“I do not pretend,” she said; “because it is comme il faut? but, yes, that is all natural. Yet I do not pretend. I wish to show de l’amitié for Madame Suzanne. I will not give up my ideas, nor do what you will, instead of that which I will; but to be good friends, this is what I desire. Bébé is satisfied—he asks no more—he demands not the sacrifice. Why not Madame Suzanne too?”
“Go away, go away, please,” cried Miss Susan, faintly. She was not capable of anything more.
Giovanna shrugged her handsome shoulders, and gave an appealing look round her, as if to some unseen audience. She felt that nothing but native English stupidity could fail to see her good sense and honest meaning. Then, perceiving further argument to be hopeless, she turned away, with the child still on her shoulder, and ere she had reached the end of the passage, began to sing to him with her sweet, rich, untutored voice. The voice receded, carolling through all the echoes of the old house like a bird, floating up the great oaken staircase, and away to the extremity of the long corridor, where her room was. She was perfectly light-hearted and easy-minded in the resolution to do the best for herself; and she was perfectly aware that the further scheme she had concocted for her own benefit would be still more displeasing to the present mistress of the house. She did not care for that the least in the world; but, honestly, she was well-disposed toward Miss Susan, and not only willing, but almost anxious, so far as anxiety was possible to her, to establish a state of affairs in which they might be good friends.
But to Miss Susan it was absolutely impossible to conceive that things so incompatible could yet exist together. Perhaps she was dimly aware of the incongruities in her own mind, the sense of guilt and the sense of innocence which existed there, in opposition, yet, somehow, in that strange concord which welds the contradictions of the human soul into one, despite of all incongruity; but to realize or believe in the strange mixture in Giovanna’s mind was quite impossible to her. She sat still with her face covered until she was quite sure the young woman and her child had gone, listening, indeed, to the voice which went so lightly and sweetly through the passages. How could she sing—that woman! whom if she had never seen, Susan Austin would still have been an honest woman, able to look everybody in the face! Miss Susan knew—no one better—how utterly foolish and false it was to say this; she knew that Giovanna was but the instrument, not the originator, of her own guilt; but, notwithstanding the idea having once occurred to her, that had she never seen Giovanna, she would never have been guilty, she hugged it to her bosom with an insane satisfaction, feeling as if, for the moment, it was a relief. Oh, that she had never seen her! How blameless she had been before that unhappy meeting! how free of all weight upon her conscience! and now, how burdened, how miserable, how despotic that conscience was! and her good name dependent upon the discretion of this creature, without discretion, without feeling, this false, bold foreigner, this intruder, who had thrust her way into a quiet house, to destroy its peace! When she was quite sure that Giovanna was out of the way, Miss Susan went to her own room, and looked piteously at her own worn face in the glass. Did that face tell the same secrets to others as it did to herself? she wondered. She had never been a vain woman, even in her youth, though she had been comely enough, if not pretty; but now, a stranger, who did not know Miss Susan, might have thought her vain. She looked at herself so often in the glass, pitifully studying her looks, to see what could be read in them. It had come to be one of the habits of her life.
CHAPTER XXXII.
The Winter passed slowly, as Winters do, especially in the silence of the country, where little happens to mark their course. The Autumnal fall of leaves lasted long, but at length cleared off with the fogs and damps of November, leaving the lawn and Priory Lane outside free from the faded garments of the limes and beeches. Slowly, slowly the earth turned to the deepest dark of Winter, and turned back again imperceptibly toward the sun. The rich brown fields turned up their furrows to the darkening damp and whitening frost, and lay still, resting from their labors, waiting for the germs to come. The trees stood out bare against the sky, betraying every knob and twist upon their branches; big lumps of gray mistletoe hung in the apple-trees that bordered Priory Lane; and here and there a branch of Lombardy poplar, still clothed with a few leaves, turning their white lining outward, threw itself up against the blue sky like a flower. The Austin Chantry was getting nearly finished, all the external work having been done some time ago. It was hoped that the ornamentation within would be completed in time for Christmas, when the chaplain, who was likewise to be the curate, and save (though Mr. Gerard mentioned this to no one) sixty pounds a year to the vicar, was to begin the daily service. This chaplain was a nephew of Dr. Richard’s, a good young man of very High Church views, who was very ready to pray for the souls of the Austin family without once thinking of the rubrics. Mr. Gerard did not care for a man of such pronounced opinions; and good little Dr. Richard, even after family feeling had led him to recommend his nephew, was seized with many pangs as to the young Ritualist’s effect upon the parish.
“He will do what Miss Augustine wants, which is what I never would have done,” said the warden of the Almshouses. “He thinks he is a better Churchman than I am, poor fellow! but he is very careless of the Church’s directions, my dear; and if you don’t attend to the rubrics, where are you to find rest in this world? But he thinks he is a better Churchman than I.”
“Yes, my dear, the rubrics have always been your great standard,” said the good wife; but as the Rev. Mr. Wrook was related to them by her side, she was reluctant to say anything more.
Thus, however, it was with a careful and somewhat anxious brow that Dr. Richard awaited the young man’s arrival. He saved Mr. Gerard the best part of a curate’s salary, as I have said. Miss Augustine endowed the Chantry with an income of sixty pounds a year; and with twenty or thirty pounds added to that, who could object to such a salary for a curacy in a country place? The vicar’s purse was the better for it, if not himself; and he thought it likely that by careful processes of disapproval any young man in course of time might be put down. The Chantry was to be opened at Christmas; and I think (if it had ever occurred to her) that Miss Augustine might then have been content to sing her Nunc Dimittis; but it never did occur to her, her life being very full, and all her hours occupied. She looked forward, however, to the time when two sets of prayers should be said every day for the Austins with unbounded expectation.
Up to the middle of November, I think, she almost hoped (in an abstract way, meaning no harm to her nephew) that something might still happen to Herbert; for Giovanna, who went with her to the Almshouse service every morning to please her, seemed endowed with heavenly dispositions, and ready to train up her boy—who was a ready-made child, so to speak, and not uncertain, as any baby must be who has to be born to parents not yet so much as acquainted with each other—to make the necessary sacrifice, and restore Whiteladies to the Church. This hope failed a little after November, because then, without rhyme or reason, Giovanna tired of her devotions, and went to the early service no longer; though even then Miss Augustine felt that little Jean (now called Johnny) was within her own power, and could be trained in the way in which he should go; but anyhow, howsoever it was to be accomplished, no doubt the double prayers for the race would accomplish much, and something at the sweetness of an end attained stole into Augustine’s heart.