“I have read in the marvellous heart of man,
That strange and mystic scroll,
That an army of phantoms vast and wan
Beleaguer the human soul.
“Encamped beside life’s rushing stream,
In Fancy’s misty light,
Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam
Portentous through the night.”
The Beleaguered City, LONGFELLOW.
A dinner party at the Deanery in the sessions week was an institution,
but Rachel, lying on the sofa in a cool room, had thought herself exempt
from it, and was conscious for the time of but one wish, namely, to be
let alone, and to be able to shut her eyes, without finding the lids, as
it were, lined with tiers of gazing faces, and curious looks turned on
her, and her ears from the echo of the roar of fury that had dreadfully
terrified both her and her mother, and she felt herself to have merited!
The crush of public censure was not at the moment so overwhelming as
the strange morbid effect of having been the focus of those many, many
glances, and if she reflected at all, it was with a weary speculating
wonder whether one pair of dark grey eyes had been among those levelled
at her. She thought that if they had, she could not have missed either
their ironical sting, or perchance some kindly gleam of sympathy, such
as had sometimes surprised her from under the flaxen lashes.
There she had lain, unmolested and conscious of a certain relief in the
exceeding calm; the grey pinnacle of the cathedral, and a few branches
of an elm-tree alone meeting her eye through the open window, and the
sole sound the cawing of the rooks, whose sailing flight amused and
attracted her glance from time to time with dreamy interest. Grace had
gone into court to hear Maria Hatherton’s trial, and all was still.
The first break was when her mother and Miss Wellwood came in, after
having wandered gently together round the warm, walled Deanery garden,
comparing notes about their myrtles and geraniums. Then it was that amid
all their tender inquiries after her headache, and their administration
of afternoon tea, it first broke upon Rachel that they expected her to
go down to dinner.
“Pray excuse me,” she said imploringly, looking at her mother for
support, “indeed, I don’t know that I could sit out a dinner! A number
of people together make me so dizzy and confused.”
“Poor child!” said Miss Wellwood, kindly, but looking to Mrs. Curtis
in her turn. “Perhaps, as she has been so ill, the evening might be
enough.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Rachel, “I hope to be in bed before you have finished
dinner. Indeed I am not good company for any one.”
“Don’t say that, my dear,” and Miss Wellwood looked puzzled.
“Indeed, my dear,” said Mrs. Curtis, evidently distressed, “I think the
exertion would be good for you, if you could only think so.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Miss Wellwood, catching at the notion; “it is your
mind that needs the distraction, my dear.”
“I am distracted enough already,” poor Rachel said, putting her hand up.
“Indeed, I do not want to be disobliging,” she said, interpreting her
mother’s anxious gestures to mean that she was wanting in civility; “it
is very kind in you, Miss Wellwood, but this has been a very trying day,
and I am sure I can give no pleasure to anybody, so if I might only be
let off.”
“It is not so much—” began Miss Wellwood, getting into a puzzle, and
starting afresh. “Indeed, my dear, my brother and I could not bear that
you should do anything you did not like, only you see it would never do
for you to seem to want to shut yourself up.”
“I should think all the world must feel as if I ought to be shut up for
life,” said Rachel, dejectedly.
“Ah! but that is the very thing. If you do not show yourself it will
make such a talk.”
Rachel had nearly said, “Let them talk;” but though she felt tormented
to death, habitual respect to these two gentle, nervous, elderly women
made her try to be courteous, and she said, “Indeed, I cannot much care,
provided I don’t hear them.”
“Ah! but you don’t know, my dear,” said Mrs. Curtis, seeing her friend
looked dismayed at this indifference. “Indeed, dear Miss Wellwood, she
does not know; we thought it would be so awkward for her in court.”
“Know what?” exclaimed Rachel, sitting upright, and putting down her
feet. “What have you been keeping from me?”
“Only—only, my dear, people will say such things, and nobody could
think it that knew you.”
“What?” demanded Rachel.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Curtis, perhaps, since her daughter was to have the
shock, rather glad to have a witness to the surprise it caused her: “you
know people will gossip, and some one has put it about that—that this
horrid man was—”
Mrs. Curtis paused, Miss Wellwood was as pink as her cap strings. Rachel
grasped the meaning at last. “Oh!” she said, with less reticence than
her elders, “there must needs be a spice of flirtation to give piquancy
to the mess of gossip! I don’t wonder, there are plenty of people
who judge others by themselves, and think that motive must underlie
everything! I wonder who imagines that I am fallen so low?”
“There, I knew she would take it in that way,” said Mrs. Curtis. “And so
you understand us, my dear, we could not bear to ask you to do anything
so distressing except for your own sake.”
“I am far past caring for my own sake,” said Rachel, “but for yours and
Grace’s, mother, I will give as much ocular demonstration as I can, that
I am not pining for this hero with a Norman name. I own I should have
thought none of the Dean’s friends would have needed to be convinced.”
“Oh, no! no! but—” Miss Wellwood made a great confusion of noes, buts,
and my dears, and Mrs. Curtis came to the rescue. “After all, my love,
one can’t so much wonder! You have always been very peculiar, you know,
and so clever, and you took up this so eagerly. And then the Greys saw
you so unwilling to prosecute. And—and I have always allowed you too
much liberty—ever since your poor dear papa was taken—and now it has
come upon you, my poor child! Oh, I hope dear Fanny will take warning by
me,” and off went poor Mrs. Curtis into a fit of sobs.
“Mother—mother! this is worse than anything,” exclaimed Rachel in an
agony, springing to her feet, and flying after sal volatile, but feeling
frightfully helpless without Grace, the manager of all Mrs. Curtis’s
ailments and troubles. Grace would have let her quietly cry it out.
Rachel’s remedies and incoherent protestations of all being her own
fault only made things worse, and perhaps those ten minutes were the
most overwhelming of all the griefs that Rachel had brought on herself.
However, what with Miss Wellwood’s soothing, and her own sense of the
becoming, Mrs. Curtis struggled herself into composure again by the time
the maid came to dress them for dinner; Rachel all the while longing for
Grace’s return, not so much for the sake of hearing the verdict, as of
knowing whether the mother ought to be allowed to go down to dinner, so
shaken did she look; for indeed, besides her distress for her daughter,
no small ingredient in her agitation was this recurrence to a stated
custom of her husband’s magisterial days.
Persuasion was unavailing. At any cost the Curtis family must present
an unassailable front to the public eye, and if Mrs. Curtis had forced
forward her much tried and suffering daughter, far more would she
persist in devoting herself to gaiety and indifference, but her
nervousness was exceeding, and betrayed itself in a continual wearying
for Grace, without whom neither her own dress nor Rachel’s could be
arranged to her satisfaction, and she was absolutely incapable of not
worrying Rachel about every fold, every plait, every bow, in a manner
that from any one else would have been unbearable; but those tears
had frightened Rachel into a penitent submission that endured with an
absolute semblance of cheerfulness each of these torments. The languor
and exhaustion had been driven away, and feverish excitement had set in,
not so much from the spirit of defiance that the two elder ladies had
expected to excite, as from the having been goaded into a reckless
determination to sustain her part. No matter for the rest.
It often happened in these parties that the ladies would come in from
the country in reasonable time, while their lords would be detained
much later in court, so when the cathedral clock had given notice of
the half-hour, Mrs. Curtis began to pick up fan and handkerchief, and
prepare to descend. Rachel suggested there would be no occasion so to
do till Grace’s return, since it was plain that no one could yet be
released.
“Yes, my dear, but perhaps—don’t you think it might be remarked as if
you chose to keep out of sight?”
“Oh, very well.”
Rachel followed her mother down, sustained by one hope, that Captain
Keith would be there. No; the Deanery did not greatly patronize the
barracks; there was not much chance of any gentleman under forty,
except, perhaps, in the evening. And at present the dean himself and
one canon were the entire gentleman element among some dozen ladies.
Everybody knew that the cause of delay was the trial of the cruel
matron, and added to the account of Rachel’s iniquities their famished
and weary state of expectation, the good Dean gyrating among the groups,
trying to make conversation, which every one felt too fretful and
too hungry to sustain with spirit. Rachel sat it out, trying to talk
whenever she saw her mother’s anxious eyes upon her, but failing in
finding anything to say, and much doubting whether her neighbours liked
talking to her.
At last gentlemen began to appear in twos and threes, and each made some
confidence to the womankind that first absorbed him, but no one came in
Rachel’s way, and the girl beside her became too unfeignedly curious to
support even the semblance of conversation, but listened for scraps of
intelligence. Something was flying about respecting “a gentleman
who came down by the train,” and something about “Lady Temple” and
“admirable,” and the young lady seized the first opportunity of
deserting Rachel, and plunging into the melee. Rachel sat on, sick with
suspense, feeling utterly unable to quit her seat. Still they waited,
the whole of the party were not arrived, and here was the curfew
ringing, and that at the Deanery, which always felt injured if it were
seven o’clock before people were in the dining-room! Grace must be
upstairs dressing, but to reach her was impossible!
At last Mr. Grey was announced, and he had mercy upon Rachel; he came up
to her as soon as he could without making her remarkable, and told her
the cause of his delay had been the necessity of committing Mauleverer
upon an accusation by a relation of Colonel Keith, of very extensive
frauds upon Miss Williams’s brother. Rachel’s illness and the caution
of the Williamses had prevented her from being fully aware of the
complication of their affairs with her own, and she became paler and
paler, as she listened to the partial explanation, though she was hardly
able as yet to understand it.
“The woman?” she asked.
“Sentenced to a year’s imprisonment with hard labour, and let me tell
you, Rachel, you had a most narrow escape there! If that army doctor had
not come in time to see the child alive, they could not have chosen
but have an inquest, and no mortal can tell what might have been the
decision about your homoeopathy. You might have been looking forward to
a worse business than this at the next assizes.”
Mr. Grey had done his work at last! The long waiting, the weary
constraint, and at last the recurrence of Lovedy’s sufferings and her
own share in them, entirely overcame her. Mists danced before her eyes,
and the very sensation that had been so studiously avoided was produced
by her fainting helplessly away in her chair, while Mr. Grey was talking
to her.
To be sure it brought deliverance from the multitude, and she awoke
in the quiet of her room, upon her bed, in the midst of the despairing
compunction of the mother, and the tender cares of Grace, but she
was too utterly overdone for even this to be much relief to her; and
downstairs poor Miss Wellwood’s one desire was to hinder the spread of
the report that her swoon had been caused by the tidings of Mauleverer’s
apprehension. It seemed as if nothing else had been wanting to make the
humiliation and exposure complete. Rachel had despised fainting ladies,
and had really hitherto been so superabundant in strength that she had
no experience of the symptoms, or she might have escaped in time. But
there she lay, publicly censured before the dignitaries of her county
for moral folly, and entirely conquered before the rest of the world by
the physical weakness she had most contemned.
Then the mother was so terrified and distressed that all sorts of
comforting reassurances were required, and the chief object soon became
to persuade her to go downstairs and leave Rachel to her bed. And at
last the thought of civility and of the many Mrs. Grundys prevailed, and
sent her downstairs, but there was little more comfort for Rachel even
in being left to herself—that for which she had a few minutes before
most ardently longed.
That night was perhaps the most painful one of her whole life. The
earnest desire to keep her mother from uneasiness, and the longing to be
unmolested, made her play her part well when the mother and Grace came
up to see her before going to bed, and they thought she would sleep off
her over-fatigue and excitement, and yielded to her desire that they
should bid her good night, and leave her to rest.
But what sort of rest was it? Sometimes even her own personal identity
was gone, and she would live over again in the poor children, the
hunger and the blows, or she would become Mrs. Rawlins, and hear herself
sentenced for the savage cruelty, or she would actually stand in court
under sentence for manslaughter. Her pulses throbbed up to fever pitch,
head and cheeks burnt, the very power to lie still was gone, and whether
she commanded her thoughts or lapsed into the land of dreams, they
worked her equal woe.
Now it was the world of gazing faces, feverishly magnified, multiplied,
and pressing closer and closer on her, till she could have screamed to
dispel them; now it was her mother weeping over the reports to which she
had given occasion, and accusing herself of her daughter’s errors; and
now it was Lovedy Kelland’s mortal agony, now the mob, thirsting for
vengeance, were shouting for justice on her, as the child’s murderer,
and she was shrieking to Alick Keith to leave her to her fate, and only
save her mother.
It would hardly be too much to say that the positive wretchedness of
actually witnessing the child’s death was doubled in these its imaginary
repetitions on that still more suffering night of waking dreams, when
every solemn note of the cathedral clock, every resolute proclamation
from its fellow in the town hall, every sharp reply from the domestic
timepiece in the Deanery fell on her ears, generally recalling her
at least to full consciousness of her identity and whereabouts, and
dispelling the delusion.
But, then, what comfort was there? Veritably she had caused suffering
and death; she had led to the peril of Fanny’s children; she had
covered her mother with shame and grief! Nay, in her exaggerated tone of
feeling, she imagined that distress and poverty might have been entailed
on that beloved mother. Those title deeds—no intelligence. Captain
Keith had taken no notice. Perhaps he heard and believed those degrading
reports! He had soul enough to pity and sympathize with the failure of
extended views of beneficence; he despised the hypocrisy that had made
charity a cloak for a credulous debasing attachment, and to such an
object! He might well avoid her! His sister had always bantered her
on what had seemed too absurd to be rebutted, and, at any rate, this
fainting fit would clench his belief. No doubt he believed it. And if he
did, why should not every one else whose opinion she cared for: Ermine,
her Colonel, even gentle Fanny—no, she would never believe any harm,
she had suffered too much in her cause.
Oh, for simple genuine charity like Fanny’s, with eyes clear with
innocence and humility! And now what was before her? should she ever be
allowed to hide her head, or should she be forced again to brave that
many-eyed world? Perhaps the title-deed business would prove utter ruin.
It would have been acceptable to herself, but her mother and sister!
Chastisement! Yes, it was just chastisement for headstrong folly and
conceit. She had heard of bending to the rod and finding it a cross, but
here came the dreadful confusion of unreality, and of the broken habit
of religious meditation except as matter of debate. She did not know
till her time of need how deeply sneers had eaten into her heart. The
only text that would come to her mind was, “And in that day they shall
roar against them like the roaring of the sea; and if one look unto
the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in
the heavens thereof.” Every effort at prayer or at calm recall of old
thoughts still ended in that desolate verse. The first relief to these
miserable dreams was the cool clear morning light, and by-and-by
the early cathedral bells, then Grace’s kind greeting made her quite
herself; no longer feverish, but full of lassitude and depression. She
would not listen to Grace’s entreaties that she would remain in bed. No
place was so hateful to her, she said, and she came down apparently not
more unwell than had been the case for many days past, so that after
breakfast her mother saw no reason against leaving her on the sofa,
while going out to perform some commissions in the town, attended,
of course, by Grace. Miss Wellwood promised that she should not be
disturbed, and she found that she must have been asleep, for she was
taken by surprise by the opening of the door, and the apologetic face
of the butler, who told her that a gentleman had asked if she would see
him, and presented the card of “Captain Alexander Keith.”
Eagerly she desired that he should be admitted, tremulously she awaited
his sentence upon her mother’s peace, and, as she thought of all he must
have heard, all he must believe, she felt as if she must flee; or, if
that were impossible, cower in shrinking dread of the glance of his
satirical eye!
Here he was, and she could not look or speak, nor did he; she only felt
that his clasp of greeting was kind, was anxious, and he put forward the
easy-chair, into which she sank, unable to stand. He said, “I saw your
mother and sister going into the town. I thought you would like to hear
of this business at once.”
“Oh yes, thank you.”
“I could not see the man till the day before yesterday,” he said, “and I
could get nothing satisfactory from him. He said he had taken the papers
to a legal friend, but was not authorized to give his name. Perhaps his
views may be changed by his present condition. I will try him again if
you like.”
“Thank you, thank you! Do you think this is true!”
“He is too cunning a scoundrel to tell unnecessary lies, and very likely
he may have disposed of them to some Jew attorney; but I think nothing
is to be feared but some annoyance.”
“And annoyance to my mother is the one thing I most fear,” sighed
Rachel, helplessly.
“There might be a mode of much lessening it to her,” he said.
“Oh, what? Tell me, and I would do it at any cost.”
“Will you?” and he came nearer. “At the cost of yourself?”
She thrilled all over, and convulsively grasped the arm of her chair.
“Would not a son be the best person to shield her from annoyance,” he
added, trying for his usual tone, but failing, he exclaimed, “Rachel,
Rachel, let me!”
She put her hands over her face, and cried, “Oh! oh! I never thought of
this.”
“No,” he said, “and I know what you do think of it, but indeed you need
not be wasted. Our women and children want so much done for them, and
none of our ladies are able or willing. Will you not come and help me?”
“Don’t talk to me of helping! I do nothing but spoil and ruin.”
“Not now! That is all gone and past. Come and begin afresh.”
“No, no, I am too disagreeable.”
“May not I judge for myself?” he said, drawing nearer, and his voice
falling into tremulous tenderness.
“Headstrong—overbearing.”
“Try,” and his smile overbore her.
“Oh no, no, nobody can bear me! This is more than you—you ought to
do—than any one should,” she faltered, not knowing what she said.
“Than any one to whom you were not most dear!” was the answer, and he
was now standing over her, with the dew upon his eyelashes.
“Oh, that can’t be. Bessie said you always took up whatever other people
hated, and I know it is only that—”
“Don’t let Bessie’s sayings come between us now, Rachel. This goes too
deep,” and he had almost taken her hand, when with a start she drew it
back, saying, “But you know what they say!”
“Have they been stupid enough to tell you?” he exclaimed. “Confute them
then, Rachel—dolts that can’t believe in self-devotion! Laugh at their
beards. This is the way to put an end to it!”
“Oh no, they would only detest you for my sake. I can’t,” she said
again, bowed down again with shame and dejection.
“I’ll take care of that!” he said with the dry tone that perhaps was
above all reassurance, and conquered her far enough to enable him to
take possession of the thin and still listless hand.
“Then,” he said, “you will let me take this whole matter in hand; and if
the worst comes to the worst, we will make up to the charity out of the
Indian money, without vexing the mother.”
“I can’t let you suffer for my miserable folly.”
“Too late to say that!” he answered; and as her eyes were raised to him
in startled inquiry, he said gravely, “These last weeks have shown me
that your troubles must be mine.”
A hand was on the door, and Rachel fled, in time to screen her flight
from Miss Wellwood, whom Alick met with his usual undisturbed front, and
inquiries for Mrs. Curtis.
That good lady was in the town more worried than flattered by the
numerous inquiries after Rachel’s health, and conscious of having gone
rather near the wind in making the best of it. She had begun to dread
being accosted by any acquaintance, and Captain Keith, sauntering near
the archway of the close, was no welcome spectacle. She would have
passed him with a curt salutation, but he grasped her hand, saying, “May
I have a few words with you?”
“Not Fanny—not the children!” cried Mrs. Curtis in dismay.
“No indeed. Only myself,” and a gleam of intelligence under his
eyelashes and judicious pressure of his hand conveyed volumes to Grace,
who had seen him often during Rachel’s illness, and was not unprepared.
She merely said that she would see how her sister was, substituted
Captain Keith’s arm for her own as her mother’s support, and hurried
away, to encounter Miss Wellwood’s regrets that, in spite of all her
precautions, dear Rachel had been disturbed by “a young officer, I
believe. We see him often at the cathedral, and somebody said it was his
sister whom Lord Keith married.”
“Yes, we know him well, and he is a Victoria Cross man,” said Grace,
beginning to assume his reflected glory.
“So some one said, but the Dean never calls on the officers unless there
is some introduction, or there would be no end to it. It was a mistake
letting him in to disturb Rachel. Is your mother gone up to her, my
dear?”
“No, I think she is in the cathedral yard. I just came in to see about
Rachel,” said Grace, escaping.
Miss Wellwood intended going out to join her old friend; but, on going
to put on her bonnet, she saw from the window Mrs. Curtis, leaning on
the intruder’s arm, conversing so confidentially that the Dean’s sister
flushed with amazement, and only hoped she had mentioned him with due
respect. And under that southern cathedral wall good Mrs. Curtis took
the longest walk she had indulged in for the last twenty years, so that
Grace, and even Rachel, beholding from the window, began to fear that
the mother would be walked to death.
But then she had that supporting arm, and the moral support, that was
infinitely more! That daughter, the spoilt pet of her husband, the
subject of her pride, even when an enigma and an anxiety, whom she had
lately been forced to think of as
“A maid whom there were few to praise
And very few to love,”
she now found loved by one at least, and praised in terms that thrilled
through and through the mother’s heart in their truth and simplicity,
for that sincerity, generosity, and unselfishness. It was her own
daughter, her real Rachel, no illusion, that she heard described in
those grave earnest words, only while the whole world saw the errors and
exaggerated them, here was one who sank them all in the sterling worth
that so few would recognise. The dear old lady forgot all her prudence,
and would hardly let him speak of his means; but she soon saw that
Rachel’s present portion would be more than met on his side, and that no
one could find fault with her on the score of inequality of fortune. He
would have been quite able to retire, and live at ease, but this he
said at once and with decision he did not intend. His regiment was his
hereditary home, and his father had expressed such strong wishes that
he should not lightly desert his profession, that he felt bound to it by
filial duty as well as by other motives. Moreover, he thought the change
of life and occupation would be the best thing for Rachel, and Mrs.
Curtis could not but acquiesce, little as she had even dreamt that a
daughter of hers would marry into a marching regiment! Her surrender of
judgment was curiously complete. “Dear Alexinder,” as thenceforth she
called him had assumed the mastery over her from the first turn they
took under the cathedral, and when at length he reminded her that
the clock was on the stroke of one, she accepted it on his infallible
judgment, for her own sensations would have made her believe it not a
quarter of an hour since the interview had begun.
Not a word had been granted on either side to the conventional vows of
secrecy, always made to be broken, and perhaps each tacitly felt that
the less secrecy the better for Rachel. Certain it is that Mrs. Curtis
went into the Deanery with her head considerably higher, kissed Rachel
vehemently, and, assuring her she knew all about it, and was happier
than she had ever thought to be again, excused her from appearing at
luncheon, and hurried down thereto, without giving any attention to a
feeble entreaty that she would not go so fast. And when at three o’clock
Rachel crept downstairs to get into the carriage for her return home,
the good old Dean lay in wait for her, told her she must allow him an
old friend’s privilege, kissed her, congratulated her, and said he would
beg to perform the ceremony.
“Oh, Mr. Dean, it is nothing like that.”
He laughed, and handed her in.
“Mother, mother, how could you?” sighed Rachel, as they drove on.
“My dear, they were so kind; they could not help knowing!”
“But it can’t be.”
“Rachel, my child, you like him!”
“He does not know half about me yet. Mother, don’t tell Fanny or any one
till I have seen him again.”
And the voice was so imperious with the wayward vehemence of illness
that Mrs. Curtis durst not gainsay it. She did not know how Alick Keith
was already silencing those who asked if he had heard of the great event
at the Dean’s party. Still less did she guess at the letter at that
moment in writing:—
“My Dear Bessie,—Wish me joy. I have gone in for the uncroquetable
lawn, and won it.—Your affectionate brother’,
“A. C. Keith.”