Giovanna looked at Miss Susan with surprise, then with a little
apprehension. It was her turn to be uneasy. “Que voulez-vous? que
voulez-vous dire?” she said under her breath, endeavoring to catch Miss
Susan’s eye. Miss Susan was a great deal too impassioned and absorbed
even to notice the disturbed condition of her adversary. She knew
herself to be surrounded by an eager audience, but yet in her soul she
was alone, insensible to everything, moved only by a passionate impulse
to relieve herself, to throw off the burden which was driving her mad.
She did not even see Giovanna, who after walking round behind Herbert,
trying to communicate by the eyes with the woman whom all this time she
had herself subdued by covert threats, sat down at last at the head of
the sofa, putting her hand, which Herbert took into his, upon it.
Probably this sign of kindness stimulated Miss Susan, though I doubt
whether she was conscious of it, something having laid hold upon her
which was beyond her power to resist.
“I have a story to tell you, children,” she said, pulling instinctively
with her hand at the throat of her dress, which seemed to choke her,
“and a confession to make. I have been good, good enough in my way,
trying to do my duty most of my life; but now at the end of it I have
done wrong, great wrong, and sinned against you all. God forgive me! and
I hope you’ll forgive me. I’ve been trying to save myself from
the--exposure--from the shame, God help me! I have thought of myself,
when I ought to have thought of you all. Oh, I’ve been punished! I’ve
been punished! But perhaps it is not yet too late. Oh, Herbert, Herbert!
my dear boy, listen to me!”
“If you are going to say anything against Giovanna, you will lose your
time, Aunt Susan,” said Herbert; and Giovanna leaned on the arm of the
sofa, and kissed his forehead again in thanks and triumph.
“What I am going to say first is against myself,” said Miss Susan. “It
is three years ago--a little more than three years; Farrel-Austin, who
is dead, came and told me that he had found the missing people, the
Austins whom you have heard of, whom I had sought for so long, and that
he had made some bargain with them, that they should withdraw in his
favor. You were very ill then, Herbert, thought to be dying; and
Farrel-Austin--poor man, he is dead!--was our enemy. It was dreadful,
dreadful to think of him coming here, being the master of the place.
That was my sin to begin with. I thought I could bear anything sooner
than that.”
Augustine came into the room at this moment. She came and went so
noiselessly that no one even heard her; and Miss Susan was too much
absorbed to note anything. The new-comer stood still near the door
behind her sister, at first because it was her habit, and then, I
suppose, in sympathy with the motionless attention of the others, and
the continuance without a pause of Miss Susan’s voice.
“I meant no harm; I don’t know what I meant. I went to break their
bargain, to show them the picture of the house, to make them keep their
rights against that man. It was wicked enough. Farrel-Austin’s gone, and
God knows what was between him and us; but to think of him here made me
mad, and I went to try and break the bargain. I own that was what I
meant. It was not, perhaps, Christian-like; not what your Aunt
Augustine, who is as good as an angel, would have approved of; but it
was not wicked, not wicked, if I had done no more than that!
“When I got there,” said Miss Susan, drawing a long breath, “I found
them willing enough; but the man was old, and his son was dead, and
there was nothing but daughters left. In the room with them was a
daughter, a young married woman, a young widow--”
“Yes, there was me,” said Giovanna. “To what good is all this narrative,
Madame Suzanne? Me, I know it before, and Monsieur ’Erbert is not
amused; look, he yawns. We have assez, assez, for to-day.”
“There was _she_; sitting in the room, a poor, melancholy, neglected
creature; and there was the other young woman, Gertrude, pretty and
fair, like an English girl. She was--going to have a baby,” said Miss
Susan, even at that moment hesitating in her old maidenliness before she
said it, her old face coloring softly. “The devil put it into my head
all at once. It was not premeditated; I did not make it up in my mind.
All at once, all at once the devil put it into my head! I said suddenly
to the old woman, to old Madame Austin, ‘Your daughter-in-law is in the
same condition?’ She was sitting down crouched in a corner. She was said
to be sick. What was more natural,” cried poor Miss Susan looking round,
“than to think that was the cause?”
Perhaps it was the first time she had thought of this excuse. She caught
at the idea with heat and eagerness, appealing to them all. “What more
natural than that I should think so? She never rose up; I could not see
her. Oh, children,” cried Miss Susan, wringing her hands, “I cannot tell
how much or how little wickedness there was in my first thought; but
answer me, wasn’t it natural? The old woman took me up in a moment, took
up more--yes, I am sure--more than I meant. She drew me away to her
room, and there we talked of it. She did not say to me distinctly that
the widow was not in that way. We settled,” she said after a pause, with
a shiver and gasp before the words, “that anyhow--if a boy came--it was
to be Giovanna’s boy and the heir.”
Herbert made an effort at this moment to relinquish Giovanna’s hand,
which he had been holding all the time; not, I believe, because of this
information, which he scarcely understood as yet, but because his arm
was cramped remaining so long in the same position; but she, as was
natural, understood the movement otherwise. She held him for a second,
then tossed his hand away and sprang up from her chair. “Après?” she
cried, with an insolent laugh. “Madame Suzanne, you radotez, you are too
old. This goes without saying that the boy is Giovanna’s boy.”
“Yes, we know all this,” said Herbert, pettishly. “Aunt Susan, I cannot
imagine what you are making all this fuss and looking so excited about.
What do you mean? What is all this about old women and babies? I wish
you would speak out if you have anything to say. Giovanna, come here.”
“Yes,” she said, throwing herself on the sofa beside him; “yes, mon
Herbert, mon bien-aimé. You will not abandon me, whatever any one may
say?”
“Herbert,” cried Miss Susan, “let her alone, let her alone, for God’s
sake! She is guilty, guiltier than I am. She made a pretence as her
mother-in-law told her, pretended to be ill, pretended to have a child,
kept up the deceit--how can I tell how long?--till now. Gertrude is
innocent, whose baby was taken; she thought it died, poor thing, poor
thing! but Giovanna is not innocent. All she has done, all she has said,
has been lies, lies! The child is not her child; it is not the heir. She
has thrust herself into this house, and done all this mischief, by a
lie. She knows it; look at her. She has kept her place by threatening
me, by holding my disgrace before my eyes; and now, Herbert, my poor
boy, my poor boy, she will ruin you. Oh, put her away, put her away!”
Herbert rose up, trembling in his weakness. “Is this true, Giovanna?” he
said, turning to her piteously. “Have you anything to say against it? Is
it true?”
Reine, who had been standing behind, listening with an amazement beyond
the reach of words, came to her brother’s side, to support him at this
terrible moment; but he put her away. Even Miss Susan, who was the chief
sufferer, fell into the background. Giovanna kept her place on the sofa,
defiant, while he stood before her, turning his back upon the elder
offender, who felt this mark of her own unimportance, even in the fever
of her excitement and passion.
“Have you nothing to say against it?” cried Herbert, with anguish in his
voice. “Giovanna! Giovanna! is it true?”
Giovanna shrugged her shoulders impatiently. “Mon Dieu,” she said, “I
did what I was told. They said to me, ‘Do this,’ and I did it; was it my
fault? It was the old woman who did all, as Madame Suzanne says--”
“We are all involved together, God forgive us!” cried Miss Susan, bowing
her head into her hands.
Then there was a terrible pause. They were all silent, all waiting to
hear what Herbert had to say, who, by reason of being most deeply
involved, seemed suddenly elevated into the judge. He went away from the
sofa where Giovanna was, and in front of which Miss Susan was sitting,
as far away as he could get, and began to walk up and down the room in
his excitement. He took no further notice of Giovanna, but after a
moment, pausing in his angry march, said suddenly, “It was all on
Farrel-Austin’s account you plunged into crime like this? Silence,
Reine! it is crime, and it is she who is to blame. What in the name of
heaven had Farrel-Austin done to you that you should avenge yourself
upon us all like this?”
“Forgive me, Herbert!” said Miss Susan, faintly; “he was to have married
Augustine, and he forsook her, jilted her, shamed her, my only sister.
How could I see him in this house?”
And then again there was a pause. Even Reine made no advance to the
culprit, though her heart began to beat loudly, and her indignation was
mingled with pity. Giovanna sat gloomy; drumming with her foot upon the
carpet. Herbert had resumed his rapid pacing up and down. Miss Susan sat
in the midst of them, hopeless, motionless, her bowed head hidden in her
hands, every help and friendly prop dropped away from her, enduring to
the depths the bitterness of her punishment, yet, perhaps, with a
natural reaction, asking herself, was there none, none of all she had
been kind to, capable of a word, a look, a touch of pity in this moment
of her downfall and uttermost need? Both Everard and Reine felt upon
them that strange spell which often seems to freeze all outward action
in a great emergency, though their hearts were swelling. They had both
made a forward step; when suddenly, the matter was taken out of their
hands. Augustine, perhaps, was more slow than any of them, out of her
abstraction and musing, to be roused to what was being said. But the
last words had supplied a sharp sting of reality which woke her fully,
and helped her to understand. As soon as she had mastered it, she went
up swiftly and silently to her sister, put her arms round her, and drew
away the hands in which she had buried her face.
“Susan,” she said, in a voice more real and more living than had been
heard from her lips for years, “I have heard everything. You have
confessed your sin, and God will forgive you. Come with me.”
“Austine! Austine!” cried poor Miss Susan, shrinking, dropping to the
floor at the feet of the immaculate creature who was to her as a saint.
“Yes, it is I,” said Augustine. “Poor Susan! and I never knew! God will
forgive you. Come with me.”
“Yes,” said the other, the elder and stronger, with the humility of a
child; and she got up from where she had thrown herself, and casting a
pitiful look upon them all, turned round and gave her hand to her
sister. She was weak with her excitement, and exhausted as if she had
risen from a long illness. Augustine drew her sister’s hand through her
arm, and without another word, led her away. Reine rushed after them,
weeping and anxious, the bonds loosed that seemed to have congealed her.
Augustine put her back, not unkindly, but with decision. “Another time,
Reine. She is going with me.”
They were all so overawed by this sudden action that even Herbert
stopped short in his angry march, and Everard, who opened the door for
their exit, could only look at them, and could not say a word. Miss
Susan hung on Augustine’s arm, broken, shattered, feeble; an old woman,
worn out and fainting. The recluse supporting her, with a certain air of
strength and pride, strangely unlike her nature, walked on steadily and
firmly, looking, as was her wont, neither to the right hand nor the
left. All her life Susan had been her protector, her supporter, her
stay. Now their positions had changed all in a moment. Erect and almost
proud she walked out of the room, holding up the bowed-down, feeble
figure upon her arm. And the young people, all so strangely, all so
differently affected by this extraordinary revelation, stood blankly
together and looked at each other, not knowing what to say, when the
door closed. None of the three Austins spoke to or looked at Giovanna,
who sat on the sofa, still drumming with her foot upon the carpet. When
the first blank pause was over, Reine went up to Herbert and put her arm
through his.
“Oh, forgive her, forgive her!” she cried.
“I will never forgive her,” he said wildly; “she has been the cause of
it all. Why did she let this go on, my God! and why did she tell me
now?”
Giovanna sat still, beating her foot on the carpet, and neither moved
nor spoke.
As for Susan and Augustine, no one attempted to follow them. No one
thought of anything further than a withdrawal to their rooms of the two
sisters, united in a tenderness of far older date than the memories of
the young people could reach; and I don’t even know whether the impulse
that made them both turn through the long passage toward the porch was
the same. I don’t suppose it was. Augustine thought of leading her
penitent sister to the Almshouse chapel, as she would have wished should
be done to herself in any great and sudden trouble; whereas an idea of
another kind entered at once into the mind of Susan, which, beaten down
and shaken as it was, began already to recover a little after having
thrown off the burden. She paused a moment in the hall, and took down a
gray hood which was hanging there, like Augustine’s, a covering which
she had adopted to please her sister on her walks about the roads near
home. It was the nearest thing at hand, and she caught at it, and put it
on, as both together with one simultaneous impulse they bent their steps
to the door. I have said that the day was damp and dismal and hopeless,
one of those days which make a despairing waste of a leafy country. Now
and then there would come a miserable gust of wind, carrying floods of
sickly yellow leaves from all the trees, and in the intervals a small
mizzling rain, not enough to wet anything, coming like spray in the
wayfarers’ faces, filled up the dreary moments. No one was out of doors
who could be in; it was worse than a storm, bringing chill to the marrow
of your bones, weighing heavy upon your soul. The two old sisters,
without a word to each other, went out through the long passage, through
the porch in which Miss Susan had sat and done her knitting so many
Summers through. She took no farewell look at the familiar place, made
no moan as she left it. They went out clinging to each other, Augustine
erect and almost proud, Susan bowed and feeble, across the sodden wet
lawn, and out at the little gate in Priory Lane. They had done it a
hundred and a thousand times before; they meant, or at least Miss Susan
meant, to do it never again; but her mind was capable of no regret for
Whiteladies. She went out mechanically, leaning on her sister, yet
almost mechanically directing that sister the way Susan intended to go,
not Augustine. And thus they set forth into the Autumn weather, into the
mists, into the solitary world. Had the departure been made publicly
with solemn farewells and leave-takings, they would have felt it far
more deeply. As it was, they scarcely felt it at all, having their minds
full of other things. They went along Priory Lane, wading through the
yellow leaves, and along the road to the village, where Augustine would
have turned to the left, the way to the Almshouses. They had not spoken
a word to each other, and Miss Susan leaned almost helplessly in her
exhaustion upon her sister; but nevertheless she swayed Augustine in the
opposite direction across the village street. One or two women came out
to the cottage doors to look after them. It was a curious sight, instead
of Miss Augustine, gray and tall and noiseless, whom they were all used
to watch in the other direction, to see the two gray figures going on
silently, one so bowed and aged as to be unrecognizable, exactly the
opposite way. “She have got another with her, an old ’un,” the women
said to each other, and rubbed their eyes, and were not half sure that
the sight was real. They watched the two figures slowly disappearing
round the corner. It came on to rain, but the wayfarers did not quicken
their pace. They proceeded slowly on, neither saying a word to the
other, indifferent to the rain and to the yellow leaves that tumbled on
their path. So, I suppose, with their heads bowed, and no glance behind,
the first pair may have gone desolate out of Paradise. But they were
young, and life was before them; whereas Susan and Augustine, setting
out forlorn upon their new existence, were old, and had no heart for
another home and another life.