Towards the middle of the eighteenth century there lived
in the Province of Massachusetts a widowed gentlewoman, the mother of three
children, by name Mrs Veronica Wingrave. She had lost her husband early
in life, and had devoted herself to the care of her progeny. These young
persons grew up in a manner to reward her tenderness and to gratify her
highest hopes. The first-born was a son, whom she had called Bernard, in
remembrance of his father. The others were daughters – born at an
interval of three years apart. Good looks were traditional in the family,
and this youthful trio were not likely to allow the tradition to perish. The
boy was of that fair and ruddy complexion and that athletic structure which
in those days (as in these) were the sign of good English descent – a
frank, affectionate young fellow, a deferential son, a patronising brother,
a steadfast friend. Clever, however, he was not; the wit of the family had
been apportioned chiefly to his sisters. The late Mr William Wingrave
had been a great reader of Shakespeare, at a time when this pursuit implied
more freedom of thought than at the present day, and in a community where it
required much courage to patronise the drama even in the closet; and he had
wished to call attention to his admiration of the great poet by calling his
daughters out of his favourite plays. Upon the elder he had bestowed the
romantic name of
Rosalind,
and the younger he had called
Perdita,
in memory of a little girl born between them, who had lived but a few
weeks.
When Bernard Wingrave came to his sixteenth year his
mother put a brave face upon it and prepared to execute her husband’s
last injunction. This had been a formal command that, at the proper age, his
son should be sent out to England, to complete his education at the
university of Oxford, where he himself had acquired his taste for elegant
literature. It was Mrs Wingrave’s belief that the lad’s equal
was not to be found in the two hemispheres, but she had the old traditions
of literal obedience. She swallowed her sobs, and made up her boy’s
trunk and his simple provincial outfit, and sent him on his way across the
seas. Bernard presented himself at his father’s college, and spent five
years in England, without great honour, indeed, but with a vast deal of
pleasure and no discredit. On leaving the university he made the journey to
France. In his twenty-fourth year he took ship for home, prepared to find
poor little New England (New England was very small in those days) a very
dull, unfashionable residence. But there had been changes at home, as well
as in
Mr Bernard’s opinions. He found his mother’s house quite
habitable, and his sisters grown into two very charming young ladies, with
all the accomplishments and graces of the young women of Britain, and a
certain native-grown originality and wildness, which, if it was not an
accomplishment, was certainly a grace the more. Bernard privately assured
his mother that his sisters were fully a match for the most genteel young
women in the old country; whereupon poor Mrs Wingrave, you may be sure,
bade them hold up their heads. Such was Bernard’s opinion, and such, in
a tenfold higher degree, was the opinion of Mr Arthur Lloyd. This
gentleman was a college-mate of Mr Bernard, a young man of reputable
family, of a good person and a handsome inheritance; which latter
appurtenance he proposed to invest in trade in the flourishing colony. He
and Bernard were sworn friends; they had crossed the ocean together, and the
young American had lost no time in presenting him at his mother’s
house, where he had made quite as good an impression as that which he had
received and of which I have just given a hint.
The two sisters were at this time in all the freshness
of their youthful bloom; each wearing, of course, this natural brilliancy in
the manner that became her best. They were equally dissimilar in appearance
and character. Rosalind, the elder – now in her twenty-second year
– was tall and white, with calm gray eyes and auburn tresses; a very
faint likeness to the Rosalind of Shakespeare’s
comedy, whom I imagine a brunette
(if you will), but a slender, airy creature, full of the softest, quickest
impulses. Miss Wingrave, with her slightly lymphatic fairness, her fine
arms, her majestic height, her slow utterance, was not cut out for
adventures. She would never have put on a man’s jacket and hose; and,
indeed, being a very plump beauty, she may have had reasons apart from her
natural dignity. Perdita, too, might very well have exchanged the sweet
melancholy of her name against something more in consonance with her aspect
and disposition. She had the cheek of a gipsy and the eye of an eager child,
as well as the smallest waist and lightest foot in all the country of the
Puritans. When you spoke to her she never made you wait, as her handsome
sister was wont to do (while she looked at you with a cold fine eye), but
gave you your choice of a dozen answers before you had uttered half your
thought.
The young girls were very glad to see their brother once
more; but they found themselves quite able to spare part of their attention
for their brother’s friend. Among the young men their friends and
neighbours, the
belle jeunesse
of the Colony, there were many excellent fellows, several devoted swains,
and some two or three who enjoyed the reputation of universal charmers and
conquerors. But the homebred arts and somewhat boisterous gallantry of these
honest colonists were completely eclipsed by the good looks, the fine
clothes, the punctilious courtesy, the perfect elegance, the immense
information, of Mr Arthur Lloyd. He was in reality no paragon; he was a
capable, honourable, civil youth, rich in pounds
sterling, in his health and complacency and his little capital of uninvested
affections. But he was a gentleman; he had a handsome person; he had studied
and travelled; he spoke French, he played on the flute, and he read verses
aloud with very great taste. There were a dozen reasons why Miss Wingrave
and her sister should have thought their other male acquaintance made but a
poor figure before such a perfect man of the world. Mr Lloyd’s
anecdotes told our little New England maidens a great deal more of the ways
and means of people of fashion in European capitals than he had any idea of
doing. It was delightful to sit by and hear him and Bernard talk about the
fine people and fine things they had seen. They would all gather round the
fire after tea, in the little wainscoted parlour, and the two young men
would remind each other, across the rug, of this, that and the other
adventure. Rosalind and Perdita would often have given their ears to know
exactly what adventure it was, and where it happened, and who was there, and
what the ladies had on; but in those days a well-bred young woman was not
expected to break into the conversation of her elders, or to ask too many
questions; and the poor girls used therefore to sit fluttering behind the
more languid – or more discreet – curiosity of their mother.
That they were both very fine girls Arthur Lloyd was not
slow to discover; but it took him some time to make up his mind whether he
liked the
big sister or the little sister best. He had a strong presentiment – an
emotion of a nature entirely too cheerful to be called a foreboding –
that he was destined to stand up before the parson with one of them; yet he
was unable to arrive at a preference, and for such a consummation a
preference was certainly necessary, for Lloyd had too much young blood in
his veins to make a choice by lot and be cheated of the satisfaction of
falling in love. He resolved to take things as they came – to let his
heart speak. Meanwhile he was on a very pleasant footing. Mrs Wingrave
showed a dignified indifference to his ‘intentions’, equally
remote from a carelessness of her daughter’s honour and from that sharp
alacrity to make him come to the point, which, in his quality of a young man
of property, he had too often encountered in the worldly matrons of his
native islands. As for Bernard, all that he asked was that his friend should
treat his sisters as his own; and as for the poor girls themselves, however
each may have secretly longed that their visitor should do or say something
‘marked’, they kept a very modest and contented demeanour.
Towards each other, however, they were somewhat more on
the offensive. They were good friends enough, and accommodating bedfellows
(they shared the same four-poster), betwixt whom it would take more than a
day for the seeds of jealousy to sprout and bear fruit; but they felt that
the seeds had been sown on the day that Mr Lloyd came into the house.
Each made up her mind that, if she should be slighted, she would
bear her grief in silence, and that no one should be any the wiser; for if
they had a great deal of ambition, they had also a large share of pride. But
each prayed in secret, nevertheless, that upon her the selection,
the distinction, might fall. They had need of a vast deal of patience, of
self-control, of dissimulation. In those days a young girl of decent
breeding could make no advances whatever, and barely respond, indeed, to
those that were made. She was expected to sit still in her chair, with her
eyes on the carpet, watching the spot where the mystic handkerchief should
fall. Poor Arthur Lloyd was obliged to carry on his wooing in the little
wainscoted parlour, before the eyes of Mrs Wingrave, her son, and his
prospective sister-in-law. But youth and love are so cunning that a hundred
signs and tokens might travel to and fro, and not one of these three pairs
of eyes detect them in their passage. The two maidens were almost always
together, and had plenty of chances to betray themselves. That each knew
she was being watched, however, made not a grain of difference in the
little offices they mutually rendered, or in the various household tasks
they performed in common. Neither flinched nor fluttered beneath the silent
battery of her sister’s eyes. The only apparent change in their habits
was that they had less to say to each other. It was impossible to talk about
Mr Lloyd, and it was ridiculous to talk about anything else. By tacit
agreement they began to wear all their choice finery, and to devise such
little implements of conquest, in the way of ribbons and top-knots and
kerchiefs, as were sanctioned
by indubitable modesty. They executed in the same inarticulate fashion a
contract of fair play in this exciting game. “Is it better so?”
Rosalind would ask, tying a bunch of ribbons on her bosom, and turning about
from her glass to her sister. Perdita would look up gravely from her work
and examine the decoration. “I think you had better give it another
loop,” she would say, with great solemnity, looking hard at her sister
with eyes that added, ‘upon my honour!’ So they were for ever
stitching and trimming their petticoats, and pressing out their muslins, and
contriving washes and ointments and cosmetics, like
the ladies in the household of the vicar of Wakefield.
Some three or four months went by; it
grew to be midwinter, and as yet Rosalind knew that if Perdita had nothing
more to boast of than she, there was not much to be feared from her rivalry.
But Perdita by this time – the charming Perdita – felt that her
secret had grown to be tenfold more precious than her sister’s.
One afternoon Miss Wingrave sat alone – that was a
rare accident – before her toilet-glass, combing out her long hair. It
was getting too dark to see; she lit the two candles in their sockets, on
the frame of her mirror, and then went to the window to draw her curtains.
It was a gray December evening; the landscape was bare and bleak, and the
sky heavy with snow-clouds. At the end of the large garden into which her
window looked was a wall with a little postern door, opening into a lane.
The door stood ajar, as she could vaguely see in the gathering darkness, and
moved
slowly to and fro, as if some one were swaying it from the lane without. It
was doubtless a servant-maid who had been having a tryst with her
sweetheart. But as she was about to drop her curtain Rosalind saw her sister
step into the garden and hurry along the path which led to the house. She
dropped the curtain, all save a little crevice for her eyes. As Perdita came
up the path she seemed to be examining something in her hand, holding it
close to her eyes. When she reached the house she stopped a moment, looked
intently at the object, and pressed it to her lips.
Poor Rosalind slowly came back to her chair and sat down
before her glass, where, if she had looked at it less abstractedly, she
would have seen her handsome features sadly disfigured by jealousy. A moment
afterwards the door opened behind her and her sister came into the room, out
of breath, and her cheeks aglow with the chilly air.
Perdita started. “Ah,” said she, “I
thought you were with our mother.” The ladies were to go to a
tea-party, and on such occasions it was the habit of one of the young girls
to help their mother to dress. Instead of coming in, Perdita lingered at the
door.
“Come in, come in,” said Rosalind. “We
have more than an hour yet. I should like you very much to give a few
strokes to my hair.” She knew that her sister wished to retreat, and
that she could see in the glass all her movements in the room. “Nay,
just help me with my hair,” she said, “and I will go to
mamma.”
Perdita came reluctantly, and took the brush. She saw
her sister’s eyes, in the glass, fastened
hard upon her hands. She had not made three passes when Rosalind clapped her
own right hand upon her sister’s left, and started out of her chair.
“Whose ring is that?” she cried, passionately, drawing her towards
the light.
On the young girl’s third finger glistened a little
gold ring, adorned with a very small sapphire. Perdita felt that she need no
longer keep her secret, yet that she must put a bold face on her avowal.
“It’s mine,” she said proudly.
“Who gave it to you?” cried the other.
Perdita hesitated a moment. “Mr Lloyd.”
“Mr Lloyd is generous, all of a sudden.”
“Ah no,” cried Perdita, with spirit, “not
all of a sudden! He offered it to me a month ago.”
“And you needed a month’s begging to take
it?” said Rosalind, looking at the little trinket, which indeed was not
especially elegant, although it was the best that the jeweller of the
Province could furnish. “I wouldn’t have taken it in less than
two.”
“It isn’t the ring,” Perdita answered,
“it’s what it means!”
“It means that you are not a modest girl!”
cried Rosalind. “Pray, does your mother know of your intrigue? does
Bernard?”
“My mother has approved my ‘intrigue’, as
you call it. Mr Lloyd has asked for my hand, and mamma has given it.
Would you have had him apply to you, dearest sister?”
Rosalind gave her companion a long look, full of
passionate envy and sorrow. Then she dropped her lashes on her pale cheeks
and turned away. Perdita felt that it had not been a pretty scene;
but it was her sister’s fault. However, the elder girl rapidly called
back her pride, and turned herself about again. “You have my very best
wishes,” she said, with a low curtsey. “I wish you every
happiness, and a very long life.”
Perdita gave a bitter laugh. “Don’t speak in
that tone!” she cried. “I would rather you should curse me
outright. Come, Rosy,” she added, “he couldn’t marry both of
us.”
“I wish you very great joy,” Rosalind
repeated, mechanically, sitting down to her glass again, “and a very
long life, and plenty of children.”
There was something in the sound of these words not at
all to Perdita’s taste. “Will you give me a year to live at
least?” she said. “In a year I can have one little boy – or
one little girl at least. If you will give me your brush again I will do
your hair.”
“Thank you,” said Rosalind. “You had
better go to mamma. It isn’t becoming that a young lady with a promised
husband should wait on a girl with none.”
“Nay,” said Perdita, good-humouredly, “I
have Arthur to wait upon me. You need my service more than I need
yours.”
But her sister motioned her away, and she left the room.
When she had gone poor Rosalind fell on her knees before her dressing-table,
buried her head in her arms, and poured out a flood of tears and sobs. She
felt very much the better for this effusion of sorrow. When her sister came
back she insisted upon helping her to dress – on her wearing her
prettiest things. She forced upon
her acceptance a bit of lace of her own, and declared that now that she was
to be married she should do her best to appear worthy of her lover’s
choice. She discharged these offices in stern silence; but, such as they
were, they had to do duty as an apology and an atonement; she never made any
other.
Now that Lloyd was received by the family as an accepted
suitor nothing remained but to fix the wedding-day. It was appointed for the
following April, and in the interval preparations were diligently made for
the marriage. Lloyd, on his side, was busy with his commercial arrangements,
and with establishing a correspondence with the great mercantile house to
which he had attached himself in England. He was therefore not so frequent a
visitor at Mrs Wingrave’s as during the months of his diffidence
and irresolution, and poor Rosalind had less to suffer than she had feared
from the sight of the mutual endearments of the young lovers. Touching his
future sister-in-law Lloyd had a perfectly clear conscience. There had not
been a particle of love-making between them, and he had not the slightest
suspicion that he had dealt her a terrible blow. He was quite at his ease;
life promised so well, both domestically and financially. The great revolt
of the Colonies was not yet in the air, and that his connubial felicity
should take a tragic turn it was absurd, it was blasphemous, to apprehend.
Meanwhile, at Mrs Wingrave’s, there was a greater rustling of
silks, a more rapid clicking of scissors and flying of needles, than ever.
The good lady
had determined that her daughter should carry from home the genteelest
outfit that her money could buy or that the country could furnish. All the
sage women in the Province were convened, and their united taste was brought
to bear on Perdita’s wardrobe. Rosalind’s situation, at this
moment, was assuredly not to be envied. The poor girl had an inordinate love
of dress, and the very best taste in the world, as her sister perfectly well
knew. Rosalind was tall, she was stately and sweeping, she was made to carry
stiff brocade and masses of heavy lace, such as belong to the toilet of a
rich man’s wife. But Rosalind sat aloof, with her beautiful arms folded
and her head averted, while her mother and sister and the venerable women
aforesaid worried and wondered over their materials, oppressed by the
multitude of their resources. One day there came in a beautiful piece of
white silk, brocaded with heavenly blue and silver, sent by the bridegroom
himself – it not being thought amiss in those days that the
husband-elect should contribute to the bride’s trousseau. Perdita could
think of no form or fashion which would do sufficient honour to the
splendour of the material.
“Blue’s your colour, sister, more than
mine,” she said, with appealing eyes. “It’s a pity it’s
not for you. You would know what to do with it.”
Rosalind got up from her place and looked at the great
shining fabric, as it lay spread over the back of a chair. Then she took it
up in her hands and felt it – lovingly, as Perdita could see – and
turned about toward the mirror with it. She let
it roll down to her feet, and flung the other end over her shoulder,
gathering it in about her waist with her white arm, which was bare to the
elbow. She threw back her head, and looked at her image, and a hanging tress
of her auburn hair fell upon the gorgeous surface of the silk. It made a
dazzling picture. The women standing about uttered a little “Look,
look!” of admiration. “Yes, indeed,” said Rosalind, quietly,
“blue is my colour.” But Perdita could see that her fancy had been
stirred, and that she would now fall to work and solve all their silken
riddles. And indeed she behaved very well, as Perdita, knowing her
insatiable love of millinery, was quite ready to declare. Innumerable yards
of lustrous silk and satin, of muslin, velvet and lace, passed through her
cunning hands, without a jealous word coming from her lips. Thanks to her
industry, when the wedding-day came Perdita was prepared to espouse more of
the vanities of life than any fluttering young bride who had yet received
the sacramental blessing of a New England divine.
It had been arranged that the young couple should go out
and spend the first days of their wedded life at the country-house of an
English gentleman – a man of rank and a very kind friend to Arthur
Lloyd. He was a bachelor; he declared he should be delighted to give up the
place to the influence of Hymen. After the ceremony at church – it had
been performed by an English clergyman – young Mrs Lloyd hastened
back to her mother’s house to change her nuptial robes for a
riding-dress. Rosalind helped her to effect the
change, in the little homely room in which they had spent their undivided
younger years. Perdita then hurried off to bid farewell to her mother,
leaving Rosalind to follow. The parting was short; the horses were at the
door, and Arthur was impatient to start. But Rosalind had not followed, and
Perdita hastened back to her room, opening the door abruptly. Rosalind, as
usual, was before the glass, but in a position which caused the other to
stand still, amazed. She had dressed herself in Perdita’s cast-off
wedding veil and wreath, and on her neck she had hung the full string of
pearls which the young girl had received from her husband as a wedding-gift.
These things had been hastily laid aside, to await their possessor’s
disposal on her return from the country. Bedizened in this unnatural garb
Rosalind stood before the mirror, plunging a long look into its depths and
reading heaven knows what audacious visions. Perdita was horrified. It was a
hideous image of their old rivalry come to life again. She made a step
toward her sister, as if to pull off the veil and the flowers. But catching
her eyes in the glass, she stopped.
“Farewell, sweetheart,” she said. “You
might at least have waited till I had got out of the house!” And she
hurried away from the room.
Mr Lloyd had purchased in Boston a house which to
the taste of those days appeared as elegant as it was commodious; and here
he very soon established himself with his young wife. He was thus separated
by a distance of twenty miles from the residence of his mother-in-law.
Twenty
miles, in that primitive era of roads and conveyances, were as serious a
matter as a hundred at the present day, and Mrs Wingrave saw but little
of her daughter during the first twelvemonth of her marriage. She suffered
in no small degree from Perdita’s absence; and her affliction was not
diminished by the fact that Rosalind had fallen into terribly low spirits
and was not to be roused or cheered but by change of air and company. The
real cause of the young lady’s dejection the reader will not be slow to
suspect. Mrs Wingrave and her gossips, however, deemed her complaint a
mere bodily ill, and doubted not that she would obtain relief from the
remedy just mentioned. Her mother accordingly proposed, on her behalf, a
visit to certain relatives on the paternal side, established in New York,
who had long complained that they were able to see so little of their New
England cousins. Rosalind was despatched to these good people, under a
suitable escort, and remained with them for several months. In the interval
her brother Bernard, who had begun the practice of the law, made up his mind
to take a wife. Rosalind came home to the wedding, apparently cured of her
heartache, with bright roses and lilies in her face and a proud smile on her
lips. Arthur Lloyd came over from Boston to see his brother-in-law married,
but without his wife, who was expecting very soon to present him with an
heir. It was nearly a year since Rosalind had seen him. She was glad –
she hardly knew why – that Perdita had stayed at home. Arthur looked
happy, but he was more grave and important
than before his marriage. She thought he looked ‘interesting’
– for although the word, in its modern sense, was not then invented, we
may be sure that the idea was. The truth is, he was simply anxious about his
wife and her coming ordeal. Nevertheless, he by no means failed to observe
Rosalind’s beauty and splendour, and to note how she effaced the poor
little bride. The allowance that Perdita had enjoyed for her dress had now
been transferred to her sister, who turned it to wonderful account. On the
morning after the wedding he had a lady’s saddle put on the horse of
the servant who had come with him from town, and went out with the young
girl for a ride. It was a keen, clear morning in January; the ground was
bare and hard, and the horses in good condition – to say nothing of
Rosalind, who was charming in her hat and plume, and her dark blue riding
coat, trimmed with fur. They rode all the morning, they lost their way, and
were obliged to stop for dinner at a farm-house. The early winter dusk had
fallen when they got home. Mrs Wingrave met them with a long face. A
messenger had arrived at noon from Mrs Lloyd; she was beginning to be
ill, she desired her husband’s immediate return. The young man, at the
thought that he had lost several hours, and that by hard riding he might
already have been with his wife, uttered a passionate oath. He barely
consented to stop for a mouthful of supper, but mounted the messenger’s
horse and started off at a gallop.
He reached home at midnight. His wife had
been delivered of a little girl. “Ah, why weren’t you with
me?” she said, as he came to her bedside.
“I was out of the house when the man came. I was
with Rosalind,” said Lloyd, innocently.
Mrs Lloyd made a little moan, and turned away. But
she continued to do very well, and for a week her improvement was
uninterrupted. Finally, however, through some indiscretion in the way of
diet or exposure, it was checked, and the poor lady grew rapidly worse.
Lloyd was in despair. It very soon became evident that she was breathing her
last. Mrs Lloyd came to a sense of her approaching end, and declared
that she was reconciled with death. On the third evening after the change
took place she told her husband that she felt she should not get through the
night. She dismissed her servants, and also requested her mother to withdraw
– Mrs Wingrave having arrived on the preceding day. She had had
her infant placed on the bed beside her, and she lay on her side, with the
child against her breast, holding her husband’s hands. The night-lamp
was hidden behind the heavy curtains of the bed, but the room was illumined
with a red glow from the immense fire of logs on the hearth.
“It seems strange not to be warmed into life by
such a fire as that,” the young woman said, feebly trying to smile.
“If I had but a little of it in my veins! But I have given all
my fire to this little spark of mortality.” And she dropped
her eyes on her child. Then raising them she looked at her husband with a
long, penetrating gaze. The last feeling which lingered in her
heart was one of suspicion. She had not recovered from the shock which
Arthur had given her by telling her that in the hour of her agony he had
been with Rosalind. She trusted her husband very nearly as well as she loved
him; but now that she was called away for ever she felt a cold horror of her
sister. She felt in her soul that Rosalind had never ceased to be jealous of
her good fortune; and a year of happy security had not effaced the young
girl’s image, dressed in her wedding-garments, and smiling with
simulated triumph. Now that Arthur was to be alone, what might not Rosalind
attempt? She was beautiful, she was engaging; what arts might she not use,
what impression might she not make upon the young man’s saddened
heart? Mrs Lloyd looked at her husband in silence. It seemed hard,
after all, to doubt of his constancy. His fine eyes were filled with tears;
his face was convulsed with weeping; the clasp of his hands was warm and
passionate. How noble he looked, how tender, how faithful and devoted!
‘Nay,’ thought Perdita, ‘he’s not for such a one as
Rosalind. He’ll never forget me. Nor does Rosalind truly care for him;
she cares only for vanities and finery and jewels.’ And she lowered her
eyes on her white hands, which her husband’s liberality had covered
with rings, and on the lace ruffles which trimmed the edge of her
night-dress. ‘She covets my rings and my laces more than she covets my
husband.’
At this moment the thought of her sister’s rapacity
seemed to cast a dark shadow between
her and the helpless figure of her little girl. “Arthur,” she
said, “you must take off my rings. I shall not be buried in them. One
of these days my daughter shall wear them – my rings and my laces and
silks. I had them all brought out and shown me to-day. It’s a great
wardrobe – there’s not such another in the Province; I can say it
without vanity, now that I have done with it. It will be a great inheritance
for my daughter when she grows into a young woman. There are things there
that a man never buys twice, and if they are lost you will never again see
the like. So you will watch them well. Some dozen things I have left to
Rosalind; I have named them to my mother. I have given her that blue and
silver; it was meant for her; I wore it only once, I looked ill in it. But
the rest are to be sacredly kept for this little innocent. It’s such a
providence that she should be my colour; she can wear my gowns; she has her
mother’s eyes. You know the same fashions come back every twenty years.
She can wear my gowns as they are. They will lie there quietly waiting till
she grows into them – wrapped in camphor and rose-leaves, and keeping
their colours in the sweet-scented darkness. She shall have black hair, she
shall wear my carnation satin. Do you promise me, Arthur?”
“Promise you what, dearest?”
“Promise me to keep your poor little wife’s
old gowns.”
“Are you afraid I shall sell them?”
“No, but that they may get scattered. My mother
will have them properly wrapped up, and
you shall lay them away under a double-lock. Do you know the great chest in
the attic, with the iron bands? There is no end to what it will hold. You
can put them all there. My mother and the housekeeper will do it, and give
you the key. And you will keep the key in your secretary, and never give it
to any one but your child. Do you promise me?”
“Ah, yes, I promise you,” said Lloyd, puzzled
at the intensity with which his wife appeared to cling to this idea.
“Will you swear?” repeated Perdita.
“Yes, I swear.”
“Well – I trust you – I trust you,”
said the poor lady, looking into his eyes with eyes in which, if he had
suspected her vague apprehensions, he might have read an appeal quite as
much as an assurance.
Lloyd bore his bereavement rationally and manfully. A
month after his wife’s death, in the course of business, circumstances
arose which offered him an opportunity of going to England. He took
advantage of it, to change the current of his thoughts. He was absent nearly
a year, during which his little girl was tenderly nursed and guarded by her
grandmother. On his return he had his house again thrown open, and announced
his intention of keeping the same state as during his wife’s lifetime.
It very soon came to be predicted that he would marry again, and there were
at least a dozen young women of whom one may say that it was by no fault of
theirs that, for six months after his return, the prediction did
not come true. During this interval he still left his little daughter in
Mrs Wingrave’s hands, the latter assuring him that a change of
residence at so tender an age would be full of danger for her health.
Finally, however, he declared that his heart longed for his daughter’s
presence and that she must be brought up to town. He sent his coach and his
housekeeper to fetch her home. Mrs Wingrave was in terror lest
something should befall her on the road; and, in accordance with this
feeling, Rosalind offered to accompany her. She could return the next day.
So she went up to town with her little niece, and Mr Lloyd met her on
the threshold of his house, overcome with her kindness and with paternal
joy. Instead of returning the next day Rosalind stayed out the week; and
when at last she reappeared, she had only come for her clothes. Arthur would
not hear of her coming home, nor would the baby. That little person cried
and choked if Rosalind left her; and at the sight of her grief Arthur lost
his wits, and swore that she was going to die. In fine, nothing would suit
them but that the aunt should remain until the little niece had grown used
to strange faces.
It took two months to bring this consummation about; for
it was not until this period had elapsed that Rosalind took leave of her
brother-in-law. Mrs Wingrave had shaken her head over her
daughter’s absence; she had declared that it was not becoming, that it
was the talk of the whole country. She had reconciled herself to it only
because, during the girl’s visit, the household
enjoyed an unwonted term of peace. Bernard Wingrave had brought his wife
home to live, between whom and her sister-in-law there was as little love as
you please. Rosalind was perhaps no angel; but in the daily practice of life
she was a sufficiently good-natured girl, and if she quarrelled with
Mrs Bernard, it was not without provocation. Quarrel, however, she did,
to the great annoyance not only of her antagonist, but of the two spectators
of these constant altercations. Her stay in the household of her
brother-in-law, therefore, would have been delightful, if only because it
removed her from contact with the object of her antipathy at home. It was
doubly – it was ten times – delightful, in that it kept her near
the object of her early passion. Mrs Lloyd’s sharp suspicions had
fallen very far short of the truth. Rosalind’s sentiment had been a
passion at first, and a passion it remained – a passion of whose
radiant heat, tempered to the delicate state of his feelings, Mr Lloyd
very soon felt the influence. Lloyd, as I have hinted, was not a modern
Petrarch;
it was not in his nature to practise an ideal constancy. He had
not been many days in the house with his sister-in-law before he began to
assure himself that she was, in the language of that day, a devilish fine
woman. Whether Rosalind really practised those insidious arts that her
sister had been tempted to impute to her it is needless to inquire. It is
enough to say that she found means to appear to the very best advantage. She
used to seat herself every morning before the big fireplace in the
dining-room,
at work upon a piece of tapestry, with her little niece disporting herself
on the carpet at her feet, or on the train of her dress, and playing with
her woollen balls. Lloyd would have been a very stupid fellow if he had
remained insensible to the rich suggestions of this charming picture. He was
exceedingly fond of his little girl, and was never weary of taking her in
his arms and tossing her up and down, and making her crow with delight. Very
often, however, he would venture upon greater liberties than the young lady
was yet prepared to allow, and then she would suddenly vociferate her
displeasure. Rosalind, at this, would drop her tapestry, and put out her
handsome hands with the serious smile of the young girl whose virgin fancy
has revealed to her all a mother’s healing arts. Lloyd would give up
the child, their eyes would meet, their hands would touch, and Rosalind
would extinguish the little girl’s sobs upon the snowy folds of the
kerchief that crossed her bosom. Her dignity was perfect, and nothing could
be more discreet than the manner in which she accepted her
brother-in-law’s hospitality. It may almost be said, perhaps, that
there was something harsh in her reserve. Lloyd had a provoking feeling that
she was in the house and yet was unapproachable. Half-an-hour after supper,
at the very outset of the long winter evenings, she would light her candle,
make the young man a most respectful curtsey, and march off to bed. If these
were arts, Rosalind was a great artist. But their effect was so gentle, so
gradual, they were calculated to work upon the
young widower’s fancy with a
crescendo
so finely shaded, that, as the reader has seen, several weeks elapsed before
Rosalind began to feel sure that her returns would cover her outlay. When
this became morally certain she packed up her trunk and returned to her
mother’s house. For three days she waited; on the fourth Mr Lloyd
made his appearance – a respectful but pressing suitor. Rosalind heard
him to the end, with great humility, and accepted him with infinite modesty.
It is hard to imagine that Mrs Lloyd would have forgiven her husband;
but if anything might have disarmed her resentment it would have been the
ceremonious continence of this interview. Rosalind imposed upon her lover
but a short probation. They were married, as was becoming, with great
privacy – almost with secrecy – in the hope perhaps, as was
waggishly remarked at the time, that the late Mrs Lloyd wouldn’t
hear of it.
The marriage was to all appearance a happy one, and each
party obtained what each had desired – Lloyd ‘a devilish fine
woman’, and Rosalind – but Rosalind’s desires, as the reader
will have observed, had remained a good deal of a mystery. There were,
indeed, two blots upon their felicity, but time would perhaps efface them.
During the first three years of her marriage Mrs Lloyd failed to become
a mother, and her husband on his side suffered heavy losses of money. This
latter circumstance compelled a material retrenchment in his expenditure,
and Rosalind was perforce less of a fine lady than her sister had been. She
contrived, however, to carry it like a woman of
considerable fashion. She had long since ascertained that her sister’s
copious wardrobe had been sequestrated for the benefit of her daughter, and
that it lay languishing in thankless gloom in the dusty attic. It was a
revolting thought that these exquisite fabrics should await the good
pleasure of a little girl who sat in a high chair and ate bread-and-milk
with a wooden spoon. Rosalind had the good taste, however, to say nothing
about the matter until several months had expired. Then, at last, she
timidly broached it to her husband. Was it not a pity that so much finery
should be lost? – for lost it would be, what with colours fading, and
moths eating it up, and the change of fashions. But Lloyd gave her so abrupt
and peremptory a refusal, that she saw, for the present, her attempt was
vain. Six months went by, however, and brought with them new needs and new
visions. Rosalind’s thoughts hovered lovingly about her sister’s
relics. She went up and looked at the chest in which they lay imprisoned.
There was a sullen defiance in its three great padlocks and its iron bands
which only quickened her cupidity. There was something exasperating in its
incorruptible immobility. It was like a grim and grizzled old household
servant, who locks his jaws over a family secret. And then there was a look
of capacity in its vast extent, and a sound as of dense fulness, when
Rosalind knocked its side with the toe of her little shoe, which caused her
to flush with baffled longing. “It’s absurd,” she cried;
“it’s improper, it’s wicked”; and she forthwith resolved
upon
another attack upon her husband. On the following day, after dinner, when he
had had his wine, she boldly began it. But he cut her short with great
sternness.
“Once for all, Rosalind,” said he,
“it’s out of the question. I shall be gravely displeased if you
return to the matter.”
“Very good,” said Rosalind. “I am glad to
learn the esteem in which I am held. Gracious heaven,” she cried,
“I am a very happy woman! It’s an agreeable thing to feel
one’s self sacrificed to a caprice!” And her eyes filled with
tears of anger and disappointment.
Lloyd had a good-natured man’s horror of a
woman’s sobs, and he attempted – I may say he condescended –
to explain. “It’s not a caprice, dear, it’s a promise,”
he said – “an oath.”
“An oath? It’s a pretty matter for oaths! and
to whom, pray?”
“To Perdita,” said the young man, raising his
eyes for an instant, but immediately dropping them.
“Perdita – ah, Perdita!” and
Rosalind’s tears broke forth. Her bosom heaved with stormy sobs –
sobs which were the long-deferred sequel of the violent fit of weeping in
which she had indulged herself on the night when she discovered her
sister’s betrothal. She had hoped, in her better moments, that she had
done with her jealousy; but her temper, on that occasion, had taken an
ineffaceable fold. “And pray, what right had Perdita to dispose of my
future?” she cried. “What right had she to bind you to meanness
and cruelty? Ah, I occupy a dignified place, and I make a very fine figure!
I am welcome to what Perdita has left! And what has she left? I never knew
till now how little! Nothing, nothing, nothing.”
This was very poor logic, but it was very good as a
‘scene’. Lloyd put his arm around his wife’s waist and tried
to kiss her, but she shook him off with magnificent scorn. Poor fellow! he
had coveted a ‘devilish fine woman’, and he had got one. Her scorn
was intolerable. He walked away with his ears tingling – irresolute,
distracted. Before him was his secretary, and in it the sacred key which
with his own hand he had turned in the triple lock. He marched up and opened
it, and took the key from a secret drawer, wrapped in a little packet which
he had sealed with his own honest bit of blazonry.
Je garde,
said the motto – ‘I keep’. But he was ashamed to put it back.
He flung it upon the table beside his wife.
“Put it back!” she cried. “I want it not.
I hate it!”
“I wash my hands of it,” cried her husband.
“God forgive me!”
Mrs Lloyd gave an indignant shrug of her shoulders,
and swept out of the room, while the young man retreated by another door.
Ten minutes later Mrs Lloyd returned, and found the room occupied by
her little step-daughter and the nursery-maid. The key was not on the table.
She glanced at the child. Her little niece was perched on a chair, with the
packet in her hands. She had broken the seal with her own small
fingers. Mrs Lloyd hastily took possession of the key.
At the habitual supper-hour Arthur Lloyd came back from
his counting-room. It was the month of June, and supper was served by
daylight. The meal was placed on the table, but Mrs Lloyd failed to
make her appearance. The servant whom his master sent to call her came back
with the assurance that her room was empty, and that the women informed him
that she had not been seen since dinner. They had, in truth, observed her to
have been in tears, and, supposing her to be shut up in her chamber, had not
disturbed her. Her husband called her name in various parts of the house,
but without response. At last it occurred to him that he might find her by
taking the way to the attic. The thought gave him a strange feeling of
discomfort, and he bade his servants remain behind, wishing no witness in
his quest. He reached the foot of the staircase leading to the
topmost flat,
and stood with his hand on the banisters, pronouncing his wife’s name.
His voice trembled. He called again louder and more firmly. The only sound
which disturbed the absolute silence was a faint echo of his own tones,
repeating his question under the great eaves. He nevertheless felt
irresistibly moved to ascend the staircase. It opened upon a wide hall,
lined with wooden closets, and terminating in a window which looked
westward, and admitted the last rays of the sun. Before the window stood the
great chest. Before the chest, on her knees, the young man saw with
amazement and horror
the figure of his wife. In an instant he crossed the interval between them,
bereft of utterance. The lid of the chest stood open, exposing, amid their
perfumed napkins, its treasure of stuffs and jewels. Rosalind had fallen
backward from a kneeling posture, with one hand supporting her on the floor
and the other pressed to her heart. On her limbs was the stiffness of death,
and on her face, in the fading light of the sun, the terror of something
more than death. Her lips were parted in entreaty, in dismay, in agony; and
on her blanched brow and cheeks there glowed the marks of ten hideous wounds
from two vengeful ghostly hands.
THE END
part of an etext edition of
The romance of certain old clothes
on
the Ladder : a Henry James website