Mrs. Errington advanced towards her daughter-in-law with her habitual
serene stateliness, and Rhoda followed her, modestly, looking very
pretty in a new dress, the delicate hue of which set off her fair
complexion to great advantage. Castalia received them much as usual;
that is to say, without displaying any emotion whatever. But when Mrs.
Errington took her daughter-in-law's hand, she exclaimed, "Good
gracious, Castalia, how cold you are! A perfect frog! And yet this
little room of yours is very warm; oppressively warm to one coming from
without."
"We find the temperature so comfortable here!" said Violet. "Dear
Castalia always has her rooms deliciously warm, we think."
"Perhaps, Violet, you are chilly by nature. Some constitutions are so.
For myself, I have a wonderful circulation. But it is hereditary. All my
branch of the Ancrams were renowned for it. I don't know, my dear
Castalia, whether my cousin, Lady Seely, has the same peculiarity?"
"I don't know, I'm sure."
"With us it was a well-known thing among the Faculty for miles around
Ancram Park. Our extremities were never cold, nor had we ever red noses.
I believe a red nose was absolutely unknown in our family. No doubt that
was part of the same thing; perfect circulation of the blood."
With that Mrs. Errington sat down tolerably near the fire and made
herself comfortable. "Where is my dear boy?" she asked after a little
while. "Not at that dreadful office I hope and trust!"
"He is at home," replied Castalia, slowly. "I asked him to come into the
drawing-room, and he said he would by-and-by."
"Oh, I daresay he will come now, dear," said Rose McDougall, without
raising her eyes from her sewing.
"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Errington to her daughter-in-law, "and if he
does come 'now' you must not be jealous."
The two sisters glanced at the good lady in quick surprise, and then at
Rhoda. Rhoda was looking, for the hundredth time, at a book of prints.
It was her usual evening's occupation at Ivy Lodge. Mrs. Errington
proceeded, placid, smiling, and condescending as ever: "You must not be
jealous, Castalia, if he does come directly he learns that his mother
is here. To be sure a wife ranks first. I have always acknowledged that;
and, indeed, insisted on it. I am sure it was my own case with poor dear
Dr. Errington, who would never have dreamed of putting any human being
into competition with me. Still, allowances must be made for the very
peculiar and devoted attachment Algy has always felt for me. He is, and
ever was, an Ancram to the core. And this kind of--one may say
romantic--affection for their mothers has always distinguished the
scions of our house from time immemorial. Good evening, my dear Algy. I
find our dear Castalia looking a little worn and ill, and I tell her she
keeps her rooms too hot. What do you say?"
Algernon had sauntered into the room during his mother's harangue,
delivered in the full mellow voice that belonged to her, and now bent to
kiss the worthy lady's cheek as he greeted her. It was a cool, firm,
rosy cheek. Indeed, Mrs. Errington's freshness and bloom were in
singular opposition to Castalia's sallow haggardness, and made the elder
lady look doubly buxom and buoyant by the force of contrast.
"You're flourishing, at all events, _chère madame_," said Algernon,
looking at his mother with unfeigned satisfaction. It was a relief to
him to see a contented, smiling, comfortable countenance. Nevertheless,
although agreeable to look upon, Mrs. Errington was apt to become a
little wearisome in point of conversation, and her dutiful son cast his
eyes round the circle in search of a pleasant seat wherein to bestow
himself. But his glance met no response. Rose McDougall had drawn near
his wife, and after very stiffly returning his bow, had ceased to take
any notice of him, markedly avoiding his eye, and keeping silence after
he had spoken. Violet was divided between listening to the elder Mrs.
Errington and watching her sister. Castalia was more lazy, more silent,
more indifferent than usual. Algernon was as unaccustomed as a spoiled
child to be taken no notice of. He to stand among those women as a
person of secondary importance, not greeted, not flattered, not smiled
upon!
He looked across the group round the fire to Rhoda, who happened to
raise her eyes at that moment, and being taken by surprise at meeting
his, dropped them hastily, with a vivid blush. Rhoda's blushes were as
unmeaning as the smiles of an infant. The most trivial cause made her
change colour, as Algernon very well knew. But at least the soft bright
pink hue on pretty Rhoda's cheek showed some emotion, however slight or
transient, at the sight of him. And, moved partly by a boyish, pettish
resentment against the others, partly by the desire to hear a pleasant
voice and pleasant words, and look upon a pretty woman's face with its
delicate contour and fine subtle changes of tint, he walked across the
room and seated himself beside Rhoda Maxfield.
Castalia pushed her chair back out of the lamplight. "You can't see to
do your purse in that dark corner, Castalia," exclaimed Mrs. Errington.
"I don't want to do my purse. I'm sick of it."
"Naughty, fickle girl!" This was said playfully. Then in a loud whisper,
addressed to the McDougalls as well as to her daughter-in-law, Mrs.
Errington exclaimed, "Doesn't Rhoda look charming to-night? That pale
lilac is the very colour for her. Trying to skins that have the least
tinge of yellow in them, but she is so wonderfully fair! Dear me, it
reminds one of old times to see those two side by side. As children they
were always together."
No one responded. Violet McDougall fidgeted nervously on her chair and
cast an appealing look at her sister. She would have tried to lead Mrs.
Errington to talk of something else had she dared, but in Rose's
presence Violet never ventured to take the initiative; and, besides, she
was afraid of doing more harm than good, Mrs. Errington not being one of
those persons who take a hint easily. The silence of her three listeners
was no check to the worthy lady's eloquence. She continued to descant on
Rhoda's attractions, and graces, and good manners; she dropped hints of
the excellent opportunities Rhoda now had of "settling in life," only
that she was a little fastidious from long association with such refined
persons as the Erringtons, and had turned the cold shoulder to several
well-to-do wooers in her own rank of life; she related anecdotes of
Rhoda's early devotion to herself and her son, until Violet McDougall
muttered under her breath, in a paroxysm of nervous impatience, "One
would think the woman was doing it on purpose!"
Meanwhile Algernon was talking to Rhoda more freely and confidentially
than he had spoken to her for a long, long time. He was indulging in the
luxury of playing victim before a spectator whose pity would certainly
be admiring, not contemptuous. And, as he spoke, the old habit of
appealing to Rhoda, and confiding in Rhoda, and taking Rhoda's sympathy
for granted, resumed its power over him. There was no strain of
tenderness in his words. He said not a syllable that his wife and all
the world might not freely have listened to. He talked as a petted boy
might talk to an idolising sister--with a mixture of boastfulness and
repining, which he would have been ashamed to display to a man.
Rhoda listened with sorrowful interest. How could it be that Algernon
should have to endure all these troubles and mortifications? He was so
clever, so accomplished, so highly connected, had such great and
powerful relations! It appeared natural enough that folks like Mrs.
Thimbleby, and the Gladwishes, and even her brother Seth, should
sometimes be pressed for money. She herself, although she had never
known privation in her father's house, had, until within the last year
or so, been accustomed to the most rigid economy--not to say
parsimony--and it had never cost her a care. But that Algernon Errington
should desire money for various purposes, and not be able to get it,
seemed to her a very hard case.
But Algernon's note was not all of complaint. There were occasional
intervals in which he spoke of the brightness of his prospects
ultimately, when once he should have tided over his present difficulties
and had got out of Whitford. And there were a few flourishes about his
social successes in town last year. In the indulgence of his
all-absorbing egotism, he seemed to forget that the girl beside him had
ever been--or had ever had either expectation or right to be--anything
more to him than the patient, admiring, sisterly, humble confidante on
whom he had relied for praise and sympathy from the time of his earliest
recollections, and who supplied him with the most delicious food for his
vanity, because unmingled with any doubt of its genuineness. No thought
of her feelings (save that they were kindly and admiring towards
himself) crossed his mind whilst he talked to her, bending down his head
and gesticulating slightly with his white, handsome hands.
But when his mother called to her, "Come, Rhoda, I think, we must be
going; I heard the carriage at the gate, child. You and Algy have been
having a famous long chat! Reminded you of old times, didn't it?"
When I say Algernon heard these words, a spark of manhood made his
cheeks tingle and his tongue stammer as he said, "I--I'm afraid I must
have been--boring you dreadfully, Rhoda?"
In truth he was surprised to find that he had spent the whole evening in
talking to Rhoda about himself. He glanced quickly at his wife, but she
was occupied with the Misses McDougall. So occupied was she that she
hardly returned Mrs. Errington's "Good night," which negligence,
however, little ruffled that lady's equanimity. But when Rhoda
approached to take leave of Castalia, the latter moved aside so suddenly
that the movement might almost be called a start, and facing round, came
opposite to her own image in the mirror above the chimney-piece, with
Rhoda's fair image looking over its shoulder.
For one second, perhaps--it could scarcely have been more--the smooth
surface of the glass gave back the two women's faces: one youthful,
lily-hued, innocently surprised, with chestnut eyebrows and shining
chestnut curls, and tender rosy lips parted like those of a child; the
other yellow, worn full of fretful creases, with glittering eager eyes,
and a thin mouth set into a straight line, and yet over all the
undefinable pathos of a suffering spirit; behind the two, Algernon
looking into his wife's dark eyes and recognising something there that
he had never seen in them before.
In no longer time than it would take for a breath to dim the mirror all
these images were gone, and the cold shiny glass indifferently showed a
confusion of cloaks and shoulders and the back of a huge bonnet crowning
Mrs. Errington's majestic figure.
* * * * *
From that day forth Castalia gave herself up to a devouring jealousy of
Rhoda. She spied her goings and comings; she watched her husband's face
when the girl was spoken of; she opened the letters that she found in
the pockets of his clothes; she lay in wait to surprise some proof, no
matter what, of a tender feeling on his part for his old love. In a
word, she pursued her own misery with more eagerness, vigilance, and
unflagging singleness of purpose than most people devote to the
attainment of any object whatsoever.