EVERARD AUSTIN remained at Whiteladies for the rest of the afternoon—he was like one of the children of the house. The old servants took him aside and asked him to mention things to Miss Susan with which they did not like to worry her in her trouble, though indeed most of these delicacies were very much after date, and concerned matters on which Miss Susan had already been sufficiently worried. The gardener came and told him of trees that wanted cutting, and the bailiff on the farm consulted him about the laborers for the approaching harvest. “Miss Susan don’t like tramps, and I don’t want to go against her, just when things is at its worst. I shouldn’t wonder, sir,” said the man, looking curiously in Everard’s face, “if things was in other hands this time next year?” Everard answered him with something of the bitterness which he himself had condemned so much a little while before. That Farrel-Austin should succeed was natural; but thus to look forward to the changing of masters gave him, too, a pang. He went indoors somewhat disturbed, and fell into the hands of Martha and Jane fresh from the almshouse. Martha, who was Miss Susan’s maid and half-housekeeper, had taken charge of him often enough in his boyish days, and called him Master Everard still, so that she was entitled to speak; while the younger maid looked on, and concurred—“It will break my lady’s heart,” said Martha, “leaving this old house; not but what we might be a deal more comfortable in a nice handy place, in good repair like yours is, Master Everard; where the floors is straight and the roofs likewise, and you don’t catch a rheumatism round every corner; but my lady ain’t of my way of thinking. I tell her as it would have been just as bad if Mr. Herbert had got well, poor dear young gentleman, and got married; but she won’t listen to me. Miss Augustine, she don’t take on about the house; but she’s got plenty to bother her, poor soul; and the way she do carry on about them almshouses! It’s like born natural, that’s what it is, and nothing else. Oh me! I know as I didn’t ought to say it; but what can you do, I ask you, Master Everard, when you have got the like of that under your very nose? She’ll soon have nothing but paupers in the parish if she has her way.”
“She’s very feeling-hearted,” said Jane, who stood behind her elder companion and put in a word now and then over Martha’s shoulder. She had been enjoying the delights of patronage, the happiness of recommending her friends in the village to Miss Augustine’s consideration; and this was too pleasant a privilege to be consistent with criticism. The profusion of her mistress’s alms made Jane feel herself to be “feeling-hearted” too.
“And great thanks she gets for it all,” said Martha. “They call her the crazy one down in the village. Miss Susan, she’s the hard one; and Miss Augustine’s the crazy one. That’s gratitude! trailing about in her gray gown for all the world like a Papist nun. But, poor soul, I didn’t ought to grudge her gray, Master Everard. We’ll soon be black and black enough in our mourning, from all that I hear.”
Again Everard was conscious of a shiver. He made a hasty answer and withdrew from the women who had come up to him in one of the airy corridors upstairs, half glass, like the passages below, and full of corners. Everard was on his way from a pilgrimage to the room, in which, when Herbert and he were children, they had been allowed to accumulate their playthings and possessions. It had a bit of corridor, like a glazed gallery, leading to it—and a door opened from it to the musicians’ gallery of the hall. The impulse which led him to this place was not like his usual care to avoid unpleasant sensations, for the very sight of the long bare room, with its windows half choked with ivy, the traces of old delights on the walls—bows hung on one side, whips on the other—a heap of cricket-bats and pads in a corner; and old books, pictures, and rubbish heaped upon the old creaky piano on which Reine used to play to them, had gone to his heart. How often the old walls had rung with their voices, the old floor creaked under them! He had given one look into the haunted solitude, and then had fled, feeling himself unable to bear it. “As if I could do them any good thinking!” Everard had said to himself, with a rush of tears to his eyes—and it was in the gallery leading to this room—the west gallery as everybody called it—that the women stopped him. The rooms at Whiteladies had almost every one a gallery, or an ante-room, or a little separate staircase to itself. The dinner-bell pealed out as he emerged from thence and hurried to the room which had been always called his, to prepare for dinner. How full of memories the old place was! The dinner-bell was very solemn, like the bell of a cathedral, and had never been known to be silent, except when the family were absent, for more years than any one could reckon. How well he recollected the stir it made among them all as children, and how they would steal into the musicians’ gallery and watch in the centre of the great room below, in the speck of light which shone amid its dimness, the two ladies sitting at table, like people in a book or in a dream, the servants moving softly about, and no one aware of the unseen spectators, till the irrepressible whispering and rustling of the children betrayed them! how sometimes they were sent away ignominiously, and sometimes Aunt Susan, in a cheery mood, would throw up oranges to them, which Reine, with her tiny hands, could never catch! How she used to cry when the oranges fell round her and were snapped up by the boys—not for the fruit, for Reine never had anything without sharing it or giving it away, but for the failure which made them laugh at her! Everard laughed unawares as the scene came up before him, and then felt that sudden compression, constriction of his heart—serrement du cœur, which forces out the bitterest tears. And then he hurried down to dinner and took his seat with the ladies, in the cool of the Summer evening, in the same historical spot, having now become one of them, and no longer a spectator. But he looked up at the gallery with a wistful sense of the little scuffle that used to be there, the scrambling of small feet, and whispering of voices. In Summer, when coolness was an advantage, the ladies still dined in the great hall.
“Austine, you have not seen Everard since he returned from America,” said Miss Susan. “How strong and well he looks!”—here she gave a sigh; not that she grudged Everard his good looks, but the very words brought the other before her, at thought of whom every other young man’s strength and health seemed cruel.
“He has escaped the fate of the family,” said Miss Augustine. “All I can pray for, Everard, is that you may never be the Austin of Whiteladies. No wealth can make up for that.”
“Hush, hush!” said Miss Susan with a smile, “these are your fancies. We are not much worse off than many other families who have no such curse as you think of, my dear? Are all the old women comfortable—and grumbling? What were you about to-day?”
“I met them in chapel,” said the younger sister, “and talked to them. I told them, as I always do, what need we have of their prayers; and that they should maintain a Christian life. Ah, Susan, you smile; and Everard, because he is young and foolish, would laugh if he could; but when you think that this is all I can do, or any one can do, to make up for the sins of the past, to avert the doom of the family—”
“If we have anything to make up more than others, I think we should do it ourselves,” said Miss Susan. “But never mind, dear, if it pleases you. You are spoiling the people; but there are not many villages spoiled with kindness. I comfort myself with that.”
“It is not to please myself that I toil night and day, that I rise up early and lie down late,” said Miss Augustine, with a faint gleam of indignation in her eyes. Then she looked at Everard and sighed. She did not want to brag of her mortifications. In the curious balance-sheet which she kept with heaven, poor soul, so many prayers and vigils and charities, against so many sinful failings in duty, she was aware that anything like a boast on her part diminished the value of the compensation she was rendering. Her unexpressed rule was that the, so to speak, commercial worth of a good deed disappeared, when advantage was taken of it for this world; she wanted to keep it at its full value for the next, and therefore she stopped short and said no more. “Some of them put us to shame,” she said; “they lead such holy lives. Old Mary Matthews spends nearly her whole time in chapel. She only lives for God and us. To hear her speak would reward you for many sacrifices, Susan—if you ever make any. She gives up all—her time, her comfort, her whole thoughts—for us.”
“Why for us?” said Everard. “Do you keep people on purpose to pray for the family, Aunt Augustine? I beg your pardon, but it sounded something like it. You can’t mean it, of course?”
“Why should not I mean it? We do not pray so much as we ought for ourselves,” said Miss Augustine; “and if I can persuade holy persons to pray for us continually—”
“At so much a week, a cottage, and coals and candles,” said Miss Susan. “Augustine, my dear, you shall have your way as long as I can get it for you. I am glad the old souls are comfortable; and if they are good, so much the better; and I am glad you like it, my dear; but whatever you think, you should not talk in this way. Eh, Stevens, what do you say?”
“If I might make so bold, ma’am,” said the butler, “not to go against Miss Augustine; but that hold Missis Matthews, mum, she’s a hold—”
“Silence, sir!” said Miss Susan promptly, “I don’t want to hear any gossip; my sister knows best. Tell Everard about your schools, my dear; the parish must be the better with the schools. Whatever the immediate motive is, so long as the thing is good,” said this casuist, “and whatever the occasional result may be, so long as the meaning is charitable—There, there, Everard, I won’t have her crossed.”
This was said hastily in an undertone to Everard, who was shaking his head, with a suppressed laugh on his face.
“I am not objecting to anything that is done, but to your reasoning, which is defective,” he said.
“Oh, my reasoning! is that all? I don’t stand upon my reasoning,” said Miss Susan. And then there was a pause in the conversation, for Miss Susan’s mind was perturbed, and she talked but in fits and starts, having sudden intervals of silence, from which she would as suddenly emerge into animated discussion, then be still again all in a moment. Miss Augustine, in her long limp gray dress, with pale hands coming out of the wide hanging sleeves, talked only on one subject, and did not eat at all, so that her company was not very cheerful. And Everard could not but glance up now and then to the gallery, which lay in deep shade, and feel as if he were in a dream, seated down below in the light. How vividly the childish past had come upon him; and how much more cheerful it had been in those old days, when the three atoms in the dusty corner of the gallery looked down with laughing eyes upon the solemn people at table, and whispered and rustled in their restlessness till they were found out!
At last—and this was something so wonderful that even the servants who waited at table were appalled—Miss Augustine recommenced the conversation. “You have had some one here to-day,” she said. “Farrel-Austin—I met him.”
“Yes!” said Miss Susan, breathless and alarmed.
“It seemed to me that the shadow had fallen upon them already. He is gray and changed. I have not seen him for a long time; his wife is ill, and his children are delicate.”
“Nonsense, Austine, the girls are as strong and well as a couple of young hoydens need be.” Miss Susan spoke almost sharply, and in a half-frightened tone.
“You think so, Susan; for my part I saw the shadow plainly. It is that their time is drawing near to inherit. Perhaps as they are girls, nothing will happen to them; nothing ever happened to us; that is to say, they will not marry probably; they will be as we have been. I wish to know them, Susan. Probably one of them would take up my work, and endeavor to keep further trouble from the house.”
“Farrel’s daughter? you are very good, Austine, very good; you put me to shame,” said Miss Susan, bending her head.
“Yes; why not Farrel’s daughter? She is a woman like the rest of us and an Austin, like the rest of us. I wish the property could pass to women, then there might be an end of it once for all.”
“In that case it would go to Reine, and there would not in the least be the end of it; quite the reverse.”
“I could persuade Reine,” said Miss Augustine. “Ah, yes; I could persuade her. She knows my life. She knows about the family, how we have all suffered. Reine would be led by me; she would give it up, as I should have done had I the power. But men will not do such a thing. I am not blaming them, I am saying what is the fact. Reine would have given it up.”
“You speak like a visionary,” said Miss Susan sighing. “Yes, I daresay Reine would be capable of a piece of folly, or you, or even myself. We do things that seem right to us at the moment without taking other things into consideration, when we are quite free to do what we like. But don’t you see, my dear, a man with an entailed estate is not free? His son or his heir must come after him, as his father went before him; he is only a kind of a tenant. Farrel, since you have spoken of Farrel—I would not have begun it—dare not alienate property from Everard; and Everard, when it comes to him, must keep it for his son, if he ever has one.”
“The thing would be,” said Miss Augustine, “to make up your mind never to have one, Everard.” She looked at him calmly and gravely, crossing her hands within her long sleeves.
“But, my dear Aunt Augustine,” said Everard, laughing, “what good would that do me? I should have to hand it on to the next in the entail all the same. I could not do away with the estate without the consent of my heir at least.”
“Then I will tell you what to do,” said Miss Augustine. “Marry; it is different from what I said just now, but it has the same meaning. Marry at once; and when you have a boy let him be sent to me. I will train him, I will show him his duty; and then with his consent, which he will be sure to give when he grows up, you can break the entail and restore Whiteladies to its right owner. Do this, my dear boy, it is quite simple; and so at last I shall have the satisfaction of feeling that the curse will be ended one day. Yes; the thing to be done is this.”
Miss Susan had exclaimed in various tones of impatience. She had laughed reluctantly when Everard laughed; but what her sister said was more serious to her than it was to the young man. “Do you mean to live forever,” she said at last, “that you calculate so calmly on bringing up Everard’s son?”
“I am fifty-five,” said Miss Augustine, “and Everard might have a son in a year. Probably I shall live to seventy-five, at least,—most of the women of our family do. He would then be twenty, approaching his majority. There is nothing extravagant in it; and on the whole, it seems to me the most hopeful thing to do. You must marry, Everard, without delay; and if you want money I will help you. I will do anything for an object so near my heart.”
“You had better settle whom I am to marry, Aunt Augustine.”
Everard’s laughter made the old walls gay. He entered into the joke without any arrière pensée; the suggestion amused him beyond measure; all the more that it was made with so much gravity and solemnity. Miss Susan had laughed too; but now she became slightly alarmed, and watched her sister with troubled eyes.
“Whom you are to marry? That wants consideration,” said Miss Augustine. “The sacrifice would be more complete and satisfying if two branches of the family concurred in making it. The proper person for you to marry in the circumstances would be either—”
“Austine!”
“Yes! I am giving the subject my best attention. You cannot understand, no one can understand, how all-important it is to me. Everard, either one of Farrel’s girls, to whom I bear no malice, or perhaps Reine.”
“Austine, you are out of your senses on this point,” said Miss Susan, almost springing from her seat, and disturbing suddenly the calm of the talk. “Come, come, we must retire; we have dined. Everard, if you choose to sit a little, Stevens is giving you some very good claret. It was my father’s; I can answer for it, much better than I can answer for my own, for I am no judge. You will find us in the west room when you are ready, or in the garden. It is almost too sweet to be indoors to-night.”
She drew her sister’s arm within hers and led her away, with peremptory authority which permitted no argument, and to which Augustine instinctively yielded; and Everard remained alone, his cheek tingling, his heart beating. It had all been pure amusement up to this point; but even his sense of the ludicrous could not carry him further. He might have known, he said to himself, that this was what she must say. He blushed, and felt it ungenerous in himself to have allowed her to go so far, to propose these names to him. He seemed to be making the girls endure a humiliation against his will, and without their knowledge. What had they done that he should permit any one even to suggest that he could choose among them? This was the more elevated side of his feelings; but there was another side, I am obliged to allow, a fluttered, flattered consciousness that the suggestion might be true; that he might have it in his power, like a sultan, to choose among them, and throw his princely handkerchief at the one he preferred. A mixture, therefore, of some curious sense of elation and suppressed pleasure, mingled with the more generous feeling within him, quenching at once the ridicule of Miss Augustine’s proposal, and the sense of wrong done to those three girls. Yes, no doubt it is a man’s privilege to choose; he, and not the woman, has it in his power to weigh the qualities of one and another, and to decide which would be most fit for the glorious position of his wife. They could not choose him, but he could choose one of them, and on his choice probably their future fate would depend. It was impossible not to feel a little pleasant flutter of consciousness. He was not vain, but he felt the sweetness of the superiority involved, the greatness of the position.
When the ladies were gone Everard laughed, all alone by himself, he could not help it; and the echoes took up the laughter, and rang into that special corner of the gallery which he knew so well, centring there. Why there, of all places in the world? Was it some ghost of little Reine in her childhood that laughed? Reine in her childhood had been the one who exercised choice. It was she who might have thrown the handkerchief, not Everard. And then a hush came over him, and a compunction, as he thought where Reine was at this moment, and how she might be occupied. Bending over her brother’s death-bed, hearing his last words, her heart contracted with the bitter pang of parting, while her old playfellow laughed, and wondered whether he should choose her out of the three to share his grandeur. Everard grew quite silent all at once, and poured himself out a glass of the old claret in deep humiliation and stillness, feeling ashamed of himself. He held the wine up to the light with the solemnest countenance, trying to take himself in, and persuade himself that he had no lighter thoughts in his mind, and then having swallowed it with equal solemnity, he got up and strolled out into the garden. He had so grave a face when Miss Susan met him, that she thought for the first moment that some letter had come, and that all was over, and gasped and called to him, what was it? what was it? “Nothing!” said Everard more solemnly than ever. He was impervious to any attempt at laughter for the rest of the evening, ashamed of himself and his light thoughts, in sudden contrast with the thoughts that must be occupying his cousins, his old playmates. And yet, as he went home in the moonlight, the shock of that contrast lessened, and his young lightness of mind began to reassert itself. Before he got out of hearing of the manor he began to whistle again unawares; but this time it was not one of Reine’s songs. It was a light opera air which, no doubt, one of the other girls had taught him, or so, at least, Miss Susan thought.