MRS. REDMAIN.
In the autumn the Redmains went to
Durnmelling: why they did so, I should find it
hard to say. If, when a child, Hesper loved either
of her parents, the experiences of later years had
so heaped that filial affection with the fallen leaves
of dead hopes and vanished dreams, that there was
now nothing in her heart recognizable to herself as
love to father or mother. She always behaved
to them, of course, with perfect propriety; never
refused any small request; never showed resentment
when blamed never felt any, for she did
not care enough to be angry or sorry that father or
mother should disapprove.
On the other hand, Lady Margaret saw
great improvement in her daughter. To the maternal
eye, jealous for perfection, Hesper’s carriage
was at length satisfactory. It was cold, and
the same to her mother as to every one else, but the
mother did not find it too cold. It was haughty,
even repellent, but by no means in the mother’s
eyes repulsive. Her voice came from her in well-balanced
sentences, sounding as if they had been secretly constructed
for extempore use, like the points of a parliamentary
orator. “Marriage has done everything for
her!” said Lady Malice to herself with a dignified
chuckle, and dismissed the last shadowy remnant of
maternal regret for her part in the transaction of
her marriage.
She never saw herself in the wrong,
and never gave herself the least trouble to be in
the right. She was in good health, ate, and liked
to eat; drank her glass of champagne, and would have
drunk a second, but for her complexion, and that it
sometimes made her feel ill, which was the only thing,
after marrying Mr. Redmain, she ever felt degrading.
Of her own worth she had never had a doubt, and she
had none yet: how was she to generate one, courted
wherever she went, both for her own beauty and her
husband’s wealth?
To her father she was as stiff and
proud as if she had been a maiden aunt, bent on destroying
what expectations from her he might be cherishing.
Who will blame her? He had done her all the ill
he could, and by his own deed she was beyond his reach.
Nor can I see that the debt she owed him for being
her father was of the heaviest.
Her husband was again out of health certain
attacks to which he was subject were now coming more
frequently. I do not imagine his wife offered
many prayers for his restoration. Indeed, she
never prayed for the thing she desired; and, while
he and she occupied separate rooms, the one solitary
thing she now regarded as a privilege, how could
she pray for his recovery?
Greatly contrary to Mr. Redmain’s
unexpressed desire, Miss Yolland had been installed
as Hesper’s cousin-companion. After the
marriage, she ventured to unfold a little, as she
had promised, but what there was yet of womanhood
in Hesper had shrunk from further acquaintance with
the dimly shadowed mysteries of Sepia’s story;
and Sepia, than whom none more sensitive to change
of atmosphere, had instantly closed again; and now
not unfrequently looked and spoke like one feeling
her way. The only life-principle she had, so
far as I know, was to get from the moment the greatest
possible enjoyment that would leave the way clear
for more to follow. She had not been in his house
a week before Mr. Redmain hated her. He was something
given to hating people who came near him, and she
came much too near. She was by no means so different
in character as to be repulsive to him; neither was
she so much alike as to be tiresome; their designs
could not well clash, for she was a woman and he was
a man; if she had not been his wife’s friend,
they might, perhaps, have got on together better than
well; but the two were such as must either be hand
in glove or hate each other. There had not, however,
been the least approach to rupture between them.
Mr. Redmain, indeed, took no trouble to avoid such
a catastrophe, but Sepia was far too wise to allow
even the dawn of such a risk. When he was ill,
he was, if possible, more rude to her than to every
one else, but she did not seem to mind it a straw.
Perhaps she knew something of the ways of such gentlemen
as lose their manners the moment they are ailing, and
seem to consider a headache or an attack of indigestion
excuse sufficient for behaving like the cad they scorn.
It was not long, however, before he began to take
in her a very real interest, though not of a sort
it would have made her comfortable with him to know.
Every time Mr. Redmain had an attack,
the baldness on the top of his head widened, and the
skin of his face tightened on his small, neat features;
his long arms looked longer; his formerly flat back
rounded yet a little; and his temper grew yet more
curiously spiteful. Long after he had begun to
recover, he was by no means an agreeable companion.
Nevertheless, as if at last, though late in the day,
she must begin to teach her daughter the duty of a
married woman, from the moment he arrived, taken ill
on the way, Lady Malice, regardless of the brusqueness
with which he treated her from the first, devoted herself
to him with an attention she had never shown her husband.
She was the only one who manifested any appearance
of affection for him, and the only one of the family
for whom, in return, he came to show the least consideration.
Rough he was, even to her, but never, except when in
absolute pain, rude as to everybody in the house besides.
At times, one might have almost thought he stood in
some little awe of her. Every night, after his
man was gone, she would visit him to see that he was
left comfortable, would tuck him up as his mother might
have done, and satisfy herself that the night-light
was shaded from his eyes. With her own hands
she always arranged his breakfast on the tray, nor
never omitted taking him a basin of soup before he
got up; and, whatever he may have concluded concerning
her motives, he gave no sign of imagining them other
than generous. Perhaps the part in him which had
never had the opportunity of behaving ill to his mother,
and so had not choked up its channels with wrong,
remained, in middle age and illness, capable of receiving
kindness.
Hesper saw the relation between them,
but without the least pleasure or the least curiosity.
She seemed to care for nothing except the
keeping of her back straight. What could it be,
inside that lovely form, that gave itself pleasure
to be, were a difficult question indeed. The bear
as he lies in his winter nest, sucking his paw, has
no doubt his rudimentary theories of life, and those
will coincide with a desire for its continuance; but
whether what either the lady or the bear counts the
good of life, be really that which makes either desire
its continuance, is another question. Mere life
without suffering seems enough for most people, but
I do not think it could go on so for ever. I
can not help fancying that, but for death, utter dreariness
would at length master the healthiest in whom the
true life has not begun to shine. But so satisfying
is the mere earthly existence to some at present,
that this remark must sound to them bare insanity.
Partly out of compliment to Mr. Redmain,
the Mortimers had scarcely a visitor; for he would
not come out of his room when he knew there was a
stranger in the house. Fond of company of a certain
kind when he was well, he could not endure an unknown
face when ho was ill. He told Lady Malice that
at such times a stranger always looked a devil to him.
Hence the time was dull for everybody dullest,
perhaps, for Sepia, who, as well as Redmain, had a
few things that required forgetting. It was no
wonder, then, that Hesper, after a fort-night of it,
should think once more of the young woman in the draper’s
shop of Testbridge. One morning, in consequence,
she ordered her brougham, and drove to the town.