Our Neighbours in the Corner House CHAPTER 9.
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"Your visit has been a very pleasant one," was the remark of Aunt Mary, as my wife rose to go home. "Not more pleasant to you than it has proved to me," answered my wife.
"Will you come again?" Aunt Mary's eyes gave warrant of her sincerity.
"If my visits will be agreeable."
Aunt Mary took her hand, as she replied:
"They will always be agreeable. You have been very kind and very considerate — more like a true-hearted friend than a stranger. Come and see us often, if you will waive the formality of a full return of visits. I will repay what I can."
My wife accepted this friendly overture, and made frequent visits to the corner house; always growing more and more interested in both aunt and niece — who proved to be highly educated, refined, and intelligent.
Several months had passed since this family entered our neighborhood, yet were we, apparently, no nearer a solution of the mystery that surrounded them, than when the first intimations came of their being in some way involved with our cousin. For nearly three months of this period, we had seen nothing of Mr. Congreve.
One evening, my wife, who went often, sat talking with Mrs. Congreve and her aunt, when a man's step was heard in the passage below. An exclamation came from the lips of Mrs. Congreve. Alice looked towards her, and saw that the face was agitated, and the expression strange — almost fearful. Rising, she passed from the room with swift, noiseless steps. Aunt Mary did not move, nor show any unusual disturbance. Her face was partly turned aside, so that it could not be clearly seen. A heavy step moved along the hall, then ascended the stairs. Aunt Mary now arose, and half crossed the room to the door. It was Mr. Congreve.
"This was the first time I had met him," said my wife, in relating the circumstance; "and the first opportunity for observing him closely. His face, as you know, is strongly marked; a prominence of feature being one of its peculiarities. His complexion is quite dark. I thought him, as he stood in the door, with the light of feeling in his countenance, a handsome man, but not a good man. Strength, will, passion, were clearly indicated; and not only these, but disappointment and suffering.
"'Aunt Mary,' he uttered her name in a kind of dead level tone, as though he had returned after an hour's absence. She did not offer him her hand — I noticed that — nor give him a welcome word. But her voice was gentle and kind as she presented him to me, and pronounced his name. He came into the room and sat down, addressing me a few words in a courteous manner, though he was by no means at ease in my presence. I sat as long after he came, as seemed right under the circumstances, and then returned home."
Scarcely had my wife ceased speaking, when someone gave our bell a desperate jerk, and she startled to her feet. She was nervous about the effect on Mrs. Congreve of her husband's return, and this sudden loud ring unsettled her.
"Mrs. Congreve, as I live!" she exclaimed, as she bent over the baluster. Then she went flying downstairs. I followed. My wife had drawn her into the parlor, and they stood together, the arm of Alice around her, as I entered.
"This is my husband," said Alice.
I bowed, but my appearance was not welcome. I saw this, but kept my ground. There were signs of deep disturbance on the face of Mrs. Congreve. My wife drew her to a sofa, and sat down, holding both her hands. After several minutes of silence, Mrs. Congreve said, in a husky fluttering voice, "You must forgive me, friends, for this unseemly intrusion." She looked at me and then at my wife. I sat down in front of them. The word friends included me, of course, and I accepted the recognition. There was nothing of that wild incoherence of manner seen on the occasion of a similar visit made some months before.
"Does Aunt Mary know of this?" asked my wife.
Mrs. Congreve shook her head. "It will frighten her."
"I can't help it. You will let me stay here tonight?" and she looked with appealing earnestness into my wife's face.
"On one condition," replied Alice, promptly.
"What?"
"You must send word to Aunt Mary that you are here."
Mrs. Congreve thought for some moments.
"I will write her a note."
"Very well."
I brought paper and a pencil. The note was hurriedly written, and my wife conveyed it herself, as we did not wish to let our servants into the secret of what was passing, any further than could be helped. Mrs. Congreve sat without speaking a word until her return, and I did not think it wise to intrude any remark.
"Did you see her?" she asked, with evident anxiety, when my wife returned.
"No; I gave the note to Jane, and told her to be sure to place it in Aunt Mary's hands."
For the next three or four minutes she sat listening, as if every moment in expectation that someone would appear. Then she breathed more freely, and showed signs of relief.
"I think," she now said, speaking in that tone which is assumed in reverie, not looking up into our faces, "that I must be living in a dream. This can't all be real! Is it real — or is it fantasy?"
She lifted her eyes to the face of my wife, and gazed at her in a doubting, curious way.
"If real," she added, "then fact is stranger than fiction."
"The real," replied Alice, "is the actual of our inner lives; the enduring things, their quality. Change, mystery, doubt, wrong, sweep around us, in the ever mutable external — but the inner life is secure, if we wisely make it so. In the maze of circumstances by which we are involved, we seem at times to be dreaming. We ask ourselves, as you do now — am I sleeping or awake? Is it real or a fantasy? In part, it is phantasy. We look at the bewildering investiture of external circumstances, until their true meaning is lost, and we give them a significance that misleads us. But this is not wise. Let us go down into our hearts and see to what measure they beat. Let us lay aside covering after covering, and get at their true quality. Let us see whether God's laws are our laws."
"Laws — laws — " She looked bewildered. "The heart is bound by no laws. You cannot trammel it with fetters. The heart is free."
"Only in true freedom — when bound by the laws of God," said Alice, calmly. "Blind passion and evil impulse — are not freedom."
"But is there not freedom in true love?"
She fixed her eyes with an intensity of inquiry on the face of my wife.
"If love makes a false vow; if it binds itself with solemn pledges, against which the heart rebels — the bonds are self-wrought, and may not be broken. Love is not free in this case."
The hands of Mrs. Congreve were laid slowly over her bosom, and I saw them press tightly against it, as if she were attempting, by an external act, to still the disturbed beating within.
"It is a mystery," she sighed. "I cannot see it clearly. Aunt Mary talks so; and she is good and wise. You talk so, and I think you good and wise, also. But it is hard — hard, I cannot bear it, I am not strong enough."
"But you will be," said my wife, confidently. "Time and God's Providence are at work. You have been made to pass through a region that must have been as dark and fearful as the valley of the shadow of death; but there is a plain way for your feet; and delectable mountains, from which the eye can see beyond the enchanted ground, even to the eternal city, whose walls are of jasper, and the buildings thereof pure gold, as clear as crystal. Move on, steadily, bravely, like old Christian; ever looking upwards for strength and comfort. All must come out right in the end. God will surely bring it to pass."
Mrs. Congreve bent towards my wife, and looked at her wonderingly.
"Has Aunt Mary told you?" she asked, almost in a whisper.
"Told me of what?"
Mrs. Congreve drew away, like one conscious of having unwittingly half betrayed herself. There followed a long pause, in which I withdrew from the parlor. Soon after, they followed me, but passed the sitting-room and went to my wife's chamber. In about twenty minutes, Alice came alone, and said that Mrs. Congreve would sleep that night with her.
"I would not feel safe," she said, "to leave her in a room alone. Aunt Mary always sleeps with her."
This I thought but common prudence. She stayed with me only a few minutes, and then went back to Mrs. Congreve. I slept in the room adjoining, and, for full two hours after I was in bed, heard the low murmur of voices; or, rather, for the most part, of a single voice, which I knew to be that of our visitor.
The eyes of my wife, when I looked into them on the next morning, were full of mysterious intelligence.
"I have such a story to relate!" she said in a half whisper.
"Of Edgar?" I asked.
"Yes."
"He has not been murdered?"
"No — no. He is living, I trust, and, what is best of all, innocent!"
"Thank God for that! But where is he?"
Alice shook her head. "It is not known."
"Did you tell her that you knew Edgar? That he was your cousin?"
"No; I kept this concealed. Was I not right?"
"I think so."
The sound of Mrs. Congreve's step in the passage, as she came out of the chamber where she had passed the night with my wife, was now heard, and Alice left me to join her. We met at the breakfast table. I read the face of Mrs. Congreve with curious interest, as she sat nearly opposite me. I had only seen it in the gas-light before, except in a casual glance as she stood at the window of her own house. Her deep black hair, made the whiteness of her face look unnatural. She looked very young; even with the signs of suffering so strongly impressed on every feature — not over twenty-five. Her eyes were large, clear, of great depth, and singular beauty. When the light of a happy heart was in them, they must have charmed and bewitched almost every beholder. The style of her face was not strictly classic; but, while very pure and delicate, with something more passionate than is seen in the Grecian outline, her mouth did not express strength of character. You saw that feeling would rule, under strong excitement, even against reason. So the face impressed me.
She said very little during the meal, and ate scarcely anything. It was plain that she felt herself in an embarrassed position, as far as I was concerned. And no wonder.
On my return at dinner-time, I found Mrs. Congreve still an inhabitant of my house. I learned from Alice, that Aunt Mary had been in, and tried in vain to persuade her to go back.
"Not while he is in the house!" was her resolute answer.
Still Aunt Mary urged her niece in her gentle, earnest way, using arguments founded on duty and high religious obligations, when Mrs. Congreve exclaimed, passionately,
"I will not go back! I hate and loathe him! His very name is an offence to me!"
Fearful that her mind might be thrown again from its equipoise, it was thought best to permit her, for the present, to have her way. She did not come from her room at dinner-time. My wife gave me a few passages from the long history to which she had listened during the previous night. They made my ears tingle. The full narrative I give in following chapters, related in the words of Mrs. Congreve herself.
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