"Oh! well, if you can stay, Andrew will take charge of you, I dare say."
"No, my dear, Andrew will not--a nonent.i.ty cannot--you must."
"Impossible, Louisa," said Evan, as one who imagines he is uttering a thing of little consequence. "I promised Rose."
"You promised Rose that you would abdicate and retire? Sweet, loving girl!"
Evan made no answer.
"You will stay with me, Evan."
"I really can"t," he said in his previous careless tone.
"Come and sit down," cried the Countess, imperiously.
"The first trifle is refused. It does not astonish me. I will honour you now by talking seriously to you. I have treated you hitherto as a child.
Or, no--" she stopped her mouth; "it is enough if I tell you, dear, that poor Mrs. Bonner is dying, and that she desires my attendance on her to refresh her spirit with readings on the Prophecies, and Scriptural converse. No other soul in the house can so soothe her."
"Then, stay," said Evan.
"Unprotected in the midst of enemies! Truly!"
"I think, Louisa, if you can call Lady Jocelyn an enemy, you must read the Scriptures by a false light."
"The woman is an utter heathen!" interjected the Countess. "An infidel can be no friend. She is therefore the reverse. Her opinions embitter her mother"s last days. But now you will consent to remain with me, dear Van!"
An implacable negative responded to the urgent appeal of her eyes.
"By the way," he said, for a diversion, "did you know of a girl stopping at an inn in Fallow field?"
"Know a barmaid?" the Countess"s eyes and mouth were wide at the question.
"Did you send Raikes for her to-day?"
"Did Mr. Raikes--ah, Evan! that creature reminds me, you have no sense of contrast. For a Brazilian ape--he resembles, if he is not truly one--what contrast is he to an English gentleman! His proximity and acquaintance--rich as he may be--disfigure you. Study contrast!"
Evan had to remind her that she had not answered him: whereat she exclaimed: "One would really think you had never been abroad. Have you not evaded me, rather?"
The Countess commenced fanning her languid brows, and then pursued: "Now, my dear brother, I may conclude that you will acquiesce in my moderate wishes. You remain. My venerable friend cannot last three days.
She is on the brink of a better world! I will confide to you that it is of the utmost importance we should be here, on the spot, until the sad termination! That is what I summoned you for. You are now at liberty.
Ta-ta, as soon as you please."
She had baffled his little cross-examination with regard to Raikes, but on the other point he was firm. She would listen to nothing: she affected that her mandate had gone forth, and must be obeyed; tapped with her foot, fanned deliberately, and was a consummate queen, till he turned the handle of the door, when her complexion deadened, she started up, trembling, and tripping towards him, caught him by the arm, and said: "Stop! After all that I have sacrificed for you! As well try to raise the dead as a Dawley from the dust he grovels in! Why did I consent to visit this place? It was for you. I came, I heard that you had disgraced yourself in drunkenness at Fallow field, and I toiled to eclipse that, and I did. Young Jocelyn thought you were what you are I could spit the word at you! and I dazzled him to give you time to win this minx, who will spin you like a top if you get her. That Mr. Forth knew it as well, and that vile young Laxley. They are gone! Why are they gone? Because they thwarted me--they crossed your interests--I said they should go. George Uplift is going to-day. The house is left to us; and I believe firmly that Mrs. Bonner"s will contains a memento of the effect of our frequent religious conversations. So you would leave now? I suspect n.o.body, but we are all human, and Wills would not have been tampered with for the first time. Besides, and the Countess"s imagination warmed till she addressed her brother as a confederate, "we shall then see to whom Beckley Court is bequeathed. Either way it may be yours. Yours! and you suffer their plots to drive you forth. Do you not perceive that Mama was brought here to-day on purpose to shame us and cast us out? We are surrounded by conspiracies, but if our faith is pure who can hurt us? If I had not that consolation--would that you had it, too!--would it be endurable to me to see those menials whispering and showing their forced respect? As it is, I am fortified to forgive them. I breathe another atmosphere. Oh, Evan! you did not attend to Mr. Parsley"s beautiful last sermon. The Church should have been your vocation."
From vehemence the Countess had subsided to a mournful gentleness. She had been too excited to notice any changes in her brother"s face during her speech, and when he turned from the door, and still eyeing her fixedly, led her to a chair, she fancied from his silence that she had subdued and convinced him. A delicious sense of her power, succeeded by a weary reflection that she had constantly to employ it, occupied her mind, and when presently she looked up from the shade of her hand, it was to agitate her head pitifully at her brother.
"All this you have done for me, Louisa," he said.
"Yes, Evan,--all!" she fell into his tone.
"And you are the cause of Laxley"s going? Did you know anything of that anonymous letter?"
He was squeezing her hand-with grateful affection, as she was deluded to imagine.
"Perhaps, dear,--a little," her conceit prompted her to admit.
"Did you write it?"
He gazed intently into her eyes, and as the question shot like a javelin, she tried ineffectually to disengage her fingers; her delusion waned; she took fright, but it was too late; he had struck the truth out of her before she could speak. Her spirit writhed like a snake in his hold. Innumerable things she was ready to say, and strove to; the words would not form on her lips.
"I will be answered, Louisa."
The stern manner he had a.s.sumed gave her no hope of eluding him. With an inward gasp, and a sensation of nakedness altogether new to her, dismal, and alarming, she felt that she could not lie. Like a creature forsaken of her staunchest friend, she could have flung herself to the floor. The next instant her natural courage restored her. She jumped up and stood at bay.
"Yes. I did."
And now he was weak, and she was strong, and used her strength.
"I wrote it to save you. Yes. Call on your Creator, and be my judge, if you dare. Never, never will you meet a soul more utterly devoted to you, Evan. This Mr. Forth, this Laxley, I said, should go, because they were resolved to ruin you, and make you base. They are gone. The responsibility I take on myself. Nightly--during the remainder of my days--I will pray for pardon."
He raised his head to ask sombrely: "Is your handwriting like Laxley"s?"
"It seems so," she answered, with a pitiful sneer for one who could arrest her exaltation to inquire about minutiae. "Right or wrong, it is done, and if you choose to be my judge, think whether your own conscience is clear. Why did you come here? Why did you stay? You have your free will,--do you deny that? Oh, I will take the entire blame, but you must not be a hypocrite, Van. You know you were aware. We had no confidences. I was obliged to treat you like a child; but for you to pretend to suppose that roses grow in your path--oh, that is paltry! You are a hypocrite or an imbecile, if that is your course."
Was he not something of the former? The luxurious mist in which he had been living, dispersed before his sister"s bitter words, and, as she designed he should, he felt himself her accomplice. But, again, reason struggled to enlighten him; for surely he would never have done a thing so disproportionate to the end to be gamed! It was the unconnected action of his brain that thus advised him. No thoroughly-fashioned, clear-spirited man conceives wickedness impossible to him: but wickedness so largely mixed with folly, the best of us may reject as not among our temptations. Evan, since his love had dawned, had begun to talk with his own nature, and though he knew not yet how much it would stretch or contract, he knew that he was weak and could not perform moral wonders without severe struggles. The cynic may add, if he likes--or without potent liquors.
Could he be his sister"s judge? It is dangerous for young men to be too good. They are so sweeping in their condemnations, so sublime in their conceptions of excellence, and the most finished Puritan cannot out-do their demands upon frail humanity. Evan"s momentary self-examination saved him from this, and he told the Countess, with a sort of cold compa.s.sion, that he himself dared not blame her.
His tone was distinctly wanting in admiration of her, but she was somewhat over-wrought, and leaned her shoulder against him, and became immediately his affectionate, only too-zealous, sister; dearly to be loved, to be forgiven, to be prized: and on condition of inserting a special pet.i.tion for pardon in her orisons, to live with a calm conscience, and to be allowed to have her own way with him during the rest of her days.
It was a happy union--a picture that the Countess was lured to admire in the gla.s.s.
Sad that so small a murmur should destroy it for ever!
"What?" cried the Countess, bursting from his arm.
"Go?" she emphasized with the hardness of determined unbelief, as if plucking the words, one by one, out of her reluctant ears. "Go to Lady Jocelyn, and tell her I wrote the letter?"
"You can do no less, I fear," said Evan, eyeing the floor and breathing a deep breath.
"Then I did hear you correctly? Oh, you must be mad-idiotic! There, pray go away, Evan. Come in the morning. You are too much for my nerves."
Evan rose, putting out his hand as if to take hers and plead with her.
She rejected the first motion, and repeated her desire for him to leave her; saying, cheerfully--
"Good night, dear; I dare say we shan"t meet till the morning."
"You can"t let this injustice continue a single night, Louisa?" said he.