Duchess

“ Barry looks at him.
‘She is only a little country girl,’ says he. As if disliking the definition of her, Susan releases herself and stands back from Crosby. ‘And you—have large possessions—and a position that will enable you to choose a wife anywhere. Susan—has nothing!’
‘She has everything,’ says Crosby hotly. ‘When I look at her I know it is I who have nothing. What money, what position, could compare with the wealth of her beauty?... ”

“ And all at once to Crosby comes the thought, how pure at heart all these people are—how ‘far from the madding crowd’ of self-seekers! She has not realized that he is what most of his town acquaintances call a ‘good match.’ She is even afraid to announce her engagement to her father, lest he should think her too young to marry. It sounds incredible, but a glance at Susan, and a vision of the sad man sitting alone with his new sorrow and disappointment in his little study beyond, dissolves all suspicions. ”

“ On the avenue of Crosby Park Wyndham meets the master of it, who has plainly been strolling this way with a view to meeting him on his return.
‘Well!’ says Crosby. Then, seeing the other’s face, ‘I was right, then?’
‘You were. She had made her way in, and insulted the poor child in the most violent way.’
‘I felt sure she was up to mischief,’ says Crosby, colouring hotly; he, too, is conscious of strong resentment. That anyone should go from his house to deliberately annoy a girl—a young girl, and one so sadly circumstanced—makes his usually easy-going blood boil. ”

“ Can the girl have taken her hint to heart? A glow of hope radiates her mind for a moment. But then come other thoughts, and fear, and trouble, and a keen, strange disappointment.
No, no! Susan—Susan to be worldly! Her pretty girl! God grant she has not been the means of driving her to belie her better—her own—self.
Good gracious! If Susan comes back and tells her she has engaged herself to James because of her father’s trouble—because of Carew’s trouble—what shall she do? Miss Barry, who is hardly equal to emergencies so great as this, looks with a certain wildness round her. ”

“ There is a rising odour of damp, sweet earth upon the air. Lady Forster is making little signs of departure—not hurried signs, by any means; she seems, indeed, rather reluctant to say good-bye, but Mrs. Prior has said something to her, on which she has risen, the others following her example. There is no doubt about Mrs. Prior’s anxiety to go. With her face set like a flint, she is already bidding Miss Barry a stiff farewell, and is waiting with ill-concealed impatience for Lady Forster.
‘Good-bye, Susan,’ says Crosby, coming up at this moment to the slim maiden who bears that name. ”

“ Here Susan, who is under the impression that he is ill, brings him hurriedly a cup of coffee, which he takes, pressing her hand, and murmuring to her inaudible, but no doubt very ‘precious,’ things.
‘One yearns over the beautiful always,’ says he. It is plain to everyone that he is yearning over Susan, and Crosby, looking on, feels a sudden mad longing to kick him over the laurel hedge on to the road below. ”

“ The rose on the straggling bush above her is not sweeter or more beautiful than Susan is now, with her pretty bent head and her flower-like face, and all the delicate beauty of her soul shining through her earnest eyes. ”

“ Wyndham’s aunt,’ says Susan again. ‘Perhaps the likeness you see lies there.’
‘Perhaps so. But no, he is not like her,’ says the girl earnestly. ‘No, it is not Mr. Wyndham she reminds me of.’
‘My goodness, Susan,’ says Betty suddenly, ‘perhaps we should not have left all those cakes with the children. They will make themselves ill, and we shall have a horrid time to-morrow.’
‘Oh, and Bonnie!’ says Susan, paling. She kisses Ella hurriedly and races home again up the quiet little shadowy road, without waiting for the slower coming of those behind her. ”

“ Crosby advances slowly, carefully. This gives him time to look at Susan, to mark the sadness of the tender face bending over the sleeping child, to mark also the terrible lines of suffering on his. But his eyes wander always back to Susan.
In her grief, how beautiful she is! how human! how womanly! And with the child 135pressed against her breast. Oh, Susan, you were always pretty, but now! The grief is almost divine. Oh, little young Madonna!
But, then, to have Susan look like that! He wakes from his dreams of her beauty with a sharp anger against himself. ”

“ And if Shangarry once knew that Paul so much as wavered in his allegiance to Josephine, he would be very hard to manage.’
‘But has it, then, gone so far as that?’
‘Far! What can be farther? A girl, a young girl, and a—well, I dare say there are some who would call her beautiful—kept in seclusion, called, for decency’s sake, his tenant——’
‘Oh, that!’ says Crosby; ‘I wasn’t alluding to that. I mean, has this affair between your daughter and Wyndham gone so very far? Is this engagement you hint at a thing accomplished? Has it been settled?’ He leans towards her in a strictly confidential manner. ”

“ But no one laughs; they are all too engrossed with what they see, peeping out shyly from between the branches of those trees below, 35that seem to belong to the Rectory, meeting them as they do, and mingling with them so closely that one loses memory of the road that runs between. ‘I feel as if I saw one now. How do you feel, Forster?’
Sir William laughs.
‘A charming Hamadryad beyond dispute,’ says he.
Charming indeed! Crowned by the leaves that hang above her head, Ella’s face is looking out at them like some lovely vision. Her face only can be seen, but that very distinctly. ”

“ Soon he will be here! How kind he is to her! How good! And to remember that Christmas card! She had heard Susan and Betty talking of Christmas cards, and they had sent her one, each of them, and Carew had sent one, too. They also were kind, so kind; but that Mr. Wyndham should remember her, with all his other friends to think of!
Alone in this dear garden, with no one to hear or see her, she gives way to her mood. Miss Manning has gone up to Dublin to spend her Christmas Day with an old friend, urged thereto by Ella, who, indeed, wished to be alone after her post had come. ”

“ It has stopped. Mr. Crosby springs out of it; he looks at Susan, but Susan, after one swift glance, does not look at him; her eyes have gone farther, to a small, slim, beautiful boy who gets out of the carriage by himself, and slowly, but without a crutch, goes to Susan, and precipitates himself upon her with a little loving cry.
196‘Susan! Susan!’ says he.
‘Oh, Bonnie! Oh, Bonnie!’ Her arms are round him. They seem to hold him as though she could never let him go again. ‘Oh, Bonnie! you can walk by yourself!’
Suddenly she bursts into a storm of tears, and the child clinging to her cries too. ”

“ Her tone vibrates with wild and angry grief, yet still she keeps it low. It strikes Crosby as wonderful that, through all her 137violent agitation, she never forgets the child sleeping in her arms.
He says nothing, however. Who could, to comfort her, in an hour like this? He bends over the sleeping child and looks at him. Such a small face, and so lovely, in spite of the furrows pain has laid upon it. How clearly writ they are! And yet the child is like Susan—strangely like. In the young blooming face, bending over the emaciated one, the likeness can be traced. ”

“ But the situation is made of material too heavy to be blown aside by any such light wind. Susan pays no heed to him. He is quite aware, indeed, after a moment, that Susan neither sees nor hears him. She is holding the child against her heart, and breathing into his ear broken words of love and hope and courage.
At last the final moment comes. Crosby has shaken hands with Mr. Barry, who is looking paler and more gaunt than usual, for at least the fourth time, and has now come to the carriage in which Susan has placed Bonnie, having wrapped him warmly round with rugs. Betty is standing near her. ”

“ Sparks like diamonds come from the small white stones in the gravel, and the grassy edges close to them—clean shaven by Denis, who is down again on a penitential visit to his wife—are sweet and fresh, and suggestive of a desire to make to-day’s work a work again for to-morrow, so quickly the spring blades grow and prosper.
Wyndham, as he walks from the station to this pretty spot, takes great note of Nature. 216Lately the loveliness—the charm of it!—the desire that grows in the heart for it, has come to him, has sunk into his soul. As he goes life seems everywhere, and with it such calm!... ”

“ You really shouldn’t, Susan! Flattery is bad for people generally, and for me in particular. I’m very open to it.’
‘I don’t flatter,’ says Susan. She laughs and runs away to answer a call from her aunt, who is evidently struggling with an idea, in one of the rooms within.
‘Who’s that on the tennis-ground?’ asks Crosby of Betty as they are standing on the hall-door steps.
‘Oh, don’t you know? That’s James. He came back a week ago. Of course, now I think of it’—airily—‘you couldn’t know, as we were unable to write to you for the past week. But it’s James. ”

“ This is a second threat, meant to be conveyed to Wyndham. Crosby represses an inclination to laugh. After all, she has chosen, poor woman! about the worst man in Europe for her ambassador. To him, Mrs. Prior’s indignation is as clear as day. With his clear common-sense he thus reads her: She has doubts about Wyndham’s relations with his pretty tenant, but she has deliberately set herself to believe the worst. The worst to her, however, would not be the immoral attitude of the case, but the dread that the girl would inveigle Wyndham into a marriage with her, and so spoil her daughter’s chance. ”

“ This marriage, if he can persuade her to it, will offend his uncle, Lord Shangarry. Not a farthing will that old Irish aristocrat leave him if he knows he has wedded himself to a girl outside his own world—a mere waif and stray, disreputable, as many would call her. ”

“ He springs to his feet, angry, yet filled with an admiration for her that has, if not increased his love, made it more open to him. A strong man himself, and hard to move, he can see the splendid strength of this poor girl, who, because of her love for him, refuses his love for her. ”

“ Mrs. Prior, who has sat on a lounge near the door listening silently to this conversation, now makes up her mind. There is nothing to be hoped for from Crosby. To-morrow, then, she will see this ‘tenant’ of Paul’s, though all the guardians and chaperons in Europe rise up to prevent her.
‘But are you really so sure that your brother is in love with Miss Susan?’ asks Lennox of Lady Forster, in a low tone, unheard by the others. ”

“ Here she revives a little, and at certain recollections of the illustrious Jones, in spite of herself, her smiles break forth again. ‘He——’ She bursts out laughing. ‘It sounds horribly conceited, but I really think he believes he is in love with me. Such nonsense, isn’t it?’
(Oh, too pretty Susan! who wouldn’t be in love with you?)
‘I don’t know about that,’ says Dom, who has escaped from Betty’s wrathful hands and is prepared to go any length to prevent a recurrence of the late ceremonies. ‘He might do worse!’
‘And so the house is lovely,’ says Betty, with a regretful sigh. ”

“ Naturally everyone is impressed by this startling declaration, and Miss Forbes is actually overcome. At all 31events, she subsides behind her parasol, and is for a little time lost in thought.
‘Yes, yes. Charming people—charming!’ says Lady Forster quickly, if a little hysterically; and the poet, having seen Susan’s eye upon him and his pose, and feeling that he has not endured the last half-hour in vain, struggles into a more every-day attitude. ”

“ But’—Susan’s face, that had been glowing, now loses something of its warmth—‘not good, either. Still——Betty’—she looks at her sister—‘don’t you think Mr. Crosby is a man one might depend upon?’
‘Oh, I do—I do indeed!’ says Betty. ‘He’—earnestly, and with a view to please Susan—‘is so ugly that anyone might depend upon him.’
‘Ugly! He certainly is not ugly,’ says Susan. ‘I must say, Betty, I think sometimes you make the most foolish remarks.’
‘Well, I’ll say he’s handsome, if you like,’ says Betty, slightly affronted. ‘Any way, he has been very good to Bonnie. ”

“ Forster roars.
‘I’m glad I’m the biggest,’ says he. ‘It’s well to be great in one’s own line.’
‘Well, that’s where it is,’ says Lady Forster, returning with perfect equanimity to the original subject. ‘And if it comes off, Susan will be a perfect sister-in-law. One has to think of one’s self, you know; and what I dwell on is, that I’ll have the greatest fun bringing her out in town. I’ve thought it all over. She will have a regular boom. There won’t be a girl next year in it with her. ”

“ To these days, so cold and pitiless to the fragile creatures of the earth, little Bonnie has succumbed. Into his aching limbs the frosts have entered, racking the tender little body, and bringing it to so low an ebb that Susan, watching over him with miserable fear and terrible forebodings from morning till night, and from night again to morning (she never now lets him out of her sight, refusing even to let anyone else sleep with 132him) , lives in secret, awful terror of what every day may bring. ”

“ Susan, with Bonnie! A Bonnie who now trots happily beside her, and is evidently quite her slave—a pretty undoing of the old days, when she was always his. Tommy, full of toys brought by Crosby—a white rabbit, a performing elephant, an awful bear, and various other delightful things tucked under his fat arms—is following them. ”

“ On the wall close to the old tree, from which she loves to look into the Rectory garden and wave a handkerchief to the children there to come to her, sits Moore, the man from whom she had fled; the man whom she dreads most of all things upon earth ”

“ But Susan, after each disappointment, feels her spirits rise again, and, with glad delight in her heart, trifles with the work she is pretending to do. Betty and the boys are on 193the top of the garden wall, and have promised to send her instant tidings of the approach of the carriage. Susan felt she could not watch from there the home-coming of her Bonnie. The workings of the human mind are strange, and Susan, who had climbed many a wall in her time, and still can climb them with the best, shrank with a sort of nervous terror from being up there—on the top of that wall—when he came! ”

“ The good soul (so good in spite of her temper and her peculiarities) has felt deep joy in the thought that the children had been not only invited, but actually sought after, by all those fashionable 20folk up there, and though she would have died rather than boast of it to her neighbours, being too well-born for boasting of that kind, still, her own heart swells with pride at the thought that, in spite of their poverty, the children’s birth has asserted itself, and carried them through all difficulties to the society where they should be. ”