Trevlyn Hold Part 32

Miss Diana went up to Rupert's room. He had taken off his coat, and thrown himself on the bed, as if the fatigue of undressing were too much for him.

"What's that for?" asked Miss Diana, as she entered. "Is that the way you get into bed?"

Rupert rose and sat down on a chair. "Only coming upstairs seems to tire me," he said in tones of apology. "I should not have lain a minute."

Miss Diana threw back her head a little, and looked at Rupert: the determined will of the Trevlyns s.h.i.+ning out in every line of her face.

"I have come to ask where you slept last night. I mean to know, Rupert."

"I don't mind your knowing," replied Rupert; "I have told Aunt Edith. I decline to tell Chattaway, and I hope that no one else will tell him."

"Why?"

"Because he might lay blame where no blame is due. Chattaway turned me from the door, Aunt Diana, and Cris, who came up just after, turned me from it also. I went down to the lodge, and Ann Canham let me in; and I lay part of the night on their hard settle, and part of the night I sat upon it. That's where I was. But if Chattaway knew it, he'd turn old Canham and Ann from the lodge, as he turned me from the door."

"Oh no, he wouldn't," said Miss Diana, "if it were my pleasure to keep them in it. Do you feel ill, Rupert?"

"I feel middling. It is that I am tired, I suppose. I shall be all right in the morning."

Miss Diana descended to her own room. Waiting there for her was Mrs.

Chattaway. In spite of a shawl thrown over her shoulders, she seemed to be s.h.i.+vering. She slipped the bolt of the door--what was she afraid of?--and turned to Miss Trevlyn, her hands clasped.

"Diana, this is killing me!" she wailed. "Why should Rupert be treated as he is? I know I am but a poor creature, that I have been one all my life--a very coward; but sometimes I think that I must speak out and protest against the injustice, though I should die in the effort."

"Why, what's the matter?" uttered Miss Diana, whose intense composure formed a strange contrast to her sister's agitated words and bearing.

"Oh, you know!--you know! I have not dared to speak out much, even to you, Diana; but it's killing me--it's killing me! Is it not enough that we despoiled Rupert of his inheritance, but we must also----"

"Be silent!" sharply interrupted Miss Diana, glancing around and lowering her voice to a whisper. "Will you never have done with that folly, Edith?"

"I shall never have done with its remembrance. I don't often speak of it; once, it may be, in seven years, not more. Better for me that I could speak of it; it would prey less upon my heart!"

"You have benefited by it as much as any one has."

"I cannot help myself. Heaven knows that if I could retire to some poor hut, and live upon a crust of bread, and benefit by it no more, I should do so--oh, how willingly! But there's no escape. I am hemmed in by its consequences; we are all hemmed in by them--and there's no escape."

Miss Diana looked at her. Steadfastly, keenly; not angrily, but searchingly and critically, as a doctor looks at a patient supposed to be afflicted with mania.

"If you do not take care, Edith, you will become insane upon this point, as I believe I have warned you before," she said, with calmness. "I am not sure but you are slightly touched now!"

"I do not think I am," replied poor Mrs. Chattaway, pa.s.sing her hand over her brow. "I feel confused enough sometimes, but there's no fear that madness will really come. If thinking could have turned me mad, I should have gone mad years ago."

"The very act of your coming here in this excited state, when you should be going to bed, and saying what you do say, must be nothing less than a degree of madness."

"I would go to bed, if I could sleep," said Mrs. Chattaway. "I lie awake night after night, thinking of the past; of the present; thinking of Rupert and of what we did for him; the treatment we deal out to him now.

I think of his father, poor Joe; I think of his mother, Emily Dean, whom we once so loved; and I--I cannot sleep, Diana!"

There really did seem something strange in Mrs. Chattaway to-night. For once in her life, Diana Trevlyn's heart beat a shade faster.

"Try and calm yourself, Edith," she said soothingly.

"I wish I could! I should be more calm if you and my husband would allow it. If you would only allow Rupert to be treated with common kindness----"

"He is not treated with unkindness," interrupted Miss Diana.

"It appears to me that he is treated with nothing but great unkindness.

He----"

"Is he beaten?--is he starved?"

"The system pursued towards him is altogether unkind," persisted Mrs.

Chattaway. "Indulgences dealt out to our own children are denied to him.

When I think that he might be the true master of Trevlyn Hold----"

"I will not listen to this," interrupted Miss Diana. "What has come to you to-night?"

A s.h.i.+ver pa.s.sed over the frame of Mrs. Chattaway. She was sitting on a low toilette chair covered with white drapery, her head bent on her hand. By her reply, which she did not look up to give, it appeared that she took the question literally.

"I feel the pain more than usual; nothing else. I do feel it so sometimes."

"What pain?" asked Miss Diana.

"The pain of remorse: the pain of the wrong dealt out to Rupert. It seems greater than I can bear. Do you know," raising her feverish eyes to Miss Diana, "that I scarcely closed my eyelids last night? All the long night through I was thinking of Rupert: fancying him lying outside on the damp gra.s.s; fancying----"

"Stop a minute, Edith. Are you seeking to blame your husband to me?"

"No, no; I don't wish to blame any one. But I wish it could be altered."

"If Rupert knows the hour for coming in--and it is not an unreasonable hour--it is he who is to blame if he exceeds it."

Mrs. Chattaway could not gainsay this. In point of fact, though she found things grievously uncomfortable, wrong altogether, she had not the strength of mind to say _where_ the fault lay, or how it should be altered. On this fresh agitation, the coming in at half-past ten, she could only judge as a vacillating woman. The hour, as Miss Diana said, was not unreasonable, and Mrs. Chattaway would have fallen in with it, and approved her husband's judgment, if Rupert had only obeyed the mandate. If Rupert did not obey it--if he somewhat exceeded its bounds--she would have liked the door to be still open to him, and no scolding given. It was the discomfort that worried her; mixing itself up with the old feeling of the wrong done to Rupert, rendering things, as she aptly expressed it, more miserable than she could bear.

"I'll talk to Rupert to-morrow morning," said Miss Diana. "I shall add my authority to Chattaway's, and tell him that he _must_ be in."

It may be that a shadow of the future was casting itself over the mind of Mrs. Chattaway, dimly and vaguely pointing to the terrible events hereafter to arise--events which would throw their consequences on the remainder of Rupert's life, and which had their origin in this new and ill-omened order, touching his coming home at night.

"Edith," said Miss Diana, "I would recommend you to become less sensitive on the subject of Rupert. It is growing into a morbid feeling."

"I wish I could! It does grow upon me. Do you know," sinking her voice and looking feverishly at her sister, "that old impression has come again! I thought it had worn itself out. I thought it had left me for ever."

Miss Diana almost lost patience. Her own mind was a very contrast to her sister's; the two were as opposite in their organisation as the poles.

Fanciful, dreamy, vacillating, weak, the one; the other strong, practical, matter-of-fact.

"I don't know what you mean by the 'old impression,'" she rejoined, with a contempt she did not seek to disguise. "Is it not some new folly?"

"I told you of it in the old days, Diana. I used to feel certain--certain--that the wrong we inflicted on Rupert would avenge itself--that in some way he would come into his inheritance, and we should be despoiled of it. I felt so certain of it, that every morning of my life when I got up I seemed to expect its fulfilment before the day closed. But the time went on and on, and it never came. It went on so long that the impression wore itself out, I say, and now it has come again. It is stronger than ever. For some weeks past it has been growing more present with me day by day, and I cannot shake it off."

"The best thing you can do now is to go to bed, and try and sleep off your folly," cried Miss Trevlyn, with the stinging contempt she allowed herself at rare times to show to her sister. "I feel more provoked with you than I can express. A child might be pardoned for indulging in such absurdities; a woman, never!"