THE girls went out into the old corridor, leaving the great carved door of the dining-hall open behind them. The flutter of their pretty dresses filled the picturesque passage with animation, and the sound of their receding voices kept up this sentiment of life and movement even after they had disappeared. Their father looked after them well pleased, with that complacence on his countenance, and pleasant sense of personal well-being which is so natural, but so cruel and oppressive to people less well off. Miss Susan, for her part, felt it an absolute insult. It seemed to her that he had come expressly to flaunt before her his own happiness and the health and good looks of his children. She turned her back to the great window, that she might not see them going across the lawn, with Everard in close attendance upon them. A sense of desertion, by him, by happiness, by all that is bright and pleasant in the world, came into her heart, and made her defiant. When such a feeling as this gets into the soul, all softness, all indulgence to others, all favorable construction of other people’s words or ways departs. They seemed to her to have come to glory over her and over Herbert dying, and Reine mourning, and the failure of the old line. What was grief and misery to her was triumph to them. It was natural perhaps, but very bitter; curses even, if she had not been too good a woman to let them come to utterance, were in poor Miss Susan’s heart. If he had said anything to her about his girls, as she expected, if he had talked of them at all, I think the flood must have found vent somehow; but fortunately he did not do this. He waited till they were out of the house, and then rose and closed the door, and reseated himself facing her, with something more serious in his face.
“Excuse me for waiting till they had gone,” he said. “I don’t want the girls to be mixed up in any family troubles; though, indeed, there is no trouble involved in what I have to tell you—or, at least, so I hope.”
The girls were crossing the lawn as he spoke, laughing and talking, saying something about the better training of the roses, and how the place might be improved. Miss Susan caught some words of this with ears quickened by her excited feelings. She drew her chair further from the window, and turned her back to it more determinedly than ever. Everard, too! he had gone over to the prosperous side.
“My dear cousin,” said Mr. Farrel-Austin, “I wish you would not treat me like an enemy. Whenever there is anything I can do for you, I am always glad to do it. I heard that you were making inquiries after our great-uncle Everard and his descendants, if he left any.”
“You could not miss hearing it. I made no secret of it,” said Miss Susan. “We have put advertisements in the newspapers, and done everything we possibly could to call everybody’s attention.”
“Yes; I know, I know; but you never consulted me. You never said, ‘Cousin, it is for the advantage of all of us to find these people.’ ”
“I do not think it is for your advantage,” said Miss Susan, looking quickly at him.
“You will see, however, that it is, when you know what I have to tell you,” he said, rubbing his hands. “I suppose I may take it for granted that you did not mean it for my advantage. Cousin Susan, I have found the people you have been looking for in vain.”
The news gave her a shock, and so did his triumphant expression; but she put force upon herself. “I am glad to hear it,” she said. “Such a search as mine is never in vain. When you have advantages to offer, you seldom fail to find the people who have a right to those advantages. I am glad you have been successful.”
“And I am happy to hear you say so,” said the other. “In short, we are in a state of agreement and concord for once in our lives, which is delightful. I hope you will not be disappointed, however, with the result. I found them in Bruges, in a humble position enough. Indeed, it was the name of Austin over a shop door which attracted my notice first.”
He spoke leisurely, and regarded her with a smile which almost drove her furious, especially as, by every possible argument, she was bound to restrain her feelings. She was strong enough, however, to do this, and present a perfectly calm front to her adversary.
“You found the name—over a shop door?”
“Yes, a drapery shop; and inside there was an old man with the Austin nose as clear as I ever saw it. It belongs, you know, more distinctly to the elder branch than to any other portion of the family.”
“The original stock is naturally stronger,” said Miss Susan. “When you get down to collaterals, the family type dies out. Your family, for instance, all resemble your mother, who was a Miss Robinson, I think I have heard?”
This thrust gave her a little consolation in her pain, and it disturbed her antagonist in his triumph. She had, as it were, drawn the first blood.
“Yes, yes; you are quite right,” he said; “of a very good family in Essex. Robinsons of Swillwell—well-known people.”
“In the city,” said Miss Susan, “so I have always heard; and an excellent thing, too. Blood may not always make its way, but money does; and to have an alderman for your grandfather is a great deal more comfortable than to have a crusader. But about our cousin at Bruges,” she added, recovering her temper. How pleasant to every well-regulated mind is the consciousness of having administered a good, honest, knock-down blow!
Mr. Farrel-Austin glanced at her out of the light gray eyes, which were indisputable Robinsons’, and as remote in color as possible from the deep blue orbs, clear as a Winter sky, which were one of the great points of the Austins; but he dared not take any further notice. It was his turn now to restrain himself.
“About our cousin in Bruges,” he repeated with an effort. “He turns out to be an old man, and not so happy in his family as might be wished. His only son was dying—”
“For God’s sake!” said Miss Susan, moved beyond her power of control, and indeed ceasing to control herself with this good reason for giving way—“have you no heart that you can say such words with a smile on your face? You that have children yourself, whom God may smite as well as another’s! How dare you? how dare you? for your own sake!”
“I don’t know that I am saying anything unbecoming,” said Mr. Farrel. “I did not mean it. No one can be more grateful for the blessings of Providence than I am. I thank Heaven that all my children are well; but that does not hinder the poor man at Bruges from losing his. Pray let me continue: his wife and he are old people, and his only son, as I say, was dying or dead—dead by this time, certainly, according to what they said of his condition.”
Miss Susan clasped her hands tightly together. It seemed to her that he enjoyed the poignant pang his words gave her—“dead by this time, certainly!” Might that be said of the other who was dearer to her? Two dying, that this man might get the inheritance! Two lives extinguished, that Farrel-Austin and his girls might have this honor and glory! He had no boys, however. His glory could be but short-lived. There was a kind of fierce satisfaction in that thought.
“I had a long conversation with the old man; indeed, we stayed in Bruges for some days on purpose. I saw all his papers, and there can be no doubt he is the grandson of our great-uncle Everard. I explained the whole matter to him, of course, and brought your advertisements under his notice, and explained your motives.”
“What are my motives?—according to your explanation.”
“Well, my dear cousin—not exactly love and charity to me, are they? I explained the position fully to him.”
“Then there is no such thing as justice or right in the world, I suppose,” she cried indignantly, “but everything hinges on love to you, or the reverse. You know what reason I have to love you—well do you know it, and lose no opportunity to keep it before me; but if my boy himself—my dying boy, God help me!—had been in your place, Farrel-Austin, should I have let him take possession of what was not his by right? You judge men, and women too, by yourself. Let that pass, so far as you are concerned. You have no other ground, I suppose, to form a judgment on; but you have no right to poison the minds of others. Nothing will make me submit to that.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Farrel-Austin, shrugging his shoulders with contemptuous calm, “you can set yourself right when you please with the Bruges shopkeeper. I will give you his address. But in the meantime you may as well hear what his decision is. At his age he does not care to change his country and his position, and come to England in order to become the master of a tumble-down old house. He prefers his shop, and the place he has lived in all his life. And the short and the long of it is, that he has transferred his rights to me, and resigned all claim upon the property. I agreed to it,” he added, raising his head, “to save trouble, more than for any other reason. He is an old man, nearly seventy; his son dead or dying, as I said. So far as I am concerned, it could only have been a few years’ delay at the most.”
Miss Susan sat bolt upright in her chair, gazing at him with eyes full of amazement—so much astonished that she scarcely comprehended what he said. It was evidently a relief to the other to have made his announcement. He breathed more freely after he had got it all out. He rose from his chair and went to the window, and nodded to his girls across the lawn. “They are impatient, I see, and I must be going,” he went on. Then looking at Miss Susan for the first time, he added, in a tone that had a sound of mockery in it, “You seem surprised.”
“Surprised!” She had been leaning toward the chair from which he had arisen without realizing that he had left it in her great consternation. Now she turned quickly to him. “Surprised! I am a great deal more than surprised.”
He laughed; he had the upper hand at last. “Why more?” he said lightly. “I think the man was a very reasonable old man, and saw what his best policy was.”
“And you—accepted his sacrifice?” said Miss Susan, amazement taking from her all power of expression;—“you permitted him to give up his birthright? you—took advantage of his ignorance?”
“My dear cousin, you are rude,” he said, laughing; “without intending it, I am sure. So well-bred a woman could never make such imputations willingly. Took advantage! I hope I did not do that. But I certainly recommended the arrangement to him, as the most reasonable thing he could do. Think! At his age, he could come here only to die; and with no son to succeed him, of course I should have stepped in immediately. Few men like to die among strangers. I was willing, of course, to make him a recompense for the convenience—for it was no more than a convenience, make the most you can of it—of succeeding at once.”
Miss Susan looked at him speechless with pain and passion. I do not know what she did not feel disposed to say. For a moment her blue eyes shot forth fire, her lips quivered from the flux of too many words which flooded upon her. She began even, faltering, stammering—then came to a stop in the mere physical inability to arrange her words, to say all she wanted, to launch her thunderbolt at his head with the precision she wished. At last she came to a dead stop, looking at him only, incapable of speech; and with that pause came reflection. No; she would say nothing; she would not commit herself; she would think first, and perhaps do, instead of saying. She gave a gasp of self-restraint.
“The young ladies seem impatient for you,” she said. “Don’t let me detain you. I don’t know that I have anything to say on the subject of your news, which is surprising, to be sure, and takes away my breath.”
“Yes, I thought you would be surprised,” he said, and shook hands with her. Miss Susan’s fingers tingled—how she would have liked, in an outburst of impatience which I fear was very undignified, to apply them to his ear, rather than to suffer his hand to touch hers in hypocritical amity! He was a little disappointed, however, to have had so little response to his communication. Her silence baffled him. He had expected her to commit herself, to storm, perhaps; to dash herself in fury against this skilful obstacle which he had placed in her way. He did not expect her to have so much command of herself; and, in consequence, he went away with a secret uneasiness, feeling less successful and less confident in what he had done, and asking himself, Could he have made some mistake after all—could she know something that made his enterprise unavailing? He was more than usually silent on the drive home, making no answer to the comments of his girls, or to their talk about what they would do when they got possession of the manor.
“I hope the furniture goes with the house,” said Kate. “Papa, you must do all you can to secure those old chairs, and especially the settee with the stamped leather, which is charming, and would fetch its weight in gold in Wardour street.”
“And, papa, those big blue and white jars,” said Sophy, “real old Nankin, I am sure. They must have quantities of things hidden away in those old cupboards. It shall be as good as a museum when we get possession of the house!”
“You had better get possession of the house before you make any plans about it,” said her father. “I never like making too sure.”
“Why, papa, what has come over you?” cried the eldest. “You were the first to say what you would do, when we started. Miss Susan has been throwing some spell over you.”
“If it is her spell, it will not be hard to break it,” said Sophy; and thus they glided along, between the green abundant hedges, breathing the honey breath of the limes, but not quite so happy and triumphant as when they came. As for the girls, they had heard no details of the bargain their father had made, and gave no great importance to it; for they knew he was the next heir, and that the manor-house would soon cease to be poor Herbert’s, with whom they had played as children, but whom, they said constantly, they scarcely knew. They did not understand what cloud had come over their father. “Miss Susan is an old witch,” they said, “and she has put him under some spell.”
Meanwhile Miss Susan sat half-stupefied where he had left her, in a draught, which was a thing she took precautions against on ordinary occasions—the great window open behind her, the door open in front of her, and the current blowing about even the sedate and heavy folds of the great crimson curtains, and waking, though she did not feel it, the demon Neuralgia to twist her nerves, and set her frame on an edge. She did not seem able to move or even think, so great was the amazement in her mind. Could he be right—could he have found the Austin she had sought for over all the world; and was it possible that the unrighteous bargain he had told her of had really been completed? Unrighteous! for was it not cheating her in the way she felt the most, deceiving her in her expectations? An actual misfortune could scarcely have given Miss Susan so great a shock. She sat quite motionless, her very thoughts arrested in their course, not knowing what to think, what to do—how to take this curious new event. Must she accept it as a thing beyond her power of altering, or ought she to ignore it as something incredible, impossible? One thing or other she must decide upon at once; but in the meantime, so great was the effect this intimation had upon her mind, she felt herself past all power of thinking. Everard coming back found her still seated there in the draught in the old hall. He shut the door softly behind him and went in, looking at her with questioning eyes. But she did not notice his look; she was too much and too deeply occupied in her own mind. Besides, his friendship with her visitors made Everard a kind of suspected person, not to be fully trusted. Miss Susan was too deeply absorbed to think this, but she felt it. He sat down opposite, where Mr. Farrel-Austin had been sitting, and looked at her; but this mute questioning produced no response.
“What has old Farrel been saying to you, Aunt Susan?” he asked at last.
“Why do you call him old Farrel, Everard? he is not nearly so old as I am,” said Miss Susan with a sigh, waking up from her thoughts. “Growing old has its advantages, no doubt, when one can realize the idea of getting rid of all one’s worries, and having the jangled bells put in tune again; but otherwise—to think of others who will set everything wrong coming after us, who have tried hard to keep them right! Perhaps, when it comes to the very end, one does not mind; I hope so; I feel sore now to think that this man should be younger than I am, and likely to live ever so much longer, and enjoy my father’s house.”
Everard sat still, saying nothing. He was unprepared for this sort of reply. He was slightly shocked too, as young people so often are, by the expression of any sentiments, except the orthodox ones, on the subject of dying. It seemed to him, at twenty-five, that to Miss Susan at sixty, it must be a matter of comparatively little consequence how much longer she lived. He would have felt the sentiments of the Nunc Dimittis to be much more appropriate and correct in the circumstances; he could not understand the peculiar mortification of having less time to live than Farrel-Austin. He looked grave with the fine disapproval and lofty superiority of youth. But he was a very gentle-souled and tender-hearted young man, and he did not like to express the disapproval that was in his face.
“We had better not talk of them,” said Miss Susan, after a pause; “we don’t agree about them, and it is not likely we should; and I don’t want to quarrel with you, Everard, on their account. Farrel thinks he is quite sure of the estate now. He has found out some one whom he calls our missing cousin, and has got him to give up in his own favor.”
“Got him to give up in his own favor!” repeated Everard amazed. “Why, this is wonderful news. Who is it, and where is he, and how has it come about? You take away one’s breath.”
“I cannot go into the story,” said Miss Susan. “Ask himself. I am sick of the subject. He thinks he has settled it, and that it is all right; and waits for nothing but my poor boy’s end to take possession. They had not even the grace to ask for him!” she cried, rising hastily. “Don’t ask me anything about it; it is more than I can bear.”
“But, Aunt Susan—”
“I tell you we shall quarrel, Everard, if we talk more on this subject,” she cried. “You are their friend, and I am their—no; it is they who are my enemies,” she added, stopping herself. “I don’t dictate to you how you are to feel, or what friends you are to make. I have no right; but I have a right to talk of what I please, and to be silent when I please. I shall say no more about it. As for you,” she said, after another pause, with a forced smile, “the young ladies will consult with you what changes they are to make in the house. I heard them commenting on the roses, and how everything could be improved. You will be of the greatest use to them in their new arrangements, when all obstacles are removed.”
“I don’t think it is kind to speak to me so,” said Everard, in his surprise. “It is not generous, Aunt Susan. It is like kicking a fellow when he is down; for you know I can’t defend myself.”
“Yes, I suppose it is unjust,” said Miss Susan, drying her eyes, which were full of hot tears, with no gratefulness of relief in them. “The worst of this world is that one is driven to be unjust, and can’t help it, even to those one loves.”