The explanation was over, but the family atmosphere was not cleared. Gussy indeed had been moved out of her resentment and doubt, partly for the sake of her lover, partly for the sake of her mother. To stand out against both was more than she had been capable of. And Meredith had been perhaps alarmed by her sudden withdrawal from him, or in some other way (she could not tell how) moved back towards his former devotion. He was more anxious to draw her back, to recover her attention, than he had ever been before in any of the little brief estrangements which Gussy was generally the person to bring to an end. But on this occasion it was entirely he who did it, who sought her pardon, her return of tenderness, all the old attentions that had once been lavished upon him. Gussy could not resist that silent moving back of her heart; and it pleased her that he should defend her mother, whether or not her mother was worthy of it. But the younger ones were not moved by this influence. They were the more dissatisfied with their mother’s defence, because Meredith had chimed in, to put arguments into her mouth when she was about, as they believed, to break down. Had she been permitted to break down, a more full explanation might have been had, and the children might then have forgiven their mother; but, as it was, there had been too much and not enough. An insufficient explanation is the most painful of family misfortunes. It gives a sense of falsehood and insincerity to the mind. When you do not explain at all, it is possible you may be innocent: but when you explain profusely, dwelling upon some sides of the matter while ignoring others, you must be guilty: and the impression left is all the more unhappy and unsatisfactory that it is in its way definitive and final, and all are precluded from opening up the subject again. Unless some new incident took place, or some accident which disturbed the family laws, Dolff could not ask any more questions. He was too young to know what to do, too proud and shame-faced to hazard the credit of the family by making inquiries in other quarters. An uneasy sense that everything was different, that his own position and that of everybody else was changed, that he was no longer sure of the ground on which he stood, or the relations of those around him, was in Dolff’s mind. It must make a difference that his father was{307} alive, even though that father was a madman: and vague notions came into his painfully exercised brain—ideas half seen, uncomprehended, of some sense in which his mother might have done what she had done for their sakes, although she had professed in the same breath that it was for her husband’s sake she had done it, that he might not be shut up away from her. Julia, on the other hand who was much more sharp-witted than Dolff, had seized like lightning upon this inconsistency, and could not forget it.
“She said it was for him and then she said it was for us,” cried the girl. “How could it be for us when it was for him? It could not be supposed good for us that there should have been some one shut up there in the wing, and when we might have found it out any day.”
“I never found it out nor thought of it,” said Dolff. “If I had been told of it I should not have believed it. I should have said my mother was the last person in the world for mysteries—the very last person in the world—and that everything in this house was honest and above-board.”
“I never thought like that,” said Julia, shaking her head. “There was always something queer. Vicars, that was our servant, and yet not our servant, and that cry that one heard——”
“What cry?”
“Oh, an awful cry that we heard sometimes. Janet heard it when she had only been here a week, and she was dreadfully frightened. So was I at first,” said Julia, with dignity. “It has only been for a few years: mamma explained it to me: she said it was the wind in the vacant chimneys that were not used. Oh, Dolff, though she knew very well it was not the wind, and the chimneys were not vacant! Dolff, mamma has said a great many things that are——”
“Don’t talk of the mother, Ju—I’m very fond of the mother; and to think she should ever—— Don’t—I think perhaps there might be reasons for our sakes, as she said. The property, you know, came from my grandfather to us. If he were known to have been alive, perhaps—I don’t know so much about business as I ought—perhaps—— It makes my head a little queer to think of all that. She might have reasons.”
“If it was simply for him, as she said first, to keep him from being sent to an asylum, it could not be for us as well.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Dolff stroking fondly, but with a very serious face, his youthful very light moustache, light both in color and texture.
“I have noticed in ladies,” said quick-witted Julia, “that{308} they like to have a motive, don’t you know—something nice, as if they were always thinking of others, never of themselves; when they do anything, it’s always for their children. Mamma is not like that, to do her justice; when things are going on she says she likes it, not for us only. Oh, Dolff! to think of the parties and romps we have had this Christmas, and people coming to dinner, and him there all the while!”
They were both overawed by the thought, and silenced, not venturing even to look at one another, when Julia suddenly cried out,
“There’s a party to-morrow, Dolff.”
“It mustn’t be,” said the young man; “they must write and say it can’t be.”
“What can they say? Nobody is ill; you can’t shut the people out who come to call, and they would see mamma was quite well, and know it was not true. Oh, no; mamma will say we must keep up appearances; and she will be there, looking as nice as possible at the end of the table, and Vicars behind her chair.”
“Ju, what did they do with him when Vicars was at all the parties behind her chair?”
“He was fastened in, I suppose, the doors all locked. I don’t know. Dolff, suppose he had come downstairs one of these times, as he did last night!”
They looked at each other with a shudder.
“Perhaps on the whole,” said the young man, “it was better for us that we did not know.”
This was how they came to a partial approval of their mother. It rankled in their hearts that she had said to them what was not true, that she had made explanations which they could not refuse yet could not receive; that this tremendous crisis had come and gone in their lives and everything been changed, and yet that they were little wiser than before. And it was still more bitter for Dolff to perceive, what he could not help seeing whenever the family assembled together, that the knowledge that was kept from him was given to Meredith: but yet it had gleamed upon him that after all there might be something reasonable in his mother’s plea.
There came, however, in this way to be two parties in the house—one which knew and discussed everything, the other which knew nothing and imagined a great deal, and chafed at the ignorance in which it was kept, yet found no means of knowing more or understanding better. Mrs. Harwood talked apart with Gussy and Meredith, who were always about her chair. When the others came into the room there was a{309} momentary silence, and then one of the three would start an indifferent subject. It was enough for Dolff or Julia to come near to stop all conversation of any importance. They were shut out from all that was serious in the house as if they had nothing to do with it, as if their lives were not bound up with it as much—nay, far more than the others! What had Meredith to do with it, at all? Only through Gussy, who, if she married him at last, would go away with him and be a Harwood no longer; whereas Dolff, whatever happened, would always be the representative of the family, though shut out from its councils and kept in ignorance of its affairs.
Mrs. Harwood had decided, as Julia foresaw, that the party was to take place, that the world was not to be permitted to see any difference. Such whispers as had crept out could be silenced in no other wa............