I
It was raining, apparently, but she didn't mind--she would put on stout
shoes and walk over to Plash. She was restless and so fidgety that it
was a pain; there were strange voices that frightened her--they threw
out the ugliest intimations--in the empty rooms at home. She would see
old Mrs. Berrington, whom she liked because she was so simple, and old
Lady Davenant, who was staying with her and who was interesting for
reasons with which simplicity had nothing to do. Then she would come
back to the children's tea--she liked even better the last half-hour in
the schoolroom, with the bread and butter, the candles and the red fire,
the little spasms of confidence of Miss Steet the nursery-governess, and
the society of Scratch and Parson (their nicknames would have made you
think they were dogs) her small, magnificent nephews, whose flesh was so
firm yet so soft and their eyes so charming when they listened to
stories. Plash was the dower-house and about a mile and a half, through
the park, from Mellows. It was not raining after all, though it had
been; there was only a grayness in the air, covering all the strong,
rich green, and a pleasant damp, earthy smell, and the walks were smooth
and hard, so that the expedition was not arduous.
The girl had been in England more than a year, but there were some
satisfactions she had not got used to yet nor ceased to enjoy, and one
of these was the accessibility, the convenience of the country. Within
the lodge-gates or without them it seemed all alike a park--it was all
so intensely 'property.' The very name of Plash, which was quaint and
old, had not lost its effect upon her, nor had it become indifferent to
her that the place was a dower-house--the little red-walled, ivied
asylum to which old Mrs. Berrington had retired when, on his father's
death, her son came into the estates. Laura Wing thought very ill of the
custom of the expropriation of the widow in the evening of her days,
when honour and abundance should attend her more than ever; but her
condemnation of this wrong forgot itself when so many of the
consequences looked right--barring a little dampness: which was the fate
sooner or later of most of her unfavourable judgments of English
institutions. Iniquities in such a country somehow always made pictures;
and there had been dower-houses in the novels, mainly of fashionable
life, on which her later childhood was fed. The iniquity did not as a
general thing prevent these retreats from being occupied by old ladies
with wonderful reminiscences and rare voices, whose reverses had not
deprived them of a great deal of becoming hereditary lace. In the park,
half-way, suddenly, Laura stopped, with a pain--a moral pang--that
almost took away her breath; she looked at the misty glades and the
dear old beeches (so familiar they were now and loved as much as if she
owned them); they seemed in their unlighted December bareness conscious
of all the trouble, and they made her conscious of all the change. A
year ago she knew nothing, and now she knew almost everything; and the
worst of her knowledge (or at least the worst of the fears she had
raised upon it) had come to her in that beautiful place, where
everything was so full of peace and purity, of the air of happy
submission to immemorial law. The place was the same but her eyes were
different: they had seen such sad, bad things in so short a time. Yes,
the time was short and everything was strange. Laura Wing was too uneasy
even to sigh, and as she walked on she lightened her tread almost as if
she were going on tiptoe.
At Plash the house seemed to shine in the wet air--the tone of the
mottled red walls and the limited but perfect lawn to be the work of an
artist's brush. Lady Davenant was in the drawing-room, in a low chair by
one of the windows, reading the second volume of a novel. There was the
same look of crisp chintz, of fresh flowers wherever flowers could be
put, of a wall-paper that was in the bad taste of years before, but had
been kept so that no more money should be spent, and was almost covered
over with amateurish drawings and superior engravings, framed in narrow
gilt with large margins. The room had its bright, durable, sociable air,
the air that Laura Wing liked in so many English things--that of being
meant for daily life, for long periods, for uses of high decency. But
more than ever to-day was it incongruous that such an habitation, with
its chintzes and its British poets, its well-worn carpets and domestic
art--the whole aspect so unmeretricious and sincere--should have to do
with lives that were not right. Of course however it had to do only
indirectly, and the wrong life was not old Mrs. Berrington's nor yet
Lady Davenant's. If Selina and Selina's doings were not an implication
of such an interior any more than it was for them an explication, this
was because she had come from so far off, was a foreign element
altogether. Yet it was there she had found her occasion, all the
influences that had altered her so (her sister had a theory that she was
metamorphosed, that when she was young she seemed born for innocence) if
not at Plash at least at Mellows, for the two places after all had ever
so much in common, and there were rooms at the great house that looked
remarkably like Mrs. Berrington's parlour.
Lady Davenant always had a head-dress of a peculiar style, original and
appropriate--a sort of white veil or cape which came in a point to the
place on her forehead where her smooth hair began to show and then
covered her shoulders. It was always exquisitely fresh and was partly
the reason why she struck the girl rather as a fine portrait than as a
living person. And yet she was full of life, old as she was, and had
been made finer, sharper and more delicate, by nearly eighty years of
it. It was the hand of a master that Laura seemed to see in her face,
the witty expression of which shone like a lamp through the ground-glass
of her good breeding; nature was always an artist, but not so much of an
artist as that. Infinite knowledge the girl attributed to her, and that
was why she liked her a little fearfully. Lady Davenant was not as a
general thing fond of the young or of invalids; but she made an
exception as regards youth for the little girl from America, the sister
of the daughter-in-law of her dearest friend. She took an interest in
Laura partly perhaps to make up for the tepidity with which she regarded
Selina. At all events she had assumed the general responsibility of
providing her with a husband. She pretended to care equally little for
persons suffering from other forms of misfortune, but she was capable of
finding excuses for them when they had been sufficiently to blame. She
expected a great deal of attention, always wore gloves in the house and
never had anything in her hand but a book. She neither embroidered nor
wrote--only read and talked. She had no special conversation for girls
but generally addressed them in the same manner that she found effective
with her contemporaries. Laura Wing regarded this as an honour, but very
often she didn't know what the old lady meant and was ashamed to ask
her. Once in a while Lady Davenant was ashamed to tell. Mrs. Berrington
had gone to a cottage to see an old woman who was ill--an old woman who
had been in her service for years, in the old days. Unlike her friend
she was fond of young people and invalids, but she was less interesting
to Laura, except that it was a sort of fascination to wonder how she
could have such abysses of placidity. She had long cheeks and kind eyes
and was devoted to birds; somehow she always made Laura think secretly
of a tablet of fine white soap--nothing else was so smooth and clean.
'And what's going on _chez vous_--who is there and what are they
doing?' Lady Davenant asked, after the first greetings.
'There isn't any one but me--and the children--and the governess.'
'What, no party--no private theatricals? How do you live?'
'Oh, it doesn't take so much to keep me going,' said Laura. 'I believe
there were some people coming on Saturday, but they have been put off,
or they can't come. Selina has gone to London.'
'And what has she gone to London for?'
'Oh, I don't know--she has so many things to do.'
'And where is Mr. Berrington?'
'He has been away somewhere; but I believe he is coming back
to-morrow--or next day.'
'Or the day after?' said Lady Davenant. 'And do they never go away
together?' she continued after a pause.
'Yes, sometimes--but they don't come back together.'
'Do you mean they quarrel on the way?'
'I don't know what they do, Lady Davenant--I don't understand,' Laura
Wing replied, with an unguarded tremor in her voice. 'I don't think they
are very happy.'
'Then they ought to be ashamed of themselves. They have got everything
so comfortable--what more do they want?'
'Yes, and the children are such dears!'
'Certainly--charming. And is she a good person, the present governess?
Does she look after them properly?'
'Yes--she seems very good--it's a blessing. But I think she's unhappy
too.'
'Bless us, what a house! Does she want some one to make love to her?'
'No, but she wants Selina to see--to appreciate,' said the young girl.
'And doesn't she appreciate--when she leaves them that way quite to the
young woman?'
'Miss Steet thinks she doesn't notice how they come on--she is never
there.'
'And has she wept and told you so? You know they are always crying,
governesses--whatever line you take. You shouldn't draw them out too
much--they are always looking for a chance. She ought to be thankful to
be let alone. You mustn't be too sympathetic--it's mostly wasted,' the
old lady went on.
'Oh, I'm not--I assure you I'm not,' said Laura Wing. 'On the contrary,
I see so much about me that I don't sympathise with.'
'Well, you mustn't be an impertinent little American either!' her
interlocutress exclaimed. Laura sat with her for half an hour and the
conversation took a turn through the affairs of Plash and through Lady
Davenant's own, which were visits in prospect and ideas suggested more
or less directly by them as well as by the books she had been reading, a
heterogeneous pile on a table near her, all of them new and clean, from
a circulating library in London. The old woman had ideas and Laura liked
them, though they often struck her as very sharp and hard, because at
Mellows she had no diet of that sort. There had never been an idea in
the house, since she came at least, and there was wonderfully little
reading. Lady Davenant still went from country-house to country-house
all winter, as she had done all her life, and when Laura asked her she
told her the places and the people she probably should find at each of
them. Such an enumeration was much less interesting to the girl than it
would have been a year before: she herself had now seen a great many
places and people and the freshness of her curiosity was gone. But she
still cared for Lady Davenant's descriptions and judgments, because they
were the thing in her life which (when she met the old woman from time
to time) most represented talk--the rare sort of talk that was not mere
chaff. That was what she had dreamed of before she came to England, but
in Selina's set the dream had not come true. In Selina's set people only
harried each other from morning till night with extravagant
accusations--it was all a kind of horse-play of false charges. When Lady
Davenant was accusatory it was within the limits of perfect
verisimilitude.
Laura waited for Mrs. Berrington to come in but she failed to appear, so
that the girl gathered her waterproof together with an intention of
departure. But she was secretly reluctant, because she had walked over
to Plash with a vague hope that some soothing hand would be laid upon
her pain. If there was no comfort at the dower-house she knew not where
to look for it, for there was certainly none at home--not even with Miss
Steet and the children. It was not Lady Davenant's leading
characteristic that she was comforting, and Laura had not aspired to be
coaxed or coddled into forgetfulness: she wanted rather to be taught a
certain fortitude--how to live and hold up one's head even while knowing
that things were very bad. A brazen indifference--it was not exactly
that that she wished to acquire; but were there not some sorts of
indifference that were philosophic and noble? Could Lady Davenant not
teach them, if she should take the trouble? The girl remembered to have
heard that there had been years before some disagreeable occurrences in
_her_ family; it was not a race in which the ladies inveterately turned
out well. Yet who to-day had the stamp of honour and credit--of a past
which was either no one's business or was part and parcel of a fair
public record--and carried it so much as a matter of course? She herself
had been a good woman and that was the only thing that told in the long
run. It was Laura's own idea to be a good woman and that this would make
it an advantage for Lady Davenant to show her how not to feel too much.
As regards feeling enough, that was a branch in which she had no need to
take lessons.
The old woman liked cutting new books, a task she never remitted to her
maid, and while her young visitor sat there she went through the greater
part of a volume with the paper-knife. She didn't proceed very
fast--there was a kind of patient, awkward fumbling of her aged hands;
but as she passed her knife into the last leaf she said abruptly--'And
how is your sister going on? She's very light!' Lady Davenant added
before Laura had time to reply.
'Oh, Lady Davenant!' the girl exclaimed, vaguely, slowly, vexed with
herself as soon as she had spoken for having uttered the words as a
protest, whereas she wished to draw her companion out. To correct this
impression she threw back her waterproof.
'Have you ever spoken to her?' the old woman asked.
'Spoken to her?'
'About her behaviour. I daresay you haven't--you Americans have such a
lot of false delicacy. I daresay Selina wouldn't speak to you if you
were in her place (excuse the supposition!) and yet she is capable----'
But Lady Davenant paused, preferring not to say of what young Mrs.
Berrington was capable. 'It's a bad house for a girl.'
'It only gives me a horror,' said Laura, pausing in turn.
'A horror of your sister? That's not what one should aim at. You ought
to get married--and the sooner the better. My dear child, I have
neglected you dreadfully.'
'I am much obliged to you, but if you think marriage looks to me happy!'
the girl exclaimed, laughing without hilarity.
'Make it happy for some one else and you will be happy enough yourself.
You ought to get out of your situation.'
Laura Wing was silent a moment, though this was not a new reflection to
her. 'Do you mean that I should leave Selina altogether? I feel as if I
should abandon her--as if I should be a coward.'
'Oh, my dear, it isn't the business of little girls to serve as
parachutes to fly-away wives! That's why if you haven't spoken to her
you needn't take the trouble at this time of day. Let her go--let her
go!'
'Let her go?' Laura repeated, staring.
Her companion gave her a sharper glance. 'Let her stay, then! Only get
out of the house. You can come to me, you know, whenever you like. I
don't know another girl I would say that to.'
'Oh, Lady Davenant,' Laura began again, but she only got as far as
this; in a moment she had covered her face with her hands--she had burst
into tears.
'Ah my dear, don't cry or I shall take back my invitation! It would
never do if you were to _larmoyer_. If I have offended you by the way I
have spoken of Selina I think you are too sensitive. We shouldn't feel
more for people than they feel for themselves. She has no tears, I'm
sure.'
'Oh, she has, she has!' cried the girl, sobbing with an odd effect as
she put forth this pretension for her sister.
'Then she's worse than I thought. I don't mind them so much when they
are merry but I hate them when they are sentimental.'
'She's so changed--so changed!' Laura Wing went on.
'Never, never, my dear: _c'est de naissance_.'
'You never knew my mother,' returned the girl; 'when I think of
mother----' The words failed her while she sobbed.
'I daresay she was very nice,' said Lady Davenant gently. 'It would take
that to account for you: such women as Selina are always easily enough
accounted for. I didn't mean it was inherited--for that sort of thing
skips about. I daresay there was some improper ancestress--except that
you Americans don't seem to have ancestresses.'
Laura gave no sign of having heard these observations; she was occupied
in brushing away her tears. 'Everything is so changed--you don't know,'
she remarked in a moment. 'Nothing could have been happier--nothing
could have been sweeter. And now to be so dependent--so helpless--so
poor!'
'Have you nothing at all?' asked Lady Davenant, with simplicity.
'Only enough to pay for my clothes.'
'That's a good deal, for a girl. You are uncommonly dressy, you know.'
'I'm sorry I seem so. That's just the way I don't want to look.'
'You Americans can't help it; you "wear" your very features and your
eyes look as if they had just been sent home. But I confess you are not
so smart as Selina.'
'Yes, isn't she splendid?' Laura exclaimed, with proud inconsequence.
'And the worse she is the better she looks.'
'Oh my child, if the bad women looked as bad as they are----! It's only
the good ones who can afford that,' the old lady murmured.
'It was the last thing I ever thought of--that I should be ashamed,'
said Laura.
'Oh, keep your shame till you have more to do with it. It's like lending
your umbrella--when you have only one.'
'If anything were to happen--publicly--I should die, I should die!' the
girl exclaimed passionately and with a motion that carried her to her
feet. This time she settled herself for departure. Lady Davenant's
admonition rather frightened than sustained her.
The old woman leaned back in her chair, looking up at her. 'It would be
very bad, I daresay. But it wouldn't prevent me from taking you in.'
Laura Wing returned her look, with eyes slightly distended, musing.
'Think of having to come to that!'
Lady Davenant burst out laughing. 'Yes, yes, you must come; you are so
original!'
'I don't mean that I don't feel your kindness,' the girl broke out,
blushing. 'But to be only protected--always protected: is that a life?'
'Most women are only too thankful and I am bound to say I think you are
_difficile_.' Lady Davenant used a good many French words, in the
old-fashioned manner and with a pronunciation not perfectly pure: when
she did so she reminded Laura Wing of Mrs. Gore's novels. 'But you shall
be better protected than even by me. _Nous verrons cela._ Only you must
stop crying--this isn't a crying country.'
'No, one must have courage here. It takes courage to marry for such a
reason.'
'Any reason is good enough that keeps a woman from being an old maid.
Besides, you will like him.'
'He must like me first,' said the girl, with a sad smile.
'There's the American again! It isn't necessary. You are too proud--you
expect too much.'
'I'm proud for what I am--that's very certain. But I don't expect
anything,' Laura Wing declared. 'That's the only form my pride takes.
Please give my love to Mrs. Berrington. I am so sorry--so sorry,' she
went on, to change the talk from the subject of her marrying. She wanted
to marry but she wanted also not to want it and, above all, not to
appear to. She lingered in the room, moving about a little; the place
was always so pleasant to her that to go away--to return to her own
barren home--had the effect of forfeiting a sort of privilege of
sanctuary. The afternoon had faded but the lamps had been brought in,
the smell of flowers was in the air and the old house of Plash seemed to
recognise the hour that suited it best. The quiet old lady in the
firelight, encompassed with the symbolic security of chintz and
water-colour, gave her a sudden vision of how blessed it would be to
jump all the middle dangers of life and have arrived at the end, safely,
sensibly, with a cap and gloves and consideration and memories. 'And,
Lady Davenant, what does _she_ think?' she asked abruptly, stopping
short and referring to Mrs. Berrington.
'Think? Bless your soul, she doesn't do that! If she did, the things she
says would be unpardonable.'
'The things she says?'
'That's what makes them so beautiful--that they are not spoiled by
preparation. You could never think of them _for_ her.' The girl smiled
at this description of the dearest friend of her interlocutress, but she
wondered a little what Lady Davenant would say to visitors about _her_
if she should accept a refuge under her roof. Her speech was after all a
flattering proof of confidence. 'She wishes it had been you--I happen to
know that,' said the old woman.
'It had been me?'
'That Lionel had taken a fancy to.'
'I wouldn't have married him,' Laura rejoined, after a moment.
'Don't say that or you will make me think it won't be easy to help you.
I shall depend upon you not to refuse anything so good.'
'I don't call him good. If he were good his wife would be better.'
'Very likely; and if you had married him _he_ would be better, and
that's more to the purpose. Lionel is as idiotic as a comic song, but
you have cleverness for two.'
'And you have it for fifty, dear Lady Davenant. Never, never--I shall
never marry a man I can't respect!' Laura Wing exclaimed.
She had come a little nearer her old friend and taken her hand; her
companion held her a moment and with the other hand pushed aside one of
the flaps of the waterproof. 'And what is it your clothing costs you?'
asked Lady Davenant, looking at the dress underneath and not giving any
heed to this declaration.
'I don't exactly know: it takes almost everything that is sent me from
America. But that is dreadfully little--only a few pounds. I am a
wonderful manager. Besides,' the girl added, 'Selina wants one to be
dressed.'
'And doesn't she pay any of your bills?'
'Why, she gives me everything--food, shelter, carriages.'
'Does she never give you money?'
'I wouldn't take it,' said the girl. 'They need everything they
have--their life is tremendously expensive.'
'That I'll warrant!' cried the old woman. 'It was a most beautiful
property, but I don't know what has become of it now. _Ce n'est pas pour
vous blesser_, but the hole you Americans _can_ make----'
Laura interrupted immediately, holding up her head; Lady Davenant had
dropped her hand and she had receded a step. 'Selina brought Lionel a
very considerable fortune and every penny of it was paid.'
'Yes, I know it was; Mrs. Berrington told me it was most satisfactory.
That's not always the case with the fortunes you young ladies are
supposed to bring!' the old lady added, smiling.
The girl looked over her head a moment. 'Why do your men marry for
money?'
'Why indeed, my dear? And before your troubles what used your father to
give you for your personal expenses?'
'He gave us everything we asked--we had no particular allowance.'
'And I daresay you asked for everything?' said Lady Davenant.
'No doubt we were very dressy, as you say.'
'No wonder he went bankrupt--for he did, didn't he?'
'He had dreadful reverses but he only sacrificed himself--he protected
others.'
'Well, I know nothing about these things and I only ask _pour me
renseigner_,' Mrs. Berrington's guest went on. 'And after their reverses
your father and mother lived I think only a short time?'
Laura Wing had covered herself again with her mantle; her eyes were now
bent upon the ground and, standing there before her companion with her
umbrella and her air of momentary submission and self-control, she might
very well have been a young person in reduced circumstances applying for
a place. 'It was short enough but it seemed--some parts of it--terribly
long and painful. My poor father--my dear father,' the girl went on. But
her voice trembled and she checked herself.
'I feel as if I were cross-questioning you, which God forbid!' said Lady
Davenant. 'But there is one thing I should really like to know. Did
Lionel and his wife, when you were poor, come freely to your
assistance?'
'They sent us money repeatedly--it was _her_ money of course. It was
almost all we had.'
'And if you have been poor and know what poverty is tell me this: has it
made you afraid to marry a poor man?'
It seemed to Lady Davenant that in answer to this her young friend
looked at her strangely; and then the old woman heard her say something
that had not quite the heroic ring she expected. 'I am afraid of so many
things to-day that I don't know where my fears end.'
'I have no patience with the highstrung way you take things. But I have
to know, you know.'
'Oh, don't try to know any more shames--any more horrors!' the girl
wailed with sudden passion, turning away.
Her companion got up, drew her round again and kissed her. 'I think you
would fidget me,' she remarked as she released her. Then, as if this
were too cheerless a leave-taking, she added in a gayer tone, as Laura
had her hand on the door: 'Mind what I tell you, my dear; let her go!'
It was to this that the girl's lesson in philosophy reduced itself, she
reflected, as she walked back to Mellows in the rain, which had now come
on, through the darkening park.