A House in Bloomsbury

Miss Bethune ended with a harsh laugh, and after a moment seated herself again in her chair. The tempest of personal feeling had carried her away, quenching even the other and yet stronger sentiment, which for so many years had been the passion of her life. She had been suddenly, strangely driven back to a period which even now, in her sober middle age, it was a kind of madness to think of—the years which she had lived through in awful silence, a wife yet no wife, a mother yet no mother, cut off from everything but the monotonous, prolonged, unending formula of a girlhood out of date, the life without individuality, without meaning, and without hope, of a large-minded and active woman, kept to the rôle of a child, in a house where there was not even affection to sweeten it. The recollection of those terrible, endless, changeless days, running into years as indistinguishable, the falsehood of every circumstance and appearance, the secret existence of love and sacrifice, of dread knowledge and disenchantment, of strained hope and failing illusion, and final and awful despair, of which Gilchrist alone knew anything,—Gilchrist, the faithful servant, the sole companion of her heart,—came back upon her with all that horrible sense of the intolerable which such a martyrdom brings. She had borne it in its day—how had she borne it? Was it possible that a woman could go through that and live? her heart torn from her bosom, her baby torn from her side, and no one, no one but Gilchrist, to keep a little life alive in her heart! And it had lasted for years—many, many, many years,—all the years of her life, except those first twenty which tell for so little. In that rush of passion she did not know how time passed, whether it was five minutes or an hour that she sat under the inspection of the old lawyer, whom this puzzle of humanity filled with a sort of professional interest, and who did not think it necessary to withdraw, or had any feeling of intrusion upon the sufferer. It was not really a long time, though it might have been a year, when she roused herself and took hold of her forces, and the dread panorama rolled away.

Gradually the familiar things around her came back. She remembered herself, no despairing girl, no soul in bondage, but a sober woman, disenchanted in many ways, but never yet cured of those hopes and that faith which hold the ardent spirit to life. Her countenance changed with her thoughts, her eyes ceased to be abstracted and visionary, her colour came back. She turned to the old gentleman with a look which for the first time disturbed and bewildered that old and hardened spectator of the vicissitudes of life. Her eyes filled with a curious liquid light, an expression wistful, flattering, entreating. She looked at him as a child looks who has a favour to ask, her head a little on one side, her lips quivering with a smile. There came into the old lawyer’s mind, he could not tell how, a ridiculous sense of being a superior being, a kind of god, able to confer untold advantages and favours. What did the woman want of him? What—it did not matter what she wanted—could he do for her? Nothing that he was aware of: and a sense of the danger of being cajoled came into his mind, but along with that, which was ridiculous, though he could not help it, a sense of being really a superior being, able to grant favours, and benignant, as he had never quite known himself to be.

“Mr. Templar,” she said, “now all is over there is not another word to say: and now the boy—my boy–”

“The boy?” he repeated, with a surprised air.

“My child that was taken from me as soon as he was born, my little helpless bairn that never knew his mother—my son, my son! Give me a right to him, give me my lawful title to him, and there can be no more doubt about it—that nobody may say he is not mine.”

The old lawyer was more confused than words could say. The very sense she had managed to convey to his mind of being a superior being, full of graces and gifts to confer, made his downfall the more ludicrous to himself. He seemed to tumble down from an altitude quite visionary, yet very real, as if by some neglect or ill-will of his own. He felt himself humiliated, a culprit before her. “My dear lady,” he said, “you are going too fast and too far for me. I did not even know there was any– Stop! I think I begin to remember.”

“Yes,” she said, breathless,—“yes!” looking at him with supplicating eyes.

“Now it comes back to me,” he said. “I—I—am afraid I gave it no importance. There was a baby—yes, a little thing a few weeks, or a few months old—that died.”

She sprang up again once more to her feet, menacing, terrible. She was bigger, stronger, far more full of life, than he was. She towered over him, her face full of tragic passion. “It is not true—it is not true!” she cried.

“My dear lady, how can I know? What can I do? I can but tell you the instructions given to me; it had slipped out of my mind, it seemed of little importance in comparison. A baby that was too delicate to bear the separation from its mother—I remember it all now. I am very sorry, very sorry, if I have conveyed any false hopes to your mind. The baby died not long after it was taken away.”

“It is not true,” Miss Bethune said, with a hoarse and harsh voice. After the excitement and passion, she stood like a figure cut out of stone. This statement, so calm and steady, struck her like a blow. Her lips denied, but her heart received the cruel news. It may be necessary to explain good fortune, but misery comes with its own guarantee. It struck her like a sword, like a scythe, shearing down her hopes. She rose into a brief blaze of fury, denying it. “Oh, you think I will believe that?” she cried,—“me that have followed him in my thoughts through every stage, have seen him grow and blossom, and come to be a man! Do you think there would have been no angel to stop me in my vain imaginations, no kind creature in heaven or earth that would have breathed into my heart and said, ‘Go on no more, hope no more’? Oh no—oh no! Heaven is not like that, nor earth! Pain comes and trouble, but not cruel fate. No, I do not believe it—I will not believe it! It is not true.”

“My dear lady,” said the old gentleman, distressed.

“I am no dear lady to you. I am nothing to you. I am a poor, deserted, heartbroken woman, that have lived false, false, but never meant it: that have had no one to stand by me, to help me out of it. And now you sit there calm, and look me in the face, and take away my son. My baby first was taken from me, forced out of my arms, new-born: and now you take the boy I’ve followed with my heart these long, long years, the bonnie lad, the young man I’ve seen. I tell you I’ve seen him, then. How can a mother be deceived? We’ve seen him, both Gilchrist and me. Ask her, if you doubt my word. We have seen him, can any lie stand against that? And my heart has spoken, and his heart has spoken; we have sought each other in the dark, and taken hands. I know him by his bonnie eyes, and a trick in his mouth that is just my father over again: and he knows me by nature, and the touch of kindly blood.”

“Oh, mem,” Gilchrist cried, “I warned ye—I warned ye! What is a likeness to lippen to? And I never saw it,” the woman said, with tears.

“And who asked ye to see it, or thought ye could see it, a serving-woman, not a drop’s blood to him or to me? It would be a bonnie thing,” said Miss Bethune, pausing, looking round, as if to appeal to an unseen audience, with an almost smile of scorn, “if my hired woman’s word was to be taken instead of his mother’s. Did she bear him in pain and anguish? Did she wait for him, lying dreaming, month after month, that he was to cure all? She got him in her arms when he was born, but he had been in mine for long before; he had grown a man in my heart before ever he saw the light of day. Oh, ask her, and there is many a fable she will tell ye. But me!"—she calmed down again, a smile came upon her face,—“I have seen my son. Now, as I have nobody but him, he has nobody but me: and I mean from this day to take him home and acknowledge him before all the world.”

Mr. Templar had risen, and stood with his hand on the back of his chair. “I have nothing more to say,” he said. “If I can be of any use to you in any way, command me, madam. It is no wish of mine to take any comfort from you, or even to dispel any pleasing illusion.”

“As if you could!” she said, rising again, proud and smiling. “As if any old lawyer’s words, as dry as dust, could shake my conviction, or persuade me out of what is a certainty. It is a certainty. Seeing is believing, the very vulgar say. And I have seen him—do you think you could make me believe after that, that there is no one to see?”

He shook his head and turned away. “Good-morning to you, ma’am,” he said. “I have told you the truth, but I cannot make you believe it, and why should I try? It may be happier for you the other way.”

“Happier?” she said, with a laugh. “Ay, because it’s true. Falsehood has been my fate too long—I am happy because it is true.”

Miss Bethune sat down again, when her visitor closed the door behind him. The triumph and brightness gradually died out of her face. “What are you greetin’ there for, you fool?” she said, “and me the happiest woman, and the proudest mother! Gilchrist,” she said, suddenly turning round upon her maid, “the woman that is dead was a weak creature, bound hand and foot all her life. She meant no harm, poor thing, I will allow, but yet she broke one man’s life in pieces, and it must have been a poor kind of happiness she gave the other, with her heart always straying after another man’s bairn. And I’ve done nothing, nothing to injure any mortal. I was true till I could be true no longer, till he showed all he was; and true I have been in spite of that all my life, and endured and never said a word. Do you think it’s possible, possible that yon woman should be rewarded with her child in her arms, and her soul satisfied?—and me left desolate, with my very imaginations torn from me, torn out of me, and my heart left bleeding, and all my thoughts turned into lies, like myself, that have been no better than a lie?—turned into lies?”

“Oh, mem!” cried Gilchrist—“oh, my dear leddy, that has been more to me than a’ this world! Is it for me to say that it’s no’ justice we have to expect, for we deserve nothing; and that the Lord knows His ain reasons; and that the time will come when we’ll get it all back—you, your bairn, the Lord bless him! and me to see ye as happy as the angels, which is all I ever wanted or thought to get either here or otherwhere!”

CHAPTER XX

There was nothing more said to Mr. Mannering on the subject of Mr. Templar’s mission, neither did he himself say anything, either to sanction or prevent his child from carrying out the strange desire of her mother—her mother! Dora did not accept the thought. She made a struggle within herself to keep up the fiction that it was her mother’s sister—a relation, something near, yet ever inferior to the vision of a benignant, melancholy being, unknown, which a dead mother so often is to an imaginative girl.

It pleased her to find, as she said to herself, “no likeness” to the suffering and hysterical woman she had seen, in that calm, pensive portrait, which she instantly secured and took possession of—the little picture which had lain so long buried with its face downward in the secret drawer. She gazed at it for an hour together, and found nothing—nothing, she declared to herself with indignant satisfaction, to remind her of the other face—flushed, weeping, middle-aged—which had so implored her affection. Had it been her mother, was it possible that it should have required an effort to give that affection? No! Dora at sixteen believed very fully in the voice of nature. It would have been impossible, her heart at once would have spoken, she would have known by some infallible instinct. She put the picture up in her own room, and filled her heart with the luxury, the melancholy, the sadness, and pleasure of this possession—her mother’s portrait, more touching to the imagination than any other image could be. But then there began to steal a little shadow over Dora’s thoughts. She would not give up her determined resistance to the idea that this face and the other face, living and dying, which she had seen, could be one; but when she raised her eyes suddenly, to her mother’s picture, a consciousness would steal over her, an involuntary glance of recognition. What more likely than that there should be a resemblance, faint and far away, between sister and sister? And then there came to be a gleam of reproach to Dora in those eyes, and the girl began to feel as if there was an irreverence, a want of feeling, in turning that long recluse and covered face to the light of day, and carrying on all the affairs of life under it, as if it were a common thing. Finally she arranged over it a little piece of drapery, a morsel of faded embroidered silk which was among her treasures, soft and faint in its colours—a veil which she could draw in her moments of thinking and quiet, those moments which it would not be irreverent any longer to call a dead mother or an angelic presence to hallow and to share.

But she said nothing when she was called to Miss Bethune’s room, and clad in mourning, recognising with a thrill, half of horror, half of pride, the crape upon her dress which proved her right to that new exaltation among human creatures—that position of a mourner which is in its way a step in life. Dora did not ask where she was going when she followed Miss Bethune, also in black from head to foot, to the plain little brougham which had been ordered to do fit and solemn honour to the occasion; the great white wreath and basket of flowers, which filled up the space, called no observation from her. They drove in silence to the great cemetery, with all its gay flowers and elaborate aspect of cheerfulness. It was a fine but cloudy day, warm and soft, yet without sunshine; and Dora had a curious sense of importance, of meaning, as if she had attained an advanced stage of being. Already an experience had fallen to her share, more than one experience. She had knelt, troubled and awe-stricken, by a death-bed; she was now going to stand by a grave. Even where real sorrow exists, this curious sorrowful elation of sentiment is apt to come into the mind of the very young. Dora was deeply impressed by the circumstances and the position, but it was impossible that she could feel any real grief. Tears came to her eyes as she dropped the shower of flowers, white and lovely, into the darkness of that last abode. Her face was full of awe and pity, but her breast of that vague, inexplainable expansion and growth, as of a creature entered into the larger developments and knowledge of life. There were very few other mourners. Mr. Templar, the lawyer, with his keen but veiled observation of everything, serious and businesslike; the doctor, with professional gravity and indifference; Miss Bethune, with almost stern seriousness, standing like a statue in her black dress and with her pale face. Why should any of these spectators care? The woman was far the most moved, thinking of the likeness and difference of her own fate, of the failure of that life which was now over, and of her own, a deeper failure still, without any fault of hers. And Dora, wondering, developing, her eyes full of abstract tears, and her mind of awe.

Only one mourner stood pale with watching and thought beside the open grave, his heart aching with loneliness and a profound natural vacancy and pain. He knew that she had neglected him, almost wronged him at the last, cut him off, taking no thought of what was to become of him. He felt even that in so doing this woman was unfaithful to her trust, and had done what she ought not to have done. But all that mattered nothing in face of natural sorrow, natural love. She had been a mother to him, and she was gone. The ear always open to his boyish talk and confidence, always ready to listen, could hear him no more; and, almost more poignant, his care of her was over, there was nothing more to do for her, none of the hundred commissions that used to send him flying, the hundred things that had to be done. His occupation in life seemed to be over, his home, his natural place. It had not perhaps ever been a natural place, but he had not felt that. She had been his mother, though no drop of her blood ran in his veins; and now he was nobody’s son, belonging to no family. The other people round looked like ghosts to Harry Gordon. They were part of the strange cutting off, the severance he already felt; none of them had anything to do with her, and yet it was he who was pushed out and put aside, as if he had nothing to do with her, the only mother he had ever known! The little sharp old lawyer was her representative now, not he who had been her son. He stood languid, in a moment of utter depression, collapse of soul and body, by the grave. When all was over, and the solemn voice which sounds as no other voice ever does, falling calm through the still air, bidding earth return to earth, and dust to dust, had ceased, he still stood as if unable to comprehend that all was over—no one to bid him come away, no other place to go to. His brain was not relieved by tears, or his mind set in activity by anything to do. He stood there half stupefied, left behind, in that condition when simply to remain as we are seems the only thing possible to us.

Miss Bethune had placed Dora in the little brougham, in rigorous fulfilment of her duty to the child. Mr. Templar and the doctor had both departed, the two other women, Mrs. Bristow’s maid and the nurse who had accompanied her, had driven away: and still the young man stood, not paying any attention. Miss Bethune waited for a little by the carriage door. She did not answer the appeal of the coachman, asking if he was to drive away; she said nothing to Dora, whose eyes endeavoured in vain to read the changes in her friend’s face; but, after standing there for a few minutes quite silent, she suddenly turned and went back to the cemetery. It was strange to her to hesitate in anything she did, and from the moment she left the carriage door all uncertainty was over. She went back with a quick step, treading her way among the graves, and put her hand upon young Gordon’s arm.

“You are coming home with me,” she said.

The new, keen voice, irregular and full of life, so unlike the measured tones to which he had been listening, struck the young man uneasily in the midst of his melancholy reverie, which was half trance, half exhaustion. He moved a step away, as if to shake off the interruption, scarcely conscious what, and not at all who it was.

“My dear young man, you must come home with me,” she said again.

He looked at her, with consciousness re-awakening, and attempted to smile, with his natural ready response to every kindness. “It is you,” he said, and then, “I might have known it could only be you.”

What did that mean? Nothing at all. Merely his sense that the one person who had spoken kindly to him, looked tenderly at him (though he had never known why, and had been both amused and embarrassed by the consciousness), was the most likely among all the strangers by whom he was surrounded to be kind to him now. But it produced an effect upon Miss Bethune which was far beyond any meaning it bore.

A great light seemed suddenly to blaze over her face; her eyes, which had been so veiled and stern, awoke; every line of a face which could be harsh and almost rigid in repose, began to melt and soften; her composure, which had been almost solemn, failed; her lip began to quiver, tears came dropping upon his arm, which she suddenly clasped with both her hands, clinging to it. “You say right,” she cried, “my dear, my dear!—more right than all the reasons. It is you and nature that makes everything clear. You are just coming home with me.”

“I don’t seem,” he said, “to know what the word means.”

“But you will soon learn again. God bless the good woman that cherished you and loved you, my bonnie boy. I’ll not say a word against her—oh, no, no! God’s blessing upon her as she lies there. I will never grudge a good word you say of her, never a regret. But now"—she put her arm within his with a proud and tender movement, which so far penetrated his languor as to revive the bewilderment which he had felt before—“now you are coming home with me.”

He did not resist; he allowed himself to be led to the little carriage and packed into it, which was not quite an easy thing to do. On another occasion he would have laughed and protested, but on this he submitted gravely to whatever was required of him, thankful, in the failure of all motive, to have some one to tell him what to do, to move him as if he were an automaton. He sat bundled up on the little front seat, with Dora’s wondering countenance opposite to him, and that other inexplicable face, inspired and lighted up with tenderness. He had not strength enough to inquire why this stranger took possession of him so; neither could Dora tell, who sat opposite to him, her mind awakened, her thoughts busy. This was the almost son of the woman who they said was Dora’s mother. What was he to Dora? Was he the nearer to her, or the farther from her, for that relationship? Did she like him better or worse for having done everything that it ought, they said, have been her part to do?

These questions were all confused in Dora’s mind, but they were not favourable to this new interloper into her life—he who had known about her for years while she had never heard of him. She sat very upright, reluctant to make room for him, yet scrupulously doing so, and a little indignant that he should thus be brought in to interfere with her own claims to the first place. The drive to Bloomsbury seemed very long in these circumstances, and it was indeed a long drive. They all came back into the streets after the long suburban road with a sense almost of relief in the growing noise, the rattle of the causeway, and sound of the carts and carriages—which made it unnecessary, as it had been impossible for them, to say anything to each other, and brought back the affairs of common life to dispel the influences of the solemn moment that was past.

When they had reached Miss Bethune’s rooms, and returned altogether to existence, and the sight of a table spread for a meal, it was a shock, but not an ungrateful one. Miss Bethune at once threw off the gravity which had wrapped her like a cloak, when she put away her black bonnet. She bade Gilchrist hurry to have the luncheon brought up. “These two young creatures have eaten nothing, I am sure, this day. Probably they think they cannot: but when food is set before them they will learn better. Haste ye, Gilchrist, to have it served up. No, Dora, you will stay with me too. Your father is a troubled man this day. You will not go in upon him with that cloud about you, not till you are refreshed and rested, and have got your colour and your natural look back. And you, my bonnie man!” She could not refrain from touching, caressing his shoulder as she passed him; her eyes kept filling with tears as she looked at him. He for his part moved and took his place as she told him, still in a dream.

It was a curious meal, more daintily prepared and delicate than usual, and Miss Bethune was a woman who at all times was “very particular,” and exercised all the gifts of the landlady, whose other lodgers demanded much less of her. And the mistress of the little feast was still less as usual. She scarcely sat down at her own table, but served her young guests with anxious care, carving choice morsels for them, watching their faces, their little movements of impatience, and the gradual development of natural appetite, which came as the previous spell gradually wore off. She talked all the time, her countenance a little flushed and full of emotion, her eyes moist and shining, with frequent sallies at Gilchrist, who hovered round the table waiting upon the young guests, and in her excitement making continual mistakes and stumblings, which soon roused Dora to laugh, and Harry to apologise.

“It is all right,” he cried, when Miss Bethune at last made a dart at her attendant, and gave her, what is called in feminine language, “a shake,” to bring her to herself.

“Are you out of your wits, woman?” Miss Bethune exclaimed. “Go away and leave me to look after the bairns, if ye cannot keep your head. Are you out of your wits?”

“Indeed, mem, and I have plenty of reason, Gilchrist said, weeping, and feeling for her apron, while the dish in her hand wavered wildly; and then it was that Harry Gordon, coming to himself, cried out that it was all right.