Whiteladies

“Pardon, ma sœur,” said M. Guillaume. “I am of the house, but I do not know.”

“Ah!” said Augustine, looking at him. “After Herbert, you represent the elder branch, it is true; but you have not a daughter who is young, under twenty, have you? that is what I want to know.”

“I have three daughters, ma sœur,” said M. Guillaume, delighted to find a subject on which he could expatiate; “all very good – gentille, kind to every one. There is Madeleine, who is the wife of M. Meeren, the jeweller – François Meeren, the eldest son, very well off; and Marie, who is settled at Courtray, whose husband has a great manufactory; and Gertrude, my youngest, who has married my partner – they will succeed her mother and me when our day is over. Ma sœur knows that my son died. Yes; these are misfortunes that all have to bear. This is my family. They are very good women, though I say it – pious and good mothers and wives, and obedient to their husbands and kind to the poor.”

Augustine had continued to look at him, but the animation had faded out of her eyes. “Men’s wives are of little interest to me,” she said. “What I want is one who is young, and who would understand and do what I say.”

Here Giovanna got up from her chair, pushing it back with a force which almost made Stevens drop the dish he was carrying. “Me!” she cried, with a gleam of malice in her eyes, “me, ma sœur! I am younger than Gertrude and the rest. I am no one’s wife. Let it be me.”

Augustine looked at her with curious scrutiny, measuring her from head to foot, as it were; while Miss Susan, horror-stricken at once by the discussion and the indecorum, looked on breathless. Then Augustine turned away.

“You could not be Herbert’s wife,” she said, with her usual abstract quiet; and added softly, “I must ask for enlightenment. I shall speak to my people at the almshouses to-morrow. We have done so much. His life has been given to us; why not the family salvation too?”

“These are questions which had better not be discussed at the dinner-table,” said Miss Susan; “a place where in England we don’t think it right to indulge in expressions of feeling. Madame Jean, I am afraid you are surprised by my sister’s ways. In the family we all know what she means exactly; but outside the family – ”

“I am one of the family,” said Giovanna, leaning back in her chair, on which she had reseated herself. She put up her hands, and clasped them behind her head in an attitude which was of the easiest and freest description. “I eat no more, thank you, take it away; though the cuisine is better than my belle mère’s, bon papa; but I cannot eat forever, like you English. Oh, I am one of the family. I understand also, and I think – there are many things that come into my head.”

Miss Susan gave her a look which was full of fright and dislike, but not of understanding. Everard only thought he caught for a moment the gleam of sudden malicious meaning in her eyes. She laughed a low laugh, and looked at him across the table, yawning and stretching her arms, which were hidden by her black sleeves, but which Everard divined to be beautiful ones, somewhat large, but fine and shapely. His eyes sought hers half unwillingly, attracted in spite of himself. How full of life and youth and warmth and force she looked among all these old people! Even her careless gestures, her want of breeding, over which Stevens was groaning, seemed to make it more evident; and he thought to himself, with a shudder, that he understood what was in her eye.

But none of the old people thought the rude young woman worth notice. Her father-in-law pulled her skirt sharply under the table, to recall her to “her manners,” and she laughed, but did not alter her position. Miss Susan was horrified and angry, but her indignation went no further. She turned to the old linendraper with elaborate politeness.

“I am afraid you will find our English Sunday dull,” she said. “You know we have different ideas from those you have abroad; and if you want to go to-morrow, travelling is difficult on Sunday – though to be sure we might make an effort.”

“Pardon, I have no intention of going to-morrow,” said M. Guillaume. “I have been thinking much – and after dinner I will disclose to Madame what my thoughts have been.”

Miss Susan’s bosom swelled with suspense and pain. “That will do, Stevens, that will do,” she said.

He had been wandering round and round the table for about an hour, she thought, with sweet dishes of which there was an unusual and unnecessary abundance, and which no one tasted. She felt sure, as people always do, when they are aware of something to conceal, that he lingered so long on purpose to spy out what he could of the mystery; and now her heart beat with feverish desire to know what was the nature of M. Guillaume’s thoughts. Why did not he say plainly, “We are going on Monday?” That would have been a hundred times better than any thoughts.

“It will be well if you will come to the Almshouses to-morrow,” said Miss Augustine, once more taking the conduct of the conversation into her hands. “It will be well for yourself to show at least that you understand what the burden of the family is. Perhaps good thoughts will be put into your heart; perhaps, as you are the next in succession of our family – ah! I must think of that. You are an old man; you cannot be ambitious,” she said slowly and calmly; “nor love the world as others do.”

“You flatter me, ma sœur,” said M. Guillaume. “I should be proud to deserve your commendation; but I am ambitious. Not for myself – for me it is nothing; but if this child were the master here, I should die happy. It is what I wish for most.”

“That is,” said Miss Susan, with rising color (and oh, how thankful she was for some feasible pretext by which to throw off a little of the rising tide of feeling within her!) – “that is – what M. Guillaume Austin wishes for most is, that Herbert, our boy, whom God has spared, should get worse again, and die.”

The old man looked up at her, startled, having, like so many others, thought innocently enough of what was most important to himself, without considering how it told upon the others. Giovanna, however, put herself suddenly in the breach.

“I,” she cried, with another quick change of movement – “I am the child’s mother, Madame Suzanne, you know; yet I do not wish this. Listen. I drink to the health of M. Herbert!” she cried, lifting up the nearest glass of wine, which happened to be her father-in-law’s; “that he comes home well and strong, that he takes a wife, that he lives long! I carry this to his health. Vive M. Herbert!” she cried, and drank the wine, which brought a sudden flush to her cheeks, and lighted up her eyes.

They all gazed at her – I cannot say with what disapproval and secret horror in their elderly calm; except Everard, who, always ready to admire a pretty woman, felt a sudden enthusiasm taking possession of him. He, oddly enough, was the only one to understand her meaning; but how handsome she was! how splendid the glow in her eyes! He looked across the table, and bowed and pledged her. He was the only one who did not look at her with disapproval. Her beauty conciliated the young man, in spite of himself.

“Drinking to him is a vain ceremony,” said Augustine; “but if you were to practise self-denial, and get up early, and come to the Almshouses every morning with me – ”

“I will,” said Giovanna, quickly, “I will! every morning, if ma sœur will permit me – ”

“I do not suppose that every morning can mean much in Madame Jean’s case,” said Miss Susan stiffly, “as no doubt she will be returning home before long.”

“Do not check the young woman, Susan, when she shows good dispositions,” said Augustine. “It is always good to pray. You are worldly-minded yourself, and do not think as I do; but when I can find one to feel with me, that makes me happy. She may stay longer than you think.”

Miss Susan could not restrain a low exclamation of dismay. Everard, looking at her, saw that her face began to wear that terrible look of conscious impotence – helpless and driven into a corner, which is so unendurable to the strong. She was of more personal importance individually than all the tormentors who surrounded her, but she was powerless, and could do nothing against them. Her cheeks flushed hot under her eyes, which seemed scorched, and dazzled too, by this burning of shame. He said something to her in a low tone, to call off her attention, and perceived that the strong woman, generally mistress of the circumstances, was unable to answer him out of sheer emotion. Fortunately, by this time the dessert was on the table, and she rose abruptly. Augustine, slower, rose too. Giovanna, however, sat still composedly by her father-in-law’s side.

“The bon papa has not finished his wine,” she said, pointing to him.

“Madame Jean,” said Miss Susan, “in England you must do as English ladies do. I cannot permit anything else in my house.”

It was not this that made her excited, but it was a mode of throwing forth a little of that excitement which, moment by moment, was getting to be more than she could bear. Giovanna, after another look, got up and obeyed her without a word.

“So this is the mode Anglaise!” said the old man when they were gone; “it is not polite; it is to show, I suppose, that we are not welcome; but Madame Suzanne need not give herself the trouble. If she will do her duty to her relations, I do not mean to stay.”

“I do not know what it is about,” said Everard; “but she always does her duty by everybody, and you need not be afraid.”

On this hint M. Guillaume began, and told Everard the whole matter, filling him with perplexity. The story of Miss Susan’s visit sounded strangely enough, though the simple narrator knew nothing of its worst consequences; but he told his interested auditor how she had tempted him to throw up his bargain with Farrel-Austin, and raised hopes which now she seemed so little inclined to realize; and the story was not agreeable to Everard’s ear. Farrel-Austin, no doubt, had begun this curious oblique dealing; but Farrel-Austin was a man from whom little was expected, and Everard had been used to expect much from Miss Susan. But he did not know, all the time, that he was driving her almost mad, keeping back the old man, who had promised that evening to let her know the issue of his thoughts. She was sitting in a corner, speechless and rigid with agitation, when the two came in from the dining-room to “join the ladies;” and even then Everard, in his ignorance, would have seated himself beside her, to postpone the explanation still longer. “Go away! go away!” she said to him in a wild whisper. What could she mean? for certainly there could be nothing tragical connected with this old man, or so at least Everard thought.

“Madame will excuse me, I hope,” said Guillaume blandly; “as it is the mode Anglaise, I endeavored to follow it, though it seems little polite. But it is not for one country to condemn the ways of the other. If Madame wishes it, I will now say the result of my thoughts.”

Miss Susan, who was past speaking, nodded her head, and did her best to form her lips into a smile.

“Madame informs me,” said M. Guillaume, “that Monsieur Herbert is better, that the chances of le petit are small, and that there is no one to give to the child the rente, the allowance, that is his due?”

“That is true, quite true.”

“On the other hand,” said M. Guillaume, “Giovanna has told me her ideas – she will not come away with me. What she says is that her boy has a right to be here; and she will not leave Viteladies. What can I say? Madame perceives that it is not easy to change the ideas of Giovanna when she has made up her mind.”

“But what has her mind to do with it,” cried Miss Susan in despair, “when it is you who have the power?”

“Madame is right, of course,” said the old shopkeeper; “it is I who have the power. I am the father, the head of the house. Still, a good father is not a tyrant, Madame Suzanne; a good father hears reason. Giovanna says to me, ‘It is well; if le petit has no right, it is for M. le Proprietaire to say so.’ She is not without acuteness, Madame will perceive. What she says is, ‘If Madame Suzanne cannot provide for le petit – will not make him any allowance – and tells us that she has nothing to do with Viteladies – then it is best to wait until they come who have to do with it. M. Herbert returns in May. Eh, bien! she will remain till then, that M. Herbert, who must know best, may decide.”

Miss Susan was thunderstruck. She was driven into silence, paralyzed by this intimation. She looked at the old shopkeeper with a dumb strain of terror and appeal in her face, which moved him, though he did not understand.

“Mon Dieu! Madame,” he cried; “can I help it? it is not I; I am without power!”

“But she shall not stay – I cannot have her; I will not have her!” cried Miss Susan, in her dismay.

M. Guillaume said nothing, but he beckoned his step-daughter from the other end of the room.

“Speak for thyself,” he said. “Thou art not wanted here, nor thy child either. It would be better to return with me.”

Giovanna looked Miss Susan fall in the eyes, with an audacious smile.

“Madame Suzanne will not send me away,” she said; “I am sure she will not send me away.”

Miss Susan felt herself caught in the toils. She looked from one to another with despairing eyes. She might appeal to the old man, but she knew it was hopeless to appeal to the young woman, who stood over her with determination in every line of her face, and conscious power glancing from her eyes. She subdued herself by an incalculable effort.

“I thought,” she said, faltering, “that it would be happier for you to go back to your home – that to be near your friends would please you. It may be comfortable enough here, but you would miss the – society of your friends – ”

“My mother-in-law?” said Giovanna, with a laugh. “Madame is too good to think of me. Yes, it is dull, I know; but for the child I overlook that. I will stay till M. Herbert comes. The bon papa is fond of the child, but he loves his rente, and will leave us when we are penniless. I will stay till M. Herbert returns, who must govern everything. Madame Suzanne will not contradict me, otherwise I shall have no choice. I shall be forced to go to M. Herbert to tell him all.”

Miss Susan sat still and listened. She had to keep silence, though her heart beat so that it seemed to be escaping out of her sober breast, and the blood filled her veins to bursting.

Heaven help her! here was her punishment. Fiery passion blazed in her, but she durst not betray it; and to keep it down – to keep it silent – was all she was able to do. She answered, faltering, —

“You are mistaken; you are mistaken. Herbert will do nothing. Besides, some one could write and tell you what he says.”

“Pardon! but I move not; I leave not,” said Giovanna. She enjoyed the triumph. “I am a mother,” she said; “Madame Suzanne knows; and mothers sacrifice everything for the good of their children – everything. I am able for the sacrifice,” she said, looking down upon Miss Susan with a gleam almost of laughter – of fun, humor, and malicious amusement in her eyes.

To reason with this creature was like dashing one’s self against a stone wall. She was impregnable in her resolution. Miss Susan, feeling the blow go to her heart, pushed her chair back into the corner, and hid herself, as it were. It was a dark corner, where her face was in comparative darkness.

“I cannot struggle with you,” she said, in a piteous whisper, feeling her lips too parched and dry for another word.

CHAPTER XXIX

“Going to stay till Herbert comes back! but, my dear Aunt Susan, since you don’t want her – and of course you don’t want her – why don’t you say so?” cried Everard. “An unwelcome guest may be endured for a day or two, or a week or two, but for five or six months – ”

“My dear,” said Miss Susan, who was pale, and in whose vigorous frame a tremble of weakness seemed so out of place, “how can I say so? It would be so – discourteous – so uncivil – ”

The young man looked at her with dismay. He would have laughed had she not been so deadly serious. Her face was white and drawn, her lips quivered slightly as she spoke. She looked all at once a weak old woman, tremulous, broken down, and uncertain of herself.

“You must be ill,” he said. “I can’t believe it is you I am speaking to. You ought to see the doctor, Aunt Susan – you cannot be well.”

“Perhaps,” she said with a pitiful attempt at a smile, “perhaps. Indeed you must be right, Everard, for I don’t feel like myself. I am getting old, you know.”

“Nonsense!” he said lightly, “you were as young as any of us last time I was here.”

“Ah!” said Miss Susan, with her quivering lips. “I have kept that up too long. I have gone on being young – and now all at once I am old; that is how it is.”

“But that does not make any difference in my argument,” said Everard; “if you are old – which I don’t believe – the less reason is there for having you vexed. You don’t like this guest who is going to inflict herself upon you. I shouldn’t mind her,” he added, with a laugh; “she’s very handsome, Aunt Susan; but I don’t suppose that affects you in the same way; and she will be quite out of place when Herbert comes, or at least when Reine comes. I advise you to tell her plainly, before the old fellow goes, that it won’t do.”

“I can’t, my dear – I can’t!” said Miss Susan; how her lips quivered! – “she is in my house, she is my guest, and I can’t say ‘Go away.’ ”

“Why not? She is not a person of very fine feelings, to be hurt by it. She is not even a lady; and till May, till the end of May! you will never be able to endure her.”

“Oh, yes I shall,” said Miss Susan. “I see you think that I am very weak; but I never was uncivil to any one, Everard, not to any one in my own house. It is Herbert’s house, of course,” she added quickly, “but yet it has been mine, though I never had any real right to it for so many years.”

“And you really mean to leave now?”

“I suppose so,” said Miss Susan faltering, “I think, probably – nothing is settled. Don’t be too hard upon me, Everard! I said so – for them, to show them that I had no power.”

“Then why, for heaven’s sake, if you have so strong a feeling – why, for the sake of politeness! – Politeness is absurd, Aunt Susan,” said Everard. “Do you mean to say that if any saucy fellow, any cad I may have met, chose to come into my house and take possession, I should not kick him out because it would be uncivil? This is not like your good sense. You must have some other reason. No! do you mean No by that shake of the head? Then if it is so very disagreeable to you, let me speak to her. Let me suggest – ”

“Not for the world,” cried Miss Susan. “No, for pity’s sake, no. You will make me frantic if you speak of such a thing.”

“Or to the old fellow,” said Everard; “he ought to see the absurdity of it, and the tyranny.”

She caught at this evidently with a little hope. “You may speak to Monsieur Guillaume if you feel disposed,” she said; “yes, you may speak to him. I blame him very much; he ought not to have listened to her; he ought to have taken her away at once.”

“How could he if she wouldn’t go? Men no doubt are powerful beings,” said Everard laughing, “but suppose the other side refused to be moved? Even a horse at the water, if it declines to drink – you know the proverb.”

“Oh, don’t worry me with proverbs – as if I had not enough without that!” she said with an impatience which would have been comic had it not been so tragical. “Yes, Everard, yes, if you like you may speak to him – but not to her; not a word to her for the world. My dear boy, my dear boy! You won’t go against me in this?”

“Of course I shall do only what you wish me to do,” he said more gravely; the sight of her agitation troubled the young man exceedingly. To think of any concealed feeling, any mystery in connection with Susan Austin, seemed not only a blasphemy, but an absurdity. Yet what could she mean, what could her strange terror, her changed looks, her agitated aspect, mean? Everard was more disturbed than he could say.

This was on Sunday afternoon, that hour of all others when clouds hang heaviest, and troubles, where they exist, come most into the foreground. The occupations of ordinary life push them aside, but Sunday, which is devoted to rest, and in which so many people honestly endeavor to put the trifling little cares of every day out of their minds, always lays hold of those bigger disturbers of existence which it is the aim of our lives to forget. Miss Susan would have made a brave fight against the evil which she could not avoid on another day, but this day, with all its many associations of quiet, its outside tranquillity, its peaceful recollections and habits, was too much for her. Everard had found her walking in the Priory Lane by herself, a bitter dew of pain in her eyes, and a tremble in her lips which frightened him. She had come out to collect her thoughts a little, and to escape from her visitors, who sometimes seemed for the moment more than she could bear.

Miss Augustine came up on her way from the afternoon service at the Almshouses, while Everard spoke. She was accompanied by Giovanna, and it was a curious sight to see the tall, slight figure of the Gray sister, type of everything abstract and mystic, with that other by her side, full of strange vitality, watching the absorbed and dreamy creature with those looks of investigation, puzzled to know what her meaning was, but determined somehow to be at the bottom of it. Giovanna’s eyes darted a keen telegraphic communication to Everard’s as they came up. This glance seemed to convey at once an opinion and an inquiry. “How droll she is! Is she mad? I am finding her out,” the eyes said. Everard carefully refrained from making any reply; though, indeed, this was self-denial on his part, for Giovanna certainly made Whiteladies more amusing than it had been when he was last there.

“You have been to church?” said Miss Susan, with her forced and reluctant smile.

“She went with me,” said Miss Augustine. “I hope we have a great acquisition in her. Few have understood me so quickly. If anything should happen to Herbert – ”

“Nothing will happen to Herbert,” cried Miss Susan. “God bless him! It sounds as if you were putting a spell upon our boy.”

“I put no spell; I don’t even understand such profane words. My heart is set on one thing, and it is of less importance how it is carried out. If anything should happen to Herbert, I believe I have found one who sees the necessity as I do, and who will sacrifice herself for the salvation of the race.”

“One who will sacrifice herself!” Miss Susan gasped wildly under her breath.

Giovanna looked at her with defiance, challenging her, as it were, to a mortal struggle; yet there was a glimmer of laughter in her eyes. She looked at Miss Susan from behind the back of the other, and made a slow, solemn courtesy as Augustine spoke. Her eyes were dancing with humorous enjoyment of the situation, with mischief and playfulness, yet with conscious power.

“This – lady?” said Miss Susan, “I think you are mad; Austine, I think you are going mad!”

Miss Augustine shook her head. “Susan, how often do I tell you that you are giving your heart to Mammon and to the world! This is worse than madness. It makes you incapable of seeing spiritual things. Yes! she is capable of it. Heaven has sent her in answer to many prayers.”

Saying this, Augustine glided past toward the house with her arms folded in her sleeves, and her abstract eyes fixed on the vacant air. A little flush of displeasure at the opposition had come upon her face as she spoke, but it faded as quickly as it came. As for Giovanna, before she followed her, she stopped, and threw up her hands with an appealing gesture: “Is it then my fault?” she said, as she passed.

Miss Susan stood and looked after them, her eyes dilating; a kind of panic was in her face. “Is it, then, God that has sent her, to support the innocent, to punish the guilty?” she said, under her breath.

“Aunt Susan, take my arm; you are certainly ill.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, faintly. “Take me in, take me out of sight, and never tell any one, Everard, never tell any one. I think I shall go out of my mind. It must be giving my thoughts to Mammon and the world, as she said.”

“Never mind what she says,” said Everard, “no one pays any attention to what she says. Your nerves are overwrought somehow or other, and you are ill. But I’ll have it out with the old duffer!” cried the young man. They met Monsieur Guillaume immediately after, and I think he must have heard them; but he was happily quite unaware of the nature of a “duffer,” or what the word meant, and to tell the truth, so am I.