“Going to stay till Herbert comes back! but, my dear Aunt Susan, since
you don’t want her--and of course you don’t want her--why don’t you say
so?” cried Everard. “An unwelcome guest may be endured for a day or two,
or a week or two, but for five or six months--”
“My dear,” said Miss Susan, who was pale, and in whose vigorous frame a
tremble of weakness seemed so out of place, “how can I say so? It would
be so--discourteous--so uncivil--”
The young man looked at her with dismay. He would have laughed had she
not been so deadly serious. Her face was white and drawn, her lips
quivered slightly as she spoke. She looked all at once a weak old woman,
tremulous, broken down, and uncertain of herself.
“You must be ill,” he said. “I can’t believe it is you I am speaking to.
You ought to see the doctor, Aunt Susan--you cannot be well.”
“Perhaps,” she said with a pitiful attempt at a smile, “perhaps. Indeed
you must be right, Everard, for I don’t feel like myself. I am getting
old, you know.”
“Nonsense!” he said lightly, “you were as young as any of us last time I
was here.”
“Ah!” said Miss Susan, with her quivering lips. “I have kept that up too
long. I have gone on being young--and now all at once I am old; that is
how it is.”
“But that does not make any difference in my argument,” said Everard;
“if you are old--which I don’t believe--the less reason is there for
having you vexed. You don’t like this guest who is going to inflict
herself upon you. I shouldn’t mind her,” he added, with a laugh; “she’s
very handsome, Aunt Susan; but I don’t suppose that affects you in the
same way; and she will be quite out of place when Herbert comes, or at
least when Reine comes. I advise you to tell her plainly, before the old
fellow goes, that it won’t do.”
“I can’t, my dear--I can’t!” said Miss Susan; how her lips
quivered!--“she is in my house, she is my guest, and I can’t say ‘Go
away.’”
“Why not? She is not a person of very fine feelings, to be hurt by it.
She is not even a lady; and till May, till the end of May! you will
never be able to endure her.”
“Oh, yes I shall,” said Miss Susan. “I see you think that I am very
weak; but I never was uncivil to any one, Everard, not to any one in my
own house. It is Herbert’s house, of course,” she added quickly, “but
yet it has been mine, though I never had any real right to it for so
many years.”
“And you really mean to leave now?”
“I suppose so,” said Miss Susan faltering, “I think, probably--nothing
is settled. Don’t be too hard upon me, Everard! I said so--for them, to
show them that I had no power.”
“Then why, for heaven’s sake, if you have so strong a feeling--why, for
the sake of politeness!--Politeness is absurd, Aunt Susan,” said
Everard. “Do you mean to say that if any saucy fellow, any cad I may
have met, chose to come into my house and take possession, I should not
kick him out because it would be uncivil? This is not like your good
sense. You must have some other reason. No! do you mean No by that shake
of the head? Then if it is so very disagreeable to you, let me speak to
her. Let me suggest--”
“Not for the world,” cried Miss Susan. “No, for pity’s sake, no. You
will make me frantic if you speak of such a thing.”
“Or to the old fellow,” said Everard; “he ought to see the absurdity of
it, and the tyranny.”
She caught at this evidently with a little hope. “You may speak to
Monsieur Guillaume if you feel disposed,” she said; “yes, you may speak
to him. I blame him very much; he ought not to have listened to her; he
ought to have taken her away at once.”
“How could he if she wouldn’t go? Men no doubt are powerful beings,”
said Everard laughing, “but suppose the other side refused to be moved?
Even a horse at the water, if it declines to drink--you know the
proverb.”
“Oh, don’t worry me with proverbs--as if I had not enough without that!”
she said with an impatience which would have been comic had it not been
so tragical. “Yes, Everard, yes, if you like you may speak to him--but
not to her; not a word to her for the world. My dear boy, my dear boy!
You won’t go against me in this?”
“Of course I shall do only what you wish me to do,” he said more
gravely; the sight of her agitation troubled the young man exceedingly.
To think of any concealed feeling, any mystery in connection with Susan
Austin, seemed not only a blasphemy, but an absurdity. Yet what could
she mean, what could her strange terror, her changed looks, her agitated
aspect, mean? Everard was more disturbed than he could say.
This was on Sunday afternoon, that hour of all others when clouds hang
heaviest, and troubles, where they exist, come most into the foreground.
The occupations of ordinary life push them aside, but Sunday, which is
devoted to rest, and in which so many people honestly endeavor to put
the trifling little cares of every day out of their minds, always lays
hold of those bigger disturbers of existence which it is the aim of our
lives to forget. Miss Susan would have made a brave fight against the
evil which she could not avoid on another day, but this day, with all
its many associations of quiet, its outside tranquillity, its peaceful
recollections and habits, was too much for her. Everard had found her
walking in the Priory Lane by herself, a bitter dew of pain in her eyes,
and a tremble in her lips which frightened him. She had come out to
collect her thoughts a little, and to escape from her visitors, who
sometimes seemed for the moment more than she could bear.
Miss Augustine came up on her way from the afternoon service at the
Almshouses, while Everard spoke. She was accompanied by Giovanna, and it
was a curious sight to see the tall, slight figure of the Gray sister,
type of everything abstract and mystic, with that other by her side,
full of strange vitality, watching the absorbed and dreamy creature with
those looks of investigation, puzzled to know what her meaning was, but
determined somehow to be at the bottom of it. Giovanna’s eyes darted a
keen telegraphic communication to Everard’s as they came up. This glance
seemed to convey at once an opinion and an inquiry. “How droll she is!
Is she mad? I am finding her out,” the eyes said. Everard carefully
refrained from making any reply; though, indeed, this was self-denial on
his part, for Giovanna certainly made Whiteladies more amusing than it
had been when he was last there.
“You have been to church?” said Miss Susan, with her forced and
reluctant smile.
“She went with me,” said Miss Augustine. “I hope we have a great
acquisition in her. Few have understood me so quickly. If anything
should happen to Herbert--”
“Nothing will happen to Herbert,” cried Miss Susan. “God bless him! It
sounds as if you were putting a spell upon our boy.”
“I put no spell; I don’t even understand such profane words. My heart is
set on one thing, and it is of less importance how it is carried out. If
anything should happen to Herbert, I believe I have found one who sees
the necessity as I do, and who will sacrifice herself for the salvation
of the race.”
“One who will sacrifice herself!” Miss Susan gasped wildly under her
breath.
Giovanna looked at her with defiance, challenging her, as it were, to a
mortal struggle; yet there was a glimmer of laughter in her eyes. She
looked at Miss Susan from behind the back of the other, and made a slow,
solemn courtesy as Augustine spoke. Her eyes were dancing with humorous
enjoyment of the situation, with mischief and playfulness, yet with
conscious power.
“This--lady?” said Miss Susan, “I think you are mad; Austine, I think
you are going mad!”
Miss Augustine shook her head. “Susan, how often do I tell you that you
are giving your heart to Mammon and to the world! This is worse than
madness. It makes you incapable of seeing spiritual things. Yes! she is
capable of it. Heaven has sent her in answer to many prayers.”
Saying this, Augustine glided past toward the house with her arms folded
in her sleeves, and her abstract eyes fixed on the vacant air. A little
flush of displeasure at the opposition had come upon her face as she
spoke, but it faded as quickly as it came. As for Giovanna, before she
followed her, she stopped, and threw up her hands with an appealing
gesture: “Is it then my fault?” she said, as she passed.
Miss Susan stood and looked after them, her eyes dilating; a kind of
panic was in her face. “Is it, then, God that has sent her, to support
the innocent, to punish the guilty?” she said, under her breath.
“Aunt Susan, take my arm; you are certainly ill.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, faintly. “Take me in, take me out of sight, and
never tell any one, Everard, never tell any one. I think I shall go out
of my mind. It must be giving my thoughts to Mammon and the world, as
she said.”
“Never mind what she says,” said Everard, “no one pays any attention to
what she says. Your nerves are overwrought somehow or other, and you are
ill. But I’ll have it out with the old duffer!” cried the young man.
They met Monsieur Guillaume immediately after, and I think he must have
heard them; but he was happily quite unaware of the nature of a
“duffer,” or what the word meant, and to tell the truth, so am I.
Miss Susan was not able to come down to dinner, a marvellous and almost
unheard of event, so that the party was still less lively than usual.
Everard was so concerned about his old friend, and the strange condition
in which she was, that he began his attack upon the old shopkeeper
almost as soon as they were left alone. “Don’t you think, sir,” the
young man began, in a straightforward, unartificial way, “that it would
be better to take your daughter-in-law with you? She will only be
uncomfortable among people so different from those you have been
accustomed to; I doubt if they will get on.”
“Get on?” said Monsieur Guillaume, pleasantly. “Get on what? She does
not wish to get on anywhere. She wishes to stay here.”
“I mean, they are not likely to be comfortable together, to agree, to be
friends.”
M. Guillaume shrugged his shoulders. “Mon Dieu,” he said, “it will not
be my fault. If Madame Suzanne will not grant the little rente, the
allowance I demanded for le petit, is it fit that he should be at my
charge? He was not thought of till Madame Suzanne came to visit us.
There is nothing for him. He was born to be the heir here.”
“But Miss Austin could have nothing to do with his being born,” cried
Everard, laughing. Poor Miss Susan, it seemed the drollest thing to lay
to her charge. But M. Guillaume did not see the joke, he went on
seriously.
“And I had made my little arrangement with M. Farrel. We were in accord;
all was settled; so much to come to me on the spot, and this heritage,
this old château--château, mon Dieu, a thing of wood and brick!--to him,
eventually. But when Madame Suzanne arrived to tell us of the beauties
of this place, and when the women among them made discovery of le petit,
that he was about to be born, the contract was broken with M. Farrel. I
lost the money--and now I lose the heritage; and it is I who must
provide for le petit! Monsieur, such a thing was never heard of. It is
incredible; and Madame Suzanne thinks, I am to carry off the child
without a word, and take this disappointment tranquilly! But no! I am
not a fool, and it cannot be.”
“But I thought you were very fond of the child, and were in despair of
losing him,” said Everard.
“Yes, yes,” cried the old shopkeeper, “despair is one thing, and good
sense is another. This is contrary to good sense. Giovanna is an
obstinate, but she has good sense. They will not give le petit anything,
eh bien, let them bear the expense of him! That is what she says.”
“Then the allowance is all you want?” said Everard, with British
brevity. This seemed to him the easiest of arrangements. With his mind
quite relieved, and a few jokes laid up for the amusement of the future,
touching Miss Susan’s powers and disabilities, he strolled into the
drawing-room, M. Guillaume preferring to take himself to bed. The
drawing-room of Whiteladies had never looked so thoroughly unlike
itself. There seemed to Everard at first to be no one there, but after a
minute he perceived a figure stretched out upon a sofa. The lamps were
very dim, throwing a sort of twilight glimmer through the room; and the
fire was very red, adding a rosy hue, but no more, to this faint
illumination. It was the sort of light favorable to talk, or to
meditation, or to slumber, but by aid of which neither reading, nor
work, nor any active occupation could be pursued. This was of itself
sufficient to mark the absence of Miss Susan, for whom a cheerful light
full of animation and activity seemed always necessary. The figure on
the sofa lay at full length, with an _abandon_ of indolence and comfort
which suited the warm atmosphere and subdued light. Everard felt a
certain appropriateness in the scene altogether, but it was not
Whiteladies. An Italian palace or an Eastern harem would have been more
in accordance with the presiding figure. She raised her head, however,
as he approached, supporting herself on her elbow, with a vivacity
unlike the Eastern calm, and looked at him by the dim light with a look
half provoking half inviting, which attracted the foolish young man more
perhaps than a more correct demeanor would have done. Why should not he
try what he could do, Everard thought, to move the rebel? for he had an
internal conviction that even the allowance which would satisfy M.
Guillaume would not content Giovanna. He drew a chair to the other side
of the table upon which the tall dim lamp was standing, and which was
drawn close to the sofa on which the young woman lay.
“Do you really mean to remain at Whiteladies?” he said. “I don’t think
you can have any idea how dull it is here.”
She shrugged her shoulders slightly, and raised her eyebrows. She had
let her head drop back upon the sofa cushions, and the faint light threw
a kind of dreamy radiance upon her fine features, and great glowing dark
eyes.
“Dull! it is almost more than dull,” he continued; though even as he
spoke he felt that to have this beautiful creature in Whiteladies would
be a sensible alleviation of the dulness, and that his effort on Miss
Susan’s behalf was of the most disinterested kind. “It would kill you, I
fear; you can’t imagine what it is in Winter, when the days are short;
the lamps are lit at half-past four, and nothing happens all the
evening, no one comes. You sit before dinner round the fire, and Miss
Austin knits, and after dinner you sit round the fire again, and there
is not a sound in all the place, unless you have yourself the courage to
make an observation; and it seems about a year before it is time to go
to bed. You don’t know what it is.”
What Miss Susan would have said had she heard this account of those
Winter evenings, many of which the hypocrite had spent very coseyly at
Whiteladies, I prefer not to think. The idea occurred to himself with a
comic panic. What would she say? He could scarcely keep from laughing as
he asked himself the question.
“I have imagination,” said Giovanna, stretching her arms. “I can see it
all; but I should not endure it, me. I should get up and snap my fingers
at them and dance, or sing.”
“Ah!” said Everard, entering into the humor of his rôle, “so you think
at present; but it would soon take the spirit out of you. I am very
sorry for you, Madame Jean. If I were like you, with the power of
enjoying myself, and having the world at my feet--”
“Ah! bah!” cried Giovanna, “how can one have the world at one’s feet,
when one is never seen? And you should see the shop at Bruges, mon Dieu!
People do not come and throw themselves at one’s feet there. I am not
sure even if it is altogether the fault of Gertrude and the belle-mère;
but here--”
“You will have no one to see to,” said Everard, tickled by the part he
was playing, and throwing himself into the spirit of it. “That is
worse--for what is the good of being visible when there is no one to
see?”
This consideration evidently was not without its effect. Giovanna raised
herself lazily on her elbow and looked at him across the table. “You
come,” said she, “and this ’Erbert.”
“Herbert!” said Everard, shading his head, “he is a sickly boy; and as
for me--I have to pay my vows at other shrines,” he added with a laugh.
But he found this conversation immensely entertaining, and went on
representing the disadvantages of Whiteladies with more enjoyment than
perhaps he had ever experienced in that place on a Sunday evening
before. He went on till Giovanna pettishly bade him go. “At the least,
it is comfortable,” she said. “Ah, go! It is very tranquil, there is no
one to call to you with sharp voice like a knife, ‘Gi’vanna! tu dors!’
Go, I am going to sleep.”
I don’t suppose she meant him to take her at her word, for Giovanna was
amused too, and found the young man’s company and his compliments, and
that half-mocking, half-real mixture of homage and criticism, to be a
pleasant variety. But Everard, partly because he had exhausted all he
had got to say, partly lest he should be drawn on to say more, jumped up
in a state of amusement and satisfaction with himself and his own
cleverness which was very pleasant. “Since you send me away, I must
obey,” he said; “Dormez, belle enchanteresse!” and with this, which he
felt to be a very pretty speech indeed, he left the room more pleased
with himself than ever. He had spent a most satisfactory evening, he
had ascertained that the old man was to be bought off with money, and
he had done his best to disgust the young woman with a dull English
country-house; in short, he had done Miss Susan yeoman’s service, and
amused himself at the same time. Everard was agreeably excited, and
felt, after a few moments’ reflection over a cigar on the lawn, that he
would like to do more. It was still early, for the Sunday dinner at
Whiteladies, as in so many other respectable English houses, was an hour
earlier than usual; and as he wandered round the house, he saw the light
still shining in Miss Susan’s window. This decided him; he threw away
the end of his cigar, and hastening up the great staircase three steps
at once, hurried to Miss Susan’s door. “Come in,” she said faintly.
Everard was as much a child of the house as Herbert and Reine, and had
received many an admonition in that well-known chamber. He opened the
door without hesitation. But there was something in the very atmosphere
which he felt to daunt him as he went in.
Miss Susan was seated in her easy chair by the bedside fully dressed.
She was leaning her head back upon the high shoulder of the
old-fashioned chair with her eyes shut. She thought it was Martha who
had come in, and she was not careful to keep up appearances with Martha,
who had found out days before that something was the matter. She was
almost ghastly in her paleness, and there was an utter languor of
despair about her attitude and her look, which alarmed Everard in the
highest degree. But he could not stop the first words that rose upon his
lips, or subdue altogether the cheery tone which came naturally from his
satisfied feelings. “Aunt Susan,” he cried, “come along, come down
stairs, now’s your time. I have been telling stories of Whiteladies to
disgust her, and I believe now you could buy them off with a small
annuity. Aunt Susan! forgive my noise, you are ill.”
“No, no,” she said with a gasp and a forlorn smile. “No, only tired.
What did you say, Everard? whom am I to buy off?” This was a last effort
at keeping up appearances. Then it seemed to strike her all at once that
this was an ungrateful way of treating one who had been taking so much
trouble on her account. “Forgive me, Everard,” she said; “I have been
dozing, and my head is muddled. Buy them off? To be sure, I should have
thought of that; for an annuity, after all, though I have no right to
give it, is better than having them settled in the house.”
“Far better, since you dislike them so much,” said Everard; “I don’t,
for my part. She is not so bad. She is very handsome, and there’s some
fun in her.”
“Fun!” Miss Susan rose up very tremulous and uncertain, and looking ten
years older, with her face ashy pale, and a tottering in her steps, all
brought about by this unwelcome visitor; and to hear of fun in
connection with Giovanna, made her sharply, unreasonably angry for the
time. “You should choose your words better at such a moment,” she said.
“Never mind my words, come and speak to her,” cried Everard. He was very
curious and full of wonder, seeing there was something below the surface
more than met his eyes, and that the mystery was far more mysterious
than his idea of it. Miss Susan hesitated more than ever, and seemed as
if she would have gone back before they reached the stairs; but he kept
up her courage. “When it’s only a little money, and you can afford it,”
he said. “You don’t care so much for a little money.”
“No, I don’t care much for a little money,” she repeated after him
mechanically, as she went downstairs.