John Halifax, Gentleman Part 92

"What folly about nothing! how can one read with such a clatter going on?"

"You old book-worm! you care for nothing and n.o.body but yourself," Guy answered, laughing. But Edwin, really incensed, rose and settled himself in the far corner of the room.

"Edwin is right," said the father, in a tone which indicated his determination to end the discussion, a tone which even Miss Silver obeyed. "My dear young lady, I hope you will like your book; Guy, write her name in it at once."

Guy willingly obeyed, but was a good while over the task; his mother came and looked over his shoulder.

"Louisa Eugenie--how did you know that, Guy? Louisa Eugenie Sil--is that your name, my dear?"

The question, simple as it was, seemed to throw the governess into much confusion, even agitation. At last, she drew herself up with the old repulsive gesture, which of late had been slowly wearing off.

"No--I will not deceive you any longer. My right name is Louise Eugenie D'Argent."

Mrs. Halifax started. "Are you a Frenchwoman?"

"On my father's side--yes."

"Why did you not tell me so?"

"Because, if you remember, at our first interview, you said no Frenchwoman should educate your daughter. And I was homeless--friendless."

"Better starve than tell a falsehood," cried the mother, indignantly.

"I told no falsehood. You never asked me of my parentage."

"Nay," said John, interfering, "you must not speak in that manner to Mrs. Halifax. Why did you renounce your father's name?"

"Because English people would have scouted my father's daughter. You knew him--everybody knew him--he was D'Argent the Jacobin--D'Argent the Bonnet Rouge."

She threw out these words defiantly, and quitted the room.

"This is a dreadful discovery. Edwin, you have seen most of her--did you ever imagine--"

"I knew it, mother," said Edwin, without lifting his eyes from his book. "After all, French or English, it makes no difference."

"I should think not, indeed!" cried Guy, angrily. "Whatever her father is, if any one dared to think the worse of her--"

"Hus.h.!.+--till another time," said the father, with a glance at Maud, who, with wide-open eyes, in which the tears were just springing, had been listening to all these revelations about her governess.

But Maud's tears were soon stopped, as well as this painful conversation, by the entrance of our daily, or rather nightly, visitor for these six weeks past, Lord Ravenel. His presence, always welcome, was a great relief now. We never discussed family affairs before people. The boys began to talk to Lord Ravenel: and Maud took her privileged place on a footstool beside him. From the first sight she had been his favourite, he said, because of her resemblance to Muriel.

But I think, more than any fancied likeness to that sweet lost face, which he never spoke of without tenderness inexpressible, there was something in Maud's buoyant youth--just between childhood and girlhood, having the charms of one and the immunities of the other--which was especially attractive to this man, who, at three-and-thirty, found life a weariness and a burthen--at least, he said so.

Life was never either weary or burthensome in our house--not even to-night, though our friend found us less lively than usual--though John maintained more than his usual silence, and Mrs. Halifax fell into troubled reveries. Guy and Edwin, both considerably excited, argued and contradicted one another more warmly than even the Beechwood liberty of speech allowed. For Miss Silver, she did not appear again.

Lord Ravenel seemed to take these slight desagremens very calmly. He stayed his customary time, smiling languidly as ever at the boys'

controversies, or listening with a half-pleased, half-melancholy laziness to Maud's gay prattle, his eye following her about the room with the privileged tenderness that twenty years' seniority allows a man to feel and show towards a child. At his wonted hour he rode away, sighingly contrasting pleasant Beechwood with dreary and solitary Luxmore.

After his departure we did not again close round the fire. Maud vanished; the younger boys also; Guy settled himself on his sofa, having first taken the pains to limp across the room and fetch the Flora, which Edwin had carefully stowed away in the book-case. Then making himself comfortable, as the pleasure-loving lad liked well enough to do, he lay dreamily gazing at the t.i.tle-page, where was written her name, and "From Guy Halifax, with--"

"What are you going to add, my son?"

He, glancing up at his mother, made her no answer, and hastily closed the book.

She looked hurt; but, saying nothing more, began moving about the room, putting things in order before retiring. John sat in the arm-chair--meditative. She asked him what he was thinking about?

"About that man, Jacques D'Argent."

"You have heard of him, then?"

"Few had not, twenty years ago. He was one of the most 'blatant beasts' of the Reign of Terror. A fellow without honesty, conscience, or even common decency."

"And that man's daughter we have had in our house, teaching our innocent child!"

Alarm and disgust were written on every feature of the mother's face.

It was scarcely surprising. Now that the ferment which had convulsed society in our younger days was settling down,--though still we were far from that ultimate calm which enables posterity to judge fully and fairly such a remarkable historical crisis as the French Revolution,--most English people looked back with horror on the extreme opinions of that time. If Mrs. Halifax had a weak point, it was her prejudice against anything French or Jacobinical. Partly, from that tendency to moral conservatism which in most persons, especially women, strengthens as old age advances; partly, I believe, from the terrible warning given by the fate of one--of whom for years we had never heard--whose very name was either unknown to, or forgotten by, our children.

"John, can't you speak? Don't you see the frightful danger?"

"Love, try and be calmer."

"How can I? Remember--remember Caroline."

"Nay, we are not talking of her, but of a girl whom we know, and have had good opportunity of knowing. A girl, who, whatever may have been her antecedents, has lived for six months blamelessly in our house."

"Would to Heaven she had never entered it! But it is not too late. She may leave--she shall leave, immediately."

"Mother!" burst out Guy. Never since she bore him had his mother heard her name uttered in such a tone.

She stood petrified.

"Mother, you are unjust, heartless, cruel. She shall NOT leave; she shall NOT, I say!"

"Guy, how dare you speak to your mother in that way?"

"Yes, father, I dare. I'll dare anything rather than--"

"Stop. Mind what you are saying--or you may repent it."

And Mr. Halifax, speaking in that low tone to which his voice fell in serious displeasure, laid a heavy hand on the lad's shoulder. Father and son exchanged fiery glances. The mother, terrified, rushed between them.

"Don't, John! Don't be angry with him. He could not help it,--my poor boy!"

At her piteous look Guy and his father both drew back. John put his arm round his wife, and made her sit down. She was trembling exceedingly.

"You see, Guy, how wrong you have been. How could you wound your mother so?"

"I did not mean to wound her," the lad answered. "I only wished to prevent her from being unjust and unkind to one to whom she must show all justice and kindness. One whom I respect, esteem--whom I LOVE."

"Love!"