I have told ces dames that I am glad M. Herbert goes to get well. I hope he will live long and be happy. Jean, chéri! dis fort ‘Vive M. Herbert!’ as I taught you, that ces dames may hear.”
Johnny was armed with his usual weapon, the paper-knife, which on ordinary occasions Miss Susan could not endure to see in his hand; for I need not say it was her own pet weapon, which Giovanna in her ignorance had appropriated. He made a great flourish in the air with this falchion. “Vive M’sieu ’Erbert!” cried the child, his little round face flushed and shining with natural delight in his achievement. Giovanna snatched him up on her lap to kiss and applaud him, and Miss Susan, with a start of wonder, felt tears of pleasure come to her eyes. It was scarcely credible even to herself.
“Yes, he is the heir,” she said quickly, looking her assailants in the face, “that is, if Herbert has no children of his own. I am fortunate, as you say—more fortunate than your papa, Miss Kate.”
“Who has only girls,” said Sophy, coming to the rescue. “Poor papa! Though if we are not as good as the men, we must be poor creatures,” she added with a laugh; and this was a proposition which nobody attempted to deny.
As for Kate, she addressed her sister very seriously when they left Whiteladies. Things were come to a pass in which active measures were necessary, and a thorough comprehension of the situation.
“If you don’t make up your mind at once to marry Herbert, that woman will,” she said to Sophy. “We shall see before six months are out. You don’t mind my advice as you ought, but you had better this time. I’d rather marry him myself than let him drop into the hands of an adventuress like that.”
“Do! I shan’t interfere,” said Sophy lightly; but in her heart she allowed that Kate was right. If one of them was to have Whiteladies, it would be necessary to be alert and vigorous. Giovanna was not an antagonist to be despised. They did not under-value her beauty; women seldom do, whatever fancy-painters on the other side may say.
Miss Susan, for her part, left the drawing-room along with them, with so curious a sensation going through her that she had to retire to her room to get the better of it. She felt a certain thrill of gratefulness, satisfaction, kindness in the midst of her hatred; and yet the hatred was not diminished. This put all her nerves on edge like a jarring chord.
Herbertand Reine had settled at Cannes for the Winter, at the same time when Giovanna settled herself at Whiteladies. They knew very little of this strange inmate in their old home, and thought still less. The young man had been promoted from one point to another of the invalid resorts, and now remained at Cannes, which was so much brighter and less valetudinary than Mentone, simply, as the doctors said, “as a precautionary measure.” Does the reader know that bright sea-margin, where the sun shines so serene and sweet, and where the color of the sea and the sky and the hills and the trees are all brightened and glorified by the fact that the grays and chills of northern Winter are still close at hand? When one has little to do, when one is fancy free, when one is young, and happiness comes natural, there is nothing more delicious than the Riviera. You are able, in such circumstances, to ignore the touching groups which encircle here and there, some of the early doomed. You are able to hope that the invalids must get better. You say to yourself, “In this air, under this sky, no one can long insist upon being ill;” and if your own invalid, in whom you are most interested, has really mended, hope for every other becomes conviction. And then there are always idlers about who are not ill, to whom life is a holiday, or seems so, and who, being impelled to amuse themselves by force of circumstances, add a pleasant movement to the beautiful scene. Without even these attractions, is not the place in which you receive back your sick as from the dead always beautiful, if it were the dirtiest seaport or deserted village? Mud and gray sky, or sands of gold and heavenly vaults of blue, what matters? That was the first time since the inspired and glorious moment at Kandersteg that Reine had feltsureof Herbert’s recovery;—there was no doubting the fact now. He was even no longer an invalid, a change which at first was not nearly so delightful to his sister as she had expected. They had been all in all to each other for so long; and Reine had given up to Herbert not only willingly, but joyfully, all the delights of youth—its amusements, its companionships, everything. She had never been at a ball (grown up) in her life, though she was now over twenty. She had passed the last four years, the very quintessence of her youth, in a sick-room, or in the subdued goings out and gentle amusements suited to an invalid; and indeed, her heart and mind being fully occupied, she had desired no better. Herbert, and his comfort and his entertainment, had been the sum of all living to Reine. And now had come the time when she was emancipated, and when the young man, recovering his strength, began to think of other amusements than those which a girl could share. It was quite natural. Herbert made friends of his own, and went out with them, and made parties of pleasure, and manly expeditions in which Reine had no part. It was very foolish of her to feel it, and no critic could have been more indignant with her than she was with herself. The girl’s first sensation was surprise when she found herself left out. She was bewildered by it. It had never occurred to her as likely, natural, nay, necessary—which, as soon as she recovered her breath, she assured herself it was. Poor Reine even tried to laugh at herself for her womanish folly. Was it to be expected that Herbert should continue in the same round when he got better, that he should not go out into the world like other men? On the contrary, Reine was proud and delighted to see him go; to feel that he was able to do it; to listen to his step, which was as active as any of the others, she thought, and his voice, which rang as clear and gay. It was only after he was gone that the sudden surprise I have spoken of assailed her. And if you will think of it, it was hard upon Reine. Because of her devotion to him she had made no friends for herself. She had been out of the way of wanting friends. Madame de Mirfleur’s eagerness to introduce her, to find companions for her, when she paid the pair her passing visits, had always been one of the things which most offended Reine. What did she want with other companions than Herbert? She was necessary to him, and did any one suppose that she would leave him for pleasure? For pleasure!could mamma suppose it would be any pleasure to her to be separate from her brother? Thus the girl thought in her absolute way, carrying matters with a high hand as long as it was in her power to do so. But now that Herbert was well, everything was changed. He was fond of his sister, who had been so good a nurse to him; but it seemed perfectly natural that she should have been his nurse, and had she not always said she preferred it to anything else in the world? It was just the sort of thing that suited Reine—it was her way, and the way of most good girls. But it did not occur to Herbert to think that there was anything astonishing, any hardship in the matter; nor, when he went out with his new friends, did it come into his head that Reine, all alone, might be dull and miss him. Yes, miss him, that of course she must; but then it was inevitable. A young fellow enjoying his natural liberty could not by any possibility drag a girl about everywhere after him—that was out of the question, of course. At first now and then it would sometimes come into his head that his sister was alone at home, but that impression very soon wore off. She liked it. She said so; and why should she say so if it was not the case? Besides, she could of course have friends if she chose. So shy Reine, who had not been used to any friends but him, who had alienated herself from all her friends for him, stayed at home within the four rather bare walls of their sitting-room, while the sun shone outside, and even the invalids strolled about, and the soft sound of the sea upon the beach filled the air with a subdued, delicious murmur. Good François, Herbert’s faithful attendant, used to entreat her to go out.
“The weather is delightful,” he said. “Why will mademoiselle insist upon shutting herself up in-doors?”
“I will go out presently, François,” Reine said, her pretty lips quivering a little.
But she had no one to go out with, poor child! She did not like even to go and throw herself upon the charity of one or two ladies whom she knew. She knew no one well, and how could she go and thrust herself upon them now, after having received their advances coldly while she had Herbert? So the poor child sat down and read, or tried to read, seated at the window from which she could see the sea and the people who were walking about. How lucky she was to have such a cheerful window! But whenshe saw the sick English girl who lived close by going out for her midday walk leaning upon her brother’s arm, with her mother close by watching her, poor Reine’s heart grew sick. Why was it not she who was ill? if she died, nobody would miss her much (so neglected youth always feels, with poignant self pity), whereas it was evident that the heart of that poor lady would break if her child was taken from her. The poor lady whom Reine thus noted looked up at her where she sat at the window, with a corresponding pang in her heart. Oh, why was it that other girls should be so fresh and blooming while her child was dying? But it is very hard at twenty to sit at a bright window alone, and try to read, while all the world is moving about before your eyes, and the sunshine sheds a soft intoxication of happiness into the air. The book would fall from her hands, and the young blood would tingle in her veins. No doubt, if one of the ladies whom Reine knew had called just then, the girl would have received her visitor with the utmost dignity, nor betrayed by a word, by a look, how lonely she was; for she was proud, and rather perverse and shy—shy to her very finger-tips; but in her heart I think if any one had been so boldly kind as to force her out, and take her in charge, she would have been ready to kiss that deliverer’s feet, but never to own what a deliverance it was.
No one came, however, in this enterprising way. They had been in Cannes several times, the brother and sister, and Reine had been always bound to Herbert’s side, finding it impossible to leave him. How could these mere acquaintances know that things were changed now? So she sat at the window most of the day, sometimes trying to make little sketches, sometimes working, but generally reading or pretending to read—not improving books, dear reader. These young people did not carry much solid literature about with them. They had poetry books—not a good selection—and a supply of the pretty Tauchnitz volumes, only limited by the extent of that enterprising firm’s reprints, besides such books as were to be got at the library. Everard had shown more discrimination than was usual to him when he said that Herbert, after his long helplessness and dependence, would rush very eagerly into the enjoyments and freedom of life. It was very natural that he should do so; chained to a sick-room as he had been for so long—then indulged with invalid pleasures, invalidprivileges, and gradually feeling the tide rise and the warm blood of his youth swell in his veins—the poor young fellow was greedy of freedom, of boyish company, from which he had always been shut out—of adventures innocent enough, yet to his recluse mind having all the zest of desperate risk and daring. He had no intention of doing anything wrong, or even anything unkind. But this was the very first time that he had fallen among a party of young men like himself, and the contrast being so novel, was delightful to him. And his new friends “took to him” with a flattering vehemence of liking. They came to fetch him in the morning, they involved him in a hundred little engagements. They were fond of him, he thought, and he had never known friendship before. In short, they turned Herbert’s head, a thing which quite commonly happens both to girls and boys when for the first time either boy or girl falls into a merry group of his or her contemporaries, with many amusements and engagements on hand. Had one of these young fellows happened to fall in love with Reine, all would have gone well—for then, no doubt, the young lover would have devised ways and means for having her of the party. But she was not encouraging to their advances. Girls who have little outward contact with society are apt to form an uncomfortably high ideal, and Reine thought her brother’s friends a pack of noisy boys quite inferior to Herbert, with no intellect, and not very much breeding. She was very dignified and reserved when they ran in and out, calling for him to come here and go there, and treated them as somehow beneath the notice of such a very mature person as herself; and the young fellows were offended, and revenged themselves by adding ten years to her age, and giving her credit for various disagreeable qualities.
“Oh, yes, he has a sister,” they would say, “much older than Austin—who looks as if she would like to turn us all out, and keep her darling at her apron-string.”
“You must remember she has had the nursing of him all his life,” a more charitable neighbor would suggest by way of excusing the middle-aged sister.
“But women ought to know that a man is not to be always lounging about pleasing them, and not himself. Hang it all, what would they have? I wonder Austin don’t send her home. It is the best place for her.”
This was how the friends commented upon Reine. And Reine did not know that even to be called Austin was refreshing to the invalid lad, showing him that he was at least on equal terms with somebody; and that the sense of independence intoxicated him, so that he did not know how to enjoy it enough—to take draughts full enough and deep enough of the delightful pleasure of being his own master, of meeting the night air without a muffler, and going home late in sheer bravado, to show that he was an invalid no more.
After this first change, which chilled her and made her life so lonely, another change came upon Reine. She had been used to be anxious about Herbert all her life, and now another kind of anxiety seized her, which a great many women know very well, and which with many becomes a great and terrible passion, ravaging secretly their very lives. Fear for his health slid imperceptibly in her loneliness into fear for him. Does the reader know the difference? She was a very ignorant, foolish girl: she did not know anything about the amusements and pleasures of young men. When her brother came in slightly flushed and flighty, with some excitement in his looks, parting loudly with his friends at the door, smelling of cigars and wine, a little rough, a little noisy, poor Reine thought he was plunging into some terrible whirlpool of dissipation, such as she had read of in books; and, as she was of the kind of woman who is subject to its assaults, the vulture came down upon her, there and then, and began to gnaw at her heart. In those long evenings when she sat alone waiting for him, the legendary Spartan with the fox under his cloak was nothing to Reine. She kept quite still over her book, and read page after page, without knowing a word she was reading, but heard the pitiful little clock on the mantel-piece chime the hours, and every step and voice outside, and every sound within, with painful acuteness, as if she were all ear; and felt her heart beat all over her—in her throat, in her ears, stifling her and stopping her breath. She did not form any idea to herself of how Herbert might be passing his time; she would not let her thoughts accuse him of anything, for, indeed, she was too innocent to imagine those horrors which women often do imagine. She sat in an agony of listening, waiting for him, wondering how he would look when he returned—wondering if this was he, witha renewed crisis of excitement, this step that was coming—falling dull and dead when the step was past, rousing up again to the next, feeling herself helpless, miserable, a slave to the anguish which dominated her, and against which reason itself could make no stand. Every morning she woke saying to herself that she would not allow herself to be so miserable again, and every night fell back into the clutches of this passion, which gripped at her and consumed her. When Herbert came in early and “like himself”—that is to say, with no traces of excitement or levity—the torture would stop in a moment, and a delicious repose would come over her soul; but next night it came back again the same as ever, and poor Reine’s struggles to keep mastery of herself were all in vain. There are hundreds of women who well know exactly how she felt, and what an absorbing fever it was which had seized upon her. She had more reason than she really knew for her fears, for Herbert was playing with his newly-acquired health in the rashest way, and though he was doing no great harm, had yet departed totally from that ideal which had been his, as well as his sister’s, but a short time before. He had lost altogether the tender gratitude of that moment when he thought he was being cured in a half miraculous, heavenly way, and when his first simple boyish thought was how good it became him to be, to prove the thankfulness of which his heart was full. He had forgotten now about being thankful. He was glad, delighted to be well, and half believed that he had some personal credit in it. He had “cheated the doctors”—it was not they who had cured him, but presumably something great and vigorous in himself which had triumphed over all difficulties; and now he had a right to enjoy himself in proportion to—what he began to think—the self-denial of past years. Both the brother and sister had very much fallen off from that state of elevation above the world which had been temporarily theirs in that wonderful moment at Kandersteg; and they had begun to feel the effect of those drawbacks which every great change brings with it, even when the change is altogether blessed, and has been looked forward to with hope for years.
This was the position of affairs between the brother and sister when Madame de Mirfleur arrived to pay them a visit, and satisfy herself as to her son’s health. She came to them in her mostgenial mood, happy in Herbert’s recovery, and meaning to afford herself a little holiday, which was scarcely the aspect under which her former visits to her elder children had shown themselves. They had received her proposal with very dutiful readiness, but oddly enough, as one of the features of the change, it was Reine who wished for her arrival; not Herbert, though he, in former tunes, had always been the more charitable to his mother. Now his brow clouded at the prospect. His new-born independence seemed in danger. He felt as if mufflers and respirators, and all the old marks of bondage, were coming back to him in Madame de Mirfleur’s trunks.
“If mamma comes with the intention of coddling me up again, and goes on about taking care,” he said, “by Jove! I tell you I’ll not stand it, Reine.”
“Mamma will do what she thinks best,” said Reine, perhaps a little coldly; “but you know I think you are wrong, Bertie, though you will not pay any attention to me.”
“You are just like a girl,” said Herbert, “never satisfied, never able to see the difference. What a change it is, by Jove, when a fellow gets into the world, and learns the right way of looking at things! If you go and set her on me, I’ll never forgive you; as if I could not be trusted to my own guidance—as if it were not I, myself, who was most concerned!”
These speeches of her brother’s cost Reine, I am afraid, some tears when he was gone, and her pride yielded to the effects of loneliness and discouragement. He was forsaking her, she thought, who had the most right to be good to her—he of whom she had boasted that he was the only being who belonged to her in the world; her very own, whom nobody could take from her. Poor Reine! it had not required very much to detach him from her. When Madame de Mirfleur arrived, however, she did not interfere with Herbert’s newly-formed habits, nor attempt to put any order in his mannish ways. She scolded Reine for moping, for sitting alone and neglecting society, and instantly set about to remedy this fault; but she found Herbert’s little dissipations tout simple, said not a word about a respirator, and rather encouraged him than otherwise, Reine thought. She made him give them an account of everything, where he had been, and all about his expeditions, when he came back at night, and never showedeven a shadow of disapproval, laughing at the poor little jokes which Herbert reported, and making the best of his pleasure. She made him ask his friends, of whom Reine disapproved, to dinner, and was kind to them, and charmed these young men; for Madame de Mirfleur had been a beauty in her day, and kept up those arts of pleasing which her daughter disdained, and made Herbert’s boyish companions half in love with her. This had the effect of restraining Herbert often, without any suspicions of restraint entering his head; and the girl, who half despised, half envied her mother’s power, was not slow to perceive this, though she felt in her heart that nothing could ever qualify her to follow the example. Poor Reine looked on, disapproving her mother as usual, yet feeling less satisfied with herself than usual, and asking herself vainly if she loved Herbert as she thought she did, would not she make any sacrifice to make him happy? If this made him happy, why could not she do it? It was because his companions were his inferiors, she said to herself—companions not worthy of Herbert. How could she stoop to them? Madame de Mirfleur had not such a high standard of excellence. She exerted herself for the amusement of the young men as if they had been heroes and sages. And even Reine, though she disapproved, was happier, against her will.
“But, mon Dieu!” cried Madame de Mirfleur, “the fools that these boys are! Have you ever heard, my Reine, such bêtises as my poor Herbert takes for pleasantries? They give me mal au cœur. How they are bêtes, these boys!”
“I thought you liked them,” said Reine, “you are so kind to them. You flatter them, even. Oh, does it not wound you, are you not ashamed, to see Bertie, my Bertie, prefer the noise—those scufflings? It is this that gives me mal au cœur.”
“Bah! you are high-flown,” said the mother. “If one took to heart all the things that men do, one would have no consolation in this world. They are all less or more, bêtes, the men. What we have to do is to ménager—to make of it the best we can. You do not expect them to understand—to be likeus?Tenez, Reine; that which your brother wants is a friend. No, not thee, my child, nor me. Do not cry, chérie. It is the lot of the woman. Thou hast not known whether thou wert girl or boy, or what difference there was, in the strange life you have led; but listen,my most dear, for now you find it out. Herbert is but like others; he is no worse than the rest. He accepts from thee everything, so long as he wants thee; but now he is independent, he wants thee no more. This is a truth which every woman learns. To struggle is inutile—it does no good, and a woman who is wise accepts what must be, and does not struggle. What he wants is a friend. Where is the cousin, the Monsieur Everard, whom I left with you, who went away suddenly? You have never told me why he went away.”
Reine’s color rose. She grew red to the roots of her hair. It was a subject which had never been touched upon between them, and possibly it was the girl’s consciousness of something which she could not put into words which made the blood flush to her face. Madame de Mirfleur had been very discreet on this subject, as she always was. She had never done anything to awaken her child’s susceptibilities. And she was not ignorant of Everard’s story, which Julie had entered upon in much greater detail than would have been possible to Reine. Honestly, she thought no more of Everard so far as Reine was concerned; but, for Herbert, he would be invaluable; therefore, it was with no match-making meaning that she awaited her daughter’s reply.
“I told you when it happened,” said Reine, in very measured tones, and with unnecessary dignity; “you have forgotten, mamma. His affairs got into disorder; he thought he had lost all his money; and he was obliged to go at a moment’s notice to save himself from being ruined.”
“Ah!” said Madame de Mirfleur, “I begin to recollect. Après? He was not ruined, but he did not come back?”
“He did not come back because he had to go to Jamaica—to the West Indies,” said Reine, somewhat indignant, “to work hard. It is not long since he has been back in England. I had a letter—to say he thought—of coming—” Here she stopped short, and looked at her mother with a certain defiance. She had not meant to say anything of this letter, but in Everard’s defence had betrayed its existence before she knew.
“Ah!” said Madame de Mirfleur, wisely showing little eagerness, “such an one as Everard would be a good companion for thy brother. He is a man, voyez-vous, not a boy. He thought—of coming?”
“Somewhere—for the Winter,” said Reine, with a certain oracular vagueness, and a tremor in her voice.
“Some-vere,” said Madame de Mirfleur, laughing, “that is large; and you replied, ma Reine?”
“I did not reply—I have not time,” said Reine with dignity, “to answer all the idle letters that come to me. People in England seem to think one has nothing to do but to write.”
“It is very true,” said the mother, “they are foolish, the English, on that point. Give me thy letter, chérie, and I will answer it for thee. I can think of no one who would be so good for Herbert. Probably he will never want a good friend so much as now.”
“Mamma!” cried Reine, changing from red to white, and from white to red in her dismay, “you are not going to invite Everard here?”
“Why not, my most dear? It is tout simple; unless thou hast something secret in thy heart against it, which I don’t know.”
“I have nothing secret in my heart,” cried Reine, her heart beating loudly, her eyes filling with tears; “but don’t do it—don’t do it; I don’t want him here.”
“Très-bien, my child,” said the mother calmly, “it was not for thee, but for thy brother. Is there anything against him?”
“No, no, no! There is nothing against him—nothing!”
“Then you are unreasonable, Reine,” said her mother; “but I will not go against you, my child. You are excited—the tears come to you in the eyes; you are not well—you have been too much alone, ma petite Reine.”
“No, no; I am quite well—I am not excited!” cried the girl.
Madame de Mirfleur kissed her, and smoothed her hair, and bid her put on her hat and come out.
“Come and listen a little to the sea,” she said. “It is soft, like the wind in our trees. I love to take advantage of the air when I am by the sea.”