Whiteladies

In the meantime another event utterly unexpected had followed that unlucky day on the river, and had contributed to leave the little romance of Herbert and Giovanna undisturbed. Mr. Farrel-Austin caught cold in the “blight” that fell upon the river, or in the drive home afterward; nobody could exactly tell how it was. He caught cold, which brought on congestion of the lungs, and in ten days, taking the county and all his friends utterly by surprise, and himself no less, to whom such a thing seemed incredible, was dead. Dead; not ill, nor in danger, but actually dead – a thing which the whole district gasped to hear, not finding it possible to connect the idea of Farrel-Austin with anything so solemn. The girls drove over twice to ask for Herbert, and had been admitted to the morning room, the cheerfullest room in the house, where he lay on his sofa, to see him, and had told him lightly (which was a consolation to Herbert, as showing him that he was not alone in misfortune) that papa was ill too, in bed and very bad. But Sophy and Kate were, like all the rest of the world, totally unprepared for the catastrophe which followed; and they did not come back, being suddenly plunged into all the solemn horror of an event so deeply affecting their own fortunes, as well as such affections as they possessed. Thus, there was not even the diversion of a rival to interrupt Giovanna’s opportunity. Farrel-Austin’s death affected Miss Susan in the most extraordinary way, so that all her friends were thunderstruck. She was overwhelmed; was it by grief for her enemy? When she received the news, she gave utterance to a wild and terrible cry, and rushed up to her own room, whence she scarcely appeared all the rest of the day. Next morning she presented to her astonished family a countenance haggard and pale, as if by years of suffering. What was the cause? Was it Susan that had loved him, and not Augustine (who took the information very calmly), or what was the secret of this impassioned emotion? No one could say. Miss Susan was like a woman distraught for some days. She would break out into moanings and weeping when she was alone, in which indulgence she was more than once surprised by the bewildered Reine. This was too extraordinary to be accounted for. Was it possible, the others asked themselves, that her enmity to Farrel-Austin had been but a perverse cloak for another sentiment?

I give these wild guesses, because they were at their wits’ end, and had not the least clue to the mystery. So bewildered were they, that they could show her little sympathy, and do nothing to comfort her; for it was monstrous to see her thus afflicted. Giovanna was the only one who seemed to have any insight at this moment into the mind of Miss Susan. I think even she had but a dim realization of how it was. But she was kind, and did her best to show her kindness; a sympathy which Miss Susan revolted the rest by utter rejection of, a rejection almost fierce in its rudeness.

“Keep me free from that woman – keep her away from me!” she cried wildly.

“Aunt Susan,” said Reine, not without reproach in her tone, “Giovanna wants to be kind.”

“Oh, kind! What has come to us that I must put up with her kindness?” she cried, with her blue eyes aflame.

Neither Reine nor any of the others knew what to say to this strange new phase in Miss Susan’s mysterious conduct. For it was apparent to all of them that some mystery had come into her life, into her character, since the innocent old days when her eyes were as clear and her brow, though so old, as unruffled as their own. Day by day Miss Susan’s burden was getting heavier to bear. Farrel’s death, which removed all barriers except the one she had herself put there, between Everard and the inheritance of Whiteladies; and this growing fascination of Herbert for Giovanna, which she seemed incapable of doing anything to stop, and which, she cried out to herself in the silence of the night, she never, never would permit herself to consent to, and could not bear – these two things together filled up the measure of her miseries. Day by day the skies grew blacker over her, her footsteps were hemmed in more terribly; until at last she seemed scarcely to know what she was doing. The bailiff addressed himself to Everard in a kind of despair.

“I can’t get no orders,” he said. “I can’t get nothing reasonable out of Miss Austin; whether it’s anxiousness, or what, none of us can tell.” And he gave Everard an inquisitive look, as if testing him how far he might go. It was the opinion of the common people that Augustine had been mad for years; and now they thought Miss Susan was showing signs of the same malady.

“That’s how things goes when it’s in a family,” the village said.

Thus the utmost miserable endurance, and the most foolish imbecile happiness lived together under the same roof, vaguely conscious of each other, yet neither fathoming the other’s depths. Herbert, like Reine and Everard, perceived that something was wrong with Miss Susan; but being deeply occupied with his own affairs, and feeling the absolute unimportance of anything that could happen to his old aunt in comparison – was not much tempted to dwell upon the idea, or to make any great effort to penetrate the mystery; while she, still more deeply preoccupied with her wretchedness, fearing the future, yet fearing still more to betray herself, did not realize how quickly affairs were progressing, nor how far they had gone. It was not till late in September that she at last awoke to the fact. Herbert was better, almost well again, the doctor pronounced, but sadly shaken and weak. It was a damp, rainy day, with chills in it of the waning season, dreary showers of yellow leaves falling with every gust, and all the signs that an early ungenial Autumn, without those gorgeous gildings of decay which beguile us of our natural regrets, was closing in, yellow and humid, with wet mists and dreary rain. Everything dismal that can happen is more dismal on such a day, and any diversion which can be had indoors to cheat the lingering hours is a double blessing. Herbert was as usual in the morning-room, which had been given up to him as the most cheerful. Reine had been called away to see Everard, who, now that the invalid was better, insisted upon a share of her attention; and she had left the room all the more reluctantly that there was a gleam of pleasure in her brother’s eye as she was summoned. “Giovanna will stay with me,” he said, the color rising in his pale cheeks; and Reine fled to Everard, red with mortification and sorrow and anger, to ask him for the hundredth time, “Could nothing be done to stop it – could nothing be done?”

Miss Susan was going about the house from room to room, feverishly active in some things by way of making up, perhaps from the half-conscious failing of her powers in others. She was restless, and could not keep still to look out upon the flying leaves, the dreary blasts, the gray dismal sky; and the rain prevented her from keeping her miserable soul still by exercise out of doors, as she often did now, contrary to all use and wont. She had no intention in her mind when her restless feet turned the way of Herbert’s room. She did not know that Giovanna was there, and Reine absent. She was not suspicious more than usual, neither had she the hope or fear of finding out anything. She went mechanically that way, as she might have gone mechanically through the long turnings of the passage to the porch, where Reine and Everard were looking out upon the dismal Autumn day.

When she opened the door, however, listlessly, she saw a sight which woke her up like a trumpet. Giovanna was sitting upon a stool close by Herbert’s sofa. One of her hands he was holding tenderly in his; with the other she was smoothing back his hair from his forehead, caressing him with soft touches and soft words, while he gazed at her with that melting glow of sentimentality – vanity or love, or both together, in his eyes – which no spectator can ever mistake. As Miss Susan went into the room, Giovanna, who sat with her back to the door, bent over him and kissed him on the forehead, murmuring as she did so into his bewitched and delighted ear.

The looker-on was petrified for the first moment; then she threw up her hands, and startled the lovers with a wild shrill cry. I think it was heard all over the house. Giovanna jumped up from her stool, and Herbert started upright on his sofa; and Reine and Everard, alarmed, came rushing from the porch. They all gazed at Miss Susan, who stood there as pale as marble, gasping with an attempt to speak. Herbert for the moment was cowed and frightened by the sight of her; but Giovanna had perfect possession of her faculties. She faced the new-comers with a blush, which only improved her beauty, and laughed.

“Eh bien!” she cried, “you have then found out, Madame Suzanne? I am content, me. I am not fond of to deceive. Speak to her, mon ’Erbert, the word is to thee.”

“Yes, Aunt Susan,” he said, trying to laugh too, but blushing, a hot uneasy blush, not like Giovanna’s. “I beg your pardon. Of course I ought to have spoken to you before; and equally of course now you see what has happened without requiring any explanation. Giovanna, whom you have been so kind to, is going to be my wife.”

Miss Susan once more cried out wildly in her misery, “It cannot be – it shall not be! I will not have it!” she said.

Once more Giovanna laughed, not offensively, but with a good-natured sense of fun. “Mon Dieu!” she said, “what can you do? Why should not we be bons amis? You cannot do anything, Madame Suzanne. It is all fixed and settled, and if you will think, it is for the best, it will arrange all.” Giovanna had a real desire to make peace, to secure de l’amitié, as she said. She went across the room toward Miss Susan, holding out her hand.

And then for a moment a mortal struggle went on in Susan Austin’s soul. She repulsed wildly, but mechanically, the offered hand, and stood there motionless, her breast panting, all the powers of nature startled into intensity, and such a conflict and passion going on within her as made her blind and deaf to the world outside. Then suddenly she put her hand upon the nearest chair, and drawing it to her, sat down, opposite to Herbert, with a nervous shiver running over her frame. She put up her hand to her throat, as if to tear away something which restrained or suffocated her; and then she said, in a terrible, stifled voice, “Herbert! first you must hear what I have got to say.”

CHAPTER XLV

Giovanna looked at Miss Susan with surprise, then with a little apprehension. It was her turn to be uneasy. “Que voulez-vous? que voulez-vous dire?” she said under her breath, endeavoring to catch Miss Susan’s eye. Miss Susan was a great deal too impassioned and absorbed even to notice the disturbed condition of her adversary. She knew herself to be surrounded by an eager audience, but yet in her soul she was alone, insensible to everything, moved only by a passionate impulse to relieve herself, to throw off the burden which was driving her mad. She did not even see Giovanna, who after walking round behind Herbert, trying to communicate by the eyes with the woman whom all this time she had herself subdued by covert threats, sat down at last at the head of the sofa, putting her hand, which Herbert took into his, upon it. Probably this sign of kindness stimulated Miss Susan, though I doubt whether she was conscious of it, something having laid hold upon her which was beyond her power to resist.

“I have a story to tell you, children,” she said, pulling instinctively with her hand at the throat of her dress, which seemed to choke her, “and a confession to make. I have been good, good enough in my way, trying to do my duty most of my life; but now at the end of it I have done wrong, great wrong, and sinned against you all. God forgive me! and I hope you’ll forgive me. I’ve been trying to save myself from the – exposure – from the shame, God help me! I have thought of myself, when I ought to have thought of you all. Oh, I’ve been punished! I’ve been punished! But perhaps it is not yet too late. Oh, Herbert, Herbert! my dear boy, listen to me!”

“If you are going to say anything against Giovanna, you will lose your time, Aunt Susan,” said Herbert; and Giovanna leaned on the arm of the sofa, and kissed his forehead again in thanks and triumph.

“What I am going to say first is against myself,” said Miss Susan. “It is three years ago – a little more than three years; Farrel-Austin, who is dead, came and told me that he had found the missing people, the Austins whom you have heard of, whom I had sought for so long, and that he had made some bargain with them, that they should withdraw in his favor. You were very ill then, Herbert, thought to be dying; and Farrel-Austin – poor man, he is dead! – was our enemy. It was dreadful, dreadful to think of him coming here, being the master of the place. That was my sin to begin with. I thought I could bear anything sooner than that.”

Augustine came into the room at this moment. She came and went so noiselessly that no one even heard her; and Miss Susan was too much absorbed to note anything. The new-comer stood still near the door behind her sister, at first because it was her habit, and then, I suppose, in sympathy with the motionless attention of the others, and the continuance without a pause of Miss Susan’s voice.

“I meant no harm; I don’t know what I meant. I went to break their bargain, to show them the picture of the house, to make them keep their rights against that man. It was wicked enough. Farrel-Austin’s gone, and God knows what was between him and us; but to think of him here made me mad, and I went to try and break the bargain. I own that was what I meant. It was not, perhaps, Christian-like; not what your Aunt Augustine, who is as good as an angel, would have approved of; but it was not wicked, not wicked, if I had done no more than that!

“When I got there,” said Miss Susan, drawing a long breath, “I found them willing enough; but the man was old, and his son was dead, and there was nothing but daughters left. In the room with them was a daughter, a young married woman, a young widow – ”

“Yes, there was me,” said Giovanna. “To what good is all this narrative, Madame Suzanne? Me, I know it before, and Monsieur ’Erbert is not amused; look, he yawns. We have assez, assez, for to-day.”

“There was she; sitting in the room, a poor, melancholy, neglected creature; and there was the other young woman, Gertrude, pretty and fair, like an English girl. She was – going to have a baby,” said Miss Susan, even at that moment hesitating in her old maidenliness before she said it, her old face coloring softly. “The devil put it into my head all at once. It was not premeditated; I did not make it up in my mind. All at once, all at once the devil put it into my head! I said suddenly to the old woman, to old Madame Austin, ‘Your daughter-in-law is in the same condition?’ She was sitting down crouched in a corner. She was said to be sick. What was more natural,” cried poor Miss Susan looking round, “than to think that was the cause?”

Perhaps it was the first time she had thought of this excuse. She caught at the idea with heat and eagerness, appealing to them all. “What more natural than that I should think so? She never rose up; I could not see her. Oh, children,” cried Miss Susan, wringing her hands, “I cannot tell how much or how little wickedness there was in my first thought; but answer me, wasn’t it natural? The old woman took me up in a moment, took up more – yes, I am sure – more than I meant. She drew me away to her room, and there we talked of it. She did not say to me distinctly that the widow was not in that way. We settled,” she said after a pause, with a shiver and gasp before the words, “that anyhow – if a boy came – it was to be Giovanna’s boy and the heir.”

Herbert made an effort at this moment to relinquish Giovanna’s hand, which he had been holding all the time; not, I believe, because of this information, which he scarcely understood as yet, but because his arm was cramped remaining so long in the same position; but she, as was natural, understood the movement otherwise. She held him for a second, then tossed his hand away and sprang up from her chair. “Après?” she cried, with an insolent laugh. “Madame Suzanne, you radotez, you are too old. This goes without saying that the boy is Giovanna’s boy.”

“Yes, we know all this,” said Herbert, pettishly. “Aunt Susan, I cannot imagine what you are making all this fuss and looking so excited about. What do you mean? What is all this about old women and babies? I wish you would speak out if you have anything to say. Giovanna, come here.”

“Yes,” she said, throwing herself on the sofa beside him; “yes, mon Herbert, mon bien-aimé. You will not abandon me, whatever any one may say?”

“Herbert,” cried Miss Susan, “let her alone, let her alone, for God’s sake! She is guilty, guiltier than I am. She made a pretence as her mother-in-law told her, pretended to be ill, pretended to have a child, kept up the deceit – how can I tell how long? – till now. Gertrude is innocent, whose baby was taken; she thought it died, poor thing, poor thing! but Giovanna is not innocent. All she has done, all she has said, has been lies, lies! The child is not her child; it is not the heir. She has thrust herself into this house, and done all this mischief, by a lie. She knows it; look at her. She has kept her place by threatening me, by holding my disgrace before my eyes; and now, Herbert, my poor boy, my poor boy, she will ruin you. Oh, put her away, put her away!”

Herbert rose up, trembling in his weakness. “Is this true, Giovanna?” he said, turning to her piteously. “Have you anything to say against it? Is it true?”

Reine, who had been standing behind, listening with an amazement beyond the reach of words, came to her brother’s side, to support him at this terrible moment; but he put her away. Even Miss Susan, who was the chief sufferer, fell into the background. Giovanna kept her place on the sofa, defiant, while he stood before her, turning his back upon the elder offender, who felt this mark of her own unimportance, even in the fever of her excitement and passion.

“Have you nothing to say against it?” cried Herbert, with anguish in his voice. “Giovanna! Giovanna! is it true?”

Giovanna shrugged her shoulders impatiently. “Mon Dieu,” she said, “I did what I was told. They said to me, ‘Do this,’ and I did it; was it my fault? It was the old woman who did all, as Madame Suzanne says – ”

“We are all involved together, God forgive us!” cried Miss Susan, bowing her head into her hands.

Then there was a terrible pause. They were all silent, all waiting to hear what Herbert had to say, who, by reason of being most deeply involved, seemed suddenly elevated into the judge. He went away from the sofa where Giovanna was, and in front of which Miss Susan was sitting, as far away as he could get, and began to walk up and down the room in his excitement. He took no further notice of Giovanna, but after a moment, pausing in his angry march, said suddenly, “It was all on Farrel-Austin’s account you plunged into crime like this? Silence, Reine! it is crime, and it is she who is to blame. What in the name of heaven had Farrel-Austin done to you that you should avenge yourself upon us all like this?”

“Forgive me, Herbert!” said Miss Susan, faintly; “he was to have married Augustine, and he forsook her, jilted her, shamed her, my only sister. How could I see him in this house?”

And then again there was a pause. Even Reine made no advance to the culprit, though her heart began to beat loudly, and her indignation was mingled with pity. Giovanna sat gloomy; drumming with her foot upon the carpet. Herbert had resumed his rapid pacing up and down. Miss Susan sat in the midst of them, hopeless, motionless, her bowed head hidden in her hands, every help and friendly prop dropped away from her, enduring to the depths the bitterness of her punishment, yet, perhaps, with a natural reaction, asking herself, was there none, none of all she had been kind to, capable of a word, a look, a touch of pity in this moment of her downfall and uttermost need? Both Everard and Reine felt upon them that strange spell which often seems to freeze all outward action in a great emergency, though their hearts were swelling. They had both made a forward step; when suddenly, the matter was taken out of their hands. Augustine, perhaps, was more slow than any of them, out of her abstraction and musing, to be roused to what was being said. But the last words had supplied a sharp sting of reality which woke her fully, and helped her to understand. As soon as she had mastered it, she went up swiftly and silently to her sister, put her arms round her, and drew away the hands in which she had buried her face.

“Susan,” she said, in a voice more real and more living than had been heard from her lips for years, “I have heard everything. You have confessed your sin, and God will forgive you. Come with me.”

“Austine! Austine!” cried poor Miss Susan, shrinking, dropping to the floor at the feet of the immaculate creature who was to her as a saint.

“Yes, it is I,” said Augustine. “Poor Susan! and I never knew! God will forgive you. Come with me.”

“Yes,” said the other, the elder and stronger, with the humility of a child; and she got up from where she had thrown herself, and casting a pitiful look upon them all, turned round and gave her hand to her sister. She was weak with her excitement, and exhausted as if she had risen from a long illness. Augustine drew her sister’s hand through her arm, and without another word, led her away. Reine rushed after them, weeping and anxious, the bonds loosed that seemed to have congealed her. Augustine put her back, not unkindly, but with decision. “Another time, Reine. She is going with me.”

They were all so overawed by this sudden action that even Herbert stopped short in his angry march, and Everard, who opened the door for their exit, could only look at them, and could not say a word. Miss Susan hung on Augustine’s arm, broken, shattered, feeble; an old woman, worn out and fainting. The recluse supporting her, with a certain air of strength and pride, strangely unlike her nature, walked on steadily and firmly, looking, as was her wont, neither to the right hand nor the left. All her life Susan had been her protector, her supporter, her stay. Now their positions had changed all in a moment. Erect and almost proud she walked out of the room, holding up the bowed-down, feeble figure upon her arm. And the young people, all so strangely, all so differently affected by this extraordinary revelation, stood blankly together and looked at each other, not knowing what to say, when the door closed. None of the three Austins spoke to or looked at Giovanna, who sat on the sofa, still drumming with her foot upon the carpet. When the first blank pause was over, Reine went up to Herbert and put her arm through his.

“Oh, forgive her, forgive her!” she cried.

“I will never forgive her,” he said wildly; “she has been the cause of it all. Why did she let this go on, my God! and why did she tell me now?”

Giovanna sat still, beating her foot on the carpet, and neither moved nor spoke.

As for Susan and Augustine, no one attempted to follow them. No one thought of anything further than a withdrawal to their rooms of the two sisters, united in a tenderness of far older date than the memories of the young people could reach; and I don’t even know whether the impulse that made them both turn through the long passage toward the porch was the same. I don’t suppose it was. Augustine thought of leading her penitent sister to the Almshouse chapel, as she would have wished should be done to herself in any great and sudden trouble; whereas an idea of another kind entered at once into the mind of Susan, which, beaten down and shaken as it was, began already to recover a little after having thrown off the burden. She paused a moment in the hall, and took down a gray hood which was hanging there, like Augustine’s, a covering which she had adopted to please her sister on her walks about the roads near home. It was the nearest thing at hand, and she caught at it, and put it on, as both together with one simultaneous impulse they bent their steps to the door. I have said that the day was damp and dismal and hopeless, one of those days which make a despairing waste of a leafy country. Now and then there would come a miserable gust of wind, carrying floods of sickly yellow leaves from all the trees, and in the intervals a small mizzling rain, not enough to wet anything, coming like spray in the wayfarers’ faces, filled up the dreary moments. No one was out of doors who could be in; it was worse than a storm, bringing chill to the marrow of your bones, weighing heavy upon your soul. The two old sisters, without a word to each other, went out through the long passage, through the porch in which Miss Susan had sat and done her knitting so many Summers through. She took no farewell look at the familiar place, made no moan as she left it. They went out clinging to each other, Augustine erect and almost proud, Susan bowed and feeble, across the sodden wet lawn, and out at the little gate in Priory Lane. They had done it a hundred and a thousand times before; they meant, or at least Miss Susan meant, to do it never again; but her mind was capable of no regret for Whiteladies. She went out mechanically, leaning on her sister, yet almost mechanically directing that sister the way Susan intended to go, not Augustine. And thus they set forth into the Autumn weather, into the mists, into the solitary world. Had the departure been made publicly with solemn farewells and leave-takings, they would have felt it far more deeply. As it was, they scarcely felt it at all, having their minds full of other things. They went along Priory Lane, wading through the yellow leaves, and along the road to the village, where Augustine would have turned to the left, the way to the Almshouses. They had not spoken a word to each other, and Miss Susan leaned almost helplessly in her exhaustion upon her sister; but nevertheless she swayed Augustine in the opposite direction across the village street. One or two women came out to the cottage doors to look after them. It was a curious sight, instead of Miss Augustine, gray and tall and noiseless, whom they were all used to watch in the other direction, to see the two gray figures going on silently, one so bowed and aged as to be unrecognizable, exactly the opposite way. “She have got another with her, an old ’un,” the women said to each other, and rubbed their eyes, and were not half sure that the sight was real. They watched the two figures slowly disappearing round the corner. It came on to rain, but the wayfarers did not quicken their pace. They proceeded slowly on, neither saying a word to the other, indifferent to the rain and to the yellow leaves that tumbled on their path. So, I suppose, with their heads bowed, and no glance behind, the first pair may have gone desolate out of Paradise. But they were young, and life was before them; whereas Susan and Augustine, setting out forlorn upon their new existence, were old, and had no heart for another home and another life.

CHAPTER XLVI