SUSPENSE.
When the Rentons were all seated together in the drawing-room after
dinner, doing their best to get through the Sunday evening, a note was
brought to Mrs. Renton, to the amazement of all the family assembly.
Mrs. Westbury and her son Laurence, who was curate of Cookesley, had
joined them at dinner; and they were all seated in a circle round the
room drinking their tea and trying to talk, and suppressing an
occasional yawn with the true decorum of a family party. Sometimes there
would get up a little lively talk between Mary and her mother and
brother touching the gossip of the district, or Alice and Laurie would
brighten into a familiar discussion of something belonging to Fitzroy
Square; but then they would suddenly remark that the others were
uninterested and taking no part, and the talk would come to a stop, and
Mrs. Westbury would make a commonplace remark to one of her nephews, and
Alice would ask the curate if he went often to the Opera, and a
uniformity of dulness would fall upon the party. The Rentons were all
well-bred people, and it was certainly not well-bred to enjoy one’s self
in an animated way in a corner with two or three, while the rest of the
company sat blank and did not know what one was making merry about. To
be sure, there was Alice’s music to fall back upon; but, except to two
or three of the company, that would not much mend matters; so that when
the note was brought to Mrs. Renton there was immediately a little
movement of interest. Ben brought one of the shaded lamps to his mother
that she might read it, and Mary drew near in case her services should
be wanted to write the answer, for which the butler stood solemnly
waiting erect in the midst of the fatigued group.
‘It must be something very urgent indeed to write about to-day,’ Mrs.
Westbury said. ‘I am old-fashioned, and I don’t think the family quiet
should be disturbed on Sunday unless it is something of importance.’
‘My dear, I can’t read these dreadful hands that people write
now-a-days,’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘I can’t get the light on it, and I am
too tired to sit up. If you would read it aloud, Ben----’
Ben took the little note in his hand, and put the lamp down on the
nearest table. His face was in shade, and it was impossible to tell what
his feelings were. He glanced over the note for a second, and then read
it aloud as his mother bade. It was a prayer to be allowed to visit the
woods next morning with a friend who was going away, and it was signed
‘Millicent Rich.’ ‘I would not have dreamt of asking, knowing that you
have all your people about you, and do not want to be troubled with
strangers,’ she wrote; ‘but our friend is going off by the three o’clock
train. We shall keep strictly to the woods, and not come near the house
to worry you, when your attention must be so occupied with other things;
but please let me come.’ This was what Ben read out with a perfectly
expressionless voice, not even faltering over the name.
‘Of course she must come,’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘Mary, you must write a
note for me. Say that the boys being here makes no difference, and that
if she will come to luncheon and bring her friend----’
‘But, godmamma, Mr. Ponsonby is coming,’ said Mary, while Ben took up
the lamp, and stood like a monument, holding it in his hand.
‘Mr. Ponsonby will not eat her, I suppose,’ said Mrs. Renton; and then
there was a pause.
‘But, godmamma,’ Mary resumed after that interval, ‘don’t you think so
important a day as to-morrow is,--and so much as there will be going
on----’
‘Any stranger would be a bore,’ said Frank. ‘How are we to go and talk
and be civil, when an hour more may see us set up or ruined----’
Here Alice plucked at his sleeve, indicating with a look of warning the
stolid countenance of old Willis, who stood listening to everything. ‘If
it would be any pleasure to grandmamma, I would attend to them,’ she
said.
‘And I think it would be a very good thing for you all,’ said Mrs.
Westbury, ‘and take your minds off yourselves a little. It is a blessing
to have a stranger for that,--you are obliged to exert yourselves, and
kept from brooding over one subject. I think your mother is quite
right.’
‘Let us have them,’ said Laurie. ‘What does it matter? Old Ponsonby is
always late.’
‘He will surely never be late on an occasion of such importance,’ said
Laurence Westbury.
Mrs. Renton looked from one to another with an anxious countenance, and
they came round the sofa, glad of the little interruption to that family
quiet which was almost too much blessedness. Ben, who said nothing,
lighted up the circle in a curious Rembrandtish way, holding his lamp so
as to screen his mother; and outside stood old Willis, erect as a
soldier, with unmoved countenance, waiting for the answer.
‘Ben, what do you say?’ said Mrs. Renton, with all the earnestness of a
last appeal.
‘That you must do just what you like, mother,’ said Ben.
Upon which she wrung her hands in despair. ‘How can I tell what I shall
like if none of you will advise me?’ she said.
‘I will attend to them, if grandmamma would like it,’ said Alice, coming
to the head of the sofa. ‘And I am sure you would like it, dear
grandmamma; it would give you something else to think of.’
‘So it would, my dear,’ said Mrs. Renton, ready to cry; ‘and how I am to
get through to-morrow without some assistance is more than I can tell.’
‘It will take all your minds off the one subject,’ added Mrs. Westbury;
‘and of course there must always be luncheon. Mary, go and do what your
aunt tells you. It will be good, my dears, for you all.’
And Ben gave a little gesture with his hand, Mary caught his eye over
the glowing darkness of the shaded lamp, and went and wrote her note
without a word. Ben’s face had said, or seemed to say, ‘Let them
come,--what does it matter?’ And if it did not matter to him, certainly
it mattered nothing to any one else. When the note was despatched, Alice
sat down at the piano and played to the entire satisfaction of her
husband, his mother, and Laurence Westbury. Ben settled down in a
corner and took a book, till his aunt Lydia went and sat beside him,
when an earnest conversation ensued; and Laurie stood idling by the
window, beating back the moths that came in tribes to seek their
destruction in the light, and sometimes saying a word to Mary, who, half
occupied by the music and more than half by her own thoughts, sat near
him within the shadow of the curtains.
‘What sort of people are those that are coming to-morrow, and why don’t
you like them?’ said Laurie, under cover of a fortissimo.
‘I never said I did not like them,’ said Mary.
‘No; but I know you don’t. Who are they?’
And then the music fell low into tremulous, dying murmurs, and all was
silent in the room except for a shrill ‘s’ now and then of Mrs.
Westbury’s half-whispered energetic conversation with Ben. When the
strain rose and swelled into passion, the talk at the window was
resumed.
‘It is not they,--it is she I don’t like;--one of my old school-fellows,
and the most beautiful woman you ever saw.’
‘Hallo!’ said Laurie, ‘is that the reason why?’
‘Yes, of course. We should all like to strangle her because she is so
pretty,’ said Mary, with a certain rancour in her voice.
Laurie sent a great night-moth out with a rush, and then he stooped
towards his cousin’s hiding-place. ‘Granted in the general,’ he said,
‘but there is something particular about this.’
What could Mary say? Her heart was quivering with that poignant sense of
weakness and inability to resist fate which sometimes overcomes a woman
in those secret machinations for somebody else’s good, which are so
seldom successful. ‘I have done,’ she said; ‘I will try no more.’ And
that was all the answer that was given to Laurie’s curiosity.
Alice had not fallen off in her playing. The piano, under her fingers,
gave forth such sounds as wiled the very hearts out of the bosoms of the
three who were listening. Mrs. Renton lay back on her sofa, with the
tears coming to her eyes and a world of inarticulate, inexpressible
feeling in her heart. Had it been poetry, the poor lady would have
yawned and wished herself in bed; but now she had floated into a serene
Eden,--a Paradise full of all vague loveliness, and sweetness, and
unspeakable, indistinct emotions. As for Laurence Westbury, he dared
scarcely draw breath, so entirely did the witchery seize him. The music
to him stormed and struggled like a soul in pain, and paused and sank to
give forth the cry of despair, and swelled into a gathering hope, into a
final conflict, into delicious murmurs of sweetness and gratefulness and
repose; there was a whole drama in it, moving the real listener with
such a rapid succession of feeling as the highest tragic efforts of
poetry call forth in others. While in the meanwhile Ben and Aunt Lydia
talked quite undisturbed in their corner of railways and investments,
and of how much Renton might be improved, and how fast Dick Westbury was
making his fortune out in India; and Laurie was driving out the moths,
and moralising over their eagerness to enter, and thinking of anything
in the world rather than the music. Such were the strange differences of
sensibility and feeling among half-a-dozen people, all of one race.
A forlorn hope that it might rain next morning, and so prevent the
threatened invasion, was in Mary’s mind up to the last moment. She felt
as if, having thus failed in her own person, Providence must aid her to
save her cousin, the head of the house, who was of so much importance to
the family, from such a snare. But Providence refused, as Providence so
often does in what seems the most heart-breaking emergency, to aid the
plans of the schemer. As lovely a September morning as ever shone
brightened all the park and the trees under her windows as she gazed
out, unable to believe that she was thus abandoned of Heaven. But there
could be no mistake about it. It was a lovely day, enough to tempt any
one to the woods had there been no purpose of the kind beforehand; and
as if to aggravate her sense of the danger of the situation, Ben
himself was visible from her window, coming up the river-path in boating
costume, though it was only half-past seven in the morning. Had he been
on the river already at this ridiculous hour? Passing The Willows no
doubt, gazing at the closed windows, pleased with the mere fact of being
near her, though at such an hour no one, Mary assured herself with a
little scorn, had ever seen Millicent out of bed; and on such a day as
this, when all his prospects for life hung in the balance! But,
strangely enough, it never occurred to Mary in her womanish
pre-occupation to think that it might be the feverish excitement of the
crisis, and not any thought of Millicent, which had roused Ben and
driven him to try the tranquillising effects of bodily exertion.
Notwithstanding the atmosphere of family anxiety by which she was
surrounded, the fact was that Millicent’s visit was ten times more
important in Mary’s eyes than that of Mr. Ponsonby. The one did not cost
her a tenth part of the anxious cogitation called forth by the other. No
doubt the will would be read and everything settled, ill or well. Ben
would have Renton, as he ought; or Frank would have it, or it would be
settled somehow; but the effect of Millicent’s appearance would be to
unsettle everything. It would rouse up those embers of old love which
she felt were smouldering in Ben’s mind. Smouldering! How could she tell
that they were not blazing with all the warmth of present passion?
Else, why had he sallied out in the dawn of the morning only to pass by
the sleeping, shut-up house which contained the lady of his dreams? For
that he had gone out for this purpose, and no other, Mary felt as
certain as if she had watched him every step of the way. But there was
nothing now to be done but to submit, and to put the best face that was
possible upon it. Perhaps, indeed, if anything should occur so as that
Ben should not have Renton, it would no longer be an unmixed misfortune,
for it would take him out of Millicent’s way.
It was hard to tell whether it was a relief or an annoyance to find a
stranger at the breakfast-table when they all met down-stairs. ‘What a
nuisance!’ Frank said to his wife, feeling that Ben’s right-hand man was
not the sort of person to be admitted to familiar intercourse with the
family at such a moment. But Mary felt, on the whole, that Hillyard’s
unexpected appearance was a good thing for Ben. The stranger, who ought
to have arrived some days before, had been detained, and got down to
Cookesley on Sunday night, from whence it appeared Ben had gone down
early to fetch him, thus explaining, to the great consolation of his
guardian and watcher, his early expedition. Hillyard was very carefully
dressed, too carefully for the morning, and a little impressed by the
house and the circumstances. His beard had been trimmed and his
wardrobe renewed before he would follow his once _protégé_, and now
patron, to the Manor, and he was very anxious to make himself agreeable,
and justify his presence.
‘I know I should not have come at such a time,’ he explained to Mary; ‘I
told Renton so. Of course we have been so much together that I could not
but know why he was coming home.’
‘I do not think it makes any difference,’ said Mary. ‘I am sure my aunt
will always be glad to have any of Ben’s friends.’
‘It is very good of you to say so,’ Hillyard answered gratefully. And
then he began to tell her what a fine fellow her cousin was, and what a
head he had, and how he had mastered his profession while other men
would have been gaping at it. ‘He is master and I am man now,’ he said,
unconsciously using Ben’s words, ‘though I was brought up to it; and I
should just like you to see the beautiful work he puts out of his
hands.’
‘I daresay I should not understand it if I saw it,’ said Mary, smiling
behind the urn; but she lent a very willing ear, and thought Hillyard a
very nice person. Unquestionably he was a relief to the high strain of
suppressed feeling which appeared in every face at the table, except,
perhaps, Laurie’s, who, late as usual, came in, carrying the baby in his
arms, and did not mind.
‘Here is a little waif and stray I found wandering about the passages,’
he said. ‘Little Laurie, your mamma does not care about you to-day; you
had better stay with me.’
‘Doesn’t mamma care for him, the darling!’ cried Alice. And then the
child was picked up, having made a rush to her arms, and set up beside
her at table.
‘The heir-presumptive, I suppose?’ Hillyard said behind the urn; and
Mary began to think he was not quite so nice as she had thought him
before.
Then the members of the family dispersed, to kill this lingering, weary
forenoon as they best could. Ben and Hillyard went out together in
earnest conversation, and Laurie established himself in a shady corner
of the lawn, and made a group of Alice and her children, and began to
draw them; while Frank started off, as he said, for a long walk. Mr.
Ponsonby had announced that he was to come by the one o’clock train; but
there was another three-quarters of an hour later, and nobody who knew
him expected him to arrive by the first. And at half-past one Millicent
and her friend would come to luncheon. Such a conjunction of events was
very terrible to think of; though, perhaps, not so alarming to any one
as to Mary, who alone knew of the motives of the latter visit. She had
to go about her usual occupations all the same. She could not cheat the
sick expectations of her heart by joining the group on the lawn and
chatting with the children, nor could she rush forth to still her
anxieties by bodily exertion, like the boys. A woman, she thought to
herself, is always tied to the stake. She had to fulfil all her little
peaceful household occupations as if her heart was quite at ease, and
had not even any sympathy to support her, for what was it to her any one
could have said? They were all three her cousins, and it could not
matter very deeply to her which of them got Renton; and as for
Millicent, that was mere feminine jealousy, and nothing else,--so Mary
had to lock up her troubles carefully in her own breast.
It was only about a quarter past one when Millicent arrived at Renton,
and with her came her mother and her ‘friend,’ who was the young soldier
they had seen rowing her on the river. Mrs. Renton had just come
down-stairs, with Davison carrying her shawls and her worsted work, and
it was to her the visitors made their way. ‘Mr. Horsman is a connexion
of my poor husband’s,’ Millicent said with a decent sigh. ‘He is a
brother of Sir George Horsman, whom Nelly married. Nelly is my
sister-in-law, Mrs. Renton; but I suppose you know?’
‘Indeed I know very well,’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘It was she who we once
thought would have married Frank. Not that I am not perfectly satisfied
with Frank’s wife. She is certainly nice, and suits him admirably, which
of course is the great thing. But she had no money. And there was once a
time when he saw a great deal of Miss Rich.’
‘She was quite a catch,’ said Mrs. Tracy,--a word which wounded Mrs.
Renton’s ear.
‘I cannot say I looked upon it in that point of view; but the young
people were thrown in each other’s way a great deal,’ Mrs. Renton said
with some stateliness; and Millicent immediately rushed into the field.
‘I thought the Mr. Rentons had all arrived,’ she said, ‘and yet you are
alone;’ and cast an angry glance at Mary, as if demanding of her where
they were.
‘What has become of the boys?’ said Mrs. Renton, looking round her. ‘I
have only just come down. The fact is, it is a very exciting day for
them; we expect Mr. Ponsonby down immediately to read the will.’
Millicent and her mother exchanged glances. ‘Then the time is up?’ Mrs.
Tracy said meditatively, and bent with increasing solicitude over the
invalid on her sofa. ‘What a trial for you!’ she said, clasping her hand
in sympathy. And Mrs. Renton raised to her eyes that said unspeakable
things.
‘Ah! yes,’ she murmured; ‘but nobody thinks of me;’ and this balm of
consolation was sweet to her heart.
They all came dropping in a few minutes later to luncheon, and Ben and
Hillyard were among the first. ‘Ponsonby has not come by this train,’
said Ben, ‘but Frank is waiting at the station for the next.’ It was
hard not to feel as if Frank was doing the rest an injury by waiting to
have the first word with the lawyer; such, at least, was Mary’s
instinctive feeling. But her heart was weighted now with a more painful
anxiety still. She saw Ben give a brief, contemptuous glance at young
Horsman, whose position was not a comfortable one, and her heart sunk.
But then he turned away from Millicent,--avoided seeing her, indeed, in
a curious, visible way, and that was a consolation. Mrs. Tracy, however,
got up with effusion to shake hands with dear Mr. Renton, begging that
she might have a good look at him, to see if he was changed. ‘Not at all
changed,’ was her verdict. ‘Just the same generous face that once came
to our help in our troubles. Mr. Renton, do you know I may say you saved
my life?’
Then Millicent, too, rose, and, with a whole drama in her eyes, held out
her hand to him. There was regret, remorse, and a tender appeal for
pardon, and a sweet self-pity in those blue, shining eyes. They seemed
to say, ‘Be kind to me! Be sorry for me! I am so sorry for myself!’ But
it was hard to make out whether there was any answer in Ben’s looks.
She stood so turned towards him, holding out her hand, that he had no
choice but to draw near, and then she turned meaningly towards a vacant
chair at her side. He could not have gone away without rudeness, and Ben
was not disposed to be rude to anybody at such a moment of fate. He took
the seat accordingly, though with grave looks, and then there came a
gleam of triumph into Millicent’s eyes.
‘How curious we should have chanced to come here on this day of all
others,’ she said, her voice sinking to its softest tones. ‘You told me
of it the very last time we met; but, perhaps, Mr. Renton, you forget?’
‘Did I tell you of this?’ said Ben. ‘What a good memory you must have!
but there are some things I do not forget.’
‘Ah! something unkind about poor me, Mr. Renton! but if you knew what I
have had to go through since, you would not think anything unkind.’
‘I suppose we have all had a great deal to go through since,’ said Ben.
‘Seven years! it is a large slice out of one’s life; one’s ideas about
most things change immensely in seven years.’
‘Do they?’ said Millicent, looking at him with soft, appealing eyes.
‘Very much,’ said Ben, with a smile; ‘so much that one looks back with
amazement upon the follies one has been guilty of. A man says to
himself, “Is it possible I could have been such an ass?” Are ladies not
subject to the same effect of time?’
‘No;--ladies are more constant,’ said Millicent. ‘When our thoughts have
turned one way, it does not matter what happens, they always keep the
same. We may be obliged to change in outward appearance. We are not so
free as you gentlemen are. One’s friends or one’s circumstances sway one
sometimes, but in the heart we never change,--not half, oh! not a
quarter so much as you.’
‘That may be. I have no experience,’ said Ben.
‘But I have,’ said Millicent, ‘and I do so want to tell you. You know I
never was very happy in my circumstances, Mr. Renton. Mamma is very
kind, but she does not understand one’s feelings; and when she got me
abroad, she had me all in her own hands. Yes, you are quite right about
the change time makes. When I look back I cannot think how I could have
done it. But I was so young, and so used to obey mamma.’
‘And a very laudable principle, I am sure,’ said Ben, with a polite
little bow. ‘I beg your pardon--I thought I saw my brother and Mr.
Ponsonby coming up the avenue. You were saying,--something about
obedience,--I think?’
‘You do not think it worth while to listen to me,’ said Millicent.
‘Oh, yes, surely,--pray go on. I am full of interest,’ said Ben.
And then the poor creature looked at him with eyes which were pitiful in
the eagerness of their appeal. She was a mercenary, wretched woman,
ready to barter her beauty for comfort and wealth, and a fine house and
a good position; and yet there was still in Mrs. Henry Rich the same
redeeming possibility that there had been in Millicent Tracy. If he
would have taken her out of that slough of despond, she would have been
good, have made him a true wife, have grown a gentle lady, so far as it
was in her. To the bottom of her soul Millicent felt this,--just as many
a poor criminal feels that in other circumstances he would have been a
model of all virtue. And for her the matter was not one without
hope;--marriage to a woman may always be a new life,--and the seven
years had not dimmed her eyes, nor taken the roses from her cheeks. And
by those roses and bright eyes and lovely looks are not a woman’s fate
determined continually? Again, it was her last hope. For though
admiration was always sweet, yet to be troubled with a boy like this
young Guardsman, was irksome to Millicent in her maturity. And to go
through a round of such boys,--flattering, wooing them, being
wooed,--good heavens! was this all that fortune had in store for a
woman? Therefore she made one more effort before she yielded to fate.
‘You were more interested, Mr. Renton,’ she said, with soft reproach,
‘when we talked together last,--oh, so much more interested! If I did
not know you so well, I could scarcely think it was the same.’
‘That is true,’ said Ben; ‘but you taught me some things, Mrs. Rich, and
I profited by the lesson. I doubt whether but for your assistance I
could ever have been the man I am.’
‘Ah! then I have at least something to do with you?’ said Millicent.
‘Come and tell me, will you? It is not like London, where one was always
being interrupted. In the country there is so much time for talk.’
‘But I have no time,’ said Ben. ‘After to-morrow I shall probably go
away again; and when I tell you I have profited by your instructions, I
think that is all I have to say.’
‘You are angry with me because of,--because of,--poor Henry,’ said
Millicent, with tears coming to her eyes. ‘But ah, Mr. Renton!--ah, Ben,
if you only knew!’
Ben sprang impatiently to his feet. To him, as to any other generous
man, it felt like a personal pang and shame to see a woman thus
humiliate herself. He made a long step towards the window, with a flush
on his face. ‘Here they come!’ he said, though at the moment he was not
thinking much of their coming. And then there ensued a sudden
inevitable flutter in the family which affected the guests. Alice, who
had been charitably talking to the Guardsman, jumped up with a little
cry of excitement, and sat down again, ashamed of herself, but with all
possibilities of conversation quenched out of her; and Mrs. Renton, whom
Mrs. Tracy had been occupying to the best of her ability to leave
Millicent free for her important interview with Ben, was suddenly
overcome, and cried a little, lying back on her pillows. ‘Oh Ben, my
dear! I don’t know how I am to bear it,’ she said, holding fast by her
son’s hand. Laurie was the only one who was perfectly steady. He came
forward immediately from the background, and raised his mother up,
supporting her on his arm. ‘You will bear it beautifully, mamma, as you
always do,’ said Laurie. ‘Come and give us our luncheon. You forget we
are not alone.’
And he supported her into the dining-room, holding her hand caressingly
in his. As for Ben, he turned and gave his arm to Millicent, ‘As if I
had been a cabbage,’ she said afterwards, indignantly. None of her
pathetic glances, not the soft little pressure of her hand upon his arm,
gained the slightest response. His face was set and stern, full of
thoughts with which she had nothing to do. Mrs. Tracy ventured to
whisper as she followed, ‘Ah, how sweet it is to me to see you two
together again!’ But Ben did not even hear what she said. He waved his
hand to Mr. Ponsonby in the distance as he went across the hall. The
beautiful face at his side had no more effect upon him than if it had
been a hideous mask. He was absorbed in his own business, and careless
of her very existence. Millicent, in her fury, could have struck him as
he took her into the dining-room. Was this to be the end?