THE WOMEN’S PART.
There is no doubt that the interval which ensued after this was a time
of extraordinary peace and quietness at the White House. Whether it was
the heart which had faintly stirred in Ralph Joscelyn’s bosom, or
whether he was alarmed by what he had done, it is certain that he was
wonderfully subdued and silenced. When, after a long career of violence
and family domineering, and threats of all kinds, one of those who have
hitherto only scolded back and kept up a war of words, is suddenly stung
into action, and does something desperate instead of uttering the mere
froth of passion, it is not unusual to see the domestic tyrant come to a
sudden stand-still, more bewildered than anyone by the result. Times
without number he had threatened to turn every son he had out of the
house: but the young man who turned himself out of the house gave him
such a shock as he had never got before in his life. He was very
susceptible to outside criticism, for one thing, and all the county
would soon find out what had happened. He would be asked on the other
side of the Fells if he had any news of his son. The news would soon
travel over all his haunts as far as Carlisle. People would tell each
other how Harry Joscelyn had disappeared; that he had not been able to
stand things any longer; that there had been a dreadful quarrel, and his
father had turned him to the door, and he had gone away. It was a long
time, however, before the real state of affairs was known, even in the
White House. A few terrible days passed, terrible for his mother and
sister, and in a way for Joscelyn also, who was moody and silent, going
about the house more quietly than his wont, and not able to get over the
shock of his surprise. Joan secretly despatched messengers to the houses
of her brothers, neither of whom had seen Harry, and it was not till the
third day that Isaac Oliver came shuffling to the door, desiring to
speak with the mistress or Miss Joan. Joan found a little whispering
knot at the door as she passed through the passages from the dairy.
“Who is that?” she said.
“It’s me, Miss Joan, Isaac Oliver, your uncle’s man,” said a well-known
voice; and instantly there flashed upon Joan all he had come to say.
Uncle Henry’s, to be sure! Had she ever thought otherwise? Of course it
was the most natural place for Harry to go.
“Come in this way,” she said, hastily. Joscelyn was out, and there was
little chance of visitors at the White House to interrupt such a
conference. She led him in with a beating heart, dismissing with a word
the gossiping women about the door. “I hope you’re bringing us no bad
news, Isaac; my uncle’s an old man,” said Joan, breathless. She so
little knew what she was saying, in the light that seemed to flood upon
her, that she did not even feel it to be insincere.
“It’s not about t’auld maister, he’s fine and weel,” said Isaac,
following her along the passage with his shuffle, talking as he went;
“you would not give him more than sixty to look at him, out here and
there to his dinner, and driving about the country like ony young man.”
“He’s very lively for his age,” Joan said.
“Ay, or for any age,” said Isaac, and by this time they had reached the
parlour-door.
The moment they had entered that sanctuary Joan turned upon this
messenger of fate and pushed him into a chair. She took no notice of
Mrs. Joscelyn, who sat as usual in the distance, pretending to work, but
on the watch for every wayfarer, sweeping the line of road and the grey
fields and dim horizon with her anxious eyes.
“Now tell us what you have to tell us,” she cried.
“It’s just--I’ve been at Wyburgh, Miss Joan, to see t’auld maister. He’s
fine and weel, as I said; and Mrs. Eadie, she’s fine and weel, and as
pleased as they could be, baith the wan and the other----”
“Isaac, if you have nothing to tell us but about Uncle Henry and Mrs.
Eadie say so at once.”
Mrs. Joscelyn rose from her chair. She left her eternal mending on her
seat, and came forward holding her hands together as was her wont.
“What is it, Joan?” she said, with an appeal to her daughter’s
understanding; she had begun not to trust to her own.
“That’s just what I’m waiting to hear. It’s about Harry; he’s been at
Wyburgh, of course, on his way to ----. To be sure, mother, you know
that.”
“They were terrible glad to see him,” said Isaac. “I said you would be
sure to ken, but Mrs. Eadie she thought no, so she would engage me to
come. Go over as soon as you get back, Isaac, she said to me, the
mistress and Miss Joan will be real glad to hear.”
“So we are, Isaac. Say away like a man, anything you can tell us we’ll
be glad to hear; he’s not a good letter-writer, my brother Harry; we
like to hear all we can. He got there safe and well?”
“I gave him a dael of advice the night before,” said Isaac, “young lads
is aye wanting something--again’ asking a penny from t’auld maister. Mr.
Harry makes a fool o’ me, leddies; he’s just one o’ the lads I canno’
resist. There’s naething I would not do for him. I flew in the face o’
my missis, and even o’ my ain convictions, which are mair than ony
woman’s, to follow him to the ‘Red Lion’ the night afore. No, it’s not a
place that I frequent, far from that, no man can be more strong again’
it, let alone the missis; but I risked a dael of disgrace to gang after
him there, to say to him--Ye’ll no’ think the worse of me, nor the
mistress will no’ think the worse of me, that I spoke my mind.”
“And is he with Uncle Henry now, or has he--gone on?”
“To say to him, ‘Hev patience,’ that was all I said, ‘Hev patience, and
ye’ll get every penny.’ I hev a conviction he’ll get every penny. It’s a
nice little bit of money, and the land’s no’ such ill land about
Burnswark if he were to build a new house. The auld wan we’re in is gude
for naething, but Burnswark would be no’ bad for a sma’ property if he
were to build a new house; and he’s naething to do but to hev
patience--and never to bother t’auld maister in his lifetime, that was
what I said.”
“You were always a sensible person, Isaac; my uncle’s much obliged to
you for taking such care of him. But I hope my brother Harry did not
want it. Is he still at Wyburgh, or has he--gone on? Tell us, for you
see my mother’s anxious. We have got no letter.”
“To my great satisfaction,” said Isaac, “he must have taken my advice,
for he went on to Liverpool the same night.”
Joan nodded her head a great many times; her face was wreathed in
smiles. She took her mother’s feeble hands--straining themselves
together as usual--into hers, and beamed upon the messenger.
“That is just what I thought! just what I thought!” she said; “far the
best thing he could do, and shows his sense, mother. I could have told
you from the first! Just see, now, how you torment yourself for nothing
at all. I’ll get his things packed and send them off this very night.”
Isaac went on droning steadily.
“I’m saying nothing again’ Mr. Harry, nor yet reflecting upon ony person
at home. Lads are aye wanting, and they’ll ask an auld uncle or aunt, or
that, sooner than they’ll ask faither or mither. I’ve seen the like o’
that often, but what I said to Mr. Harry was, ‘Hev patience, that’s aw
about it: just hev patience and ye’ll get everything you want.’”
“I am sure we are very much obliged to you,” said Joan; “you must have a
glass of wine. Would you like port wine or sherry, Isaac? you shall have
a glass of the best, and you can come up to the dairy next time you’re
going to Wyburgh and take Mrs. Eadie a bit of our sweet butter. Yes,
yes, I know you make it yourself, but you must not say it’s as good as
mine. Eadie shall have a pat all for herself--I am sure she was kind to
Harry--and perhaps some new-laid eggs, they’re a treat in a town.”
“I take them in aw we hev at Burnswark. Ye need not trouble, Miss Joan,”
said Isaac, “wance a week I take in the best of everything, eggs and
cream.”
“Or a little honey,” said Joan; “our honey off the Fells is beautiful.
It’s that Uncle Henry is so fond of. You shall take them a honey-comb,
Isaac; and tell your wife to come up to the house and see me. There’s
some things would make up for the children. She’s a good housewife, that
wife of yours, and keeps the children always nice. You should be proud
of her. She would be a credit to any man.”
“Oh, ay,” said Isaac, sheepishly scratching his head, “there’s a many
worse, there’s a many worse. I’m making no complaint; but the worst of a
wife is that she will never let her man judge for himsel’.”
“And a great deal better for you, if your judgment was to take you to
the ‘Red Lion,’” said Joan. She was gradually edging him out,
suppressing Isaac’s inclination to say a great deal more. “Good day,”
she cried, “good day,” conducting him to the door. “I am very much
obliged to you; and next time you go to Wyburgh you’ll be sure to take
the White House on your way.”
When she had closed the door Joan turned round quickly upon her mother.
Mrs. Joscelyn was lying back in her chair, with those expressive hands
of hers lying loosely in her lap. The relief in her mind had relaxed all
the nervous tightening of her muscles. She had sunk back with that
softening sense of relief which makes freedom from pain no negative but
an active blessedness. The pressure upon her brain, and her heart, and
her very breath, seemed withdrawn. Sitting so quietly by the window, an
image of domestic tranquillity, she had been a mere collection of
beating pulses, of hot throbs and concussions; but now all these
agitations were stilled; her heart dropped into quietness, like a bird
into its nest, her blood ran softly in her veins. She smiled faintly at
Joan when she went up to her, and said in a scarcely audible voice,
“Thank God!”
“That’s true,” said Joan, “but how often have I told you, mother, that
things would come all right if you would not make a fuss? The fellow was
in no danger after all, not in any danger at any time, just as well off
as a lad could be, petted by old Eadie, and with Uncle Henry to look
after him. Of course I knew he must have been there.”
“You never said it, Joan.”
“No,” said Joan, with a laugh rendered unsteady by the same sense of
relief, “I knew it the moment I heard it, mother. I am not setting up
for more sense than other folk; the moment I heard Isaac’s voice asking
for me I knew it in a moment, but not till then. Just see what fools we
are, the wisest of us,” said Joan, reflectively. “I think I’ve got a
little sense; but I have no more than other folk, till it’s put into my
head. Well! it’s a comfort to know his address to write to, and that
he’s gone to his work, and no harm done; for he has a queer temper, has
Harry. He’s not just like the rest of us; he might have done a desperate
thing, being the kind of lad he is. That’s always been on my mind. I
would not have said it till now, but that was always in my mind. A lad
like that, there was no telling what he mightn’t have done; but don’t I
aye tell you, mother, if you don’t make a fuss things will always come
right at the end?”
Then Joan did what was a very strange thing for her, she sat down and
had a little cry all to herself. She had never betrayed the depth of her
anxiety before, but the running over of her satisfaction and relief
betrayed her.
“The things have come from the wash,” she said; “I’ll put them in and
lock up his boxes, and send them to-night. He must have been ill off for
his clothes, poor lad! and I might have sent them after him without
losing any time, if I had only had the sense! Never mind, Eadie would do
the best she could for him, and it’s not a week yet. Bless me! what a
week it has been! It’s been like a year! I’ve been saying to myself all
these days, ‘I never knew I had so much of mother in me.’ It’s a funny
thing, a very funny thing, how folks are made up, a bit of one and a bit
of another; but I never thought I had so much of you in me, mother; I
have just been as near as possible to making a fuss myself.”
And it is impossible to say how much this breaking down on Joan’s part,
temporary as it was, comforted her mother. She had never yet, she
thought, been so near to any of her children. She began, poor lady! to
pour forth her own dreary private self-tormentings.
“I’ve pictured him astray on the moors; I’ve pictured him on the
Fell-side, Joan, with one of those dreadful mists coming on; every night
in the dark I have thought of him wandering and wandering. I’ve heard
his step going away, as I heard it that dreadful night; or in the
water--if some one had come and said there was one found in the
water----”
“Now, mother, these are nothing but fancies,” cried Joan; “that’s what I
call just giving yourself up to nonsense. Was Harry such a fool as to
lose himself on the Fells? now, I ask you, just take a little common
sense! or the river? he that can swim like a duck. Nay, that goes beyond
me. Reason is reason, however nervous you may be. Nay, nay, I would
never take leave of my wits like that. If you will but mind what I say;
don’t make any more fuss than you can help, and in the end you’ll find
all will come right. Now I’ll go and put up the poor lad’s things; I
can’t think what he can have done for shirts.”
Joan turned back, however, when she got to the door.
“Now, mother, listen to me for a moment. Don’t take it into your head
that you are just to have a letter directly and all to go well. He may
take some time to come round. I would not wonder if he was offended both
with you and me. What for? oh, who can tell what for? Just for nonsense,
and queer temper. Don’t you be disappointed if there’s no word.”
“I will be terribly disappointed, Joan,” said the poor mother. “I am
going to write to him now. Why should he be offended with me? If he does
not answer it will break my heart.”
“Your heart’s been broken a many times, mother,” Joan said, shaking her
head. “Well, maybe there will be an answer, but it’s always best to be
prepared for the worst.”
She shook her head again as she went away.
“I wonder,” she said to herself, with a half smile on her face, “how
many pieces mother’s heart’s in? it’s taken a deal of breaking. We’ve
all had a good pull at it in our day;” and then her face, with its half
comic look of criticism, softened, and she added gently, “Poor dear!”
Then Joan went up to Harry’s room in all her self-possessed activity,
and laid the clean white shirts carefully into the half-packed
portmanteau, which stood like a kind of coffin half open in the deserted
room. She looked through all the drawers, and put in everything he was
likely to want. She had a very soft heart to her younger brother. There
were only some five or six years between them, but a boy of
four-and-twenty looks very young to a woman over thirty; she felt as if
he might have been her son. Will and Tom were different. She had shared
their games and such training as they had, and lived her hoyden days in
their close company, with a careless comradeship, but no particular
sentiment. Harry, however, had been the one who was away. When he came
home at holiday times he was the stranger, the little brother, less
robust than the others, a boy who had to be considered and cared for;
even his mending and darning, in which she early had a share, had to be
more carefully done than the others, for Mrs. Joscelyn had been jealous
of any imperfection in her boy’s outfit falling under Uncle Henry’s, or
still more Uncle Henry’s housekeeper’s eye. And so it had happened that
a very special softness of regard for Harry had come into his elder
sister’s mind. Nobody knew of it, but there it was. Perhaps the fact
that he had “a deal of mother in him” had added to this partiality,
notwithstanding that the mother’s peculiarities had often exasperated
Joan in their original manifestation. Reflected in Harry they gave him a
certain charm, the charm which a nature full of sudden impulses, swift
to act and lively to feel has to a more substantial and matter-of-fact
nature. She packed his clothes even with a tender touch, smoothing
everything with the greatest neatness, arranging layer above layer in
the most perfect order. “They’ll all be tossed into his drawers
pell-mell,” she said, shaking her head over the linen as she laid it in,
with a smile on her face. She disliked untidiness next to wickedness,
but in Harry it was venial. Even Harry’s wrong-doings would have been no
more hardly judged by Joan than with a shake of the head and a smile.
When she had finished her packing, she went downstairs on a still more
congenial errand, and packed a hamper of home produce for her brother.
“Mr. Harry’s not coming back; he’s gone straight on to Liverpool; we’re
to send his things after him,” she explained to the maids, who were
full of curiosity, and vaguely certain that something was wrong. They
were already beginning to have their doubts as to that first fine
hypothesis about Joan’s lover, and to make out that Harry had more to do
with the locking of the door than any “lad” who could be “courting” the
daughter of the house; and they were all agog for information, as was
natural. The packing up of the cheese and eggs, the bottle of cream
(though that was allowed to be of very doubtful expediency), the fine
piece of honey-comb, the home-cured ham, all that was best in the house,
threw, however, an air of stability and reality about Harry, and
suppressed the first whispers against him. There could be nothing wrong
about a young man for whom such a hamper was being prepared; neither a
deadly quarrel with his family, nor any trouble at his office, nor
roguery of any kind was compatible with that hamper. It meant a
well-doing respectable youth eating good breakfasts (always a sure sign
of good morals) and coming in regularly to all his meals. The hamper
eased the mind generally of the house. Joscelyn himself saw it as he
passed, and, though he took no notice, was comforted too. His
uneasiness had been angry rather than anxious; but then the anger had
been partly against himself, and a consciousness that humbled him of
having laid himself open to criticism and made a foolish exhibition of
temper, had given it a double sting. It was one of the finest hams he
ever had seen which he saw packed into the hamper, and he grudged it to
Harry, but all the same it eased his mind. The fellow he said to
himself, had taken no harm; he was all right. He asked no questions, but
his mind was relieved. When they were all put into the cart in the
evening, to be taken down to the nearest station, even Mrs. Joscelyn
herself came out to the door to watch them go off. It was a soft
evening, the warmest that had been that season; the wind had changed
into the west, the sun was setting in a glow of crimson, the whole
valley canopied over with clouds full of rosy reflection. In the
distance one of these rose-clouds caught the mirror of the river, and
glowed in that, repeating its warm and smiling tone of colour in the
midst of the gray fields of the surrounding landscape and the gray
houses of the village. At the back door, where the cart was standing,
the servants were all congregated as if it wanted half-a-dozen people
to put up two portmanteaus and a hamper. Joan gave a hand herself with
that last precious burden.
“That’s the most worth of a’,” said the cook. “Ye may buy shirts and
waistcoats, but you’ll no buy butter like ours, nor a ham to compare
with that--and my griddle-cakes, I never made better.”
“It’s to be hoped,” said the dairy-maid, “they’ll not spoil.”
Mrs. Joscelyn laid her hand upon it with a caressing touch; her poor
thin white hands at which the women looked half-admiring,
half-contemptuous, as good for nothing but to sew a seam and play the
piano. It was a kind of link between Harry and the house that had been
so unkind to him. “He’ll understand what it means,” she said to Joan,
aside, as the cart lumbered off.
Joan did not make any reply, nor did she very well understand her
mother, nor know what it might be supposed to mean, but it was she who
had packed all that love, forgiveness, and tender thought; which were so
solidly represented in that hamper from home. And it lumbered off to the
railway, and was despatched by the night mail, though that was an
extravagant proceeding; and the White House was solaced visibly and
lightened of its care. It had not been a practice to give Harry such a
hamper when he went away. He got one at Christmas, and that had hitherto
been supposed to be enough; but this had more in it than met the eye.
And then there was a pause in the history of the house, a pause of
suspense yet of hope and peace. Joan and her mother afterwards often
looked back to these days, which did not last long, yet were sweet. The
two were very good friends, not a jar between them, and Ralph Joscelyn
was unusually quiet and subdued; and it happened that one or two
visitors came to the house, a circumstance which did not often
happen--touching one of whom, in this little lull of preparing events,
we may as well take the opportunity of a word or two: for though nobody
thought very much about him at that moment, he was a personage of some
importance in the family life.