Whiteladies

“Don’t quarrel, Bertie,” Reine whispered in his ear.

“Quarrel! he is not worth quarrelling with. He is jealous, I suppose, because I am more important than he is,” Herbert said, stalking through the long passages which were still all bright with lights and flowers. Everard, hanging back out of hearing, followed the two young figures with his eyes through the windings of the passage. Herbert held his head high, indignant. Reine, with both her hands on his arm, soothed and calmed him. They were both resentful of his sour tone and what he had said.

“I dare say they think I am jealous,” Everard said to himself with a laugh that was not merry, and went away to his own room, and beginning to arrange his things for departure, meaning to leave next day. He had no need to stay there to swell Herbert’s triumph, he who had so long acted as nurse to him without fee or reward. Not quite without reward either, he thought, after all, rebuking himself, and held up his hand and looked at it intently, with a smile stealing over his face. Why should he interfere to save Herbert from his own vanity and folly? Why should he subject himself to the usual fate of Mentors, pointing out Scylla on the one side and Charybdis on the other? If the frail vessel was determined to be wrecked, what had he, Everard, to do with it? Let the boy accomplish his destiny, who cared? and then what could Reine do but take refuge with her natural champion, he whom she herself had appointed to stand in her place, and who had his own score against her still unacquitted? It was evidently to his interest to keep out of the way, to let things go as they would. “And I’ll back Giovanna against Sophy,” he said to himself, half jealous, half laughing, as he went to sleep.

As for Herbert, he lounged into the great hall, where some lights were still burning, with his sister, and found Miss Susan there, pale with fatigue and the excitement past but triumphant. “I hope you have not tired yourself out,” she said. “It was like those girls to lead you out into the night air, to give you a chance of taking cold. Their father would like nothing better than to see you laid up again: but I don’t give them credit for any scheme. They are too feather-brained for anything but folly.”

“Do you mean our cousins Sophy and Kate?” said Herbert with some solemnity, and an unconscious attempt to overawe Miss Susan, who was not used to anything of this kind, and was unable to understand what he meant.

“I mean the Farrel-Austin girls,” she said. “Riot and noise and nonsense are their atmosphere. I hope you do not like this kind of goings on, Reine?”

The brother and sister looked at each other. “You have always disliked the Farrel-Austins,” said Herbert, bravely putting himself in the breach. “I don’t know why, Aunt Susan. But we have no quarrel with the girls. They are very nice and friendly. Indeed, Reine and I have promised to go to them on Friday, for two or three days.”

He was three and twenty, he was acknowledged master of the house; but Herbert felt a certain tremor steal over him, and stood up before her with a strong sense of valor and daring as he said these words.

“Going to them on Friday – to the Farrel-Austins’ for three or four days! then you do not mean even to go to your own parish church on your first Sunday? Herbert,” said Miss Susan, indignantly, “you will break Augustine’s heart.”

“No, no, we did not say three or four days. I thought of that,” said Reine. “We shall return on Saturday. Don’t be angry, Aunt Susan. They were very kind, and we thought it was no harm.”

Herbert gave her an indignant glance. It was on his lips to say, “It does not matter whether Aunt Susan is angry or not,” but looking at her, he thought better of it. “Yes,” he said after a pause, “we shall return on Saturday. They were very kind, as Reine says, and how visiting our cousins could possibly involve any harm – ”

“That is your own affair,” said Miss Susan; “I know what you mean, Herbert, and of course you are right, you are not children any longer, and must choose your own friends; well! Before you go, however, I should like to settle everything. To-night is my last night. Yes, it is too late to discuss that now. I don’t mean to say more at present. It went off very well, very pleasantly, but for that ridiculous interruption of Giovanna’s – ”

“I did not think it was ridiculous,” said Herbert. “It was very pretty. Does Giovanna displease you too?”

Once more Reine pressed his arm. He was not always going to be coerced like this. If Miss Susan wants to be unjust and ungenerous, he was man enough, he felt, to meet her to the face.

“It was very ridiculous, I thought,” she said with a sigh, “and I told her so. I don’t suppose she meant any harm. She is very ignorant, and knows nothing about the customs of society. Thank heaven, she can’t stay very long now.”

“Why can’t she stay?” cried Herbert, alarmed. “Aunt Susan, I don’t know what has come over you. You used to be so kind to everybody, but now it is the people I particularly like you are so furious against. Why? those girls, who are as pretty and as pleasant as possible, and just the kind of companions Reine wants, and Madame Jean, who is the most charming person I ever saw in this house. Ignorant! I think she is very accomplished. How she sang last night, and what an eye she has for the picturesque! I never admired Whiteladies so much as this morning, when she took us over it. Aunt Susan, don’t be so cross. Are you disappointed in Reine, or in me, that you are so hard upon the people we like most?”

“The people you like most?” cried Miss Susan aghast.

“Yes, Aunt Susan, I like them too,” said Reine, bravely putting herself by her brother’s side. I believe they both thought it was a most chivalrous and high-spirited thing they were doing, rejecting experience and taking rashly what seemed to them the weaker side. The side of the accused against the judge, the side of the young against the old. It seemed so natural to do that. The two stood together in their foolishness in the old hall, all decorated in their honor, and confronted the dethroned queen of it with a smile. She stood baffled and thunderstruck, gazing at them, and scarcely knew what to say.

“Well, children, well,” she managed to get out at last. “You are no longer under me, you must choose your own friends; but God help you, what is to become of you if these are the kind of people you like best!”

They both laughed softly; though Reine had compunctions, they were not afraid. “You must confess at least that we have good taste,” said Herbert; “two very pretty people, and one beautiful. I should have been much happier with Sophy at one hand and Madame Jean on the other, instead of those two swells, as Sophy calls them.”

“Sophy, as you call her, would give her head for their notice,” cried Miss Susan indignant, “two of the best women in the county, and the most important families.”

Herbert shrugged his shoulders. “They did not amuse me,” he said, “but perhaps I am stupid. I prefer the foolish Sophy and the undaunted Madame Jean.”

Miss Susan left them with a cold good-night to see all the lights put out, which was important in the old house. She was so angry that it almost eased her of her personal burden; but Reine, I confess, felt a thrill of panic as she went up the oak stairs. Scylla and Charybdis! She did not identify Herbert’s danger, but in her heart there worked a vague premonition of danger, and without knowing why, she was afraid.

CHAPTER XLI

“Going away?” said Giovanna. “M. ’Erbert, you go away already? is it that Viteladies is what you call dull? You have been here so short of time, you do not yet know.”

“We are going only for a day; at least not quite two days,” said Reine.

“For a day! but a day, two days is long. Why go at all?” said Giovanna. “We are very well here. I will sing, if that pleases, to you. M. ’Erbert, when you are so long absent, you should not go away to-morrow, the next day. Madame Suzanne will think, ‘They lofe me not.’ ”

“That would be nonsense,” said Herbert; “besides, you know I cannot be kept in one place at my age, whatever old ladies may think.”

“Ah! nor young ladies neither,” said Giovanna. “You are homme, you have the freedom to do what you will, I know it. Me, I am but a woman, I can never have this freedom; but I comprehend and I admire. Yes, M. ’Erbert, that goes without saying. One does not put the eagle into a cage.”

And Giovanna gave a soft little sigh. She was seated in one of her favorite easy chairs, thrown back in it in an attitude of delicious easy repose. She had no mind for the work with which Reine employed herself, and which all the women Herbert ever knew had indulged in, to his annoyance, and often envy; for an invalid’s weary hours would have been the better often of such feminine solace, and the young man hated it all the more that he had often been tempted to take to it, had his pride permitted. But Giovanna had no mind for this pretty cheat, that looked like occupation. In her own room she worked hard at her own dresses and those of the child, but downstairs she sat with her large, shapely white hands in her lap, in all the luxury of doing nothing; and this peculiarity delighted Herbert. He was pleased, too, with what she said; he liked to imagine that he was an eagle who could not be shut into a cage, and to feel his immense superiority, as man, over the women who were never free to do as they liked, and for whom (he thought) such an indulgence would not be good. He drew himself up unconsciously, and felt older, taller. “No,” he said, “of course it would be too foolish of Aunt Susan or any one to expect me to be guided by what she thinks right.”

“Me, I do not speak for you,” said Giovanna; “I speak for myself. I am disappointed, me. It will be dull when you are gone. Yes, yes, Monsieur ’Erbert, we are selfish, we other women. When you go we are dull; we think not of you, but of ourselves, n’est ce pas, Mademoiselle Reine? I am frank. I confess it. You will be very happy; you will have much pleasure; but me, I shall be dull. Voilà tout!”

I need not say that this frankness captivated Herbert. It is always more pleasant to have our absence regretted by others, selfishly, for the loss it is to them, than unselfishly on our account only; so that this profession of indifference to the pleasure of your departing friend, in consideration of the loss to yourself, is the very highest compliment you can pay him. Herbert felt this to the bottom of his heart. He was infinitely flattered and touched by the thought of a superiority so delightful, and he had not been used to it. He had been accustomed, indeed, to be in his own person the centre of a great deal of care and anxiety, everybody thinking of him for his sake; but to have it recognized that his presence or absence made a place dull or the reverse, and affected his surroundings, not for his sake but theirs, was an immense rise in the world to Herbert. He felt it necessary to be very friendly and attentive to Giovanna, by way of consoling her. “After all, it will not be very long,” he said; “from Friday morning to Saturday night. I like to humor the old ladies, and they make a point of our being at home for Sunday; though I don’t know how Sophy and Kate will like it, Reine.”

“They will not like it at all,” said Giovanna. “They want you to be to them, to amuse them, to make them happy; so do I, the same. When they come here, those young ladies, we shall not be friends; we shall fight,” she said with a laugh. “Ah, they are more clever than me, they will win; though if we could fight with the hands like men, I should win. I am more strong.”

“It need not come so far as that,” said Herbert, complaisant and delighted. “You are all very kind, I am sure, and think more of me than I deserve.”

“I am kind – to me, not to you, M. ’Erbert,” said Giovanna; “when I tell you it is dull, dull à mourir the moment you go away.”

“Yet you have spent a good many months here without Herbert, Madame Jean,” said Reine; “if it had been so dull, you might have gone away.”

“Ah, mademoiselle! where could I have gone to? I am not rich like you; I have not parents that love me. If I go home now,” cried Giovanna, with a laugh, “it will be to the room behind the shop where my belle-mère sits all the day, where they cook the dinner, where I am the one that is in the way, always. I have no money, no people to care for me. Even little Jean they take from me. They say, ‘Tenez Gi’vanna; she has not the ways of children.’ Have not I the ways of children, M. ’Erbert? That is what they would say to me, if I went to what you call ’ome.”

“Reine,” said Herbert, in an undertone, “how can you be so cruel, reminding the poor thing how badly off she is? I hope you will not think of going away,” he added, turning to Giovanna. “Reine and I will be too glad that you should stay; and as for your flattering appreciation of our society, I for one am very grateful,” said the young fellow. “I am very happy to be able to do anything to make Whiteladies pleasant to you.”

Miss Susan came in as he said this with Everard, who was going away; but she was too much preoccupied by her own cares to attend to what her nephew was saying. Everard appreciated the position more clearly. He saw the grateful look with which Giovanna turned her beautiful eyes to the young master of the house, and he saw the pleased vanity and complaisance in Herbert’s face. “What an ass he is!” Everard thought to himself; and then he quoted privately with rueful comment, —

“ ‘On him each courtier’s eye was bent,
To him each lady’s look was lent:’

all because the young idiot has Whiteladies, and is the head of the house. Bravo! Herbert, old boy,” he said aloud, though there was nothing particularly appropriate in the speech, “you are having your innings. I hope you will make the most of them. But now that I am no longer wanted, I am going off. I suppose when it is warm enough for water parties, I shall come into fashion again; Sophy and Kate will manage that.”

“Well, Everard, if I were you I should have more pride,” said Miss Susan. “I would not allow myself to be taken up and thrown aside as those girls please. What you can see in them baffles me. They are not very pretty. They are very loud, and fast and noisy – ”

“I think so too!” cried Giovanna, clapping her hands. “They are my enemies: they take you away, M. ’Erbert and Mademoiselle Reine. They make it dull here.”

“Only for a day,” said Herbert, bending over her, his eyes melting and glowing with that delightful suffusion of satisfied vanity which with so many men represents love. “I could not stay long away if I would,” said the young man in a lower tone. He was quite captivated by her frank demonstrations of personal loss, and believed them to the bottom of his heart.

Miss Susan threw a curious, half-startled look at them, and Reine raised her head from her embroidery; but both of these ladies had something of their own on their minds which occupied them, and closed their eyes to other matters. Reine was secretly uneasy that Everard should go away; that there should have been no explanation between them; and that his tone had in it a certain suppressed bitterness. What had she done to him? Nothing. She had been occupied with her brother, as was natural; any one else would have been the same. Everard’s turn could come at any time, she said to herself, with an unconscious arrogance not unusual with girls, when they are sure of having the upper hand. But she was uneasy that he should go away.

“I don’t want to interfere with your pleasures, Herbert,” said Miss Susan, “but I must settle what I am to do. Our cottage is ready for us, everything is arranged; and I want to give up my charge to you, and go away.”

“To go away!” the brother and sister repeated together with dismay.

“Of course; that is what it must come to. When you were under age it was different. I was your guardian, Herbert, and you were my children.”

“Aunt Susan,” cried Reine, coming up to her with eager tenderness, “we are your children still.”