IN THE DRAWING-ROOM.
Coffee having been announced, the Colonel, who had been sitting alone with his burgundy, and perhaps drinking a little more of it than usual, followed her ladyship into the drawing-room. That drawing-room was the most delicately fanciful room in the whole house. It was wainscoted with cedar to the height of eight feet, where the panels terminated in a beautiful little carved arcade running all round the noble room, and following the wall everywhere into its quaint recesses. Heraldic decoration, used so profusely in the great hall and elsewhere, was here limited to John Stanburne's own conjugal shield, in which the arms of Stanburne were impaled with those of Basenthorpe.
If the Colonel could only have drunk his cup of coffee in silence, or made a commonplace remark or two, and then gone straight to bed, or into his own den, it might have been better for them both; but he was stung to the quick by her ladyship's unsympathizing manner, and he had absorbed so much burgundy in the dining-room as to have lost altogether that salutary fear of his wife's keen little observations which usually kept him in restraint. It was a great pity, too, that they were alone together in the drawing-room that evening, and that Miss Stanburne had left Wenderholme two days before on a brief visit to a country house at a distance.
His heart yearned for Helena's sympathy and support, and of this she was perfectly aware; but, with that rashness which is peculiarly feminine, and which makes women play their little game of withholding what men's hearts want, even in moments of the utmost urgency and peril, she determined to give him no help until he had properly and sufficiently humiliated himself and confessed his sins before her. The woman who could withhold her tenderness in such an hour as this diminished, in doing so, the value of that tenderness itself; and every minute that passed whilst it was still withheld made such a large deduction from it, that if this coldness lasted for an hour longer, John Stanburne felt that no subsequent kindness could atone for it. As the slow, miserable minutes went by whilst Lady Helena sat yards away from him at a little table in a great oriel window, saying not one word, not even looking once in his direction, John Stanburne's brain, already in a state of intense excitement in consequence of the miseries of the day, began to suffer from an almost insane irritability and impatience on account of the silence and calm that surrounded him. It was a most peaceful and beautiful summer evening, and the sun, as he declined towards the west, sent rich warm rays into the noble room, glowing on the cedar panels, and on the quaintly elegant furniture, with its pervading expression of luxury and ease. This luxury maddened John Stanburne, the soft carpet was hateful to his feet, the easy-chair irritating to his whole body; he hated the great clusters of flowers in the jardinières, and the white delicate webs that were the summer curtains. Considering the present temper of his mind, and his horror of every thing that had cost him money, the drawing-room was the worst place he could have been in.
If her ladyship would just have left that interesting bit of plain hemming that she was engaged upon (and whereby she was effecting an economy of about twopence a-day), and gone to her husband and said one kind word to him, merely his name even, and given him one caress, one kiss, their fate would have been incomparably easier to endure. They would have supported each other under the pressure of calamity, and the material loss might have been balanced by a moral gain.
But she sat there silently, persistently, doing that farthing's worth of plain needlework.
"Helena!" at last the Colonel broke out, "I say, Helena, I wonder what the devil we are to do?"
"You need not swear at me, sir."
"Swear at you!—who swears at you? I didn't. But if I did swear at you, it wouldn't be without provocation. You are the most provoking woman I ever knew in my life; upon my word you are—you are, by God, Helena!"
"You are losing your temper, Colonel Stanburne. Pray remember whom you are speaking to. I am not to be sworn at like your grooms."
"You never lose your temper. Now, I say that as you are such a mistress of yourself under all circumstances, it's your own fault that you don't make yourself more agreeable."
"I regret that you don't think me agreeable, Colonel Stanburne."
"Well, now, are you, Helena? Here am I under the blow of a tremendous calamity, and you haven't a word to say to me. If Fyser knew what had happened, he'd be more sorry than you are."
"What would you have me say to you? If I said all you deserve, would you listen to it? You appear to forget that you have as yet expressed no sympathy for me, whom you have ruined by your folly, whereas you are angry because I have said little to you."
"You ruined, Helena!" said John Stanburne, with a bitter laugh; "you ruined—why, you never had any thing to lose! Your father allows you six hundred a-year, and he'll continue your allowance, I suppose. You never owned a thousand pounds in your life. But it's different with me. I'm losing all I was born to."
The answer to this was too obvious for Lady Helena to condescend to make it. She remained perfectly silent, which irritated the Colonel more than any imaginable answer could have irritated him.
He certainly was wrong so far as this, that any one who asks for sympathy puts himself in a false position. Condolence must be freely given, or it is worthless. And any disposition which her ladyship may have felt towards a more wifely frame of mind was effectually checked by his advancing these claims of his. She was not to be scolded into amiability.
"Hang it, Helena!" he broke out, "I didn't think there was a woman in England that would behave as you are behaving under such circumstances. The thing doesn't seem to make the least impression upon you. There you sit, doing your confounded sewing, just as if nothing had happened, you do. You won't sit there doing your sewing long. The bailiffs will turn you out. They'll be here in a day or two."
"You are becoming very coarse, sir; your language is not fit for a woman to hear."
"It's the plain truth, it is. But women won't hear the plain truth. They don't like it—they never do. But your ladyship must be made to understand that this cannot go on. We cannot stop here, at Wenderholme. The place will be sold, and every thing in it. Now, I should just like to know what your ladyship proposes to do. If my way of asking your ladyship this question isn't polite enough, please do me the favor to instruct me in the necessary forms."
"If you could speak without oaths, that would be something gained."
"Answer me my question, can't you? Where do you mean to go—what do you mean to do?"
"I intend to go to my father's."
"Well, that's plain. Why couldn't you tell me that sooner? You mean to go to old Adisham's. But I'll be hanged if I'll go there, to be patronized as a beggarly relation."
"Very well."
"Very well, is it? It's very well that you are to live in one place, and I in another."
"A distance sufficient to protect me from your rudeness would certainly be an advantage."
"Would it, indeed? You really think so, do you? Well, if you think so, it shall be so."
"Very well."
She spoke with a calmness that was perfectly exasperating, and John Stanburne's brain was too much overwrought by the terrible trial of that day for him to bear things with any patience. He was half insane temporarily; he could not bear to see that calm little woman sitting there, with her jarring self-control.
"I say, Lady Helena, if you mean to go to old Adisham's, the sooner you go the better. All this house is crumbling over our heads as if it were rotten."
Lady Helena rose quietly from her seat, took up her work, and walked towards the door. Just as she was opening it, she turned towards the Colonel, and pronounced with the clearest possible articulation the following sentences:—
"You will please remember, Colonel Stanburne, that it was you who turned me out of your house, and the sort of language you used in doing so. I shall always remember it."
Then the door closed quietly upon her—the great heavy door, slowly moving on its smooth hinges.