Hannah/Chapter 7

No harm had befallen baby. Hannah, flying up stairs on terror-winged feet that carried her she hardly knew how, found her treasure all safe, lying fast asleep, as warm and soft as a little bird in its nest, in the quiet nursery.

Grace was not there, and yet it was certainly Grace's voice she had heard. What could have happened? The uneasy fear that some time or other something uncomfortable might turn up concerning Jem Dixon was seldom long absent from Hannah's mind, though it was not strong enough to take away the comfort she had in her intelligent and faithful nurse.

​Of course the whole household, as well as every household at Easterham, knew Grace's story. In such a small. community concealment was impossible, even had Miss Thelluson wished it, which she did not. She had a great horror of secrets, and, besides, she felt that in this painful matter perfect openness was the safest course. Therefore, both to her servants and her neighbors, she had never hesitated to mention the thing, telling the plain story, accepting it as an inevitable misfortune, and then protecting Grace to the utmost by her influence—the influence which any lady can use, both with equals and inferiors, when she is, like Hannah, quite firm in her own mind, and equally fearless in expressing it. Whatever people said behind her back, before Hannah's face nobody breathed a word against the poor nurse, who cowered gratefully under the shelter of her mistress's kindness, and kept out of other people's way as much as possible.

In her class broken hearts are rare; working-women have not time to die of grief. But though Grace said little or nothing, often when she sat sewing, with Rosie playing at her feet, Hannah watched with pity the poor sad face, and thought of the blighted life which nothing could ever restore. For, as has been said, Grace, brought up as little maid to the Misses Melville, had caught from them a higher tone of feeling and a purer morality, in great things and small, than, alas! is usually found among servants; and she suffered accordingly. Her shame, if shame it could be called, seemed to gnaw into her very heart. So did her separation from the children. How far she grieved for their father could not be guessed; she never named him, and, Hannah was certain, saw and heard nothing of him. But that scream, and a slight confusion which was audible down stairs, convinced her that something—probably the vague something she always feared—had happened: James Dixon had reappeared.

She went down stairs and found it so. In the servants' hall, the centre of an excited group—some frightened at him, some making game of him—stood a little, ugly-look​ing man, half drunk, but not too drunk to be incapable of taking care of himself, or knowing quite well what he was about. He held Grace tight round the waist with one hand, and brandished a kitchen carving-knife with the other, daring every body to come near him, which nobody did, until Mr. Rivers walked quietly up and took the knife out of his hand.

"James Dixon, what business have you in my house at this time of night?"

"I want my missis. I'm come to fetch my missis," stammered the man, drunkenly, still keeping hold of Grace, in spite of her violent struggles to get free.

"She isn't his missis," cried some one from behind. "Please, Sir, he married my cousin, Ann Bridges, only two months ago. He's always a-marrying somebody."

"But I don't like Ann Bridges, now I've got her. She's forever rating at me and beating the children; and I'm a fond father, as doesn't like to see his little 'uns ill used," added Jem, growing maudlin. "So I'd rather get rid of Ann, and take Grace back again."

When he spoke of the children Grace had given a great sob; but now, when he turned to her his red, drunken face, and wanted to kiss her, she shrank from him in disgust, and, making one struggle, wrenched herself free and darted over to Mr. Rivers.

"Oh, please save me! I don't want to go back to him. I can't, Sir, you know." And then she appealed despairingly to her mistress. "Did you hear what he said? That woman beats the children; I knew she would; and yet I can't go back. Miss Thelluson, you don't think I ought to go back?"

"Certainly not," said Hannah; and then her brother-in-law first noticed her presence.

"Pray go away," he whispered; "this is not a place for you. See, the man is drunk."

"I do not mind," she answered. "Just look at poor Grace. We must save her from him."

For Jem had again caught the young woman in his ​arms, where she lay half fainting, not resisting at all, evidently frightened to death.

"This can not be endured," said Mr. Rivers, angrily. "Dixon, be off with you! Webb, Jacob, take him between you and see him clear out of the gate."

Butler and footman advanced, but their task was not easy. Dixon was a wiry little fellow, sharp as a ferret, even in his cups. He wriggled out of the men's grasp immediately, and tried again to snatch at the kitchen knife.

"Hands off, mates; I'll go fast enough. It isn't much a fellow gets in this house. Grace wouldn't even give me a drop o' beer. I'll be off, Mr. Rivers; but I'll not stir a step without my wife—that's the young woman there. I married her in church, same as I did t'other woman, and I like her the best o' the two; so do the little ones. I promised them I'd fetch her back. You'll come, Grace, won't you? and I'll be so kind to you."

"Oh, Jem, Jem!" sobbed poor Grace, melted by the coaxing tone; but still she tried to get away, and cried imploringly to her master to release her from Dixon's hold. Mr. Rivers grew angry.

"Let the woman go, I say. You have not the smallest claim upon her, no more than she upon you. If she chooses to stay here she shall. Begone, before I set the police on you!"

"Do it if you dare, Sir," said Dixon, setting his back against the door. "I'll not stir a step without Grace; she's a pretty girl, and a nice girl, and I married her in church, too, I found a parson to do it, though you wouldn't."

"Your marriage is worth nothing; I told you so at the time. It was against the law, and the law does not recognize it. She is not your wife, and so, very rightly, she refuses to go back to you; and I, as magistrate, will protect her in this refusal. Let her go." And Mr. Rivers, following words by action, again shook off the fellow's grasp, and let the young woman free. "Now, Grace, get away up stairs, and let us put an end to this nonsense."

​For, in spite of their respect for their master, the other servants seemed rather amused than not at this spectacle of a gentleman arguing with a drunken man for the possession of his wife; or, perhaps, some of them, having as confused notions of the marriage laws as James Dixon, had thought Jem was rather hardly used, and ought to get Grace if he wanted. John, the butler, an old servant, even ventured to hint this, and that it was a pity to meddle between man and wife.

"Did I not say plainly that she is not his wife?" cried Mr. Rivers, in much displeasure. "A man can not marry his wife's sister. I am master here, and out of my house she shall not stir against her will. Grace, go up stairs immediately with Miss Thelluson."

Then Dixon's lingering civility and respect for the clergy quite left him. He squared up at Mr. Rivers in drunken rage.

"You're a nice parson, you are! Mind your own business, and I'll mind mine. Your own hands bean't so very clean, I reckon. Some folk 'ud say mine were the cleanest o' the two."

"What do you mean, you scoundrel? Speak out, or I'll take you by the neck and shake you like a rat!"

For Mr. Rivers was a young man, and his passions were up; and Dixon looked so very like a rat, with his glittering, hungry eyes, and a creeping way he had till he showed his teeth and sprung upon you. Hannah wondered how on earth poor, pretty Grace could ever have been persuaded to marry him. But no doubt it was like so many marriages, the mere result of circumstances, and for the sake of the children. "If ever I could marry that man, it would be for the sake of his children," said once a very good woman; and though men are probably too vain to believe it, many another good woman may have felt the same.

"What do I mean, Sir?" said Dixon, with a laugh; "oh, you knows well enough what I mean, and so do your servants there, and so does all Easterham. There bean't much ​to choose betwixt you and me, Mr. Rivers, if all tales be true."

"What tales?" said Bernard, slowly, turning white, though he still held his ground, and deliberately faced the man. For all his servants were facing him, and on more than one countenance was a horrid kind of smile, the smile with which, in these modern days, when the old feudal reverence seems so mournfully wearing off, the kitchen often views the iniquities of the parlor. "What tales?"

"Of course it isn't true, Sir—or else it doesn't matter—gentlefolks may do any thing they likes. But people do say, Mr. Rivers, that you and I row in the same boat; only I was honest enough to marry my wife's sister, and you—wasn't. That's all!"

It was enough. Brief as the accusation was put, there was no mistaking it, or Dixon's meaning in it. Either Mr. Rivers had not believed the man's insolence would go so far, or was unaware of the extent to which the scandal had grown; but he stood, for the moment, perfectly paralyzed. He neither looked to one side nor the other—to Hannah, who had scarcely taken it in, or to the servants, who had taken it in only too plainly. Twice he opened his lips to speak, and twice his voice failed. At last he said, in a voice so hollow and so unlike his own that every body started:

"It is a lie! I declare, before God and all now present, that what this man says against me is a foul, damnable lie!"

He uttered the ugly words as strongly and solemnly as he was accustomed to read such out of the Bible in his pulpit at church. They sent a thrill through every listener, and sobered even the drunken man. But Jem soon saw his advantage, and took it.

"Lie or not, Sir, it looks just the same, and folks believe it all the same. When a poor man takes a young woman into his house, and either marries her or wants to, what an awful row you kick up about it! But when a gentleman does it—oh dear! it's quite another thing!"

​Mr. Rivers almost ground his teeth together; but still no words came except the repetition of those four, "It is a lie!"

"Well, if it is, Sir, it looks uncommon queer, anyhow. For a young lady and a young gentleman to live together, and be a-going out and a-coming home together; and when we meets 'em, as I did a bit ago, not exactly a-going straight home, but a-walking and a-whispering together in the dark—'twas them, sure, for the lady had got a red hood on, and she's got it on still."

Hannah put up her hand to her head. Until this moment, confused and bewildered, and full of pity for unfortunate Grace, she had scarcely understood the scandal with regard to herself. Now she did. Plain as light—or, rather, black as darkness—she saw all that she was accused of, all that she had innocently laid herself open to, and from which she must at once defend herself. How?

It was horrible! To stand there and hear her good name taken away before her own servants, and with her brother-in-law close by! She cast a wild appealing look to him, as if he could protect her; but he took no notice—scarcely seemed to see her. Grace only-poor, miserable Grace—stole up to her and caught her hand.

"It is a lie, miss—and Jem knows it is! You musn't mind what he says."

And then another of the women-servants—an under house-maid to whom she had been specially kind—ran across to her, beginning to cry. Oh, the humiliation of those tears!

Somebody must speak. This dreadful scene must be ended.

"Sister Hannah," said Mr. Rivers, at length recovering himself, and speaking in his natural manner, but with grave and pointed respect," will you oblige me by taking Grace up stairs? Webb and Jacob, remove this fellow from my house immediately; or else, as I said, we must fetch the police."

Mr. Rivers had great influence when he chose to exer​cise it, especially with his inferiors. His extraordinarily sweet temper, his tender consideration for other people's feelings, his habit of putting himself in their place—the lowest and most degraded of them, and judging them mercifully, as the purest-hearted always do judge—these things stood him in good stead, both in his household and his parish. Besides, when a mild man once gets thoroughly angry, people know he means it, and are frightened accordingly.

Either Dixon felt some slight remorse, or dreaded the police, for he suffered himself to be conveyed quietly outside, and the gate locked upon him, without making more ado than a few harmless pullings of the garden bell. These at last subsided, and the household became quiet.

Quiet, after such a scene! As if it were possible! Retiring was a mere form. The servants sat up till midnight, gossiping gloriously over the kitchen fire. Hannah heard them where she, too, sat, wide awake, in the dreadful silence and solitude of her own room.

She had gone up stairs with Grace, as bidden; and they had separated, without exchanging a word, at the nursery door. For the first time in her life Hannah went to bed without taking one watchful, comforting look, one kiss of her sleeping darling. She went to bed in a mechanical, stunned way; for though it was still quite early, she never thought of rejoining her brother-in-law. She heard him moving up and down the house for an hour or more, even after that cruel clamor of tongues in the kitchen was silent; but to meet him again that night never struck her as a possibility. What help, what comfort, could he be to her?—he who was joined with her in this infamous slander? Henceforth, instead of coming to him for protection, she must avoid him as she would the plague.

"Oh, what have I done, and how have I erred, that all this misery should fall upon me?" moaned poor Hannah, as bit by bit she realized her position—the misinterpretations that might be put upon her daily conduct, even as upon to-night's walk across the hill. Perhaps what Dixon ​said was true—that all Easterham was watching her and speaking evil of her? Was this the meaning of Lady Rivers's dark hints—of the eager desire to get her married to Mr. Morecamb—of the falling off of late in social civilities—a certain polite coldness in houses where her visits used to be welcomed—a gradual cessation of lady visitors at the House on the Hill? As all these facts came back upon her mind, fitting into one another, as unpleasant facts do, when one once fancies one has got the key to them, Hannah groaned aloud, feeling as if she could lay her down and die. It had all come so suddenly. She had gone on her way in such happy unsuspiciousness. Yes! now she recognized, with mingled wonder and—was it terror also?—how very happy she had been. There seemed nothing left for her but to lay her down and die.

Every body knows the story of the servant lamenting his master's dying innocent, to whom the master said, "Would you have me die guilty?" Nevertheless, it is hard to die, even when innocent. No bitterer hour ever came to Hannah, or was likely to come, than that first hour after a bad man's wicked words had forced from Mr. Rivers the declaration—which in itself, and in his ever feeling it incumbent upon himself to make it, was disgrace enough—"It is a lie!"

Of course it was; and any friend who really knew them both would be sure of that. But what of the world at large—the careless world, that judges from hearsay—the evil world, which is always so quick to discover, so ready to gloat over any thing wrong? And there must be something wrong, some false position, some oversight in conduct, some unfortunate concatenation of circumstances, to make such a lie possible.

"Be thou chaste as ice, pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny." Most true; but the calumny is rarely altogether baseless—some careless, passing hand may have smutched the snow, or the ice have let itself be carried too near the fire. Hannah remembered now, wondering she could have forgotten it so long, Lady Dunsmore's warn​ing: "He is not your brother; it is only a social fiction that makes him so." And if Bernard Rivers and she were not brother and sister, if there was no tie of blood between them, nothing that, if he had not been Rosa's husband first, would have prevented their marrying—why, then, she ought not to have gone and lived with him. The chain of argument seemed so plain, that in thinking it out Hannah suddenly begun to tremble—nay, she actually shuddered; but, strange contradiction! it was not altogether a shudder of pain.

Fictions, social and otherwise, may have their day, when both the simple and the cunning accept them. But it is not a day which lasts forever. By-and-by they tumble down like all other shams; and the poor heart who had dwelt in them is cast out, bare and shelterless, to face the bitter truth as best it may.

Hannah's was the most innocent heart possible—strangely so for a woman who had lived, not ignorantly, in the world for thirty years. Whatever mistake she had fallen into—under whatever delusion she had wrapped herself—it was all done as unknowingly, as foolishly, as if she had been a seven-years-old child. But that did not hinder her from suffering like a woman—a woman who, after a long dream of peace, wakes up to find she has been sleeping on the edge of a precipice.

That pleasant fiction which had been torn down by the rough hands of James Dixon, opened her eyes to its corresponding truth, that nature herself sets bounds to the association of men and women—certainly of young men and young women—and that, save under very exceptional circumstances, all pseudo-relationships are a mistake. Two people, who are neither akin by blood nor bound in wedlock, can seldom, almost never, live together in close and affectionate friendship without this friendship growing to be something less or something more. The thing is abnormal, and against nature; and Nature avenges herself by asserting her rights and exacting her punishments.

The law says to people in such positions—to brothers ​and sisters in law especially—"you shall not marry." But it can not say, "You shall not love." It can not prevent the gradual growth of that fond, intimate affection which is the surest basis of married happiness. Suppose—Hannah put the question to herself with frightened conscience—suppose, instead of that tender friendship which undoubtedly existed between them, she and Bernard had really fallen in love with one another?

That he was very fond of her, in a sort of way, she never doubted. That she was fond of him—yes, that also was true. She could not help it. He was so good; he made her so happy. Many a man is deeply attached to a woman—wife or sister—whom he yet entirely fails in making happy. He thinks too much of himself, too little of her. But Bernard was a different kind of man. That sweet sunshininess of nature, that generous self-forgetfulness, that constant protecting tenderness—more demonstrative in deeds than words—qualities so rare in men, and so precious when found, were his to perfection. He was not brilliantly clever; and he had many little faults; rashnesses, bursts of wrath, sudden, childish, fantastic humors, followed by pathetic contrition; but he was intensely lovable. Hannah had told him truly when she said—oh, how hot she grew when she recalled it!—"that it was a blessing to live with him," for every body whom he lived with he contrived to make happy.

"Oh, we have been so happy together," Rosa had sighed, almost with her last breath. And Rosa's sister, in the bitter pang which seemed like death—for it must surely result in a parting as complete—could have said the same.

Yes, of course she must go away. There seemed to her at first no other alternatiye. She must quit the House on the Hill the very next day. This not alone for her own sake. It was, as Bernard had once said, truly a house on a hill, exposed to every comment, a beacon and example to every eye. No cloud of suspicion must be suffered to rest upon it—not for a day, an hour. She would run away at once.

​And yet, was that the act of innocence—did it look like innocence? Was it not much more like the impulse of cowardly guilt? And if she did run, could she take Rosie with her?

Then poor Hannah at once fell prone, crushed by a weight of misery greater than she could bear. To go away and leave her child behind! All Easterham might be howling at her, but she could never do that. Life without Rosie—the old, blank, sunless, childless life—she could not endure it. It would kill her at once. Better a thousand times stay on here, strong in her innocence, and let Easterham do and say its worst. For she had done no wrong, and, come what would, she had been happy. This sense of happiness, never stronger than a few hours ago, when she and Bernard were taking together that innocent-guilty walk, and finding out more than ever the deep, true harmony of soul, which, in spite of their great differences of character, existed between them, seemed to wrap her up, close and warm, her only shelter against the bitter outside blast.

What would her brother-in-law say? She could not act for herself alone; the position was as cruel for him as for her. She must think of him too, and wait for his opinion, whatever it might be. And then she became conscious how completely she had learned to look to Bernard's opinion, to lean upon his judgment, to consult his tastes, to make him, in short, for these many months, what no man who is neither her relative nor her lover ought to be to any woman—the one primary object of her life.

Utterly bewildered, half frightened, and unable to come to the slightest conclusion, Hannah, after lying awake half the night, fell heavily asleep, nor wakened till the sound of little feet in her room, and the shrill, joyous cry—as sweet as the song of the lark springing up into the morning air over a clover-field—"Tannie, Tannie! Wake up, Tannie!" dispersed in a moment all the cloudy despairs of the night.

​Tennyson knew human nature well when he made the rejected lover say,

That is, they press out every image unholy, or painful, or despairing. Such can not long exist in any heart that is filled with a child. Hannah had sometimes read in novels of women who were mothers falling in love, and with other men than their own husbands; kissing their babies in their innocent cradles, and then flying from lawful homes to homes unlawful. All these stories seemed to her then very dreadful, very tragical, but not quite impossible. Now, since she had had Rosie, they almost did seem impossible. How a woman once blessed with a child could ever think of any man alive she could not comprehend.

Hannah had not held her little niece beside her for five minutes—feasting her eyes on the loving, merry face, and playing all the funny little games which Rosie and Tannie were so grand at when together—before all the agony of last night became as unreal as last night's dreams. This was the real thing—the young life intrusted to her care—the young soul growing up under the shelter of her love. She rose and dressed for breakfast, feeling that with the child in her arms she could face the whole world.

Ay, her brother-in-law included; though this was a hard thing. She would not have been a woman not to have found it hard. And if he decided that she must stay—that, strong in their innocence, they must treat Dixon's malicious insolence as mere insolence, no more, and make no change whatever in their way of life—still, how doubly difficult that life would be! To meet day after day at table and fireside; to endure, not in cheerful ignorance, but painful consciousness, the stare of all suspicious eyes, especially of their own household, who had heard them so wickedly accused, and seen—they must have seen!—how deep the wound had gone. It would be dreadful—almost unbearable.

And then-with regard to their two selves!

​Bernard was—Hannah knew it, felt it—one of the purest-hearted of men. Living in the house with him was like living with a woman; nay, not all women had his delicacy of feeling. Frank and familiar as his manner was—or had been till lately—he never was free with her—never caressed her; nothing but the ordinary shake of the hand had ever passed between them, even though he was her brother-in-law. Hannah liked this reserve; she was not used to kissing; as people in large families are, as the Moat House girls were; it had rather surprised her to see the way they all hung about young Mr. Melville. But, even though in their daily conduct to one another, private and public, she and Bernard could never be impeached, still the horrible possibility of being watched—watched and suspected—and that both knew it was so, was enough to make the relations between them so painful, that she hardly knew how she should bear it.

Even this morning her foot lingered on the stair, and that bright breakfast-room, with its pleasant morning greeting, seemed a sort of purgatory that she would have escaped if she could.

She did escape it, for it was empty of every body but Webb, the butler, whom she saw hovering about, near, suspiciously near, to an open note, or rather a scrap of paper, left on the table, open—was it intentionally open?—for any body's perusal.

"Master has just gone off to the railway in the dog-cart, Miss Thelluson. He left me this bit of paper, with an apology to you, saying he was in a great hurry, and hadn't time to write more, or he would miss the London train."

"He has gone to London?" said Hannah, with a great sense of relief, and yet of pain.

"Yes, miss, I think so; but the note says—"

Then Webb had gratified his curiosity by reading the paper.

Any body might have read it, certainly. It might have been printed in the Times newspaper, or declaimed by the Easterham town-crier for the benefit of the small public at ​the market-place. And yet Hannah's eyes read it eagerly, and her heart beat as she did so in a way that no sight of Bernard's familiar handwriting had ever made it beat before.

"Dear Sister Hannah,—I am away to town to visit a sick friend, and am obliged to start very early. I hope to be back by Sunday, but do not expect me till you see me. Give papa's love to his little Rosie, and believe me,

"Your affectionate brother,

"Bernard Rivers.

"Perhaps you will kindly call at the Moat House to-day, and tell them I am gone."