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A House in Bloomsbury
“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—
If the pass were dangerous known,
The danger’s self were lure alone.
He went back to his hotel with at least a new project fully occupying all his thoughts.
On the next evening, in the dusk of the summer night, Miss Bethune was in her bed-chamber alone. She had no light, though she was a lover of the light, and had drawn up the blinds as soon as the young physician who prescribed a darkened room had disappeared. She had a habit of watching out the last departing rays of daylight, and loved to sit in the gloaming, as she called it, reposing from all the cares of the day in that meditative moment. It was a bad sign of Miss Bethune’s state of mind when she called early for her lamp. She was seated thus in the dark, when young Gordon came in audibly to the sitting-room, introduced by Gilchrist, who told him her mistress would be with him directly; but, knowing Miss Bethune would hear what she said, did not come to call her. The lamps were lighted in that room, and showed a little outline of light through the chinks of the door. She smiled to herself in the dark, with a beatitude that ought to have lighted it up, as she listened to the big movements of the young man in the lighted room next door. He had seated himself under Gilchrist’s ministrations; but when she went away he got up and moved about, looking, as Miss Bethune divined, at the pictures on the walls and the books and little silver toys on the tables.
He made more noise, she thought to herself proudly, than a woman does: filled the space more, seemed to occupy and fill out everything. Her countenance and her heart expanded in the dark; she would have liked to peep at him through the crevice of light round the door, or even the keyhole, to see him when he did not know she was looking, to read the secrets of his heart in his face. There were none there, she said to herself with an effusion of happiness which brought the tears to her eyes, none there which a mother should be afraid to discover. The luxury of sitting there, holding her breath, hearing him move, knowing him so near, was so sweet and so great, that she sat, too blessed to move, taking all the good out of that happy moment before it should fleet away.
Suddenly, however, there came a dead silence. Had he sat down again? Had he gone out on the balcony? What had become of him? She sat breathless, wondering, listening for the next sound. Surely he had stepped outside the window to look out upon the Bloomsbury street, and the waving of the trees in the Square, and the stars shining overhead. Not a sound—yet, yes, there was something. What was it? A faint, stealthy rustling, not to be called a sound at all, rather some stealthy movement to annihilate sound—the strangest contrast to the light firm step that had come into the room, and the free movements which she had felt to be bigger than a woman’s.
Miss Bethune in the dark held her breath; fear seized possession of her, she knew not why; her heart sank, she knew not why. Oh, his father—his father was not a good man!
The rustling continued, very faint; it might have been a small animal rubbing against the door. She sat bolt upright in her chair, motionless, silent as a waxen image, listening. If perhaps, after all, it should be only one of the little girls, or even the cat rubbing against the wall idly on the way downstairs! A troubled smile came over her face, her heart gave a throb of relief. But then the sound changed, and Miss Bethune’s face again grew rigid, her heart stood still.
Some one was trying very cautiously, without noise, to open the door; to turn the handle without making any sound required some time; it creaked a little, and then there was silence—guilty silence, the pause of stealth alarmed by the faintest noise; then it began again. Slowly, slowly the handle turned round, the door opened, a hair’s breadth at a time. O Lord above! his father—his father was an ill man.
There was some one with her in the room—some one unseen, as she was, swallowed up in the darkness, veiled by the curtains at the windows, which showed faintly a pale streak of sky only, letting in no light. Unseen, but not inaudible; a hurried, fluttering breath betraying him, and that faint sound of cautious, uneasy movement, now and then instantly, guiltily silenced, and then resumed. She could feel the stealthy step thrill the flooring, making a jar, which was followed by one of those complete silences in which the intruder too held his breath, then another stealthy step.
A thousand thoughts, a very avalanche, precipitated themselves through her mind. A man did not steal into a dark room like that if he were doing it for the first time. And his words last night, “How do you know even that I am honest?” And then his father—his father—oh, God help him, God forgive him!—that was an ill man! And his upbringing in a country where lies were common, with a guardian that did him no justice, and the woman that cut him off. And not to know that he had a creature belonging to him in the world to be made glad or sorry whatever happened! Oh, God forgive him, God help him! the unfortunate, the miserable boy! “Mine all the same—mine all the same!” her heart said, bleeding—oh, that was no metaphor! bleeding with the anguish, the awful, immeasurable blow.
If there was any light at all in the room, it was a faint greyness, just showing in the midst of the dark the vague form of a little table against the wall, and a box in a brown cover—a box—no, no, the shape of a box, but only something standing there, something, the accursed thing for which life and love were to be wrecked once more. Oh, his father—his father! But his father would not have done that. Yet it was honester to take the trinkets, the miserable stones that would bring in money, than to wring a woman’s heart. And what did the boy know? He had never been taught, never had any example, God help him, God forgive him! and mine—mine all the time!
Then out of the complete darkness came into that faint grey where the box was, an arm, a hand. It touched, not calculating the distance, the solid substance with a faint jar, and retired like a ghost, while she sat rigid, looking on; then more cautiously, more slowly still, it stole forth again, and grasped the box. Miss Bethune had settled nothing what to do, she had thought of nothing but the misery of it, she had intended, so far as she had any intention, to watch while the tragedy was played out, the dreadful act accomplished. But she was a woman of sudden impulses, moved by flashes of resolution almost independent of her will.
Suddenly, more ghostlike still than the arm of the thief, she made a swift movement forward, and put her hand upon his. Her grasp seemed to crush through the quivering clammy fingers, and she felt under her own the leap of the pulses; but the criminal was prepared for every emergency, and uttered no cry. She felt the quick noiseless change of attitude, and then the free arm swing to strike her—heaven and earth! to strike her, a woman twice his age, to strike her, his friend, his– She was a strong woman, in the fulness of health and courage. As quick as lightning, she seized the arm as it descended, and held him as in a grip of iron. Was it guilt that made him like a child in her hold? He had a stick in his hand, shortened, with a heavy head, ready to deal a blow. Oh, the coward, the wretched coward! She held him panting for a moment, unable to say a word; and then she called out with a voice that was no voice, but a kind of roar of misery, for “Gilchrist, Gilchrist!”
Gilchrist, who was never far off, who always had her ear open for her mistress, heard, and came flying from up or down stairs with her candle: and some one else heard it, who was standing pensive on the balcony, looking out, and wondering what fate had now in store for him, and mingling his thoughts with the waving of the trees and the nameless noises of the street. Which of them arrived first was never known, he from the other room throwing wide the door of communication, or she from the stairs with the impish, malicious light of that candle throwing in its sudden illumination as with a pleasure in the deed.
The spectators were startled beyond measure to see the lady in apparent conflict with a man, but they had no time to make any remarks. The moment the light flashed upon her, Miss Bethune gave a great cry. “It’s you, ye vermin!” she cried, flinging the furtive creature in her grasp from her against the wall, which half stunned him for the moment. And then she stood for a moment, her head bent back, her face without a trace of colour, confronting the eager figure in the doorway, surrounded by the glow of the light, flying forward to help her.
“O God, forgive me!” she cried, “God, forgive me, for I am an ill woman: but I will never forgive myself!”
The man who lay against the wall, having dropped there on the floor with the vehemence of her action, perhaps exaggerating the force that had been used against him, to excite pity—for Gilchrist, no mean opponent, held one door, and that unexpected dreadful apparition of the young man out of the lighted room bearing down upon him, filled the other—was Alfred Hesketh, white, miserable, and cowardly, huddled up in a wretched heap, with furtive eyes gleaming, and the heavy-headed stick furtively grasped, still ready to deal an unexpected blow, had he the opportunity, though he was at the same time rubbing the wrist that held it, as if in pain.
Young Gordon had made a hurried step towards him, when Miss Bethune put out her hand. She had dropped into a chair, where she sat panting for breath.
“Wait,” she said, “wait till I can speak.”
“You brute!” cried Harry; “how dare you come in here? What have you done to frighten the lady?”
He was interrupted by a strange chuckle of a laugh from Miss Bethune’s panting throat.
“It’s rather me, I’m thinking, that’s frightened him,” she said. “Ye wretched vermin of a creature, how did ye know? What told ye in your meeserable mind that there was something here to steal? And ye would have struck me—me that am dealing out to ye your daily bread! No, my dear, you’re not to touch him; don’t lay a finger on him. The Lord be thanked—though God forgive me for thanking Him for the wickedness of any man!”
How enigmatical this all was to Harry Gordon, and how little he could imagine any clue to the mystery, it is needless to say. Gilchrist herself thought her mistress was temporarily out of her mind. She was quicker, however, to realise what had happened than the young man, who did not think of the jewels, nor remember anything about them. Gilchrist looked with anxiety at her lady’s white face and gleaming eyes.
“Take her into the parlour, Master Harry,” she said: “she’s just done out. And I’ll send for the police.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind, Gilchrist,” said Miss Bethune. “Get up, ye creature. You’re not worth either man’s or woman’s while; you have no more fusion than a cat. Get up, and begone, ye poor, weak, wretched, cowardly vermin, for that’s what ye are: and I thank the Lord with all my heart that it was only you! Gilchrist, stand away from the door, and let the creature go.”
He rose, dragging himself up by degrees, with a furtive look at Gordon, who, indeed, looked a still less easy opponent than Miss Bethune.
“I take that gentleman to witness,” he said, “as there’s no evidence against me but just a lady’s fancy: and I’ve been treated very bad, and my wrist broken, for aught I know, and bruised all over, and I–”
Miss Bethune stamped her foot on the floor. “Begone, ye born liar and robber!” she said. “Gilchrist will see ye off the premises; and mind, you never come within my sight again. Now, Mr. Harry, as she calls ye, I’ll go into the parlour, as she says; and the Lord, that only knows the wickedness that has been in my mind, forgive me this night! and it would be a comfort to my heart, my bonnie man, if you would say Amen.”
“Amen with all my heart,” said the young man, with a smile, “but, so far as I can make out, your wickedness is to be far too good and forgiving. What did the fellow do? I confess I should not like to be called a vermin, as you called him freely—but if he came with intent to steal, he should have been handed over to the police, indeed he should.”
“I am more worthy of the police than him, if ye but knew: but, heaven be praised, you’ll never know. I mind now, he came with a message when I was playing with these wretched diamonds, like an old fool: and he must have seen or scented them with the creeminal instinct Dr. Roland speaks about.”
She drew a long breath, for she had not yet recovered from the panting of excitement, and then told her story, the rustling without, the opening of the door, the hand extended to the box. When she had told all this with much vividness, Miss Bethune suddenly stopped, drew another long breath, and dropped back upon the sofa where she was sitting. It was not her way; the lights had been dazzling and confusing her ever since they blazed upon her by the opening of the two doors, and the overwhelming horror, and blessed but tremendous revulsion of feeling, which had passed in succession over her, had been more than her strength, already undermined by excitement, could bear. Her breath, her consciousness, her life, seemed to ebb away in a moment, leaving only a pale shadow of her, fallen back upon the cushions.
Once more Harry was the master of the situation. He had seen a woman faint before, which was almost more than Gilchrist, with all her experience, had done, and he had the usual remedies at his fingers’ ends. But this was not like the usual easy faints, over in a minute, to which young Gordon had been accustomed, and Dr. Roland had to be summoned from below, and a thrill of alarm had run through the house, Mrs. Simcox herself coming up from the kitchen, with strong salts and feathers to burn, before Miss Bethune came to herself. The house was frightened, and so at last was the experienced Harry; but Dr. Roland’s interest and excitement may be said to have been pleasurable. “I have always thought this was what was likely. I’ve been prepared for it,” he said to himself, as he hovered round the sofa. It would be wrong to suppose that he lengthened, or at least did nothing to shorten, this faint for his own base purposes, that he might the better make out certain signs which he thought he had recognised. But the fact was, that not only Dora had come from abovestairs, but even Mr. Mannering had dragged himself down, on the alarm that Miss Bethune was dead or dying; and that the whole household had gathered in her room, or on the landing outside; while she lay, in complicity (or not) with the doctor, in that long-continued swoon, which the spectators afterwards said lasted an hour, or two, or even three hours, according to their temperaments.
When she came to herself at last, the scene upon which she opened her eyes was one which helped her recovery greatly, by filling her with wrath and indignation. She lay in the middle of her room, in a strong draught, the night air blowing from window to window across her, the lamp even under its shade, much more the candles on the mantelpiece, blown about, and throwing a wavering glare upon the agitated group, Gilchrist in the foreground with her apron at her eyes, and behind her Dora, red with restrained emotions, and Janie and Molly crying freely, while Mrs. Simcox brandished a bunch of fuming feathers, and Mr. Mannering peered over the landlady’s head with his “pince-nez” insecurely balanced on his nose, and his legs trembling under him in a harmony of unsteadiness, but anxiety. Miss Bethune’s wrist was in the grasp of the doctor; and Harry stood behind with a fan, which, in the strong wind blowing across her from window to window, struck the patient as ludicrously unnecessary. “What is all this fuss about?” she cried, trying to raise herself up.
“There’s no fuss, my dear lady,” said the doctor; “but you must keep perfectly quiet.”
“Oh, you’re there, Dr. Roland? Then there’s one sane person. But, for goodness’ sake, make Mr. Mannering sit down, and send all these idiots away. What’s the matter with me, that I’ve to get my death of cold, and be murdered with that awful smell, and even Harry Gordon behaving like a fool, making an air with a fan, when there’s a gale blowing? Go away, go away.”
“You see that our friend has come to herself,” said the doctor. “Shut that window, somebody, the other will be enough; and, my dear woman, for the sake of all that’s good, take those horrid feathers away.”
“I am murdered with the smell!” cried Miss Bethune, placing her hands over her face. “But make Mr. Mannering sit down, he’s not fit to stand after his illness; and Harry, boy, sit down, too, and don’t drive me out of my senses. Go away, go all of you away.”
The last to be got rid of was Dr. Roland, who assured everybody that the patient was now quite well, but languid. “You want to get rid of me too, I know,” he said, “and I’m going; but I should like to see you in bed first.”
“You shall not see me in bed, nor no other man,” said Miss Bethune. “I will go to bed when I am disposed, doctor. I’m not your patient, mind, at all events, now.”
“You were half an hour since: but I’m not going to pretend to any authority,” said the doctor. “I hope I know better. Don’t agitate yourself any more, if you’ll be guided by me. You have been screwing up that heart of yours far too tight.”
“How do you know,” she said, “that I have got a heart at all?”
“Probably not from the sentimental point of view,” he replied, with a little fling of sarcasm: “but I know you couldn’t live without the physical organ, and it’s over-strained. Good-night, since I see you want to get rid of me. But I’ll be handy downstairs, and mind you come for me, Gilchrist, on the moment if she should show any signs again.”
This was said to Gilchrist in an undertone as the doctor went away.
Miss Bethune sat up on her sofa, still very pale, still with a singing in her ears, and the glitter of fever in her eyes. “You are not to go away, Harry,” she said. “I have something to tell you before you go.”
“Oh, mem,” said Gilchrist, “for any sake, not to-night.”
“Go away, and bide away till I send for you,” cried the mistress. “And, Harry, sit you down here by me. I am going to tell you a story. This night has taught me many things. I might die, or I might be murdered for the sake of a few gewgaws that are nothing to me, and go down to my grave with a burden on my heart. I want to speak before I die.”
“Not to-night,” he cried. “You are in no danger. I’ll sleep here on the sofa by way of guard, and to-morrow you will send them to your bankers. Don’t tire yourself any more to-night.”
“You are like all the rest, and understand nothing about it,” she cried impatiently. “It is just precisely now that I will speak, and no other time. Harry, I am going to tell you a story. It is like most women’s stories—about a young creature that was beguiled and loved a man. He was a man that had a fine outside, and looked as good as he was bonnie, or at least this misfortunate thing thought so. He had nothing, and she had nothing. But she was the last of her family, and would come into a good fortune if she pleased her uncle that was the head of the name. But the uncle could not abide this man. Are you listening to me? Mind, it is a story, but not an idle story, and every word tells. Well, she was sent away to a lonely country place, an old house, with two old servants in it, to keep her free of the man. But the man followed; and in that solitude who was to hinder them seeing each other? They did for a while every day. And then the two married each other, as two can do in Scotland that make up their minds to risk it, and were living together in secret in the depths of the Highlands, as I told you, nobody knowing but the old servants that had been far fonder of her father than of the uncle that was head of the house, and were faithful to her in life and death. And then there came terrible news that the master was coming back. That poor young woman—oh, she was a fool, and I do not defend her!—had just been delivered in secret, in trouble and misery—for she dared not seek help or nursing but what she got at home—of a bonnie bairn,"—she put out her hand and grasped him by the arm,—“a boy, a darling, though she had him but for two or three days. Think if you can what that was. The master coming that had, so to speak, the power of life and death in his hands, and the young, subdued girl that he had put there to be in safety, the mother of a son–” Miss Bethune drew a long breath. She silenced the remonstrance on the lips of her hearer by a gesture, and went on:—
