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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Whiteladies," Mrs. Oliphant weaves a rich tapestry of Victorian social dynamics and familial intrigue through her evocative prose and nuanced character development. Set in a picturesque estate that mirrors the complexities of its inhabitants, the narrative unfolds the lives of the Whiteladies family, exploring themes of love, duty, and societal expectations. Oliphant's literary style is marked by her keen psychological insights and her ability to illuminate the subtleties of human relationships, firmly situating the novel within the context of 19th-century social realism. The juxtaposition of privilege and moral quandaries invites readers to question the very nature of happiness in a rigidly stratified society. Mrs. Oliphant, a prolific writer and astute observer of her time, was greatly influenced by her own experiences as a woman navigating the literary landscape of the Victorian era. Born in 1828, she faced personal tragedies and societal limitations that informed her compassionate yet critical perspective on the roles assigned to women. Her deep understanding of the human condition and the complexities of domestic life profoundly shapes the narrative of "Whiteladies," making it a reflection of her own struggles against the backdrop of poetic realism. Readers looking for a compelling exploration of Victorian values and personal dilemmas will find "Whiteladies" captivating. With its intricate plot and richly drawn characters, the novel serves as a poignant commentary on the intersection of personal aspiration and societal constraint, offering timeless insights that resonate across generations. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Whiteladies
Table of Contents
Introduction
When blood, land, and reputation pull in different directions, the heart must decide what kind of legacy it will protect. Whiteladies, by Mrs. Oliphant (Margaret Oliphant), is a Victorian social and domestic novel set in nineteenth-century Britain, with the life of an old country house at its center. First published in the 1870s, it belongs to the later Victorian period and reflects the era’s preoccupations with property, rank, and moral responsibility. The book’s atmosphere is that of parlors, lanes, and parish ties, where public opinion travels quickly and private motives are tested under the steady gaze of community life.
Mrs. Oliphant was a prolific and discerning observer of provincial society, and Whiteladies exemplifies her gift for weaving social nuance with moral inquiry. She writes with a composed, often gently ironic voice that inspects how families manage appearances, how women negotiate constraint, and how class expectations mold choice. Rather than leaning on sensational shocks, she builds pressure through circumstance and character. The result is a narrative attentive to everyday textures—letters, visits, confidences—while keeping sight of the broader forces that shape them. Readers will recognize her signature combination of sympathy and skepticism, a balance that allows the story’s dilemmas to register with humane clarity.
Without revealing later turns, Whiteladies begins by situating readers within the orbit of a venerable estate and those linked to it by kinship, service, and proximity. Questions around succession, security, and the right to belong stir unease that spreads from the house’s threshold into the surrounding community. The plot draws together would-be heirs, trusted advisers, and observant neighbors, letting seemingly small decisions accrue weight. The house itself becomes a figure in the narrative—a repository of memory and a prize that confers status. The initial tensions promise a story of shifting allegiances and competing claims, told with restraint rather than melodrama.
The reading experience is that of a measured, immersive Victorian novel. Oliphant’s omniscient narration moves deftly between interior reflection and social scene, illuminating motives without reducing them to tidy judgments. The pace allows for atmosphere and detail: the cadence of household routines, the choreography of visits, the subtleties of tone in a drawing-room conversation. Yet beneath the calm surface lies a current of uncertainty, as legalities, finances, and family histories press inward. The style is precise, observant, and quietly witty, inviting readers to weigh the evidence of conduct as carefully as any character must do to secure a future.
Key themes arise organically from this setting: inheritance as both legal mechanism and moral test; identity anchored to place; reputation as a currency that can be defended or squandered. The novel probes duty and desire in the context of class expectations, and considers how women, in particular, navigate obligations that afford little room for error. It is equally alert to how rumor operates—how stories about a family become part of the family’s fate. Through these lenses, Whiteladies examines the difference between possession and stewardship, and the costs of protecting a name when truth and affection do not align neatly.
For contemporary readers, the book’s questions resonate beyond Victorian parlors. Whiteladies contemplates who is welcomed into institutions and who is kept at the threshold, how privilege is justified, and how communities police boundaries in the name of continuity. Its attention to the ethics of ownership and the weight of expectation echoes current debates about legacy and access. The portrait of constrained agency—especially for women—invites reflection on how structures limit choice and how individuals improvise within them. It also speaks to the emotional meaning of home, asking what people owe to the places that shaped them and what those places owe in return.
As an entry in Mrs. Oliphant’s substantial body of work, Whiteladies offers a compelling blend of social observation and psychological insight rooted in the later Victorian world. It rewards patient reading with finely drawn characters whose virtues and blind spots feel earned, and with scenes that reveal how ordinary politeness can mask profound stakes. The novel’s enduring appeal lies in its moral attentiveness: it neither flatters nor condemns its figures, but follows them as they reckon with the legacies they inherit and the ones they will pass on. In doing so, it invites readers to consider the kind of inheritance they themselves value.
Synopsis
Whiteladies opens in a settled English county, where a venerable house stands as the emblem of lineage and local memory. The estate’s long history, once associated with a religious foundation and later with a single family’s name, shapes the expectations of all who live under its roof. Domestic routines, parish ties, and visits from neighboring gentry convey a calm continuity that is, nevertheless, under pressure from dwindling income and delicate proprieties. A widowed matriarch, her household of dependent gentlewomen, and a young heir apparent uphold the fabric of respectability. The narrative establishes place, custom, and obligation before revealing the uncertainties that lie beneath this ordered surface.
The household’s hopes rest on the heir, whose future is the assumed guarantee of Whiteladies’ continuity. He is affectionate and impressionable, and his education—moral as much as academic—is an ongoing concern. Well-meaning advisers include a cautious solicitor and clerical friends, who interpret duty through the lenses of law and conscience. Society’s rituals—calling, dinners, parish committees—quietly measure the young man’s progress. A potential alliance with a reputable neighboring family, much discussed and never crudely commercial, is part of the unspoken plan for security. Through these scenes, the narrative shows expectations shaping character, while hinting that affection, pride, and circumstance may pull against orderly intention.
The calm is unsettled by news that a distant claimant may exist with grounds to challenge the accepted succession. Rumors precede a stranger’s arrival, bringing documents, memories of far-off places, and a manner neither pushy nor cringing. The possibility that a past relationship produced an heir introduces a question more moral than sensational: what is owed to truth when truth threatens comfort? The matriarch receives the newcomer with scrupulous civility, balancing hospitality with a resolve to protect her own. Local talk grows lively but remains within decorum, as the narrative shifts from pastoral routine to a careful inquiry into names, dates, and obligations long assumed but never tested.
Investigation begins in parish registers, solicitors’ files, and the recollections of old servants who remember what formal records omit. The stranger submits to scrutiny; the household braces for consequences. Letters are sought, signatures compared, and silences weighed. The heir, thrown off balance, fluctuates between indignation and curiosity, his temper sharpened by the fear of losing more than property. Meanwhile, the women of the house—accustomed to managing appearances—demonstrate a steadier judgment, mindful of how pride and prudence must coexist. Neighbors take sides with polite caution, while the legal framework of entail and inheritance gradually comes into focus as a living force, not merely an abstract rule.
Against this backdrop, personal feelings deepen the stakes. Romantic inclinations surface around the heir, whose attractions lean toward both independence of spirit and the safety of a prudent match. Social gatherings—garden parties, parish fairs, music in drawing rooms—offer occasions where manners display character more clearly than speeches. The claimant’s reserve, sympathy for humbler neighbors, and aversion to show draw quiet notice. The heir’s small misjudgments, visible only to those who know him, grow consequential in a crowded room. Yet the story refrains from melodrama, allowing chance encounters, overheard remarks, and social obligations to advance the action while preserving the impression of real lives unfolding under ordinary constraints.
Finances tighten as inquiries lengthen and legal costs accumulate, making economies in the great house a matter of quiet pride and private worry. The matriarch weighs household adjustments that maintain dignity without theatrics. Dependents consider prospects and alliances as insurance against sudden change. The solicitor outlines options in measured tones, explaining how a trust, a mortgage, or a compromise might preserve appearances and realities alike. Within these choices lies a moral calculus: safeguarding employment for longtime servants, honoring the past, and refusing to defend privilege at any cost. The estate itself becomes a character—beautiful yet burdensome—its preservation demanding both sacrifice and imaginative stewardship.
A turning point arrives with new testimony and papers from abroad, carried by a traveler whose memories link disparate worlds. An illness in the elder generation and a small domestic crisis focus attention, pressing the household toward decisions that cannot be postponed. Quiet acts of kindness reveal loyalties not visible in drawing-room debates. One figure, previously underestimated, shows steadiness; another recognizes the costs of previous evasions. Legal clarity nears, but the narrative emphasizes conduct over technicalities, making the question not only who has the right, but how that right is acknowledged. The momentum shifts from defense of status to the search for a just settlement.
The resolution unfolds with restraint. A course is chosen that preserves honor as carefully as it assigns responsibility. Some ties loosen, others are newly contracted, and personal expectations adjust to the realities that evidence and conscience require. The village, attentive but discreet, accepts the outcome as part of its evolving history. Without detailing the final distribution, the story conveys that Whiteladies will endure, though not unaltered. Departures occur without bitterness; arrivals are greeted without triumph. What remains is a renewed understanding that heritage is sustained by character as much as by name or deed—by the daily work of those who inhabit a tradition rather than merely inherit it.
Whiteladies ultimately presents a study of property, identity, and duty in a society governed by law and softened by conscience. It shows how reputation, affection, and right are negotiated through patience and civility, not spectacle. Women’s influence—practical, moral, and strategic—shapes outcomes even where formal power is limited. The novel’s abiding message is that legitimacy rests on more than documentation: it requires conduct worthy of trust. By tracing the inquiry from rumor to resolution without sensational disclosure, the narrative affirms continuity grounded in fairness. The estate stands at the end not as a prize, but as a trust linking past and future through responsible human choice.
Historical Context
Set in the social and material world of mid-to-late Victorian England, Whiteladies unfolds around a rural country house and its surrounding parish life, where land, lineage, and local office still confer tangible power. The estate-based setting evokes the English shires, with a nearby market town, a parish church, and the encroaching presence of railway and telegraph that tie the countryside to London. Published in the mid-1870s, the novel reflects a moment when old county families faced legal, economic, and political shifts that were altering their authority. The house itself, bearing a name suggestive of monastic origins, anchors the narrative in a landscape layered with deep English historical memory.
The Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII (1536–1541) redistributed ecclesiastical lands to lay owners, seeding the English countryside with estates built from or beside former religious houses. The name Whiteladies recalls foundations like White Ladies Priory in Shropshire, an Augustinian house dissolved in 1536, later associated with Charles II’s flight after the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Such sites retained ruins, chapels, and recusant lore that endured in local consciousness. The novel’s estate name and atmosphere of inherited sanctity and obligation mirror this post-dissolution legacy, in which sacred prestige became transmuted into secular status, binding the proprietors to a past that is at once dignifying and burdensome.
The legal framework of landholding shaped gentry life. English primogeniture and fee tail favored male succession, while marriage settlements locked property into family lines. The Fines and Recoveries Act (1833) simplified disentailing, enabling owners to convert fee tail into fee simple; the Wills Act (1837) standardized testamentary practice; and the Judicature Acts (1873–1875) fused law and equity, streamlining disputes over trusts and inheritance. Later, the Settled Land Act (1882) empowered life tenants to sell or improve entailed estates. Whiteladies reflects anxieties born of these mechanisms—trustees, life interests, and perilous expectations—dramatizing how a family’s identity can be imperiled or preserved by the technicalities of settlement, legitimacy, and entail.
The economic backbone of such estates was agriculture, and the nineteenth century brought destabilization. The repeal of the Corn Laws (1846) exposed British grain to global competition, advantaging urban consumers but pressuring rural rents. From 1873 a prolonged agricultural depression set in; cheap North American wheat and improved steam shipping cut prices roughly in half by the 1890s, while livestock diseases and wet seasons compounded losses. Landowners mortgaged properties, consolidated tenancies, or sold ancestral acres; some sought heiresses, others diversified into urban investments. Whiteladies mirrors this transformation, presenting estate finance as a precarious calculus that links moral authority to fiscal solvency and makes marriage, inheritance, and sale urgent social strategies.
Victorian electoral reform reconfigured county influence. The Great Reform Act (1832) redistributed seats and broadened the borough franchise; the Second Reform Act (1867) enfranchised many urban working men; the Third Reform Act (1884) extended a comparable franchise to county householders. The Secret Ballot Act (1872) weakened landlord pressure, and the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act (1883) curtailed lavish canvassing. Justices of the peace and poor-law guardians still mattered locally, but deference ebbed as voters multiplied. Whiteladies reflects the waning, though persistent, sway of landowners over parish and county affairs, suggesting a world where prestige must constantly be performed and defended as electoral norms and administrative reforms reshape the countryside’s political choreography.
Transport and communications altered the tempo of rural life. Railway expansion—from trunk lines like the London and Birmingham Railway (opened 1838) and the Great Western to Bristol (1841) to branch lines by mid-century—linked shire towns to the metropolis; by 1870 Britain had over 15,000 miles of track. The Penny Post (1840) and electric telegraph (rapidly spreading in the 1850s) accelerated news, finance, and family negotiations. These infrastructures carried industrial fortunes and metropolitan fashions into county drawing rooms and made discreet retreats to London easier. Whiteladies resonates with this connectedness: changes in status, solvency, and reputation can move at rail speed, while outsiders with new money can appear, compete, and unsettle established hierarchies.
Victorian law defined women’s property and agency. Under coverture, a married woman’s legal identity merged with her husband’s; reforms gradually loosened this grip. The Custody of Infants Act (1839) and later acts modestly improved maternal rights; the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act (1857) established civil divorce; the Married Women’s Property Act (1870) allowed wives to keep earnings and small legacies; and the stronger 1882 act granted married women control over real and personal property. Such statutes reshaped settlements, dowries, and expectations around inheritance. Whiteladies reflects these tensions: women must navigate guardians, trustees, and strategic marriages, and their security or vulnerability becomes a barometer of how the law distributes power within the ostensibly harmonious country house.
As a social critique, the novel exposes the precariousness of rank propped upon legal technicalities, uneven economic tides, and a gendered hierarchy of rights. It depicts the country house as both sanctuary and snare, where the moral language of lineage masks systemic inequities in inheritance, marital law, and local governance. By invoking monastic memory and modern market pressures, Whiteladies interrogates how sacred aura and public duty can be harnessed to protect privilege while marginalizing dependents and outsiders. In tracing the friction between landed honor and cash flow, and between paternalism and electoral accountability, it indicts the period’s complacency about class power and the civil disabilities of women.
Whiteladies
CHAPTER I.
It was an old manor-house, not a deserted convent, as you might suppose by the name. The conventual buildings from which no doubt the place had taken its name, had dropped away, bit by bit, leaving nothing but one wall of the chapel, now closely veiled and mantled with ivy, behind the orchard, about a quarter of a mile from the house. The lands were Church lands, but the house was a lay house, of an older date than the family who had inhabited it from Henry VIII[1].’s time, when the priory was destroyed, and its possessions transferred to the manor. No one could tell very clearly how this transfer was made, or how the family of Austins came into being. Before that period no trace of them was to be found. They sprang up all at once, not rising gradually into power, but appearing full-blown as proprietors of the manor, and possessors of all the confiscated lands. There was a tradition in the family of some wild, tragical union of an emancipated nun[2] with a secularized friar—a kind of repetition of Luther and his Catherine, but with results less comfortable than those which followed the marriage of those German souls. With the English convertites the issue was not happy, as the story goes. Their broken vows haunted them; their possessions, which were not theirs, but the Church’s, lay heavy on their consciences; and they died early, leaving descendants with whose history a thread of perpetual misfortune was woven. The family history ran in a succession of long minorities, the line of inheritance gliding from one branch to the other, the direct thread breaking constantly. To die young, and leave orphan children behind; or to die younger still, letting the line drop and fall back upon cadets of the house, was the usual fate of the Austins of Whiteladies—unfortunate people who bore the traces of their original sin in their very name.
Miss Susan Austin was, at the moment when this story begins, seated in the porch of the manor, on a blazing day of July, when every scrap of shade was grateful and pleasant, and when the deep coolness of the old-fashioned porch was a kind of paradise. It was a very fine old house, half brick, half timber; the eaves of the high gables carved into oaken lace-work; the lattice casements shining out of velvet clothing of ivy; and the great projecting window of the old hall, stepping out upon the velvet lawn, all glass from roof to ground, with only one richly-carved strip of panelling to frame it into the peaked roof. The door stood wide open, showing a long passage floored with red bricks, one wall of which was all casement, the other broken by carved and comely oaken doors, three or four centuries old. The porch was a little wider than the passage, and had a mullioned window in it, by the side of the great front opening, all clustered over with climbing roses. Looking out from the red-floored passage, the eye went past Miss Susan in the porch, to the sweet, luxuriant greenness of the lime-trees on the farther side of the lawn, which ended the prospect. The lawn was velvet green; the trees were silken soft, and laden with blossoms; the roses fluttered in at the open porch window, and crept about the door. Every beam in the long passage, every door, the continuous line of casement, the many turns by which this corridor led, meandering, with wealth of cool and airy space, toward the house, were all centuries old, bearing the stamp of distant generations upon the carved wood and endless windings; but without, everything was young and sunny,—grass and daisies and lime-blossoms, bees humming, birds twittering, the roses waving up and down in the soft wind. I wish the figure of Miss Susan had belonged to this part of the landscape; but, alas! historical accuracy forbids romancing. She was the virtual mistress of the house, in absence of a better; but she was not young, nor had she been so for many a long day.
Miss Susan was about sixty, a comely woman of her age, with the fair hair and blue eyes of the Austins. Her hair was so light that it did not turn gray; and her eyes, though there were wrinkles round them, still preserved a certain innocence and candor of aspect which, ill-natured people said, had helped Miss Susan to make many a hard bargain, so guileless was their aspect. She was dressed in a gray gown of woollen stuff (alpaca, I think, for it is best to be particular); her hair was still abundant, and she had no cap on it, nor any covering. In her day the adoption of a cap had meant the acceptation of old age, and Miss Susan had no intention of accepting that necessity a moment before she was obliged to do so. The sun, which had begun to turn westward, had been blazing into the drawing-room, which looked that way, and Miss Susan had been driven out of her own chair and her own corner by it—an unwarrantable piece of presumption. She had been obliged to fly before it, and she had taken refuge in the porch, which faced to the north, and where shelter was to be found. She had her knitting in her hands; but if her countenance gave any clue to her mind’s occupation, something more important than knitting occupied her thoughts. She sat on the bench which stood on the deepest side between the inner and the outer entrance, knitting silently, the air breathing soft about her, the roses rustling. For a long time she did not once raise her head. The gardener was plodding about his work outside, now and then crossing the lawn with heavy, leisurely foot, muffled by the velvet of the old immemorial turf. Within there would now and then come an indistinct sound of voice or movement through the long passage; but nothing was visible, except the still gray figure in the shade of the deep porch.
By-and-by, however, this silence was broken. First came a maid, carrying a basket, who was young and rosy, and lighted up the old passage with a gleam of lightness and youthful color.
“Where are you going, Jane?” said Miss Susan.
“To the almshouse[3], please,” said Jane, passing out with a curtsey.
After her came another woman, at ten minutes’ interval, older and staider, in trim bonnet and shawl, with a large carpet-bag.
“Where are you going, Martha?” said the lady again.
“Please, ma’am, to the almshouse,” said Martha.
Miss Susan shrugged her shoulders slightly, but said no more.
A few minutes of silence passed, and then a heavy foot, slow and solemn, which seemed to come in procession from a vast distance, echoing over miles of passage, advanced gradually, with a protestation in every footfall. It was the butler, Stevens, a portly personage, with a countenance somewhat flushed with care and discontent.
“Where are you going, Stevens?” said Miss Susan.
“I’m going where I don’t want to go, mum,” said Stevens, “and where I don’t hold with; and if I might make so bold as to say so, where you ought to put a stop to, if so be as you don’t want to be ruinated[4] and done for—you and Miss Augustine, and all the house.”
“‘Ruinated’ is a capital word,” said Miss Susan, blandly, “very forcible and expressive; but, Stevens, I don’t think we’ll come to that yet awhile.”
“Going on like this is as good a way as any,” grumbled the man, “encouraging an idle set of good-for-nothings to eat up ladies as takes that turn. I’ve seen it afore, Miss Austin. You gets imposed upon, right hand and left hand; and as for doing good!—No, no, this ain’t the way.”
Stevens, too had a basket to carry, and the afternoon was hot and the sun blazing. Between the manor and the almshouses there lay a long stretch of hot road, without any shade to speak of. He had reason, perhaps, to grumble over his unwilling share in these liberal charities. Miss Susan shrugged her shoulders again, this time with a low laugh at the butler’s perturbation, and went on with her knitting. In a few minutes another step became audible, coming along the passage—a soft step with a little hesitation in it—every fifth or sixth footfall having a slight pause or shuffle which came in a kind of rhythm. Then a tall figure came round the corner, relieved against the old carved doorway at the end and the bright redness of the brick floor; a tall, very slight woman, peculiarly dressed in a long, limp gown, of still lighter gray than the one Miss Susan wore, which hung closely about her, with long hanging sleeves hanging half way down the skirt of her dress, and something like a large hood depending from her shoulders. As the day was so warm, she had not drawn this hood over her head, but wore a light black gauze scarf, covering her light hair. She was not much younger than her sister, but her hair was still lighter, having some half visible mixture of gray, which whitened its tone. Her eyes were blue, but pale, with none of the warmth in them of Miss Susan’s. She carried her head a little on one side, and, in short, she was like nothing in the world so much as a mediæval saint[5] out of a painted window, of the period when painted glass was pale in color, and did not blaze in blues and rubies. She had a basket too, carried in both her hands, which came out of the long falling lines of her sleeves with a curious effect. Miss Augustine’s basket, however, was full of flowers—roses, and some long white stalks of lilies, not quite over, though it was July, and long branches of jasmine covered with white stars.
“So you are going to the almshouses too?” said her sister. “I think we shall soon have to go and live there ourselves, as Stevens says, if this is how you are going on.”
“Ah, Susan, that would indeed be the right thing to do, if you could make up your mind to it,” said her sister, in a low, soft, plaintive voice, “and let the Church have her own again. Then perhaps our sacrifice, dear, might take away the curse.”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Miss Susan. “I don’t believe in curses. But, Austine, my dear, everybody tells me you are doing a great deal too much.”
“Can one do too much for God’s poor?[1q]”
“If we were sure of that now,” said Miss Susan, shaking her head; “but some of them, I am afraid, belong to—the other person. However, I won’t have you crossed; but, Austine, you might show a little moderation. You have carried off Jane and Martha and Stevens: if any one comes, who is to open the door?”
“The doors are all open, and you are here,” said Miss Augustine calmly. “You would not have the poor suffer for such a trifle? But I hope you will have no visitors to disturb your thoughts. I have been meditating much this morning upon that passage, ‘Behold, our days are as a weaver’s shuttle.’ Think of it, dear. We have got much, much to do, Susan, to make up for the sins of our family.”
“Fiddlesticks,” said Miss Susan again; but she said it half playfully, with tones more gentle than her decided expression of face would have prophesied. “Go away to your charities,” she added. “If you do harm, you do it in a good way, and mean well, poor soul, God knows; so I hope no mischief will come of it. But send me Stevens home as soon as may be, Austine, for the sake of my possible meditations, if for nothing else; for there’s nobody left in the house but old Martin and the boy, and the women in the kitchen.”
“What should we want with so many servants?” said Miss Augustine with a sigh; and she walked slowly out of the porch, under the rose-wreaths, and across the lawn, the sun blazing upon her light dress and turning it into white, and beating fiercely on her uncovered head.
“Take a parasol, for heaven’s sake,” said Miss Susan; but the white figure glided on, taking no notice. The elder sister paused for a moment in her knitting, and looked after the other with that look, half tender, half provoked, with which we all contemplate the vagaries of those whom we love, but do not sympathize with, and whose pursuits are folly to us. Miss Susan possessed what is called “strong sense[6],” but she was not intolerant, as people of strong sense so often are; at least she was not intolerant to her sister, who was the creature most unlike her, and whom she loved best in the world.
The manor-house did not belong to the Misses Austin, but they had lived in it all their lives. Their family history was not a bright one, as I have said; and their own immediate portion of the family had not fared better than the previous generations. They had one brother who had gone into the diplomatic service, and had married abroad and died young, before the death of their father, leaving two children, a boy and a girl, who had been partially brought up with the aunts. Their mother was a Frenchwoman, and had married a second time. The two children, Herbert and Reine, had passed half of their time with her, half with their father’s sisters; for Miss Susan had been appointed their guardian by their father, who had a high opinion of her powers. I do not know that this mode of education was very good for the young people; but Herbert was one of those gentle boys predestined to a short life, who take little harm by spoiling. He was dying now at one-and-twenty, among the Swiss hills, whither he had been taken, when the weather grew hot, from one of the invalid refuges on the Mediterranean shore. He was perishing slowly, and all false hope was over, and everybody knew it—a hard fate enough for his family; but there were other things involved which made it harder still. The estate of Whiteladies was strictly entailed. Miss Susan and Miss Augustine Austin had been well provided for by a rich mother, but their French sister-in-law had no money and another family, and Reine had no right to the lands, or to anything but a very humble portion left to her by her father; and the old ladies had the prospect before them of being turned out of the house they loved, the house they had been born in, as soon as their nephew’s feeble existence should terminate. The supposed heir-at-law was a gentleman in the neighborhood, distantly related, and deeply obnoxious to them. I say the supposed heir—for there was a break in the Austin pedigree, upon which, at the present time, the Misses Austin and all their friends dwelt with exceeding insistance. Two or three generations before, the second son of the family had quarrelled with his father and disappeared entirely from England. If he had any descendants, they, and not Mr. Farrel-Austin, were the direct heirs. Miss Susan had sent envoys over all the known world seeking for these problematic descendants of her granduncle Everard. Another young Austin, of a still more distant stock, called Everard too, and holding a place in the succession after Mr. Farrel-Austin, had gone to America even, on the track of some vague Austins there, who were not the people he sought; and though Miss Susan would not give up the pursuit, yet her hopes were getting feeble; and there seemed no likely escape from the dire necessity of giving up the manor, and the importance (which she did not dislike) of the position it gave her as virtual mistress of a historical house, to a man she disliked and despised, the moment poor Herbert’s breath should be out of his body. Peacefully, therefore, as the scene had looked before the interruptions above recorded, Miss Susan was not happy, nor were her thoughts of a cheerful character. She loved her nephew, and the approaching end to which all his relations had long looked forward hung over her like a cloud, with that dull sense of pain, soon to become more acute, which impending misfortune, utterly beyond our power to avert, so often brings; and mingled with this were the sharper anxieties and annoyances of the quest she had undertaken, and its ill success up to this moment; and the increasing probability that the man she disliked, and no other, must be her successor, her supplanter in her home. Her mind was full of such thoughts; but she was a woman used to restrain her personal sentiments, and keep them to herself, having been during her long life much alone, and without any companion in whom she was accustomed to confide. The two sisters had never been separated in their lives; but Augustine, not Susan, was the one who disclosed her feelings and sought for sympathy. In most relations of life there is one passive and one active, one who seeks and one who gives. Miss Augustine was the weaker of the two, but in this respect she was the more prominent. She was always the first to claim attention, to seek the interest of the other; and for years long her elder sister had been glad to give what she asked, and to keep silent about her own sentiments, which the other might not have entered into. “What was the use?” Miss Susan said to herself; and shrugged her shoulders and kept her troubles, which were very different from Augustine’s in her own breast.
How pleasant it was out there in the porch! the branches of the lime-trees blown about softly by the wind; a daisy here and there lifting its roguish saucy head, which somehow had escaped the scythe, from the close-mown lawn; the long garlands of roses playing about the stone mullions of the window, curling round the carved lintel of the door; the cool passage on the other side leading into the house, with its red floor and carved doors, and long range of casement. Miss Susan scarcely lifted her eyes from her knitting, but every detail of the peaceful scene was visible before her. No wonder—she had learned them all by heart in the long progress of the years. She knew every twig on the limes, every bud on the roses. She sat still, scarcely moving, knitting in with her thread many an anxious thought, many a wandering fancy, but with a face serene enough, and all about her still. It had never been her habit to betray what was in her to an unappreciative world.
She brightened up a little, however, and raised her head, when she heard the distant sound of a whistle coming far off through the melodious Summer air. It caught her attention, and she raised her head for a second, and a smile came over her face. “It must be Everard,” she said to herself, and listened, and made certain, as the air, a pretty gay French air, became more distinct. No one else would whistle that tune. It was one of Reine’s French songs—one of those graceful little melodies which are so easy to catch and so effective. Miss Susan was pleased that he should whistle one of Reine’s tunes. She had her plans and theories on this point, as may be hereafter shown; and Everard besides was a favorite of her own, independent of Reine. Her countenance relaxed, her knitting felt lighter in her hand, as the whistle came nearer, and then the sound of a firm, light step. Miss Susan let the smile dwell upon her face, not dismissing it, and knitted on, expecting calmly till he should make his appearance. He had come to make his report to her of another journey, from which he had just returned, in search of the lost Austins. It had not been at all to his own interest to pursue this search, for, failing Mr. Farrel-Austin, he himself would be the heir-at-law; but Everard, as Miss Susan had often said to herself, was not the sort of person to think of his own advantage. He was, if anything, too easy on that head—too careless of what happened to himself individually. He was an orphan with a small income—that “just enough” which is so fatal an inheritance for a young man—nominally at “the Bar,” actually nowhere in the race of life, but very ready to do anything for anybody, and specially for his old cousins, who had been good to him in his youth. He had a small house of his own on the river not far off, which the foolish young man lived in only a few weeks now and then, but which he refused to let, for no reason but because it had been his mother’s, and her memory (he thought) inhabited the place. Miss Susan was so provoked with this and other follies that she could have beaten Everard often, and then hugged him—a mingling of feelings not unusual. But as Everard is just about to appear in his own person, I need not describe him further. His whistle came along, advancing through the air, the pleasantest prelude to his appearance. Something gay and free and sweet was in the sound, the unconscious self-accompaniment of a light heart. He whistled as he went for want of thought—nay, not for want of thought, but because all the movements of his young soul were as yet harmonious, lightsome, full of hope and sweetness; his gay personality required expression; he was too light-hearted, too much at home in the world, and friendly, to come silent along the sunshiny way. So, as he could not talk to the trees and the air, like a poetical hero in a tragedy, Everard made known his good-will to everything, and delicious, passive happiness, by his whistle; and he whistled like a lark, clear and sweet; it was one of his accomplishments. He whistled Miss Susan’s old airs when she played them on her old piano, in charming time and harmony; and he did not save his breath for drawing-room performances, but sent before him these pleasant intimations of his coming, as far as a mile off. To which Miss Susan sat and listened, waiting for his arrival, with a smile on her face.
CHAPTER II.
“IHAVE been waiting for you these fifteen minutes,” she said.
“What—you knew I was coming?”
“I heard you, boy. If you choose to whistle ‘Ce que je desire’ through St. Austin’s parish, you may make up your mind to be recognized. Ah! you make me think of my poor children, the one dying, the other nursing him—”
“Don’t!” said the young man, holding up his hand, “it is heart-breaking; I dare not think of them, for my part. Aunt Susan, the missing Austins are not to be found in Cornwall. I went to Bude, as you told me, and found a respectable grocer, who came from Berks, to be sure, and knew very little about his grandfather, but is not our man. I traced him back to Flitton, where he comes from, and found out his pedigree. I have broken down entirely. Did you know that the Farrel-Austins were at it too?”
“At what?”
“This search after our missing kinsfolk. They have just come back, and they look very important; I don’t know if they have found out anything.”
“Then you have been visiting them?” said Miss Susan, bending her head over her knitting, with a scarcely audible sigh; it would have been inaudible to a stranger, but Everard knew what it meant.
“I called—to ask if they had got back, that was all,” he said, with a slight movement of impatience; “and they have come back. They had come down the Rhine and by the old Belgian towns, and were full of pictures, and cathedrals, and so forth. But I thought I caught a gleam in old Farrel’s eye.”
“I wonder—but if he had found them out I don’t think there would be much of a gleam in his eye,” said Miss Susan. “Everard, my dear, if we have to give up the house to them, what shall I do? and my poor Austine will feel it still more.”
“If it has to be done, it must be done, I suppose,” said Everard, with a shrug of his shoulders, “but we need not think of it until we are obliged; and besides, Aunt Susan, forgive me, if you had to give it up to—poor Herbert himself, you would feel it; and if he should get better, poor fellow, and live, and marry—”
“Ah, my poor boy,” said Miss Susan, “life and marriage are not for him!” She paused a moment and dried her eyes, and gulped down a sob in her throat. “But you may be right,” she said in a low tone, “perhaps, whoever our successors were, we should feel it—even you, Everard.”
“You should never go out of Whiteladies for me,” said the young man, “that you may be sure of; but I shall not have the chance. Farrel-Austin, for the sake of spiting the family generally, will make a point of outliving us all. There is this good in it, however,” he added, with a slight movement of his head, which looked like throwing off a disagreeable impression, and a laugh, “if poor Herbert, or I, supposing such a thing possible, had taken possession, it might have troubled your affection for us, Aunt Susan. Nay, don’t shake your head. In spite of yourself it would have affected you. You would have felt it bitter, unnatural, that the boys you had brought up and fostered should take your house from you. You would have struggled against the feeling, but you could not have helped it, I know.”
“Yes; a great deal you know about an old woman’s feelings,” said Miss Susan with a smile.
“And as for these unknown people, who never heard of Whiteladies, perhaps, and might pull down the old house, or play tricks with it—for instance, your grocer at Bude, the best of men, with a charming respectable family, a pretty daughter, who is a dress-maker, and a son who has charge of the cheese and butter. After all, Aunt Susan, you could not in your heart prefer them even to old Farrel-Austin, who is a gentleman at least, and knows the value of the old house.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Miss Susan, though she had shivered at the description. “Farrel-Austin is our enemy; he has different ways of thinking, different politics, a different side in everything; and besides—don’t laugh in your light way, Everard; everybody does not take things lightly as you do—there is something between him and us, an old grievance that I don’t care to speak of now.”
“So you have told me,” said the young man. “Well, we cannot help it, anyhow; if he must succeed, he must succeed, though I wish it was myself rather for your sake.”
“Not for your own?” said Miss Susan, with restrained sharpness, looking up at him. “The Farrel-Austins are your friends, Everard. Oh, yes, I know! nowadays young people do not take up the prejudices of their elders. It is better and wiser, perhaps, to judge for yourself, to take up no foregone conclusion; but for my part, I am old-fashioned, and full of old traditions. I like my friends, somehow, reasonably or unreasonably, to be on my side.”
“You have never even told me why it was your side,” said Everard, with rising color; “am I to dislike my relations without even knowing why? That is surely going too far in partisanship. I am not fond of Farrel-Austin himself; but the rest of the family—”
“The—girls; that is what you would say.”
“Well, Aunt Susan! the girls if you please; they are very nice girls. Why should I hate them because you hate their father? It is against common-sense, not to speak of anything else.”
There was a little pause after this. Miss Susan had been momentarily happy in the midst of her cares, when Everard’s whistle coming to her over the Summer fields and flowers, had brought to her mind a soft thought of her pretty Reine, and of the happiness that might be awaiting her after her trial was over. But now, by a quick and sudden revulsion this feeling of relief was succeeded by a sudden realization of where Reine might be now, and how occupied, such as comes to us all sometimes, when we have dear friends in distress—in one poignant flash, with a pain which concentrates in itself as much suffering as might make days sad. The tears came to her eyes in a gush. She could not have analyzed the sensations of disappointment, annoyance, displeasure, which conspired to throw back her mind upon the great grief which was in the background of her landscape, always ready to recall itself; but the reader will understand how it came about. A few big drops of moisture fell upon her knitting. “Oh, my poor children!” she said, “how can I think of anything else, when at this very moment, perhaps, for all one knows—”
I believe Everard felt what was the connecting link of thought, or rather feeling, and for the first moment was half angry, feeling himself more or less blamed; but he was too gentle a soul not to be overwhelmed by the other picture suggested, after the first moment. “Is he so very bad, then?” he asked, after an interval, in a low and reverential tone.
“Not worse than he has been for weeks,” said Miss Susan, “but that is as bad as possible; and any day—any day may bring—God help us! in this lovely weather, Everard, with everything blooming, everything gay—him dying, her watching him. Oh! how could I forget them for a moment—how could I think of anything else?”
He made no answer at first, then he said faltering, “We can do them no good by thinking, and it is too cruel, too terrible. Is she alone?”
“No; God forgive me,” said Miss Susan. “I ought to think of the mother who is with her. They say a mother feels most. I don’t know. She has other ties and other children, though I have nothing to say against her. But Reine has no one.”
Was it a kind of unconscious appeal to his sympathy? Miss Susan felt in a moment as if she had compromised the absent girl for whom she herself had formed visions with which Reine had nothing to do.
“Not that Reine is worse off than hundreds of others,” she said, hastily, “and she will never want friends; but the tie between them is very strong. I do wrong to dwell upon it—and to you!”
“Why to me?” said Everard. He had been annoyed to have Reine’s sorrow thrust upon his notice, as if he had been neglecting her; but he was angry now to be thus thrust away from it, as if he had nothing to do with her; the two irritations were antagonistic, yet the same. “You don’t like painful subjects,” said Miss Susan, with a consciousness of punishing him, and vindictive pleasure, good soul as she was, in his punishment. “Let us talk of something else. Austine is at her almshouses, as usual, and she has left me with scarcely a servant in the house. Should any one call, or should tea be wanted, I don’t know what I should do.”
“I don’t suppose I could make the tea,” said Everard. He felt that he was punished, and yet he was glad of the change of subject. He was light-hearted, and did not know anything personally of suffering, and he could not bear to think of grief or misfortune which, as he was fond of saying, he could do no good by thinking of. He felt quite sure of himself that he would have been able to overcome his repugnance to things painful had it been “any good,” but as it was, why make himself unhappy? He dismissed the pain as much as he could, as long as he could, and felt that he could welcome visitors gladly, even at the risk of making the tea, to turn the conversation from the gloomy aspect it had taken. The thought of Herbert and Reine seemed to cloud over the sunshine, and take the sweetness out of the air. It gave his heart a pang as if it had been suddenly compressed; and this pain, this darkening of the world, could do them no good. Therefore, though he was fond of them both, and would have gone to the end of the world to restore health to his sick cousin, or even to do him a temporary pleasure, yet, being helpless toward them, he was glad to get the thoughts of them out of his mind. It spoilt his comfort, and did them no manner of good. Why should he break his own heart by indulging in such unprofitable thoughts?
Miss Susan knew Everard well; but though she had herself abruptly changed the subject in deference to his wishes, she was vexed with him for accepting the change, and felt her heart fill full of bitterness on Reine’s account and poor Herbert’s, whom this light-hearted boy endeavored to forget. She could not speak to him immediately, her heart being sore and angry. He felt this, and had an inkling of the cause, and was half compunctious and half disposed to take the offensive, and ask, “What have I done?” and defend himself, but could not, being guilty in heart. So he stood leaning against the open doorway, with a great rosebranch, which had got loose from its fastenings, blowing in his face, and giving him a careless prick with its thorns, as the wind blew it about. Somehow the long waving bough, with its many roses, which struck him lightly, playfully, across the face as he stood there, with dainty mirth and mischief, made him think of Reine more than Miss Susan’s reminder had done. The prick of the branch woke in his heart that same, sudden, vivid, poignant realization of the gay girl in contrast with her present circumstances, which just a few minutes before had taken Miss Susan, too, by surprise; and thus the two remained, together, yet apart, silent, in a half quarrel, but both thinking of the same subject, and almost with the same thoughts. Just then the rolling of carriage wheels and prance of horses became audible turning the corner of the green shady road into which the gate, at this side of the town, opened—for the manor-house was not secluded in a park, but opened directly from a shady, sylvan road, which had once served as avenue to the old priory. The greater part of the trees that formed the avenue had perished long ago, but some great stumps and roots, and an interrupted line of chance-sown trees, showed where it had been. The two people in the porch were roused by this sound, Miss Susan to a troubled recollection of her servant-less condition, and Everard to mingled annoyance and pleasure as he guessed who the visitors were. He would have been thankful to any one who had come in with a new interest to relieve him from the gloomy thoughts that had taken possession of him against his will, and the new comers, he felt sure, were people whom he liked to meet.
“Here is some one coming to call,” cried Miss Susan in dismay, “and there is no one to open the door!”
“The door is open, and you can receive them here, or take them in, which you please; you don’t require any servant,” said Everard; and then he added, in a low tone, “Aunt Susan, it is the Farrel-Austins; I know their carriage.”
“Ah!” cried Miss Susan, drawing herself up. She did not say any more to him—for was not he a friend and supporter of that objectionable family?—but awaited the unwelcome visitors with dignified rigidity. Their visits to her were very rare, but she had always made a point of enduring and returning these visits with that intense politeness of hostility which transcends every other kind of politeness. She would not consent to look up, nor to watch the alighting of the brightly-clad figures on the other side of the lawn. The old front of the house, the old doorway and porch in which Miss Susan sat, was not now the formal entrance, and consequently there was no carriage road to it; so that the visitors came across the lawn with light Summer dresses and gay ribbons, flowery creatures against the background of green. They were two handsome girls, prettily dressed and smiling, with their father, a dark, insignificant, small man, coming along like a shadow in their train.
“Oh, how cool and sweet it is here!” said Kate, the eldest. “We are so glad to find you at home, Miss Austin. I think we met your sister about an hour ago going through the village. Is it safe for her to walk in the sun without her bonnet? I should think she would get a sunstroke on such a day.”
“She is the best judge,” said Miss Susan, growing suddenly red; then subduing herself as suddenly, “for my part,” she said, “I prefer the porch. It is too warm to go out.”
“Oh, we have been so much about; we have been abroad,” said Sophy, the youngest. “We think nothing of the heat here. English skies and English climate are dreadful after the climate abroad.”
“Ah, are they? I don’t know much of any other,” said Miss Susan. “Good morning, Mr. Farrel. May I show you the way to the drawing-room, as I happen to be here?”
“Oh, mayn’t we go to the hall, please, instead? We are all so fond of the hall,” said Sophy. She was the silly one, the one who said things which the others did not like to say. “Please let us go there; isn’t this the turn to take? Oh, what a dear old house it is, with such funny passages and turnings and windings! If it were ours, I should never sit anywhere but in the hall.”
“Sophy!” said the father, in a warning tone.
“Well, papa! I am not saying anything that is wrong. I do love the old hall. Some people say it is such a tumble-down, ramshackle old house; but that is because they have no taste. If it were mine, I should always sit in the hall.”
Miss Susan led the way to it without a word. Many people thought that Sophy Farrel-Austin had reason in her madness, and said, with a show of silliness, things that were too disagreeable for the others; but that was a mere guess on the part of the public. The hall was one of the most perfectly preserved rooms of its period. The high, open roof had been ceiled, which was almost the only change made since the fifteenth century, and that had been done in Queen Anne’s time; and the huge, open chimney was partially built up, small sacrifices made to comfort by a family too tenacious of their old dwelling-place to do anything to spoil it, even at the risk of asthma or rheumatism. To tell the truth, however, there was a smaller room, of which the family now made their dining-room on ordinary occasions. Miss Susan, scorning to take any notice of words which she laid up and pondered privately to increase the bitterness of her own private sentiments toward her probable supplanters, led the way into this beautiful old hall. It was wainscoted with dark panelled wood, which shone and glistened, up to within a few feet of the roof, and the interval was filled with a long line of casement, throwing down a light which a painter would have loved upon the high, dark wall. At the upper end of the room was a deep recess, raised a step from the floor, and filled with a great window all the way up to the roof. At the lower end the musicians’ gallery of ancient days, with carved front and half-effaced coats-of-arms, was still intact. The rich old Turkey carpet on the floor, the heavy crimson curtains that hung on either side of the recess with its great window, were the most modern things in the room; and yet they were older than Miss Susan’s recollection could carry. The rest of the furniture dated much further back. The fire-place, in which great logs of wood blazed every Winter, was filled with branches of flowering shrubs, and the larger old-fashioned garden flowers, arranged in some huge blue and white China jars, which would have struck any collector with envy. Miss Susan placed her young visitors on an old, straight-backed settle, covered with stamped leather, which was extremely quaint, and very uncomfortable. She took herself one of the heavy-fringed, velvet-covered chairs, and began with deadly civility to talk. Everard placed himself against the carved mantel-piece and the bank of flowers that filled the chimney. The old room was so much the brighter to him for the presence of the girls; he did not care much that Sophy was silly. Their pretty faces and bright looks attracted the young man; perhaps he was not very wise himself. It happens so often enough.
And thus they all sat down and talked—about the beautiful weather, about the superiority, even to this beautiful weather, of the weather “abroad;” of where they had been and what they had seen; of Mrs. Farrel-Austin’s health, who was something of an invalid, and rarely came out; and other similar matters, such as are generally discussed in morning calls. Everard helped Miss Susan greatly to keep the conversation up, and carry off the visit with the ease and lightness that were desirable, but yet I am not sure that she was grateful to him. All through her mind, while she smiled and talked, there kept rising a perpetual contrast. Why were these two so bright and well, while the two children of the old house were in such sad estate?—while they chattered and laughed what might be happening elsewhere? and Everard, who had been like a brother to Herbert and Reine, laughed too, and chattered, and made himself pleasant to these two girls, and never thought—never thought! This was the sombre under-current which went through Miss Susan’s mind while she entertained her callers, not without sundry subdued passages of arms. But Miss Susan’s heart beat high, in spite of herself, when Mr. Farrel-Austin lingered behind his daughters, bidding Everard see them to the carriage.
“Cousin Susan, I should like a word with you,” he said.
CHAPTER III.
The
