‘IS IT TRUE?’
A few days passed without any further incident. Mrs. Blencarrow’s
appearance in the meantime had changed in a singular way. Her wonderful
self-command was shaken; sometimes she had an air of suppressed
excitement, a permanent flush under her eyes, a nervous irritation
almost uncontrollable; at other moments she was perfectly pale and
composed, but full of an acute consciousness of every sound. She spent a
great part of her time in her business-room downstairs, going and coming
on many occasions hurriedly, as if by an impulse she could not resist.
This could not be hidden from those keen observers, the servants, who
all kept up a watch upon her, quickened by whispers that began to reach
them from without. Mrs. Blencarrow, on her side, realized very well what
must be going on without. She divined the swiftness with which Mrs.
Bircham’s information would circulate through the county, and the effect
it would produce. Whether it was false or true would make no difference
at first. There would be the same wave of discussion, of wonder, of
doubt; her whole life would be investigated to see what were the
likelihoods on either side, and her recent acts and looks and words all
talked over. She was a very proud woman, and her sensations were
something like those of a civilized man who is tied to a stake and sees
the savages dancing round him, preparing to begin the torture. She
expected every moment to see the dart whirl through the air, to feel it
quiver in her flesh; the waiting at the beginning, anticipating the
first missile, must be, she thought, the worst of all.
She watched for the first sound of the tempest, and Emmy and the
servants watched her, the one with sympathy and terror, the others with
keen curiosity not unheightened by expectation. She was a good mistress,
and some of them were fond of her; some of them were capable of standing
by her through good and evil; but it is not in human nature not to watch
with excitement the bursting of such a cloud, or to look on without a
certain keen pleasure in seeing how a victim--a heroine--will comport
herself in the moment of danger. It was to them as good as a play. There
were some in her own house who did not believe it; there were some who
had long, they said, been suspicious; but all, both those who believed
it and those who did not believe it, were keen to see how she would
comport herself in this terrible crisis of fate.
The days went by very slowly in this extraordinary tension of spirit;
the first stroke came as such a stroke generally does--from a wholly
unexpected quarter. Mrs. Blencarrow was sitting one afternoon with Emmy
in the drawing-room. The large room looked larger with only these two in
it. Emmy, a little figure only half visible, lay in a great chair near
the fire, buried in it, her small face showing like a point of
whiteness amid the ruddy tones of the firelight and the crimson of the
chair. Her mother was on the other side of the fire, with a screen
thrown between her and the glow, scarcely betraying her existence at
all, in the shade in which she sat, by any movement. The folds of her
velvet dress caught the firelight and showed a little colour lying
coiled about her feet; but this was all that a spectator would have
seen. Emmy was busy with some fleecy white knitting, which she could go
on with in the partial darkness; the faint sound of her knitting-pins
was audible along with the occasional puff of flame from the fire, or
falling of ashes on the hearth. There was not much conversation between
them. Sometimes Emmy would ask a question: ‘When are the boys coming
home, mamma?’ ‘Perhaps to-day,’ with a faint movement in the darkness;
‘but they are going back to school on Monday,’ Mrs. Blencarrow said,
with a tone of relief. It might have been imagined that she said ‘Thank
Heaven!’ under her breath. Emmy felt the meaning of that tone as she
felt everything, but blamed herself for thinking so, as if she were
doing wrong.
‘It is a strange thing to say,’ said Mrs. Blencarrow; ‘but I almost wish
they were going straight back to school, without coming home again.’
‘Oh, mamma!’ said Emmy, with a natural protest.
‘It seems a strange thing,’ said Mrs. Blencarrow, ‘to say----’ She had
paused between these two last words, and there was a slight quiver in
her voice.
She had paused to listen; there was some sound in the clear air, which
was once more hard with frost; it was the sound of a carriage coming up
the avenue. All was so still around the house that they could hear it
for a long way. Mrs. Blencarrow drew a long, shivering breath.
‘There’s somebody coming,’ said Emmy; ‘can it be Rex and Bertie?’
‘Most likely only somebody coming to call. Emmy!’
‘What, mamma?’
‘I was going to say, don’t stay in the room if--if it were. But no,
never mind; it was a mistake; I would rather you did stay.’
‘I will do whatever you please, mamma.’
‘Thank you, Emmy. If I turn to you, go. But perhaps there will be no
need.’
They waited, falling into a curious silence, full of expectation; the
carriage came slowly up to the door; it jingled and jogged, so that they
recognised instinctively that it must be the fly from the station.
‘It will be the boys, after all,’ Mrs. Blencarrow said, with something
between relief and annoyance. ‘No,’ she added, with a little impatience;
‘don’t run to the door to meet them. It is too cold for you; stay where
you are; I can’t have you exposing yourself.’
Something of the irritability of nervous expectation was in her voice,
and presently the door opened, but not with the rush of the boys’
return. It was opened by the butler, who came in solemnly, his white
shirt shining out in the twilight of the room, and announced in his
grandest tone, ‘Colonel and Mr. d’Eyncourt,’ as two dark figures
followed him into the room. Mrs. Blencarrow rose to her feet with a low
cry. She put her hand unconsciously upon her heart, which leaped into
the wildest beating.
‘You!’ she said.
They came forward, one following the other, into the circle of the
firelight, and took her hand and kissed her with solemnity. Colonel
d’Eyncourt was a tall, slim, soldierly man, the other shorter and
rotund. But there was something in the gravity of their entrance which
told that their errand was of no usual kind. When Emmy came forward to
greet her uncles, they turned to her with a mixture of impatience and
commiseration.
‘Are you here, my poor child?’ said one; and the other told her to run
away, as they had something particular to say to her mamma.
The butler in the meantime was lighting the candles on the mantelpiece,
which made a sudden blaze and brought the two gentlemen into sight.
‘I am sorry I did not know you were coming,’ said Mrs. Blencarrow,
recovering her fortitude with the sudden gleam of the light, ‘or I
should have sent for you to the station. Preston, bring some tea.’
‘No tea for us,’ said Mr. d’Eyncourt; ‘we have come to see you on family
business, if you could give us an hour undisturbed.’
‘Don’t bring any tea, then, Preston,’ she said with a smile, ‘and don’t
admit anyone.’ She turned and looked at Emmy, whose eyes were fixed on
her. ‘Go and look out for the boys, my dear.’
The two brothers exchanged glances--they were, perhaps, not men of great
penetration--they considered that their sister’s demeanour was one of
perfect calm; and she felt as if she were being suffocated, as she
waited with a smile on her face till her daughter and the footman, who
was more deliberate, were gone. Then she sat down again on her low chair
behind the screen, which sheltered her a little from the glare of the
candles as well as the fire.
‘I hope,’ she said, ‘it is nothing of a disagreeable kind--you both look
so grave.’
‘You must know what we have come to talk about, Joan.’
‘Indeed I don’t,’ she said; ‘what is it? There is something the matter.
Reginald--Roger--what is it? You frighten me with your grave
faces--what has happened?’
The gentlemen looked at each other again; their eyes said, ‘It cannot be
true.’ The Colonel cleared his voice; he was the eldest, and it was upon
him that the special burden lay.
‘If it is true,’ he said--‘you know best, Joan, whether it is true or
not--if it is true, it is the most dreadful thing that has happened in
our family.’
‘You frighten me more and more,’ said Mrs. Blencarrow. ‘Something about
John?’
John was the black sheep of the D’Eyncourt family. Again the brothers
looked at each other.
‘You must be aware of the rumour that is filling the county,’ said the
younger brother. ‘I hear there is nothing else talked of, Joan. It is
about you--you, whom we have always been so proud of. Both Reginald and
I have got letters. They say that you have made a disgraceful marriage;
that it’s been going on for years; that you’ve no right to your present
name at all, nor to your position in this house. I cannot tell you the
half of what’s said. The first letter we paid no attention to, but when
we heard it from half a dozen different places--Joan--nothing about John
could be half so bad as a story like this about you.’
Mrs. Blencarrow had risen slowly to her feet, but still was in the
shade. She did not seem able to resist the impulse to stand up while she
was being accused.
‘So this is the reason of your sudden visit,’ she said, speaking with
deliberation, which might have meant either inability to speak, or the
utmost contempt of the cause.
‘What could we have done else?’ they both cried together, apologetic for
the first moment. ‘We, your brothers, with such a circumstantial story,’
said the Colonel.
‘And your nearest friends, Joan; to nobody could it be of so much
importance as to us,’ said the other.
‘Us!’ she said; ‘it is of more importance to the children.’
‘My dear girl,’ said the Colonel, putting his hand on her shoulder, ‘I
am most thankful we did not trust to letters, but came. It’s enough to
look at you. You must give us your authority, and we will soon make an
end of these slanderers. By Jove! in the old days it would have been
pistols that would have done it.’
‘You can’t use pistols to women,’ said Mr. d’Eyncourt, ‘if you were the
greatest fire-eater that ever was.’
They both laughed a little at this, but the soul was taken out of the
laugh by the perception slowly dawning upon both that Mrs. Blencarrow
had said nothing, did not join either in their laugh or their
thankfulness for having come, and had, indeed, slightly shrunk from her
brother’s hand, and still stood without asking them to sit down.
‘I’m afraid you are angry with us,’ said Roger d’Eyncourt, ‘for having
hurried here as if we believed it. But there never is any certainty in
such matters. We thought it better to settle it at once--at the
fountain-head.’
‘Yes,’ she said, but no more.
The brothers looked at each other again, this time uneasily.
‘My dear Joan,’ said the Colonel--but he did not know how to go on.
‘The fact is,’ said Mr. d’Eyncourt, ‘that you must give us your
authority to contradict it, don’t you know--to say authoritatively that
there is not a shadow of truth----’
‘Won’t you sit down?’ said Mrs. Blencarrow.
‘Eh? Ah! Oh yes,’ said both men together. They thought for a moment that
she was giving them her ‘authority,’ as they said. The Colonel rolled an
easy chair near to her. Roger d’Eyncourt stood up against the glow of
the fire.
‘Of course, that is all we want--your word,’ said the Colonel.
She was still standing, and seemed to be towering above him where he sat
in that low chair; and there was a dumb resistance in her attitude
which made a strange impression upon the two men. She said, after a
moment, moistening her lips painfully, ‘You seem to have taken the word
of other people against me easily enough.’
‘Not easily; oh no! with great distress and pain. And we did not take
it,’ said the younger brother; ‘we came at once, to hear your own----’
He stopped, and there was a dead silence. The Colonel sat bending
forward into the comparative gloom in which she stood, and Roger
d’Eyncourt turned to her in an attitude of anxious attention; but she
made no further reply.
‘Joan, for God’s sake say something! Don’t you see that pride is out of
the question in such circumstances? We must have a distinct
contradiction. Heavens! here’s someone coming, after all.’
There was a slight impatient tap at the door, and then it was opened
quickly, as by someone who had no mind to be put back. They all turned
towards the new-comer, the Colonel whirling his chair round with
annoyance. It was Brown--Mrs. Blencarrow’s agent or steward. He was a
tall young man with a well-developed, athletic figure, his head covered
with those close curling locks which give an impression of vigour and
superabundant life. He came quickly up to Mrs. Blencarrow with some
papers in his hand and said something to her, which, in their
astonishment and excitement, the brothers did not make out. He had the
slow and low enunciation of the North-country, to which their ear was
not accustomed. She answered him with almost painful distinctness.
‘Oh, the papers about Appleby’s lease. Put them on the table, please.’
He went to the table and put them down, turned for a moment undecided,
and then joined the group, which watched him with a surprised and
hostile curiosity, so far as the brothers were concerned. She turned her
face towards him with a fixed, imperious look.
‘I forgot,’ she said hurriedly; ‘I think you have both seen my agent,
Mr. Brown.’
Roger d’Eyncourt gave an abrupt nod of recognition; the Colonel only
gazed from his chair.
‘I thought Mr. Brown had been your steward, Joan.’
‘He is my--everything that is serviceable and trustworthy,’ she said.
The words seemed to vibrate in the air, so full of meaning were they,
and she herself to thrill with some strong sentiment which fixed her
look upon this man. He paused a little as if he intended to speak, but
after a minute’s uncertainty, with a rustic inclination of his head,
went slowly away. Mrs. Blencarrow dropped suddenly into her chair as the
door closed, as if some tremendous tension had relaxed. The brothers
looked wonderingly at each other again. ‘That is all very well; the
people you employ are in your own hands; but this is of far more
consequence.’
‘Joan,’ said the Colonel, ‘I don’t know what to think. For God’s sake
answer one way or another! Why don’t you speak? For the sake of your
children, for the sake of your own honour, your credit, your family--Is
it true?’
‘Hush, Rex! Of course we know it isn’t true. But, Joan, be reasonable,
my dear; let’s have your word for it, that we may face the world. Of
course we know well enough that you’re the last woman to dishonour
Blencarrow’s memory--poor old fellow! who was so fond of you--and
deceive everybody.’
‘You seem to have believed me capable of all that, or you would not have
come here!’
‘No, Joan, no--not so. Do, for God’s sake, take the right view of it!
Tell us simply that you are not married, and have never thought of such
a thing, which I for one am sure of to begin with.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, with a curious hard note of a laugh, ‘they have
told you, having told you so much, whom I am supposed to have married,
as you say.’
Again they looked at each other. ‘No one,’ said the Colonel, ‘has told
us that.’
She laughed again. ‘Then if this is all you know, and all I am accused
of, to have married no one knows who, no one knows when, you must come
to what conclusion you please, and make what discoveries you can. I have
nothing to say.’
‘Joan!’ they both cried.
‘You must do exactly what seems good to you,’ she said, rising hastily.
‘Find out what you can, say what you like--you shall not have a word
from me.’