Whiteladies. Oliphant Margaret
ring presently, and it would do you good.”
“My dear, I have no time,” said the elder sister, “I have a hundred things to do.”
Augustine turned away with a soft shake of the head. She folded her arms into her sleeves, and glided away like a ghost. Presently her sister saw her crossing the lawn, her gray hood thrown lightly over her head, her long robes falling in straight, soft lines, her slim figure moving along noiselessly. Miss Susan was the practical member of the family, and but for her probably the Austins of Whiteladies would have died out ere now, by sheer carelessness of their substance, and indifference to what was going on around them; but as she watched her sister crossing the lawn, a sense of inferiority crossed her mind. She felt herself worldly, a pitiful creature of the earth, and wished she was as good as Augustine. “But the house, and the farm, and the world must be kept going,” she said, by way of relieving herself, with a mingling of humor and compunction. It was not much her small affairs could do to make or mar the going on of the world, but yet in small ways and great the world has to be kept going. She went off at once to the bailiff, who was waiting for her, feeling a pleasure in proving to herself that she was busy and had no time, which is perhaps a more usual process of thought with the Marthas of this world than the other plan of finding fault with the Marys, for in their hearts most women have a feeling that the prayer is the best.
The intimation of Miss Susan’s intended absence excited the rest of the household much more than it had excited her sister. “Wherever are you going to, miss?” said cook, who was as old as her mistress, and had never changed her style of addressing her since the days when she was young Miss Susan and played at house-keeping.
“I am going abroad,” she answered, with a little innocent pride; for to people who live all their lives at home there is a certain grandeur in going abroad. “You will take great care of my sister, and see that she does not fast too much.”
It was a patriarchal household, with such a tinge of familiarity in its dealings with its mistress, as – with servants who have passed their lives in a house – it is seldom possible, even if desirable, to avoid. Stevens the butler stopped open-mouthed, with a towel in his hand, to listen, and Martha approached from the other end of the kitchen, where she had been busy tying up and labelling cook’s newly-made preserves.
“Going abroad!” they all echoed in different keys.
“I expect you all to be doubly careful and attentive,” said Miss Susan, “though indeed I am not going very far, and probably won’t be more than a few days gone. But in the meantime Miss Augustine will require your utmost care. Stevens, I am very much displeased with the way you took it upon you to speak at dinner yesterday. It annoyed my sister extremely, and you had no right to use so much freedom. Never let it happen again.”
Stevens was taken entirely by surprise, and stood gazing at her with the bewildered air of a man who, seeking innocent amusement in the hearing of news, is suddenly transfixed by an unexpected thunderbolt. “Me, mum!” said Stevens bewildered, “I – I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was an unfair advantage to take.
“Precisely, you,” said Miss Susan; “what have you to do with the people at the almshouses? Nobody expects you to be answerable for what they do or don’t do. Never let me hear anything of the kind again.”
“Oh,” said Stevens, with a snort of suppressed offence, “it’s them! Miss Austin, I can’t promise at no price! if I hears that old ’ag a praised up to the skies – ”
“You will simply hold your tongue,” said Miss Susan peremptorily. “What is it to you? My sister knows her own people best.”
Upon this the two women in attendance shook their heads, and Stevens, encouraged by this tacit support, took courage.
“She don’t, mum, she don’t,” he said; “if you heard the things they’ll say behind her back! It makes me sick, it does, being a faithful servant. If I don’t dare to speak up, who can? She’s imposed upon to that degree, and made game of as your blood would run cold to see it; and if I ain’t to say a word when I haves a chance, who can? The women sees it even – and it’s nat’ral as I should see further than the women.”
“Then you’ll please set the women a good example by holding your tongue,” said Miss Susan. “Once for all, recollect, all of you, Miss Augustine shall never be crossed while I am mistress of the house. When it goes into other hands you can do as you please.”
“Oh, laws!” said the cook, “when it comes to that, mum, none of us has nothing to do here.”
“That is as you please, and as Mr. – as the heir pleases,” Miss Susan said, making a pause before the last words. Her cheek colored, her blue eyes grew warm with the new life and energy in her. She went out of the kitchen with a certain swell of anticipated triumph in her whole person. Mr. Farrel-Austin should soon discover that he was not to have everything his own way. Probably she would find he had deceived the old man at Bruges, that these poor people knew nothing about the true value of what they were relinquishing. Curiously enough, it never occurred to her, to lessen her exhilaration, that to leave the house of her fathers to an old linen-draper from the Low-Countries would be little more agreeable than to leave it to Farrel-Austin – nay, even as Everard had suggested to her, that Farrel-Austin, as being an English gentleman, was much more likely to do honor to the old house than a foreigner of inferior position, and ideas altogether different from her own. She thought nothing of this; she ignored herself, indeed, in the matter, which was a thing she was pleased to think of afterward, and which gave her a little consolation – that is, she thought of herself only through Farrel-Austin, as the person most interested in, and most likely to be gratified by, his downfall.
As the day wore on and the sun got round and blazed on the south front of the house, she withdrew to the porch, as on the former day, and sat there enjoying the coolness, the movement of the leaves, the soft, almost imperceptible breeze. She was more light-hearted than on the previous day when poor Herbert was in her mind, and when nothing but the success of her adversary seemed possible. Now it seemed to her that a new leaf was turned, a new chapter commenced.
Thus the day went on. In the afternoon she had one visitor, and only one, the vicar, Mr. Gerard, who came by the north gate, as her visitors yesterday had done, and crossed the lawn to the porch with much less satisfaction of mind than Miss Susan had to see him coming.
“Of course you know what has brought me,” he said at once, seating himself in a garden-chair which had been standing outside on the lawn, and which he brought in after his first greeting. “This chantry of your sister’s is a thing I don’t understand, and I don’t know how I can consent to it. It is alien to all the customs of the time. It is a thing that ought to have been built three hundred years ago, if at all. It will be a bit of bran new Gothic, a thing I detest; and in short I don’t understand it, nor what possible meaning a chantry can have in these days.”
“Neither do I,” said Miss Susan smiling, “not the least in the world.”
“If it is meant for masses for the dead,” said Mr. Gerard – “some people I know have gone as far as that – but I could not consent to it, Miss Austin. It should have been built three hundred years ago, if at all.”
“Augustine could not have built it three hundred years ago,” said Miss Susan, “for the best of reasons. My own opinion is, between ourselves, that had she been born three hundred years ago she would have been a happier woman; but neither she nor I can change that.”
“That is not the question,” said the vicar. He was a man with a fine faculty for being annoyed. There was a longitudinal line in his forehead between his eyes, which was continually moving, marking the passing irritations which went and came, and his voice had a querulous tone. He was in the way of thinking that everything that happened out of the natural course was done to annoy him specially, and he felt it a personal grievance that the Austin chantry had not been built in the sixteenth century. “There might have been some sense in it then,” he added, “and though art was low about that time, still it would have got toned down, and been probably an ornament to the church; but a white, staring, new thing with spick and span pinnacles! I do not see how I can consent.”
“At