The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866

But O the struggle it cost her not to slap both Mrs. Gaunt's fair cheeks impartially with the backs of the brushes! And what with this struggle, and the reprimand, and the past agitations, by and by the comb ceased, and the silence was broken by faint sobs.

Mrs. Gaunt turned calmly round and looked full at her hysterical handmaid.

"What is to do?" said she. "Is it because I chid you, child? Nay, you need not take that to heart; it is just my way: I can bear anything but my hair pulled." With this she rose and poured some drops of sal-volatile into water, and put it to her secret rival's lips: it was kindly done, but with that sort of half contemptuous and thoroughly cold pity women are apt to show to women, and especially when one of them is Mistress and the other is Servant.

Still it cooled the extreme hatred Caroline had nursed, and gave her a little twinge, and awakened her intelligence. Now her intelligence was truly remarkable when not blinded by passion. She was a woman with one or two other masculine traits besides her roving heart. For instance, she could sit and think hard and practically for hours together: and on these occasions her thoughts were never dreamy and vague; it was no brown study, but good hard thinking. She would knit her coal-black brows, like Lord Thurlow himself, and realize the situation, and weigh the pros and cons with a steady judicial power rarely found in her sex; and, nota bene, when once her mind had gone through this process, then she would act with almost monstrous resolution.

She now shut herself up in her own room for some hours, and weighed the matter carefully.

The conclusion she arrived at was this: that, if she stayed at Hernshaw Castle, there would be mischief; and probably she herself would be the principal sufferer to the end of the chapter, as she was now.

She said to herself: "I shall go mad, or else expose myself, and be turned away with loss of character; and then what will become of me, and my child? Better lose life or reason than character. I know what I have to go through; I have left a man ere now with my heart tugging at me to stay beside him. It is a terrible wrench; and then all seems dead for a long while without him. But the world goes on and takes you round with it; and by and by you find there are as good fish left in the sea. I'll go, while I've sense enough left to see I must."

The very next day she came to Mrs. Gaunt and said she wished to leave.

"Certainly," said Mrs. Gaunt, coldly. "May I ask the reason?"

"O, I have no complaint to make, ma'am, none whatever; but I am not happy here; and I wish to go when my month's up, or sooner, ma'am, if you could suit yourself."

Mrs. Gaunt considered a moment: then she said, "You came all the way from Gloucestershire to me; had you not better give the place a fair trial? I have had two or three good servants that felt uncomfortable at first; but they soon found out my ways, and stayed with me till they married. As for leaving me before your month, that is out of the question."

To this Ryder said not a word, but merely vented a little sigh, half dogged, half submissive; and went cat-like about, arranging her mistress's things with admirable precision and neatness. Mrs. Gaunt watched her, without seeming to do so, and observed that her discontent did not in the least affect her punctual discharge of her duties. Said Mrs. Gaunt to herself, "This servant is a treasure; she shall not go." And Ryder to herself, "Well, 't is but for a month; and then no power shall keep me here."

CHAPTER XIX

Not long after these events came the county ball. Griffith was there, but no Mrs. Gaunt. This excited surprise, and, among the gentlemen, disappointment. They asked Griffith if she was unwell; he thanked them dryly, she was very well; and that was all they could get out of him. But to the ladies he let out that she had given up balls, and, indeed, all reasonable pleasures. "She does nothing but fast, and pray, and visit the sick." He added, with rather a weak smile, "I see next to nothing of her." A minx stood by and put in her word. "You should take to your bed; then, who knows? she might look in upon you."

Griffith laughed, but not heartily. In truth, Mrs. Gaunt's religious fervor knew no bounds. Absorbed in pious schemes and religious duties, she had little time, and much distaste, for frivolous society; invited none but the devout, and found polite excuses for not dining abroad. She sent her husband into the world alone, and laden with apologies. "My wife is turned saint. 'T is a sin to dance, a sin to hunt, a sin to enjoy ourselves. We are here to fast, and pray, and build schools, and go to church twice a day."

And so he went about publishing his household ill; but, to tell the truth, a secret satisfaction peeped through his lugubrious accents. An ugly saint is an unmixed calamity to jolly fellows; but to be lord and master, and possessor, of a beautiful saint, was not without its piquant charm. His jealousy was dormant, not extinct; and Kate's piety tickled that foible, not wounded it. He found himself the rival of heaven,—and the successful rival; for, let her be ever so strict, ever so devout, she must give her husband many delights she could not give to heaven.

This soft and piquant phase of the passion did not last long. All things are progressive.

Brother Leonard was director now, as well as confessor; his visits became frequent; and Mrs. Gaunt often quoted his authority for her acts or her sentiments. So Griffith began to suspect that the change in his wife was entirely due to Leonard; and that, with all her eloquence and fervor, she was but a priest's echo. This galled him. To be sure Leonard was only an ecclesiastic; but if he had been a woman, Griffith was the man to wince. His wife to lean so on another; his wife to withdraw from the social pleasures she had hitherto shared with him; and all because another human creature disapproved them. He writhed in silence awhile, and then remonstrated.

He was met at first with ridicule: "Are you going to be jealous of my confessor?" and, on repeating the offence, with a kind, but grave admonition, that silenced him for the time, but did not cure him, nor even convince him.

The facts were too strong: Kate was no longer to him the genial companion she had been; gone was the ready sympathy with which she had listened to all his little earthly concerns; and as for his hay-making, he might as well talk about it to an iceberg as to the partner of his bosom.

He was genial by nature, and could not live without sympathy. He sought it in the parlor of the "Red Lion."

Mrs. Gaunt's high-bred nostrils told her where he haunted, and it caused her dismay. Woman-like, instead of opening her battery at once, she wore a gloomy and displeased air, which a few months ago would have served her turn and brought about an explanation at once; but Griffith took it for a stronger dose of religious sentiment, and trundled off to the "Red Lion" all the more.

So then at last she spoke her mind, and asked him how he could lower himself so, and afflict her.

"Oh!" said he, doggedly, "this house is too cold for me now. My mate is priest-rid. Plague on the knave that hath put coldness 'twixt thee and me."

Mrs. Gaunt froze visibly, and said no more at that time.

One bit of sunshine remained in the house, and shone brighter than ever on its chilled master,—shone through two black, seducing eyes.

Some three months before the date we have now reached, Caroline Ryder's two boxes were packed and corded ready to go next day. She had quietly persisted in her resolution to leave, and Mrs. Gaunt, though secretly angry, had been just and magnanimous enough to give her a good character.

Now female domestics are like the little birds; if that great hawk, their mistress, follows them about, it is a deadly grievance; but if she does not, they follow her about, and pester her with idle questions, and invite the beak and claws of petty tyranny and needless interference.

So, the afternoon before she was to leave, Caroline Ryder came to her mistress's room on some imaginary business. She was not there. Ryder, forgetting that it did not matter a straw, proceeded to hunt her everywhere; and at last ran out, with only her cap on, to "the Dame's Haunt," and there she was; but not alone: she was walking up and down with Brother Leonard. Their backs were turned, and Ryder came up behind them. Leonard was pacing gravely, with his head gently drooping as usual. Mrs. Gaunt was walking elastically, and discoursing with great fire and animation.

Ryder glided after, noiseless as a serpent, more bent on wondering and watching now than on overtaking; for inside the house her mistress showed none of this charming vivacity.

Presently the keen black eyes observed a "trifle light as air" that made them shine again.

She turned and wound herself amongst the trees, and disappeared. Soon after she was in her own room, a changed woman. With glowing cheeks, sparkling eyes, and nimble fingers, she uncorded her boxes, unpacked her things, and placed them neatly in the drawers.

What more had she seen than I have indicated?

Only this: Mrs. Gaunt, in the warmth of discourse, laid her hand lightly for a moment on the priest's shoulder. That was nothing, she had laid the same hand on Ryder; for, in fact, it was a little womanly way she had, and a hand that settled like down. But this time, as she withdrew it again, that delicate hand seemed to speak; it did not leave Leonard's shoulder all at once, it glided slowly away, first the palm, then the fingers, and so parted lingeringly.

The other woman saw this subtile touch of womanhood, coupled it with Mrs. Gaunt's vivacity and the air of happiness that seemed to inspire her whole eloquent person, and formed an extreme conclusion on the spot, though she could not see the lady's face.

When Mrs. Gaunt came in she met her, and addressed her thus: "If you please, ma'am, have you any one coming in my place?"

Mrs. Gaunt looked her full in the face. "You know I have not," said she, haughtily.

"Then, if it is agreeable to you, ma'am, I will stay. To be sure the place is dull; but I have got a good mistress—and—"

"That will do, Ryder: a servant has always her own reasons, and never tells them to her mistress. You can stay this time; but the next, you go; and once for all.—I am not to be trifled with."

Ryder called up a look all submission, and retired with an obeisance. But, once out of sight, she threw off the mask and expanded with insolent triumph. "Yes, I have my own reasons," said she. "Keep you the priest, and I'll take the man."

From that hour Caroline Ryder watched her mistress like a lynx, and hovered about her master, and poisoned him slowly with vague, insidious hints.

CHAPTER XX

Brother Leonard, like many holy men, was vain. Not vainer than St. Paul, perhaps; but then he had somewhat less to be vain of. Not but what he had his gusts of humility and diffidence; only they blew over.

At first, as you may perhaps remember, he doubted his ability to replace Father Francis as Mrs. Gaunt's director; but, after a slight disclaimer, he did replace him, and had no more misgivings as to his fitness. But his tolerance and good sense were by no means equal to his devotion and his persuasive powers; and so his advice in matters spiritual and secular somehow sowed the first seeds of conjugal coolness in Hernshaw Castle.

And now Ryder slyly insinuated into Griffith's ear that the mistress told the priest everything, and did nothing but by his advice. Thus the fire already kindled was fanned by an artful woman's breath.

Griffith began to hate Brother Leonard, and to show it so plainly and rudely that Leonard shrank from the encounter, and came less often, and stayed but a few minutes. Then Mrs. Gaunt remonstrated gently with Griffith, but received short, sullen replies. Then, as the servile element of her sex was comparatively small in her, she turned bitter and cold, and avenged Leonard indirectly, but openly, with those terrible pins and needles a beloved woman has ever at command.

Then Griffith became moody, and downright unhappy, and went more and more to the "Red Lion," seeking comfort there now as well as company.

Mrs. Gaunt saw, and had fits of irritation, and fits of pity, and sore perplexity. She knew she had a good husband; and, instead of taking him to heaven with her, she found that each step she made with Leonard's help towards the angelic life seemed somehow to be bad for Griffith's soul and for his earthly happiness.

She blamed herself; she blamed Griffith; she blamed the Protestant heresy; she blamed everybody and everything—except Brother Leonard.

One Sunday afternoon Griffith sat on his own lawn, silently smoking his pipe. Mrs. Gaunt came to him, and saw an air of dejection on his genial face. Her heart yearned. She sat down beside him on the bench, and sighed; then he sighed too.

"My dear," said she, sweetly, "fetch out your viol da gambo, and we will sing a hymn or two together here this fine afternoon. We can praise God together, though we must pray apart; alas that it is so!"

"With all my heart," said Griffith. "Nay, I forgot; my viol da gambo is not here. 'T is at the 'Red Lion.'"

"At the 'Red Lion'!" said she, bitterly. "What, do you sing there as well as drink? O husband, how can you so demean yourself?"

"What is a poor man to do, whose wife is priest-ridden, and got to be no company—except for angels?"

"I did not come here to quarrel," said she, coldly and sadly. Then they were both silent a minute. Then she got up and left him.

Brother Leonard, like many earnest men, was rather intolerant. He urged on Mrs. Gaunt that she had too many Protestants in her household: her cook and her nursemaid ought, at all events, to be Catholics. Mrs. Gaunt on this was quite ready to turn them both off, and that without disguise. But Leonard dissuaded her from so violent a measure. She had better take occasion to part with one of them, and by and by with the other.

The nursemaid was the first to go, and her place was filled by a Roman Catholic. Then the cook received warning. But this did not pass off so quietly. Jane Bannister was a buxom, hearty woman, well liked by her fellow-servants. Her parents lived in the village, and she had been six years with the Gaunts, and her honest heart clung to them. She took to crying; used to burst out in the middle of her work, or while conversing with fitful cheerfulness on ordinary topics.

One day Griffith found her crying, and Ryder consoling her as carelessly and contemptuously as possible.

"Heyday, lasses!" said he; "what is your trouble?"

At this Jane's tears flowed in a stream, and Ryder made no reply, but waited.

At last, and not till the third or fourth time of asking, Jane blurted out that she had got the sack; such was her homely expression, dignified, however, by honest tears.

"What for?" asked Griffith kindly.

"Nay, sir," sobbed Jane, "that is what I want to know. Our dame ne'er found a fault in me; and now she does pack me off like a dog. Me that have been here this six years, and got to feel at home. What will father say? He'll give me a hiding. For two pins I'd drown myself in the mere."

"Come, you must not blame the mistress," said the sly Ryder. "She is a good mistress as ever breathed: 't is all the priest's doings. I'll tell you the truth, master, if you will pass me your word I sha'n't be sent away for it."

"I pledge you my word as a gentleman," said Griffith.

"Well then, sir, Jane's fault is yours and mine. She is not a Papist; and that is why she is to go. How I come to know, I listened in the next room, and heard the priest tell our dame she must send away two of us, and have Catholics. The priest's word it is law in this house. 'T was in March he gave the order: Harriet, she went in May, and now poor Jane is to go—for walking to church behind you, sir. But there, Jane, I believe he would get our very master out of the house if he could; and then what would become of us all?"

Griffith turned black, and then ashy pale, under this venomous tongue, and went away without a word, looking dangerous.

Ryder looked after him, and her black eye glittered with a kind of fiendish beauty.

Jane, having told her mind, now began to pluck up a little spirit. "Mrs. Ryder," said she, "I never thought to like you so well";—and, with that, gave her a great, hearty, smacking kiss; which Ryder, to judge by her countenance, relished, as epicures albumen. "I won't cry no more. After all, this house is no place for us that be women; 't is a fine roost, to be sure! where the hen she crows and the cock do but cluck."

Town-bred Ryder laughed at the rustic maid's simile; and, not to be outdone in metaphor, told her there were dogs that barked, and dogs that bit. "Our master is one of those that bite. I've done the priest's business. He is as like to get the sack as you are."

Griffith found his wife seated on the lawn reading. He gulped down his ire as well as he could; but nevertheless his voice trembled a little with suppressed passion.

"So Jane is turned off now," said he.

"I don't know about being turned off," replied Mrs. Gaunt, calmly; "but she leaves me next month, and Cicely Davis comes back."

"And Cicely Davis is a useless slut that cannot boil a potato fit to eat; but then she is a Papist, and poor Jenny is a Protestant, and can cook a dinner."

"My dear," said Mrs. Gaunt, "do not you trouble about the servants; leave them to me."

"And welcome; but this is not your doing, it is that Leonard's: and I cannot allow a Popish priest to turn off all my servants that are worth their salt. Come, Kate, you used to be a sensible woman, and a tender wife; now I ask you, is a young bachelor a fit person to govern a man's family?"

Mrs. Gaunt laughed in his face. "A young bachelor!" said she; "who ever heard of such a term applied to a priest,—and a saint upon earth?"

"Why, he is not married, so he must be a bachelor; and I say again it is monstrous for a young bachelor to come between old married folk, and hear all their secrets, and have a finger in every pie, and set up to be master of my house, and order my wife to turn away my servants for going to church behind me. Why not turn me away too? Their fault is mine."

"Griffith, you are in a passion, and I begin to think you want to put me in one."

"Well, perhaps I am. Job's patience went at last, and mine has been sore tried this many a month. 'T was bad enough when the man was only your confessor; you told him everything, and you don't tell me everything. He knew your very heart, better than I do, and that was a bitter thing for me to bear, that love you and have no secrets from you. But every man who marries a Catholic must endure this; so I put a good face on it, though my heart was often sore; 't was the price I had to pay for my pearl of womankind. But since he set up your governor as well, you are a changed woman; you shun company abroad, you freeze my friends at home. You have made the house so cold that I am fain to seek the 'Red Lion' for a smile or a kindly word: and now, to please this fanatical priest, you would turn away the best servants I have, and put useless, dirty slatterns in their place, that happen to be Papists. You did not use to be so uncharitable, nor so unreasonable. 'T is the priest's doing. He is my secret, underhand enemy; I feel him undermining me, inch by inch, and I can bear it no longer. I must make a stand somewhere, and I may as well make it here; for Jenny is a good girl, and her folk live in the village, and she helps them. Think better of it, dame, and let the poor wench stay, though she does go to church behind your husband."

"Griffith," said Mrs. Gaunt, "I might retort and say that you are a changed man; for to be sure you did never use to interfere between me and my maids. Are you sure some mischief-making woman is not advising you? But there, do not let us chafe one another, for you know we are hot-tempered both of us. Well, leave it for the present, my dear; prithee let me think it over till to-morrow, at all events, and try if I can satisfy you."

The jealous husband saw through this proposal directly. He turned purple. "That is to say, you must ask your priest first for leave to show your husband one grain of respect and affection, and not make him quite a cipher in his own house. No, Kate, no man who respects himself will let another man come between himself and the wife of his bosom. This business is between you and me; I will brook no interference in it; and I tell you plainly, if you turn this poor lass off to please this d–d priest, I'll turn the priest off to please her and her folk. They are as good as he is, any way."

The bitter contempt with which he spoke of brother Leonard, and this astounding threat, imported a new and dangerous element into the discussion: it stung Mrs. Gaunt beyond bearing. She turned with flashing eyes upon Griffith.

"As good as he is? The scum of my kitchen! You will make me hate the mischief-making hussy. She shall pack out of the house to-morrow morning."

"Then I say that priest shall never darken my doors again."

"Then I say they are my doors, not yours; and that holy man shall brighten them whenever he will."

If to strike an adversary dumb is the tongue's triumph, Mrs. Gaunt was victorious; for Griffith gasped, but did not reply.

They faced each other, pale with fury; but no more words.

No: an ominous silence succeeded this lamentable answer, like the silence that follows a thunder-clap.

Griffith stood still awhile, benumbed as it were by the cruel stroke; then cast one speaking look of anguish and reproach upon her, drew himself haughtily up, and stalked away like a wounded lion.

Well said the ancients that anger is a short madness. When we reflect in cold blood on the things we have said in hot, how impossible they seem! how out of character with our real selves! And this is one of the recognized symptoms of mania.

There were few persons could compare with Mrs. Gaunt in native magnanimity; yet how ungenerous a stab had she given.

And had he gone on, she would have gone on; but when he turned silent at her bitter thrust, and stalked away from her, she came to herself almost directly.

She thought, "Good God! what have I said to him?"

And the flush of shame came to her cheek, and her eyes filled with tears.

He saw them not; he had gone away, wounded to the heart.

You see it was true. The house was hers; tied up as tight as wax. The very money (his own money) that had been spent on the place, had become hers by being expended on real property; he could not reclaim it; he was her lodger, a dependent on her bounty.

During all the years they had lived together she had never once assumed the proprietor. On the contrary, she put him forward as the Squire, and slipped quietly into the background. Bene latuit. But, lo! let a hand be put out to offend her saintly favorite, and that moment she could waken her husband from his dream, and put him down into his true legal position with a word. The matrimonial throne for him till he resisted her priest; and then, a stool at her feet, and his.

He was enraged as well as hurt; but being a true lover, his fury was levelled, not at the woman who had hurt him, but at the man who stood out of sight and set her on.

By this time the reader knows his good qualities, and his defects; superior to his wife in one or two things, he was by no means so thorough a gentleman as she was a lady. He had begun to make a party with his own servants against the common enemy; and, in his wrath, he now took another step, or rather a stride, in the same direction. As he hurried away to the public-house, white with ire, he met his gamekeeper coming in with a bucketful of fish fresh caught. "What have ye got there?" said Griffith, roughly; not that he was angry with the man, but that his very skin was full of wrath, and it must exude.

Mr. Leicester did not relish the tone, and replied, bluntly and sulkily, "Pike for our Papists."

The answer, though rude, did not altogether displease Griffith; it smacked of odium theologicum, a sentiment he was learning to understand. "Put 'em down, and listen to me, Thomas Leicester," said he.