CHAPTER XL
The evening came to an end at last. The great people went first, as became them, filling the rural roads with the ponderous rumble of their great carriages and gleam of their lamps. The whole neighborhood was astir. A little crowd of village people had collected round the gates to see the ladies in their fine dresses, and to catch the distant echo of the festivities. There was quite an excitement among them, as carriage after carriage rolled away. The night was soft and warm and light, the moon invisible, but yet shedding from behind the clouds a subdued lightness into the atmosphere. As the company dwindled, and ceremony diminished, a group gradually collected in the great porch, and at last this group dwindled to the family party and the Farrel-Austins, who were the last to go away. This was by no means the desire of their father, who had derived little pleasure from the entertainment. None of those ulterior views which Kate and Sophy had discussed so freely between themselves had been communicated to their father, and he saw nothing but the celebration of his own downfall, and the funeral of his hopes, in this feast, which was all to the honor of Herbert. Consequently, he had been eager to get away at the earliest moment possible, and would even have preceded Lord Kingsborough, could he have moved his daughters, who did not share his feelings. On the contrary, the display which they had just witnessed had produced a very sensible effect upon Kate and Sophy. They were very well off, but they did not possess half the riches of Whiteladies; and the grandeur of the stately old hall, and the importance of the party, impressed these young women of the world. Sophy, who was the younger, was naturally the less affected; but Kate, now five-and-twenty, and beginning to perceive very distinctly that all is vanity, was more moved than I can say. In the intervals of livelier intercourse, and especially during that moment in the drawing-room when the gentlemen were absent – a moment pleasing in its calm to the milder portion of womankind, but which fast young ladies seldom endure with patience – Kate made pointed appeals to her sister’s proper feelings.
“If you let all this slip through your fingers, I shall despise you,” she said with vehemence.
“Go in for it yourself, then,” whispered the bold Sophy; “I shan’t object.”
But even Sophy was impressed. Her first interest, Lord Alf, had disappeared long ago, and had been succeeded by others, all very willing to amuse themselves and her, as much as she pleased, but all disappearing in their turn to the regions above, or the regions below, equally out of Sophy’s reach, whom circumstances shut out from the haunts of blacklegs and sporting men, as well as from the upper world, to which the Lord Alfs of creation belong by nature. Still it was not in Sophy’s nature to be so wise as Kate. She was not tired of amusing herself, and had not begun yet to pursue her gayeties with a definite end. Sophy told her friends quite frankly that her sister was “on the look-out.” “She has had her fun, and she wants to settle down,” the younger said with admirable candor, to the delight and much amusement of her audiences from the Barracks. For this these gentlemen well knew, though both reasonable and virtuous in a man, is not so easily managed in the case of a lady. “By Jove! I shouldn’t wonder if she did,” was their generous comment. “She has had her fun, by Jove! and who does she suppose would have her?” Yet the best of girls, and the freshest and sweetest, do have these heroes, after a great deal more “fun” than ever could have been within the reach of Kate; for there are disabilities of women which cannot be touched by legislation, and to which the most strong-minded must submit.
However, Sophy and Kate, as I have said, were both moved to exertion by this display of all the grandeur of Whiteladies. They kept their father fuming and fretting outside, while they lingered in the porch with Reine and Herbert. The whole youthful party was there, including Everard and Giovanna, who had at last permitted poor little Jean to be put to bed, but who was still excited by her demonstration, and the splendid company of which she had formed a part.
“How they are dull, these great ladies!” she cried; “but not more dull than ces messieurs, who thought I was mad. Mon Dieu! because I was happy about M. ’Erbert, and that he had come home.”
“It was very grand of you to be glad,” cried Sophy. “Bertie, you have gone and put everybody out. Why did you get well, sir? Papa pretends to be pleased, too, but he would like to give you strychnine or something. Oh, it wouldn’t do us any good, we are only girls; and I think you have a better right than papa.”
“Thanks for taking my part,” said Herbert, who was a little uncertain how to take this very frank address. A man seldom thinks his own problematical death an amusing incident; but still he felt that to laugh was the right thing to do.
“Oh, of course we take your part,” cried Sophy. “We expect no end of fun from you, now you’ve come back. I am so sick of all those Barrack parties; but you will always have something going on, won’t you? And Reine, you must ask us. How delicious a dance would be in the hall! Bertie, remember you are to go to Ascot with us; you are our cousin, not any one else’s. When one is related to the hero of the moment, one is not going to let one’s glory drop. Promise, Bertie! you go with us?”
“I am quite willing, if you want me,” said Herbert.
“Oh, if we want you! – of course we want you – we want you always,” cried Sophy. “Why, you are the lion; we are proud of you. We shall want to let everybody see that you don’t despise your poor relations, that you remember we are your cousins, and used to play with you. Don’t you recollect, Bertie? Kate and Reine used to be the friends always, because they were the steadiest; and you and me – we were the ones who got into scrapes,” cried Sophy. This, to tell the truth, was a very rash statement; for Herbert, always delicate, had not been in the habit of getting into scrapes. But all the more for this, he was pleased with the idea.
“Yes,” he said half doubtfully, “I recollect;” but his recollections were not clear enough to enter into details.
“Come, let us get into a scrape again,” cried Sophy; “it is such a lovely night. Let us send the carriage on in front, and walk. Come with us, won’t you? After a party, it is so pleasant to have a walk; and we have been such swells to-night. Come, Bertie, let’s run on, and bring ourselves down.”
“Sophy, you madcap! I daresay the night air is not good for him,” said Kate.
Upon which Sophy broke forth into the merriest laughter. “As if Bertie cared for the night air! Why, he looks twice as strong as any of us. Will you come?”
“With all my heart,” said Herbert; “it is the very thing after such a tremendous business as Aunt Susan’s dinner. This is not the kind of entertainment I mean to give. We shall leave the swells, as you say, to take care of themselves.”
“And ask me!” said bold Sophy, running out into the moonlight, which just then got free of the clouds. She was in high spirits, and pleased with the decided beginning she had made. In her white dress, with her white shoes twinkling over the dark cool greenness of the grass, she looked like a fairy broken forth from the woods. “Who will run a race with me to the end of the lane?” she cried, pirouetting round and round the lawn. How pretty she was, how gay, how light-hearted – a madcap, as her sister said, who stood in the shadow of the porch laughing, and bade Sophy recollect that she would ruin her shoes.
“And you can’t run in high heels,” said Kate.
“Can’t I?” cried Sophy. “Come, Bertie, come.” They nearly knocked down Mr. Farrel-Austin, who stood outside smoking his cigar, and swearing within himself, as they rushed out through the little gate. The carriage was proceeding abreast, its lamps making two bright lines of light along the wood, the coachman swearing internally as much as his master. The others followed more quietly – Kate, Reine, and Everard. Giovanna, yawning, had withdrawn some time before.
“Sophy, really, is too great a romp,” said Kate; “she is always after some nonsense; and now we shall never be able to overtake them, to talk to Bertie about coming to the Hatch. Reine, you must settle it. We do so want you to come; consider how long it is since we have seen you, and of course everybody wants to see you; so unless we settle at once, we shall miss our chance – Everard too. We have been so long separated; and perhaps,” said Kate, dropping her voice, “papa may have been disagreeable; but that don’t make any difference to us. Say when you will come; we are all cousins together, and we ought to be friends. What a blessing when there are no horrible questions of property between people!” said Kate, who had so much sense. “Now it don’t matter to any one, except for friendship, who is next of kin.”
“Bertie has won,” said Sophy, calling out to them. “Fancy! I thought I was sure, such a short distance; men can stay better than we can,” said the well-informed young woman; “but for a little bit like this, the girl ought to win.”
“Since you have come back, let us settle about when they are to come,” said Kate; and then there ensued a lively discussion. They clustered all together at the end of the lane, in the clear space where there were no shadowing trees – the two young men acting as shadows, the girls all distinct in their pretty light dresses, which the moon whitened and brightened. The consultation was very animated, and diversified by much mirth and laughter, Sophy being wild, as she said, with excitement, with the stimulation of the race, and of the night air and the freedom. “After a grand party of swells, where one has to behave one’s self,” she said, “one always goes wild.” And she fell to waltzing about the party. Everard was the only one of them who had any doubt as to the reality of Sophy’s madcap mood; the others accepted it with the naive confidence of innocence. They said to each other, what a merry girl she was! when at last, moved by Mr. Farrel-Austin’s sulks and the determination of the coachman, the girls permitted themselves to be placed in the carriage. “Recollect Friday!” they both cried, kissing Reine, and giving the most cordial pressure of the hand to Herbert. The three who were left stood and looked after the carriage as it set off along the moonlit road. Reine had taken her brother’s arm. She gave Everard no opportunity to resume that interrupted conversation on board the steamboat. And Kate and Sophy had not been at all attentive to their cousin, who was quite as nearly related to them as Bertie, so that if he was slightly misanthropical and inclined to find fault, it can scarcely be said that he had no justification. They all strolled along together slowly, enjoying the soft evening and the suppressed moonlight, which was now dim again, struggling faintly through a mysterious labyrinth of cloud.
“I had forgotten what nice girls they were,” said Herbert; “Sophy especially; so kind and so genial and unaffected. How foolish one is when one is young! I don’t think I liked them, even, when we were last here.”
“They are sometimes too kind,” said Everard, shrugging his shoulders; but neither of the others took any notice of what he said.
“One is so much occupied with one’s self when one is young,” said middle-aged Reine, already over twenty, and feeling all the advantages which age bestows.
“Do you think it is that?” said Herbert. He was much affected by the cordiality of his cousins, and moved by many concurring causes to a certain sentimentality of mind; and he was not indisposed for a little of that semi-philosophical talk which sounds so elevating and so improving at his age.
“Yes,” said Reine, with confidence; “one is so little sure of one’s self, one is always afraid of having done amiss; things you say sound so silly when you think them over. I blush sometimes now when I am quite alone to think how silly I must have seemed; and that prevents you doing justice to others; but I like Kate best.”
“And I like Sophy best. She has no nonsense about her; she is so frank and so simple. Which is Everard for? On the whole, there is no doubt about it, English girls have a something, a je ne sais quoi – ”
“I can’t give any opinion,” said Everard laughing. “After your visit to the Hatch you will be able to decide. And have you thought what Aunt Susan will say, within the first week, almost before you have been seen at home?”
“By Jove! I forgot Aunt Susan!” cried Herbert with a sudden pause; then he laughed, trying to feel the exquisite fun of asking Aunt Susan’s permission, while they were so independent of her; but this scarcely answered just at first. “Of course,” he added, with an attempt at self-assertion, “one cannot go on consulting Aunt Susan’s opinion forever.”
“But the first week!” Everard had all the delight of mischief in making them feel the subordination in which they still stood in spite of themselves. He went on laughing. “I would not say anything about it to-night. She is not half pleased with Madame Jean, as they call her. I hope Madame Jean has been getting it hot. Everything went off perfectly well by a miracle, but that woman as nearly spoiled it by her nonsense and her boy – ”
“Whom do you call that woman?” said Herbert coldly. “I think Madame Jean did just what a warm-hearted person would do. She did not wait for mere ceremony or congratulations prearranged. For my part,” said Herbert stiffly, “I never admired any one so much. She is the most beautiful, glorious creature!”
“There was no one there so pretty,” said innocent Reine.
“Pretty! she is not pretty: she is splendid! she is beautiful! By Jove! to see her with her arm raised, and that child on her shoulder – it’s like a picture! If you will laugh,” said Herbert pettishly, “don’t laugh in that offensive way! What have they done to you, and why are you so disagreeable to-night?”
“Am I disagreeable?” said Everard laughing again. It was all he could do to keep from being angry, and he felt this was the safest way. “Perhaps it is that I am more enlightened than you youngsters. However beautiful a woman may be (and I don’t deny she’s very handsome), I can see when she’s playing a part.”
“What part is she playing?” cried Herbert hotly. Reine was half frightened by his vehemence, and provoked as he was by Everard’s disdainful tone; but she pressed her brother’s arm to restrain him, fearful of a quarrel, as girls are so apt to be.
“I suppose you will say we are all playing our parts; and so we are,” said Reine. “Bertie, you have been the hero to-night, and we are all your satellites for the moment. Come in quick, it feels chilly. I don’t suppose even Everard would say Sophy was playing a part, except her natural one,” she added with a laugh.
Everard was taken by surprise. He echoed her laugh with all the imbecility of astonishment. “You believe in them too,” he said to her in an aside, then added, “No, only her natural part,” with a tone which Herbert found as offensive as the other. Herbert himself was in a state of flattered self-consciousness which made him look upon every word said against his worshippers as an assault upon himself. Perhaps the lad being younger than his years, was still at the age when a boy is more in love with himself than any one else, and loves others according to their appreciation of that self which bulks so largely in his own eyes. Giovanna’s homage to him, and Sophy’s enthusiasm of cousinship, and the flattering look in all these fine eyes, had intoxicated Herbert. He could not but feel that they were above all criticism, these young, fair women, who did such justice to his own excellences. As for any suggestion that their regard for him was not genuine, it was as great an insult to him as to them, and brought him down, in the most humbling way, from the pedestal on which they had elevated him. Reine’s hand patting softly on his arm kept him silent, but he felt that he could knock down Everard with pleasure, and fumes of anger and self-exaltation mounted into his head.
“Don’t quarrel, Bertie,” Reine whispered in his ear.
“Quarrel! he is not worth quarrelling with. He is jealous, I suppose, because I am more important than he is,” Herbert said, stalking through the long passages which were still all bright with lights and flowers. Everard, hanging back out of hearing, followed the two young figures with his eyes through the windings of the passage. Herbert held his head high, indignant. Reine, with both her hands on his arm, soothed and calmed him. They were both resentful of his sour tone and what he had said.
“I dare say they think I am jealous,” Everard said to himself with a laugh that was not merry, and went away to his own room, and beginning to arrange his things for departure, meaning to leave next day. He had no need to stay there to swell Herbert’s triumph, he who had so long acted as nurse to him without fee or reward. Not quite without reward either, he thought, after all, rebuking himself, and held up his hand and looked at it intently, with a smile stealing over his face. Why should he interfere to save Herbert from his own vanity and folly? Why should he subject himself to the usual fate of Mentors, pointing out Scylla on the one side and Charybdis on the other? If the frail vessel was determined to be wrecked, what had he, Everard, to do with it? Let the boy accomplish his destiny, who cared? and then what could Reine do but take refuge with her natural champion, he whom she herself had appointed to stand in her place, and who had his own score against her still unacquitted? It was evidently to his interest to keep out of the way, to let things go as they would. “And I’ll back Giovanna against Sophy,” he said to himself, half jealous, half laughing, as he went to sleep.
As for Herbert, he lounged into the great hall, where some lights were still burning, with his sister, and found Miss Susan there, pale with fatigue and the excitement past but triumphant. “I hope you have not tired yourself out,” she said. “It was like those girls to lead you out into the night air, to give you a chance of taking cold. Their father would like nothing better than to see you laid up again: but I don’t give them credit for any scheme. They are too feather-brained for anything but folly.”
“Do you mean our cousins Sophy and Kate?” said Herbert with some solemnity, and an unconscious attempt to overawe Miss Susan, who was not used to anything of this kind, and was unable to understand what he meant.
“I mean the Farrel-Austin girls,” she said. “Riot and noise and nonsense are their atmosphere. I hope you do not like this kind of goings on, Reine?”
The brother and sister looked at each other. “You have always disliked the Farrel-Austins,” said Herbert, bravely putting himself in the breach. “I don’t know why, Aunt Susan. But we have no quarrel with the girls. They are very nice and friendly. Indeed, Reine and I have promised to go to them on Friday, for two or three days.”
He was three and twenty, he was acknowledged master of the house; but Herbert felt a certain tremor steal over him, and stood up before her with a strong sense of valor and daring as he said these words.
“Going to them on Friday – to the Farrel-Austins’ for three or four days! then you do not mean even to go to your own parish church on your first Sunday? Herbert,” said Miss Susan, indignantly, “you will break Augustine’s heart.”
“No, no, we did not say three or four days. I thought of that,” said Reine. “We shall return on Saturday. Don’t be angry, Aunt Susan. They were very kind, and we thought it was no harm.”
Herbert gave her an indignant glance. It was on his lips to say, “It does not matter whether Aunt Susan is angry or not,” but looking at her, he thought better of it. “Yes,” he said after a pause, “we shall return on Saturday. They were very kind, as Reine says, and how visiting our cousins could possibly involve any harm – ”
“That is your own affair,” said Miss Susan; “I know what you mean, Herbert, and of course you are right, you are not children any longer, and must choose your own friends; well! Before you go, however, I should like to settle everything. To-night is my last night. Yes, it is too late to discuss that now. I don’t mean to say more at present. It went off very well, very pleasantly, but for that ridiculous interruption of Giovanna’s – ”
“I did not think it was ridiculous,” said Herbert. “It was very pretty. Does Giovanna displease you too?”
Once more Reine pressed his arm. He was not always going to be coerced like this. If Miss Susan wants to be unjust and ungenerous, he was man enough, he felt, to meet her to the face.
“It was very ridiculous, I thought,” she said with a sigh, “and I told her so. I don’t suppose she meant any harm. She is very ignorant, and knows nothing about the customs of society. Thank heaven, she can’t stay very long now.”
“Why can’t she stay?” cried Herbert, alarmed. “Aunt Susan, I don’t know what has come over you. You used to be so kind to everybody, but now it is the people I particularly like you are so furious against. Why? those girls, who are as pretty and as pleasant as possible, and just the kind of companions Reine wants, and Madame Jean, who is the most charming person I ever saw in this house. Ignorant! I think she is very accomplished. How she sang last night, and what an eye she has for the picturesque! I never admired Whiteladies so much as this morning, when she took us over it. Aunt Susan, don’t be so cross. Are you disappointed in Reine, or in me, that you are so hard upon the people we like most?”
“The people you like most?” cried Miss Susan aghast.
“Yes, Aunt Susan, I like them too,” said Reine, bravely putting herself by her brother’s side. I believe they both thought it was a most chivalrous and high-spirited thing they were doing, rejecting experience and taking rashly what seemed to them the weaker side. The side of the accused against the judge, the side of the young against the old. It seemed so natural to do that. The two stood together in their foolishness in the old hall, all decorated in their honor, and confronted the dethroned queen of it with a smile. She stood baffled and thunderstruck, gazing at them, and scarcely knew what to say.
“Well, children, well,” she managed to get out at last. “You are no longer under me, you must choose your own friends; but God help you, what is to become of you if these are the kind of people you like best!”
They both laughed softly; though Reine had compunctions, they were not afraid. “You must confess at least that we have good taste,” said Herbert; “two very pretty people, and one beautiful. I should have been much happier with Sophy at one hand and Madame Jean on the other, instead of those two swells, as Sophy calls them.”
“Sophy, as you call her, would give her head for their notice,” cried Miss Susan indignant, “two of the best women in the county, and the most important families.”
Herbert shrugged his shoulders. “They did not amuse me,” he said, “but perhaps I am stupid. I prefer the foolish Sophy and the undaunted Madame Jean.”
Miss Susan left them with a cold good-night to see all the lights put out, which was important in the old house. She was so angry that it almost eased her of her personal burden; but Reine, I confess, felt a thrill of panic as she went up the oak stairs. Scylla and Charybdis! She did not identify Herbert’s danger, but in her heart there worked a vague premonition of danger, and without knowing why, she was afraid.