No man believes that many-textured knowledge and skill--as a just
idea of the solar system, or the power of painting flesh, or of
reading written harmonies--can come late and of a sudden; yet many
will not stick at believing that happiness can come at any day and
hour solely by a new disposition of events; though there is naught
less capable of a magical production than a mortal's happiness,
which is mainly a complex of habitual relations and dispositions
not to be wrought by news from foreign parts, or any whirling of
fortune's wheel for one on whose brow Time has written legibly.
Some days after Esther's arrival at Transome Court, Denner, coming to
dress Mrs. Transome before dinner--a labor of love for which she had
ample leisure now--found her mistress seated with more than ever of a
marble aspect of self-absorbed suffering, which to the waiting-woman's
keen observation had been gradually intensifying itself during the past
week. She had tapped at the door without having been summoned, and she
had ventured to enter though she had heard no voice saying, "Come in."
Mrs. Transome had on a dark warm dressing-gown, hanging in thick folds
about her, and she was seated before a mirror which filled a panel from
the floor to the ceiling. The room was bright with the light of the fire
and of wax candles. For some reason, contrary to her usual practice,
Mrs. Transome had herself unfastened her abundant gray hair, which
rolled backward in a pale sunless stream over her dark dress. She was
seated before the mirror apparently looking at herself, her brow knit in
one deep furrow, and her jewelled hands laid one above the other on her
knee. Probably she had ceased to see the reflection in the mirror, for
her eyes had the fixed wide-open look that belongs not to examination,
but to reverie. Motionless in that way, her clear-cut features keeping
distinct record of past beauty, she looked like an image faded, dried,
and bleached by uncounted suns, rather than a breathing woman who had
numbered the years as they passed, and had a consciousness within her
which was the slow deposit of those ceaseless rolling years.
Denner, with all her ingrained and systematic reserve, could not help
showing signs that she was startled, when, peering from between her
half-closed eyelids, she saw the motionless image in the mirror opposite
to her as she entered. Her gentle opening of the door had not roused her
mistress, to whom the sensations produced by Denner's presence were as
little disturbing as those of a favorite cat. But the slight cry, and
the start reflected in the glass, were unusual enough to break the
reverie, Mrs. Transome moved, leaned back in her chair, and said--
"So you're come at last, Denner?"
"Yes, madam; it is not late. I'm sorry you should have undone your hair
yourself."
"I undid it to see what an old hag I am. These fine clothes you put on
me, Denner, are only a smart shroud."
"Pray don't talk so, madam. If there's anybody doesn't think it pleasant
to look at you, so much the worse for them. For my part, I've seen no
young ones fit to hold up your train. Look at your likeness down below;
and though you're older now, what signifies? I wouldn't be Letty in the
scullery because she's got red cheeks. She mayn't know she's a poor
creature, but I know it, and that's enough for me; I know what sort of a
dowdy draggletail she'll be in ten years' time. I would change with
nobody, madam. And if troubles were put up to market, I'd sooner buy old
than new. It's something to have seen the worst."
"A woman never has seen the worst till she is old, Denner," said Mrs.
Transome, bitterly.
The keen little waiting-woman was not clear as to the cause of her
mistress's added bitterness; but she rarely brought herself to ask
questions, when Mrs. Transome did not authorize them by beginning to
give her information. Banks the bailiff and the head-servant had nodded
and winked a good deal over the certainty that Mr. Harold was "none so
fond" of Jermyn, but this was a subject on which Mrs. Transome had never
made up her mind to speak, and Denner knew nothing definite. Again, she
felt quite sure that there was some important secret connected with
Esther's presence in the house; she suspected that the close Dominic
knew the secret, and was more trusted than she was, in spite of her
forty years' service; but any resentment on this ground would have been
an entertained reproach against her mistress, inconsistent with Denner's
creed and character. She inclined to the belief that Esther was the
immediate cause of the new discontent.
"If there's anything worse coming to you, I should like to know what it
is, madam," she said, after a moment's silence, speaking always in the
same low quick way, and keeping up her quiet labors. "When I awake at
cock-crow, I'd sooner have one real grief on my mind than twenty false.
It's better to know one's robbed than to think one's going to be
murdered."
"I believe you are the creature in the world that loves me best, Denner;
yet you will never understand what I suffer. It's of no use telling you.
There's no folly in you, and no heartache. You are made of iron. You
have never had any trouble."
"I've had some of your trouble, madam."
"Yes, you good thing. But as a sick-nurse, that never caught the fever.
You never even had a child."
"I can feel for things I never went through. I used to be sorry for the
poor French Queen when I was young; I'd have lain cold for her to lie
warm. I know people have feelings according to their birth and station.
And you always took things to heart, madam, beyond anybody else. But I
hope there's nothing new, to make you talk of the worst."
"Yes, Denner, there is--there is," said Mrs. Transome, speaking in a low
tone of misery, while she bent for her head-dress to be pinned on.
"Is it this young lady?"
"Why, what do you think about her, Denner?" said Mrs. Transome, in a
tone of more spirit, rather curious to hear what the old woman would
say.
"I don't deny she's graceful, and she has a pretty smile and very good
manners: it's quite unaccountable by what Banks says about her father. I
know nothing of those Treby townsfolk myself, but for my part I'm
puzzled. I'm fond of Mr. Harold. I always shall be, madam. I was at his
bringing into the world, and nothing but his doing wrong by you would
turn me against him. But the servants all say he's in love with Miss
Lyon."
"I wish it were true, Denner," said Mrs. Transome, energetically. "I
wish he were in love with her, so that she could master him, and make
him do what she pleased."
"Then it is not true--what they say?"
"Not true that she will ever master him. No woman ever will. He will
make her fond of him, and afraid of him. That's one of the things you
have never gone through, Denner. A woman's love is always freezing into
fear. She wants everything, she is secure of nothing. This girl has a
fine spirit--plenty of fire and pride and wit. Men like such captives,
as they like horses that champ the bit and paw the ground: they feel
more triumph in their mastery. What is the use of a woman's will?--if
she tries, she doesn't get it, and she ceases to be loved. God was cruel
when He made women."
Denner was used to such outbursts as this. Her mistress's rhetoric and
temper belonged to her superior rank, her grand person, and her piercing
black eyes. Mrs. Transome had a sense of impiety in her words which made
them all the more tempting to her impotent anger. The waiting-woman had
none of that awe which could be turned into defiance: the Sacred Grove
was a common thicket to her.
"It mayn't be good luck to be a woman," she said. "But one begins with
it from a baby: one gets used to it. And I shouldn't like to be a
man--to cough so loud, and stand straddling about on a wet day, and be
so wasteful with meat and drink. They're a coarse lot, I think. Then I
needn't make a trouble of this young lady, madam," she added, after a
moment's pause.
"No, Denner, I like her. If that were all--I should like Harold to marry
her. It would be the best thing. If the truth were known--and it will be
known soon--the estate is hers by law--such law as it is. It's a strange
story: she's a Bycliffe really."
Denner did not look amazed, but went on fastening her mistress's dress,
as she said--
"Well, madam, I was sure there was something wonderful at the bottom of
it. And turning the old lawsuits and everything else over in my mind, I
thought the law might have something to do with it. Then she is a born
lady?"
"Yes; she has good blood in her veins."
"We talked that over in the housekeeper's room--what a hand and an
instep she has, and how her head is set on her shoulders--almost like
your own, madam. But her lightish complexion spoils her, to my thinking.
And Dominic said Mr. Harold never admired that sort of woman before.
There's nothing that smooth fellow couldn't tell you if he would: he
knows the answer to riddles before they're made. However, he knows how
to hold his tongue; I'll say that for him. And so do I, madam."
"Yes, yes; you will not talk of it till other people are talking of it."
"And so, if Mr. Harold married her, it would save all fuss and
mischief?"
"Yes--about the estate."
"And he seems inclined; and she'll not refuse him, I'll answer for it.
And you like her, madam. There's everything to set your mind at rest."
Denner was putting the finishing-touch to Mrs. Transome's dress by
throwing an Indian scarf over her shoulders, and so completing the
contrast between the majestic lady in costume and the dishevelled
Hecuba-like woman whom she had found half an hour before.
"I am not at rest!" Mrs. Transome said, with slow distinctness, moving
from the mirror to the window, where the blind was not drawn down, and
she could see the chill white landscape and the far-off unheeding stars.
Denner, more distressed by her mistress's suffering than she could have
been by anything else, took up with the instinct of affection a gold
vinaigrette which Mrs. Transome often liked to carry with her, and going
up to her put it into her hand gently. Mrs. Transome grasped the little
woman's hand hard, and held it so.
"Denner," she said, in a low tone, "if I could choose at this moment, I
would choose that Harold should never have been born."
"Nay, my dear," (Denner had only once before in her life said "my dear"
to her mistress), "it was a happiness to you then."
"I don't believe I felt the happiness then as I feel the misery now. It
is foolish to say people can't feel much when they are getting old. Not
pleasure, perhaps--little comes. But they can feel they are
forsaken--why, every fibre in me seems to be a memory that makes a pang.
They can feel that all the love in their lives is turned to hatred or
contempt."
"Not mine, madam, not mine. Let what would be I should want to live for
your sake, for fear you should have nobody to do for you as I would."
"Ah, then you are a happy woman, Denner; you have loved somebody for
forty years who is old and weak now, and can't do without you."
The sound of the dinner-gong resounded below, and Mrs. Transome let the
faithful hand fall again.