The explanation was over, but the family atmosphere was not cleared.
Gussy indeed had been moved out of her resentment and doubt, partly for
the sake of her lover, partly for the sake of her mother. To stand out
against both was more than she had been capable of. And Meredith had
been perhaps alarmed by her sudden withdrawal from him, or in some other
way (she could not tell how) moved back towards his former devotion. He
was more anxious to draw her back, to recover her attention, than he had
ever been before in any of the little brief estrangements which Gussy
was generally the person to bring to an end. But on this occasion it was
entirely he who did it, who sought her pardon, her return of tenderness,
all the old attentions that had once been lavished upon him. Gussy could
not resist that silent moving back of her heart; and it pleased her that
he should defend her mother, whether or not her mother was worthy of it.
But the younger ones were not moved by this influence. They were the
more dissatisfied with their mother’s defence, because Meredith had
chimed in, to put arguments into her mouth when she was about, as they
believed, to break down. Had she been permitted to break down, a more
full explanation might have been had, and the children might then have
forgiven their mother; but, as it was, there had been too much and not
enough. An insufficient explanation is the most painful of family
misfortunes. It gives a sense of falsehood and insincerity to the mind.
When you do not explain at all, it is possible you may be innocent: but
when you explain profusely, dwelling upon some sides of the matter while
ignoring others, you must be guilty: and the impression left is all the
more unhappy and unsatisfactory that it is in its way definitive and
final, and all are precluded from opening up the subject again. Unless
some new incident took place, or some accident which disturbed the
family laws, Dolff could not ask any more questions. He was too young to
know what to do, too proud and shame-faced to hazard the credit of the
family by making inquiries in other quarters. An uneasy sense that
everything was different, that his own position and that of everybody
else was changed, that he was no longer sure of the ground on which he
stood, or the relations of those around him, was in Dolff’s mind. It
must make a difference that his father was alive, even though that
father was a madman: and vague notions came into his painfully exercised
brain--ideas half seen, uncomprehended, of some sense in which his
mother might have done what she had done for their sakes, although she
had professed in the same breath that it was for her husband’s sake she
had done it, that he might not be shut up away from her. Julia, on the
other hand who was much more sharp-witted than Dolff, had seized like
lightning upon this inconsistency, and could not forget it.
“She said it was for him and then she said it was for us,” cried the
girl. “How could it be for us when it was for him? It could not be
supposed good for us that there should have been some one shut up there
in the wing, and when we might have found it out any day.”
“I never found it out nor thought of it,” said Dolff. “If I had been
told of it I should not have believed it. I should have said my mother
was the last person in the world for mysteries--the very last person in
the world--and that everything in this house was honest and
above-board.”
“I never thought like that,” said Julia, shaking her head. “There was
always something queer. Vicars, that was our servant, and yet not our
servant, and that cry that one heard----”
“What cry?”
“Oh, an awful cry that we heard sometimes. Janet heard it when she had
only been here a week, and she was dreadfully frightened. So was I at
first,” said Julia, with dignity. “It has only been for a few years:
mamma explained it to me: she said it was the wind in the vacant
chimneys that were not used. Oh, Dolff, though she knew very well it was
not the wind, and the chimneys were not vacant! Dolff, mamma has said a
great many things that are----”
“Don’t talk of the mother, Ju--I’m very fond of the mother; and to think
she should ever---- Don’t--I think perhaps there might be reasons for
our sakes, as she said. The property, you know, came from my grandfather
to us. If he were known to have been alive, perhaps--I don’t know so
much about business as I ought--perhaps---- It makes my head a little
queer to think of all that. She might have reasons.”
“If it was simply for _him_, as she said first, to keep him from being
sent to an asylum, it could not be for us as well.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Dolff stroking fondly, but with a very
serious face, his youthful very light moustache, light both in color and
texture.
“I have noticed in ladies,” said quick-witted Julia, “that they like to
have a motive, don’t you know--something nice, as if they were always
thinking of others, never of themselves; when they do anything, it’s
always for their children. Mamma is not like that, to do her justice;
when things are going on she says she likes it, not for us only. Oh,
Dolff! to think of the parties and romps we have had this Christmas, and
people coming to dinner, and _him_ there all the while!”
They were both overawed by the thought, and silenced, not venturing even
to look at one another, when Julia suddenly cried out,
“There’s a party to-morrow, Dolff.”
“It mustn’t be,” said the young man; “they must write and say it can’t
be.”
“What can they say? Nobody is ill; you can’t shut the people out who
come to call, and they would see mamma was quite well, and know it was
not true. Oh, no; mamma will say we must keep up appearances; and she
will be there, looking as nice as possible at the end of the table, and
Vicars behind her chair.”
“Ju, what did they do with _him_ when Vicars was at all the parties
behind her chair?”
“He was fastened in, I suppose, the doors all locked. I don’t know.
Dolff, suppose he had come downstairs one of these times, as he did last
night!”
They looked at each other with a shudder.
“Perhaps on the whole,” said the young man, “it _was_ better for us that
we did not know.”
This was how they came to a partial approval of their mother. It rankled
in their hearts that she had said to them what was not true, that she
had made explanations which they could not refuse yet could not receive;
that this tremendous crisis had come and gone in their lives and
everything been changed, and yet that they were little wiser than
before. And it was still more bitter for Dolff to perceive, what he
could not help seeing whenever the family assembled together, that the
knowledge that was kept from him was given to Meredith: but yet it had
gleamed upon him that after all there might be something reasonable in
his mother’s plea.
There came, however, in this way to be two parties in the house--one
which knew and discussed everything, the other which knew nothing and
imagined a great deal, and chafed at the ignorance in which it was kept,
yet found no means of knowing more or understanding better. Mrs. Harwood
talked apart with Gussy and Meredith, who were always about her chair.
When the others came into the room there was a momentary silence, and
then one of the three would start an indifferent subject. It was enough
for Dolff or Julia to come near to stop all conversation of any
importance. They were shut out from all that was serious in the house as
if they had nothing to do with it, as if their lives were not bound up
with it as much--nay, far more than the others! What had Meredith to do
with it, at all? Only through Gussy, who, if she married him at last,
would go away with him and be a Harwood no longer; whereas Dolff,
whatever happened, would always be the representative of the family,
though shut out from its councils and kept in ignorance of its affairs.
Mrs. Harwood had decided, as Julia foresaw, that the party was to take
place, that the world was not to be permitted to see any difference.
Such whispers as had crept out could be silenced in no other way.
“Of course they have heard something,” she said, “and if they were put
off, if we made any excuse, they would believe the most of what they
heard, whatever it was; but if they are received the same as ever and
have as good a dinner, and see us all just as usual, even the
worst-thinking people will be confused. They will not believe we could
be such hypocrites as that. They will say whatever it is that has
happened must be much exaggerated. The Harwoods look just as usual. Oh,
I know the world a little,” she said, with a half laugh.
Even Gussy, who knew her so well, was bewildered by her mother’s
fortitude, and by the clearness of her vision.
“I know the world a little,” Mrs. Harwood said. “I have lived in it a
great many years. Nothing makes quite such an impression as we expect.
The people who can piece things together and understand exactly what has
happened, are the ones that don’t hear of it, and those who do hear
haven’t got the clue. I have told Charley already what I think. If we
stand together and are bold, we’ll get out of it all, and no great harm
will come.”
“Yes, you have told me, and I begin to believe,” said Meredith.
“What do you mean by harm coming?” said Gussy, surprised. “Gossip about
one’s family is not pleasant; but that is all, and what other harm could
come?”
Her mother and her lover looked at each other, and a faint sign passed
between them; they did not venture to smile, much less to laugh, at the
simplicity which understood nothing. Dolff, too, overheard this talk
with an ache of wonder. What did they mean? Something more than gossip,
he felt sure; for what did it matter about gossip? The madman in the
house would scare and startle the neighbors, but it was not that his
mother meant. What did she mean? He was the one that was likely to
betray himself at the dinner-party, where he was compelled to take the
foot of the table as usual, much against his will.
“Why can’t you put Meredith there?” he said; “you trust him a great deal
more than you trust me.”
“And if I do so,” said Mrs. Harwood, “have I not good reason? He is not
always flinging my mistake--if it is a mistake--in my face. He is
willing to do what he can for me. To help me without setting up for a
judge.”
“I have not set up for a judge,” said Dolff.
“You have,” his mother said; “you are judging me and finding me wanting
whatever I do.”
“Why should you have this party?” cried the young man; “why fill the
house with strangers when we are all so miserable?”
Dolff could have cried with trouble and discontent and a sense of wrong
had not his manhood forbidden such an indulgence. He was all wrong, out
of place, wherever he turned.
“I see no cause you have to be miserable. I am not miserable,” said Mrs.
Harwood, “and I hope you will have the sense not to look so, making
everybody talk.”
This effort, however, on the part of Dolff was impossible. He sat at the
foot of the table like a ghost. He scarcely opened his mouth, either to
the lady on his right hand or the lady on his left. He ate nothing,
making it very evident that he had something on his mind; and it became
quite clear to all the guests that Dolff was in great trouble. Rumors
about him had flown through the neighborhood, as well as rumors on the
other subject, perplexed stories of which it was difficult to make
anything. But when his mother’s guests saw Dolff’s looks, they were
instantly convinced that the true part of the story was that which
concerned him.
“Didn’t you remark what a hang-dog look he had? Depend upon it, it is
Dolff that is at the bottom of everything. The other thing is probably
great nonsense, but Dolff is evidently in a bad way.”
This was the conclusion arrived at by Mrs. Harwood’s guests, which that
inscrutable woman had foreseen, and for which, perhaps, she was scarcely
sorry. It is so common for a young man to get into a scrape--and when
the said young man is only two-and-twenty it is not so difficult to get
him out of it. Even the hardest of judges are tolerant of
misdemeanors--when they are not dishonorable--at that age. Therefore,
perhaps, the mother calculated--being forced to very deep calculations
at this trying period--that it would do no harm to the house to have the
trouble in it saddled upon Dolff. “Is that all?” people would say.
Whereas to have a family secret divulged--to have curious minds in St.
John’s Wood inquiring what was the meaning of that story about a secret
inmate in the Harwoods’ house, and who the Harwoods were before they
came to that house, and what there was in the antecedents of the family
to account for it--that would be a very different matter. When a
sympathetic friend, anxious to find out what she could, condoled with
her after dinner in the drawing-room about her son’s looks, Mrs. Harwood
accepted the kind expressions gratefully.
“No,” she said, “I am afraid Dolff is not looking very well, poor boy;
he has had a good deal to trouble him: but I hope everything is now in a
right way, and he will have no more bother.”
“Was it some trouble with his college?” asked the sympathetic friend.
“Oh, no! nothing with the college,” said Mrs. Harwood. “He has stayed
down for an extra week to look after some business, and he is going back
to Oxford in a day or two--it is nothing of that kind.”
The friend concluded from this that it was debt which was troubling
Dolff, “like all the young men.” And his mother, no doubt, had been
obliged to draw her purse. It must have been some writ or something of
that sort--which is a thing that still always seems to involve dungeons
and horrors to women--which had taken the “police” to the Harwoods: for
that the “police” had been at the house of the Harwoods everybody knew.
Poor Dolff! but he had evidently got a lesson, and probably it would do
good for him in the end, these good people thought.
Thus Mrs. Harwood’s plan was successful more than she could have hoped,
and it seemed as if all would settle down again, and go well. Meredith
had arranged everything for his appearance before the commissioners on
her behalf. He had a very touching story to tell. The poor wife
distracted by the arrival of her husband, whom she had supposed to be
dead, but who was brought back to her when she was in her widow’s weeds,
not dead, indeed, but mad, and as much severed from life and all its
ways as if he had been dead indeed; and how she had no one to advise
her, no one to consult with, and had come to a rash but heroic
resolution to devote herself to him, to provide for his comfort secretly
in her own house; and how he had been carefully tended by an
experienced servant, and by herself until rheumatism crippled her and
confined her to her chair--which still did not prevent her now and then
from paying him visits, at the cost of great agony to herself, to see
that all was well.
“Such things rarely get into the papers unless there is some special
interest in them,” said Meredith. “I think with a little care we may
keep it quiet, and then----”
“Then all will be safe,” said Mrs. Harwood, “and no secrecy whatever.
Oh! my dear Charley, what I shall owe you!--the relief to my mind, above
all.”
“You will owe me no more than you will pay me,” he said, with a laugh;
“which will satisfy _him_ also, as clearing off those debts which are so
much on his mind. It is a transaction by which we shall all gain.”
This was not a point of view which was agreeable to Mrs. Harwood.
“I wish,” she said, “that you would not treat it in that way. It will be
Gussy’s fortune. I have a right to give Gussy what I please. She has not
said anything to me, but I hope you have spoken to Gussy----”
“As soon as the business is over,” he said, “when I shall have won--not
only Gussy, but my share----”
“Oh! for heaven’s sake,” cried Mrs. Harwood, “do not speak of it like
that.”