"O Life, how naked and how hard when known!
Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I."
GEORGE MEREDITH.
Janey lit her bedroom candle with a hand that trembled a little, and in
her turn went slowly upstairs.
She could hear the clatter of knives and forks in the dining-room, and
Harry's vacant laugh, and Nurse's sharp voice. They had come back, then.
She went with an effort into her mother's room, and sat down in her
accustomed chair by the bed.
"It is ten o'clock. Shall I read, mother?"
"Certainly."
It was the first time they had spoken since she had been ordered out of
the room earlier in the day.
Janey opened the Prayer Book on the table by the bedside, and read a
psalm and a chapter from the Gospel:--
"Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and
lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is
easy, and My burden is light."
Janey closed the book, and said timidly, "May I stay until Nurse comes
up?"
"Pray do exactly what you like."
She did not move.
"I am heavy laden," said her mother. "I don't suppose you have ever
given it one moment's thought what it must be like to lie like a log as
I do."
Her daughter dared not answer.
"How many months have I lain in this room?"
"Eight months."
"Ever since I went to Paris last October. I was too ill to go, but I
went."
Silence.
"I am heavy laden, but it seems I must not look to you for help, Janey."
Janey's heart sickened within her. When had her mother ever relinquished
anything if once her indomitable will were set upon it? She felt within
herself no force to withstand a second attack.
The nurse came in at that moment, a tall, shrewd, capable woman of
five-and-thirty, with a certain remnant of haggard good looks.
"May Mr. Harry come in to say good-night, milady?"
"Yes."
She went to the door and admitted a young man. Harry came and stood
beside the bed, looking sheepishly at his mother. If his face had not
been slightly vacant, the mouth ajar, he would have been beautiful. As
it was, people turned in the street to see him pass. He was tall, fair,
well grown, with a delightful smile. He smiled now at his mother, and
she tried hard to smile back at him, her rigid face twitching a little.
"Well, my son! Had you a nice day in Ipswich?"
"Yes, mamma."
"And I hope you were brave at the dentist's, and that he did not hurt
you much?"
"Oh no, mamma. He did not hurt me at all."
"Not at all?" said his mother, surprised.
The nurse stepped forward at once.
"Mr. Harry did not have his tooth out, milady."
"No," said Harry slowly, looking at the nurse as if he were repeating a
lesson, "the tooth was _not_ taken out. It was _not_."
"Mr. Milson had been called away," continued the nurse glibly.
"Called away," echoed Harry.
"Then the expedition was all for nothing?" said Lady Louisa wearily.
"Oh _no_, mamma."
The nurse intervened once more, and recounted how she had taken Harry to
have his hair cut, and to buy some gloves, and to an entertainment of
performing dogs, and to tea at Frobisher's. They could have been home
earlier, but she knew the carriage was ordered to meet the later train.
Harry began to imitate the tricks which the dogs had done, but the nurse
peremptorily interrupted him.
"Her ladyship's tired, and it's past ten o'clock. You must tell her
about the dogs to-morrow."
"Yes, to-morrow," echoed Harry, and he kissed his mother, and shuffled
towards the door. Janey slipped out with him.
Lady Louisa did not speak again while the nurse made the arrangements
for the night. She was incensed with her. She had been too peremptory
with Harry. It was not for her to order him about in that way. Lady
Louisa was beginning to distrust this capable, indefatigable woman, on
whom she had become absolutely dependent; and when the nurse had left
her for the night, and was asleep in the next room with the door open
between, she began to turn over in her mind, not for the first time, the
idea of parting with her, and letting Janey nurse her entirely once
more, as she had done at first. Janey with Anne the housemaid to help
her could manage perfectly well, whatever the doctor might say. It was
not as if she wanted anything doing for her, lying still as she did day
after day. She should never have had a trained nurse if her own wishes
had been consulted. But when were they ever consulted? The doctor, who
understood nothing about her illness, had insisted, and Janey had not
resisted the idea as she ought to have done. But the whole household
could not be run to suit Janey's convenience. She had told her so
already more than once. She should tell her so again. Even worms will
turn. There were others to be considered besides Janey, who only
considered herself.
Lady Louisa's mind left her daughter and went back, as if it had
received some subtle warning, to the subject of the nurse. She was
convinced by the woman's manner of intervening when she had been
questioning Harry, that something had been concealed from her about the
expedition to Ipswich. She constantly suspected that there was a cabal
against her. She was determined to find out what it was, which she could
easily do from Harry. And if Nurse had really disobeyed her, and had
taken him on the water, which always excited him, or to a theatre, which
was strictly forbidden, then she would make use of that act of
disobedience as a pretext for dismissing her, and she would certainly
not consent to have anyone else in her place. Having settled this point,
she closed her eyes and tried to settle herself to sleep.
But sleep would not come. The diligent little clock, with its face
turned to the strip of light shed by the shaded nightlight, recorded in
a soft chime half-hour after half-hour. With forlorn anger, she
reflected that every creature in the house was sleeping--she could hear
Nurse's even breathing close at hand--every one except herself, who
needed sleep more than anyone to enable her to get through the coming
day. It did not strike her that possibly Janey also might be lying
open-eyed through the long hours.
Lady Louisa's mind wandered like a sullen, miserable tramp over her past
life. She told herself that all had gone wrong with her, all had cheated
her from first to last. It seems to be the doom of the egoist to crave
for things for which he has no real value, on which when acquired he can
only trample. Lady Louisa had acquired a good deal and had trampled
heavily on her acquisitions, especially on her kindly, easy-tempered
husband who had loved her. And how throughout her whole life she had
longed to be loved!
To thirst voraciously to be loved, to have sufficient acumen to perceive
love to be the only real bulwark, as it is, against the blows of fate;
the only real refuge, as it is, from grief; the one sure consolation, as
it is, in the recurring anguished ache of existence,--to perceive that
life is not life without it, and _then_ to find that love when
appropriated and torn out of its shrine is no talisman, but only a
wearisome, prosaic clog quickly defaced by being dragged in the dust up
the thorny path of our egotism! Is there any disappointment so bitter,
so devastating as that? Lady Louisa, poor soul, had endured it. She
glanced for a moment at the photograph of her husband on the
mantelpiece, with his hair brushed forward over his ears. Even death had
not assuaged her long-standing grievance against him. Why had he always
secretly preferred his nephew Roger to his own sons? Why did he die just
after their eldest son Dick came of age? And why had not he left her
Hulver for her life, instead of taking for granted that she would prefer
to go back to her own house, Noyes Court, a few miles off? She had told
him so, but he might have known she had never meant it. She had not
wanted to go back to it. She had not gone back, though all her friends
and Janey had especially wished it. She had hastily let it to Mr.
Stirling the novelist, to show that she should do exactly as she liked,
and had made one of those temporary arrangements that with the old are
always for life. She had moved into the Dower House for a year, and had
been in it seven years.
Her heart swelled with anger as she thought of the conduct of her eldest
son after his father's death: and yet could anyone have been a brighter,
more delightful child than Dicky? But Dicky had been a source of
constant anxiety to her, from the day when he was nearly drowned in the
mill-race at Riff to the present hour, when he was lying dying by inches
of spinal paralysis at his aunt's house in Paris as the result of a
racing accident. What a heartbreaking record his life had been, of one
folly, one insane extravagance after another! And shame had not been
wanting. He had not even made a foolish marriage, and left a son whom
she and Janey could have taken from its mother and educated; but there
was an illegitimate child--a girl--whom Roger had told her about, by a
village schoolmistress, an honest woman whom Dick had seduced under
promise of marriage.
Perhaps, after all, Lady Louisa had some grounds for feeling that
everything had gone against her. Dick was dying, and her second son
Harry--what of him? She was doggedly convinced that Harry was not
"wanting": that "he could help it if he liked." In that case, all that
could be said was that he did not like. She stuck to it that his was a
case of arrested development, in strenuous opposition to her husband,
who had held that Harry's brain was not normal from the awful day when
as a baby they first noticed that he always stared at the ceiling. Lady
Louisa had fiercely convinced herself, but no one else, that it was the
glitter of the old cut-glass chandelier which attracted him. But after a
time even she had to own to herself, though never to others, that he had
a trick of staring upwards where no chandelier was. Even now, at
two-and-twenty, Harry furtively gazed upon the sky, and perhaps vaguely
wondered why he could only do so by stealth--why that was one of the
innumerable forbidden things among which he had to pick his way, and
for which he was sharply reprimanded by that dread personage his mother.
Mr. Manvers on his death-bed had said to Dick in Lady Louisa's presence,
"Remember, if you don't have a son, Roger ought to have Hulver. Harry is
not fit."
She had never forgiven her husband for trying to denude Harry of his
birthright. And to-night she felt a faint gleam of consolation in the
surrounding dreariness in the thought that he had not been successful.
When Dick died, Harry would certainly come in. On her last visit to
Paris she had ransacked Dick's rooms at his training-stable. She had
gone through all his papers. She had visited his lawyers. She had
satisfied herself that he had not made a will. It was all the more
important, as Harry would be very rich, that Janey should take entire
and personal charge of him, lest he should fall into the hands of some
designing woman. That pretty French adventuress, Miss Georges, who had
come to live at Riff and whom Janey had made such friends with, was just
the kind of person who might entangle him into marrying her. And then if
Roger and Janey should eventually marry, Harry could perfectly well live
with them. He must be guarded at all costs. Lady Louisa sighed. That
seemed on the whole the best plan. She had looked at it all round. But
Janey was frustrating it by refusing to do her part. She must fall into
line. To-morrow she would send for her lawyer and alter her will once
more, leaving Noyes to Harry, instead of Janey, as she had done by a
promise to her husband. Janey had no one but herself to thank for such a
decision. She had forced it on her mother by her obstinacy and her
colossal selfishness. What had she done that she of all women should
have such selfish children? Then Janey would have nothing of her own at
all, and then she would be so dependent on Harry that she would have no
alternative but to do her duty by him.
Lady Louisa sighed again. Her mind was made up. Janey must give way, and
the nurse must be got rid of. Those were the two next things to be
achieved. Then perhaps she would be suffered to rest in peace.