WINIFRED had never fainted before in her life, and it made a great commotion in the house. Hopkins, without a word to any one, sent off for Dr. Langton, and half the maids in the house poured into the room eagerly to help, bringing water, eau de Cologne, everything they could think of. Mrs. George’s hysterics fled before the alarming sight, the insensibility, and pallor, which for a moment she took for death, and with a cry of horror and pity, and the tears still standing upon her flushed cheeks, she flung herself on her knees on the floor by Winifred’s side. The two brothers stood and looked on, feeling very uncomfortable, gazing with a half-guilty aspect upon the fallen figure. Would any one perhaps say that it was their fault? They stood near each other, though without exchanging a word, while the sudden irruption of women poured in. Winifred, however, was not long of coming to her senses. She woke to find herself lying on the floor, to her great astonishment, in the midst of a little crowd, and then struggled back into full consciousness again with a head that ached and throbbed, and something singing in her ears. She got to her feet with an effort and begged their pardon faintly. “What has happened?” she said; “have I done any thing strange? what have I done?”
“You have only fainted,” said Miss Farrell, “that is all. Miss Chester is better now. She has no more need of you, you may all go. Yes, my dear, you have fainted, that is all. Some girls are always doing it; but it never happened to you before, and it ought to be a proof to you, Winnie, that you are only mortal after all, and can’t do more than you can.”
Winifred smiled as best she could in the face of her old friend. “I did not know I could be so foolish,” she said; “but it is all over now. Dear Miss Farrell, leave me with them. There is something I must say.”
“Oh, put it off till to-morrow,” said Mrs. George; “whether you’ve been our enemy or not, you are only a bit of a girl; and it can’t hurt to wait till to-morrow. I know what nerves are myself, I’ve always been a dreadful sufferer. A dead faint like that, it is very frightening to other people. Don’t send the old lady away.”
“I am going to stay with you, Winnie—unless you will be advised by me, and by Mrs. George, who has a kind heart, I am sure she has—and go to bed.”
Winifred placed herself in a deep easy-chair which gave her at least a physical support. She gave her hand to Miss Farrell, who stood by her, and turned to the brothers, who were still looking on uneasily, half-conscious that it was their fault, half-defiant of her and all that she could say. She lifted her eyes to them, in that moment of weakness and uncertainty before the world settled back into its place. Even their faces for a little while were but part of a phantasmagoria that moved and trembled in the air around her. She felt herself as in a dream, seeing not only what was before her, but many a visionary scene behind. She had been the youngest, she had always yielded to the boys; and as they stood before her thus, though with so few features of the young playfellows and tyrants to whom all her life she had been more or less subject, it became more and more impossible to her to assume the different part which an ill fate had laid upon her. As she looked at them, so many scenes came back. They had been fond of her and good to her in their way, when she was a child. She suddenly remembered how George used to carry her up and down-stairs when she was recovering from the fever which was the great event in her childish life, and in how many rides and rows she had been Tom’s companion, grateful above measure for his notice. These facts, with a hundred trivial incidents which she had forgotten, rushed back upon her mind. “Boys,” she said, and then paused, her eyes growing clearer and clearer, but tears getting into her voice.
“Come, Winnie,” said George, “Tom and I are a little too old for that.”
“You will never be too old for that to me,” she said. “Oh, if you would but look a little kind, as you used to do! It was against my will and my prayers that it was left to me. I said that I would not accept it, that I would never, never, take what was yours. I never deceived him in that. Oh, boys! do you think it is not terrible for me to be put into your place, even for a moment? And that is not the worst. I thought when I sent for you that I could give it you back, that it would all be easy; but there is more to tell you.”
They looked at her, each in his different way. Tom sullenly from under his eyebrows, George with his careworn look, anxious to get to an end of it, to consult with his wife what they were to do; but neither said a word.
“After,” she said with difficulty, struggling against the rising in her throat, “after—it was found that I could not give it you back. If I did so, I too was to lose everything. Oh, wait, wait, till I have done! What am I to do? I put it in your hands. If I try to give you any part, it is lost to us all three. What am I to do? I can take no advice from any but you. What I wish is to restore everything to you; but if I attempt to do so, all is lost. What am I to do? What am I to do?”
“Winnie, what you will do is to make yourself ill in the meantime.”
“What does it matter?” she cried wildly; “if I were to die, I suppose it would go to them as my heirs.”
The blank faces round her had no pity in them for Winnie. They were for the moment too deeply engrossed with the news which they had just heard. Miss Farrell alone stooped over her, and stood by her, holding her hand. Mrs. George, who had been listening, bewildered, unable to divine what all this could mean, broke the silence with a cry.
“She don’t say a word of Georgie. Is there nothing for Georgie? I don’t know what you mean, all about giving and not giving—it’s our right. George, ain’t it our right?”
“There are no rights in our family,” said George; “but I don’t know what it means any more than you.”
Here Tom stepped forward into the midst of the group, lifting his sullen eyebrows. “I know what it means,” he said. “It is easy enough to tell what it means. If she takes you in, she can’t take me in. I saw how things were going long ago. First one was got out of the house and then another, but she was always there, saying what she pleased, getting over the old man. Do you think if he had been in his right senses, he would have driven away his sons, and put a girl over our heads? I’ll tell you what,” he cried with passion, “I am not going to stand it if you are. She was there always at one side of him, and the doctor at the other. The daughter and the doctor and nobody else. Every one knows how a doctor can work upon your nerves; and a woman that is always nursing you, making herself sweet. If there ever was undue influence, there it is. And I don’t mean to stand it for one.”
George was not enraged like his brother: he looked from one to another with his anxious eyes. “If you don’t stand it, what can you do?” he said.
“I mean to bring it to a trial. I mean to take it into court. There isn’t a jury in England but would give it in our favour,” said Tom. “I know a little about the law. It is the blackest case I ever knew. The doctor, Langton, he is engaged to Winnie. He has put her up to it; I don’t blame her so much. He has stood behind her making a cat’s-paw of her. Oh, I’ve found out all about it. He belongs to the old family that used to own Bedloe, and he has had his eye on this ever since we came here. The governor was very sharp,” said Tom, “he was not one to be beaten in the common way. But the doctor, that was always handy, that came night and day, that cured him—the first time,” he added significantly.
Tom, in his fury, had not observed, nor had any of his agitated hearers, the opening of the door behind, the quiet entry into the room of a new-comer, who, arrested by the words he heard, had stood there listening to what Tom said. At this moment he advanced quickly up the long room. “You think perhaps that I killed him—the second time?” he said, confronting the previous speaker.
Winifred rose from her chair with a low cry, and came to his side, putting her arm through his.
“Edward! Edward! he does not know what he is saying,” she cried.
The other pair had stood bewildered during all this, Mrs. George gasping with her pretty red lips apart, her husband, always careworn, looking anxiously from one face to another. When she saw Winnie’s sudden movement, Mrs. George copied it in her way. She was cowed by the appearance of the doctor, who was so evidently a gentleman, one of those superior beings for whom she retained the awe and admiration of her youth.
“Oh, George, come to bed! don’t mix yourself up with none of them—don’t get yourself into trouble!” she cried, doing what she could to drag him away.
“Let alone, Alice,” he said, disengaging himself. “I suppose you are Dr. Langton. My brother couldn’t mean that; but if things are as he says, it’s rather a bad case.”
A fever of excitement, restrained by the habit of self-command, and making little appearance, had risen in Langton’s veins. “Winifred,” he cried, with the calm of passion, “you have been breaking your heart to find out a way of serving your brothers. You see how they receive it. Retire now, you are not able to deal with them, and leave it to me.”
She was clinging to him with both hands, clasping his arm, very weak, shaken both in body and mind, longing for quietness and rest; but she shook her head, looking up with a pathetic smile in his face.
“No, Edward,” she said.
“No?” he looked at her, not believing his ears. She had never resisted him before, even when his counsels were most repugnant to her. A sudden passionate offence took possession of him. “In that case,” he said, “perhaps it is I that ought to withdraw, and allow your brother to accuse me of every crime at his ease.”
“Oh, Edward, don’t make it harder! It is hard upon us all, both them and me. It is desperate, the position we are in. I cannot endure it, and they cannot endure it. What are we to do?”
“Nor can I endure it,” he said. “Let them contest the will. It is the best way; but in that case they cannot remain under your roof.”
“Who gave you the right to dictate what we are to do?” cried Tom, who was beside himself with passion. “This is my father’s house, not yours. It is my sister’s, if you like, but not yours. Winnie, let that fellow go; what has he got to do between us? Let him go away; he has got nothing to do here.”
“You are of that opinion too?” Langton said, turning to her with a pale smile. “Be it so. I came to look after Miss Chester’s health, not to disturb a family party.”
“Edward!” Winifred cried. The name he gave her went to her heart. He had detached himself from her hold; he would not see the hand which she held out to him. His ear was deaf to her voice. She had deserted him, he said to himself. She had brought insult upon him, and an atrocious accusation, and she had not resented it, showed no indignation, rejected his help, prepared to smooth over and conciliate the miserable cad who had permitted himself to do this thing. Beneath all this blaze of passion, there was no doubt also the bitterness of disappointment with which he saw the destruction of those hopes which he had been foolishly entertaining, allowing himself to cherish, although he knew all the difficulties in the way. He saw and felt that, right or wrong, she would give all away, that Bedloe was farther from him than ever it had been. He loved Winifred, it was not for Bedloe he had sought her; but everything surged up together at this moment in a passion of mortification, resentment, and shame. She had not maintained his cause, she had refused his intervention, she had allowed these intruders to regard him as taking more upon him than she would permit, claiming an authority she would not grant. He neither looked at her, nor listened to the call which she repeated with a cry that might have moved a savage. A man humiliated, hurt in his pride, is worse than a savage.
“Take care of her,” he said, wringing Miss Farrell’s hand as he passed her, and without another look or word went away.
Winifred, standing, following with her eyes, with consternation unspeakable, his departing figure, felt the strength ebb out of her as he disappeared. But yet there was relief in his departure, too. A woman has often many pangs to bear between her husband and her family. She has to endure and maintain often the authority which she does not acknowledge, which in her right he assumes over them, which is a still greater offence to her than to them; and an instinctive sense that her lover should not have any power over her brothers was strong in her notwithstanding her love. Her agitated heart returned after a moment’s pause to the problem which was no nearer solution than before. She said softly—
“All that I can do for your sake I will do, whatever I may suffer. There is one thing I will not do, and that is, defend myself or him. If you do not know that neither I nor he have done anything against you, it is not for me to say it. It is hard, very hard for us all. If you will advise with me like friends what to do, I shall be very, very thankful; but if not, you must do what you will, and I will do what I can, and there is no more to say.”
The interruption, though it had been hard to bear, had done her good. She went back to her chair, and leant back, letting her head rest on good Miss Farrell’s faithful shoulder. A kind of desperation had come to her. She had sent her lover away, and nothing remained for her, but only this forlorn duty.
“Edward will not come back,” she said in Miss Farrell’s ear.
“To-morrow, my darling, to-morrow,” the old lady said, with tears in her eyes.
Winifred shook her head. No one could deceive her any more. She seemed to have come to that farthest edge of life on which everything becomes plain. After a while she withdrew, leaving the others to their consultation; they had been excited by Edward’s coming, but they were cowed by his going away. It seemed to bring to all a strange realisation, such as people so often reach through the eyes of others, of the real state of their affairs.