Works of Ellen Wood, page 1186
“He says he shall always behave fairly by me,” spoke poor Selina.
“Why, you’d have a step-son older than yourself, Selina!” put in the old lady. “And I don’t like him — that Stephen Radcliffe. He’s no better than he should be. I saw him one day whipping a poor calf almost to death.”
Well, they said all they could against it; ten thousand times more than is written down here. Selina wavered: she was not an obstinate girl, but tractable as you please. Only — she had no homestead on the face of the earth, and Mr. Radcliffe offered her one. He did not possess youth, it is true; he had never been handsome: but he was of irreproachable descent — and Selina had a little corner of ambition in her heart; and, above all, he had a fairly good income.
It was rather curious that the dread of this girl’s life, the one dread above all other dreads, was that of poverty. In the earlier days of her parents, when she was a little girl and her mother was alive, and the parson’s pay was just seventy pounds a-year, they had had such a terrible struggle with poverty that a horror of it was implanted in the child’s mind for ever. Her mother died of it. She had become weaker and weaker, and perished slowly away for the want of those comforts that money alone could have bought. Mr. Elliot’s stipend was increased later: but the fear of poverty never left Selina: and now, by his death, she was again brought face to face with it. That swayed her; and her choice was made.
Old Mrs. Todhetley and the Squire protested that they washed their hands of the marriage. But they could only wash them gingerly, and, so to say, in private. For, after all, excepting that Paul Radcliffe was more than old enough to be Selina’s father, and had grizzly hair and a grown-up son, there was not so much to be said against it. She would be Mrs. Radcliffe of Sandstone Torr, and might take her standing in the county.
Sandstone Torr, dull and gloomy, and buried amidst its trees, was enough to put a lively man in mind of a prison. You entered it by a sort of closed-in porch, the outer door of which was always chained back in the daytime. The inner door opened into a long, narrow passage, and that again to a circular stone hall with a heavy ceiling, just like a large dark watch-box. Four or five doors led off from it to different passages and rooms. This same kind of round place was on all the landings, shut in just as the hall was, and with no light, except what might be afforded from the doors of the passages or rooms leading to it. It was the foundation of the tower, and the house was built round it. All the walls were of immense thickness: the rooms were low, and had beams running across most of them. But the rooms were many in number, and the place altogether had a massive, grand air, telling of its past importance. It had one senseless point in it — there was no entrance to the tower. The tower had neither staircase nor door of access. People said what a grand view might be obtained if you could only get to the top of it, or even get up to look through the small slits of windows in its walls. But the builder had forgotten the staircase, and there it ended.
Mr. Radcliffe took his wife straight home from the church-door. Selina had never before been inside the Torr, and the gloominess of its aspect struck upon her unpleasantly. Leading her down the long passage into the circular hall, he opened one of its doors, and she found herself in a sitting-room. The furniture was good but heavy; the Turkey carpet was nearly colourless with age, but soft to the feet; the window looked out only upon trees. A man-servant, who had admitted them, followed them in, asking his master if he had any orders.
“Send Holt here,” said Mr. Radcliffe. “This is the parlour, Selina.”
A thin, respectable woman of middle age made her appearance. She looked with curiosity at the young lady her master had brought in: at her wedding-dress of grey silk, at the pretty face blushing under the white straw bonnet.
“Mrs. Radcliffe, Holt. Show your mistress her rooms.”
The woman curtsied, and led the way through another passage to the stairs; and into a bedroom and sitting-room above, that opened into one another.
“I’ve aired ’em well, ma’am,” were the first words she said. “They’ve never been used since the late mistress’s time, for master has slept in a little chamber near Master Stephen’s. But he’s coming back here now.”
“Is this the drawing-room?” asked Selina, observing that the furniture, though faded, was prettier and lighter than that in the room downstairs.
“Dear no, ma’am! The drawing-room is below and on t’other side of the house entirely. It’s never gone into from one month’s end to another. Master and Mr. Stephen uses nothing but the parlour. We call this the Pine Room.”
“The Pine Room!” echoed Selina. “Why?”
“Because it looks out on them pines, I suppose,” replied Holt.
Selina looked from the window, and saw a row of dark pines waving before the higher trees behind them. The view beyond was completely shut in by these trees; they were very close to the house: it almost seemed as though a long arm might have touched them from where she stood. Anything more dull than this aspect could not well be found. Selina leaned from the window to look below: and saw a gravel-path with some grass on either side it, but no flowers.
It was a week later. Mr. Radcliffe sat in the parlour, busily examining some samples of new wheat, when there came a loud ring at the outer bell, and presently Stephen Radcliffe walked in. The father and son resembled each other. Both were tall and strongly built, and had the same rugged cast of features: men of few words and ungenial manners. But while Mr. Radcliffe’s face was not an unpleasing one, Stephen’s had a most sullen — some might have said evil — expression. In his eyes there was a slight cast, and his dull brown hair was never tidy. Some time before this, when the father and son had a quarrel, Stephen had gone off into Cornwall to stay with his mother’s relations. This was his first appearance back again.
“Is it you, Stephen!” cried Mr. Radcliffe, without offering to shake hands: for the house was never given to ceremony.
“Yes, it’s me,” replied Stephen, who generally talked more like a boor than a gentleman, particularly in his angry moods. “It’s about time I came home, I think, when such a notice as this appears in the public papers.”
He took a newspaper from his pocket, and laid it before his father, pointing with his fore-finger to an announcement. It was that of Mr. Radcliffe’s marriage.
“Well?” said Mr. Radcliffe.
“Is that true or a hoax?”
“True.”
Stephen caught the paper up again, tore it in two, and flung it across the room.
“What the devil made you go and do such a thing as that?”
“Softly, Ste. Keep a civil tongue in your head. I am my own master.”
“At your age!” growled Stephen. “There’s no fool like an old fool.”
“If you don’t like it, you can go back to where you came from,” said Mr. Radcliffe quietly, turning the wheat from one of the sample-bags out on the table.
Stephen went to the window, and stood there looking at that agreeable prospect beyond — the trees — his hands in his pockets, his back to his father, and swearing to himself awfully. It would not do to quarrel implacably with the old man, for his money was at his own disposal: and, if incensed too greatly, he might possibly take the extreme step of leaving it away from him. But Stephen Radcliffe’s heart was good to turn his father out of doors there and then, and appropriate the money to himself at once, if he only had the power. “No fool like an old fool!” he again muttered. “Where is the cat?”
“Where’s who?” cried Mr. Radcliffe, looking up from his wheat.
“The woman you’ve gone and made yourself a world’s spectacle with.”
“Ste, my lad, this won’t do. Keep a fair tongue in your head, as I bid you; or go where you may make it a foul one. For by Heaven!” — and Mr. Radcliffe’s passion broke out and he rose from his seat menacingly— “I’ll not tolerate this.”
Stephen hardly ever remembered his father to have shown passion before. He did not like it. They had gone on so very quietly together, until that quarrel just spoken of, and Stephen had had his own way, and ruled, so to say, in all things, for his father was easy, that this outbreak was something new. It might not do to give further provocation then.
He was standing as before in sullen silence, his hands in his trousers’ pockets and the skirts of his short brown velveteen coat thrown back, and Mr. Radcliffe had sat down to the bags again, when the door opened, and some one came in. Stephen turned. He saw a pretty young girl in black, with some books in her delicate hands. Just for an instant he wondered who the young girl could be: and then the thought flashed over him that “the woman” his father had married might have a grown-up daughter. Selina had been unpacking her trunks upstairs, and arranging her things in the drawers and closets. She hesitated on her way to the book-case when she saw the stranger.
“My son Stephen, Selina. Ste, Mrs. Radcliffe.”
Stephen Radcliffe for a moment forgot his sullenness and his temper. He did nothing but stare. Was his father playing a joke on him? He had pictured the new wife (though he knew not why) as a woman of mature age: this was a child. As she timidly held out the only hand she could extricate from the load of books, he saw the wedding-ring on her finger. Meeting her hand ungraciously and speaking never a word, he turned to the window again. Selina put the books down, to be disposed in their shelves later, and quitted the room.
“This is even worse folly than I dreamed of,” began Stephen, facing his father. “She’s nothing but a child.”
“She is close upon twenty.”
“Why, there may be children!” broadly roared out Stephen. “You must have been mad when you did such a deed as this.”
“Mad or sane, it’s done, Stephen. And I should do it again to-morrow without asking your leave. Understand that.”
Yes, it was done. Rattling the silver in his pockets, Stephen Radcliffe felt that, and that there was no undoing it. Here was this young step-mother planted down at the Torr; and if he and she could not hit it off together, it was he who would have to walk out of the house. For full five minutes Stephen mentally rehearsed all the oaths he remembered. Presently he spoke.
“It was a fair trick, wasn’t it, that you should forbid my marrying, and go and do the same thing yourself!”
“I did not object to your marrying, Ste: I objected to the girl. Gibbon’s daughter is not one to match with you. You are a Radcliffe.”
Stephen scoffed. Nobody had ever been able to beat into him any sense of self-importance. Pride of birth, pride in his family were elements unknown to Stephen’s nature. He had a great love of money to make up for it.
“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” he retorted, plunging into a communication he had resolved to make. “You have been taking a wife on your score, and I have taken one on mine.”
Mr. Radcliffe looked keenly at Stephen. “You have married Gibbon’s girl?”
“I have.”
“When? Where?”
“In Cornwall. She followed me there.”
The elder man felt himself in a dilemma. He did care for his son, and he resented this alliance bitterly for Stephen’s sake. Gibbon was gamekeeper to Sir Peter Chanasse, and had formerly been outdoor servant at the Torr; and this daughter of his, Rebecca — or Becca, as she was commonly called — was a girl quite beneath Stephen. Neither was she a lovable young woman in herself; but hard, and sly, and bony. How it was that Stephen had fancied her, Mr. Radcliffe could not understand. But having stolen a march on Stephen himself, in regard to his own marriage, he did not feel much at liberty to resent Stephen’s. It was done, too — as he had just observed of his own — and it could not be undone.
“Well, Stephen, I am more vexed for your sake than I care to say. It strikes me you will live to repent it.”
“That’s my look out,” replied Stephen. “I am going to bring her home.”
“Home! Where?”
“Here.”
Mr. Radcliffe was silent; perhaps the assertion startled him.
“I don’t want Gibbon’s daughter here, Stephen. There’s no room for her.”
“Plenty of room, and to spare.”
So there was; for the old house was large. But Mr. Radcliffe had not been thinking of space.
“I can’t have her. There! You may make your home where you like.”
“This is my home,” said Stephen.
“And it may be still, if you like. But it’s not hers. Two women in a house, each wanting to be mistress, wouldn’t do. Now no noise, Ste, I won’t have Gibbon’s girl here. I’ve not been used to consort with people who have been my servants.”
It is one thing to make a resolution, and another to keep it. Before twelve months had gone by, Mr. Radcliffe’s firmly spoken words had come to naught; and Stephen had brought his wife into the Torr and two babies — for Mrs. Stephen had presented him with two at once. Selina was upstairs then with an infant of her own, and very ill. The world thought she was going to die.
The opportunity was a grand one for Madam Becca, and she seized upon it. When Selina came about again, after months spent in confinement, she found, so to say, no place for her. Becca was in her place; mistress, and ruler, and all. Stephen behaved to her like the lout he was; Becca, a formidable woman of towering height, alternately snapped at, and ignored her. Old Radcliffe did not interfere: he seemed not to see that anything was amiss. Poor Selina could only sit up in that apartment that Holt had called the Pine Room, and let her tears fall on her baby-boy, and whisper all her griefs into his unconscious ear. She was refined and timid and shrinking: but once she spoke to her husband.
“Treat you with contempt? — don’t let you have any will of your own? — thwart you in all ways?” he repeated. “Who says it, Selina?”
“Oh, it is so; you may see that it is, if you only will notice,” she said, looking up at him imploringly through her tears.
“I’ll speak to Stephen. I knew there’d be a fuss if that Becca came here. But you are not as strong to bustle about as she is, Selina: let her take the brunt of the management off you. What does it matter?”
What did it matter? — that was Mr. Radcliffe’s chief opinion on the point: and had it been only a question of management it would not have mattered. He spoke to Stephen, telling him that he and his wife must make things pleasanter for Mrs. Radcliffe, than, as it seemed, they were doing. The consequence was, that Stephen and Becca took a convenient occasion of attacking Selina; calling her a sneak, a tell-tale, and a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and pretty nearly frightening her into another spell of illness.
From that time Selina had no spirit to retaliate. She took all that was put upon her — and it was a great deal — and bore it in silence and patience. She saw that her marriage, taking one thing with another, had turned out to be the mistake her friends had foretold that it would be. Mr. Radcliffe, growing by degrees into a state of apathy as he got older, was completely under the dominion of Stephen. He did not mean to be unkind to his wife: he just perceived nothing; he was indifferent to all that passed around him: had they set fire to Selina’s petticoats before his eyes, he’d hardly have seen the blaze. Now and again Selina would try to make friends with Holt: but Holt, though never uncivil, had a way of throwing her off. And so, she lived on, a cowed, broken-spirited woman, eating away her heart in silence. Selina Radcliffe had found out that there were worse evils in the world than poverty.
She might have died then but for her boy. You never saw a nicer little fellow than he — that Francis Radcliffe. A bright, tractable, loving boy; with laughing blue eyes, and fair curls falling back from his pretty face. Mr. and Mrs. Stephen hated him. Their children, Tom and Lizzy, pinched and throttled him: but the lad took it all in good part, and had the sweetest temper imaginable. He loved his mother beyond telling, and she made him as gentle and nearly as patient as she was. Virtually driven from the parlour, except at meal-times, their refuge was the Pine Room. There they were unmolested. There Selina educated and trained him, doing her best to show him the way to the next world, as well as to fit him for this.
One day when he was about nine years old, Selina was up aloft, in the little room where he slept; which had a better view than some of the rooms had, and looked out into the open country. It was snowy weather, and she caught sight of the two boys in the yard below, snowballing each other. Opening the window to call Francis in — for he always got into the wars when with Tom, and she had learnt to dread his being with him — she saw Stephen Radcliffe crossing from the barn. Suddenly a snowball took Stephen in the face. It came from Tom; she saw that; Francis was stooping down at the time, collecting material for a fresh missive.
“Who flung that at me?” roared out Stephen, in a rage.
Tom disclaimed all knowledge of it; and Stephen Radcliffe seized upon Francis, beating him shamefully.
“It was not Francis,” called out Selina from the window, shivering at the sight; for Stephen in his violence might some time, as she knew, lame the lad. “Its touching you was an accident; I could see that; but it was not Francis who threw it.”
The cold, rarefied air carried her words distinctly to the ear of Stephen. Holding Francis by one hand to prevent his escape, he told Mrs. Radcliffe that she was a liar, adding other polite epithets and a few oaths. And then he began pummelling the lad again.
“Come in, Francis! Let him come in!” implored the mother, clasping her hands in her bitter agony. “Oh, is there no refuge for him and for me?”
She ran down to their sanctum, the Pine Room. Francis came up, sore all over, and his face bleeding. He was a brave little lad, and he strove to make light of it, and keep his tears down. She held him to her, and burst into sobs while trying to comfort him. That upset him at once.
“Oh, my darling, try and bear! My poor boy, there’s nothing left for us both but to bear. The world is full of wrongs and tribulation: but, Francis, it will all be made right when we get to heaven.”
