Whiteladies

“And I – am not at all sure whether it will suit me to take up all you have been doing,” said Herbert. “It suits you, why should we change; and how could Reine manage the house? Aunt Susan, it is unkind to come down upon us like this. Leave us a little time to get used to it. What do you want with a cottage? Of course you must like Whiteladies best.”

“Oh, Aunt Susan! what he says is not so selfish as it sounds,” said Reine. “Why – why should you go?”

“We are all selfish,” said Herbert, “as Madame Jean says. She wishes us to stay because it is dull without us (‘Bien, très dull,’ said Giovanna), and we want you to stay because we are not up to the work and don’t understand it. Never mind the cottage; there is plenty of room in Whiteladies for all of us. Aunt Susan, why should you be disagreeable? Don’t go away.”

“I wish it; I wish it,” she said in a low tone; “let me go!”

“But we don’t wish it,” cried Reine, kissing her in triumph, “and neither does Augustine. Oh, Aunt Austine, listen to her, speak for us! You don’t wish to go away from Whiteladies, away from your home?”

“No,” said Augustine, who had come in in her noiseless way. “I do not intend to leave Whiteladies,” she went on, with serious composure; “but Herbert, I have something to say to you. It is more important than anything else. You must marry; you must marry at once; I don’t wish any time to be lost. I wish you to have an heir, whom I shall bring up. I will devote myself to him. I am fifty-seven; there is no time to be lost; but with care I might live twenty years. The women of our house are long-lived. Susan is sixty, but she is as active as any one of you; and for an object like this, one would spare no pains to lengthen one’s days. You must marry, Herbert. This has now become the chief object of my life.”

The young members of the party, unable to restrain themselves, laughed at this solemn address. Miss Susan turned away impatient, and sitting down, pulled out the knitting of which lately she had done so little. But as for Augustine, her countenance preserved a perfect gravity. She saw nothing laughable in it. “I excuse you,” she said very seriously, “for you cannot see into my heart and read what is there. Nor does Susan understand me. She is taken up with the cares of this world and the foolishness of riches. She thinks a foolish display like that of last night is more important. But, Herbert, listen to me; you and your true welfare have been my first thought and my first prayer for years, and this is my recommendation, my command to you. You must marry – and without any unnecessary delay.”

“But the lady?” said Herbert, laughing and blushing; even this very odd address had a pleasurable element in it. It implied the importance of everything he did; and it pleased the young man, even after such an odd fashion, to lay this flattering unction to his soul.

“The lady!” said Miss Augustine gravely; and then she made a pause. “I have thought a great deal about that, and there is more than one whom I could suggest to you; but I have never married myself, and I might not perhaps be a good judge. It seems the general opinion that in such matters people should choose for themselves.”

All this she said with so profound a gravity that the bystanders, divided between amusement and a kind of awe, held their breath and looked at each other. Miss Augustine had not sat down. She rarely did sit down in the common sitting-room; her hands were too full of occupation. Her Church services, now that the Chantry was opened, her Almshouses prayers, her charities, her universal oversight of her pensioners filled up all her time, and bound her to hours as strictly as if she had been a cotton-spinner in a mill. No cotton-spinner worked harder than did this Gray Sister; from morning to night her time was portioned out.

I do not venture to say how many miles she walked daily, rain or shine; from Whiteladies to the Almshouses, to the church, to the Almshouses again; or how many hours she spent absorbed in that strange matter-of-fact devotion which was her way of working for her family. She repeated, in her soft tones, “I do not interfere with your choice, Herbert; but what I say is very important. Marry! I wish it above everything else in life.” And having said this, she went away.

“This is very solemn,” said Herbert, with a laugh, but his laugh was not like the merriment into which, by-and-by, the others burst forth, and which half offended the young man. Reine, for her part, ran to the piano when Miss Augustine disappeared, and burst forth into a quaint little French ditty, sweet and simple, of old Norman rusticity.

“A chaque rose que je effeuille
Marie-toi, car il est temps,”

the girl sang. But Miss Susan did not laugh, and Herbert did not care to see anything ridiculed in which he had such an important share. After all it was natural enough, he said to himself, that such advice should be given with great gravity to one on whose acts so much depended. He did not see what there was to laugh about. Reine was absurd with her songs. There was always one of them which came in pat to the moment. Herbert almost thought that this light-minded repetition of Augustine’s advice was impertinent both to her and himself. And thus a little gloom had come over his brow.

“Messieurs et mesdames,” said Giovanna, suddenly, “you laugh, but, if you reflect, ma sœur has reason. She thinks, Here is Monsieur ’Erbert, young and strong, but yet there are things which happen to the strongest; and here, on the other part, is a little boy, a little, little boy, who is not English, whose mother is nothing but a foreigner, who is the heir. This gives her the panique. And for me, too, M. ’Erbert, I say with Mademoiselle Reine, ‘Marie-toi, car il est temps.’ Yes, truly! although little Jean is my boy, I say mariez-vous with my heart.”

“How good you are! how generous you are! Strange that you should be the only one to see it,” said Herbert, for the moment despising all the people belonging to him, who were so opaque, who did not perceive the necessities of the position. He himself saw those necessities well enough, and that he should marry was the first and most important. To tell the truth, he could not see even that Augustine’s anxiety was of an exaggerated description. It was not a thing to make laughter, and ridiculous jokes and songs about.

Giovanna did not desert her post during that day. She did not always lead the conversation, nor make herself so important in it as she had done at first, but she was always there, putting in a word when necessary, ready to come to Herbert’s assistance, to amuse him when there was occasion, to flatter him with bold, frank speeches, in which there was always a subtle compliment involved. Everard took his leave shortly after, with farewells in which there was a certain consciousness that he had not been treated quite as he ought to have been. “Till I come into fashion again,” he said, with the laugh which began to sound harsh to Reine’s ears, “I am better at home in my own den, where I can be as sulky as I please. When I am wanted, you know where to find me.” Reine thought he looked at her when he said this with reproach in his eyes.

“I think you are wanted now,” said Miss Susan; “there are many things I wished to consult you about. I wish you would not go away.”

But he was obstinate. “No, no; there is nothing for me to do,” he said; “no journeys to make, no troubles to encounter. You are all settled at home in safety; and when I am wanted you know where to find me,” he added, this time holding out his hand to Reine, and looking at her very distinctly. Poor Reine felt herself on the edge of a very sea of troubles: everybody around her seemed to have something in their thoughts beyond her divining. Miss Susan meant more than she could fathom, and there lurked a purpose in Giovanna’s beautiful eyes, which Reine began to be dimly conscious of, but could not explain to herself. How could he leave her to steer her course among these undeveloped perils? and how could she call him back when he was “wanted,” as he said bitterly? She gave him her hand, turning away her head to hide a something, almost a tear, that would come into her eyes, and with a forlorn sense of desertion in her heart; but she was too proud either by look or word to bid Everard stay.

This was on Thursday, and the next day they were to go to the Hatch, so that the interval was not long. Giovanna sang for them in the evening all kinds of popular songs, which was what she knew best, old Flemish ballads, and French and Italian canzoni; those songs of which every hamlet possesses one special to itself. “For I am not educated,” she said; “Mademoiselle must see that. I do all this by the ear. It is not music; it is nothing but ignorance. These are the chants du peuple, and I am nothing but one of the peuple, me. I am très-peuple. I never pretend otherwise. I do not wish to deceive you, M. ’Erbert, nor Mademoiselle.”

“Deceive us!” cried Herbert. “If we could imagine such a thing, we should be dolts indeed.”

Giovanna raised her head and looked at him, then turned to Miss Susan, whose knitting had dropped on her knee, and who, without thought, I think, had turned her eyes upon the group. “You are right, Monsieur ’Erbert,” she said, with a strange malicious laugh, “here at least you are quite safe, though there are much of persons who are traitres in the world. No one will deceive you here.”

She laughed as she spoke, and Miss Susan clutched at her knitting and buried herself in it, so to speak, not raising her head again for a full hour after, during which time Herbert and Giovanna talked a great deal to each other. And Reine sat by, with an incipient wonder in her mind which she could not quite make out, feeling as if her aunt and herself were one faction, Giovanna and Herbert another; as if there were all sorts of secret threads which she could not unravel, and intentions of which she knew nothing. The sense of strangeness grew on her so, that she could scarcely believe she was in Whiteladies, the home for which she had sighed so long. This kind of disenchantment happens often when the hoped-for becomes actual, but not always so strongly or with so bewildering a sense of something unrevealed, as that which pressed upon the very soul of Reine.

Next morning Giovanna, with her child on her shoulder, came out to the gate to see them drive away. “You will not stay more long than to-morrow,” she said. “How we are going to be dull till you come back! Monsieur Herbert, Mademoiselle Reine, you promise – not more long than to-morrow! It is two great long days!” She kissed her hand to them, and little Jean waved his cap, and shouted “Vive M. ’Erbert!” as the carriage drove away.

“What a grace she has about her!” said Herbert. “I never saw a woman so graceful. After all, it is a bore to go. It is astonishing how happy one feels, after a long absence, in the mere sense of being at home. I am sorry we promised; of course we must keep our promise now.”

“I like it, rather,” said Reine, feeling half ashamed of herself. “Home is not what it used to be; there is something strange, something new; I can’t tell what it is. After all, though, Madame Jean is very handsome, it is strange she should be there.”

“Oh, you object to Madame Jean, do you?” said Herbert. “You women are all alike; Aunt Susan does not like her either, I suppose you cannot help it; the moment a woman is more attractive than others, the moment a man shows that he has got eyes in his head – But you cannot help it, I suppose. What a walk she has, and carrying the child like a feather! It is a great bore, this visit to the Hatch, and so soon.”

“You were pleased with the idea; you were delighted to accept the invitation,” said Reine, injudiciously, I must say.

“Bah! one’s ideas change; but Sophy and Kate would have been disappointed,” said Herbert, with that ineffable look of complaisance in his eyes. And thus from Scylla which he had left, he drove calmly on to Charybdis, not knowing where he went.

CHAPTER XLII

There had been great preparations made for Herbert’s reception at the Hatch. I say Herbert’s – for Reine, though she had been perforce included in the invitation, was not even considered any more. After the banquet at Whiteladies the sisters had many consultations on this subject, and there was indeed very little time to do anything. Sophy had been of opinion at first that the more gay his short visit could be made the better Herbert would be pleased, and had contemplated an impromptu dance, and I don’t know how many other diversions; but Kate was wiser. It was one good trait in their characters, if there was not very much else, that they acted for each other with much disinterestedness, seldom or never entering into personal rivalry. “Not too much the first time,” said Kate; “let him make acquaintance with us, that is the chief thing.” “But he mightn’t care for us,” objected Sophy. “Some people have such bad taste.” This was immediately after the Whiteladies dinner, after the moonlight walk and the long drive, when they were safe in the sanctuary of their own rooms. The girls were in their white dressing-gowns, with their hair about their shoulders, and were taking a light refection of cakes and chocolate before going to bed.

“If you choose to study him a little, and take a little pains, of course he will like you,” said Kate. “Any man will fall in love with any woman, if she takes trouble enough.”

“It is very odd to me,” said Sophy, “that with those opinions you should not be married, at your age.”

“My dear,” said Kate seriously, “plenty of men have fallen in love with me, only they have not been the right kind of men. I have been too fond of fun; and nobody that quite suited has come in my way since I gave up amusing myself. The Barracks so near is very much in one’s way,” said Kate, with a sigh. “One gets used to such a lot of them about; and you can always have your fun, whatever happens; and till you are driven to it, it seems odd to make a fuss about one. But what you have got to do is easy enough. He is as innocent as a baby, and as foolish. No woman ever took the trouble, I should say, to look at him. You have it all in your own hands. As for Reine, I will look after Reine. She is a suspicious little thing, but I’ll keep her out of your way.”

“What a bore it is!” said Sophy, with a yawn. “Why should we be obliged to marry more than the men are. It isn’t fair. Nobody finds fault with them, though they have dozens of affairs; but we’re drawn over the coals for nothing, a bit of fun. I’m sure I don’t want to marry Bertie, or any one. I’d a great deal rather not. So long as one has one’s amusement, it’s jolly enough.”

“If you could always be as young as you are now,” said Kate oracularly; “but even you are beginning to be passée, Sophy. It’s the pace, you know, as the men say – you need not make faces. The moment you are married you will be a girl again. As for me, I feel a grandmother.”

“You are old,” said Sophy compassionately; “and indeed you ought to go first.”

“I am just eighteen months older than you are,” said Kate, rousing herself in self-defence, “and with your light hair, you’ll go off sooner. Don’t be afraid; as soon as I have got you off my hands I shall take care of myself. But look here! What you’ve got to do is to study Herbert a little. Don’t take him up as if he were Jack or Tom. Study him. There is one thing you never can go wrong in with any of them,” said this experienced young woman. “Look as if you thought him the cleverest fellow that ever was; make yourself as great a fool as you can in comparison. That flatters them above everything. Ask his advice you know, and that sort of thing. The greatest fool I ever knew,” said Kate, reflectively, “was Fenwick, the adjutant. I made him wild about me by that.”

“He would need to be a fool to think you meant it,” said Sophy, scornfully; “you that have such an opinion of yourself.”

“I had too good an opinion of myself to have anything to say to him, at least; but it’s fun putting them in a state,” said Kate, pleased with the recollection. This was a sentiment which her sister fully shared, and they amused themselves with reminiscences of several such dupes ere they separated. Perhaps even the dupes were scarcely such dupes as these young ladies thought; but anyhow, they had never been, as Kate said, “the right sort of men.” Dropmore, etc., were always to the full as knowing as their pretty adversaries, and were not to be beguiled by any such specious pretences. And to tell the truth, I am doubtful how far Kate’s science was genuine. I doubt whether she was unscrupulous enough and good-tempered enough to carry out her own programme; and Sophy certainly was too careless, too feather brained, for any such scheme. She meant to marry Herbert because his recommendations were great, and because he lay in her way, as it were, and it would be almost a sin not to put forth a hand to appropriate the gifts of Providence; but if it had been necessary to “study” him, as her sister enjoined, or to give great pains to his subjugation, I feel sure that Sophy’s patience and resolution would have given way. The charm in the enterprise was that it seemed so easy; Whiteladies was a most desirable object; and Sophy, longing for fresh woods and pastures new, was rather attracted than repelled by the likelihood of having to spend the Winters abroad.

Mr. Farrel-Austin, for his part, received the young head of his family with anything but delight. He had been unable, in ordinary civility, to contradict the invitation his daughters had given, but took care to express his sentiments on the subject next day very distinctly – had they cared at all for those sentiments, which I don’t think they did. Their schemes, of course, were quite out of his range, and were not communicated to him; nor was he such a self-denying parent as to have been much consoled for his own loss of the family property by the possibility of one of his daughters stepping into possession of it. He thought it an ill-timed exhibition of their usual love of strangers, and love of company, and growled at them all day long until the time of the arrival, when he absented himself, to their great satisfaction, though it was intended as the crowning evidence of his displeasure. “Papa has been obliged to go out; he is so sorry, but hopes you will excuse him till dinner,” Kate said, when the girls came to receive their cousins at the door. “Oh, they won’t mind, I am sure,” said Sophy. “We shall have them all to ourselves, which will be much jollier.” Herbert’s brow clouded temporarily, for, though he did not love Mr. Farrel-Austin, he felt that his absence showed a want of that “proper respect” which was due to the head of the house. But under the gay influence of the girls the cloud speedily floated away.

They had gone early, by special prayer, as their stay was to be so short; and Kate had made the judicious addition of two men from the barracks to their little luncheon-party. “One for me, and one for Reine,” she had said to Sophy, “which will leave you a fair field.” The one whom Kate had chosen for herself was a middle-aged major, with a small property – a man who had hitherto afforded much “fun” to the party generally as a butt, but whose serious attentions Miss Farrel-Austin, at five-and-twenty, did not absolutely discourage. If nothing better came in the way, he might do, she felt. He had a comfortable income and a mild temper, and would not object to “fun.” Reine’s share was a foolish youth, who had not long joined the regiment; but as she was quite unconscious that he had been selected for her, Reine was happily free from all sense of being badly treated. He laughed at the jokes which Kate and Sophy made; and held his tongue otherwise – thus fulfilling all the duty for which he was told off. After this morning meal, which was so much gayer and more lively than anything at Whiteladies, the new-comers were carried off to see the house and the grounds, upon which many improvements had been made. Sophy was Herbert’s guide, and ran before him through all the new rooms, showing the new library, the morning-room, and the other additions. “This is one good of an ugly modern place,” she said. “You can never alter dear old Whiteladies, Bertie. If you did we should get up a crusade of all the Austins and all the antiquarians, and do something to you – kill you, I think; unless some weak-minded person like myself were to interfere.”

“I shall never put myself in danger,” he said, “though perhaps I am not such a fanatic about Whiteladies as you others.”

“Don’t!” said Sophy, raising her hand as if to stop his mouth. “If you say a word more I shall hate you. It is small, to be sure; and if you should have a very large family when you marry” – she went on, with a laugh – “but the Austins never have large families; that is one part of the curse, I suppose your Aunt Augustine would say! but for my part, I hate large families, and I think it is very grand to have a curse belonging to us. It is as good as a family ghost. What a pity that the monk and the nun don’t walk! But there is something in the great staircase. Did you ever see it? I never lived in Whiteladies, or I should have tried to see what it was.”

“Did you never live at Whiteladies? I thought when we were children – ”

“Never for more than a day. The old ladies hate us. Ask us now, Bertie, there’s a darling. Well! he will be a darling if he asks us. It is the most delightful old house in the world, and I want to go.”

“Then I ask you on the spot,” said Herbert. “Am I a darling now? You know,” he added in a lower tone, as they went on, and separated from the others, “it was as near as possible being yours. Two years ago no one supposed I should get better. You must have felt it was your own!”

“Not once,” said Sophy. “Papa’s, perhaps – but what would that have done for us? Daughters marry and go away – it never would have been ours; and Mrs. Farrel-Austin won’t have a son. Isn’t it provoking? Oh, she is only our step-mother, you know – it does not matter what we say. Papa could beat her; but I am so glad, so glad,” cried Sophy, with aglow of smiles, “that instead of papa, or that nasty little French boy, Bertie, it is you, our cousin, whom we are fond of! – I can’t tell you how glad I am.”

“Thanks,” said Herbert, clasping the hand she held out to him, and holding it. It seemed so natural to him that she should be glad.

“Because,” said Sophy, looking at him with her pretty blue eyes, “we have been sadly neglected, Kate and I. We have never had any one to advise us, or tell us what we ought to do. We both came out too young, and were thrown on the world to do what we pleased. If you see anything in us you don’t like, Bertie, remember this is the reason. We never had a brother. Now, you will be as near a brother to us as any one could be. We shall be able to go and consult you, and you will help us out of our scrapes. I did so hope, before you came, that we should be friends; and now I think we shall,” she said, giving a little pressure to the hand which still held hers.