Whiteladies

Sometimes, when she said her prayers – for she did still say her prayers, notwithstanding the burden on her soul – she would breathe a sigh which was scarcely a prayer, that it might soon be over one way or another, that her sufferings might be cut short; but then she would rouse herself up, and recall that despairing sigh. Giovanna would not budge. Miss Susan made a great many appeals to her, when Reine was straying about the garden, or after she had gone to her innocent rest. She offered sums which made that young woman tremble in presence of a temptation which she could scarcely resist; but she set her white teeth firm, and conquered. It was better to have all than only a part, Giovanna thought, and she comforted herself that at the last moment, if her scheme failed, she could fall back upon and accept Miss Susan’s offer. This made her very secure, through all the events that followed. When Herbert abandoned Whiteladies and was constantly at the Hatch, when he seemed to have altogether given himself over to his cousins, and a report got up through the county that “an alliance was contemplated,” as the Kingsborough paper put it, grandly having a habit of royalty, so to speak – between two distinguished county families, Giovanna bore the contretemps quite calmly, feeling that Miss Susan’s magnificent offer was always behind her to fall back upon, if her great personal enterprise should come to nothing. Her serenity gave her a great advantage over Herbert’s feebler spirit. When he came home to Whiteladies, she regained her sway over him, and as she never indulged in a single look of reproach, such as Sophy employed freely when he left the Hatch, or was too long of returning, she gradually established for herself a superior place in the young man’s mind.

As for Herbert himself, the three long months of that Summer were more to him than all the former years of his life put together. His first outburst of freedom on the Riviera, and his subsequent ramble in Italy, had been overcast by adverse circumstances. He had got his own way, but at a cost which was painful to him, and a great many annoyances and difficulties had been mingled with his pleasure. But now there was nothing to interfere with it. Reine was quiescent, presenting a smiling countenance when he saw her, not gloomy or frightened, as she had been at Cannes. She was happy enough; she was at home, with her aunts to fall back upon, and plenty of friends. And everybody and everything smiled upon Herbert. He was acting generously, he felt, to his former guardian, in leaving to her all the trouble of his affairs. He was surrounded by gay friends and unbounded amusements, amusements bounded only by the time that was occupied by them, and those human limitations which make it impossible to do two things at once. Could he have been in two places at once, enjoying two different kinds of pleasure at the same time, his engagements were sufficient to have secured for him a double enjoyment. From the highest magnates of the county, to the young soldiers of Kingsborough, his own contemporaries, everybody was willing to do him honor. The entire month of June he spent in town, where he had everything that town could give him – though their life moved rather more quickly than suited his still unconfirmed strength. Both in London and in the country he was invited into higher circles than those which the Farrel-Austins were permitted to enter; but still he remained faithful to his cousins, who gave him a homage which he could not expect elsewhere, and who had always “something going on,” both in town and country, and no pause in their fast and furious gayety. They were always prepared to go with him or take him somewhere, to give him the carte du pays, to tell him all the antecedents and history of this one and that one, and to make the ignorant youth feel himself an experienced man. Then, when it pleased him to go home, he was the master, welcomed by all, and found another beautiful slave waiting serene to burn incense to him.

No wonder Herbert enjoyed himself. He had come out of his chrysalis condition altogether, and was enjoying the butterfly existence to an extent which he had never conceived of, fluttering about everywhere, sunning his fine new wings, his new energies, his manhood, and his health, and his wealth, and all the glories that were his. To do him justice, he would have brought his household up to town, in order that Reine too might have had her glimpse of the season, could he have persuaded them; but Reine, just then at a critical point of her life, declined the indulgence. Kate and Sophy, however, were fond of saying that they had never enjoyed a season so much. Opera-boxes rained upon them; they never wanted bouquets; and their parties to Richmond, to Greenwich, wherever persons of her class go, were endless. Herbert was ready for anything, and their father did decline the advantages, though he disliked the giver of them; and even when he was disagreeable, matrons were always procurable to chaperone the party, and preside over their pleasures. Everybody believed, as Sophy did, that there could be but one conclusion to so close an intimacy.

“At all events, we have had a very jolly season,” said Kate, who was not so sure.

And Herbert fully echoed the words when he heard them. Yes, it had been a very jolly season. He had “spent his money free,” which in the highest class, as well as in the lowest, is the most appropriate way in which a young man can make himself agreeable. He had enjoyed himself, and he had given to others a great many opportunities of enjoying themselves. Now and then he carried down a great party to Whiteladies, and introduced the beau monde to his beautiful old house, and made one of those fêtes champêtres for his friends which break so agreeably upon the toils of London pleasuring, and which supply to the highest class, always like the lowest in their peculiar rites, an elegant substitute for Cremorne and Rosherville. Miss Susan bestirred herself, and made a magnificent response to his appeals when he asked her to receive such parties, and consoled herself for the gay mob that disturbed the dignity of the old house, by the noble names of some of them, which she was too English not to be impressed by. And thus in a series of delights the Summer passed from May to August. Herbert did not go to Scotland, though he had many invitations and solicitations to do so when the season was over. He came home instead, and settled there when fashion melted away out of town; and Sophy, considering the subject, as she thought, impartially, and without any personal prejudice (she said), concluded that it must be for her sake he stayed.

“I know the Duke of Ptarmigan asked him, and Tom Heath, and Billy Trotter,” she said to her sister. “Billy, they say, has the finest moors going. Why shouldn’t he have gone, unless he had some motive? He can’t have any shooting here till September. If it isn’t that, what do you suppose it can be!”

“Well, at all events we have had a very jolly season,” said Kate, not disposed to commit herself; “and what we have to do is to keep things going, and show him the country, and not be dull even now.” Which admirable suggestion they carried out with all their hearts.

Herbert’s thoughts, however, were not, I fear, so far advanced as Sophy supposed. It was not that he did not think of that necessity of marrying which Miss Augustine enforced upon him in precisely the same words, every time she saw him. “You are wasting time – you are wasting my time, Herbert,” she said to him when he came back to Whiteladies, in July. Frankly she thought this the most important point of view. So far as he was concerned, he was young, and there was time enough; but if she, a woman of seven-and-fifty, was to bring up his heir and initiate him into her ideas, surely there was not a moment to be lost in taking the preliminary steps.

Herbert was very much amused with this view of the subject. It tickled his imagination so, that he had not been able to refrain from communicating it to several of his friends. But various of these gentlemen, after they had laughed, pronounced it to be their opinion that, by Jove, the old girl was not so far out.

“I wouldn’t stand having that little brat of a child set up as the heir under my very nose; and, by Jove, Austin, I’d settle that old curmudgeon Farrel’s hopes fast enough, if I were in your place,” said his advisers.

Herbert was not displeased with the notion. He played with it, with a certain enjoyment. He felt that he was a prize worth anybody’s pursuit, and liked to hear that such and such ladies were “after him.” The Duke of Ptarmigan had a daughter or two, and Sir Billy Trotter’s sister might do worse, her friends thought. Herbert smoothed an incipient moustache, late in growing, and consequently very precious, and felt a delightful complaisance steal over him. And he knew that Sophy, his cousin, did not despise him; I am not sure even that the young coxcomb was not aware that he might have the pick of either of the girls, if he chose; which also, though Kate had never thought on the subject, was true enough. She had faithfully given him over to her younger sister, and never interfered; but if Herbert had thrown his handkerchief to her, she would have thought it sinful to refuse. When he thought on the subject, which was often enough, he had a kind of lazy sense that this was what would befall him at last. He would throw his handkerchief some time when he was at the Hatch, and wheresoever the chance wind might flutter it, there would be his fate. He did not really care much whether it might happen to be Sophy or Kate.

When he came home, however, these thoughts would float away out of his mind. He did not think of marrying, though Miss Augustine spoke to him on the subject every day. He thought of something else, which yet was not so far different; he thought that nowhere, in society or out of it, had he seen any one like Giovanna.

“Did you ever see such a picture?” he would say to Reine. “Look at her! Now she’s sculpture, with that child on her shoulder. If the boy was only like herself, what a group they’d make! I’d like to have Marochetti, or some of those swells, down, to make them in marble. And she’d paint just as well. By Jove, she’s all the arts put together. How she does sing! Patti and the rest are nothing to her. But I don’t understand how she could be the mother of that boy.”

Giovanna came back across the lawn, having swung the child from her shoulder on to the fragrant grass, in time to hear this, and smiled and said, “He does not resemble me, does he? Madame Suzanne, M. Herbert remarks that the boy is not dark as me. He is another type – yes, another type, n’est ce pas!”

“Not a bit like you,” said Herbert. “I don’t say anything against Jean, who is a dear little fellow; but he is not like you.”

“Ah! but he is the heir of M. Herbert, which is better,” cried Giovanna, with a laugh, “until M. Herbert will marry. Why will not you marry and range yourself? Then the little Jean and the great Giovanna will melt away like the fogs. Ah, marry, M. Herbert! it is what you ought to do.”

“Are you so anxious, then, to melt away like the fog? – like the sunshine, you mean,” said the young man in a low voice. They were all in the porch, but he had gone out to meet her, on pretence of playing with little Jean.

“But no,” said Giovanna, smiling, “not at all. I am very well here; but when M. Herbert will marry, then I must go away. Little Jean will be no more the heir.”

“Then I shall never marry,” said the young man, though still in tones so low as not to reach the ears of the others. Giovanna turned her face toward him with a mocking laugh.

“Bah! already I know Madame Herbert’s name, her little name!” she cried, and picked up the boy with one vigorous, easy sweep of her beautiful arms, and carried him off, singing to him – like a goddess, Herbert thought, like the nurse of a young Apollo. He was dreadfully disconcerted with this sudden withdrawal, and when Miss Augustine, coming in, addressed him in her usual way, he turned from her pettishly, with an impatient exclamation:

“I wish you would give over,” he said; “you are making a joke of a serious matter. You are putting all sorts of follies into people’s heads.”

It was only at Whiteladies, however, that he entertained this feeling. When he was away from home he would now and then consider the question of throwing the handkerchief, and made up his mind that there would be a kind of justice in it if the petit nom of the future Mrs. Herbert turned out to be either Sophy or Kate.

Things went on in this way until, one day in August, it was ordained that the party, with its usual military attendants, should vary its enjoyments by a day on the river. They started from Water Beeches, Everard’s house, in the morning, with the intention of rowing up the river as far as Marlow, and returning in the evening to a late dinner. The party consisted of Kate and Sophy, with their father, Reine and Herbert, Everard himself, and a quantity of young soldiers, with the wife of one of them, four ladies, to wit, and an indefinite number of men. They started on a lovely morning, warm yet fresh, with a soft little breeze blowing, stirring the long flags and rushes, and floating the water-lilies that lurked among their great leaves in every corner. Reine and Everard had not seen much of each other for some time. From the day that he went off in an injured state of mind, reminding them half indignantly that they knew where to find him when he was wanted, they had met only two or three times, and never had spoken to each other alone. Everard had been in town for the greater part of the time, purposely taking himself away, sore and wounded, to have, as he thought, no notice taken of him; while Reine, on her part, was too proud to make any advances to so easily affronted a lover. This had been in her mind, restraining her from many enjoyments when both Herbert and Miss Susan thought her “quite happy”. She was “quite happy,” she always said; did not wish to go to town, preferred to stay at Whiteladies, had no desire to go to Court and to make her début in society, as Miss Susan felt she should. Reine resisted, being rather proud and fanciful and capricious, as the best of girls may be permitted to be under such circumstances; and she had determinedly made herself “happy” in her country life, with such gayeties and amusements as came to her naturally. I think, however, that she had looked forward to this day on the river, not without a little hope, born of weariness, that something might happen to break the ice between Everard and herself. By some freak of fortune, however, or unkind arrangement, it so happened that Reine and Everard were not even in the same boat when they started. She thought (naturally) that it was his fault, and he thought (equally naturally) that it was her fault; and each believed that the accident was a premeditated and elaborately schemed device to hold the other off. I leave the reader to guess whether this added to the pleasure of the party, in which these two, out of their different boats, watched each other when they could, and alternated between wild gayety put on when each was within sight of the other, to show how little either minded – and fits of abstraction.

The morning was beautiful; the fair river glided past them, here shining like a silver shield, there falling into heavenly coolness under the shadows, with deep liquid tones of green and brown, with glorified reflections of every branch and twig, with forests of delicious growth (called weeds) underneath its clear rippling, throwing up long blossomed boughs of starry flowers, and in the shallows masses of great cool flags and beds of water-lilies. This was not a scene for the chills and heats of a love-quarrel, or for the perversity of a voluntary separation. And I think Everard felt this, and grew impatient of the foolish caprice which he thought was Reine’s, and which Reine thought was his, as so often happens. When they started in the cooler afternoon, to come down the river, he put her almost roughly into his boat.

“You are coming with me this time,” he said in a half-savage tone, gripping her elbow fiercely as he caught her on her way to the other, and almost lifted her into his boat.

Reine half-resisted for the moment, her face flaming with respondent wrath, but melted somehow by his face so near her, and his imperative grasp, she allowed herself to be thrust into the little nutshell which she knew so well, and which (or its predecessors) had been called “Queen” for years, thereby acquiring for Everard a character for loyalty which Reine knew he did not deserve, though he had never told her so. The moment she had taken her place there, however, Reine justified all Everard’s sulks by immediately resuming toward him the old tone. If she had not thus recovered him as her vizier and right-hand man, she would, I presume, have kept her anxiety in her own breast. As it was, he had scarcely placed her on the cushions, when suddenly, without a pause, without one special word to him, asking pardon (as she ought) for her naughtiness, Reine said suddenly, “Everard! oh, will you take care, please, that Bertie does not row?”

He looked at her wholly aggravated, but half laughing. “Is this all I am ever to be good for?” he said; “not a word for me, no interest in me. Am I to be Bertie’s dry-nurse all my life? And is this all – ?”

She put her hand softly on his arm, and drew him to her to whisper to him. In that moment all Reine’s coldness, all her doubts of him had floated away, with a suddenness which I don’t pretend to account for, but which belonged to her impulsive character (and in her heart I do not believe she had ever had the least real doubt of him, though it was a kind of dismal amusement to think she had). She put up her face to him, with her hand on his arm. “Speak low,” she said. “Is there any one I could ask but you? Everard, he has done too much already to-day; don’t let him row.”

Everard laughed. He jumped out of his boat and spoke to the other men about, confidentially, in undertones. “Don’t let him see you mean it,” he said; and when he had settled this piece of diplomacy, he came back and pushed off his own boat into mid-stream. “The others had all got settled,” he said. “I don’t see why I should run upon your messages, and do everything you tell me, and never get anything by it. Mrs. Sellinger has gone with Kate and Sophy, who have much more need of a chaperone than you have: and for the first time I have you to myself, Reine.”

Reine had the strings of the rudder in her hands, and could have driven him back, I think, had she liked, but she did not. She let herself and the boat float down the pleasanter way. “I don’t mind,” she said softly; “for a long time I have had no talk with you – since we came home.”

“And whose fault is that, I should like to know?” cried Everard, with a few long swift strokes, carrying the boat almost out of sight of the larger one, which had not yet started. “How cruel you are, Reine! You say that as if I was to blame; when you know all the time if you had but held up a little finger – ”

“Why should I hold up a little finger?” said Reine, softly, leaning back in her seat. But there was a smile on her face. It was true, she acknowledged to herself. She had known it all the time. A little finger, a look, a word would have done it, though she had made believe to be lonely and dreary and half-forsaken and angry even. At which, as the boat glided down the river in the soft shadows after sunset, in the cool grayness of the twilight, she smiled again.

But before they reached the Water Beeches, these cool soft shades had given way to a sudden cold mist, what country people call a “blight.” It was only then, I think, that these two recollected themselves. They had sped down the shining stream, with a little triumph in outstripping the other and larger boat, though it had four rowers, and Everard was but one. They had gone through the locks by themselves, leaving saucy messages for their companions, and it was only when they got safely within sight of Everard’s house, and felt the coldness of the “blight” stealing through them, that they recollected to wonder what had kept the others so long. Then Reine grew frightened, unreasonably, as she felt; fantastically, for was not Herbert quite well? but yet beyond her own power of control.

“Turn back, and let us meet them,” she begged; and Everard, though unwilling, could not refuse to do it. They went back through the growing darkness, looking out eagerly for the party.

“That cannot be them,” said Everard, as the long sweep of oars became audible. “It must be a racing boat, for I hear no voices.”

They lay close by the bank and watched, Reine in an agony of anxiety, for which she could give no reason. But sure enough it was the rest of the party, rowing quickly down, very still and frightened. Herbert had insisted upon rowing, in spite of all remonstrances, and just a few minutes before had been found half fainting over his oar, shivering and breathless.

“It is nothing – it is nothing,” he gasped, when he saw Reine, “and we are close at home.” But his heart panted so, that this was all he could say.