THE VERNONRY.
These things all happened a great number of years before the beginning
of this history. Catherine Vernon had become an old woman--at least she
was sixty-five; you can call that an old woman if you please. Sometimes
it may mean the extreme of age, decrepitude and exhaustion: but
sometimes also it means a softer and more composed middle age--a lovely
autumnal season in which all the faculties retain their force without
any of their harshness, and toleration and Christian charity replace all
sharpness of criticism or sternness of opinion. Sometimes this beautiful
age will fall to the lot of those who have experienced a large share of
the miseries of life and learnt its bitterest lessons, but often--and
this seems most natural--it is the peaceful souls who have suffered
little to whom this crown of continuance is given. Catherine Vernon
belonged to the last class. If her youth had not been altogether happy,
there had been fewer sorrows and still fewer struggles in her life. She
had gone along peacefully, her own mistress, nobody making her afraid,
no one to be anxious about, no one dear enough to rend her heart. Most
people who have gone through the natural experiences of life are of
opinion with the Laureate, that it is
"Better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."
But then we do not allow the other people to speak who know the other
side of the question. If love brings great happiness it brings many
woes. Catherine Vernon was like Queen Elizabeth, a dry tree--while other
women had sons and daughters. But when the hearts of the mothers were
torn with anxiety, she went free. She had the good of other people's
children in a wonderful degree, but it was impossible she could have the
harm of them--for those whom she took to were the good children, as was
natural, the elect of this world. Her life had been full of exertion and
occupation since that night when Rule called upon her at the Grange and
set all the world of her being in movement. What flagging and loneliness
might have been hers--what weariness and longing had ended at that time.
Since then how much she had found to do! The work of a successful man of
business increased, yet softened by all the countless nothings that make
business for a woman, had filled her days. She was an old maid, to be
sure, but an old maid who never was alone. Her house had been gay with
young friends and tender friendship. She had been the first love of more
girls than she could count. By the time she was sixty-five she was a
sort of amateur grandmother in numbers of young households. A woman with
plenty of money, with a handsome, cheerful house, and a happy
disposition, she had--at least since her youth was over--never had
occasion to remember the want of those absorbing affections which bind a
married woman within her own circle. The children of the barren in her
case were more than those of any wife. If ever in her heart she said to
herself, like Matthew in the poem--
"Many love me, yet by none
Am I enough beloved,"
the sentiment never showed, and must have occurred only as Matthew's
did, in moods as evanescent as the clouds. Her face was not without
lines, for that would be to say that it was without expression; nor did
she look too young for her age: but her eye was not dim, nor her natural
force abated. She had a finer colour than in her girlhood, though the
red was not so smooth, but a little broken in her soft cheek. Her hair
was white and beautiful, her figure ample, but graceful still. At sixty
she had given up work, entering upon, she said, the Sabbatical period of
her life. For the rest of her days she meant to keep Sunday, resting
from her labours--and indeed, with perhaps too close a following of the
divine example for any human creature to venture upon, finding them very
good.
It follows as a matter of course that she had found somebody to replace
her in the bank. There were so many Vernons, that this was not very
difficult to do. At least it was not difficult to find candidates for so
important a post. Descendants of the brothers and sisters of the great
John Vernon, who had first made the bank what it was, were plentiful,
and from among them Catherine Vernon selected two hopeful young men to
carry on her work. One of them, Harry Vernon, was descended from the
daughter of the great John, who had married a relation and continued to
bear the family name. The other went further back and traced his descent
from a brother of that great John. The parents of these fortunate young
men acquiesced with delight in the proposals she made to them. It was a
certain fortune--an established living at once--far better than the
chances of the Bar, or the Indian Civil Examinations, or Colorado, which
had begun to be the alternative for young men. Indeed it was only Edward
Vernon who had parents to be consulted. Harry had but a sister, who had
come to live with him in the fine house which the last John, the one who
had put the bank in such deadly peril, had built. Edward lived with Miss
Vernon herself. Five years had passed since their inauguration as
partners and managers, with very little change in their feelings towards
the old cousin, who had done so much for them, and whom they called Aunt
Catherine. She was Aunt Catherine to a great many people, but these
three, who were the nearest to her in blood, were disposed to give
themselves airs, and to punish intruders who presumed upon a fictitious
relationship. They were to all appearance quite satisfactory young
people, if perhaps not brilliant; and pious persons said that Miss
Vernon had got her reward for her kindness to the poor, and her more
than kindness to her poor relations. She was surrounded by those who
were to her like children of her own. No mother could have had sons more
respectful and devoted. Good and virtuous and kind children--what could
a woman have more?
Perhaps this was rather a flattering and ideal statement of the case;
but at all events one of the young men satisfied all Miss Vernon's
requirements, and they were both steady-going, fine young fellows,
paying every attention to business, keeping everything going. Ellen
perhaps was not quite so satisfactory. She was young and headstrong, and
not sure that Catherine Vernon was all that people made her out to be.
There was nothing wonderful in this. To hear one person for ever
applauded is more likely than anything else to set an impatient mind
against that person--and Ellen kept her old cousin at arm's length, and
showed her little affection. Nobody could doubt that this must have
vexed Miss Vernon, but she took it with wonderful calm.
"Your sister does not like me," she said to Harry; "never mind, she is
young, and she will know better one day."
"You must not think so," Harry said. "Ellen is foolish and headstrong,
but she has a very good heart."
Catherine Vernon nodded a little and shook her head.
"It is not a heart," she said, "that is disposed towards me. But never
mind; she will think better of it one day."
Thus you will see that Miss Vernon escaped from the worst, and had the
best, of motherhood. What a bitterness to her heart would this
alienation have been, had Ellen been her child! but as the troublesome
girl was not her child in reality, the unkindness vexed her in a very
much less degree. She was able to think of the boys, who were so good,
without being disturbed by the image of the girl, who was not so good.
And so all things went on serenely, and the years went by, gentle,
unremarkable, tranquil years.
Several years before this, before indeed the young people had entered
into her life, the old house, called the Heronry, came into Miss
Vernon's hands. It was at some distance on the same side of the Common,
but a little further out towards the country than the Grange--a large
old red-brick house, in the midst of a thin but lofty group of trees.
Though it was so near the town, there was something forlorn in it,
standing out against the west, the tall trees dark against the light,
the irregular outline of the old house flush against the sky, for it was
a flat country, no hills or undulations, but everything that was tall
enough showing direct against the horizon in a way that was sometimes
very impressive. This great old house Miss Vernon made a curious use of.
It contained a multitude of rooms, not any very large except that which
occupied the centre of the area, a sort of hall, with a great staircase
going out of it. From the moment it came into her hands, she made,
everybody thought, a toy of the Heronry. She divided it into about half
a dozen compartments, each with a separate entrance. It was very
cleverly done, so as not to interfere in any way with the appearance of
the place. The doors were not new and unsightly, but adapted with great
care, some of them being windows a little enlarged. What was it for? All
kinds of rumours ran about the town. It was some sort of a convent which
she was going to institute, a community of an apostolical kind, a
sisterhood, a hospital, a set of almshouses. Some went so far as to call
it Catherine Vernon's Folly. She spent a great deal of money upon it,
elaborating her whim, whatever it might be. It was fitted up with
apparatus for warming, which would make the dwellers in it independent
of fires, people said, and this looked like a hospital everybody
allowed. There was no end to the conveniences, the comforts of the
place. The old-fashioned gardens were put in order, and the greatest
trouble taken to make the old pool--which had got the place its name,
and where it was said that herons had actually been seen in the lifetime
of some old inhabitants--wholesome and without prejudice to the health
of the house. The pool itself was very weird, and strange to be so near
the dwelling of ordinary life. It lay in the centre of the clump of
trees which had once been a wood, and which round it had grown tall and
bare, with clumps of foliage on the top, and straight, long stems
mounting to the sky, and shining in long lines of reflection in the
still, dark water. Several gaunt and ghostly old firs were among them,
which in the sunset were full of colour, but in twilight stood up black
and wild against the clear, pale sky. This pool was about as far from
the Grange as Miss Vernon could walk with comfort, and it was a walk she
was very fond of taking on summer nights. The Common lay between the
house and the town; beyond it spread the long levels of the flat
country. In the summer all was golden about, with gorse and patches of
purple heather, and the abundant growth of wild, uncultivated nature.
What did Catherine Vernon mean to do with this house? That was what all
Redborough wanted to know.
By the time at which this story properly begins, Redborough had been
acquainted for years with Miss Vernon's intentions; they were indeed no
longer intentions, but had been carried out. The Heronry had changed its
name, if not formally, yet in familiar parlance, throughout all the
neighbourhood, and was called the Vernonry even by people who did not
know why. The six dwellings which had been contrived so cleverly were
all occupied by relations and dependents of the family, members of the
house of Vernon, or connections of the same. They made a little
community among themselves, but not the community of a sisterhood or a
hospital. It was said that they had their little internal feuds and
squabbles, as people living so close together are always supposed to
have, but they were sufficiently well bred, or sufficiently in awe of
their cousin and patroness, to keep these quarrels decorously to
themselves. How far they were indebted to her for their living, as well
as their lodging, nobody knew, which was not for want of many a
strenuous investigation on the part of the neighbourhood; but the
inmates of the Vernonry were clever enough to keep their own counsel on
a matter which involved their own consequence and credit. Disagreeable
things were indeed said about "genteel almshouses," and "poor
relations," when it first became a question in Redborough about calling
on the new residents. But, as it turned out, they were all persons of
pretensions, expecting to be called upon by the county, and contemptuous
of the townspeople. Five of the six apartments into which the old house
had been divided were occupied, when Redborough was startled by the
extraordinary intelligence that the last and best had been reserved for
no less interesting an inmate than Mrs. John Vernon, she who had left
the town in circumstances so painful. John Vernon, the unfortunate or
the culpable, who had all but ruined the bank, and left it to its ruin,
had died abroad. His wife's marriage settlement had secured their
income, but he had spent as much as it was possible to spend of that,
and forestalled every penny that he could manage to forestall. His debts
were such that his widow's income was sadly crippled by the necessity of
paying them, which it was said she would not herself have seen so
clearly but for the determined way in which it was taken up by her
child, a very young girl, born long after the catastrophe, but one who
was apparently of the old stock, with a head for business, and a
decision of character quite unusual in a child. Mrs. John's return
caused a great sensation in Redborough. She was very well connected, and
there could be no question on anybody's mind as to the propriety of
calling on a woman who was aunt to Sir John Southwood, and first cousin
to Lady Hartingale. How she could like to come back there, to live
within sight of her own beautiful house, and to be indebted for shelter
to Catherine Vernon, was a much more difficult matter to understand. But
as everybody said, that of course was Mrs. John's own concern. If she
could make up her mind to it, certainly nobody else had any call to
interfere.
But what a change it was from the fatal day when poor Mr. Rule, all
anxious and miserable, was shown in by the curious servant to the costly
drawing-room in which John Vernon's wife, in her spotted muslin, sat
ignorant of business, but confident and satisfied in her good fortune
and in the certainty that all would go well with her! Poor lady! she had
learned some few things since that day, but never had grasped the
mystery of her downfall, nor known how it was that everything had
collapsed in a moment, tumbling down like a house of cards. She had not,
indeed, tried to understand at that terrible time when it all burst upon
her--when the fact that she had to leave her house, and that her
furniture was going to be sold in spite of all her indignant
protestations, compelled her understanding, such as it was, into the
knowledge that her husband was ruined. She had too much to do then, in
crying, in packing, in appealing to heaven and earth to know what she
had done to be so cruelly used, and in trying to make out how she was to
travel, to be able to face the problem how it had all come about. And
after she went away the strangeness and novelty of everything swept
thought out of her mind, if, indeed, it ever entered there at all.
Perhaps it was only after that life was over, and when widowed and
growing old she came back to the strange little house which Catherine
Vernon had written to offer her, that she remembered once more to ask
herself the question. Or, perhaps, even then it was not she who asked
it, but Hester, who, greatly excited, with eyes large with curiosity and
interest, clinging to her mother's arm in a way she had, which looked
like dependence, and was control, went all over the new-old place with
her, drinking in information. Hester led her mother wherever she
pleased, holding her arm embraced in her own two clasped hands. It was
her way of holding the helm. She was a tall girl of fourteen when she
came to the Heronry, outgrowing all her frocks, and all her previous
knowledge, and thirsting to understand everything. She had never been in
England before, though she prided herself on being an English girl. She
knew scarcely anything about her family, why it was they lived abroad,
what was their history, or by what means they were so severed from all
relationships and friendships. The letter of Catherine Vernon offering
them a house to live in had roused her, with all the double charm of
novelty and mysterious, unknown relationship. "Who is she? Cousin
Catherine? Papa's cousin! Why is she so kind? Oh yes, of course she must
be kind--very kind, or she would not offer us a house. And that is where
you used to live? Redborough. I should think in a week--say a week--we
might be ready to go." It was thus that she carried her mother along,
who at the first did not at all intend to go. Hester arrived at the
curious old house, which was unlike anything she had ever seen before,
with eyes like two notes of interrogation, brilliant, flaming, inquiring
into everything; and as soon as her mother had rested, and had taken
that cup of tea which is an Englishwoman's comfort, the girl had her out
to see what was to be seen, and led her about, turning the helm now one
way, now another. The Grange was visible as soon as they got beyond
their gate, and on the other side of the red roofs of Wilton Street,
standing on the only height that exists in the neighbourhood, there was
the white and splendid "elevation" of the White House, still splendid,
though a little the worse for wear. Mrs. John stood still, resisting the
action of the helm unconsciously, and all at once began to cry. "That is
where we used to live," she said, with little sobs breaking in,
"that--that is where we lived when we married. It was built for me; and
now to think I have nothing to do with it--nothing!"
It was then that the question arose, large, embracing the entire past,
and so many things that were beyond the mother's knowledge--"Why did
papa go away?" Mrs. John cried, she could not help it, feeling in a
moment all the difference, the wonderful change, the downfall and
reversal of everything that in those days she had expected and hoped.
She dried her eyes half a dozen times, and then burst out again. "Oh,
what have I done that so much should happen to me! and Catherine Vernon
always the same," she said. After a while Hester ceased to ask any
questions, ceased to impel her mother this way or that by her arm, but
led her home quietly to the strange house, with its dark wainscot, which
was so unfamiliar, and made her lie down upon the sofa. Mrs. John was
not a person of original impulses. What she did to-day she had done a
great many times before. Her daughter knew all her little ways by heart.
She knew about how long she would cry, and when she would cheer up
again; and in the meantime she did her best to put two and two together
and make out for herself the outline of the history. Of course she was
all wrong. She had heard that her father was the victim of a conspiracy,
and she had never seen him on any but his best side. Her idea was he had
been wronged; perhaps he was too clever, perhaps too good, for the
designing people round him, and they had laid their heads together and
procured his ruin. The only thing that puzzled Hester was the share that
the unknown Cousin Catherine had in it. Had she been against him too?
But, if so, why was she kind to his wife and child? Perhaps out of
remorse and compunction? Perhaps because she was an old woman, and
wanted to make up a little for what she had done? But this was all
vague, and Hester was prudent enough not to make up her mind about it
until further inquiries. She put her mother to bed in the meantime, and
did all the little things for her which were part of Mrs. John's system.
She brushed her hair, still so pretty; she tied nicely, as if it were an
article of full dress, the strings of her nightcap; she put all her
little things by her on the table by her bedside--her Bible and
prayer-book, the novel she had been reading on the journey, a biscuit in
case she should wake up feeling faint in the night. There was quite an
array of small matters. And then Hester kissed her mother and bid her go
to sleep. "You will not be long of coming to bed, dear?" Mrs. John said;
and the girl promised. But she went away, carrying her candle into one
wainscoted room after another, asking herself if she liked them. She had
been used to big white rooms in France. She saw gleams of her own face,
and reflections of her light in the deep brown of these walls with a
pleasant little thrill of alarm. It was all very strange, she had never
seen anything like it before; but what was the reason why papa left?
What had he done? What had been done to him? One of the down stairs
rooms opened upon a pretty verandah, into which she was just about
stepping, notwithstanding her dread that the wind would blow her candle
out, when suddenly she was met by a large and stately figure which made
the heart jump in Hester's breast. Miss Catherine had come out, as she
did so often at night, with a white shawl thrown over her cap. The road
was so quiet--and if it had been ever so noisy Catherine Vernon could
surely dress as she pleased, and go as she pleased, from one place to
another in Redborough and its neighbourhood. She saw coming out upon her
in the light of a candle a pair of brown eyes, large and wide open, full
of eager curiosity, with a tall girl behind them, somewhat
high-shouldered, with clustering curly short hair. Catherine Vernon was
not without prejudices, and she did not like Mrs. John, nor did she
expect (or perhaps intend) to like her daughter. There was something in
the girl's face which disarmed her suspicion; but she was not a person
to give in, and give up her foregone conclusion on any such trifling
occasion as that.