“Messieurs et mesdames,” said Giovanna, suddenly, “you laugh, but, if you reflect, ma sœur has reason. She thinks, Here is Monsieur ’Erbert, young and strong, but yet there are things which happen to the strongest; and here, on the other part, is a little boy, a little, little boy, who is not English, whose mother is nothing but a foreigner, who is the heir. This gives her the panique. And for me, too, M. ’Erbert, I say with Mademoiselle Reine, ‘Marie-toi, car il est temps.’ Yes, truly! although little Jean is my boy, I say mariez-vous with my heart.”
“How good you are! how generous you are! Strange that you should be the only one to see it,” said Herbert, for the moment despising all the people belonging to him, who were so opaque, who did not perceive the necessities of the position. He himself saw those necessities well enough, and that he should marry was the first and most important. To tell the truth, he could not see even that Augustine’s anxiety was of an exaggerated description. It was not a thing to make laughter, and ridiculous jokes and songs about.
Giovanna did not desert her post during that day. She did not always lead the conversation, nor make herself so important in it as she had done at first, but she was always there, putting in a word when necessary, ready to come to Herbert’s assistance, to amuse him when there was occasion, to flatter him with bold, frank speeches, in which there was always a subtle compliment involved. Everard took his leave shortly after, with farewells in which there was a certain consciousness that he had not been treated quite as he ought to have been. “Till I come into fashion again,” he said, with the laugh which began to sound harsh to Reine’s ears, “I am better at home in my own den, where I can be as sulky as I please. When I am wanted, you know where to find me.” Reine thought he looked at her when he said this with reproach in his eyes.
“I think you are wanted now,” said Miss Susan; “there are many things I wished to consult you about. I wish you would not go away.”
But he was obstinate. “No, no; there is nothing for me to do,” he said; “no journeys to make, no troubles to encounter. You are all settled at home in safety; and when I am wanted you know where to find me,” he added, this time holding out his hand to Reine, and looking at her very distinctly. Poor Reine felt herself on the edge of a very sea of troubles: everybody around her seemed to have something in their thoughts beyond her divining. Miss Susan meant more than she could fathom, and there lurked a purpose in Giovanna’s beautiful eyes, which Reine began to be dimly conscious of, but could not explain to herself. How could he leave her to steer her course among these undeveloped perils? and how could she call him back when he was “wanted,” as he said bitterly? She gave him her hand, turning away her head to hide a something, almost a tear, that would come into her eyes, and with a forlorn sense of desertion in her heart; but she was too proud either by look or word to bid Everard stay.
This was on Thursday, and the next day they were to go to the Hatch, so that the interval was not long. Giovanna sang for them in the evening all kinds of popular songs, which was what she knew best, old Flemish ballads, and French and Italian canzoni; those songs of which every hamlet possesses one special to itself. “For I am not educated,” she said; “Mademoiselle must see that. I do all this by the ear. It is not music; it is nothing but ignorance. These are the chants du peuple, and I am nothing but one of the peuple, me. I am très-peuple. I never pretend otherwise. I do not wish to deceive you, M. ’Erbert, nor Mademoiselle.”
“Deceive us!” cried Herbert. “If we could imagine such a thing, we should be dolts indeed.”
Giovanna raised her head and looked at him, then turned to Miss Susan, whose knitting had dropped on her knee, and who, without thought, I think, had turned her eyes upon the group. “You are right, Monsieur ’Erbert,” she said, with a strange malicious laugh, “here at least you are quite safe, though there are much of persons who are traitres in the world. No one will deceive you here.”
She laughed as she spoke, and Miss Susan clutched at her knitting and buried herself in it, so to speak, not raising her head again for a full hour after, during which time Herbert and Giovanna talked a great deal to each other. And Reine sat by, with an incipient wonder in her mind which she could not quite make out, feeling as if her aunt and herself were one faction, Giovanna and Herbert another; as if there were all sorts of secret threads which she could not unravel, and intentions of which she knew nothing. The sense of strangeness grew on her so, that she could scarcely believe she was in Whiteladies, the home for which she had sighed so long. This kind of disenchantment happens often when the hoped-for becomes actual, but not always so strongly or with so bewildering a sense of something unrevealed, as that which pressed upon the very soul of Reine.
Next morning Giovanna, with her child on her shoulder, came out to the gate to see them drive away. “You will not stay more long than to-morrow,” she said. “How we are going to be dull till you come back! Monsieur Herbert, Mademoiselle Reine, you promise—not more long than to-morrow! It is two great long days!” She kissed her hand to them, and little Jean waved his cap, and shouted “Vive M. ’Erbert!” as the carriage drove away.