Hannah/Chapter 9

Hannah's waking up in the morning after her brother-in-law's return was one of the most painful sensations she had ever known, the more so as it was so unusual. To her healthy temperament the morning hour was generally the best of the day. Not Rosie herself, who always woke up as lively as a young linnet in a thorn-bush, enjoyed it more than Aunt Hannah did. But now things seemed changed. She had gone to bed at once, and fallen asleep immediately; for there are times when the brain, worn out by long tension, collapses the instant we lie down—Nature forcing upon it the temporary stupefaction which is its only preservative.

Now even she could not shake off weariness, nor rise as usual to look at one of those glorious winter sunrises which only active people see. She dreaded the dawn; she shrank from the sun, for he brought her her daily duties; and how she should ever fulfill them as heretofore she could not tell.

First, how should she again meet Mr. Rivers? What position should she hold toward him? Had her sister lived, he would have been to her nothing at all: regarded with the sacred indifference with which every pure-minded woman regards every other woman's husband. Now, what was he? Not her brother—except by a legal fiction, which he had himself recognized as a fiction. Not her lover; and yet when she recalled his looks and tones, and a certain indescribable agitation which had been upon him all the evening, some feminine instinct told her that, under other circumstances, he might have become her lover. Her husband he could never be; and yet she had to go on living with him in an anomalous relationship which was a compound of all these three ties, with the dif​ficulties of all and the comfort of none. Her friend he was; that bond seemed clear and plain; but then is it customary for a lady to go and keep the house of a male "friend," be he ever so tried and trusted? Society, to say nothing of her own feelings, would never allow it; and for once society is in the right.

Hannah felt it so—felt that, stripping off the imaginary brother-and-sister bond, Bernard and she were exactly in the position of a lady and gentleman living together in those Platonic relations which are possible certainly, but which the wicked world never believes to be possible, and which Nature herself rejects as being out of the ordinary course of things, and therefore very unadvisable. A life difficult enough to carry on even if the parties were calmly indifferent to one another; but what if they were not indifferent? Though he had never "made love" to her in the smallest degree, never caressed her even in the harmless salutations which brothers and sisters in law so commonly indulge in, still Hannah must have been dull indeed not to have long since found out that in some way or other Bernard was very fond of her; and a young man is not usually "very fond" of a woman not his own born sister without sooner or later wishing to monopolize her—to have her all to himself: in plain terms, to marry her. And though women have much less of this exclusive feeling—though many a woman will go on innocently adoring a man for years without the slightest wish of personal appropriation—still, when somebody else appropriates him—marries him, in short—and the relations are changed, and she drops into a common friend, or less than a friend, then even the noblest and most unselfish woman living will feel for a time a slight pang, a blank in her life, a soreness at her heart. It is Nature's revenge upon all shams, however innocent those shams may be.

And poor Hannah was reaping Nature's revenge now. Whether he did or did not love her in a brotherly way, she was cruelly conscious that to go on living with her brother-in-law as heretofore would be a very severe trial. ​Should she fly from it? The way was open. She could write to Lady Dunsmore, who she knew was again in search of a governess, and would gladly welcome her back. Two days, or one day even, and she might resume her old life, her old duties, and forget this year and a half at Easterham as if it had never been.

For a moment the temptation was strong. She felt hunted down, like the Israelites, with the Egyptians behind and the Red Sea before—the dreadful, surging sea of the future, over which there seemed no pathway, no possible way of crossing it, to any safe shore. If she could but escape, with her reputation clear, out of her brother-in-law's house!—that House on the Hill which had been so pleasant, which she had tried to make a sort of home-beacon to all the parish; and now all the parish leveled at it their cruel stares, their malignant comments, for it was exposed to all. For Bernard's sake, as well as her own, she ought to save him from this, free him from her blighting presence, and go.

As she lay thinking, turning over in her mind how best to accomplish this—when she should write and what she should say to Lady Dunsmore—there came the usual little knock at her door, the usual sound of tiny bare feet trotting over the carpet, and the burst of joyous child-laughter at her bedside. And when she hardly noticed it, for it pierced her like a sword, there came a loud wail. "Tannie, take her! Take Rosie in Tannie's arms." Poor Tannie sprang up, and felt that all her well-woven plans were torn down like spider webs. To go away and leave her child! The thing was impossible.

Our lives, like the year, go through a succession of seasons, which may come early or late, but come in regular order. We do not find fruit in March or primroses in August. Thus, though Hannah's heart now, strangely stirred as it was, had a primrose breath of spring quivering through it, it was not exactly the heart of a girl. She was a woman of thirty, and though she loved—alas, she knew it now only too well!—she did not love romantically, absorbingly. ​Besides, coexistent with this love had come to her that other sentiment, usually of much later growth—the maternal instinct—which in her was a passion too. Bernard's one rival, and no small one, was his own little child.

As Hannah pressed Rosie to her bosom all her vague terrors, her equally dreadful delights, faded away into quiet realities, and by the time she had had the child with her for an hour she felt quite herself again, and was able to carry Rosie down to the Sunday breakfast-table, where the small woman had lately begun to appear, conducting herself like a little princess.

Oh, what a blessing she was! the pretty little maid! How her funny ways, her wonderful attempts at English, and her irresistible bursts of laughter smoothed over difficulties untold, and helped them through that painful hour—those two, who stood to the little one like father and mother, and yet to one another were nothing, and never could be. This was the strange anomaly of their relationship, that while Rosie was her own flesh and blood, closer to her than any child not her very own could possibly be, with Rosie's father there was no tie of blood at all.

Then usual Sunday morning routine went on—prayers, breakfast, after breakfast play with Rosie—yet neither Hannah nor Bernard ventured once to look at each other, lest they should betray the piteous secret which—whether or not hers did—the deadly paleness of Bernard's features and his nervous, excited manner only too much revealed.

"I scarcely slept an hour," he said. "I had to sit up and write my sermon. And I found so much to do among my papers. I must never leave home again."

She was silent.

Then he asked her if she were going to church—an idle question for one who never missed church in any weather. Perhaps he did not want her to go? And she would have been angry but for the strange compassion she always had for him—the feeling that if any trouble came to him she should always like to bear it herself. And now he had more to bear than she. He must go up into his pulpit ​and preach, conscious that all eyes were watching him, all tongues gossiping concerning him. For in Easterham nothing was hid; rich and poor alike chattered of their neighbors' affairs; and James Dixon's visit to the House on the Hill, in all its particulars, was likely to be as fully known as Mr. Morecamb's interview with Lady Rivers, and its purport as regarded Hannah herself.

The Moat House, too, must be faced, for at breakfast-time a note had come asking them to dine there, though it was Sunday, as young Mrs. Melville had come over for the day, and particularly wished to see Miss Thelluson.

"You will go?" Bernard had said, passing the note over to her. Her first instinct had been a decided "no;" till, looking down on the bright little face beside her, Aunt Hannah felt that, at whatever cost, she must boldly show her own—at church, at the Moat House, anywhere and everywhere. There were just two courses open to her—to succumb to the lie, or to meet it and trample it down. So, again taking Rosie in her arms, she looked up fearlessly at Rosie's father.

"Yes, since Lady Rivers asks me, I will certainly go."

It was Hannah's custom to get ready for church quite early, that she might walk with Bernard thither: he disliked walking alone. Never was there a man who clung more affectionately to companionship, or to whom it was more necessary. But this Sunday he never summoned her, so she did not come. Indeed, she had determined not. She watched him start off alone, and then followed, going a longer way round, so that she only reached her pew when he reached his reading-desk. Then the sad tone of his voice as he read, evidently with an effort, the sentence, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves," etc., went to her heart.

Were they sinners? Was it a crime for her to look now at her dead sister's husband, her living Rosie's father, and think that his was one of the sweetest, noblest faces she had ever seen? that had she met him by chance, and he had cared for her, she could have tended him like a moth​er, served him like a slave; nay, have forgotten for his sake that sacred dream of so many years, the lost love of her girlhood, and become an ordinary human wife and mother—Rosie's mother? And it would all have seemed so right and natural, and they three would have been so happy. Could it be a sin now? Could any possible interpretation, secular or religious, construe it into a sin?

Poor Hannah! Even in God's house these thoughts pursued her; for, as before said, her only law of conduct was how things were, not in the sight of man, but of God. That love, which was either a righteous affection or a deadly sin, could she once assure herself that He did not forbid it, little she cared whether man forbade it or not; nor, if it were holy, whether it were a happy love or not.

Thus, during her solitary walk home, and a long, solitary afternoon that she spent with Rosie—earning that wonderful rest of mind and fatigue of body which the companionship of a child always brings—her thoughts grew clearer. Rosa's very spirit, which now and then looked strangely out of her daughter's eyes, seemed to say to her that the dead view all things with larger vision than ours; that in their passing away they have left all small jealousies behind them, and remember only the good of their beloved—not themselves at all.

"Oh, Rosa, Rosa!" Hannah thought to herself, "surely you are not angry with me, not even now? I am not stepping into your place and stealing away your joys! I have only tried to fulfill your duties toward this little one and toward him. You know how helpless he is alone! And his pretty lamb—I have to take care of them both. Rosie, my darling, who could ever love you like Tannie? Yet they say it is all unnatural and wrong: that any strange woman would be a better mother to you than I! But that is false, altogether false. When your own mother comes to look at you, as she may do every night—I would, if I were a happy ghost and God would let me—Rosie, look at her and tell her so!"

These wild and wandering thoughts, the last of which ​had been said out loud, must have brought a corresponding expression to Hannah's face, for the child caught it, and fixing on her aunt that deep, wise, almost supernatural gaze she sometimes had, answered, deliberately, "Yes." For "No"—given with a sweet decisiveness, as if she already knew her own mind, the baby!—and a gentle, satisfied "Yes," were among the earliest accomplishments of that two-year-old darling.

But when Rosie was put to bed, and left wide awake in her little crib, fearless of darkness or any thing under Tannie's "lots of tisses"—left to curl round and fall asleep in the blessed peace of infancy, innocent of all earthly cares-then this world's bitterness darkened down again upon poor Aunt Hannah. She went to dress for the Moat House dinner, and prepare to join the family circle, where she, always an uncomfortable excrescence, was now regarded— How and in what light did they regard her? Hannah could not tell; she was going there in order to find out.

Of one thing she was sure; the invitation was not given out of pure kindness. Kindness was not the habit of the Rivers family; they generally had a purpose in all they did. More than once lately Lady Rivers had told her, in as plain terms as so polite a person could, that she—Hannah—stood in the way of her brother-in-law's marriage; that his family wished him married, and she ought to aid them in every possible way toward that desirable end. Could there be a plan formed for lecturing her on this point?

But no. Bernard would never have allowed it. And if he had, Hannah would not have turned back; she had always faced her fate, this solitary woman; and as she now walked alone in the early winter darkness through Easterham village, she braced up her courage and faced it still.

Externally there seemed nothing to face; only a bright, pleasant drawing-room, and a circle of charming, well-dressed women, whose conversation suddenly paused at ​her entrance, as if they had been talking her over, feminine fashion, which no doubt they had. Hannah was sure of it. She knew the way they used to talk over other people—the Melville family above all, till Adeline belonged to it—with that sweet acerbity and smooth maliciousness which only women understand. A man's weapons smite keen, but they generally smite straight forward. Women only give the underhand thrusts, of which Hannah that night had not a few.

"What a long, dark walk, Miss Thelluson; only you never mind dark walks. Were you really quite alone? And what has become of Bernard? for you generally know all his proceedings. We thought him looking so well—so much the better for going from home. But what can he have done with himself since church-time? Are you quite sure that—"

The question was stopped by Bernard's entrance-ten minutes after the dinner-hour, of which Sir Austin bitterly complained to his son; and then offered his arm to Hannah, who stood, silent and painfully conscious, under the battery of four pairs of feminine family eyes.

"I have been home to fetch Miss Thelluson," said Bernard.—"Hannah, you should not have walked here alone."

And he would have taken a seat beside her, but Lady Rivers signed for Bertha to occupy it. Fenced in by a sister on each side, he had not a chance of a word with Hannah all dinner-time.

It was the same thing afterward. Miss Thelluson would have been amused, if she had not been a little vexed and annoyed, to see herself thus protected, like an heiress in her teens, from every approach of the obnoxious party. Mother and daughters mounted guard successively, keeping her always engaged in conversation, and subjecting Bernard to a sort of affectionate imprisonment, whence, once or twice, he vainly tried to escape. She saw it, for somehow, without intending it, she always saw him everywhere, and was conscious that he saw her, and listened to ⟨every⟩ word she was saying. Yet she made no effort to ​get near him, not even when she noticed him surreptitiously take out his watch and look at it wearily, as if entreating, "Do let us go home." Every simple word and act of a month ago had a meaning, a dreadful meaning, now.

Hannah was not exactly a proud woman, but she had a quiet dignity of her own, and it was sorely tried this night. Twenty times she would have started up from the smooth, polite circle, feeling that she could support it no longer, save for Bernard's sad, appealing face and his never-ending endurance. But then they loved him in their own way, and they were his "people," and he bore from them what he would never have borne from strangers. So must she.

So she took refuge beside Adeline's sofa. Young Mrs. Melville had never been well since her marriage; they said the low situation of Melville Grange did not agree with her. And ill health being quite at a discount among the Rivers girls, who were as strong as elephants, Adeline lay rather neglected, watching her husband laughing and talking with her sisters—flirting with them, people might have said, almost as much as before he was married; only, being a brother now, of course it did not matter. Nevertheless, there was at times a slight contraction of the young wife's brow, as if she did not altogether like it. But she laughed it off at once.

"Herbert is so merry, and so fond of coming here. Our girls amuse him much more than his own sisters, he says. Just listen how they are all laughing together now."

"It is good to laugh," said Hannah, quietly.

"Oh yes; I am glad they enjoy themselves," returned Adeline, and changed the conversation: but through it all the pale, vexed face, the anxious eyes, heavy with an unspoken anger, an annoyance that could not be complained of, struck Hannah with pity. Here, she thought, was a false position too.

At nine the butler came in, announcing, formally, "Miss Thelluson's servant."

​"It is Grace. I told her to call for me on her way from chapel. I wished to go home early."

"And without Bernard? I understand. Very right; very nice," whispered Lady Rivers, in a tone of such patronizing approval that Hannah repented herself of having thus planned, and was half inclined to call Mr. Rivers out of the dining-room and tell him she was going. But she did not. She only rose and bade them all good-night. Not one rough word had broken the smooth surface of polite conversation; yet she was fully aware that though, with that convenient plastering over of sore or ugly places peculiar to the Rivers family, they said nothing, they all knew well, and knew that she knew they knew, why she was going, and the instant her back was turned would talk her over to their hearts' content. Yet she walked out of the room slowly, calmly, with that dignified, ladylike presence she had—almost better than beauty. Yes, even though she saw Lady Rivers rise to accompany her up stairs—a piece of condescension so great that there was surely some purpose in it. Lady Rivers seldom took trouble without a purpose.

Yet for a moment she hesitated, sat pulling her rings off and on, and eying with her critical, woman-of-the-world gaze this other woman, who fulfilled the apostolic law of being in the world, not of it. The long strain of the evening had worn Hannah out, and she was in doubt whether Bernard would like her stealing off thus—whether, since Lady Rivers thought it "wise," it really was not most unwise, thus to condense the cloudy scandal into shape by paying it the respect of acceptance. As she tied her bonnet her hands trembled a little.

"Are you ready? Then, Miss Thelluson, may I say just one word before you go? As a married lady and the mother of a family, speaking to a young—no, not exactly a young, but an unmarried—person, may I ask is it true what I hear, that you have had a definite offer of marriage from Mr. Morecamb?"

Hannah started indignantly, and then composed herself. ​"I do not quite see that the matter concerns any one but myself and Mr. Morecamb. But since you have heard this, I conclude he has told you. Yes, it is true."

"And what answer did you give? You may as well tell me, for he will; he is coming here to-morrow."

Hannah waited a moment. "I have given the only answer I could give—No."

Lady Rivers sprang from her chair. "Good Heavens! Are you mad? My dear Miss Thelluson, I beg your pardon; but really—to refuse such an offer! If Mr. Morecamb had come and asked me for one of my own daughters, I would at least have considered the matter. To one in your position, and under present circumstances—"

"Excuse me, Lady Rivers; but I am myself the best judge of my own position and circumstances."

"So gentlemanly of him, too—so honorable—when he knew, as every body knows, the way you are being talked about!"

"He did know, then—" and Hannah checked herself. "Will you oblige me by telling me what he knew? How am I being talked about?" And she turned her face, white as that of a traveler who walks up to face a supposed ghost by a church-yard wall; shuddering, but still facing it. It may be only a dead tree after all.

"I am very sorry," said Lady Rivers; and no doubt she was, for she disliked saying unpleasant things, except in a covert way. "It is a most awkward matter to speak about, and I have kept it from the girls as long as possible; but people say in Easterham that it was not for nothing you took part with that unfortunate Grace—Dixon I can't call her, as she has no right to the name. In fact, I have heard it suggested plainly enough that the reason of Bernard's not marrying is because, were it not for the law, he would like to marry you."

Hannah stood silent. All the blood in her heart seemed to stand still too.

"We do not believe it, of course. Neither does Mr. ​Morecamb. Still it is generally believed at Easterham—and worse things, too."

"What worse things? Tell me. I insist upon hearing."

Hannah spoke, as she had listened, with a desperate calmness; for she felt that at all costs she must get to the bottom of the scandal—must know exactly how much she had to fight against, and whom.

"Miss Thelluson, you are the very oddest person I ever knew. Well, they say that—that— Excuse me, but I really don't know how to tell you."

"Then I will tell you; for I heard James Dixon say it, and before my own servants—as, of course, you know; every body knows every thing in Easterham. They say, these wicked neighbors, that I, a woman not young, not pretty, not attractive in any way, with her dead sister's memory yet fresh in her heart, and her dead sister's child in her arms, am living in unlawful relations with that sister's husband. Lady Rivers, I do not wonder that you shrink from repeating such an atrocious lie."

The other was a little confounded. She had been so very patronizing, so condescendingly kind in her manner, to this poor Miss Thelluson, who now stood and looked at her face to face, as much a lady as herself, and ten times more of a woman. Nay, the fire in the gray eyes, the dignity of the figure, made Hannah for the moment even a handsome woman, handsome enough to be admired by many a man.

"Pray don't talk of lies, Miss Thelluson. We object to such an ugly word out of the school-room—where, however, your experience must chiefly have lain. This is what made me resolve to speak to you. You can not be expected to know the world, nor how important it is for Bernard, as a gentleman and a clergyman, that this gossip should be stopped at once. Of course I only refer to the nonsense about his wishing to marry you. For the rest, his own character—the character of the family—is enough denial. Still, the thing is unpleasant, very unpleasant, and I don't wonder that Bernard feels it acutely."

​Hannah started. "Does he? Did he tell you so?"

"Not exactly; he is a very reserved person, as we all know; but he looks thoroughly wretched. We, his family, see that, though you, a stranger, may not. The fact is, he has placed himself, quite against our advice, in a most difficult and painful position, and does not know how to get out of it. You ought to help him, as, most providentially, you have now the means of doing."

Hannah looked up. She was being pricked to death with needles; but still she looked firmly in the face of her adversary, and asked, "How?"

"Do you not see, my dear Miss Thelluson, that every bit of gossip and scandal would necessarily die out if you married Mr. Morecamb?"

Hannah was but human. For a moment the thought of escape—of flying out of this maze of misery into a quiet home, where a good man's love would at least be hers—presented itself to her mind, tempting her, as many another woman has been tempted, into marriage without love. But immediately her honest soul recoiled.

"Lady Rivers, I would do a great deal for my brother-in-law, who has been very kind to me; but not even for his sake—since you put it so—can I marry Mr. Morecamb. And now"—turning round with sudden heat—"since you have said all you wanted to say, and I have answered it, will you let me go home?"

Home! As she uttered the word, ending thus the conversation as quietly, to all appearance, as it had begun—though she knew it had been all a planned attack, and that the ladies down stairs were all waiting eagerly to hear the result of it—as she spoke of home, Hannah felt what a farce it was. Had it been a real brother's home, there at least was external protection. So likewise was there in that other home, which, when she had saved enough, she had one day meant to have—some tiny cottage, where by her own conduct a single woman can always protect herself, keep up her own dignity, and carry out, if ever so humbly, her own independent life. Now this was lost, ​and the other not gained. As she walked on toward the House on the Hill, that cruel "home" where she and Bernard must live henceforward, as if in a house of glass, exposed to every malicious eye, Hannah felt that somehow or other she had made a terrible mistake. Almost as great a one as that of the poor girl who walked silently by her side, asking no questions—Grace never did ask any—but simply following her mistress with tender, observant, unceasing care.

"Don't let us go through the village," whispered she. "I'll take you round a nearer way, where there are not half so many folk about."

"Very well, Grace; only let us get home quickly. You are not afraid of meeting any body?"

For Jem Dixon was still at Easterham, she knew, though nothing had been seen of him since that night.

"No, no," sighed Grace; "nobody will trouble me. The master frightened him, I think. My sister told me the master did really speak to the police about him, in case he should trouble us while he was away. Look, Miss Thelluson, there he is."

Not Jem Dixon, but Mr. Rivers; yet Hannah instinctively shrank back under the shadow of a high wall, and let him pass her by. She made no explanation to her servant for this; what could she say? And Grace seemed to. guess it all without her telling.

It was a bitter humiliation, to say nothing of the pain. As she bade Grace keep close to her, while they hurried along by narrow alleys and cross-cuts, the thought of that happy walk home under the stars, scarcely a fortnight ago, came back to Hannah's mind. Alas! such could never be again. Their halcyon days were done. In her imaginary wickedness, her sinless shame, she almost felt as if she could understand the agony of a real sin—of a woman who loves some other woman's husband, or some man besides her own husband—any of those dreadful stories which she had heard of afar off, but had never seemed to realize. Once no power of will could put her in the place of these ​miserable sinners; now, perhaps, she was as miserable a sinner as any one of them all.

When reaching the gate she saw Mr. Rivers standing there waiting. She drew back as if it were really so—as if it were a sin for him to be watching for her, as he evidently was, with the kindly tenderness of old.

"Hannah, how could you think of starting off alone? You make me miserable by such vagaries."

He spoke angrily—that fond anger which betrays so much; and when he found he had betrayed it to more than herself, he too started.

"I did not know Grace was with you. That alters the case a little. Grace, take Miss Thelluson's wet cloak off, and tell the servants to come at once to prayers."

He was wise and kind. Hannah recognized that, in spite of the bitter feeling that it should be necessary for him to be wise and kind. She came into his study after all the servants were assembled there; and as she knelt near him, listening to the short service customary on Sunday nights, her spirit grew calmer. No one could hear Bernard Rivers, either in his pulpit, as that morning, or among his little household congregation, as now, without an instinctive certainty that he was one of the "pure in heart," who are forever "blessed."

The servants gone, he and she stood by the fire alone. There was a strange look upon both their faces, as if of a storm past or a storm brooding. Since this time last night, when, after her sore confession was wrung from her, Hannah had tottered away out of the room, she and her brother-in-law had never been one minute alone together, nor had exchanged any but the briefest and most commonplace words. They did not now. They just stood one on either side the fire—so near, yet so apart.

A couple that any outside observer would have judged well suited. Both in the prime of life; yet, though he was a little the younger, he did not seem so, more especially of late, since he had grown so worn and anxious-looking. Both pleasant to behold, though he had more of actual phys​ical beauty than she; but Hannah had a spiritual charm about her such as few handsome women possess. And both were at that season of life when, though boy and girl fancies are over, the calm, deep love of mature years is at its meridian, and a passion conceived then usually lasts for life. And these two, with every compulsion to love, from within and without, pressing hard upon them—respect, tenderness, habit, familiarity—with no law, natural or divine, forbidding that love, in case it should arise between them, had to stand there, man and woman, brother and sister, so called, and ignore and suppress it all.

That there was something to be suppressed showed plainly enough. In neither was the free-hearted unconsciousness which, when an accusation is wholly untrue, laughs at it, and passes it by. Neither looked toward the other; they stood both gazing wistfully into the fire until the silence became intolerable. Then Hannah, but without extending her hand as usual, bade him "Good-night."

"Good-night? Why so?"

"I am going up stairs to look at Rosie."

"I believe if the world were coming to an end in half an hour, you would still be 'going up stairs to look at Rosie.'"

That excessive irritability which always came when he was mentally disturbed, and had been heavy upon him in the early time of his sorrow, seemed revived again. He could not help it; and then he was so mournfully contrite for it.

"Oh, forgive me, Hannah! I am growing a perfect bear to you. Come down stairs again and talk to me. For we must speak out. We can not go on like this; it will drive me wild. We must come to some conclusion or other. Make haste back, and we will speak together, just as friends, and decide what it shall be."

Alas! what could it be? Every side she looked, Hannah saw no path out of the maze. Not even when, seeing that Grace sat reading her Bible by the nursery fire—Grace was a gentle, earnest Methodist, very religious ​in her own fashion—she sat down beside her living Bible, her visible revelation of Him who was once, like Rosie, a Christmas child, and tried to think the matter quietly out, to prepare herself humbly for being led, not in her own way, but in God's way: the more, as it was not her own happiness she sought, but that of those two committed to her charge in so strange a manner—the man being almost as helpless and as dependent upon her as the child. For she had not lived with Bernard thus long without discovering all his weaknesses, which were the very points upon which she knew herself most strong. When he called—as he did twenty times a day—"Hannah, help me!" she was fully conscious that she did and could help him better than any one else. Did she like him the less for this? Most women—especially those who have the motherly instinct strongly developed—will find no difficulty in answering the question.

How peaceful the nursery was—so warm and safe and still! Not a sound but the clock ticking on the chimneypiece, and the wind murmuring outside, and the soft breathing out of that darkened corner, where, snuggled down under the bedclothes, with the round little head and its circle of bright hair just peeping above, "Tannie's wee dormouse," as she sometimes called her, slept her sound, innocent sleep.

Aunt Hannah bent over her darling with a wild constriction of the heart. What if the "conclusion" to which Mr. Rivers said they must come to-night implied her going away—leaving Rosie behind? The thought was too much to bear.

"I will not—I will not! God gave me the child; God only shall take her from me!"

And rushing to her own room, she vainly tried to compose herself before appearing in Rosie's father's sight. In vain. His quick eye detected at once that she had been crying; he said so, and then her tears burst out afresh.

"I am so miserable—so miserable! Don't send me away; don't take Rosie from me. I can bear any thing ​but that. It would break my heart if I had to part from my child!"

He answered calmly—was it also a little coldly?—

"Don't distress yourself, Hannah; I had no thought of taking Rosie from you. I promised you she should be all your own, and I mean to keep my word."

"Thank you."

She dried her tears, though she was, indeed, strangely excited still; and they sat down for that serious talk together, which was to have—who knew what end?

The beginning was not easy, though Bernard did begin at once.

"I shall not detain you long, though it is still early. But I must have a few words with you. First, to apologize for a question I put to you last night, which I now feel was intrusive and wrong."

Which question—that about Mr. Morecamb, or the final one, which she had answered with such sore truthfulness—he did not say, and she did not inquire.

Bernard continued:

"Let us put that matter aside, and speak only of our own present affairs. I want you to give me your advice on a point in which a woman is a better judge than any man; especially as it concerns a woman."

A woman? Hannah leaped at once to the heart of the mystery, if mystery it were. Her only course was to solve it without delay.

"Is it your possible marriage?"

"It is. Not my love, understand; only my marriage."

They were silent—he watching her keenly. Hannah felt it, and set her face like a stone. She seemed, indeed, growing into stone.

"My family—as they may have told you, for they tell it to all Easterham—are most anxious I should marry. They have even been so kind as to name to me the lady, whom, as we both know her, I will not name, except to say that she is very young, very pretty, very rich; fulfills all conditions they desire for me, not one of which I ​desire for myself. Also, they tell me—though I scarcely believe this—that if I asked her, she would not refuse me."

"You have not asked her, then?"

"If I had, there would be little need for the questions I wished to put to you. First, what is your feeling about second marriages?"

"I thought you knew it. I must surely have said it to you some time?"

"You never have; say it, then."

Why should she not? Nothing tied her tongue now. The end she had once hoped for, then doubted, then feared, was evidently at hand. He was, after all, going to marry. In a totally unexpected way her path was being made plain.

Hannah was not a girl, and her self-control was great. Besides, she had suffered so much of late that even the very fact of an end to the suffering was relief. So she spoke out as if she were not herself, but somebody else, standing quite apart from poor Hannah Thelluson—to whom it had been the will of God that no love-bliss should ever come.

"I think, with women, second marriages are a doubtful good. If the first one has been happy, we desire no other—we can cherish a memory and sit beside a grave to the last; if unhappy, we dread renewing our unhappiness. Besides, children so fill up a woman's heart that the idea of giving her little ones a second father would be to most women very painful, nay, intolerable. But with men it is quite different. I have said to Lady Rivers many a time that from the first day I came it was my most earnest wish you should find some suitable wife, marry her, and be happy—as happy as you were with my sister."

"Thank you."

That dreadful formality of his—formality and bitterness combined! And Hannah knew his manner so well; knew every change in his face—a very tell-tale face. Bernard was none of your reserved heroes who are always "wear​ing a mask." Her heart yearned over him. Alas! she had spoken truly when she said it was not buried in Arthur's grave. It was quick and living—full of all human affections and human longings still.

"Then, sister Hannah, I have your full consent to my marriage? A mere mariage de convenance, as I told you. Not like my first one—ah, my poor Rosa, she loved me! No woman will ever love me so well."

Hannah was silent.

"Do you think it would be a wrong to Rosa, my marrying again?"

"Not if you loved again. Men do."

"And not women? Do you mean that?"

"I hardly know what I mean or what I say," cried Hannah, piteously. "It is all so strange, so bewildering. Tell me exactly how the thing stands in plain words, and let me go."

"I will let you go; I will trouble you no more about myself or my affairs. You do not care for me, Hannah; you only care for the child. But that is natural—quite natural. I was a fool to expect any more."

Strange words for a man to say to a woman under any other feeling than one. Hannah began to tremble violently.

"What could you expect more?" she faltered. "Have I not done my duty to you-my sisterly duty?"

"We are not brother and sister, and we lie—we lie to our own souls—in calling ourselves so."

He spoke passionately; he seized her hand, then begged her pardon; suddenly went back to his own place, and continued the conversation.

"We are neither of us young, Hannah—not boy and girl, anyhow—and we have been close friends for a long time. Let us speak openly together, just as if we were two departed souls looking out of Paradise at ourselves—our own selves—as our Rosa may be looking now."

Our Rosa! It went to Hannah's heart. The tenderness of the man, the unforgetfulness—ah, if men knew how ​women prize a man who does not forget! "Yes," she repeated, softly, "our Rosa."

"Oh that it were she who was judging us, not these!"

"Not who?"

"The Moat House—the village—every body. It is vain for us to shut our eyes, or our lips either. Hannah, this is a cruel crisis for you and me. People are talking of us on every hand; taking away our good name, even. James Dixon's is not the only wicked tongue in the world. It is terrible, is it not?"

"No," she said, after a moment's hesitation. "At least, not so terrible but that I can bear it."

"Can you? Then I ought too. And yet I feel so weak. You have no idea what I have suffered of late. Within and without, nothing but suffering, till I have thought the only thing to do was to obey my family's wish, and marry. But whether I marry or not, the thing seems plain—we can not go on living as we have done. For your sake, as well as my own—for they tell me I am compromising you cruelly—we must make some change. Oh, Hannah! what have I said, what have I done?"

For she had risen up, the drooping softness of her attitude and face quite gone.

"I understand you. You need not explain further. You wish me to leave you. So I will; to-morrow if you choose; only I must take the child with me. I will have the child," she continued, in a low, desperate voice. "Do what you like, marry whom you like, but the child is mine. Her own father shall not take her from me."

"He has no wish. Her unfortunate father!"

And never since his first days of desolation had Hannah seen on Bernard's countenance such an expression of utter despair.

"You shall settle it all," he said; "you who are so prudent and wise and calm. Think for me, and decide."

"What am I to think or decide?" And Hannah vainly struggled after the calmness he imputed to her. "How can I put myself in your place, and know what you would wish?"

​"What I would wish! Oh, Hannah! is it possible you do not guess?"

She must have been deaf and blind not to have guessed. Dumb she was—dumb as death—while Bernard went on, speaking with excited rapidity:

"When a man's wish is as hopeless and unattainable as a child's for the moon he had better not utter it. I have long thought this. I think so still. Happy in this world I can never be; but what would make me least unhappy would be to go on living as we do, you and Rosie and I, if such a thing were possible."

"Is it impossible?" For with this dumbness of death had come over Hannah also the peace of death—as if the struggle of living were over, and she had passed into another world. She knew Bernard loved her, though they could never be married, no more than the angels. Still he loved her. She was content. "Is it impossible?" she repeated, in her grave, tender, soothing voice. "Evil tongues would die out in time—the innocent are always stronger than the wicked. And our great safeguard against them is such a life as yours has been. You can have almost no enemies."

"Ah!" replied he, mournfully, "but in this case a man's foes are they of his own household. My people—there is no fighting against them. What do you think—I am talking to you, Hannah, as if you were not yourself, but some other person—what do you think my step-mother said to me to-night? That unless you married Mr. Morecamb, or I Ellen Melville (there! her name is out, but no matter)—unless either of these two things happened, or I did the other wicked, heart-breaking thing of turning you out of my doors, she would never admit you again into hers. That, in fact, to-night is the last time you will be received at the Moat House."

Hannah's pride rose. "So be it. I am not aware that that would be such a terrible misfortune."

"You unworldly woman, you do not know! Oh, forgive me, forgive me, Hannah; I am forgetting all you ​must feel. I am speaking to you as if you were my conscience—my very own soul—which you are."

The love that glowed in his eyes, the emotion that trembled in his voice! Hannah was not a young woman, nor, naturally, a passionate woman, but she would have been a stone not to be moved now. She sat down, hiding her face in her hands.

"Oh, it is hard, hard!" she sobbed. "When we might have been so happy—we and our child!"

Bernard left his seat and came closer to hers. His breath was loud and fast, and his hands, as he took Hannah's, grasping them so tight that she could not unloose them, though she faintly tried, were shaking much.

"Tell me—I never believed it possible till now, I thought you so calm and cold, and you knew all my faults, and I have been harsh to you often—only too often!—but, Hannah, if such a thing could be, if the law allowed it—man's law, for God's is on our side—if we could have been married, would you have married me?"

"Yes," she answered, putting both her hands on his shoulders, and looking at him with a sad solemnity, as of those who take farewell for life; "yes, I would."

Then, before he had time to answer, Hannah was gone.