Whiteladies

Miss Susan was not able to come down to dinner, a marvellous and almost unheard of event, so that the party was still less lively than usual. Everard was so concerned about his old friend, and the strange condition in which she was, that he began his attack upon the old shopkeeper almost as soon as they were left alone. “Don’t you think, sir,” the young man began, in a straightforward, unartificial way, “that it would be better to take your daughter-in-law with you? She will only be uncomfortable among people so different from those you have been accustomed to; I doubt if they will get on.”

“Get on?” said Monsieur Guillaume, pleasantly. “Get on what? She does not wish to get on anywhere. She wishes to stay here.”

“I mean, they are not likely to be comfortable together, to agree, to be friends.”

M. Guillaume shrugged his shoulders. “Mon Dieu,” he said, “it will not be my fault. If Madame Suzanne will not grant the little rente, the allowance I demanded for le petit, is it fit that he should be at my charge? He was not thought of till Madame Suzanne came to visit us. There is nothing for him. He was born to be the heir here.”

“But Miss Austin could have nothing to do with his being born,” cried Everard, laughing. Poor Miss Susan, it seemed the drollest thing to lay to her charge. But M. Guillaume did not see the joke, he went on seriously.

“And I had made my little arrangement with M. Farrel. We were in accord; all was settled; so much to come to me on the spot, and this heritage, this old château – château, mon Dieu, a thing of wood and brick! – to him, eventually. But when Madame Suzanne arrived to tell us of the beauties of this place, and when the women among them made discovery of le petit, that he was about to be born, the contract was broken with M. Farrel. I lost the money – and now I lose the heritage; and it is I who must provide for le petit! Monsieur, such a thing was never heard of. It is incredible; and Madame Suzanne thinks, I am to carry off the child without a word, and take this disappointment tranquilly! But no! I am not a fool, and it cannot be.”

“But I thought you were very fond of the child, and were in despair of losing him,” said Everard.

“Yes, yes,” cried the old shopkeeper, “despair is one thing, and good sense is another. This is contrary to good sense. Giovanna is an obstinate, but she has good sense. They will not give le petit anything, eh bien, let them bear the expense of him! That is what she says.”

“Then the allowance is all you want?” said Everard, with British brevity. This seemed to him the easiest of arrangements. With his mind quite relieved, and a few jokes laid up for the amusement of the future, touching Miss Susan’s powers and disabilities, he strolled into the drawing-room, M. Guillaume preferring to take himself to bed. The drawing-room of Whiteladies had never looked so thoroughly unlike itself. There seemed to Everard at first to be no one there, but after a minute he perceived a figure stretched out upon a sofa. The lamps were very dim, throwing a sort of twilight glimmer through the room; and the fire was very red, adding a rosy hue, but no more, to this faint illumination. It was the sort of light favorable to talk, or to meditation, or to slumber, but by aid of which neither reading, nor work, nor any active occupation could be pursued. This was of itself sufficient to mark the absence of Miss Susan, for whom a cheerful light full of animation and activity seemed always necessary. The figure on the sofa lay at full length, with an abandon of indolence and comfort which suited the warm atmosphere and subdued light. Everard felt a certain appropriateness in the scene altogether, but it was not Whiteladies. An Italian palace or an Eastern harem would have been more in accordance with the presiding figure. She raised her head, however, as he approached, supporting herself on her elbow, with a vivacity unlike the Eastern calm, and looked at him by the dim light with a look half provoking half inviting, which attracted the foolish young man more perhaps than a more correct demeanor would have done. Why should not he try what he could do, Everard thought, to move the rebel? for he had an internal conviction that even the allowance which would satisfy M. Guillaume would not content Giovanna. He drew a chair to the other side of the table upon which the tall dim lamp was standing, and which was drawn close to the sofa on which the young woman lay.

“Do you really mean to remain at Whiteladies?” he said. “I don’t think you can have any idea how dull it is here.”

She shrugged her shoulders slightly, and raised her eyebrows. She had let her head drop back upon the sofa cushions, and the faint light threw a kind of dreamy radiance upon her fine features, and great glowing dark eyes.

“Dull! it is almost more than dull,” he continued; though even as he spoke he felt that to have this beautiful creature in Whiteladies would be a sensible alleviation of the dulness, and that his effort on Miss Susan’s behalf was of the most disinterested kind. “It would kill you, I fear; you can’t imagine what it is in Winter, when the days are short; the lamps are lit at half-past four, and nothing happens all the evening, no one comes. You sit before dinner round the fire, and Miss Austin knits, and after dinner you sit round the fire again, and there is not a sound in all the place, unless you have yourself the courage to make an observation; and it seems about a year before it is time to go to bed. You don’t know what it is.”

What Miss Susan would have said had she heard this account of those Winter evenings, many of which the hypocrite had spent very coseyly at Whiteladies, I prefer not to think. The idea occurred to himself with a comic panic. What would she say? He could scarcely keep from laughing as he asked himself the question.

“I have imagination,” said Giovanna, stretching her arms. “I can see it all; but I should not endure it, me. I should get up and snap my fingers at them and dance, or sing.”

“Ah!” said Everard, entering into the humor of his rôle, “so you think at present; but it would soon take the spirit out of you. I am very sorry for you, Madame Jean. If I were like you, with the power of enjoying myself, and having the world at my feet – ”

“Ah! bah!” cried Giovanna, “how can one have the world at one’s feet, when one is never seen? And you should see the shop at Bruges, mon Dieu! People do not come and throw themselves at one’s feet there. I am not sure even if it is altogether the fault of Gertrude and the belle-mère; but here – ”

“You will have no one to see to,” said Everard, tickled by the part he was playing, and throwing himself into the spirit of it. “That is worse – for what is the good of being visible when there is no one to see?”

This consideration evidently was not without its effect. Giovanna raised herself lazily on her elbow and looked at him across the table. “You come,” said she, “and this ’Erbert.”

“Herbert!” said Everard, shading his head, “he is a sickly boy; and as for me – I have to pay my vows at other shrines,” he added with a laugh. But he found this conversation immensely entertaining, and went on representing the disadvantages of Whiteladies with more enjoyment than perhaps he had ever experienced in that place on a Sunday evening before. He went on till Giovanna pettishly bade him go. “At the least, it is comfortable,” she said. “Ah, go! It is very tranquil, there is no one to call to you with sharp voice like a knife, ‘Gi’vanna! tu dors!’ Go, I am going to sleep.”

I don’t suppose she meant him to take her at her word, for Giovanna was amused too, and found the young man’s company and his compliments, and that half-mocking, half-real mixture of homage and criticism, to be a pleasant variety. But Everard, partly because he had exhausted all he had got to say, partly lest he should be drawn on to say more, jumped up in a state of amusement and satisfaction with himself and his own cleverness which was very pleasant. “Since you send me away, I must obey,” he said; “Dormez, belle enchanteresse!” and with this, which he felt to be a very pretty speech indeed, he left the room more pleased with himself than ever. He had spent a most satisfactory evening, he had ascertained that the old man was to be bought off with money, and he had done his best to disgust the young woman with a dull English country-house; in short, he had done Miss Susan yeoman’s service, and amused himself at the same time. Everard was agreeably excited, and felt, after a few moments’ reflection over a cigar on the lawn, that he would like to do more. It was still early, for the Sunday dinner at Whiteladies, as in so many other respectable English houses, was an hour earlier than usual; and as he wandered round the house, he saw the light still shining in Miss Susan’s window. This decided him; he threw away the end of his cigar, and hastening up the great staircase three steps at once, hurried to Miss Susan’s door. “Come in,” she said faintly. Everard was as much a child of the house as Herbert and Reine, and had received many an admonition in that well-known chamber. He opened the door without hesitation. But there was something in the very atmosphere which he felt to daunt him as he went in.

Miss Susan was seated in her easy chair by the bedside fully dressed. She was leaning her head back upon the high shoulder of the old-fashioned chair with her eyes shut. She thought it was Martha who had come in, and she was not careful to keep up appearances with Martha, who had found out days before that something was the matter. She was almost ghastly in her paleness, and there was an utter languor of despair about her attitude and her look, which alarmed Everard in the highest degree. But he could not stop the first words that rose upon his lips, or subdue altogether the cheery tone which came naturally from his satisfied feelings. “Aunt Susan,” he cried, “come along, come down stairs, now’s your time. I have been telling stories of Whiteladies to disgust her, and I believe now you could buy them off with a small annuity. Aunt Susan! forgive my noise, you are ill.”

“No, no,” she said with a gasp and a forlorn smile. “No, only tired. What did you say, Everard? whom am I to buy off?” This was a last effort at keeping up appearances. Then it seemed to strike her all at once that this was an ungrateful way of treating one who had been taking so much trouble on her account. “Forgive me, Everard,” she said; “I have been dozing, and my head is muddled. Buy them off? To be sure, I should have thought of that; for an annuity, after all, though I have no right to give it, is better than having them settled in the house.”

“Far better, since you dislike them so much,” said Everard; “I don’t, for my part. She is not so bad. She is very handsome, and there’s some fun in her.”

“Fun!” Miss Susan rose up very tremulous and uncertain, and looking ten years older, with her face ashy pale, and a tottering in her steps, all brought about by this unwelcome visitor; and to hear of fun in connection with Giovanna, made her sharply, unreasonably angry for the time. “You should choose your words better at such a moment,” she said.

“Never mind my words, come and speak to her,” cried Everard. He was very curious and full of wonder, seeing there was something below the surface more than met his eyes, and that the mystery was far more mysterious than his idea of it. Miss Susan hesitated more than ever, and seemed as if she would have gone back before they reached the stairs; but he kept up her courage. “When it’s only a little money, and you can afford it,” he said. “You don’t care so much for a little money.”

“No, I don’t care much for a little money,” she repeated after him mechanically, as she went downstairs.

CHAPTER XXX

MISS SUSAN entered the drawing-room in the same dim light in which Everard had left it. She was irritable and impatient in her misery. She would have liked to turn up all the lamps, and throw a flood of light upon the stranger whose attitude was indolent and indecorous. Why was she there at all? what right had she to extend herself at full length, to make herself so comfortable? That Giovanna should be comfortable did not do Miss Susan any further harm; but she felt as if it did, and a fountain of hot wrath surged up in her heart. This, however, she felt was not the way in which she could do any good, so she made an effort to restrain herself. She sat down in Everard’s seat which he had left. She was not quite sure whether he himself were not lingering in the shadows at the door of the room, and this made her difficulty the greater in what she had to say.

“Do you like this darkness?” she asked. “It is oppressive; we cannot see to do anything.”

“Me, I don’t want to do anything,” said Giovanna. “I sleep and I dream. This is most pleasant to me. Madame Suzanne likes occupation. Me, I do not.”

“Yes,” said Miss Susan with suppressed impatience, “that is one of the differences between us. But I have something to say to you; you wanted me to make an allowance for the child, and I refused. Indeed, it is not my business, for Whiteladies is not mine. But now that I have thought of it, I will consent. It would be so much better for you to travel with your father-in-law than alone.”

Giovanna turned her face toward her companion with again that laughing devil in her eye. “Madame Suzanne mistakes. The bon papa spoke of his rente that he loves, not me. If ces dames will give me money to dress myself, to be more like them, that will be well; but it was the bon-papa, not me.”

“Never mind who it was,” said Miss Susan, on the verge of losing her temper. “One or the other, I suppose it is all the same. I will give you your allowance.”

“To dress myself? thanks, that will be well. Then I can follow the mode Anglaise, and have something to wear in the evening, like Madame Suzanne herself.”

“For the child!” cried the suffering woman, in a voice which to Everard, behind backs, sounded like low and muffled thunder. “To support him and you, to keep you independent, to make you comfortable at home among your own people – ”

“Merci!” cried Giovanna, shrugging her shoulders. “That is the bon-papa’s idea, as I tell madame, not mine. Comfortable! with my belle-mère! Listen, Madame Suzanne – I too, I have been thinking. If you will accept me with bounty, you shall not be sorry. I can make myself good; I can be useful, though it is not what I like best. I stay – I make myself your child – ”

“I do not want you,” cried Miss Susan, stung beyond her strength of self-control, “I do not want you. I will pay you anything to get you away.”

Giovanna’s eyes gave forth a gleam. “Très bien,” she said, calmly. “Then I shall stay, if madame pleases or not. It is what I have intended from the beginning; and I do not change my mind, me.”

“But if I say you shall not stay!” said Miss Susan, wrought to fury, and pushing back her chair from the table.

Giovanna raised herself on her elbow, and leaned across the table, fixing the other with her great eyes.

“Once more, très bien,” she said, in a significant tone, too low for Everard to hear, but not a whisper. “Très bien! Madame then wishes me to tell not only M. Herbert, but the bonne sœur, madame’s sister, and ce petit monsieur-là?”

Miss Susan sat and listened like a figure of stone. Her color changed out of the flush of anger which had lighted it up, and grew again ashy pale. From her laboring breast there came a great gasp, half groan, half sob. She looked at the remorseless creature opposite with a piteous prayer coming into her eyes. First rage, which was useless; then entreaty, more useless still. “Have pity on me! have pity on me,” she said.

“But certainly!” said Giovanna, sinking back upon her cushions with a soft laugh. “Certainly! I am not cruel, me; but I am comfortable, and I stay.”

“She will not hear of it,” said Miss Susan, meeting Everard’s anxious looks as she passed him, hurrying upstairs. “Never mind me. Everard, never mind! we shall do well enough. Do not say any more about it. Never mind! never mind! It is time we were all in bed.”

“But, Aunt Susan, tell me – ”

“No, no, there is nothing to tell,” she said, hurrying from him. “Do not let us say any more about it. It is time we were all in bed.”

The next day M. Guillaume left Whiteladies, after a very melancholy parting with his little grandchild. The old man sobbed, and the child sobbed for sympathy. “Thou wilt be good to him, Giovanna!” he said, weeping. Giovanna stood, and looked on with a smile on her face. “Bon papa, it is easy to cry,” she said; “but you do not want him without a rente; weep then for the rente, not for the child.” “Heartless!” cried the old shopkeeper, turning from her; and her laugh, though it was quite low, did sound heartless to the bystanders; yet there was some truth in what she said. M. Guillaume went away in the morning, and Everard in the afternoon. The young man was deeply perplexed and disturbed. He had been a witness of the conclusive interview on the previous night without hearing all that was said; yet he had heard enough to show him that something lay behind of which he was not cognizant – something which made Miss Susan unwillingly submit to an encumbrance which she hated, and which made her more deeply, tragically unhappy than a woman of her spotless life and tranquil age had any right to be. To throw such a woman into passionate distress, and make her, so strong in her good sense, so reasonable and thoroughly acquainted with the world, bow her head under an irritating and unnecessary yoke, there must be some cause more potent than anything Everard could divine. He made an attempt to gain her confidence before he went away; but it was still more fruitless than before. The only thing she would say was, that she could speak no more on the subject. “There is nothing to say. She is here now for good or for evil, and we must make the best of it. Probably we shall get on better than we think,” said Miss Susan; and that was all he could extract from her. He went away more disturbed than he could tell; his curiosity was excited as well as his sympathy, and though, after awhile, his natural reluctance to dwell on painful subjects made him attempt to turn his mind from this, yet the evident mystery to be found out made that attempt much harder than usual. Everard was altogether in a somewhat uncertain and wavering state of mind at the time. He had returned from his compulsory episode of active life rather better in fortune, and with a perception of his own unoccupied state, which had never disturbed him before. He had not got to love work, which is a thing which requires either genius or training. He honestly believed, indeed, that he hated work, as was natural to a young man of his education; but having been driven to it, and discovered in himself, to his great surprise, some faculty for it, his return to what he thought his natural state had a somewhat strange effect upon him. To do nothing was, no doubt, his natural state. It was freedom; it was happiness (passive); it was the most desirable condition of existence. All this he felt to be true. He was his own master, free to go where he would, do what he would, amuse himself as he liked; and yet the conclusion of the time when he had not been his own master – when he had been obliged to do this and that, to move here and there not by his own will, but as necessity demanded – had left a sense of vacancy in this life. He was dissatisfied with his leisure and his freedom; they were not so good, not so pleasant, as they had once been. He had known storm and tempest, and all the expedients by which men triumph over these commotions, and the calm of his inland existence wearied him, though he had not yet gone so far as to confess it to himself.

This made him think more of the mystery of Whiteladies than perhaps he would have done otherwise, and moved him so far as to indite a letter to Reine, in which perhaps more motives than that of interest in Miss Susan’s troubles were involved. He had left them when the sudden storm which he had now surmounted had appeared on the horizon, at a very critical moment of his intercourse with Reine; and then they had been cast altogether apart, driven into totally different channels for two years. Two years is a long time or a short time, according to the constitution of the mind, and the nature of circumstances. It had been about a century to Everard, and he had developed into a different being. And now this different being, brought back to the old life, did not well know what to do with himself. Should he go and join his cousins again, amuse himself, see the world, and perhaps renew some things that were past, and reunite a link half broken, half unmade? Anyhow, he wrote to Reine, setting forth that Aunt Susan was ill and very queer – that there was a visitor at Whiteladies of a very novel and unusual character – that the dear old house threatened to be turned upside down – fourthly, and accidentally, that he had a great mind to spend the next six months on the Continent. Where were they going for the Winter? Only ladies, they say, put their chief subject in a postscript. Everard put his under care of a “By-the-bye” in the last two lines of his letter. The difference between the two modes is not very great.

And thus, while the young man meditated change, which is natural to his age, in which renovation and revolution are always possible, the older people at Whiteladies settled down to make the best of it, which is the philosophy of their age. To say the older people is incorrect, for it was Miss Susan only who had anything novel or heavy to endure. Miss Augustine liked the new guest, who for some time went regularly to the Almshouse services with her, and knelt devoutly, and chanted forth the hymns with a full rich voice, which indeed silenced the quavering tones of the old folks, but filled the chapel with such a flood of melody as had never been heard there before. Giovanna enjoyed singing. She had a fine natural voice, but little instruction, and no opportunity at the moment of getting at anything better in the way of music; so that she was glad of the hymns which gave her pleasure at once in the exercise of her voice, and in the agreeable knowledge that she was making a sensation. As much of a crowd as was possible in St. Austin’s began to gather in the Almshouse garden when she was known to be there; and though Mrs. Richard instinctively disapproved of her, the Doctor was somewhat proud of this addition to his service. Giovanna went regularly with her patroness, and gained Augustine’s heart, as much as that abstracted heart could be gained, and made herself not unpopular with the poor people, to whom she would speak in her imperfect English with more familiarity than the ladies ever indulged in, and from whom, in lieu of better, she was quite ready to receive compliments about her singing and her beauty. Once, indeed, she sang songs to them in their garden, to the great entertainment of the old Almshouse folks. She was caught in the act by Mrs. Richard, who rushed to the rescue of her gentility with feelings which I will not attempt to describe. The old lady ran out breathless at the termination of a song, with a flush upon her pretty old cheeks, and caught the innovator by the arm.

“The doctor is at home, and I am just going to give him a cup of tea,” she said; “won’t you come and have some with us?”

Mrs. Richard’s tidy little bosom heaved under her black silk gown with consternation and dismay.

Giovanna was not at all willing to give up her al fresco entertainment. “But I will return, I will return,” she said.

“Do, madame, do,” cried the old people, who were vaguely pleased by her music, and more keenly delighted by having a new event to talk about, and the power of wondering what Miss Augustine (poor thing!) would think; and Mrs. Richard led Giovanna in, with her hand upon her arm, fearful lest her prisoner should escape.

“It is very good of you to sing to them; but it is not a thing that is done in England,” said the little old lady.

“I love to sing,” said Giovanna, “and I shall come often. They have not any one to amuse them; and neither have I,” she added with a sigh.

“My dear, you must speak to the Doctor about it,” said Mrs. Richard.

Giovanna was glad of any change, even of little Dr. Richard and the cup of tea, so she was submissive enough for the moment; and to see her between these two excellent and orderly little people was an edifying sight.

“No, it is not usual,” said Dr. Richard, “my wife is right; but it is very kind-hearted of madame, my dear, to wish to amuse the poor people. There is nothing to be said against that.”