Chapter X: The After Smart

"How doth Death speak of our beloved,
When it hath laid them low?

• • • • •

"It sweeps their faults with heavy hand,
As sweeps the sea the trampled sand,
Till scarce the faintest print is scanned.

• • • • •

"It takes each failing on our part,
And brands it in upon the heart,
With caustic power and cruel art."
Author of "The Schönberg-Cotta Family."

"IT's a scrumptious cake—very!" said Mrs. Kennedy, putting a piece into her own mouth.

She was in ante-lunch déshabillé, and looked, to say the least, not tidy. The inevitable end of loose hair obtruded itself from under a cap which had long passed its prime; and she only escaped having an unpinned collar by the simple process of wearing no collar at all.

Conflicting emotions showed themselves in her kind and genial face, for this was the day after General Villiers' funeral; and people have a natural feeling at such a time that the world ought not to run its usual course too blithely, that sunshine ought not to be too radiant, that cake ought not to taste too nice. Still, Mrs. Kennedy was not constitutionally given to depression, being a born optimist; a happy circumstance for one whose husband was a born pessimist, always disposed to hug his miseries, even when he had none.

Moreover the General and his wife had been her friends rather by circumstance than by choice; and Dicky, her spoilt youngest—not spoilt, of course, in maternal eyes—was irresistible.

"If father was to see you now! O Dicky, Dicky, Dicky! I'm sure the very next thing he'll have to do, will be to preach a sermon on greediness, all for yourself. Greediness!" repeated Mrs. Kennedy, with emphasis, counting herself a judicially severe mother.

It was to be feared that the said sermon would float as an outside fog over Dicky's brain, since Mr. Kennedy had not the art of reaching a child's mind. The road thereto is very straight, and Mr. Kennedy was wont to preach and expound in circles.

"Now you've had quite enough, Dicky—quite enough, and too much for any respectable little boy. No, not one single crumb more. I couldn't possibly, you know."

"I'm so awfully hungry, mother. Almost starved."

"Starved! After all that lot! And only two hours and a half since breakfast. Why, you're talking nonsense, don't you know? You'll got so fat, Dicky, you won't be able to walk, and we shall have to get a pulley to carry you. I don't know what boys are made of—I really don't! I know what they like to be made of, and that's plum-cake!"—in a sotto voce aside.

"I declare, here comes Mabel—Miss Ingram, I mean—" for the caller was not "Mabel" to small Dicky. "Well, well, just one more slice, and mind you don't say a single word to the others, or I shall have them all down upon me, plump; and there won't be a scrap left. Get along with you, Dicky, and be a good boy. Well, Mabel, my dear, how are you? Quite well? Sit down and tell me all about everything. Poor dear—"

"I can't really, Mrs. Kennedy—"

"Poor dear Thomas always forgets half that he hears, don't you know? Can't!—But you must! Now do tell me, how is that poor young thing? It's perfectly dreadful, isn't it? I couldn't get off to sleep last night for I don't know how long, thinking about her all alone in that huge house, and what in the world she's to do, you know. Have a piece of cake, Mabel? No? It's very nice cake—made from a receipt of my mother's; something quite uncommon. Well, if you won't—! But that poor young widow, left all alone, and such a big property on her hands. Of course one always expected her to be a widow pretty early, in the nature of things. It couldn't help being so. If people will go and marry an old man, fit to be their grandfather—But then one doesn't expect it to be so awfully sudden: and not an atom of warning. Such a way to lose him too! Sit down, Mabel!"

"I can't really. I've come with a message to Mr. Kennedy: and I'm to wait for a verbal answer."

"Oh, well, Thomas is out now, but he'll be in this minute. You may as well sit down. Now do tell me how that poor thing is this morning. I suppose your father is attending her still. Oh, of course I know he never tells you anything particular, and if he did you wouldn't tell it again. I know how particular your father is, and quite right of him too. I hate gossip, my dear. But still he might just have happened to say if she was better."

"My father has not been to the Park yet."

"Oh, then, of course—! However, I heard she went to the funeral, and looked so lovely in her weeds, and was as composed as anything. Thomas was there, of course; but he hasn't had a word with Mrs. Villiers yet. You see, it's a little awkward—the Park being just within Dulveriford Parish—and then we all know she only came to St. John's to please her husband. I suppose Mr. Trevelyan has been to the Park a lot this week. Quite natural too. Oh, it will be all the Trevelyans now, and nothing to do with St. John's. It was only the General kept her to that, don't you know—poor dear man! And of course, he wasn't musical. He knew the 'Old Hundredth' when he heard it, and he liked it played at a sort of 'Dead March in Saul' time, with all the little turns and twists of seventy years ago. Thomas sometimes begged the organist to put on a few of those twiddles, just by way of pleasing the poor dear General, and he did try, but he couldn't get them stately enough. The General always shook his head afterward, and said, 'Ah, it wasn't what it used to be.' Well, and I suppose Jean has been with Mrs. Villiers all the week too."

Mabel hesitated. "I don't think so—quite—from what I hear," she said. "My father says nothing, or Jean either. Jean is always so shut-up, you know—so unlike most girls. But I believe Mrs. Villiers only wants to be alone, and seems to turn from all sympathy—even Jean's. It seems odd; when Jean and Mr. Trevelyan have done so much for her."

"She is stupefied, poor thing, and doesn't know what to do or say next. I'm told she was quite decided about not asking either Mr. Trevelyan or my husband to take the funeral, but she would have that old gentleman down from London. He was rather slow, don't you think? I hope Mrs. Villiers is grateful, after the way the Trevelyans have behaved; but of course she must be stunned for a little while. Jean's an odd girl, very odd, so shut-up, as you say," pursued Mrs. Kennedy, in reflective accents. "I never can half make her out, she's so odd. But plucky, don't you know?"

"It must have been dreadful for poor Jean, to find the General like that, when she was alone."

"Like that—yes, dreadful," echoed Mrs. Kennedy. "I'm sure one feels any amount for the poor widow. That's what it is, Mabel, you see. It isn't so much for us—" as if striving to disentangle the strands of her own sensations. "They are a sort of friends—were, I mean—at least, I mean, he was and she is—at least, if she doesn't change—and my husband always thought there never was such a man as the dear General. But Mrs. Villiers doesn't care a rap for me, don't you know?—And to be sure, why should she? Everybody isn't made to suit everybody else; and it would be uncommonly stupid if they were. Like rows of buttons and buttonholes, you know. Well, and then there's the will. Of course you know all about the will. I call it a shame, only one can't say a word of blame about the good old man, now he's gone; and of course he meant it for the best, in some way or other—only one can't imagine what way, and I do call it a shame. I can't think what in the world possessed him to go and do it. As if a lovely young thing like her was never to marry again? But she'll have to wait for a rich husband, that's all. She isn't fit to rough it, you know."

"Is not this very soon to be talking about another husband?" asked Mabel, rather jarred.

"Well, yes; and I wouldn't to anybody except you. But how is one to help thinking? So Mr. James Trevelyan couldn't run down for the funeral. What a pity! He's a busy man, of course, and lots of engagements always, but I should think he might have managed it, if he had chosen. Now, he's a nice man—" meditatively—"and so handsome; and just a nice age—and I should have thought—But of course he has no money, so it's no good fancying anything about him. There's Thomas at last! Catch him, Mabel, before he gets into the study."

Mabel was met by Mr. Kennedy entering the room in which they had held their tête-à-tête.

"Thomas, Mabel has a message from her father," quoth his wife.

"Or rather from Mrs. Villiers through my father. Mrs. Villiers would be glad to see you, if you would call on her, either this afternoon or to-morrow."

"Now, Mabel! And you never to tell me that, all the time you have been here!"

Mabel laughed. She might have pleaded lack of opportunity. Mr. Kennedy stood gazing at her with blank eyes, while her words worked their way through the cotton-wool which enveloped his brain.

"Mrs. Villiers—" he echoed. "Yes—Mrs. Villiers, you say. Yes, certainly. I will go to-morrow."

"Very well. I will tell my father," Mabel said, and took herself off with all speed.

"Now that was an odd way to ask you! Why couldn't she send a post-card?" demanded Mrs. Kennedy. "People are so queer, and I do think people in trouble are the queerest of all. One never knows how they'll take it, or what they will be after next. What do you suppose Mrs. Villiers wants you for, Thomas?"

Mr. Kennedy had no suggestions to offer. He was not, like his wife, original.

Evelyn Villiers, far from being stupefied by her loss, as Mrs. Kennedy conjectured, was rather awakened by it to an abnormal acuteness of sensation. She was of stronger fibre, of more tough and elastic make, than would commonly have been supposed by those who only saw, with unpenetrating eyes, her fair and fragile exterior.

On the night of her husband's death, she had been worn out with bodily exertion and mental agony; but life was strong within her still, and she knew it before another day had passed. She might and did look ineffably mournful and sweet; she might and did think that the best of her days were over; she might and did feel that things could never again be to her as they had been; nevertheless, life stirred actively as an under-current, bearing her on with resistless power to "new tasks and sorrow's new," not to speak of possible new joys also.

In health, she suffered loss than might have been expected. The strain and the shock had actually told less upon her than upon Jean; doubtless because she had given in more at the time, and had leant upon others, at least in a measure, while Jean had borne up, and had endured a full pressure of responsibility. But nobody thought of pitying Jean, except in a perfunctory fashion; and nobody noticed anything unusual in her, unless it were Mr. Trevelyan; while all the world was convinced that Evelyn must be utterly broken-down. She was obliged to consent to one or two more visits from Dr. Ingram, if only as an escape from Miss Devereux' importunity: but frail as she looked, she was not ill.

"I wish I were! Anything to stop thinking," she said mournfully to him. "But I am well—I don't need medicines."

And Dr. Ingram frankly endorsed her words.

To get rid of Sybella before the funeral proved impossible, without stronger measures than Evelyn in her grieved and softened state cared to take. She submitted, therefore; and as the only means of avoiding Miss Devereux's interminable chit-chat, she spent her days in solitude, refusing admittance to all—even to Jean. For if she saw more of Jean, she would have inevitably to see more of Sybella.

Jean understood, at least in a measure, and trusted Evelyn entirely: yet there was a sense of pain.

The workings of Evelyn's mind, during those hushed hours of solitude, between the day of her husband's death and that of the funeral, were multiform. She was ever reviewing her past life, living again through the years in imagination. Her girlish haste to escape from the bondage of a home with Miss Devereux, had flung her into another bondage, hardly less irksome to her restless nature: and for over seven years she had endured the consequences. But this was not the light in which Evelyn, newly widowed, looked upon her past.

She knew indeed how things had been; yet in the rebound, so often seen with respect to those who have passed away, especially where the love has been defective, she could now allow no fault in her husband. All blame for past difficulties was to be attached to herself; none to him. A remorseful passionate back-wave of love held her in its grasp. She had not so loved him while he was with her: but the loneliness of her young widowhood, the sense of having no one to appeal to, caused a magnified sense of his protection and sympathy, of his unvarying kindness, of his unfailing interest in all that had concerned her.

Evelyn forgot now, or thought of as utterly unimportant, the daily frictions, the differences of opinion, which had so worried her. The absolutism of his judgment, the narrowness of his views, became as nothing, seen beside her thousand recollections of his true nobility and goodness, of his pure and upright life. And his love for her! She knew at last what that had been. What though they had differed theologically on many points? What though he had seemed at times theoretically, though not practically, hard towards those who differed from him? He had been true, constant, honourable, blameless: and how he had loved her! The world grew into a desert, without that unfailing love. Evelyn had not measured its worth until she had lost it.

She grieved for him sorely; not with the peaceful sorrow of a wife who has been perfectly at one with her husband; but with the bitter distress of one who has failed to appreciate till too late. All her little coldnesses, all her little takings of offence, all her little stiffnesses of demeanour, rose up in overwhelming array, enlarged by the microscope of imagination into gigantic proportions. In him she could see nothing now but goodness and beauty. All failings were struck away by the hand of death. She went over and over the different manifestations of his rectitude, his kindness, his chivalrous gentleness, his loving guardianship of her, his manly readiness to forgive, till he grew into an idol set up on a shrine in her heart, as a being to be reverenced and almost worshipped.

Womanly—all this!

The very will, which others were quick to blame, leaving the whole estate to her, but only so long as she should remain unmarried, supplied fresh fuel to the flame of her ardent devotion. Friends might wonder; Evelyn would allow no word of blame.

"He was right—perfectly right," she said. "The property must of course remain in the Villiers family. He only had to provide for my widowhood—and that means for my lifetime. I shall never marry again. He understood me, and he knew that I should understand him."

One thought of happiness dawned upon her as the hours of those long days dragged by—a thought of happiness, because it meant action completely in the face of her own desires, action which she could therefore feel to be a kind of sacrifice of herself to her husband's memory. She would in all things now be guided solely by his wishes and opinions. She would think what he had thought, she would do what he had done, she would cultivate the friends that he had preferred, she would follow out the lines that he would have chosen for her; and so, at least in a measure, she would make up to him for her non-submission in the past. St. John's should be exclusively her Church; the good people of St. John's congregation should be her especial clique. No matter if they did not suit her taste. Enough of that. They had suited her husband's taste. Since she had not been one with him while he was present, she would be one with him now he was gone.

So wrapped up was Evelyn in these thoughts, that she failed to see the opposite side of the question, failed to remember what was due in other quarters to tried friends of her own. Her whole heart flowed out in imaginative adulation of the man she had lost; and for a time all else went down before this phase of affairs.

There was at once, almost unconsciously on Evelyn's part, a slight drawing back from the Trevelyans; too slight to be noted by outsiders, too decided not to be noted by themselves. She was the same in manner when they met, but she did not press for frequent visits from Mr. Trevelyan or Jean. They did not speak of it, one to another, but both alike ceased to go often to the Park, waiting for renewed invitations to do so; which invitations did not come. Evelyn had sent for Mr. Kennedy after the funeral; and thenceforward, she was perceived no more within the walls of Dulveriford Church. Had not her husband always wished her to attend only St. John's?

The St. John's people were greatly touched to see the fair young widow, with her sad face and voluminous crape, seated in the chancel, having the General's empty chair beside her. Mr. Kennedy took care to supply no end of mournful hymns and sorrowful sermons, as particularly suited to a widow's frame of mind, forgetting, good man, in his sympathy with her, that the entire congregation did not consist of widows. When she came gliding out of Church at the end of the Service, half the elderly ladies present, widows or no, would have liked to press forward and sympathetically squeeze the hand of Mrs. Villiers of Dutton Park. But Evelyn had the art of keeping people at a distance; and few actually ventured. Those who tried it once were so distinctly bowed aside that they did not try it a second time; yet poor Evelyn took herself to task afterwards; for were they not his friends?

It might have been expected that Cyril would come home earlier than usual, on account of his sister's trouble; and indeed he was actually sent for to the funeral. Only two days before, however, mild scarlatina broke out in the school, and Cyril was among the first victims to the attack. Sybella, in dire alarm, announced that she could neither have him at the Brow, nor meet him anywhere else these holidays—self being as usual her first thought. It was quite impossible that she should be exposed to infection! Somebody else might undertake Cyril—or Cyril could remain at school!

"Then as soon as it is counted right for him to travel, I shall have him to stay with me at the seaside," Evelyn said, hardly caring to veil her contempt for the other's puny self-regard.

"Jean, what do you think of this?" asked her father, three or four days after Christmas.

He was alone with her in the morning-room.

"This" meant a letter from Oswald, which he handed to Jean, and she read it slowly, concealing what she felt. The one delight in prospect had been Oswald's New Year visit, and now he wished not to come. He had an invitation from a friend in Town, and the house was one where there would be "lots of fun." It would be "awfully nice;" and he knew they would not mind his going "just this time." The very next leave he could get, he would be sure to come home.

"Well, Jean?"

"He wants it very much. May he, father?"

"You will not be too direfully disappointed?"

"O no!" And Jean smiled, for she could be a very Spartan for Oswald's sake. The reality of her love for him made it impossible that she should put the thought of her own pleasure before the thought of his. "He will get leave again soon."

"I don't see any especial reason for saying 'no.' Young fellows naturally like variety." After a break, and in a different voice, he said, "You saw Mrs. Villiers yesterday afternoon?"

"Yes." Jean lifted pained eyes to her father. "I don't quite understand Evelyn," she said slowly. "Please don't say anything to anybody."

"No. You find her changed."

"Not exactly. She is, and yet she isn't. Not changed really in herself. She was as dear and kind to me as ever."

Jean paused, and appeared to swallow something down with difficulty.

"But she seems to have set herself to be like her husband—like him in everything. She told me so, and she asked me to tell you. It is because she thinks she ought. She will always go to St. John's now—evening as well as morning—and she will try hard to like Mr. Kennedy's sermons, and to care for General Villiers' friends—even that dreadful Colonel Atherstone. She had a pile of little tracts on her table, that General Villiers used to be fond of, and I suppose she had been reading them. I don't know why she shouldn't. Only, it is all because she is sure it would please him, you know. I don't like to say it, but I couldn't help fancying it was just a little as if she were acting a part in a drama. Only she doesn't feel that."

"No; she is genuine always, to the best of her self-knowledge."

"Yes—I am sure she is. And, father, if she should see less of us now than she used, we are to know—to understand—that it is because of him—because she thinks—" Jean hesitated again, "because she thinks she has been wrong. She cried so, and I told her I could not see it—but—of course if she feels it right—"

"Of course! I have foreseen this."

"I don't quite understand—" Jean came to another break, and Mr. Trevelyan knew that she was sorely tried. "I can't see—Being dead doesn't make a man right in every single thing he ever did and said!"

"Not precisely!" with a grim smile at the mode of expression. "It only lends more charity to our judgments."

"But if I were Evelyn, I don't think I could make myself feel and believe what I didn't really feel and believe, only because I wanted to agree with him."

"You could not!"

"If she didn't agree with him before, I don't see how she can now."

"She can make a Pope of his memory, and submit her own judgment to his. I doubt if she goes so far in reality. It is more emotional than logical."

Jean stood, pale and troubled, gazing into the fire, unaware how closely she was herself being studied.

"If Mrs. Villiers were over fifty, she might keep on in the same line for the rest of her life; get into her husband's groove, and remain there persistently, out of respect to him. A good many women are capable of such devotion. But only twenty-five!—No, she is too young. Have patience, Jean. She will rally to her true self by-and-by, and you will not lose your friend."

Jean's eyes were suffused suddenly.

"There is something a little morbid in all this. She will come out of it—modified, perhaps, but not a mere copy of her husband. No need to worry yourself. She will fight through it, and you too."

He opened another letter, read, re-read, and looked at Jean.

"The very thing! I have been wishing I could get you away. Here's an invitation in the nick of time."

"For me!" Jean did not know what it was to leave home alone.

"To Wufflestone. Jem's mother."

"Cousin Chrissie Trevelyan! But that is such a long way off, father. And I don't see how I can be spared."

"We'll manage the sparing. I think a change is desirable. You have not been quite the thing lately."

Jean looked up gratefully. That anybody should have detected the languor which she had resolutely concealed was astonishing.

"Oh, I'm all right," she said—an involuntary utterance.

"You will not be the worse for a break. She speaks of the middle of February—sorry her spare room is engaged till then. I shall like you to know Chrissie Trevelyan. She's a kind creature. You will be in good hands."

"I only just remember her."

"So much the better. New acquaintances are refreshing sometimes. I'm afraid you will not think Wufflestone beautiful; too flat, after this. Mind, if they wish it, you can stay a month or more."

"If she wishes it?" with a slight stress on the pronoun.

"Yes. She expects her nephew, Giles Cuthbert, for part of the winter; and Jem may be there too. You will like to see Jem again. Cuthbert?—I believe he is a nice fellow on the whole—idle and well-meaning, and good to his aunt."

"I can't bear idle people."

Mr. Trevelyan laughed. "Every hive has its drones. You will never be one of them. By-the-by, you had better have a new dress, Jean—and a hat."

"O thank you!"

New dresses and hats were rare things in Jean's existence.