Wenderholme Part 32

She said no more. She was intensely angry at her husband, but in her strongest irritation she never said any thing not justified by the circ.u.mstances--never put herself in the wrong by violence or exaggeration. She had a great contempt for female volubility and scolding; and the effect of her tongue, when she used it, was to the effect of a scold's rattle what the piercing of a rapier is to the cracking of a whip.

John Stanburne dreaded the severity of his wife's judgment more than he would have dreaded the fury of an unreasonable woman. He had not a word to offer in reply. He felt that it was literally and accurately true that he had been "very imprudent and very weak, and was not fit to have the management of his own affairs."

He covered his face with both hands in an agony of self-accusation, and remained so for several minutes. Then he cried out pa.s.sionately, "Helena, dear Helena!" and again, "Helena! Helena!"

There was no answer. He lifted up his eyes. The place she had occupied was vacant. She had noiselessly departed from his side.

CHAPTER II.

IN THE DINING-ROOM.

One of the most strange and painful things about ruin is, that for days, and even weeks, after it has actually come upon a man, his outward life remains in all its details as it was before; so that in the interval between the loss of fortune and the abandonment of his habitual way of living he leads a double life, just as a ghost would do if it were condemned to simulate the earthly existence it led before death amongst the dear familiar scenes. For there are two sorts of separation. You get into a railway train, and take s.h.i.+p, and emigrate to some distant colony or some alien empire, and see no more the land which gave you birth, nor the house which sheltered you, nor the faces of your friends. This separation is full of sadness; but there is another separation which, in its effect upon the mind, is incomparably more to be dreaded, whose pain is incomparably more poignant. I mean, that terrible separation which divides you from the persons with whom you are still living, from the house you have never quitted, from the horses in the stable, from the dog upon the hearth, from the bed you lie in, from the chair you sit upon, from the very plate out of which you eat your daily food! The man who, still in his old house, knows that he has become insolvent, feels this in a thousand subtly various tortures, that succeed each other without intermission. A curse has fallen on every thing that he sees, on every thing that he touches--a wonderful and magical curse, devised by the ingenuity of Plutus, the arch-enchanter! The wildest fairy tale narrates no deeper sorcery than this. Every thing shall remain, materially, exactly as it was; but when you go into your library you shall not be able to read, in your dining-room the food shall choke you, and you shall toss all night upon your bed.

And thus did it come to pa.s.s that from this hour all the beauties, and the luxuries, and all the acc.u.mulated objects and devices that made up the splendor of Wenderholme, became so many several causes of torture to John Stanburne. And by another effect of the same curse, he was compelled to torture himself endlessly with these things, as a man when he is galvanized finds that his fingers contract involuntarily round the bra.s.s cylinders through which flows the current that shatters all his nerves with agony.

The first bell rings for dinner, and the Colonel, from long habit, leaves his little den, and is half-way up the grand staircase before he knows that he is moving. That great staircase had been one of the favorite inventions in new Wenderholme. It was panelled with rich old yew, and in the wainscot were inserted a complete series of magnificent Italian tapestries, in which was set forth the great expedition of the Argonauts. There was the sowing of the poisoned grain, the consequent pestilence of Thebes, the flight of Phryxus and h.e.l.le on the winged ram with the golden fleece, the fall of poor h.e.l.le in the dark h.e.l.lespont, the sacrifice of the ram at Colchis, the murder of Phryxus. Above all, there was the glorious embarkation in the good s.h.i.+p Argo, when Jason and the Grecian princes came down to the sh.o.r.e, with a background of the palaces they left. And in another great tapestry the s.h.i.+p Argo sailed in the open sea, her great white sail curving before the wind, and the blue waves dancing before her prow, whilst the warriors stood quaintly upon the deck, with all their glittering arms. Then there was the storm on the coast of Thrace, and the famous ploughing-scene with the golden-horned bulls, and the sowing of the dragon's teeth.

Dragon's teeth! John Stanburne paused long before that tapestry. Had he not likewise been a sower of dragon's teeth, and were not the armed men rising, terrible, around him?

Who will help him as Medea helped Jason? Who will pa.s.s him through all his dangers in a day?

It will not be his wife--it will not be Lady Helena. She is coming up the great staircase too, whilst he is vacantly staring at the tapestry.

He does not know that she is there till the rustle of her draperies awakens him. She pa.s.ses in perfect silence, slowly, in the middle of the broad carpeted s.p.a.ce, between the margins of white stone.

They met again that evening at dinner. So long as the men waited they talked about this thing and that. But when the dessert was on the table, and the men were gone, the Colonel handed the following letter to Lady Helena:--

"MY DEAR COLONEL STANBURNE,--As you have been aware for some time of the precarious position of the Bank, the bad news I have to communicate will not find you altogether unprepared. We have been obliged to stop payment, and it will require such a large sum to meet the liabilities of the company that both you and I and many other shareholders must consider ourselves ruined men. G.o.d grant us fort.i.tude to bear it! When I advised you to embark in this speculation, G.o.d knows I did so honestly, and you have the proof of it in the fact that I am ruined along with you. It will be hard for you to descend from a station you were born for and are accustomed to, and it is hard for me to see the fruits of a life of hard work swept away just as I am beginning to be an old man. Pray think charitably of me, Colonel Stanburne. I did what I believed to be best, and though my heart is heavy, my conscience is clear still. May Heaven give strength to both of us, and to all others who are involved in the same ruin!

"Yours truly, JOSEPH ANISON."

Lady Helena read the letter from beginning to end, and then returned it to her husband without a word. Her face wore an expression of the most complete indifference.

"Why, Helena!" said John Stanburne, "you haven't a word to say to me.

It's far more my misfortune than my fault, and I think you might be kinder, under the circ.u.mstances, than you are."

"_Que voulez-vous que je vous dise?_"

CHAPTER III.

IN THE DRAWING-ROOM.

Coffee having been announced, the Colonel, who had been sitting alone with his burgundy, and perhaps drinking a little more of it than usual, followed her ladys.h.i.+p into the drawing-room. That drawing-room was the most delicately fanciful room in the whole house. It was wainscoted with cedar to the height of eight feet, where the panels terminated in a beautiful little carved arcade running all round the n.o.ble room, and following the wall everywhere into its quaint recesses. Heraldic decoration, used so profusely in the great hall and elsewhere, was here limited to John Stanburne's own conjugal s.h.i.+eld, in which the arms of Stanburne were impaled with those of Basenthorpe.

If the Colonel could only have drunk his cup of coffee in silence, or made a commonplace remark or two, and then gone straight to bed, or into his own den, it might have been better for them both; but he was stung to the quick by her ladys.h.i.+p's unsympathizing manner, and he had absorbed so much burgundy in the dining-room as to have lost altogether that salutary fear of his wife's keen little observations which usually kept him in restraint. It was a great pity, too, that they were alone together in the drawing-room that evening, and that Miss Stanburne had left Wenderholme two days before on a brief visit to a country house at a distance.

His heart yearned for Helena's sympathy and support, and of this she was perfectly aware; but, with that rashness which is peculiarly feminine, and which makes women play their little game of withholding what men's hearts want, even in moments of the utmost urgency and peril, she determined to give him no help until he had properly and sufficiently humiliated himself and confessed his sins before her. The woman who _could_ withhold her tenderness in such an hour as this diminished, in doing so, the value of that tenderness itself; and every minute that pa.s.sed whilst it was still withheld made such a large deduction from it, that if this coldness lasted for an hour longer, John Stanburne felt that no subsequent kindness could atone for it. As the slow, miserable minutes went by whilst Lady Helena sat yards away from him at a little table in a great oriel window, saying not one word, not even looking once in his direction, John Stanburne's brain, already in a state of intense excitement in consequence of the miseries of the day, began to suffer from an almost insane irritability and impatience on account of the silence and calm that surrounded him. It was a most peaceful and beautiful summer evening, and the sun, as he declined towards the west, sent rich warm rays into the n.o.ble room, glowing on the cedar panels, and on the quaintly elegant furniture, with its pervading expression of luxury and ease. This luxury maddened John Stanburne, the soft carpet was hateful to his feet, the easy-chair irritating to his whole body; he hated the great cl.u.s.ters of flowers in the _jardinieres_, and the white delicate webs that were the summer curtains. Considering the present temper of his mind, and his horror of every thing that had cost him money, the drawing-room was the worst place he could have been in.

If her ladys.h.i.+p would just have left that interesting bit of plain hemming that she was engaged upon (and whereby she was effecting an economy of about twopence a-day), and gone to her husband and said one kind word to him, merely his name even, and given him one caress, one kiss, their fate would have been incomparably easier to endure. They would have supported each other under the pressure of calamity, and the material loss might have been balanced by a moral gain.

But she sat there silently, persistently, doing that farthing's worth of plain needlework.

"Helena!" at last the Colonel broke out, "I say, Helena, I wonder what the devil we are to do?"

"You need not swear at me, sir."

"Swear at you!--who swears at you? I didn't. But if I did swear at you, it wouldn't be without provocation. You are the most provoking woman I ever knew in my life; upon my word you are--you are, by G.o.d, Helena!"

"You are losing your temper, Colonel Stanburne. Pray remember whom you are speaking to. I am not to be sworn at like your grooms."

"You never lose _your_ temper. Now, I say that as you are such a mistress of yourself under all circ.u.mstances, it's your own fault that you don't make yourself more agreeable."

"I regret that you don't think me agreeable, Colonel Stanburne."

"Well, now, _are_ you, Helena? Here am I under the blow of a tremendous calamity, and you haven't a word to say to me. If Fyser knew what had happened, he'd be more sorry than you are."

"What would you have me say to you? If I said all you deserve, would you listen to it? You appear to forget that you have as yet expressed no sympathy for me, whom you have ruined by your folly, whereas you are angry because I have said little to you."

"_You_ ruined, Helena!" said John Stanburne, with a bitter laugh; "_you_ ruined--why, you never had any thing to lose! Your father allows you six hundred a-year, and he'll continue your allowance, I suppose. You never owned a thousand pounds in your life. But it's different with me. I'm losing all I was born to."

The answer to this was too obvious for Lady Helena to condescend to make it. She remained perfectly silent, which irritated the Colonel more than any imaginable answer could have irritated him.

He certainly was wrong so far as this, that any one who _asks_ for sympathy puts himself in a false position. Condolence must be freely given, or it is worthless. And any disposition which her ladys.h.i.+p may have felt towards a more wifely frame of mind was effectually checked by his advancing these claims of his. She was not to be scolded into amiability.

"Hang it, Helena!" he broke out, "I didn't think there was a woman in England that would behave as you are behaving under such circ.u.mstances.

The thing doesn't seem to make the least impression upon you. There you sit, doing your confounded sewing, just as if nothing had happened, you do. You won't sit there doing your sewing long. The bailiffs will turn you out. They'll be here in a day or two."

"You are becoming very coa.r.s.e, sir; your language is not fit for a woman to hear."

"It's the plain truth, it is. But women won't hear the plain truth. They don't like it--they never do. But your ladys.h.i.+p must be made to understand that this cannot go on. We cannot stop here, at Wenderholme.

The place will be sold, and every thing in it. Now, I should just like to know what your ladys.h.i.+p proposes to do. If my way of asking your ladys.h.i.+p this question isn't polite enough, please do me the favor to instruct me in the necessary forms."

"If you could speak without oaths, that would be something gained."

"Answer me my question, can't you? Where do you mean to go--what do you mean to do?"

"I intend to go to my father's."

"Well, that's plain. Why couldn't you tell me that sooner? You mean to go to old Adisham's. But I'll be hanged if I'll go there, to be patronized as a beggarly relation."

"Very well."