The Deceased Wife's Sister

Front matter

The

Deceased Wife's Sister,

and

Chapter 1

THE

DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER.

I cannot tell what it was that had plunged me into so long a fit of abstraction. My mind had probably taken its complexion from the paling October afternoon. The air was moist and sweet; but there was a smell of decay in it. It made a trouble to me, like a presentiment. I have known such a trouble in breathing the air of old churchyards.

I was sitting at my bedroom window. The setting sun threw its levelling light slantwise; so that I was able to watch the prospect it illumined without the inconvenience of having my eyes dazzled. The gardener was at work below. His patient form was stooping on the walks; and as he trimmed the box along the beds, I heard the clink of his snapping shears rise like the tinkle of a silver bell. Ivy Lodge had very little grounds to boast; but being built on an eminence it overlooked a broad expanse of undulating country. I loved to watch the evening mantling the distant hills—calling out tiny lights one by one upon the landscape, in its slow envelopment, and filling the air with a stillness which I could hear, and which I used to think on as an audible symbol of eternity.

I was barely eighteen. My reflection stood like an apparition in a looking-glass opposite. It exhibited a pale face shaded by brown hair, smoothed off the forehead and plaited in coils behind; small features; a young mouth expressing little character, and eyes not large but dark. Kate, with sisterly candour, would tell me I was not pretty, but interesting. I was proud of my hands, which were small and white. Nature had not plentifully endowed me with the instinct of self-appreciation; though I will not deny that I had vanity enough to keep my self-respect in order.

Aunt Emma was out, on her customary afternoon walk. I had been in my bedroom since two o'clock, and believed that Kate had accompanied cousin George to the library at Lorton, a two-miles walk. But I was mistaken; for all at once the door was impetuously thrown open, and Kate bounded into the room.

She was nearly half a head taller than I. She was decidedly pretty. Her hair was a pale red, which became burnished when a bright light took it. Her complexion was delicately beautiful. She had soft blue eyes, that filled and faded with a sort of pulsation of light. Her finely-shaped head floated upon her neck with the stately grace of a lily on water. I was about to express my surprise at seeing her, believing her to be out, when she exclaimed:

"Oh, Maggie! Major Rivers is downstairs. Do come and see him with me!"

I slightly started at the name, and made a movement as if to accompany her. But, changing my mind, I exclaimed, abruptly:

"I don't care to see him."

"You must come!" she exclaimed, advancing to the looking-glass and pulling her silky hair a little more over her clearly-cut brows. "You know it wouldn't be right for me to see him alone."

"Why not?"

"Aunt Emma would make one of her bitter epigrams out of it. It would supply her with an excuse for a twelvemonth's badgering."

I wanted much to go with her, but a feeling of irritation I could not suppress kept me fixed to my seat.

"He has come to see you, Kate, not me. My presence would only mar the enjoyment of his visit."

She looked at me, and burst into a laugh. I coloured. "Oh, you queer child!" she cried, still toying with her hair and fixing her eyes on the looking-glass. I made no answer, but, planting my elbows firmly on the window-sill, leaned my cheeks on my hands and stared resolutely down.

"Are you coming?" she asked.

"No."

"Really, Maggie, you grow very ill-natured. He is downstairs, and mustn't be kept waiting. Come!" She advanced and laid her hand on my arm.

"It's of no use," I said, evading her touch. "I'm not going. I hate hypocrisy too. You don't want me. What's the use of shamming?"

She remained for a moment undecided, taking, apparently, no notice of what I had said. Finally, with a farewell coquettish adjustment of her hair, she left the room. I rose from my seat when she was gone, and closed the door after her. I returned to the window, but as I passed the glass I saw my eyes reflected, angry and gleaming.

I will not deny it: I was jealous. I loved Major Rivers. My love was sweet to me, and passionate and secret. In looking back, I in vain endeavour to sound the depths of my feelings towards him at that time. Memory is never more deceptive than when she deals with vanished passions. But though, at this distance of time, I cannot gauge my girlish love in all its depth—compass it in all its extent—I believe that few loves were ever more deep.

Major Rivers was a friend of my cousin George. The occasion of their meeting I forget; but in due time George's friend was invited to Ivy Lodge, and we were introduced to him. At the period that my story opens we had known him a year, or even longer. During the whole time of his acquaintance or friendship, he had never suggested by any conduct which of us two sisters had his preference. At the commencement of our acquaintance I had not much cared for him. I had framed for myself my ideal lover, and Major Rivers hardly approached my girlish creation. But as time went on, I discovered myself growing thoughtful. I experienced a pleasure in his society which I had not felt before. I found myself wondering at my feelings, with a half-glad, half-doubting surprise. But as yet the fascination was slight. The air was full of a light that had not yet scorched—of an aroma that had not yet poisoned.

I was a country girl, you must understand—fortuneless, green, but not stupid. I had a quick intelligence; but of what use was it to me in an out-of-the-way corner like Lorton, where not even a dozen of commonplace incidents happened in a year upon which to exercise it? My sister and I were orphans. We had been confided at a very early age to the care of Mrs. Gordon, my father's sister; and with her at Lorton we had lived, the horizon of our girlhood no larger than that of our infancy; our hopes cramped by a sense of helpless dependence; our dreams, our aspirations, simple, childish, bucolic. The only knowledge I had of life I had got from novels. I had looked upon an outer existence through them, and had caught—as you may believe—but a confused notion of the truth. The monotony of my country life seemed to me like a fortress—sombre, impenetrable, massive. I, the imprisoned, peered eagerly through any crevice that admitted the light. I stared through the loopholes of romance. You may guess my ideas were few—and wrong.

I loved as I lived: secretly, confusedly, wrongheadedly. But I loved truly. I reflect with astonishment upon the fidelity of my reason to my passion. No pearl in its shell was more sacredly guarded, more impenetrably hidden, than my love in my heart. Even Kate, filled by love with a keenness that was independent of reason, did not discern it.

I remained in my room, and half-an-hour slipped away. I detested my perversity, that would not allow me to see the man I loved; but my jealousy was more than a match for my longing. Yet I could find no excuse for my jealousy. I did not believe that Major Rivers cared more for Kate than myself; nay, there had been occasions when my vanity tempted me to believe that he saw in me the qualities he professed most to admire in women. "I like quaint women," he once said to me, in reply to some brusque, even odd remark of mine; "I like those elfish girls, whose brains are like a panorama of embroidered tapestry which slowly unwinds a long array of quaint, striking figures." I appropriated the remark, and hugged it into a compliment. But as my love waxed stronger I found myself shaping troubles out of my imagination. His con- stant visits to Ivy Lodge implied a compliment and an attraction. The compliment I gave to George; the attraction I worried my mind to conjecture.

The sun had set. A pearly twilight tinted the heavens; a single star had dropped into the eastern sky; an autumnal coolness had crept upon the air, and a moist smell of decay rose from the garden. I shivered, and left my chair.

At that moment I heard a low tap at the door. It was like Aunt Emma's subdued knock. Thinking it was she, I opened the door. It was Kate. A rich red upon her cheeks heightened the unusual lustre of her sweet eyes. She came in at once and took my vacant chair at the window. I noticed the quietude of her manner.

"He has proposed to me," she said.

I gazed earnestly at her for a time, doubting her. There was little need for scepticism. There was in her face an expression I had never seen before: there was a ripeness there, as if the maturity of womanhood had suddenly come upon her. I know not how it was that I remained so calm; yet what she told me did not strike me as unexpected. It appeared rather like the realisation of a secret conviction. I was no more startled at it than I have been by the sudden impression seizing me that I have lived in a scene which the strained memory refuses to draw into my present life. I am sure that there are events occurring in our lives which are foreshadowed by a prophetic intuition, and which, when they happen, do not surprise. I do not advance this as a discovery; but to those, as to myself, who have had many such experiences, life is full of ghostliness.

"Major Rivers has proposed to you!" I exclaimed.

"Yes; and I have accepted him."

Nothing was said after this for some minutes. Presently, looking up, she exclaimed:

"Why do you not congratulate me, Maggie?"

I went over to her and kissed her on the forehead. I noticed a joyous thoughtfulness in her face, which indicated too much self-engrossment to heed my silence or my salute.

"His offer makes me feel very happy, Maggie."

"He will make you a good husband," was my answer.

"Could you have guessed that he loved me?"

I shook my head.

"I did not know it. Until recently," she went on, "he was never more than polite to me. Even when I noticed an increasing warmth in his manners I would not mention it, for I did not like to believe it; and yet, do you know, I had a presentiment of a declaration."

"You are very pretty, Kate; and I am only surprised that he did not propose to you before."

"Do you think it was my face that took him?" she asked, glancing at her reflection. "He always professed to like quaint girls—brusque women, who burst out with odd sayings. I am sure there is nothing of all this in me."

"I have read," I answered a little bitterly, "that what a man likes and what he marries are not always identical. But," I added quickly, "no one could say such a thing of Major Rivers. He is too thoughtful to be capricious. Be sure he loves you, or he would never have proposed."

"He proposed to me so quietly, Maggie," she said. "Had I not anticipated his declaration it would have taken me some time to understand him. He spoke so slowly—so gently. A light in his eyes filled me with confidence. I said 'Yes' without a shiver… When a thing has happened, how we laugh at all our fears! Do you remember how I used to say that I would faint with nervousness if ever I should be proposed to?"

I was battling fiercely with my feelings, and could only answer her with a nod.

"What a change it will be!" she exclaimed. "I cannot realise leaving you—leaving this house—this old scene," looking out upon the darkening landscape. "But I am very sick of this monotonous life, Maggie; every day alike—a getting up and a going to bed, with no other excitement than meal-time in all the weary hours."

"Has Aunt Emma come in?"

"She had not arrived up to the time that Major Rivers left."

"You will tell her to-night that Major Rivers has proposed?"

"Yes. But I don't much like the process. You must be with me, dear. You must help me. He will call himself and see her to-morrow. I told him there was only her sanction to procure—nothing more. I had no fortune."

"He was prepared for this?"

"Perfectly. He drew up my life in a little picture. Oh, he made such a dainty little story of it! 'There were two orphans,' he said, 'and one'—but I mustn't tell you what he said. You would think me terribly vain to be able to remember so much flattery."

I was glad to be spared the recital, and did not press her to speak it.

"He spoke of you—summed you up so cleverly, darling. I was agitated, of course, by his praises of me, yet I couldn't help laughing at his description of you. He made you out a perfect fairy-witch—filled with a tremulous sensibility, which vibrated in your heart like the strings of a harp, and which emitted a quaint music whenever it was smitten, making you the possessor of a quite original sort of magic. There was praise! But he mustn't talk of you like this any more, or I shall be jealous. Then I could afford to listen to him. I did not mind his crowning you with a tiara when he had covered me with gems."

Her eyes in the dying light looked beautiful as she turned them upon me. I reflected on my own appearance compared to hers, and my secret heart acknowledged the right of nature to assert her nobler workmanship before her unattractive specimens.

"He must have got our previous history from George," I said.

"I daresay," she answered. "Oh, Maggie, how a few hours alter one's prospects! I was only wondering this morning whether fate would ever allow me to look over the edge of the small circle which it has drawn round us: and already am I placed on a pinnacle commanding a world-wide view."

I, who was at the base, seeing nothing, enveloped in sudden darkness, could have wept, but my pride held me tearless.

"Let us go downstairs," she said, "and see if Aunt Emma has returned. I am anxious to speak to her, and want it to be over."

"I will follow you," I answered.

"Don't be long, dear Maggie. I shan't say a word about it until you are near me."

"I will help you by opening the subject myself."

"Do! do! You can say——"

"I shall know what to say," I said, quietly interrupting her.

It was growing imperative that I should be left alone. Tea would soon be ready. I desired solitude ere I could face the light. She gave me a long kiss and left the room. Once more I closed the door; I locked it. I shut the window. Kneeling by the side of my bed, I buried my face in my hands, and cried. The hot tears scorched my cheeks, but they did me good. As they flowed, I felt the weight upon my heart lighten. The blow was sudden. Had my conviction of Major Rivers' regard for me been altered by time, had circumstances slowly unfolded the truth, endurance might have been easy. Resignation will gently slope the way when, like the glory of a summer dropping leaf by leaf from its green fulness, our hopes die by degrees, and admit us to the contemplation of decay before decay has fully come; but here had been the lightning stroke, shattering at one fell gleam.

All secret love is desperate love. It is desperate, because it suffers itself to be fed by unratified convictions. I had fed my passion with hope, and inclination had transformed hope into reality. I had misled my heart by allowing every dream to fill it like a truth. But the end had come. I remember that I thought it a cruel issue to befall so trusting a dreamer.

I rose from my bedside, and plunged my face into cold water to obliterate the traces of tears. The light had died out of the sky. I looked into the mirror, and apostrophised the darkling phantasm I witnessed in it. I determined that my love should remain a buried secret, since it was not to be uprooted. I would endeavour to correct its bitterness by contemplating only my sister's happiness. I would struggle to merge my dreams fully into hers, that the total of two impassioned hearts might glorify one life. "This," I said to myself, "shall be my occupation during the time Kate remains with me. A woman's sorrows can always be made a joy by dedicating its pangs to some noble end. I will make my suffering subservient to Kate's happiness. From the union of our different feelings I may hope, at least, solace for myself, if I cannot add to the happiness of my sister."

Chapter 2

Twenty minutes had passed since Kate had left me. My aunt was a punctual woman. Tea, I knew, would be served at six; and as I felt in no temper to meet her frowns, I descended the stairs, and pushed open the parlour-door, as a timepiece on the chimney rang the hour.

My face was one that did not readily exhibit its grief. There was always a thoughtful expression upon it that might easily have passed for habitual melancholy. My eyelids were a little red along the lashes, but I did not fear detection in the solemn light of the well-shaded lamp in the centre of the table. A comfortable fire blazed in the hearth. It quickened the crimson-papered wall with dancing shadows, and gave animation to the features of the family portraits which faced each other from opposite sides. They represented Mr. Gordon and his mother—the one dead fifteen, the other twenty-nine years. The tea-things whitened the table with a cheerful brilliancy, and filled the room with a sense of cosiness, which was not to be diminished by the somewhat wintry aspect of the elderly woman who presided behind the hissing urn. Mrs. Gordon was fifty. She had made her husband a good thrifty wife whilst he had lived, and still mourned his memory in a decent show of sombre apparel. A pair of small grey eyes indicated considerable shrewdness. Her nose was long and bleak; her lips thin and dry. She did not look her age. Time had been baulked of its grasp by her leanness, and had found no sufficient footing. She was one of the most economically-made women that it ever entered the mind of man to conceive. Nature, in her conception of her, might have borrowed a hint from in return for the innumerable hints he has borrowed from her. No superfluity, either of dress or bone, of ribbon or wrinkle, characterised her. Her thin hair was tightly curled near her brows, and her parting—there is nothing more suggestive of age than an old woman's parting—was made wider than occasion demanded by the scalp-like smoothness with which she bandolined down her hair. She was a disciplinarian to the most Scottish degree, without being a Scotchwoman. She was mathematically punctual in her habits, and wound her household up like a clock. Evangelical to the backbone, she hated the religion of the Pope with malignant bitterness. There was very little of the softness called "womanly" in her. The only human being who illustrated her capacity for the faintest approach to emotionalism of thought was her son George.

He sat near the fire, nursing his knee, thoughtfully staring at the white glow within the bars of the grate. The ruddy light irradiated a pleasing face, good-natured, frank, and sunburnt. His hair was auburn and curly. There was not a particle of his mother in him, either of character or feature. He may have resembled his father; but the family portrait, with its wonderful cravat and Cimmerian back-ground, was too badly painted to help out any theory of paternity.

I looked for Kate. She was not in the room. As I entered George rose, and, with a politeness that was never-failing, placed a chair for me.

"Where have you been all the afternoon?" asked my aunt.

"In my bedroom, aunt," I replied, pushing back my chair to get into the shadow and out of the reach of George's inquiring eyes.

"Sitting with your hands before you, I daresay," said my aunt. "Where's Kate?"

"Upstairs, I think."

"It would puzzle a wise man to find out what girls are coming to in this age," exclaimed my aunt, carefully enveloping the old silver teapot in the "cosey." "They seem to find nothing better to do than to sit with folded hands thinking. What their thinking does for them I never could guess. Yet it's better perhaps their fingers shouldn't help their thoughts, or mischief might happen."

"I'll go and call Kate," I said.

"Please keep where you are. If she wants her tea she'll come fast enough."

At that moment Kate entered the room. She gave me a meaning glance as our eyes met, and seated herself at the table. I could see that she was nervous. Yet there was a quiet smile full of triumph on her lips. I understood the delicious sense of coming independence that prompted it. My aunt, I saw, noticed the unusual expression upon her face at once.

"And where have you been this afternoon?" she asked.

"Indoors."

"Idling, of course?"

"Say you've been busy castle-building," said George.

Kate looked at me imploringly. My aunt peered at her over the spectacles she had put on to pour out the tea, and said: "I suppose you've been talking with your sister; cramming each other with the latest sentiment out of the last new novel. Well, you must do something to prove your existence. It's a poor clock that doesn't tick."

"Why, mother, what makes you so bitter to-night?" asked George. "You've been silent for the last hour, and now you burst out. You're like ale that turns sour through standing."

He usually defended us against his mother's tongue, and with impunity, if unavailingly, for he rarely provoked her reproof. For our parts we were like sheep—as helpless, as stupid. We knew our dependence; we had easily guessed it, for our aunt, since her husband's death, had taken good care to make us feel it; and our sense of dependence had bred a submissiveness which had grown into a habit.

During the foregoing conversation I had caught George several times looking earnestly at me. I imagined he noticed my red eyes, and I purposely kept my face averted from him. I dreaded the strong outspoken question which I knew would come if he saw that I had been crying.

From the turn the conversation had taken, however, I thought it wisest to introduce the subject of Major Rivers's proposal at once, lest in a few minutes my aunt's growing irritability should altogether prohibit its discussion. I therefore said, with premeditated bluntness: "The truth is, Aunt Emma, Major Rivers called here this afternoon and proposed to Kate. She accepted him."

George left his seat, and standing before the fireplace fixed a gaze upon me of comical astonishment. My aunt was pouring out the tea, but as I spoke the process of the inversion of the teapot was instantly suspended. She looked first at me, then at Kate. She set the teapot tenderly on the tray, and looking round to me, said:

"What did you say?"

I repeated my remark.

"What! Rivers proposed to Kate!" ejaculated George. "Hooray!"

"George," said his mother, turning upon him, "I beg that you will keep silence. This is a very remarkable event to take place in the bosom of my family. It happens in an unexpected manner. I am unprepared for it. It must be discussed with the solemnity due to a crisis. Now," she exclaimed, stopping George, who was about to burst forth again, "not a word, do you hear? until the tea-things are removed. I will not be interrupted by my servant, and I should be sorry, very sorry, for so serious a subject to be- come the topic of my kitchen—at least yet."

George fell back in his chair. Kate was very pale. Aunt Emma proceeded methodically in the distribution of the contents of the tea-pot, and we ate our bread-and-butter in silence. "Ring the bell, George," said Aunt Emma. The tea-things were removed, and after a short pause Aunt Emma broke silence:

"So Major Rivers has asked you to be his wife?"

"Yes," answered Kate, in a low voice.

"And you have accepted him?"

"Yes."

"Do you love him?"

"Tell her to find out," said George.

"I ask the question," Aunt Emma went on, "because before I can give my sanction to this match, I must first be satisfied in my mind that the conditions are such as are not likely to give my conscience as a guardian any trouble. Love is like an apple: when it is young it is sour; it requires time to get ripe and sweet. How long have you loved Major Rivers?"

"Don't answer her," said George.

"I must know everything," said my aunt, "or she marries without my consent."

"I don't know how long I've loved him," answered Kate, "but I know that we are very fond of each other."

"It is very abrupt—very abrupt," said my aunt, shaking her head. "If there was money concerned in the matter, I shouldn't think it was honest. Does he know you have no money?"

"I told him that, ages ago," said George.

"Because there are girls," continued my aunt, on whom George's interruptions fell and dissolved like snow-flakes on the hand, "who, in their eagerness to get married, will represent themselves as heiresses."

I felt the blood mantling my cheek. Kate sat silent, pale, with her eyes cast down.

"Let's have done with this cross-examination, mother," said George, leaving his chair. "You won't do much good to Kate's love by handling it in this manner. It's a pretty little butterfly. Don't rob it of its colour, but give it sunshine."

"If it's no better than a butterfly it's worthless," said Aunt Emma.

"That's Kate's business," remarked George. "I know I should be sorry to have my love, if I had any, pinned down, like you are pinning Kate's, on the cork of your criticism. Kate, here's a kiss for you, and my heartiest congratulations."

"I tell you, George," exclaimed his mother, suppressing her vexation as she accosted her son, "that I will not allow this subject to be disposed of as if it were of no more moment than a marriage between my cook and the milkman. Kate is my niece, or rather I am her guardian. I must be thoroughly satisfied on many heads before I can give my sanction."

"I think you may rest satisfied with Major Rivers's love," I ventured to observe. "He is too thoughtful a man to misplace his affections."

"You are foolish, mother, to threaten Kate with your 'sanction, said George. "Sanctions nowadays are only heard of in novels."

"If Kate likes to act as a servant she need not consult me for my sanction," remarked my aunt, freezingly.

"Kate," I said, seeing the slow tears gathering in my sister's eyes, "will act like a lady, in whatever resolution she may form. You may be sure of that, aunt."

George smiled as he met the defiant gleam in my eye. Aunt Emma rose irritably from her chair, and jerked her lean figure upon a sofa.

"I wish to discuss this subject coolly," she said. "If I'm to be driven into a rage by it, I'll not say another word, good or bad."

I have noticed that when bad-tempered old women threaten silence they merely wish you to prepare for greater volubility. My aunt proved no exception to what I have found a rule.

"I am perfectly well aware," she commenced, "that it is a fashion amongst the young ladies of the present day to set propriety at defiance. In my young days decorum was a virtue to be cultivated. The consent of a parent or guardian to a marriage was looked upon as much more essential to conjugal happiness than the highest excellencies of the bride or bridegroom. But I am prepared for any absurdity or folly from girls who have once read through a modern three-volumed novel."

"In your young days you had Monk Lewis to amuse you," said George. "His high standard of morality and his popularity were of course splendid guarantees of the domestic virtues of those unimpeachable times."

"You talk without knowing what you say, George," answered his mother, mildly. "When I speak of men I do not include monkeys. The writers of my young days were not all Lewises, any more than the inhabitants of Africa are all gorillas. But I say that people who have arrived at my time of life can place no reliance on young girls nowadays. There is no knowing what pernicious influence they are not allowing themselves to be affected by. And the men are quite as bad," she added, abruptly.

"Now for the men," said George.

"Fortune-hunters, the best of them!" continued Mrs. Gordon. "Wretched creatures, with no more brains in their heads than the clowns of a circus have—not so much, indeed; for the clowns do make some use of their heads—they stand on them."