hearing, I came to the conclusion that my father must have offended his
own friends by marrying my mother, whose connections might be inferior
to his own. This idea was confirmed in my mind by observing that she
occasionally received letters she was anxious to conceal, which, knowing
the frankness of her disposition, and her great love for him, appeared
very strange to me. One day, indeed, my suspicions became almost
certainties. It so happened that my mother had appeared very fidgety and
unlike herself at the breakfast-table, and more than once had spoken to
Violet and me in a voice hardly to be recognised as her own. We felt
instinctively that something was the matter, and were silent, but my
father, who was not well, seemed irritated by the unusual annoyance.
He wished to remain quietly at home that morning, but my mother found
a dozen reasons why he should ride to the neighbouring town and take
me with him. He combatted her wish for some time, till, finding that
her arguments were revolving themselves into entreaty, his affection
conquered his irresolution, and we set off together. It was not a
genial day for a ride, and the trifling commissions my mother had given
us to execute were not of sufficient consequence to turn the duty into
a pleasure. I was rather pleased than otherwise, therefore, when we had
left Lilyfields some miles behind us, to find that my pony had cast a
shoe, and to be able, according to my father’s direction, to turn back
and walk it gently home again, whilst he went forward to do my mother’s
bidding.
When I reached Lilyfields I left the animal in the stables, and, walking
up to the house, gained the hall before anyone was sensible of my
approach. What was my surprise to hear a loud altercation going on within
the parlour. My first impulse was to open the door; but as my mother
turned and saw me standing on the threshold, she came forward and pushed
me back into the hall.
‘Go away!’ she whispered hurriedly; ‘go upstairs; hide yourself
somewhere, and do not come down until I call you!’
Her eyes were bright as though with fever, and a scarlet spot burned on
either cheek. I saw she was labouring under the influence of some strong
excitement, and I became intensely curious to learn the reason.
‘Whom have you in there?’ I demanded, for I had caught sight of another
figure in the drawing-room.
‘Oh! you wish to know who I am, young man, do you?’ exclaimed a coarse,
uncertain voice from the other side the half-opened door. ‘Well, I’m not
ashamed of myself, as _some_ people ought to be, and you’re quite welcome
to a sight of me if it’ll give you any pleasure.’
The door was simultaneously pulled open, and a woman stood before me.
How shall I describe her.
She may have been beautiful, perhaps, in the days long past, but all
trace of beauty was lost in the red, blotchy, inflamed countenance she
presented to my gaze. Her eyes were bloodshot; her hair dishevelled; her
dress tawdry and untidy, and if she had even been a gentlewoman, which I
doubted, she had parted with every sign of her breeding. As she pushed
her way up behind my mother—looking so sad and sweet and ladylike beside
her—she inspired me with nothing but abhorrence.
‘Who is this person?’ I repeated, with an intimation of disgust that
apparently offended the stranger, for in a shrill voice she commenced
some explanation which my mother was evidently most anxious I should not
hear.
‘Oh, Charlie! do you love me?’ she whispered.
‘Mother! yes!’
‘Then go up to your room, now, _at once_, and wait there till I come to
you! I will speak to you afterwards—I will tell you _all_—only go now!’
She spoke so earnestly that I could not refuse her request, but did
as she desired me at once, the woman I had seen, screaming some
unintelligible sentence after me as I ascended the stairs. But when
I found myself alone, the scene I had witnessed recurred rather
unpleasantly to my memory. It was an extraordinary circumstance to see
a stranger at all within our walls; still more so a woman, and one who
dared to address my mother in loud and reproachful tones. And I was now
sixteen, able and willing to defend her against insult, why, therefore,
had she not claimed my services to turn this woman from the house,
instead of sending me upstairs, as she might have done little Violet,
until she had settled the matter for herself? But then I remembered the
trouble my mother had taken to get my father and me away from Lilyfields
that morning, and could not believe but that she had foreseen this
visitation and prepared against it. It was then as I had often supposed.
She had relations of whom she was ashamed, with whom she did not wish my
father to come in contact. Poor mother! If this was one of them, I pitied
her! I believed the story I had created myself so much, that I accepted
it without further proof, and when my mother entered the room, and
laying her head against my shoulder, sobbed as if her heart would break,
I soothed her as well as I was able, without another inquiry as to the
identity of the person with whom I had found her.
‘Don’t tell your father, Charlie!’ she said, in parting. ‘Don’t mention a
word to anyone of what you have seen to-day. Promise me, darling! I shall
not be happy till I have your word for it!’
And I gave her my word, and thought none the less of her for the secrecy,
although I regretted it need be.
Not long after this my father articled me, at my own request, to an
architect in London, and my visits to the happy home at Lilyfields became
few and far between. But I had the consolation of knowing that all went
well there, and that I was taking my place in the world as a man should
do.
I had worked steadily at my profession for two years, and was just
considering whether I had not earned the right to take a real good long
holiday at Lilyfields (where Violet, now a fine girl of seven years
old, was still my favourite plaything), when I received a letter from
the doctor of the village—desiring me to come home at once as my father
was ill, beyond hope of recovery. I knew what that meant—that he was
already gone; and when I arrived at Lilyfields I found it to be true;
he had died of an attack of the heart after a couple of hours’ illness.
The shock to me was very great. I had never loved my father as I did my
mother; the old childish recollections had been too strong for that,
but the last few years he had permitted me to be very happy, and I knew
that to _her_ his loss must be irreparable. Not that she exhibited any
violent demonstration of grief. When I first saw her, I was surprised
at her calmness. She sat beside my father’s body, day and night, without
shedding a tear; and she spoke of his departure as quietly as though he
had only gone on a journey from which she fully expected him to return.
But though her eyes were dry, they never closed in sleep, and every
morsel of colour seemed to have been blanched out of her face and hands.
So the first day passed, and when the second dawned, I, having attained
the dignity of eighteen years, thought it behoved me to speak of my late
father’s affairs and my mother’s future.
‘Where is father’s will, mother?’
‘He never made one, dear!’
‘Never made a will! That was awfully careless.’
‘Hush, Charlie!’
She would not brook the slightest censure cast on her dead love.
‘But there _must_ be a will, mother.’
‘Darling, there is none! It was the one thought that disturbed his last
moments. But I am content to let things be settled as they may.’
‘Lilyfields will be yours of course, and everything in it,’ I answered
decidedly. ‘No one has a better right to them than you have. And you and
Violet will live here to your lives’ end, won’t you?’
‘Don’t ask me, dear Charlie, don’t think of it—not just yet at least! Let
us wait until—until—it is all over, and then decide what is best to be
done!’
Before it was all over; matters were decided for us.
It was the day before the funeral. I had just gone through the mournful
ceremony of seeing my father’s coffin soldered down, and, sad and
dispirited, had retired to my own room for a little rest, when I heard
the sound of carriage wheels up on the gravel drive. I peered over the
window blind curiously, for I had never heard of my father’s relations,
and had been unable in consequence to communicate with any of them. A
lumbering hired fly, laden with luggage, stopped before the door, and
from it descended, to my astonishment, the same woman with the fiery
red face whom I had discovered in my mother’s company two years before.
I decided at once that, whatever the claims of this stranger might be,
she could not be suffered to disturb the widow in the first agony of her
crushing grief, and, quick, as thought, I ran down into the hall and
confronted her before she had entered the house.
‘I beg your pardon, madam,’ I commenced, ‘but Mrs Vere is unable to see
anyone at present. There has been a great calamity in the family, and—’
‘I know all about your calamity,’ she interrupted me rudely ‘if it were
not for that I shouldn’t be here.’
‘But you cannot see Mrs Vere!’ I repeated.
‘And pray who _is_ Mrs Vere?’ said the woman.
‘My mother,’ I replied proudly, ‘and I will not allow her to be annoyed
or disturbed.’
‘Oh! indeed, young man. It strikes me you take a great deal of authority
upon yourself; but as I mean to be mistress in my own house, the sooner
you stop that sort of thing the better! Here! some of you women!’ she
continued, addressing the servants who had come up from the kitchen to
learn the cause of the unusual disturbance. ‘Just help the flyman up with
my boxes, will you—and look sharp about it.’
I was thunderstruck at her audacity.
For a moment I did not know what to answer. But when this atrocious woman
walked past me into the parlour, and threw herself into my dead father’s
chair, I followed her, and felt compelled to speak.
‘I do not understand what you mean by talking in this way,’ I said. ‘Mrs
Vere is the only mistress in this house, and—’
‘Well, young man, and suppose _I_ am Mrs Vere!’
‘I can suppose no such thing. You cannot know what you are talking about.
My mother—’
‘_Your mother!_ And pray, what may your name be and your age?’
‘Charles Vere; and I was eighteen last birthday,’ I said, feeling
compelled, I knew not by what secret agency, to reply.
‘Just so! I thought as much! Well, I am Mrs Vere, and I am your mother!’
‘_My mother!_ You must be mad, or drunk! How dare you insult the dead man
in his coffin upstairs. My mother! Why, she died years ago, before I can
remember.’
‘Did she? That’s the fine tale, Madam, who’s been taking my place here
all this time, has told you, I suppose. But I’ll be even with her yet.
I’m your father’s widow, and all he’s left behind him belongs to me, and
she’ll be out of this house before another hour’s over her head, or my
name’s not Jane Vere!’
‘You lie!’ I exclaimed passionately. This tipsy, dissipated,
coarse-looking creature, the woman who bore me, and whom I had believed
to be lying in her grave for sixteen years and more. Was it wonderful
that at the first blush my mind utterly refused to credit it? The angry
accusation I have recorded had barely left my lips, when I looked up
and saw _my mother_—the woman who had come as an angel of light into my
father’s darkened home, and watched over me with the tenderest affection
since—standing on the threshold, pale and peaceful in her mourning garb,
as the Spirit of Death itself.
‘Mother! say it is not true,’ I cried as I turned towards her.
‘Oh, Charlie, my darling boy! my brave, good son! Be quiet! bear it like
a man; but it _is_ true!’
‘This—this woman was my father’s _wife_!’
‘She was!’
‘And _you_, mother!’ I exclaimed in agony.
‘I was only the woman that he loved, Charlie,’ she answered, with
downcast eyes. ‘You must think no higher of me than that!’
‘I think the very highest of you that I can. You were my father’s loving
companion and friend for years: you saved his life and his reason! You
were _his_ true, true wife, and _my_ mother. I shall never think of you
in any lower light.’
My emotion had found vent in tears by that time. It was all so new and so
horrible to believe, and my mother’s hand rested fondly on my bowed head.
Then that other woman, whose existence I can never recall without a
shudder, seized her hateful opportunity, and levelled the most virulent
abuse at my poor martyr mother’s head. Words, such as I had never heard
from a female before, rained thickly from her lips, until I lost sight
of my own grief in my indignation at the shower of inuendoes which were
being hurled at the person dearest to me of all the world.
‘Be silent,’ I said in a loud authoritative voice. ‘Were you twenty
times my mother I would not permit you to speak as you are speaking now.
If it is true that you were my father’s wife, why were you not in your
proper place, instead of leaving your lawful duties to another?’
‘Oh! madam here can answer that question better than myself. She knows
well enough there was no room left for me where she was.’
‘Untrue!’ murmured my mother, but without any anger. ‘I would have
shielded your character from your boy’s censure, as I have done for so
long, but justice to the dead compels me to speak. You left this home
desolate for many miserable years before I entered it. You deserted
your child in his infancy, but your husband had so good and forgiving a
heart that, when you cried to him for pardon, he took you back again and
condoned your great offence, and therefore, when you left him a second
time, the law contained no remedy for his wrong. He was compelled to live
on—alone—dishonoured and comfortless, whilst you—you can best tell your
son what your life has been since.’
‘Anyway I am Mrs Vere,’ retorted the other, ‘and my husband has died
intestate, and his property belongs to me, so I’ll thank you to take
your brat, and clear out of my house before the sun goes down.’
‘Oh! mother, this is infamous! It can never be!’
‘It _must_ be, Charlie! It is the law. I knew all this when I consented
to come here as your father’s wife. He never deceived me for a single
moment; and if I have any regret that he put off providing against this
contingency until it was too late, it is only for fear lest he should
be regretting it also. But, my dear, _dear_ love!’ she added in a lower
tone, ‘I acquit you of this as of all things. I know your great love for
me never failed, and I am content!’
‘I will not believe it without further proof!’ I exclaimed. ‘I will send
Ellen at once for the solicitor. I cannot leave you alone with this
horrid woman!’
‘Hush, Charlie! she is your mother.’
‘I will not acknowledge it. _You_ are the only mother I have ever had—the
only mother I ever will have to my life’s end.’
Mr Chorberry, the solicitor, came without delay, but he could give me no
comfort. My poor father, by that strange indifference which has been the
curse of so many, had put off making his will until it was too late, by
reason of which he had left the one to whom he owed most in the world,
the woman who had sacrificed friends and reputation to spend her life in
a dull country home, administering to his pleasures, entirely dependent
on her own resources for support—whilst the faithless, drunken creature
he had the misfortune to be still chained to, walked in as the lawful
wife, and claimed her share of the property. There was only one drop of
balm in his decision. I, as my father’s son, shared what he had left
behind him, but my angel mother and dear baby-sister were cast upon the
world to shift for themselves.
And this was the law.
Oh, father! did your spirit look down from whichever sphere it had been
translated to, and witness this?
‘But, surely,’ I said to Chorberry, ‘there can be no necessity for my
mother leaving Lilyfields before the funeral?’
‘Of course there is no necessity; but do you think it advisable, under
the circumstances, that she should remain? Mrs Vere has the legal power
to enforce her departure, and I am afraid will not be slow to use it.’
My mother evidently was of one mind with him, for in an incredibly short
space of time she had packed her belongings. Mrs Vere, standing over her
meanwhile to see she did not purloin anything from the house, and was
waiting in the hall with little Violet, ready to go to the house of the
clergyman’s wife, who, to her honour, having heard how matters stood at
Lilyfields, had promptly sent my mother an invitation to the vicarage for
the night.
‘Are you ready, dear mother?’ I said sadly, as I joined her in the hall,
and drew her arm within my own.
‘Well, Mr Charles, I suppose I shall see you back again here before
long?’ screamed the shrill voice of Mrs Vere down the staircase.
I started.
_See me back!_ Was it possible that this woman believed I intended to
make friends with her?
‘We’ve been parted long enough, it strikes me,’ she continued; ‘and now
your father’s gone, and left no one behind him but yourself, I suppose
you’ll be looking out for my share of the property at my death, so we
may as well let bye-gones be bye-gones—eh?’
‘I wish for none of your property, madam,’ I answered haughtily, ‘since
the law gives it to you you are welcome to keep it.’
‘Charlie, dear, think what you may be resigning,’ urged my mother in my
ear.
‘I think of nothing but _you_, mother!’
‘Hoity, toity! here’s manners,’ cried the other woman. ‘You seem to
forget, Master Charlie, that _I’m your mother_!’
Still holding my mother’s hand, I turned and confronted her.
‘I forget nothing, madam! I wish I could; but I remember that _here_
stands the woman who laboured where you refused to work; who loved, where
you had insulted and betrayed; who was faithful where you were faithless
and undeserving; and, I say, that here stands my dead father’s true wife;
and here stands, in God’s sight, _my mother_! The blessing of man may not
have sanctified her union, but the blessing of heaven shall be upon it
and upon her—upon the creatures she rescued from a living death and upon
the gracious hand with which she did it, until time itself shall be no
more.’
So saying, I passed with _my mother_ beyond the gates of Lilyfields, to
make a new life for her in some quiet spot where she might outlive her
grief, and to repay, if possible, by the protection and support of my
manhood, the love she had given me as a little child.
THE END.
[Illustration]
IN THE HEART OF THE ARDENNES.
Fever is raging in Brussels, and we are advised to quit the town as soon
as possible. The question is, where to go. I suggest Rochefort in the
Ardennes, having ascertained previously that the place is healthy; but
my friends laugh at me. ‘Rochefort in February! We shall all be frozen
to death.’ ‘At least,’ I argue, ‘there is pure air to breathe.’ ‘But you
can have no idea of the dulness,’ is all the reply I receive; ‘Rochefort,
with its one street and its one resident is bad enough in the summer,
but at this season it will be unendurable.’ Yet I am not to be turned
from my purpose. I consider it is better to be frozen outwardly than
burned inwardly; and that when one is flying from a pestilence, there is
no time to regret the numerous pleasures left behind, or the few that
loom in the future. And so we settle finally that, notwithstanding its
promised disadvantages, we will thankfully accept the refuge Rochefort
can afford us; and having made up our minds to go, we start twenty-four
hours afterwards.
Being pent-up in a railway carriage with half-a-dozen manikins and
womanikins, who suck oranges half the time, and obtrude their little
persons between your view and the window the other half, is not perhaps
the most favourable situation from which to contemplate the beauties
of nature; for which reason, perhaps, it is as well that for the first
part of our journey nature presents no beauties for our contemplation,
and thereby our naturally mild tempers are prevented from boiling over.
But when we have accomplished about fifty miles (Rochefort being distant
from Brussels seventy miles) the country begins to assume a different
and far more engaging aspect. The flat table-land, much of it marshy
and undrained, which has scarcely been varied hitherto, gives place to
swelling hills, half rock, half heather, and charming copses of fir, some
of which are very extensive. The scenery becomes altogether more wooded
and naturally fertile-looking; and houses and farmsteads lose all trace
of British contiguity, and become proportionately interesting to curious
English eyes. The train is an express, and as it dashes past the fragile,
roughly-built little stations with which the road is bordered, it is
amusing, or rather I should say it would be amusing, did it not suggest
the idea of accidents, to see the signal-flags displayed by peasant-women
in every variety of attitude and costume.
Here stands a stolid, solid Belgian girl, of eighteen years of age
probably, and stout enough for forty, with a waist like a tar-barrel,
and legs to match, who nurses her flag as if it were a baby, and gazes
at the flying train with a countenance which could not be more impassive
were it carved in wood. We have hardly finished laughing at her, when
the train rushes past another station, at which appears a withered old
crone, her head tied up in a coloured handkerchief, and her petticoats,
cut up to her knees, looking cruelly short for such a wintry day, and
displaying a pair of attenuated legs and feet for which the huge wooden
_sabots_ look miles too large. She waves about the signal-flag in a
nervous, agitated manner, which suggests the idea that she is not quite
sure whether she has caught up the right one or not; but before we have
time to be made uncomfortable by the fact, we are passing another of
these Belgic ‘shanties,’ at the door of which appears for a moment a
middle-aged woman, who waves the signal at us in a menacing manner, and
rushes back immediately to her children or her cooking.
Remembering our own signalmen, and the importance attached to their
capabilities and education for the important office assigned them, it
ceases to be a matter of amusement to see the lives of hundreds daily
intrusted to the direction of such ignorant creatures as these. I suppose
that ‘Monsieur,’ smoking at his ease by the fireside in the little wooden
station-house, directs the actions of his mother, wife, or daughter; but
what are the authorities about not to insist on his performing his duty
himself?
Notwithstanding all which, however, our train reaches Jemelle (the
nearest station to Rochefort) in safety, and in the midst of a wind
sufficient, if not to take our heads, to take our hats off, we and our
belongings come to the ground. It takes some minutes to get our nine
packages together; and when we present ourselves at the door of the
diligence, it is nearly full. I look despairingly at the nurse and all
the children, and decide that the younger members of the family must go
by diligence, and the elder shall walk with me to Rochefort. But the
Rochefortians are too polite to permit such a thing. Two of them insist
upon getting out and giving up their places to the children. I protest
against such a proceeding, of course, as in duty bound, but they will
hear of no excuse, and start off walking at such a pace that they are
out of sight before the diligence is set in motion. At last the luggage
is all packed away on the top, and we are all packed away inside, in
company with two gentlemen, who open the conversation pleasantly by
asking us where we come from, and telling us that we must not expect to
find Rochefort as large as Brussels, which, to say truth, we had scarcely
anticipated. The talk becomes fragmentary, for the diligence rattles and
jolts over the stony, hilly road, and the bells on the horses’ collars
jangle in unison; and the baby is so enchanted with the noise, that
he shouts till no one can be heard but himself. But twenty minutes’
purgatory brings us into a long, steep, narrow street, paved with stones,
and bordered with grey-and-white houses; and I have hardly time to ask,
‘Is this Rochefort?’ when the diligence draws up before a whitewashed
house with a sign swinging before the door, and I am asked if we are for
the Hôtel Biron. No, we are for the Hôtel de la Cloche d’Or; and as no
one seems to be for the Hôtel Biron, the diligence continues to climb the
stony street until it reaches the summit, and halts before the Hôtel de
la Cloche d’Or.