Маргарет Олифант
Whiteladies
CHAPTER XXX
MISS SUSAN entered the drawing-room in the same dim light in which Everard had left it. She was irritable and impatient in her misery. She would have liked to turn up all the lamps, and throw a flood of light upon the stranger whose attitude was indolent and indecorous. Why was she there at all? what right had she to extend herself at full length, to make herself so comfortable? That Giovanna should be comfortable did not do Miss Susan any further harm; but she felt as if it did, and a fountain of hot wrath surged up in her heart. This, however, she felt was not the way in which she could do any good, so she made an effort to restrain herself. She sat down in Everard’s seat which he had left. She was not quite sure whether he himself were not lingering in the shadows at the door of the room, and this made her difficulty the greater in what she had to say.
“Do you like this darkness?” she asked. “It is oppressive; we cannot see to do anything.”
“Me, I don’t want to do anything,” said Giovanna. “I sleep and I dream. This is most pleasant to me. Madame Suzanne likes occupation. Me, I do not.”
“Yes,” said Miss Susan with suppressed impatience, “that is one of the differences between us. But I have something to say to you; you wanted me to make an allowance for the child, and I refused. Indeed, it is not my business, for Whiteladies is not mine. But now that I have thought of it, I will consent. It would be so much better for you to travel with your father-in-law than alone.”
Giovanna turned her face toward her companion with again that laughing devil in her eye. “Madame Suzanne mistakes. The bon papa spoke of his rente that he loves, not me. If ces dames will give me money to dress myself, to be more like them, that will be well; but it was the bon-papa, not me.”
“Never mind who it was,” said Miss Susan, on the verge of losing her temper. “One or the other, I suppose it is all the same. I will give you your allowance.”
“To dress myself? thanks, that will be well. Then I can follow the mode Anglaise, and have something to wear in the evening, like Madame Suzanne herself.”
“For the child!” cried the suffering woman, in a voice which to Everard, behind backs, sounded like low and muffled thunder. “To support him and you, to keep you independent, to make you comfortable at home among your own people – ”
“Merci!” cried Giovanna, shrugging her shoulders. “That is the bon-papa’s idea, as I tell madame, not mine. Comfortable! with my belle-mère! Listen, Madame Suzanne – I too, I have been thinking. If you will accept me with bounty, you shall not be sorry. I can make myself good; I can be useful, though it is not what I like best. I stay – I make myself your child – ”
“I do not want you,” cried Miss Susan, stung beyond her strength of self-control, “I do not want you. I will pay you anything to get you away.”
Giovanna’s eyes gave forth a gleam. “Très bien,” she said, calmly. “Then I shall stay, if madame pleases or not. It is what I have intended from the beginning; and I do not change my mind, me.”
“But if I say you shall not stay!” said Miss Susan, wrought to fury, and pushing back her chair from the table.
Giovanna raised herself on her elbow, and leaned across the table, fixing the other with her great eyes.
“Once more, très bien,” she said, in a significant tone, too low for Everard to hear, but not a whisper. “Très bien! Madame then wishes me to tell not only M. Herbert, but the bonne sœur, madame’s sister, and ce petit monsieur-là?”
Miss Susan sat and listened like a figure of stone. Her color changed out of the flush of anger which had lighted it up, and grew again ashy pale. From her laboring breast there came a great gasp, half groan, half sob. She looked at the remorseless creature opposite with a piteous prayer coming into her eyes. First rage, which was useless; then entreaty, more useless still. “Have pity on me! have pity on me,” she said.
“But certainly!” said Giovanna, sinking back upon her cushions with a soft laugh. “Certainly! I am not cruel, me; but I am comfortable, and I stay.”
“She will not hear of it,” said Miss Susan, meeting Everard’s anxious looks as she passed him, hurrying upstairs. “Never mind me. Everard, never mind! we shall do well enough. Do not say any more about it. Never mind! never mind! It is time we were all in bed.”
“But, Aunt Susan, tell me – ”
“No, no, there is nothing to tell,” she said, hurrying from him. “Do not let us say any more about it. It is time we were all in bed.”
The next day M. Guillaume left Whiteladies, after a very melancholy parting with his little grandchild. The old man sobbed, and the child sobbed for sympathy. “Thou wilt be good to him, Giovanna!” he said, weeping. Giovanna stood, and looked on with a smile on her face. “Bon papa, it is easy to cry,” she said; “but you do not want him without a rente; weep then for the rente, not for the child.” “Heartless!” cried the old shopkeeper, turning from her; and her laugh, though it was quite low, did sound heartless to the bystanders; yet there was some truth in what she said. M. Guillaume went away in the morning, and Everard in the afternoon. The young man was deeply perplexed and disturbed. He had been a witness of the conclusive interview on the previous night without hearing all that was said; yet he had heard enough to show him that something lay behind of which he was not cognizant – something which made Miss Susan unwillingly submit to an encumbrance which she hated, and which made her more deeply, tragically unhappy than a woman of her spotless life and tranquil age had any right to be. To throw such a woman into passionate distress, and make her, so strong in her good sense, so reasonable and thoroughly acquainted with the world, bow her head under an irritating and unnecessary yoke, there must be some cause more potent than anything Everard could divine. He made an attempt to gain her confidence before he went away; but it was still more fruitless than before. The only thing she would say was, that she could speak no more on the subject. “There is nothing to say. She is here now for good or for evil, and we must make the best of it. Probably we shall get on better than we think,” said Miss Susan; and that was all he could extract from her. He went away more disturbed than he could tell; his curiosity was excited as well as his sympathy, and though, after awhile, his natural reluctance to dwell on painful subjects made him attempt to turn his mind from this, yet the evident mystery to be found out made that attempt much harder than usual. Everard was altogether in a somewhat uncertain and wavering state of mind at the time. He had returned from his compulsory episode of active life rather better in fortune, and with a perception of his own unoccupied state, which had never disturbed him before. He had not got to love work, which is a thing which requires either genius or training. He honestly believed, indeed, that he hated work, as was natural to a young man of his education; but having been driven to it, and discovered in himself, to his great surprise, some faculty for it, his return to what he thought his natural state had a somewhat strange effect upon him. To do nothing was, no doubt, his natural state. It was freedom; it was happiness (passive); it was the most desirable condition of existence. All this he felt to be true. He was his own master, free to go where he would, do what he would, amuse himself as he liked; and yet the conclusion of the time when he had not been his own master – when he had been obliged to do this and that, to move here and there not by his own will, but as necessity demanded – had left a sense of vacancy in this life. He was dissatisfied with his leisure and his freedom; they were not so good, not so pleasant, as they had once been. He had known storm and tempest, and all the expedients by which men triumph over these commotions, and the calm of his inland existence wearied him, though he had not yet gone so far as to confess it to himself.
This made him think more of the mystery of Whiteladies than perhaps he would have done otherwise, and moved him so far as to indite a letter to Reine, in which perhaps more motives than that of interest in Miss Susan’s troubles were involved. He had left them when the sudden storm which he had now surmounted had appeared on the horizon, at a very critical moment of his intercourse with Reine; and then they had been cast altogether apart, driven into totally different channels for two years. Two years is a long time or a short time, according to the constitution of the mind, and the nature of circumstances. It had been about a century to Everard, and he had developed into a different being. And now this different being, brought back to the old life, did not well know what to do with himself. Should he go and join his cousins again, amuse himself, see the world, and perhaps renew some things that were past, and reunite a link half broken, half unmade? Anyhow, he wrote to Reine, setting forth that Aunt Susan was ill and very queer – that there was a visitor at Whiteladies of a very novel and unusual character – that the dear old house threatened to be turned upside down – fourthly, and accidentally, that he had a great mind to spend the next six months on the Continent. Where were they going for the Winter? Only ladies, they say, put their chief subject in a postscript. Everard put his under care of a “By-the-bye” in the last two lines of his letter. The difference between the two modes is not very great.
And thus, while the young man meditated change, which is natural to his age, in which renovation and revolution are always possible, the older people at Whiteladies settled down to make the best of it, which is the philosophy of their age. To say the older people is incorrect, for it was Miss Susan only who had anything novel or heavy to endure. Miss Augustine liked the new guest, who for some time went regularly to the Almshouse services with her, and knelt devoutly, and chanted forth the hymns with a full rich voice, which indeed silenced the quavering tones of the old folks, but filled the chapel with such a flood of melody as had never been heard there before. Giovanna enjoyed singing. She had a fine natural voice, but little instruction, and no opportunity at the moment of getting at anything better in the way of music; so that she was glad of the hymns which gave her pleasure at once in the exercise of her voice, and in the agreeable knowledge that she was making a sensation. As much of a crowd as was possible in St. Austin’s began to gather in the Almshouse garden when she was known to be there; and though Mrs. Richard instinctively disapproved of her, the Doctor was somewhat proud of this addition to his service. Giovanna went regularly with her patroness, and gained Augustine’s heart, as much as that abstracted heart could be gained, and made herself not unpopular with the poor people, to whom she would speak in her imperfect English with more familiarity than the ladies ever indulged in, and from whom, in lieu of better, she was quite ready to receive compliments about her singing and her beauty. Once, indeed, she sang songs to them in their garden, to the great entertainment of the old Almshouse folks. She was caught in the act by Mrs. Richard, who rushed to the rescue of her gentility with feelings which I will not attempt to describe. The old lady ran out breathless at the termination of a song, with a flush upon her pretty old cheeks, and caught the innovator by the arm.
“The doctor is at home, and I am just going to give him a cup of tea,” she said; “won’t you come and have some with us?”
Mrs. Richard’s tidy little bosom heaved under her black silk gown with consternation and dismay.
Giovanna was not at all willing to give up her al fresco entertainment. “But I will return, I will return,” she said.
“Do, madame, do,” cried the old people, who were vaguely pleased by her music, and more keenly delighted by having a new event to talk about, and the power of wondering what Miss Augustine (poor thing!) would think; and Mrs. Richard led Giovanna in, with her hand upon her arm, fearful lest her prisoner should escape.
“It is very good of you to sing to them; but it is not a thing that is done in England,” said the little old lady.
“I love to sing,” said Giovanna, “and I shall come often. They have not any one to amuse them; and neither have I,” she added with a sigh.
“My dear, you must speak to the Doctor about it,” said Mrs. Richard.
Giovanna was glad of any change, even of little Dr. Richard and the cup of tea, so she was submissive enough for the moment; and to see her between these two excellent and orderly little people was an edifying sight.
“No, it is not usual,” said Dr. Richard, “my wife is right; but it is very kind-hearted of madame, my dear, to wish to amuse the poor people. There is nothing to be said against that.”
“Very kind-hearted,” said Mrs. Richard, though with less enthusiasm. “It is all from those foreigners’ love of display,” she said in her heart.
“But perhaps it would be wise to consult Miss Augustine, or – any other friend you may have confidence in,” said the Doctor. “People are so very censorious, and we must not give any occasion for evil-speaking.”
“I think exactly with Dr. Richard, my dear,” said the old lady. “I am sure that would be the best.”
“But I have nothing done to consult about,” cried the culprit surprised. She sipped her tea, and ate a large piece of the good people’s cake, however, and let them talk. When she was not crossed, Giovanna was perfectly good-humored. “I will sing for you, if you please,” she said when she had finished.
The Doctor and his wife looked at each other, and professed their delight in the proposal. “But we have no piano,” they said in chorus with embarrassed looks.
“What does that do to me, when I can sing without it,” said Giovanna. And she lifted up her powerful voice, “almost too much for a drawing-room,” Mrs. Richard said afterward, and sang them one of those gay peasant songs that abound in Italy, where every village has its own canzone. She sang seated where she had been taking her tea, and without seeming to miss an accompaniment, they remarked to each other, as if she had been a ballad-singer. It was pretty enough, but so very unusual! “Of course foreigners cannot be expected to know what is according to the rules of society in England,” Mrs. Richard said with conscious indulgence; but she put on her bonnet and walked with “Madame” part of the way to Whiteladies, that she might not continue her performance in the garden. “Miss Augustine might think, or Miss Susan might think, that we countenanced it; and in the Doctor’s position that would never do,” said the old lady, breathing her troubles into the ear of a confidential friend whom she met on her way home. And Dr. Richard himself felt the danger not less strongly than she.
Other changes, however, happened to Giovanna, as she settled down at Whiteladies. She was without any fixed principles of morality, and had no code of any kind which interfered with her free action. To give up doing anything she wanted to do because it involved lying, or any kind of spiritual dishonesty, would never have occurred to her, nor was she capable of perceiving that there was anything wrong in securing her own advantage as she had done. But she was by no means all bad, any more than truthful and honorable persons are all good. Her own advantage, or what she thought her own advantage, and her own way, were paramount considerations with her; but having obtained these, Giovanna had no wish to hurt anybody, or to be unkind. She was indolent and loved ease, but still she was capable of taking trouble now and then to do some one else a service. She had had no moral training, and all her faculties were obtuse; and she had seen no prevailing rule but that of selfishness. Selfishness takes different aspects, according to the manner in which you look at it. When you have to maintain hardly, by a constant struggle, your own self against the encroachments and still more rampant selfishness of others, the struggle confers a certain beauty upon the object of it. Giovanna had wanted to have her own way, like the others of the family, but had been usually thrust into a corner, and prevented from having it. What wonder, then, that when she had a chance, she seized it, and emancipated herself, and secured her own comfort with the same total disregard to others which she had been used to see? But now, having got this – having for the moment all she wanted – an entire exemption from work, an existence full of external comfort, and circumstances around her which flattered her with a sense of an elevated position – she began to think a little. Nothing was exacted of her. If Miss Susan was not kind to her, she was not at least unkind, only withdrawing from her as much as possible, a thing which Giovanna felt to be quite natural, and in the quiet and silence the young woman’s mind began to work. I do not say her conscience, for that was not in the least awakened, nor was she conscious of any penitential regret in thinking of the past, or religious resolution for the future; it was her mind only that was concerned. She thought it might be as well to make certain changes in her habits. In her new existence, certain modifications of the old use and wont seemed reasonable. And then there gradually developed in her – an invaluable possession which sometimes does more for the character than high principle or good intention – a sense of the ludicrous. This was what Everard meant when he said there was fun in her. She had a sense of humor, a sense of the incongruities which affect some minds so much more powerfully by the fact of being absurd, than by the fact of being wrong. Giovanna, without any actual good motive, thus felt the necessity of amending herself, and making various changes in her life.
This, it may be supposed, took some time to develop; and in the meantime the household in which she had become so very distinct a part, had to make up its mind to her, and resume as best it could its natural habits and use and wont, with the addition of this stranger in the midst. As for the servants, their instinctive repugnance to a foreigner and a new inmate was lessened from the very first by the introduction of the child, who conciliated the maids, and thus made them forgive his mother the extra rooms they had to arrange, and the extra work necessary. The child was fortunately an engaging and merry child, and as he got used to the strange faces round him, became the delight and pride and amusement of the house. Cook was still head nurse, and derived an increased importance and satisfaction from her supremacy. I doubt if she had ever before felt the dignity and happiness of her position as a married woman half so much as now, when that fact alone (as the others felt) gave her a mysterious capacity for the management of the child. The maids overlooked the fact that the child’s mother, though equally a married woman, was absolutely destitute of this power; but accuracy of reasoning is not necessary in such an argument, and the entire household bowed to the superior endowments of Cook. The child’s pattering, sturdy little feet, and crowings of baby laughter became the music of Whiteladies, the pleasant accompaniment to which the lives at least of the little community in the kitchen were set. Miss Susan, being miserable, resisted the fascination, and Augustine was too abstracted to be sensible of it; but the servants yielded as one woman, and even Stevens succumbed after the feeblest show of resistance. Now and then even, a bell would ring ineffectually in that well-ordered house, and the whole group of attendants be found clustered together worshipping before the baby, who had produced some new word, or made some manifestation of supernatural cleverness; and the sound of the child pervaded all that part of the house in which the servants were supreme. They forgave his mother for being there because she had brought him, and if at the same time they hated her for her neglect of him, the hatred was kept passive by a perception that, but for this insensibility on her part, the child could not have been allowed thus fully and pleasantly to minister to them.
As for Miss Susan, who had felt as though nothing could make her endure the presence of Giovanna, she too was affected unwittingly by the soft effects of time. It was true that no sentiment, no principle in existence was strong enough to make her accept cheerfully this unwelcome guest. Had she been bidden to do it in order to make atonement for her own guilt, or as penance for that guilt, earning its forgiveness, or out of pity or Christian feeling, she would have pronounced the effort impossible; and impossible she had still thought it when she watched with despair the old shopkeeper’s departure, and reflected with a sense of suffering intolerable and not to be borne that he had left behind him this terrible witness against her, this instrument of her punishment. Miss Susan had paced about her room in restless anguish, saying to herself under her breath that her punishment was greater than she could bear. She had felt with a sickening sense of helplessness and hopelessness that she could never go downstairs again, never take her place at that table, never eat or drink in the company of this new inmate whom she could not free herself from. And for a few days, indeed, Miss Susan kept on inventing little ailments which kept her in her own room. But this could not last. She had a hundred things to look after which made it necessary for her to be about, to be visible; and gradually there grew upon her a stirring of curiosity to see how things went on, with that woman always there. And then she resumed her ordinary habits, came downstairs, sat down at the familiar table, and by degrees found herself getting accustomed to the new-comer. Strangest effect of those calm, monotonous days! Nothing would have made her do it knowingly; but soft pressure of time made her do it. Things quieted down; the alien was there, and there was no possibility of casting her out; and, most wonderful of all, Miss Susan got used to her, in spite of herself.
And Giovanna, for her part, began to think.
