A House in Bloomsbury

CHAPTER XXI

It was young Gordon himself, alarmed but not excited as by any idea of a new discovery which could affect his fate, who brought Miss Bethune back to herself, far better than Gilchrist could do, who had no art but to weep and entreat, and then yield to her mistress whatever she might wish. A quelque chose malheur est bon. He had been in the habit of soothing and calming down an excitable, sometimes hysterical woman, whose accès des nerfs meant nothing, or were, at least, supposed to mean nothing, except indeed nerves, and the ups and downs which are characteristic of them. He was roused by the not dissimilar outburst of feeling or passion, wholly incomprehensible to him from any other point of view, to which his new friend had given way. He took it very quietly, with the composure of use and wont. The sight of her emotion and excitement brought him quite back to himself. He could imagine no reason whatever for it, except the sympathetic effect of all the troublous circumstances in which she had been, without any real reason, involved. It was her sympathy, her kindness for himself and for Dora, he had not the least doubt, which, by bringing her into those scenes of pain and trouble, and associating her so completely with the complicated and intricate story, had brought on this “attack.” What he had known to be characteristic of the one woman with whom he had been in familiar intercourse for so long a period of his life seemed to Harry characteristic of all women. He was quite equal to the occasion. Dr. Roland himself, who would have been so full of professional curiosity, so anxious to make out what it was all about, as perhaps to lessen his promptitude in action, would scarcely have been of so much real use as Harry, who had no arrière pensée, but addressed himself to the immediate emergency with all his might. He soothed the sufferer, so that she was soon relieved by copious floods of tears, which seemed to him the natural method of getting rid of all that emotion and excitement, but which surprised Gilchrist beyond description, and even Miss Bethune herself, whose complete breakdown was so unusual and unlike her. He left her quite at ease in his mind as to her condition, having persuaded her to lie down, and recommended Gilchrist to darken the room, and keep her mistress in perfect quiet.

“I will go and look after my things,” he said, “and I’ll come back when I have made all my arrangements, and tell you everything. Oh, don’t speak now! You will be all right in the evening if you keep quite quiet now: and if you will give me your advice then, it will be very, very grateful to me.” He made a little warning gesture, keeping her from replying, and then kissed her hand and went away. He had himself pulled down the blind to subdue a little of the garish July daylight, and placed her on a sofa in the corner—ministrations which both mistress and maid permitted with bewilderment, so strange to them was at once the care and the authority of such proceedings. They remained, Miss Bethune on the sofa, Gilchrist, open-mouthed, staring at her, until the door was heard to close upon the young man. Then Miss Bethune rose slowly, with a kind of awe in her face.

“As soon as you think he is out of sight,” she said, “Gilchrist, we’ll have up the blinds again, but not veesibly, to go against the boy.”

“Eh, mem,” cried Gilchrist, between laughing and crying, “to bid me darken the room, and you that canna abide the dark, night or day!”

“It was a sweet thought, Gilchrist—all the pure goodness of him and the kind heart.”

“I am not saying, mem, but what the young gentleman has a very kind heart.”

“You are not saying? And what can you know beyond what’s veesible to every person that sees him? It is more than that. Gilchrist, you and all the rest, what do I care what you say? If that is not the voice of nature, what is there to trust to in this whole world? Why should that young lad, bred up so different, knowing nothing of me or my ways, have taken to me? Look at Dora. What a difference! She has no instinct, nothing drawing her to her poor mother. That was a most misfortunate woman, but not an ill woman, Gilchrist. Look how she has done by mine! But Dora has no leaning towards her, no tender thought; whereas he, my bonnie boy–”

“Mem,” said Gilchrist, “but if it was the voice of nature, it would be double strong in Miss Dora; for there is no doubt that it was her mother: and with this one—oh, my dear leddy, you ken yoursel’–”

Miss Bethune gave her faithful servant a look of flame, and going to the windows, drew up energetically the blinds, making the springs resound. Then she said in her most satirical tone: “And what is it I ken mysel’?”

“Oh, mem,” said Gilchrist, “there’s a’ the evidence, first his ain story, and then the leddy’s that convinced ye for a moment; and then, what is most o’ a, the old gentleman, the writer, one of them that kens everything: of the father that died so many long years ago, and the baby before him.”

Miss Bethune put up her hands to her ears, she stamped her foot upon the ground. “How dare ye—how dare ye?” she cried. “Either man or woman that repeats that fool story to me is no friend of mine. My child, that I’ve felt in my heart growing up, and seen him boy and man! What’s that old man’s word—a stranger that knows nothing, that had even forgotten what he was put up to say—in comparison with what is in my heart? Is there such a thing as nature, or no? Is a mother just like any other person, no better, rather worse? Oh, woman!—you that are a woman! with no call to be rigid about your evidence like a man—what’s your evidence to me? I will just tell him when he comes back. ‘My bonnie man,’ I will say, ‘you have been driven here and there in this world, and them that liked you best have failed you; but here is the place where you belong, and here is a love that will never fail!’”

“Oh, my dear leddy, my own mistress,” cried Gilchrist, “think—think before you do that! He will ask ye for the evidence, if I am not to ask for it. He’s a fine, independent-spirited young gentleman, and he will just shake his head, and say he’ll lippen to nobody again. Oh, dinna deceive the young man! Ye might find out after–”

“What, Gilchrist? Do you think I would change my mind about my own son, and abandon him, like this woman, at the last?”

“I never knew you forsake one that trusted in ye, I’m not saying that; but there might come one after all that had a better claim. There might appear one that even the like of me would believe in—that would have real evidence in his favour, that was no more to be doubted than if he had never been taken away out of your arms.”

Miss Bethune turned round quick as lightning upon her maid, her eyes shining, her face full of sudden colour and light. “God bless you, Gilchrist!” she cried, seizing the maid by her shoulders with a half embrace; “I see now you have never believed in that story—no more than me.”

Poor Gilchrist could but gape with her mouth open at this unlooked-for turning of the tables. She had presented, without knowing it, the strongest argument of all.

After this, the patient, whom poor Harry had left to the happy influences of quiet and darkness, with all the blinds drawn up and the afternoon sunshine pouring in, went through an hour or two of restless occupation, her mind in the highest activity, her thoughts and her hands full. She promised finally to Gilchrist, not without a mental reservation in the case of special impulse or new light, not to disclose her conviction to Harry, but to wait for at least a day or two on events. But even this resolution did not suffice to reduce her to any condition of quiet, or make the rest which he had prescribed possible. She turned to a number of things which had been laid aside to be done one time or another; arrangement of new possessions and putting away of old, for which previously she had never found a fit occasion, and despatched them, scarcely allowing Gilchrist to help her, at lightning speed.

Finally, she took out an old and heavy jewel-box, which had stood untouched in her bedroom for years; for, save an old brooch or two and some habitual rings which never left her fingers, Miss Bethune wore no ornaments. She took them into her sitting-room as the time approached when Harry might be expected back. It would give her a countenance, she thought; it would keep her from fixing her eyes on him while he spoke, and thus being assailed through all the armour of the heart at the same time. She could not look him in the face and see that likeness which Gilchrist, unconvincible, would not see, and yet remain silent. Turning over the old-fashioned jewels, telling him about them, to whom they had belonged, and all the traditions regarding them, would help her in that severe task of self-repression. She put the box on the table before her, and pulled out the trays.

Nobody in Bloomsbury had seen these treasures before: the box had been kept carefully locked, disguised in an old brown cover, that no one might even guess how valuable it was. Miss Bethune was almost tempted to send for Dora to see the diamonds in their old-fashioned settings, and that pearl necklace which was still finer in its perfection of lustre and shape. To call Dora when there was anything to show was so natural, and it might make it easier for her to keep her own counsel; but she reflected that in Dora’s presence the young man would not be more than half hers, and forbore.

Never in her life had those jewels given her so much pleasure. They had given her no pleasure, indeed. She had not been allowed to have them in that far-off stormy youth, which had been lightened by such a sweet, guilty gleam of happiness, and quenched in such misery of downfall. When they came to her by inheritance, like all the rest, these beautiful things had made her heart sick. What could she do with them—a woman whose life no longer contained any possible festival, who had nobody coming after her, no heir to make heirlooms sweet? She had locked the box, and almost thrown away the key, which, however, was a passionate suggestion repugnant to common sense, and resolved itself naturally into confiding the key to Gilchrist, in whose most secret repositories it had been kept, with an occasional furtive interval during which the maid had secretly visited and “polished up” the jewels, making sure that they were all right. Neither mistress nor maid was quite aware of their value, and both probably exaggerated it in their thoughts; but some of the diamonds were fine, though all were very old-fashioned in arrangement, and the pearls were noted. Miss Bethune pulled out the trays, and the gems flashed and sparkled in a thousand colours in the slant of sunshine which poured in its last level ray through one window, just before the sun set—and made a dazzling show upon the table, almost blinding Janie, who came up with a message, and could not restrain a little shriek of wonder and admiration. The letter was one of trouble and appeal from poor Mrs. Hesketh, who and her husband were becoming more and more a burden on the shoulders of their friends. It asked for money, as usual, just a little money to go on with, as the shop in which they had been set up was not as yet producing much. The letter had been written with evident reluctance, and was marked with blots of tears. Miss Bethune’s mind was too much excited to consider calmly any such petition. Full herself of anticipation, of passionate hope, and visionary enthusiasm, which transported her above all common things, how was she to refuse a poor woman’s appeal for the bare necessities of existence—a woman “near her trouble,” with a useless husband, who was unworthy, yet whom the poor soul loved? She called Gilchrist, who generally carried the purse, to get something for the poor little pair.

“Is there anybody waiting?” she asked.

“Oh ay, mem,” said Gilchrist, “there’s somebody waiting,—just him himsel’, the weirdless creature, that is good for nothing.” Gilchrist did not approve of all her mistress’s liberalities. “I would not just be their milch cow to give them whatever they’re wanting,” she said. “It’s awful bad for any person to just know where to run when they are in trouble.”

“Hold your peace!” cried her mistress. “Am I one to shut up my heart when the blessing of God has come to me?”

“Oh, mem!” cried Gilchrist, remonstrating, holding up her hands.

But Miss Bethune stamped her foot, and the wiser woman yielded.

She found Hesketh standing at the door of the sitting-room, when she went out to give him, very unwillingly, the money for his wife. “The impident weirdless creature! He would have been in upon my leddy in another moment, pressing to her very presence with his impident ways!” cried Gilchrist, hot and indignant. The faithful woman paused at the door as she came back, and looked at her mistress turning over and rearranging these treasures. “And her sitting playing with her bonnie dies, in a rapture like a little bairn!” she said to herself, putting up her apron to her eyes. And then Gilchrist shook her head—shook it, growing quicker and quicker in the movement, as if she would have twisted it off.

But Miss Bethune was “very composed” when young Gordon came back. With an intense sense of the humour of the position, which mistress and maid communicated to each other with one glance of tacit co-operation, these two women comported themselves as if the behests of the young visitor who had taken the management of Miss Bethune’s accès des nerfs upon himself, had been carried out. She assumed, almost unconsciously, notwithstanding the twinkle in her eye, the languid aspect of a woman who has been resting after unusual excitement. All women, they say (as they say so many foolish things), are actors; all women, at all events, let us allow, learn as the A B C of their training the art of taking up a rôle assigned to them, and fulfilling the necessities of a position. “You will see what I’m reduced to by what I’m doing,” she said. “As if there was nothing of more importance in life, I am just playing myself with my toys, like Dora, or any other little thing.”

“So much the best thing you could do,” said young Harry; and he was eager and delighted to look through the contents of the box with her.

He was far better acquainted with their value than she was, and while she told him the family associations connected with each ornament, he discussed very learnedly what they were, and distinguished the old-fashioned rose diamonds which were amongst those of greater value, with a knowledge that seemed to her extraordinary. They spent, in fact, an hour easily and happily over that box, quite relieved from graver considerations by the interposition of a new thing, in which there were no deep secrets of the heart or commotions of being involved: and thus were brought down into the ordinary from the high and troublous level of feeling and excitement on which they had been. To Miss Bethune the little episode was one of child’s play in the midst of the most serious questions of the world. Had she thought it possible beforehand that such an interval could have been, she would, in all likelihood, have scorned herself for the dereliction, and almost scorned the young man for being able to forget at once his sorrow and the gravity of his circumstances at sight of anything so trifling as a collection of trinkets. But in reality this interlude was balm to them both. It revealed to Miss Bethune a possibility of ordinary life and intercourse, made sweet by understanding and affection, which was a revelation to her repressed and passionate spirit; and it soothed the youth with that renewing of fresh interests, reviving and succeeding the old, which gives elasticity to the mind, and courage to face the world anew. They did not know how long they had been occupied over the jewels, when the hour of dinner came round again, and Gilchrist appeared with her preparations, still further increasing that sense of peaceful life renewed, and the order of common things begun again. It was only after this meal was over, the jewels being all restored to their places, and the box to its old brown cover in Miss Bethune’s bedroom, that the discussion of the graver question was resumed.

“There is one thing,” Miss Bethune said, “that, however proud you may be, you must let me say: and that is, that everything having turned out so different to your thoughts, and you left—you will not be offended?—astray, as it were, in this big unfriendly place–”

“I cannot call it unfriendly,” said young Gordon. “If other people find it so, it is not my experience. I have found you.” He looked up at her with a half laugh, with moisture in his eyes.

“Ay,” she said, with emphasis, “you have found me—you say well—found me when you were not looking for me. I accept the word as a good omen. And after that?”

If only she would not have abashed him from time to time with those dark sayings, which seemed to mean something to which he had no clue! He felt himself brought suddenly to a standstill in his grateful effusion of feeling, and put up his hand to arrest her in what she was evidently going on to say.

“Apart from that,” he said hurriedly, “I am not penniless. I have not been altogether dependent; at least, the form of my dependence has been the easiest one. I have had my allowance from my guardian ever since I came to man’s estate. It was my own, though, of course, of his giving. And I am not an extravagant fellow. It was not as if I wanted money for to-morrow’s living, for daily bread.” He coloured as he spoke, with the half pride, half shame, of discussing such a subject. “I think,” he said, throwing off that flush with a shake of his head, “that I have enough to take me back to South America, and there, I told you, I have friends. I don’t think I can fail to find work there.”

“But under such different circumstances! Have you considered? A poor clerk where you were one of the fine gentlemen of the place. Such a change of position is easier where you are not known.”

He grew red again, with a more painful colour. “I don’t think so,” he said quickly. “I don’t believe that my old friends would cast me off because, instead of being a useless fellow about town, I was a poor clerk.”

“Maybe you are right,” said Miss Bethune very gravely. “I am not one that thinks so ill of human nature. They would not cast you off. But you, working hard all day, wearied at night, with no house to entertain them in that entertained you, would it not be you that would cast off them?”

He looked at her, startled, for a moment. “Do you think,” he cried, “that poverty makes a man mean like that?” And then he added slowly: “It is possible, perhaps, that it might be so.” Then he brightened up again, and looked her full in the face. “But then there would be nobody to blame for that, it would be simply my own fault.”

“God bless you, laddie!” cried Miss Bethune quite irrelevantly; and then she too paused. “If it should happen so that there was a place provided for you at home. No, no, not what you call dependence—far from it, hard work. I know one—a lady that has property in the North—property that has not been well managed—that has given her more trouble than it is worth. But there’s much to be made of it, if she had a man who would give his mind to it as if—as if it were his own.”

“But I,” he said, “know nothing about the North. I would not know how to manage. I told you I had no education. And would this lady have me, trust me, put that in my hands, without knowing, without–”

“She would trust you,” said Miss Bethune, clasping her hands together firmly, and looking him in the face, in a rigid position which showed how little steady she was—“she would trust you, for life and death, on my word.”

His eyes fell before that unfathomable concentration of hers. “And you would trust me like that—knowing so little, so little? And how can you tell even that I am honest—even that I am true? That there’s nothing behind, no weakness, no failure?”

“Don’t speak to me,” she said harshly. “I know.”

CHAPTER XXII

The evening passed, however, without any further revelations. Miss Bethune explained to the young man, with all the lucidity of a man of business, the situation and requirements of that “property in the North,” which would give returns, she believed, of various kinds, not always calculated in balance sheets, if it was looked after by a man who would deal with it “as if it were his own.” The return would be something in money and rents, but much more in human comfort and happiness. She had never had the courage to tackle that problem, she said, and the place had been terrible to her, full of associations which would be thought of no more if he were there. The result was, that young Gordon went away thoughtful, somewhat touched by the feeling with which Miss Bethune had spoken of her poor crofters, somewhat roused by the thought of “the North,” that vague and unknown country which was the country of his fathers, the land of brown heath and shaggy wood, the country of Scott, which is, after all, distinction enough for any well-conditioned stranger. Should he try that strange new opening of life suddenly put before him? The unknown of itself has a charm—