Mrs. Severn

“ Joy won't come unbidden; we must help to prepare the ground or there'll only be a weedy plant that will wither in the sun. The joys of one are the cares of another. I suppose Dad and the children are cares to you.'
Mrs. Severn was silent. Anna turned, and leaning against the window looked down into the garden. Its midsummer brilliancy had faded with the sunshine, and the tangle of flowers, missing the caresses of breeze and [Pg 35] sun and bees, looked subdued and shame-faced. At least so she fancied. A dewy sweetness hung above, floating up to her in incense-like whiffs. ”

“ Clothilde, you shall come home with me or every one shall know the truth. Even a shameful truth is better known sometimes; it is salvation instead of damnation. Clothilde, I did not know how I should find you to-day. If I had found you as it would have been shameful to find you, I should have told Mr. Borlase the whole truth, and he would have helped me—anything to save you from yourself! But I will not leave you here. Now you know that I know all, that——'
'All?' said Mrs. Severn. She had listened, stunned, half-terrified. Anna had never spoken to her with absolute just anger before. ”

“ My love is greater than Severn's love. I, too, can use foil or pistol, and a cavalry sabre is like neither of these. I shall fight this man."
She stood white and mute a moment, her hands hanging limply. Then suddenly her hands were upon his shoulders, her passionate face looking into his.
"Hilary, oh, my dear! No, no; I cannot bear it. Go away, leave me. I shall have your blood upon my hands, and then I think I shall go mad."
He caught her and held her.
Judith, I cannot leave you. So I must kill Severn."
"But he——"
"Dear, the man is mortal. I say, I shall kill him." ”

“ She was a girl whom time would mature into a noble womanhood, [Pg 102] and the stern realities of life at once strengthen and sweeten; the one woman whom—if he were to have his heart's desire—he must win for his wife.
And here she was to-day, at his side but still not won. However, she knew now that she was wooed. He would know more soon. Mrs. Severn should not come between them a third time, either directly or indirectly.
'The first time she ran away I was at school,' Anna said. 'Dad has never spoken of it, but Dinah has told me how awful it was. ”

“ Would she grow old and still wear it? Death could not enhance its calm. Borlase, her doctor, giving her skilled attention in her hours of agony, felt with a strange shiver that even in her agony she was, in some strange way, impersonal—her epitaph, what could be more appropriate than this, 'She died as she had lived, coldly?'
And now Anna's deft fingers had gathered up the rich hair and were plaiting it into plaits to coil high on her head with a tiara-like [Pg 32] effect. Mrs. Severn had raised herself to admit of this manipulation and watched it in a glass which Anna had put into her hands. ”

“ Severn. And I shall write to Mr. Piton. I shall be delighted to assert my ownership at Rocozanne. I've always been jealous of Ambrose.'
She laughed, and murmured that she must be going.
'Yes, I suppose you must,' he said. 'But tell me, are you going away happier than you came? Yes? And not only because Mrs. Severn has been amenable to reason? Have I at last a niche in your life, will it be more than a niche soon? It is so, is it not? Anna, remember you are to learn to be all mine. I shall be jealous of every one at Old Lafer, Mr. ”

“ His face worked with an emotion more of rage than grief. He would not allow himself to be miserable; he was fired, not numbed. He could have sworn at Anna for the quenching of her spirit, she, the good, the true, to be overwhelmed by what such a hussy as Mrs. Severn could do.
'She slipped off as neat as a weasel through a chink in a wall none other ud see,' he said. 'Dinah wer scouring t' dairy as she allus does after the week's butter's off to market, and I wer sledging peats off t' edge, and Peggy minding t' baärns in the beck-side meadows. Mrs. Hennifer had been though ”

“ Severn cooped endlessly in his chair, or Severn alive again, dazzling the world, drinking life to the full, charming, cynical, eternally young-old, with both hands ever ready to help the struggling youngster, and a paramour, might be, in every capital in Europe? Helen, living under his roof, but without love for him, without even respect, with nothing but grim and fearful rectitude; or Helen free—free to lead Terry once again into the sea of doubt and remorse? ”

“ Severn was examining the manacles. He saw that he had no hope of getting free from them; so quietly he began to unfasten the mechanical arm which was bound fast. He could no longer hesitate. The moment for action was at hand. He must stake everything-
“And here is another gift for you, rajah's son!” cried the woman's voice. “A gift of leprosy, a gift of death and disease——”
Under the flashlight, Severn saw her leap forward. Horror seized upon him as her hands fell upon his false arm and her shroud was brushed aside. ”

“ Esrun struggled and twisted like a mad thing. Hampered by having but one hand, Severn managed none the less to get fresh windings of the yellow cloth about the creature.
He was sickened by the very touch. A mad panic upgrew within him—as when a man touches some repulsive creeping thing in the dark and goes mad with a frantic horror, a desperate frenzy to kill the loathsome thing! Severn cried out incoherently, as a man cries when fighting. He struggled with the creature, wound the cloths tighter, fought back the insane impulse to strike and slay with the first weapon to hand. ”

“ Clothilde,' said Anna, 'there's none [Pg 29] so deaf as those who won't hear, is there now? I was certain you were awake but you feel lazy, and the longer you lie here the lazier you will feel! The heat, added to that constitutional tendency, is stupefying, isn't it?'
She spoke satirically and smiled, but at the same moment tried to arrange the cushions more comfortably. Mrs. Severn, however, pushed her away and sat up.
'You always think me lazy when I'm tired; you are a tiresome contradictious creature,' she said. ”

“ I never dreamt of Dr. Severn being a relation, even when I saw his locket was the same as Mercy's. You see, Mercy said it was a Chinese charm, so I thought perhaps they were quite common, like the blue-bead tassel he'd been showing you, and anybody who'd been in China might have one. Suppose I hadn't come to stay with you at Whitsuntide, or we hadn't gone to tea that afternoon, you wouldn't have noticed that locket, because Mercy hadn't shown hers to you; and if you'd told Dr. Severn about her being found, he'd never have guessed it was his own Mary. ”

“ Hysteria shrilled in Severn's tone. “You've no idea what I've done—out of here, I tell you! Pick up the light——”
Kilgore obeyed. He had no idea what Severn had done; that was true. Nothing, in fact, but to tie up a leprous woman—and yet this absurdly simple thing had unstrung and shaken Severn to the very soul. He was still nauseated.
The two men ran. When they gained the cavern entrance, Severn flung himself forward with an inarticulate cry of thanksgiving on his lips. He threw himself into the warm sand and lay there, clutching at it. ”

“ Sir Royce Severn could be accused of neither madness nor insolence if he resented another man paying court to the woman who was to be his wife.
But Judith! And that wet sunset, and the walk upon the terrace, that leave-taking, the brushing of the syringa across his mouth! A flare of pain rushed through him. ”

“ Severn glanced keenly at Anna.
'She is going home,' she said. 'Now you would drive again with Mr. Borlase. I suppose he would take you round by the park, and the old [Pg 141] bridge, and East Lafer.'
Anna flushed, but it was with anger.
'That is not the question,' she said. 'But I shall not walk home unless you go with me, Clothilde. If you go we will walk over the moor to the wood. It will take less time, and if we can't get home before Dad does, then we must feign to have had a walk for pleasure. The drive would rest me, though. I am tired. You have alarmed me. ”

“ I wish it had been the Canon, I do. I always thought she'd come round. And she went off so simply, was the only one who didn't suspect Mrs. Kerr's plan. I was sure she'd fall in with it quite naturally. But it's a failure. She's engaged herself without any leave-asking to a man she's met on their travels; Danby they call him, Lucius Danby. He's an Anglo-Indian.'
He was stirring his tea, Anna was replenishing the teapot. No one noticed that Mrs. Severn's head had fallen back, and that she was slipping off her chair. ”

“ When I pressed for details he said: "Oh, we just talked about things in general, you know—about Helen, of course—and June, and Severn himself...."
The odd thing was that he was no longer even remotely angry with Severn. He was sorry for him; he wanted to help him; he talked almost as if Severn were a pathetic little weakling instead of a man who, whatever his deficiencies, could at least take care of himself. "Severn isn't really a bad fellow," he assured me, and I agreed most cordially that he wasn't. "The real truth is," he continued, "that he's unhappy. ”

“ But in those words, poor Richard, with a lover's clairvoyance, read it at a single glance. The same resentful impulse, the same sickening of the heart, that he had felt in the conservatory, took possession of him once more. To be witness of Severn's passion for Gertrude,—that he could endure. To be witness of Gertrude's passion for Severn,—against that obligation his reason rebelled.
"What is it you wish, Richard?" Gertrude repeated. "Have you forgotten anything?"
"Nothing! nothing!" cried the young man. "It's no matter!" ”

“ Dad and mother are too excited to know what they're about. I declare, it's like being dead and seeing how they feel about it.”
There was a boyish eager look about the young man's face that made him for the first time seem rather loveable, Mrs. Severn thought. The mother in her rose to appreciation. Lynn was so glad that he was going away that she was almost friendly during lunch. And when the young man was about to depart he went to Mr. Severn's study and wrote a check for five hundred dollars:
“Just in appreciation of your kindness,” he said as he held it out to the minister. ”

“ Severn avoided them; her gaze idly followed the play of her own fingers through the fringe of the coverlet thrown over her.
'Well, you know—about Miss Marlowe.'
Mrs. Hennifer scrutinised her face in silence for some time, but its absence of colour was equalled by that of expression.
'Clothilde,' she said, 'we will not deal in innuendo. It is detestable. Why don't you say like an honest woman, "Have you seen Lucius Danby yet? Is he the man I was once engaged to marry?" It is perfectly natural, in fact necessary, that you should [Pg 242] still be interested in him to that extent. ”

“ It was not often that Gertrude threw back into her friends' teeth their acceptance of the hospitality which it had been placed in her power to offer them; but if she now mutely reproached Captain Severn with ingratitude, it was because he had done more than slight her material gifts: he had slighted that constant moral force with which these gifts were accompanied, and of which they were but the rude and vulgar token. It is but natural to expect that our dearest friends will accredit us with our deepest feelings; and Gertrude had constituted Edmund Severn her dearest friend. ”

“ He watched her in silence. From time to time the saucer clinked upon the tiled floor as she reached for a morsel on the rim; and at last the bread was all gone, and her purple tongue travelled over every unlicked spot until the saucer shone like polished marble. Then she sat up, and coolly turning her back to him, began her ablutions.
"Keep it up," said Severn, much interested, "you need it."
She flattened one ear, but neither turned nor interrupted her toilet. As the grime was slowly removed Severn observed that nature had intended her for a white cat. ”

“ After the first shock of surprise, he accepted this fact with rational calmness. Why shouldn't he be in love with her? "Je le suis bien" said the Captain; "or, rather, I'm not." Could it be, Severn pursued, that he was a favorite? He was a mannerless young farmer; but it was plain that he had a soul of his own. He almost wished, indeed, that Richard might prove to be in Gertrude's good graces. "But if he is," he reflected, "why should he sigh? It is true that there is no arguing for lovers. I, who am out in the cold, take my comfort in whistling most impertinently. ”

“ Borlase began by being angry and riding hard. He was certain Mrs. Severn's interruption had been deliberate. It was not probable she would be friendly to any one who wished to rob Old Lafer of Anna, who was oil to the domestic machinery. But he thought he should quickly outwit her unless she developed an ability for taking trouble.
Gradually his pace slackened. The remembrance of the sudden shyness in Anna's manner consoled him. He was sure she had understood all at last. This fired hope and coloured her non-appearance with an encouraging [Pg 56] construction ”

“ What, Joan, pick-a-pack?'
She knelt for Joan to clasp her neck, then tucking her little fat legs under her arms, rose and careered on to the landing. Joan was not too tired to gurgle with laughter at the jogging. The others ran after them, having dabbed random kisses on Mrs. Severn's face and throat. They left the door wide open in spite of her charge to them to shut it.
'Netta, Jack, Jack,' she called. But they were heedless. ”