CHAPTER XXIII
“Here is some one, Susan, who knows you,” said Augustine, introducing the newcomer into the drawing-room where her sister sat. It was a wainscoted room, very handsome and warm in its brown panelling, in which the firelight shone reflected. There was a bright fire, and the room doubled itself by means of a large mirror over the mantelpiece, antique like the house, shining out of black wood and burnished brass. Miss Susan sat by the fire with her knitting, framing one of those elaborate meshes of casuistry which I have already referred to. The table close by her was heaped with books, drawings for the chantry, and for the improvement of an old house in the neighborhood which she had bought in order to be independent, whatever accidents might happen. She was more tranquil than usual in the quiet of her thoughts, having made an effort to dismiss the more painful subject altogether, and to think only of the immediate future as it appeared now in the light of Herbert’s recovery. She was thinking how to improve the house she had bought, which at present bore the unmeaning title of St. Augustine’s Grange, and which she mirthfully announced her intention of calling Gray-womans, as a variation upon Whiteladies. Miss Susan was sixty, and pretended to no lingering of youthfulness; but she was so strong and full of life that nobody thought of her as an old woman, and though she professed, as persons of her age do, to have but a small amount of life left, she had no real feeling to this effect (as few have), and was thinking of her future house and planning conveniences for it as carefully as if she expected to live in it for a hundred years. If she had been doing this with the immediate prospect of leaving Whiteladies before her, probably she might have felt a certain pain; but as she had no idea of leaving Whiteladies, there was nothing to disturb the pleasure with which almost every mind plans and plots the arrangement of a house. It is one of the things which everybody likes to attempt, each of us having a confidence that we shall succeed in it. By the fire which felt so warmly pleasant in contrast with the grayness without, having just decided with satisfaction that it was late enough to have the lamp lighted, the curtains drawn, and the grayness shut out altogether; and with the moral consolation about her of having got rid of her spectre, and of having been happily saved from all consequences of her wickedness, Miss Susan sat pondering her new house, and knitting her shawl, mind and hands alike occupied, and as near being happy as most women of sixty ever succeed in being. She turned round with a smile as Augustine spoke.
I cannot describe the curious shock and sense as of a stunning blow that came all at once upon her. She did not recognize the woman, whom she had scarcely seen, nor did she realize at all what was to follow. The stranger stood in the full light, throwing back the hood of her cloak which had been drawn over her bonnet. She was very tall, slight, and dark. Who was she? It was easier to tell what she was. No one so remarkable in appearance had entered the old house for years. She was not pretty or handsome only, but beautiful, with fine features and great dark, flashing, mysterious eyes; not a creature to be overlooked or passed with slighting notice. Unconsciously as she looked at her, Miss Susan rose to her feet in instinctive homage to her beauty, which was like that of a princess. Who was she? The startled woman could not tell, yet felt somehow, not only that she knew her, but that she had known of her arrival all her life, and was prepared for it, although she could not tell what it meant. She stood up and faced her faltering, and said, “This lady – knows me? but, pardon me, I don’t know you.”
“Yes; it is this one,” said the stranger. “You not know me, Madame? You see me at my beau-père’s house at Bruges. Ah! you remember now. And this is your child,” she said suddenly, with a significant smile, putting down the baby by Miss Susan’s feet. “I have brought him to you.”
“Ah!” Miss Susan said with a suppressed cry. She looked helplessly from one to the other for a moment, holding up her hands as if in appeal to all the world against this sudden and extraordinary visitor. “You are – Madame Austin,” she said still faltering, “their son’s wife? Yes. Forgive me for not knowing you,” she said, “I hope – you are better now?”
“Yes, I am well,” said the young woman, sitting down abruptly. The child, which was about two years old, gave a crow of delight at sight of the fire, and crept toward it instantly on his hands and knees. Both the baby and the mother seemed to take possession at once of the place. She began to undo and throw back on Miss Susan’s pretty velvet-covered chairs her wet cloak, and taking off her bonnet laid it on the table, on the plans of the new house. The boy, for his part, dragged himself over the great soft rug to the fender, where he sat down triumphant, holding his baby hands to the fire. His cap, which was made like a little night-cap of black stuff, with a border of coarse white lace very full round his face, such as French and Flemish children wear, was a headdress worn in-doors, and out-of-doors and not to be taken off – but he kicked himself free of the shawl in which he had been enveloped on his way to the fender. Augustine stood in her abstract way behind, not noticing much and waiting only to see if anything was wanted of her; while Miss Susan, deeply agitated, and not knowing what to say or do, stood also, dispossessed, looking from the child to the woman, and from the woman to the child.
“You have come from Bruges?” she said, rousing herself to talk a little, yet in such a confusion of mind that she did not know what she said. “You have had bad weather, unfortunately. You speak English? My French is so bad that I am glad of that.”
“I know ver’ little,” said the stranger. “I have learn all alone, that nobody might know. I have planned it for long time to get a little change. Enfant, tais-toi; he is bad; he is disagreeable; but it is to you he owes his existence, and I have brought him to you.”
“You do not mean to give him a bad character, poor little thing,” Miss Susan said with a forced smile. “Take care, take care, baby!”
“He will not take care. He likes to play with fire, and he does not understand you,” said the woman, with almost a look of pleasure. Miss Susan seized the child and, drawing him away from the fender, placed him on the rug; and then the house echoed with a lusty cry, that startling cry of childhood which is so appalling to the solitary. Miss Susan, desperate and dismayed, tried what she could to amend her mistake. She took the handsomest book on the table in her agitation and thrust its pictures at him; she essayed to take him on her lap; she rushed to a cabinet and got out some curiosities to amuse him. “Dear, dear! cannot you pacify him?” she said at last. Augustine had turned away and gone out of the room, which was a relief.
“He does not care for me,” said the woman with a smile, leaning back in her chair and stretching out her feet to the fire. “Sometimes he will scream only when he catches sight of me. I brought him to you; – his aunt,” she added meaningly, “Madame knows – Gertrude, who lost her baby – can manage him, but not me. He is your child, Madame of the Viteladies. I bring him to you.”
“Oh, heaven help me! heaven help me!” cried Miss Susan wringing her hands.
However, after awhile the baby fell into a state of quiet, pondering something, and at last, overcome by the warmth, fell fast asleep, a deliverance for which Miss Susan was more thankful than I can say. “But he will catch cold in his wet clothes,” she said bending over him, not able to shut out from her heart a thrill of natural kindness as she looked at the little flushed face surrounded by its closely-tied cap, and the little sturdy fat legs thrust out from under his petticoats.
“Oh, nothing will harm him,” said the mother, and with again a laugh that rang harshly. She pushed the child a little aside with her foot, not for his convenience, but her own. “It is warm here,” she added, “he likes it, and so do I.”
Then there was a pause. The stranger eyed Miss Susan with a half-mocking, defiant look, and Miss Susan, disturbed and unhappy, looked at her, wondering what had brought her, what her object was, and oh! when it would be possible to get her away!
“You have come to England – to see it?” she asked, “for pleasure? to visit your friends? or perhaps on business? I am surprised that you should have found an out-of-the-way place like this.”
“I sought it,” said the new-comer. “I found the name on a letter and then in a book, and so got here. I have come to see you.”
“It is very kind of you, I am sure,” said Miss Susan, more and more troubled. “Do you know many people in England? We shall, of course, be very glad to have you for a little while, but Whiteladies is not – amusing – at this time of the year.”
“I know nobody – but you,” said the stranger again. She sat with her great eyes fixed upon Miss Susan, who faltered and trembled under their steady gaze, leaning back in her chair, stretching out her feet to the fire with the air of one entirely at home, and determined to be comfortable. She never took her eyes from Miss Susan’s face, and there was a slight smile on her lip.
“Listen,” she said. “It was not possible any longer there. They always hated me. Whatever I said or did, it was wrong. They could not put me out, for others would have cried shame. They quarreled with me and scolded me, sometimes ten times in a day. Ah, yes. I was not a log of wood. I scolded, too; and we all hated each other. But they love the child. So I thought to come away, and bring the child to you. It is you that have done it, and you should have it; and it is I, madame knows, that have the only right to dispose of it. It is I – you acknowledge that?”
Heaven and earth! was it possible that the woman meant anything like what she said? “You have had a quarrel with them,” said Miss Susan, pretending to take it lightly, falling at every word into a tremor she could not restrain. “Ah! that happens sometimes, but fortunately it does not last. If I can be of any use to make it up, I will do anything I can.”
As she spoke she tried to return, and to overcome, if possible, the steady gaze of the other; but this was not an effort of which Miss Susan was capable. The strange, beautiful creature, who looked like some being of a new species treading this unaccustomed soil, looked calmly at her and smiled again.
“No,” she said, “you will keep me here; that will be change, what I lofe. I will know your friends. I will be as your daughter. You will not send me back to that place where they hate me. I like this better. I will stay here, and be a daughter to you.”
Miss Susan grew pale to her very lips; her sin had found her out. “You say so because you are angry,” she said, trembling; “but they are your friends; they have been kind to you. This is not really my house, but my nephew’s, and I cannot pretend to have – any right to you; though what you say is very kind,” she added, with a shiver. “I will write to M. Austin, and you will pay us a short visit, for we are dull here – and then you will go back to your home. I know you would not like the life here.”
“I shall try,” said the stranger composedly. “I like a room like this, and a warm, beautiful house; and you have many servants and are rich. Ah, madame must not be too modest. She has a right to me – and the child. She will be my second mother, I know it. I shall be very happy here.”
Miss Susan trembled more and more. “Indeed you are deceiving yourself,” she said. “Indeed, I could not set myself against Mousheer Austin, your father-in-law. Indeed, indeed – ”
“And indeed, indeed!” said her visitor. “Yes; you have best right to the child. The child is yours – and I cannot be separated from him. Am not I his mother?” she said, with a mocking light on her face, and laughed – a laugh which was in reality very musical and pleasant, but which sounded to Miss Susan like the laugh of a fiend.
And then there came a pause; for Miss Susan, at her wits’ end, did not know what to say. The child lay with one little foot kicked out at full length, the other dimpled knee bent, his little face flushed in the firelight, fast asleep at their feet; the wet shawl in which he had been wrapped steaming and smoking in the heat; and the tall, fine figure of the young woman, slim and graceful, thrown back in the easy-chair in absolute repose and comfort. Though Miss Susan stood on her own hearth, and these two were intruders, aliens, it was she who hesitated and trembled, and the other who was calm and full of easy good-humor. She lay back in her chair as if she had lived there all her life; she stretched herself out before the welcome fire; she smiled upon the mistress of the house with benign indifference. “You would not separate the mother and the child,” she repeated. “That would be worse than to separate husband and wife.”
Miss Susan wrung her hands in despair. “For a little while I shall be – glad to have you,” she said, putting force on herself; “for a – week or two – a fortnight. But for a longer time I cannot promise. I am going to leave this house.”
“One house is like another to me,” said the stranger. “I will go with you where you go. You will be good to me and the child.”
Poor Miss Susan! This second Ruth looked at her dismay unmoved, nay, with a certain air of half humorous amusement. She was not afraid of her, nor of being turned away. She held possession with the bold security of one who, she knows, cannot be rejected. “I shall not be dull or fatigued of you, for you will be kind; and where you go I will go,” she repeated, in Ruth’s very words; while Miss Susan’s heart sank, sank into the very depths of despair. What could she do or say? Should she give up her resistance for the moment, and wait to see what time would bring forth? or should she, however difficult it was, stand out now at the beginning, and turn away the unwelcome visitor? At that moment, however, while she tried to make up her mind to the severest measures, a blast of rain came against the window, and moaned and groaned in the chimneys of the old house. To turn a woman and a child out into such a night was impossible; they must stay at least till morning, whatever they did more.
“And I should like something to eat,” said the stranger, stretching her arms above her head with natural but not elegant freedom, and distorting her beautiful face with a great yawn. “I am very fatigued; and then I should like to wash myself and rest.”
“Perhaps it is too late to do anything else to-night,” said Miss Susan, with a troubled countenance; “to-morrow we must talk further; and I think you will see that it will be better to go back where you are known – among your friends – ”
“No, no; never go back!” she cried. “I will go where you go; that is, I will not change any more. I will stay with you – and the child.”
Miss Susan rang the bell with an agitated hand, which conveyed strange tremors even to the sound of the bell, and let the kitchen, if not into her secret, at least into the knowledge that there was a secret, and something mysterious going on. Martha ran to answer the summons, pushing old Stevens out of the way. “If it’s anything particular, it’s me as my lady wants,” Martha said, moved to double zeal by curiosity; and a more curious scene had never been seen by wondering eyes of domestic at Whiteladies than that which Martha saw. The stranger lying back in her chair, yawning and stretching her arms; Miss Susan standing opposite, with black care upon her brow; and at their feet between them, roasting, as Martha said, in front of the fire, the rosy baby with its odd dress, thrown down like a bundle on the rug. Martha gave a scream at sight of the child. “Lord! it’s a baby! and summun will tread on’t!” she cried, with her eyes starting out of her head.
“Hold your tongue, you foolish woman,” cried Miss Susan; “do you think I will tread on the child? It is sleeping, poor little thing. Go at once, and make ready the East room; light a fire, and make everything comfortable. This – lady – is going to stay all night.”
“Yes – every night,” interposed the visitor, with a smile.
“You hear what I say to you, Martha,” said Miss Susan, seeing that her maid turned gaping to the other speaker. “The East room, directly; and there is a child’s bed, isn’t there, somewhere in the house?”
“Yes, sure, Miss Susan; Master Herbert’s, as he had when he come first, and Miss Reine’s, but that’s bigger, as it’s the one she slept in at ten years old, afore you give her the little dressing-room; and then there’s an old cradle – ”
“I don’t want a list of all the old furniture in the house,” cried Miss Susan, cutting Martha short, “and get a bath ready and some food for the child. Everything is to be done to make – this lady – comfortable – for the night.”
“Ah! I knew Madame would be a mother to me,” cried the stranger, suddenly rising up, and folding her unwilling hostess in an unexpected and unwelcome embrace. Miss Susan, half-resisting, felt her cheek touch the new-comer’s damp and somewhat rough black woollen gown with sensations which I cannot describe. Utter dismay took possession of her soul. The punishment of her sin had taken form and shape; it was no longer to be escaped from. What should she do, what could she do? She withdrew herself almost roughly from the hold of her captor, which was powerful enough to require an effort to get free, and shook her collar straight, and her hair, which had been deranged by this unexpected sign of affection. “Let everything be got ready at once,” she said, turning with peremptory tones to Martha, who had witnessed, with much dismay and surprise, her mistress’s discomfiture. The wind sighed and groaned in the great chimney, as if it sympathized with her trouble, and blew noisy blasts of rain against the windows. Miss Susan suppressed the thrill of hot impatience and longing to turn this new-comer to the door which moved her. It could not be done to-night. Nothing could warrant her in turning out her worst enemy to the mercy of the elements to-night.
That was the strangest night that had been passed in Whiteladies for years. The stranger dined with the ladies in the old hall, which astonished her, but which she thought ugly and cold. “It is a church; it is not a room,” she said, with a shiver. “I do not like to eat in a church.” Afterward, however, when she saw Augustine sit down, whom she watched wonderingly, she sat down also. “If ma sœur does it, I may do it,” she said. But she did a great many things at table which disgusted Miss Susan, who could think of nothing else but this strange intruder. She ate up her gravy with a piece of bread, pursuing the savory liquid round her plate. She declined to allow her knife and fork to be changed, to the great horror of Stevens. She addressed that correct and high-class servant familiarly as “my friend” – translating faithfully from her natural tongue – and drawing him into the conversation; a liberty which Stevens on his own account was not indisposed to take, but which he scorned to be led into by a stranger. Miss Susan breathed at last when her visitor was taken upstairs to bed. She went with her solemnly, and ushered her into the bright, luxurious English room, with its blazing fire, and warm curtains and soft carpet. The young woman’s eyes opened wide with wonder. “I lofe this,” she said, basking before the fire, and kissed Miss Susan again, notwithstanding her resistance. There was no one in the house so tall, not even Stevens, and to resist her effectually was not in anybody’s power at Whiteladies. The child had been carried upstairs, and lay, still dressed, fast asleep upon the bed.
“Shall I stay, ma’am, and help the – lady – with the chyild?” said Martha, in a whisper.
“No, no; she will know how to manage it herself,” said Miss Susan, not caring that any of the household should see too much of the stranger.
A curious, foreign-looking box, with many iron clamps and bands, had been brought from the railway in the interval. The candles were lighted, the fire burning, the kettle boiling on the hob, and a plentiful supply of bread and milk for the baby when it woke. What more could be required? Miss Susan left her undesired guests with a sense of relief, which, alas, was very short-lived. She had escaped, indeed, for the moment; but the prospect before her was so terrible, that her very heart sickened at it. What was she to do? She was in this woman’s power; in the power of a reckless creature, who could by a word hold her up to shame and bitter disgrace; who could take away from her all the honor she had earned in her long, honorable life, and leave a stigma upon her very grave. What could she do to get rid of her, to send her back again to her relations, to get her out of the desecrated house? Miss Susan’s state of mind, on this dreadful night, was one chaos of fear, doubt, misery, remorse, and pain. Her sin had found her out. Was she to be condemned to live hereafter all her life in presence of this constant reminder of it? If she had suffered but little before, she suffered enough to make up for it now.