Wrecked in Port/Book II, Chapter XIII

by Edmund Hodgson Yates

Chapter XIII.Clouding Over.

Gertrude Creswell was not wrong in her supposition that Mr. Benthall intended asking her to become his wife. It is not often that mistakes are made in such matters, despite all we read of disappointed maidens and blighted hopes. Life is so very practical in this portion of the nineteenth century that, except in very rare cases, even love affairs scarcely care to avail themselves of a halo of romance, of that veil of mystery and secrecy which used to be half the charm of the affair. "The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love" are now never seen, in anything like good society, where the intention of two young persons to marry is stated as soon as—sometimes before—they have met, and the "understanding" between them is fully recognised by all their friends; while as to the "matron's glance which would such looks reprove," it is entirely obsolete, and never brought into play, save when the bashful virgins bend their sidelong looks of love on good-looking young paupers in the government offices or the army—a proceeding which it is but fair to say the bashful virgins "of the period" very rarely indulge in. Gertrude Creswell was as unlike a "girl of the period," in the present delightful acceptation of that phrase, as can well be imagined—that is to say, she was modest, frank, simple, honest, and without guile; but she was a woman, and she knew perfectly that she had engaged George Benthall's attention and become the object of his affection, although she had had no previous experience in the matter. They had lived such quiet lives, these young ladies, and had slid so tranquilly from the frilled-trouser-wearing and les-graces-playing period of childhood to the long skirts, croquet, and flirtation of marriageable age, that they had hardly thought of that largest component part of a girl's day-dream, settling in life. There was with them no trace of that direct and unmistakable line of demarcation known as "coming out," that mountain-ridge between the cold dreary Switzerland of lessons, governesses, mid-day dinner, backboard, piano practice, and early bed; and the lovely glowing Italy of balls, bouquets, cavaliers, croquet, Park, Row, crush-room, country-house, French novel, and cotillon at five a.m. So Gertrude had never had a love affair of any kind before, but she was very quiet about it, and restrained her natural tendency to gush, principally for Maud's sake. She thought it might seem unkind in her to make a fuss, as she described it, about her having a lover before Maud, who was as yet unsuited with that commodity. It puzzled Gertrude immensely, this fact of her having proved attractive to any one while Maud was by; she was accustomed to think so much of her elder sister, on whom she had endeavoured to model herself to the best of her ability, that she could not understand any one taking notice of her while her sister was present. Throughout her life, with her father, with her mother, and now with her uncle, Gertrude Creswell had always played the inferior part to her sister; she was always the humble confidante in white muslin to Maud in Tilburina's white satin, and in looks, manner, ability, or disposition, was not imagined to be able to stand any comparison with the elder girl.

But Mr. Benthall, preferring Gertrude, had given long and serious thought as to his future. He had taken the trouble to do something which he knew he ought to have done long since, but which he had always resolutely shirked—to look into the actual condition of his school, and more especially of his boarders; and after careful examination, he confessed to himself, as he smoked a costly cigar, pacing slowly up and down the lane which was ablaze with apple-blossom—it would never have done to have been caught in the wildly dissipated act of smoking by any of the boys, or, indeed, by a good many of the villagers—he confessed to himself that he wanted a companion, and his establishment wanted a head, and that Mrs. Covey, excellent in her way, was scarcely a proper representative of the female element in the household of the head-master of Helmingham school. Thus minded, Mr. Benthall rode over to Woolgreaves, was received by a benevolent grin from the stable-helper, to whom he confided his horse (confound those fellows, with what an extraordinary facility they blunder on to the right scent in these matters!), went into the house, paid his suit to the two young ladies, had but a few words with Miss Maud, whose services, in consequence of an unfavourable turn of Mrs. Ashurst's illness, were required upstairs, and a prolonged interview of a very satisfactory kind with Miss Gertrude. With a portion only of this interview have we to do; the remaining portion can be much "more easily imagined than described," at least by those to whom the circumstances of the position have been, or actually are, familiar—perhaps no inconsiderable proportion of the world.

"By the way," said Mr. Benthall, as, after a third ridiculous attempt at pretending he was going, he had again settled himself in his chair, but had not thought it necessary to give up Miss Gertrude's hand, which he had taken in his own when he had last risen to say adieu—"by the way, Miss—well, Gertrude—what was that you were saying last time I was here about Mrs. Creswell?"

"What I was saying about Mrs. Creswell? I don't exactly know, but it wouldn't be very difficult to guess! I hate her!" said Gertrude, roundly.

"Ah, yes!" said Mr. Benthall, "I think I managed to gather that from the general tone of your conversation, but what were you saying specifically?"

"I don't know what specifically means, I think!" said Gertrude, after a moment's reflection; "but I do know why I hate her!"

"And that is because——"

"Because she pretends to be so awfully superior, and goes in to be so horribly good and demure, and all that kind of thing," said Miss Gertrude, growing very becomingly red with excitement. "She always reminds me of the publican in the parable, who, 'standing afar off'—you know what I mean! I always thought that the publican went in to draw more attention to himself by his mock humility than all the noise and outcry which the Pharisee made, and which any one would have put down to what it was worth! and that's just like Miss A.—I mean Mrs. Creswell—I'm sure I shall call her Miss A. to my dying day, Maud and I are so accustomed to speak of her like that—you'd think butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, and this is so shocking, and that is so dreadful, and she is so prim, and so innocent, and so self-sacrificing—and then she steps in and carries off our uncle, for whom all the unmarried girls in the county were angling years ago, and had given up the attempt in despair!"

"But you must have seen all this in her for months, ever since she has been in the same house with you! And yet it is only since she achieved her conquest of your uncle that you've been so bitter against her!"

"Not at all, George! That's so like a man, always to try and say an unpleasant thing about the want of generosity and all that! Not at all! I don't mind so much about her marrying uncle; if he's such a silly old thing as to like to marry her, that's his look-out, and not ours. And I've no doubt she'll make him what people call a good wife, awfully respectable, and all that kind of thing. And I don't believe she's ever been in love with anybody else, notwithstanding your stories about that Mr. Joyce. I like your talking about women's gossip, sir; a fine story that was you brought us, and all started by some old woman, wasn't it? But what annoyed me worst was the way in which she wrote about making Maud give up her music-room! I call that regularly cruel, because she knew well enough that Maud was awfully fond of that room, and—and that's what makes me hate her!"

"And Maud seemed to think that that was to be but the beginning of a series of unpleasant measures."

"Well, you know Maud's blood is regularly up in this matter, and of course she is prejudiced to a certain extent, and I don't know—I'm not clever, you know, like she is—how far she's right. But I think plainly enough that Miss A.—I mean Mrs. Creswell—intends to have her own way in everything, and as she doesn't like us, and never did, she'll set much against us, and goodness knows the result!"

Mr. Benthall could not have been described as "goodness," nor was he a particularly far-seeing man, bat he thought he knew the result. As he cantered slowly home that afternoon he thought the matter out, and came to the conclusion that if Mrs. Creswell were the woman she was described, she would tolerate but for a very little time the presence of two persons so obnoxious in the same house with her, and that when that climax arrived, it was the time for the Rev. George Benthall to step in and do himself and everybody else concerned a good turn by taking Gertrude off her uncle's hands.

There was very little doubt that the shelter of the Woolgreaves roof and the luxuries of the Woolgreaves establishment would be required by one of its inmates for but a very short time. Mrs. Ashurst's strength, which had been gradually declining, began to fail her altogether, and it was evident to all that the end was at hand. Dr. Osborne, who was in constant attendance—and the little man never showed to such advantage as under the most trying professional circumstances—shook his head sadly, and confessed that it had now become a question of days. But the old lady was so tranquil, and apparently so happy, that he hesitated to summon her daughter, more especially as the newly-married couple were so soon expected home. The girl who attended on the old lady in the capacity of night-nurse had a different experience from Dr. Osborne so far as the tranquillity of the patient was concerned. She knew when she was awake—and considering that she was a full-blooded, heavy, bacon-fed lass, she really deserved much credit for the manner in which she propped her eyelids up with her forefingers, and resorted to sniffing instead of snoring—she knew that Mrs. Ashurst had very disturbed nights, when she lay moaning and groaning and plucking at the bed-clothes, and constantly murmuring one phrase: "For my sake! Lord help her! God grant it may turn out right! She did it, I know, for my sake!" Gradually she lost consciousness, and in her wandering state she repeated nothing but this one phrase, "For my sake!" Occasionally she would smile placidly and look round the room as though in admiration of its comfort and appointments, but then the sad look would come over her face, and she would repeat the melancholy sentence in the saddest of tones. Dr. Osborne, when he eventually came to hear of this, and to witness it, confessed he could not understand it. It was not a case for the College of Surgeons, nor get-at-able by the pharmacopœia; it was what Shakespeare said—he'd heard his girl read it—about not being able to minister to a mind diseased, or something of that sort; and yet, God bless him, Mrs. Ashurst was about the last woman to have anything of the kind. However, he should be deuced glad when little Marian—ah, mustn't call her little Marian now, beg pardon, Mrs. Creswell—funny, wasn't it? couldn't get that into his head! had known 'em all so long, and never thought—nor anybody else for the matter of that. However, that's neither here nor there. What's that? Proverb? Eh, "there's no fool like an——" No, no, mustn't say that before him, please. What was he saying? Oh, he should be glad when Mrs. Creswell came home, and took her mother under her own charge.

Mr. and Mrs. Creswell came home two days before they were expected, or rather before they had originally intended. Marian had heard of her mother's illness, and expressed a wish to go to her at once—a wish which of course decided Mr. Creswell's course of action. The tenants and villagers, to whom the news of Mr. Creswell's intended political experiment had been imparted during his absence, had intended to give him a welcome in which they could express their sentiments on flags and mottoes and triumphal arches, and they had already arranged an alliterative sentence, in which "Creswell and Conservatism!" each picked out with gigantic capital letters, were to play conspicuous parts; but Dr. Osborne, who got wind of what was threatened, drove off to Brocksopp in his little pony chaise, and there took Mr. Teesdale, the agent, into confidence, and revealed to him the real state—hovering between life and death—in which Mrs. Ashurst then lay. On the reception of this information, Mr. Teesdale took upon himself to hint that the intended demonstration had better be postponed for a more convenient season; and accordingly Mr. and Mrs. Creswell, arriving by the train at Brocksopp, and having their carriage to meet them, drove through the streets when the working people were all engaged at their factories and mills, and made their way home, scarcely exciting any recognition.

The two girls, on the alert at hearing the wheels of the approaching carriage, rushed to the door, and were honoured by being permitted to kiss the cheek of the bride, as she swept past them. No sooner had they kissed their uncle, and were all assembled in the drawing-room, than Marian asked after her mother.

"I'm afraid you will find her very much changed, Mrs. Creswell," said Maud, who, of course, was spokeswoman. "Mrs. Ashurst is very much weaker, and has—has occasional fits of wandering, which——"

"Why was I not informed of this?" asked Marian, in her chilliest tones. "Were you both so much engaged that you could not manage to let me have a line to tell me of this change in my mother's state?"

"Maud wanted to write and tell you, but Dr. Osborne wouldn't let her," blustered out Gertrude. "She never will say anything for her herself, but I'm sure she has been most attentive, Maud has, and I don't think——"

"I'm sorry to interrupt this lobgesang, Gertrude; but I must go up and see my mother at once. Be good enough to open the door." "And she sailed out of the room," Gertrude said, afterwards, "as though she'd been a duchess! In one of those rustling silks, don't you know, as stiff as a board, which look as if they'd stand up by themselves!"

When Marian reached her mother's door, and was just about entering, she stopped short, arrested by a low dull moaning sound which fell upon her ear. She listened with her blood curdling within her and her lips growing cold and rigid. Still it came, that low hollow moan, monotonous, dreadful. Then she opened the door, and, passing swiftly in, saw her mother lying tossing on the bed, plucking furtively at the bedclothes, and moaning as she moved her head wearily in its unrest.

"Mother!" cried Marian—"mother, darling mother! don't you know me?" And she flung herself on the bed, and, taking the old woman's head in her arms, softly kissed her lips.

The bright, the momentarily bright, eyes looked at her without seeing her—she knew that—and presently moved away again round the room, as Mrs. Ashurst raised her long lean hand, and, pointing to the wall, said, "Pictures—and books—all fine—all fine!—for my sake!"—uttering the last words in a deep hissing whisper.

Marian was too shocked to speak. Shocked not frightened, she had much natural strength of mind, and had had experience of illness, though not of this character. But she was shocked to see her mother in such a state, and deeply enraged at the fact that the increase of the illness had been kept from her. "Don't you know me?" she repeated; "mother, darling mother, don't you know me? Marian, poor Marian! your daughter Marian!"

"Ah, don't blame her!" said the old woman, in the same whisper. "Poor Marian! poor dear Marian! my Jimmy's pet! She did it for my sake, all for my sake! Carriages and horses and wine for me—wine, rich strong wine for me—all for me, all for my sake, poor Marian! all for my sake!"

"Is she often in this way? Does she often repeat those horrible words?" asked Marian of the servant, of whose presence she then, on raising her head, became for the first time aware.

"Oh yes, miss—I mean, mum!—constantly, mum! She never says anything else, mum, but about some things being for her sake, mum. And she haven't said anything else, miss, since she was off her head—I mean, since she was delirrous,. mum——"

"Does she always mention my name Marian?"

"Always, mum, 'poor Marian'—savin' your presence, and not meanin' a liberty—is what she do say, miss, and always about 'for her sake' it's done, whatever it is, which I don't know."

"How long has she been like this? How long have you been with her?"

"A week last Wednesday, mum, was when I was brought from the laundry to be nurse, and if you find your collars and cuffs iron-moulded, mum, or not properly got up, you'll understand it's not me, Dr. Osbin having had me fetched here as bein' strong for nussin' and a good sitter up o' nights——"

"Yes, I understand!" said Marian, vacantly; "you won't have to sit up any more; I shall relieve you of that. Just wait here; I shall be back in a few minutes."

Marian hurried down-stairs, and in the drawing-room found her husband, the two girls, and Dr. Osborne, who had joined the party. There must have been some peculiar expression in her face, for she had no sooner opened the door than Mr. Creswell, looking up, hurried across the room and took her hand, saying, anxiously, "What is the matter, Marian? what is it, my love?"

"Simply that I arrive here to find my mother wandering and imbecile—she whom I left comparatively cheerful, and certainly in the possession of all her senses—that is all, nothing more," said Marian, in a hard low voice, and with a dead-white face and dried bloodless lips. "I thought," she continued, turning to the girls, "that I might have left her safely in your charge. I never asked for your sympathy, God knows; I would not have had it if you had offered it to me; but I thought you seemed to be disposed kindly and affectionately towards her. There was so much gush and display in your attachment, I might have known it had no real foundation."

"You have no right to speak to us in this way, Mrs. Creswell!" cried Maud, making a step in advance and standing very stiff and erect; "you have no right to——"

"Maud," broke in Mr. Creswell, in his coldest tone, "recollect to whom you are speaking, if you please."

"I do recollect, uncle; I am speaking to Mrs. Ashurst's daughter—dear Mrs. Ashurst, whom both Gertrude and I love, and have tried to show we love her, as she would tell you, if she could, poor darling! And it is only because Mrs. Creswell is her daughter that I answer her at all, after her speaking to me in that way. I will tell you now, Mrs. Creswell, what I should not otherwise have mentioned, that Gerty and I have been constant in our attendance on Mrs. Ashurst, and that one or other of us has always slept in the next room, to be within call if we were wanted, and——"

"Why did you take upon yourselves to keep me in ignorance of the change in my mother's mental state, of this fearful wandering and unconsciousness?—that is what I complain of."

"Oh, I must not let them say they took it upon themselves at all," said Dr. Osborne, who had been looking on uncomfortably during this dialogue; "that was my fault entirely; the girls wanted to send for you, but I said no, much better not. I knew you were due home in a few days, and your earlier arrival could not have done the least good to my poor old friend upstairs, and would only have been distressing to you."

"Oh, you accept the responsibility, Dr. Osborne?" said Marian, still in the same hard voice. "Would you have acted in the same way with any ordinary patient, any stranger?"

"Eh?" exclaimed the little doctor, in a very loud key, rubbing his face hard with his pocket-handkerchief. "What do you ask, Marian?—any stranger?"

"Would you have taken upon yourself to keep a daughter from her mother under similar circumstances, supposing they had been strangers to you?"

"No—no, perhaps not," said the little doctor, still wildly astonished.

"It will be perhaps better, then, if henceforth you put us on the footing of strangers!" said Marian.

"Marian!" exclaimed Mr. Creswell.

"I mean what I said," she replied. "Had we been on that footing now, I should have been at my mother's bedside some days since!" And she walked quickly from the room.

Dr. Osborne made two steps towards his hat, seized it, clapped it on his head, and with remarkably unsteady legs was making his way to the door when Mr. Creswell took him by the arm, begged him not to think of what had just passed, but to remember the shock which Marian had received, the suddenness with which this new phase of her mother's illness had come upon her, &c. The little doctor did not leave the room, as apparently he had intended at first; he sat down on a chair close by, muttering, "Treat her as a stranger! rocked her on my knee! brought her through measles! father died in my arms! treat her as a stranger!"

Two days afterwards Marian stood by the bed on which lay Mrs. Ashurst, dead. As she reverently arranged the grey hair under the close cap, and kissed the cold lips, she said, "You did not enjoy the money very long, darling mother! But you died in comfort at any rate! and that was worth the sacrifice—if sacrifice it were! "

End of Book the Second.