Whiteladies

It was some time even in the curious bewildering tumult of her feelings before she could recollect her real errand. She had not asked any further information from Farrel-Austin. If he had found their unknown relation out by seeing the name of Austin over a shop-door, she surely could do as much. She had, however, wandered into the outskirts of the town before she fully recollected that her mission in Bruges was, first of all, to walk about the streets and find out the strange Austins who were foreigners and tradespeople. She came back, accordingly, as best she could, straying through the devious streets, meeting English travellers with the infallible Murray under their arms, and wondering to herself how people could have leisure to come to such a place as this for mere sight-seeing. That day, however, perhaps because of the strong hold upon her of the past and its recollections, perhaps because of the bewildering sense of mingled familiarity and strangeness in the place, she did not find the object of her search – though, indeed, the streets of Bruges are not so many, or the shops so extensive as to defy the scrutiny of a passer-by. She got tired, and half ashamed of herself to be thus walking about alone, and was glad to take refuge in a dim corner of the Cathedral, where she dropped on one knee in the obscurity, half afraid to be seen by any English visitor in this attitude of devotion in a Roman Catholic church, and then sat down to collect herself, and think over all she had to do. What was it she had to do? To prevent wrong from being done; to help to secure her unknown cousins in their rights. This was but a vague way of stating it, but it was more difficult to put the case to herself if she entered into detail. To persuade them that they had been over-persuaded, that they had too lightly given up advantages which, had they known their real value, they would not have given up; to prove to them how pleasant a thing it was to be Austins of Whiteladies. This was what she had to do.

Next morning Miss Susan set out with a clear head and a more distinct notion of what she was about. She had got used to the reiterations of the carillon, to the familiar distant look of the quaint streets. And, indeed, she had not gone very far when her heart jumped up in her breast to see written over a large shop the name of Austin, as Farrel had told her. She stopped and looked at it. It was situated at a bend in the road, where a narrow street debouched into a wider one, and had that air of self-restrained plainness, of being above the paltry art of window-dressing, which is peculiar to old and long-established shops whose character is known, where rich materials are sold at high prices, and everything cheap is contemned. Piles of linen and blankets, and other unattractive articles, were in a broad but dingy window, and in the doorway stood an old man with a black skullcap on his head, and blue eyes, full of vivacity and activity, notwithstanding his years. He was standing at his door looking up and down, with the air of a man who looked for news, or expected some incident other than the tranquil events around. When Miss Susan crossed the narrow part of the street, which she did with her heart in her mouth, he looked up at her, noting her appearance; and she felt sure that some internal warning of the nature of her errand came into his mind. From this look Miss Susan, quick as a flash of lightning, divined that he was not satisfied with his bargain, that his attention and curiosity were aroused, and that Farrel-Austin’s visit had made him curious of other visits, and in a state of expectation. I believe she was right in the idea she thus formed, but she saw it more clearly than M. Austin did, who knew little more than that he was restless, and in an unsettled frame of mind.

“Est-ce vous qui êtes le propriétaire?” said Miss Susan, speaking bluntly, in her bad French, without any polite prefaces, such as befit the language; she was too much excited, even had she been sufficiently conversant with the strange tongue, to know that they were necessary. The shopkeeper took his cap off his bald head, which was venerable, with an encircling ring of white locks, and made her a bow. He was a handsome old man, with blue eyes, such as had always been peculiar to the Austins, and a general resemblance – or so, at least, Miss Susan thought – to the old family pictures at Whiteladies. Under her best black silk gown, and the Indian shawl which she had put on to impress her unknown relation with a sense of her importance, she felt her heart beating. But, indeed, black silk and India shawls are inconvenient wear in the middle of Summer in the Pays Bas; and perhaps this fact had something to do with the flush and tremor of which she was suddenly conscious.

M. Austin, the shopkeeper, took off his cap to her, and answered “Oui, madame,” blandly; then, with that instant perception of her nationality, for which the English abroad are not always grateful, he added, “Madame is Inglese? we too. I am Inglese. In what can I be serviceable to madame?”

“Oh, you understand English? Thank heaven!” said Miss Susan, whose French was far from fluent. “I am very glad to hear it, for that will make my business so much the easier. It is long since I have been abroad, and I have almost forgotten the language. Could I speak to you somewhere? I don’t want to buy anything,” she said abruptly, as he stood aside to let her come in.

“That shall be at the pleasure of madame,” said the old man with the sweetest of smiles, “though miladi will not find better damask in many places. Enter, madame. I will take you to my counting-house, or into my private house, if that will more please you. In what can I be serviceable to madame?”

“Come in here – anywhere where we can be quiet. What I have to say is important,” said Miss Susan. The shop was not like an English shop. There was less light, less decoration, the windows were half blocked up, and behind, in the depths of the shop, there was a large, half-curtained window, opening into another room at the back. “I am not a customer, but it may be worth your while,” said Miss Susan, her breath coming quick on her parted lips.

The shopkeeper made her a bow, which she set down to French politeness, for all people who spoke another language were French to Miss Susan. He said, “Madame shall be satisfied,” and led her into the deeper depths, where he placed a chair for her, and remained standing in a deferential attitude. Miss Susan was confused by the new circumstances in which she found herself, and by the rapidity with which event had followed event.

“My name is Austin too,” she said, faltering slightly. “I thought when I saw your name, that perhaps you were a relation of mine – who has been long lost to his family.”

“It is too great an honor,” said the old shopkeeper, with another bow; “but yes – but yes, it is indeed so. I have seen already another gentleman, a person in the same interests. Yes, it is me. I am Guillaume Austin.”

“Guillaume?”

“Yes. William you it call. I have told my name to the other monsieur. He is, he say, the successive – what you call it? The one who comes – ”

“The heir – ”

“That is the word. I show him my papers – he is satisfied; as I will also to madame with pleasure. Madame is also cousin of Monsieur Farrel? Yes? – and of me? It is too great honor. She shall see for herself. My grandfather was Ingleseman – trés Inglese. I recall to myself his figure as if I saw it at this moment. Blue eyes, very clear, pointed nose – ma foi! like the nose of madame.”

“I should like to see your papers,” said Miss Susan. “Shall I come back in the evening when you have more time? I should like to see your wife – for you have one, surely? and your children.”

“Yes, yes; but one is gone,” said the shopkeeper. “Figure to yourself, madame, that I had but one son, and he is gone! There is no longer any one to take my place – to come after me. Ah! life is changed when it is so. One lives on – but what is life? a thing we must endure till it comes to an end.”

“I know it well,” said Miss Susan, in a low tone.

“Madame, too, has had the misfortune to lose her son, like me?”

“Ah, don’t speak of it! But I have no son. I am what you call a vile fee,” said Miss Susan; “an old maid – nothing more. And he is still living, poor boy; but doomed, alas! doomed. Mr. Austin, I have a great many things to speak to you about.”

“I attend – with all my heart,” said the shopkeeper, somewhat puzzled, for Miss Susan’s speech was mysterious, there could be little doubt.

“If I return, then, in the evening, you will show me your papers, and introduce me to your family,” said Miss Susan, getting up. “I must not take up your time now.”

“But I am delighted to wait upon madame now,” said the old man, “and since madame has the bounty to wish to see my family – by here, madame, I beg – enter, and be welcome – very welcome.”

Saying this he opened the great window-door in the end of the shop, and Miss Susan, walking forward somewhat agitated, found herself all at once in a scene very unexpected by her, and of a kind for which she was unprepared. She was ushered in at once to the family room and family life, without even the interposition of a passage. The room into which this glass door opened was not very large, and quite disproportionately lofty. Opposite to the entrance from the shop was another large window, reaching almost to the roof, which opened upon a narrow court, and kept a curious dim day-light, half from without, half from within, in the space, which seemed more narrow than it need have done by reason of the height of the roof. Against this window, in a large easy chair, sat an old woman in a black gown, without a cap, and with one little tail of gray hair twisted at the back of her head, and curl-papers embellishing her forehead in front. Her gown was rusty, and not without stains, and she wore a large handkerchief, with spots, tied about her neck. She was chopping vegetables in a dish, and not in the least abashed to be found so engaged. In a corner sat a younger woman, also in black, and looking like a gloomy shadow, lingering apart from the light. Another young woman went and came toward an inner room, in which it was evident the dinner was going to be cooked.

A pile of boxes, red and blue, and all the colors of the rainbow, was on a table. There was no carpet on the floor, which evidently had not been frotté for some time past, nor curtains at the window, except a melancholy spotted muslin, which hung closely over it, making the scanty daylight dimmer still. Miss Susan drew her breath hard with a kind of gasp. The Austins were people extremely well to do – rich in their way, and thinking themselves very comfortable; but to the prejudiced English eye of their new relation, the scene was one of absolute squalor. Even in an English cottage, Miss Susan thought, there would have been an attempt at some prettiness or other, some air of nicety or ornament; but the comfortable people here (though Miss Susan supposed all foreigners to be naturally addicted to show and glitter), thought of nothing but the necessities of living. They were not in the least ashamed, as an English family would have been, of being “caught” in the midst of their morning’s occupations. The old lady put aside the basin with the vegetables, and wiped her hands with a napkin, and greeted her visitor with perfect calm; the others took scarcely any notice. Were these the people whose right it was to succeed generations of English squires – the dignified race of Whiteladies? Miss Susan shivered as she sat down, and then she began her work of temptation. She drew forth her picture, which was handed round for everybody to see. She described the estate and all its attractions. Would they let this pass away from them? At least they should not do it without knowing what they had sacrificed. To do this, partly in English, which the shopkeeper translated imperfectly, and partly in very bad French, was no small labor to Miss Susan; but her zeal was equal to the tax upon it, and the more she talked, and the more trouble she had to overcome her own repugnance to these new people, the more vehement she became in her efforts to break their alliance with Farrel, and induce them to recover their rights. The young woman who was moving about the room, and whose appearance had at once struck Miss Susan, came and looked over the old mother’s shoulder at the picture, and expressed her admiration in the liveliest terms. The jolie maison it was, and the dommage to lose it, she cried: and these words were very strong pleas in favor of all Miss Susan said.

“Ah, what an abominable law,” said the old lady at length, “that excludes the daughters! – sans ça, ma fille!” and she began to cry a little. “Oh, my son, my son! if the good God had not taken him, what joy to have restored him to the country of his grandfather, to an establishment so charming!”

Miss Susan drew close to the old woman in the rusty black gown, and approached her mouth to her ear.

“Cette jeune femme-là est veuve de voter fils?”

“No. There she is – there in the corner; she who neither smiles nor speaks,” said the mother, putting up the napkin with which she had dried her hands, to her eyes.

The whole situation had in it a dreary tragi-comedy, half pitiful, half laughable; a great deal of intense feeling veiled by external circumstances of the homeliest order, such as is often to be found in comfortable, unlovely bourgeois households. How it was, in such a matter-of-fact interior, that the great temptation of her life should have flashed across Miss Susan’s mind, I cannot tell. She glanced from the young wife, very soon to be a mother, who leant over the old lady’s chair, to the dark shadow in the corner, who had never stirred from her seat. It was all done in a moment – thought, plan, execution. A sudden excitement took hold upon her. She drew her chair close to the old woman, and bent forward till her lips almost touched her ear.

“L’autre est – la même – que elle?”

“Que voulez-vous dire, madame?”

The old lady looked up at her bewildered, but, caught by the glitter of excitement in Miss Susan’s eye, and the panting breath, which bore evidence to some sudden fever in her, stopped short. Her wondering look turned into something more keen and impassioned – a kind of electric spark flashed between the two women. It was done in a moment; so rapidly, that at least (as Miss Susan thought after, a hundred times, and a hundred to that) it was without premeditation; so sudden, that it was scarcely their fault. Miss Susan’s eyes gleaming, said something to those of the old Flamande, whom she had never seen before, Guillaume Austin’s wife. A curious thrill ran through both – the sting, the attraction, the sharp movement, half pain, half pleasure, of temptation and guilty intention; for there was a sharp and stinging sensation of pleasure in it, and something which made them giddy. They stood on the edge of a precipice, and looked at each other a second time before they took the plunge. Then Miss Susan laid her hand upon the other’s arm, gripping it in her passion.

“Venez quelque part pour parler,” she said, in her bad French.

CHAPTER VIII

I CANNOT tell the reader what was the conversation that ensued between Miss Susan and Madame Austin of Bruges, because the two naturally shut themselves up by themselves, and desired no witnesses. They went upstairs, threading their way through a warehouse full of goods, to Madame Austin’s bedroom, which was her reception-room, and, to Miss Susan’s surprise, a great deal prettier and lighter than the family apartment below, in which all the ordinary concerns of life were carried on. There were two white beds in it, a recess with crimson curtains drawn almost completely across – and various pretty articles of furniture, some marqueterie cabinets and tables, which would have made the mouth of any amateur of old furniture water, and two sofas with little rugs laid down in front of them. The boards were carefully waxed and clean, the white curtains drawn over the window, and everything arranged with some care and daintiness. Madame Austin placed her visitor on the principal sofa, which was covered with tapestry, but rather hard and straight, and then shut the door. She did not mean to be overheard.

Madame Austin was the ruling spirit in the house. It was she that regulated the expenses, that married the daughters, and that had made the match between her son and the poor creature downstairs, who had taken no part in the conversation. Her husband made believe to supervise and criticise everything, in which harmless gratification she encouraged him; but in fact his real business was to acquiesce, which he did with great success. Miss Susan divined well when she said to herself that his wife would never permit him to relinquish advantages so great when she knew something of what they really implied; but she too had been broken down by grief, and ready to feel that nothing was of any consequence in life, when Farrel-Austin had found them out. I do not know what cunning devil communicated to Miss Susan the right spell by which to wake up in Madame Austin the energies of a vivacious temperament partially repressed by grief and age; but certainly the attempt was crowned with success.

They talked eagerly, with flushed faces and voices which would have been loud had they not feared to be overheard; both of them carried out of themselves by the strangely exciting suggestion which had passed from one to the other almost without words; and they parted with close pressure of hands and with meaning looks, notwithstanding Miss Susan’s terribly bad French, which was involved to a degree which I hardly dare venture to present to the reader; and many readers are aware, by unhappy experience, what an elderly Englishwoman’s French can be. “Je reviendrai encore demain,” said Miss Susan. “J’ai beaucoup choses à parler, et vous dira encore à votre mari. Si vous voulez me parler avant cela, allez à l’hôtel; je serai toujours dans mon appartement. Il est pas ung plaisir pour moi de marcher autour la ville, comme quand j’étais jeune. J’aime rester tranquil; et je reviendrai demain, dans la matin, á votre maison ici. J’ai beaucoup choses de parler autour.”

Madame Austin did not know what “parler autour” could mean, but she accepted the puzzle and comprehended the general thread of the meaning. She returned to her sitting-room downstairs with her head full of a hundred busy thoughts, and Miss Susan went off to her hotel, with a headache, caused by a corresponding overflow in her mind. She was in a great excitement, which indeed could not be quieted by going to the hotel, but which prompted her to “marcher autour la ville,” trying to neutralize the undue activity of her brain by movement of body. It is one of nature’s instinctive ways of wearing out emotion. To do wrong is a very strange sensation, and it was one which, in any great degree, was unknown to Miss Susan. She had done wrong, I suppose, often enough before, but she had long outgrown that sensitive stage of mind and body which can seriously regard as mortal sins the little peccadilloes of common life – the momentary failures of temper or rashness of words, which the tender youthful soul confesses and repents of as great sins. Temptation had not come near her virtuous and equable life; and, to tell the truth, she had often felt with a compunction that the confession she sometimes made in church, of a burden of guilt which was intolerable to her, and of sins too many to be remembered, was an innocent hypocrisy on her part. She had taken herself to task often enough for her inability to feel this deep penitence as she ought; and now a real and great temptation had come in her way, and Miss Susan did not feel at all in that state of mind which she would have thought probable. Her first sensation was that of extreme excitement – a sharp and stinging yet almost pleasurable sense of energy and force and strong will which could accomplish miracles: so I suppose the rebel angels must have felt in the first moment of their sin – intoxicated with the mere sense of it, and of their own amazing force and boldness who dared to do it, and defy the Lord of heaven and earth. She walked about and looked in at the shop-windows, at that wonderful filagree work of steel and silver which the poorest women wear in those Low Countries, and at the films of lace which in other circumstances Miss Susan was woman enough to have been interested in for their own sake. Why could not she think of them? – why could not she care for them now? – A deeper sensation possessed her, and its first effect was so strange that it filled her with fright; for, to tell the truth, it was an exhilarating rather than a depressing sensation. She was breathless with excitement, panting, her heart beating.

Now and then she looked behind her as if some one were pursuing her. She looked at the people whom she met with a conscious defiance, bidding them with her eyes find out, if they dared, the secret which possessed her completely. This thought was not as other thoughts which come and go in the mind, which give way to passing impressions, yet prove themselves to have the lead by returning to fill up all crevices. It never departed from her for a moment. When she went into the shops to buy, as she did after awhile by way of calming herself down, she was half afraid of saying something about it in the midst of her request to look at laces, or her questions as to the price; and, like other mental intoxications, this unaccomplished intention of evil seemed to carry her out of herself altogether; it annihilated all bodily sensations. She walked about as lightly as a ghost, unconscious of her physical powers altogether, feeling neither hunger nor weariness. She went through the churches, the picture galleries, looking vaguely at everything, conscious clearly of nothing, now and then horribly attracted by one of those terrible pictures of blood and suffering, the martyrdoms which abound in all Flemish collections. She went into the shops, as I have said, and bought lace, for what reason she did not know, nor for whom; and it was only in the afternoon late that she went back to her hotel, where Jane, frightened, was looking out for her, and thinking her mistress must have been lost or murdered among “them foreigners.” “I have been with friends,” Miss Susan said, sitting down, bolt upright, on the vacant chair, and looking Jane straight in the face, to make sure that the simple creature suspected nothing. How could she have supposed Jane to know anything, or suspect? But it is one feature of this curious exaltation of mind, in which Miss Susan was, that reason and all its limitations is for the moment abandoned, and things impossible become likely and natural. After this, however, the body suddenly asserted itself, and she became aware that she had been on foot the whole day, and was no longer capable of any physical exertion. She lay down on the sofa dead tired, and after a little interval had something to eat, which she took with appetite, and looked on her purchases with a certain pleasure, and slept soundly all night – the sleep of the just. No remorse visited her, or penitence, only a certain breathless excitement stirring up her whole being, a sense of life and strength and power.

Next morning Miss Susan repeated her visit to her new relations at an early hour. This time she found them all prepared for her, and was received not in the general room, but in Madame Austin’s chamber, where M. Austin and his wife awaited her coming. The shopkeeper himself had altogether changed in appearance: his countenance beamed; he bowed over the hand which Miss Susan held out to him, like an old courtier, and looked gratefully at her.

“Madame has come to our house like a good angel,” he said. “Ah! it is madame’s intelligence which has found out the good news, which cette pauvre chérie had not the courage to tell us. I did never think to laugh of good heart again,” said the poor man, with tears in his eyes, “but this has made me young; and it almost seems as if we owed it to madame.”

“How can that be?” said Miss Susan. “It must have been found out sooner or later. It will make up to you, if anything can, for the loss of your boy.”

“If he had but lived to see it!” said the old man with a sob.

The mother stood behind, tearless, with a glitter in her eyes which was almost fierce. Miss Susan did not venture to do more than give her one hurried glance, to which she replied with a gleam of fury, clasping her hands together. Was it fury? Miss Susan thought so, and shrank for a moment, not quite able to understand the feelings of the other woman who had not clearly understood her, yet who now seemed to address to her a look of wild reproach.

“And my poor wife,” went on the old shopkeeper, “for her it will be an even still more happy – Tu es contente, bien contente, n’est-ce pas?”

“Oui, mon ami,” said the woman, turning her back to him, with once more a glance from which Miss Susan shrank.

“Ah, madame, excuse her; she cannot speak; it is a joy too much,” he cried, drying his old eyes.

Miss Susan felt herself constrained and drawn on by the excitement of the moment, and urged by the silence of the other woman, who was as much involved as she.

“My poor boy will have a sadder lot even than yours,” she said; “he is dying too young even to hope for any of the joys of life. There is neither wife nor child possible for Herbert.” The tears rushed to her eyes as she spoke. Heaven help her! she had availed herself, as it were, of nature and affection to help her to commit her sin with more ease and apparent security. She had taken advantage of poor Herbert in order to wake those tears which gave her credit in the eyes of the unsuspecting stranger. In the midst of her excitement and feverish sense of life, a sudden chill struck at her heart. Had she come to this debasement so soon? Was it possible that in such an emergency she had made capital and stock-in-trade of her dying boy? This reflection was not put into words, but flashed through her with one of those poignant instantaneous cuts and thrusts which men and women are subject to, invisibly to all the world. M. Austin, forgetting his respect in sympathy, held out his hand to her to press hers with a profound and tender feeling which went to Miss Susan’s heart; but she had the courage to return the pressure before she dropped his bond hastily (he thought in English pride and reserve), and, making a visible effort to suppress her emotion, continued, “After this discovery, I suppose your bargain with Mr. Farrel-Austin, who took such an advantage of you, is at an end at once?”

“Speak French,” said Madame Austin, with gloom on her countenance; “I do not understand your English.”