Lady Macleod lived at No. 3, Paramount Crescent, in Cheltenham, where she occupied a very handsome first-floor drawing-room, with a bedroom behind it looking over a stable-yard, and a small room which would have been the dressing-room had the late Sir Archibald been alive, but which was at present called the dining-room: and in it Lady Macleod did dine whenever her larger room was to be used for any purposes of evening company. The vicinity of the stable-yard was not regarded by the tenant as among the attractions of the house; but it had the effect of lowering the rent, and Lady Macleod was a woman who regarded such matters. Her income, though small, would have sufficed to enable her to live removed from such discomforts; but she was one of those women who regard it as a duty to leave something behind them — even though it be left to those who do not at all want it; and Lady Macleod was a woman who wilfully neglected no duty. So she pinched herself, and inhaled the effluvia of the stables, and squabbled with the cabmen, in order that she might bequeath a thousand pounds or two to some Lady Midlothian, who cared, perhaps, little for her, and would hardly thank her memory for the money.
Had Alice consented to live with her, she would have merged that duty of leaving money behind her in that other duty of finding a home for her adopted niece. But Alice had gone away, and therefore the money was due to Lady Midlothian rather than to her. The saving, however, was postponed whenever Alice would consent to visit Cheltenham; and a bedroom was secured for her which did not look out over the stables. Accommodation was also found for her maid much better than that provided for Lady Macleod’s own maid. She was a hospitable, good old woman, painfully struggling to do the best she could in the world. It was a pity that she was such a bore, a pity that she was so hard to cabmen and others, a pity that she suspected all tradesmen, servants, and people generally of a rank of life inferior to her own, a pity that she was disposed to condemn for ever and ever so many of her own rank because they played cards on week days, and did not go to church on Sundays — and a pity, as I think above all, that while she was so suspicious of the poor she was so lenient to the vices of earls, earls’ sons, and such like.
Alice, having fully considered the matter, had thought it most prudent to tell Lady Macleod by letter what she had done in regard to Mr Grey. There had been many objections to the writing of such a letter, but there appeared to be stronger objection to that telling it face to face which would have been forced upon her had she not written. There would in such case have arisen on Lady Macleod’s countenance a sternness of rebuke which Alice did not choose to encounter. The same sternness of rebuke would come upon the countenance on receipt of the written information; but it would come in its most aggravated form on the immediate receipt of the letter, and some of its bitterness would have passed away before Alice’s arrival. I think that Alice was right. It is better for both parties that any great offence should be confessed by letter.
But Alice trembled as the cab drew up at No. 3, Paramount Crescent. She met her aunt, as was usual, just inside the drawing-room door, and she saw at once that if any bitterness had passed away from that face, the original bitterness must indeed have been bitter. She had so timed her letter that Lady Macleod should have no opportunity of answering it. The answer was written there in the mingled anger and sorrow of those austere features.
“Alice!” she said, as she took her niece in her arms and kissed her; “oh, Alice, what is this?”
“Yes, aunt; it is very bad, I know,” and poor Alice tried to make a jest of it. “Young ladies are very wicked when they don’t know their own minds. But if they haven’t known them and have been wicked, what can they do but repent?”
“Repent!” said Lady Macleod. “Yes; I hope you will repent. Poor Mr Grey — what must he think of it?”
“I can only hope, aunt, that he won’t think of it at all for very long.”
“That’s nonsense, my dear. Of course he’ll think of it, and of course you’ll marry him.”
“Shall I, aunt?”
“Of course you will. Why, Alice, hasn’t it been all settled among the families? Lady Midlothian knew all the particulars of it just as well as I did. And is not your word pledged to him? I really don’t understand what you mean. I don’t see how it is possible you should go back. Gentlemen when they do that kind of thing are put out of society — but I really think it is worse in a woman.”
“Then they may if they please put me out of society — only that I don’t know that I’m particularly in it.”
“And the wickedness of the thing, Alice! I’m obliged to say so.”
“When you talk to me about society, aunt, and about Lady Midlothian, I give up to you, willingly — the more willingly, perhaps, because I don’t care much for one or the other.” Here Lady Macleod tried to say a word; but she failed, and Alice went on, boldly looking up into her aunt’s face, which became a shade more bitter than ever. “But when you tell me about wickedness and my conscience, then I must be my own judge. It is my conscience, and the fear of committing wickedness, that has made me do this.”
“You should submit to be guided by your elders, Alice.”
“No; my elders in such a matter as this cannot teach me. It cannot be right that I should go to a man’s house and be his wife, if I do not think that I can make him happy.”
“Then why did you accept him?”
“Because I was mistaken. I am not going to defend that. If you choose to scold me for that, you may do so, aunt, and I will not answer you. But as to marrying him or not marrying him now — as to that, I must judge for myself.”
“It was a pity you did not know your own mind earlier.”
“It was a pity — a great pity. I have done myself an injury that is quite irretrievable — I know that, and am prepared to bear it. I have done him, too, an injustice which I regret with my whole heart. I can only excuse myself by saying that I might have done him a worse injustice.”
All this was said at the very moment of her arrival, and the greeting did not seem to promise much for the happiness of the next month; but perhaps it was better for them both that the attack and the defence should thus be made suddenly, at their first meeting. It is better to pull the string at once when you are in the shower-bath, and not to stand shivering, thinking of the inevitable shock which you can only postpone for a few minutes. Lady Macleod in this case had pulled the string, and thus reaped the advantage of her alacrity.
“Well, my dear,” said her ladyship, “I suppose you will like to go upstairs and take off your bonnet. Mary shall bring you some tea when you come down.” So Alice escaped, and when she returned to the comfort of her cup of tea in the drawing-room, the fury of the storm had passed away. She sat talking of other things till dinner; and though Lady Macleod did during the evening make one allusion to “poor Mr Grey,” the subject was allowed to drop. Alice was very tender as to her aunt’s ailments, was more than ordinarily attentive to the long list of Cheltenham iniquities which was displayed to her, and refrained from combating any of her aunt’s religious views. After a while they got upon the subject of Aunt Greenow, for whose name Lady Macleod had a special aversion — as indeed she had for all the Vavasor side of Alice’s family; and then Alice offered to read, and did read to her aunt many pages out of one of those terrible books of wrath, which from time to time come forth and tell us that there is no hope for us. Lady Macleod liked to be so told; and as she now, poor woman, could not read at nights herself, she enjoyed her evening.
Lady Macleod no doubt did enjoy her niece’s sojourn at Cheltenham, but I do not think it could have been pleasant to Alice. On the second day nothing was said about Mr Grey, and Alice hoped that by her continual readings in the book of wrath her aunt’s heart might be softened towards her. But it seemed that Lady Macleod measured the periods of respite, for on the third day and on the fifth she returned to the attack. “Did John Grey still wish that the match should go on?” she asked, categorically. It was in vain that Alice tried to put aside the question, and begged that the matter might not be discussed. Lady Macleod insisted on her right to carry on the examination, and Alice was driven to acknowledge that she believed he did wish it. She could hardly say otherwise, seeing that she had at that moment a letter from him in her pocket, in which he still spoke of his engagement as being absolutely binding on him, and expressed a hope that this change from London to Cheltenham would bring her round and set everything to rights. He certainly did, in a fashion, wave his hand over her, as Kate had said of him. This letter Alice had resolved that she would not answer. He would probably write again, and she would beg him to desist. Instead of Cheltenham bringing her round, Cheltenham had made her firmer than ever in her resolution. I am inclined to think that the best mode of bringing her round at this moment would have been a course of visits from her cousin George, and a series of letters from her cousin Kate. Lady Macleod’s injunctions would certainly not bring her round.
After ten days, ten terrible days, devoted to discussions on matrimony in the morning and to the book of wrath in the evening — relieved by two tea-parties, in which the sins of Cheltenham were discussed at length — Lady Macleod herself got a letter from Mr Grey. Mr Grey’s kindest compliments to Lady Macleod. He believed that Lady Macleod was aware of the circumstances of his engagement with Miss Vavasor. Might he call on Miss Vavasor at Lady Macleod’s house in Cheltenham? and might he also hope to have the pleasure of making Lady Macleod’s acquaintance? Alice had been in the room when her aunt received this letter, but her aunt had said nothing, and Alice had not known from whom the letter had come. When her aunt crept away with it after breakfast she had suspected nothing, and had never imagined that Lady Macleod, in the privacy of her own room looking out upon the stables, had addressed a letter to Nethercoats. But such a letter had been addressed to Nethercoats, and Mr Grey had been informed that he would be received in Paramount Crescent with great pleasure.
Mr Grey had even indicated the day on which he would come, and on the morning of that day Lady Macleod had presided over the two teacups in a state of nervous excitement which was quite visible to Alice. More than once Alice asked little questions, not supposing that she was specially concerned in the matter which had caused her aunt’s fidgety restlessness, but observing it so plainly that it was almost impossible not to allude to it. “There’s nothing the matter, my dear, at all,” at last Lady Macleod said; but as she said so she was making up her mind that the moment had not come in which she must apprise Alice of Mr Grey’s intended visit. As Alice had questioned her at the breakfast table she would say nothing about it then, but waited till the teacups were withdrawn, and till the maid had given her last officious poke to the fire. Then she began. She had Mr Grey’s letter in her pocket, and as she prepared herself to speak, she pulled it out and held it on the little table before her.
“Alice,” she said, “I expect a visitor here today.”
Alice knew instantly who was the expected visitor. Probably any girl under such circumstances would have known equally well. “A visitor, aunt!” she said, and managed to hide her knowledge admirably.
“Yes, Alice, a visitor. I should have told you before, only I thought — I thought I had better not. It is Mr — Mr Grey.”
“Indeed, aunt! Is he coming to see you?”
“Well — he is desirous no doubt of seeing you more especially; but he has expressed a wish to make my acquaintance, which I cannot, under the circumstances, think is unnatural. Of course, Alice, he must want to talk over this affair with your friends.”
“I wish I could have spared them,” said Alice “— I wish I could.”
“I have brought his letter here, and you can see it if you please. It is very nicely written, and as far as I am concerned I should not think of refusing to see him. And now comes the question. What are we to do with him? Am I to ask him to dinner? I take it for granted that he will not expect me to offer him a bed, as he knows that I live in lodgings.”
“Oh no, aunt; he certainly will not expect that.”
“But ought I to ask him to dinner? I should be most happy to entertain him, though you know how very scanty my means of doing so are — but I really do not know how it might be — between you and him, I mean.”
“We should not fight, aunt.”
“No, I suppose not — but if you cannot be affectionate in your manner to him — ”
“I will not answer for my manners, aunt; but you may be sure of this — that I should be affectionate in my heart. I shall always regard him as a dearly loved friend; though for many years, no doubt, I shall be unable to express my friendship.”
“That may be all very well, Alice, but it will not be what he will want. I think upon the whole that I had better not ask him to dinner.”
“Perhaps not, aunt.”
“It is a period of the day in which any special constraint among people is more disagreeable than at any other time, and then at dinner the servants must see it. I think there might be some awkwardness if he were to dine here.”
“I really think there would,” said Alice, anxious to have the subject dropped.
“I hope he won’t think that I am inhospitable. I should be so happy to do the best I could for him, for I regard him, Alice, quite as though he were to be your husband. And when anybody at all connected with me has come to Cheltenham I always have asked them to dine, and then I have Gubbins’s man to come and wait at table — as you know.”
“Of all men in the world Mr Grey is the last to think about it.”
“That should only make me the more careful. But I think it would perhaps be more comfortable if he were to come in the evening.”
“Much more comfortable, aunt.”
“I suppose he will be here in the afternoon, before dinner, and we had better wait at home for him. I dare say he’ll want to see you alone, and therefore I’ll retire to my own room,” — looking over the stables! Dear old lady. “But if you wish it, I will receive him first — and then Martha,” — Martha was Alice’s maid — “can fetch you down.”
This discussion as to the propriety or impropriety of giving her lover a dinner had not been pleasant to Alice, but, nevertheless, when it was over she felt grateful to Lady Macleod. There was an attempt in the arrangement to make Mr Grey’s visit as little painful as possible; and though such a discussion at such a time might as well have been avoided, the decision to which her ladyship had at last come with reference both to the dinner and the management of the visit was, no doubt, the right one.
Lady Macleod had been quite correct in all her anticipations. At three o’clock Mr Grey was announced, and Lady Macleod, alone, received him in her drawing-room. She had intended to give him a great deal of good advice, to bid him still keep up his heart and as it were hold up his head, to confess to him how very badly Alice was behaving, and to express her entire concurrence with that theory of bodily ailment as the cause and origin of her conduct. But she found that Mr Grey was a man to whom she could not give much advice. It was he who did the speaking at this conference, and not she. She was overawed by him after the first three minutes. Indeed her first glance at him had awed her. He was so handsome — and then, in his beauty, he had so quiet and almost saddened an air! Strange to say that after she had seen him, Lady Macleod entertained for him an infinitely higher admiration than before, and yet she was less surprised than she had been at Alice’s refusal of him. The conference was very short; and Mr Grey had not been a quarter of an hour in the house before Martha attended upon her mistress with her summons.
Alice was ready and came down instantly. She found Mr Grey standing in the middle of the room waiting to receive her, and the look of majesty which had cowed Lady Macleod had gone from his countenance. He could not have received her with a kinder smile, had she come to him with a promise that she would at this meeting name the day for their marriage. “At any rate it does not make him unhappy,” she said to herself.
“You are not angry,” he said, “that I should have followed you all the way here, to see you.”
“No, certainly; not angry, Mr Grey. All anger that there may be between us must be on your side. I feel that thoroughly.”
“Then there shall be none on either side. Whatever may be done, I will not be angry with you. Your father advised me to come down here to you.”
“You have seen him, then?”
“Yes, I have seen him. I was in London the day you left.”
“It is so terrible to think that I should have brought upon you all this trouble.”
“You will bring upon me much worse trouble than that, unless —. But I have not now come down here to tell you that. I believe that according to rule in such matters I should not have come to you at all, but I don’t know that I care much about such rules.”
“It is I that have broken all rules.”
“When a lady tells a gentleman that she does not wish to see more of him — ”
“Oh, Mr Grey, I have not told you that.”
“Have you not? I am glad at any rate to hear you deny it. But you will understand what I mean. When a gentleman gets his dismissal from a lady he should accept it — that is, his dismissal under such circumstances as I have received mine. But I cannot lay down my love in that way; nor, maintaining my love, can I give up the battle. It seems to me that I have a right at any rate to know something of your comings and goings as long as — unless, Alice, you should take another name than mine.”
“My intention is to keep my own.” This she said in the lowest possible tone — almost in a whisper — with her eyes fixed upon the ground.
“And you will not deny me that right?”
“I cannot hinder you. Whatever you may do, I myself have sinned so against you that I can have no right to blame you.”
“There shall be no question between us of injury from one to the other. In any conversation that we may have, or in any correspondence — ”
“Oh, Mr Grey, do not ask me to write.”
“Listen to me. Should there be any on either side, there shall be no idea of any wrong done.”
“But I have done you wrong — great wrong.”
“No, Alice; I will not have it so. When I asked you to accept my hand — begging the greatest boon which it could ever come to my lot to ask from a fellow mortal — I knew well how great was your goodness to me when you told me that it should be mine. Now that you refuse it, I know also that you are good, thinking that in doing so you are acting for my welfare — thinking more of my welfare than of your own.”
“Oh yes, yes; it is so, Mr Grey; indeed it is so.”
“Believing that, how can I talk of wrong? That you are wrong in your thinking on this subject — that your mind has become twisted by false impressions — that I believe. But I cannot therefore love you less — nor, so believing, can I consider myself to be injured. Nor am I even so little selfish as you are. I think if you were my wife that I could make you happy; but I feel sure that my happiness depends on your being my wife.”
She looked up into his face, but it was still serene in all its manly beauty. Her cousin George, if he were moved to strong feeling, showed it at once in his eyes — in his mouth, in the whole visage of his countenance. He glared in his anger, and was impassioned in his love. But Mr Grey when speaking of the happiness of his entire life, when confessing that it was now at stake with a decision against him that would be ruinous to it, spoke without a quiver in his voice, and had no more sign of passion in his face than if he were telling his gardener to move a rose tree.
“I hope — and believe that you will find your happiness elsewhere, Mr Grey.”
“Well; we can but differ, Alice. In that we do differ. And now I will say one word to explain why I have come here. If I were to write to you against your will, it would seem that I were persecuting you. I cannot bring myself to do that, even though I had the right. But if I were to let you go from me, taking what you have said to me and doing nothing, it would seem that I had accepted your decision as final. I do not do so. I will not do so. I come simply to tell you that I am still your suitor. If you will let me, I will see you again early in January — as soon as you have returned to town. You will hardly refuse to see me.”
“No,” she said; “I cannot refuse to see you.”
“Then it shall be so,” he said, “and I will not trouble you with letters, nor will I trouble you longer now with words. Tell your aunt that I have said what I came to say, and that I give her my kindest thanks.” Then he took her hand and pressed it — not as George Vavasor had pressed it, and was gone. When Lady Macleod returned, she found that the question of the evening’s tea arrangements had settled itself.
It has been said that George Vavasor had a little establishment at Roebury, down in Oxfordshire, and thither he betook himself about the middle of November. He had been long known in this county, and whether or no men spoke well of him as a man of business in London, men spoke well of him down there, as one who knew how to ride to hounds. Not that Vavasor was popular among fellow-sportsmen. It was quite otherwise. He was not a man that made himself really popular in any social meetings of men. He did not himself care for the loose little talkings, half flat and half sharp, of men when they meet together in idleness. He was not open enough in his nature for such popularity. Some men were afraid of him, and some suspected him. There were others who made up to him, seeking his intimacy, but these he usually snubbed, and always kept at a distance. Though he had indulged in all the ordinary pleasures of young men, he had never been a jovial man. In his conversations with men he always seemed to think that he should use his time towards serving some purpose of business. With women he was quite the reverse. With women he could be happy. With women he could really associate. A woman he could really love — but I doubt whether for all that he could treat a woman well.
But he was known in the Oxfordshire country as a man who knew what he was about, and such men are always welcome. It is the man who does not know how to ride that is made uncomfortable in the hunting field by cold looks or expressed censure. And yet it is very rarely that such men do any real harm. Such a one may now and then get among the hounds or override the hunt, but it is not often so. Many such complaints are made; but in truth the too forward man, who presses the dogs, is generally one who can ride, but is too eager or too selfish to keep in his proper place. The bad rider, like the bad whist player, pays highly for what he does not enjoy, and should be thanked. But at both games he gets cruelly snubbed. At both games George Vavasor was great and he never got snubbed.
There were men who lived together at Roebury in a kind of club — four or five of them, who came thither from London, running backwards and forwards as hunting arrangements enabled them to do so — a brewer or two and a banker, with a would-be fast attorney, a sporting literary gentleman, and a young unmarried Member of Parliament who had no particular home of his own in the country. These men formed the Roebury Club, and a jolly life they had of it. They had their own wine closet at the King’s Head — or Roebury Inn as the house had come to be popularly called — and supplied their own game. The landlord found everything else; and as they were not very particular about their bills, they were allowed to do pretty much as they liked in the house. They were rather imperious, very late in their hours, sometimes, though not often, noisy, and once there had been a hasty quarrel which had made the landlord in his anger say that the club should be turned out of his house. But they paid well, chaffed the servants much oftener than they bullied them, and on the whole were very popular.
To this club Vavasor did not belong, alleging that he could not afford to live at their pace, and alleging, also, that his stays at Roebury were not long enough to make him a desirable member. The invitation to him was not repeated and he lodged elsewhere in the little town. But he occasionally in of an evening, and would make up with the members a table at whist.
He had come down to Roebury by mail train, ready for hunting the next morning, and walked into the club-room just at midnight. There he found Maxwell the banker, Grindley the would-be fast attorney, and Calder Jones the Member of Parliament, playing dummy. Neither of the brewers were there, nor was the sporting literary gentleman.
“Here’s Vavasor,” said Maxwell, “and now we won’t play this blackguard game any longer. Somebody told me, Vavasor, that you were gone away.”
“Gone away — what, like a fox?”
“I don’t know what it was; that something had happened to you since last season; that you were married, or dead, or gone abroad. By George, I’ve lost the trick after all! I hate dummy like the devil. I never hold a card in dummy’s hand. Yes, I know; that’s seven points on each side. Vavasor, come and cut. Upon my word if any one had asked me, I should have said you were dead.”
“But you see, nobody ever does think of asking you anything.”
“What you probably mean,” said Grindley, “is that Vavasor was not returned for Chelsea last February; but you’ve seen him since that. Are you going to try it again, Vavasor?”
“If you’ll lend me the money I will.”
“I don’t see what on earth a man gains by going into the house,” said Calder Jones. “I couldn’t help myself as it happened, but, upon my word it’s a deuce of a bore. A fellow thinks he can do as he likes about going — but he can’t. It wouldn’t do for me to give it up, because — ”
“Oh no, of course not; where should we all be?” said Vavasor.
“It’s you and me, Grindems,” said Maxwell. “D— parliament, and now let’s have a rubber.”
They played till three and Mr Calder Jones lost a good deal of money — a good deal of money in a little way, for they never played above ten-shilling points, and no bet was made for more than a pound or two. But Vavasor was the winner, and when he left the room he became the subject of some ill-natured remarks.
“I wonder he likes coming in here,” said Grindley, who had himself been the man to invite him to belong to the club, and who had at one time indulged the ambition of an intimacy with George Vavasor.
“I can’t understand it,” said Calder Jones, who was a little bitter about his money. “Last year he seemed to walk in just when he liked, as though he were one of us.”
“He’s a bad sort of fellow,” said Grindley; “he’s so uncommonly dark. I don’t know where on earth he gets his money from. He was heir to some small property in the north, but he lost every shilling of that when he was in the wine trade.”
“You’re wrong there, Grindems,” said Maxwell — making use of a playful nickname which he had invented for his friend.
“He made a pot of money at the wine business, and had he stuck to it he would have been a rich man.”
“He’s lost it all since then, and that place in the north into the bargain.”
“Wrong again, Grindems, my boy. If old Vavasor were to die tomorrow, Vavasor Hall would go just as he might choose to leave it. George may be a ruined man for aught I know — ”
“There’s no doubt about that, I believe,” said Grindley.
“Perhaps not, Grindems; but he can’t have lost Vavasor Hall, because he has never as yet had an interest in it. He’s the natural heir, and will probably get it some day.”
“All the same,” said Calder Jones, “isn’t it rather odd he should come in here?”
“We’ve asked him often enough,” said Maxwell; “not because we like him, but because we want him so often to make up a rubber. I don’t like George Vavasor, and I don’t know who does; but I like him better than dummy. And I’d sooner play whist with men I don’t like, Grindems, than I’d not play at all.” A bystander might have thought from the tone of Mr Maxwell’s voice that he was alluding to Mr Grindley himself, but Mr Grindley didn’t seem to take it in that light.
“That’s true, of course,” said he. “We can’t pick men just as we please. But I certainly didn’t think that he’d make it out for another season.”
The club breakfasted the next morning at nine o’clock, in order that they might start at half past for the meet at Edgehill. Edgehill is twelve miles from Roebury, and the hacks would do it in an hour and a half — or perhaps a little less.
“Does anybody know anything about that brown horse of Vavasor’s?” said Maxwell. “I saw him coming into the yard yesterday with that old groom of his.”
Note: Ah, my friend [Thackeray], from whom I have borrowed this scion of the nobility! Had he been left with us he would have forgiven me my little theft, and now that he has gone I will not change the name.
“He had a brown horse last season,” said Grindley — “a little thing that went very fast, but wasn’t quite sound on the road.”
“That was a mare,” said Maxwell, “and he sold her to Cinquebars.”
“For a hundred and fifty,” said Calder Jones, “and she wasn’t worth the odd fifty.”
“He won seventy with her at Leamington,” said Maxwell, “and I doubt whether he’d take his money now.”
“Is Cinquebars coming down here this year?”
“I don’t know,” said Maxwell. “I hope not. He’s the best fellow in the world, but he can’t ride, and he don’t care for hunting, and he makes more row than any fellow I ever met. I wish some fellow could tell me something about that fellow’s brown horse.”
“I’d never buy a horse of Vavasor’s if I were you,” said Grindley. “He never has anything that’s all right all round.”
Ah, my friend [Thackeray], from whom I have borrowed this scion of the nobility! Had he been left with us he would have forgiven me my little theft, and now that he has gone I will not change the name.
“And who has?” said Maxwell, as he took into his plate a second mutton chop, which had just been brought up hot into the room especially for him. “That’s the mistake men make about horses, and that’s why there’s so much cheating. I never ask for a warranty with a horse, and don’t very often have a horse examined. Yet I do as well as others. You can’t have perfect horses any more than you can perfect men, or perfect women. You put up with red hair, or bad teeth, or big feet, or sometimes with the devil of a voice. But a man when he wants a horse won’t put up with anything! Therefore those who’ve got horses to sell must lie. When I go into the market with three hundred pounds I expect a perfect animal. As I never do that now I never expect a perfect animal. I like ’em to see; I like ’em to have four legs; and I like ’em to have a little wind. I don’t much mind anything else.”
“By jove, you’re about right,” said Calder Jones. The reader will therefore readily see that Mr Maxwell the banker reigned as king in that club.
Vavasor had sent two horses on in charge of Bat Smithers, and followed on a pony about fourteen hands high, which he had ridden as a cover hack for the last four years. He did not start till near ten, but he was able to catch Bat with his two horses about a mile and a half on that side of Edgehill. “Have you managed to come along pretty clean?” the master asked as he came up with his servant.
“They be the most beastly roads in all England,” said Bat, who always found fault with any county in which he happened to be located. “But I’ll warrant I’m cleaner than most on ’em. What for any county should make such roads as them I never could tell.”
“The roads about here are bad, certainly — very bad. But I suppose they would have been better had Providence sent better materials. And what do you think of the brown horse, Bat?”
“Well, sir.” He said no more, and that he said with a drawl.
“He’s as fine an animal to look at as ever I put my eye on,” said George.
“He’s all that,” said Bat.
“He’s got lots of pace too.”
“I’m sure he has, sir.”
“And they tell me you can’t beat him at jumping.”
“They can mostly do that, sir, if they’re well handled.”
“You see he’s a deal over my weight.”
“Yes, he is, Mr Vavasor. He is a fourteen stoner.”
“Or fifteen,” said Vavasor.
“Perhaps he may, sir. There’s no knowing what a ‘orse can carry till he’s tried.”
George asked his groom no more questions, but felt sure that he had better sell his brown horse if he could. Now I here protest that there was nothing specially amiss with the brown horse. Towards the end of the preceding season he had overreached himself and had been lame, and had been sold by some owner with more money than brains who had not cared to wait for a cure. Then there had gone with him a bad character, and a vague suspicion had attached itself to him, as there does to hundreds of horses which are very good animals in their way. He had come thus to Tattersall’s and Vavasor had bought him cheap, thinking that he might make money of him, from his form and action. He had found nothing amiss with him — nor, indeed, had Bat Smithers. But his character went with him, and therefore Bat Smithers thought it well to be knowing. George Vavasor knew as much of horses as most men can — as, perhaps, any man can who is not a dealer, or a veterinary surgeon; but he, like all men, doubted his own knowledge, though on that subject he would never admit that he doubted it. Therefore he took Bat’s word and felt sure that the horse was wrong.
“We shall have a run from the big wood,” said George.
“If they make un break, you will, sir,” said Bat.
“At any rate I’ll ride the brown horse,” said George. Then, as soon as that was settled between them, the Roebury Club overtook them.
There was now a rush of horses on the road together, and they were within a quarter of a mile of Edgehill church, close to which was the meet. Bat with his two hunters fell a little behind, and the others trotted on together. The other grooms with their animals were on in advance, and were by this time employed in combing out forelocks, and rubbing stirrup leathers and horses’ legs free from the dirt of the roads — but Bat Smithers was like his master, and did not congregate much with other men, and Vavasor was sure to give orders to his servant different from the orders given by others.
“Are you well mounted this year?” Maxwell asked of George Vavasor.
“No, indeed; I never was what I call well mounted yet. I generally have one horse and three or four cripples. That brown horse behind there is pretty good, I believe.”
“I see your man has got the old chestnut mare with him.”
“She’s one of the cripples — not but what she’s as sound as a bell, and as good a hunter as ever I wish to ride; but she makes a little noise when she’s going.”
“So that you can hear her three fields off,” said Grindley.
“Five if the fields are small enough and your ears are sharp enough,” said Vavasor. “All the same I wouldn’t change her for the best horse I ever saw under you.”
“Had you there, Grindems,” said Maxwell.
“No he didn’t,” said Grindley. “He didn’t have me at all.”
“Your horses, Grindley, are always up to all the work they have to do,” said George; “and I don’t know what any man wants more than that.”
“Had you again, Grindems,” said Maxwell.
“I can ride against him any day,” said Grindley,
“Yes; or against a brick wall either, if your horse didn’t know any better,” said George.
“Had you again, Grindems,” said Maxwell. Whereupon Mr Grindley trotted on, round the corner by the church, and into the field in which the hounds were assembled. The fire had become too hot for him, and he thought it best to escape. Had it been Vavasor alone he would have turned upon him and snarled, but he could not afford to exhibit any ill temper to the king of the club. Mr Grindley was not popular, and were Maxwell to turn openly against him his sporting life down at Roebury would decidedly be a failure.
The lives of such men as Mr Grindley — men who are tolerated in the daily society of others who are accounted their superiors — do not seem to have many attractions. And yet how many such men does one see in almost every set? Why Mr Grindley should have been inferior to Mr Maxwell the banker, or to Stone, or to Prettyman who were brewers, or even to Mr Pollock the heavyweight literary gentleman, I can hardly say. An attorney by his trade is at any rate as good as a brewer, and there are many attorneys who hold their heads high anywhere. Grindley was a rich man — or at any rate rich enough for the life he led. I don’t know much about his birth, but I believe it was as good as Maxwell’s. He was not ignorant, or a fool — whereas I rather think Maxwell was a fool. Grindley had made his own way in the world, but Maxwell would certainly not have made himself a banker if his father had not been a banker before him; nor could the bank have gone on and prospered had there not been partners there who were better men of business than our friend. Grindley knew that he had a better intellect than Maxwell; and yet he allowed Maxwell to snub him, and he toadied Maxwell in return. It was not on the score of riding that Maxwell claimed and held his superiority, for Grindley did not want pluck, and everyone knew that Maxwell had lived freely and that his nerves were not what they had been. I think it had come from the outward look of the men, from the form of each, from the gait and visage which in one was good and in the other insignificant. The nature of such dominion of man over man is very singular, but this is certain, that when once obtained in manhood it may be easily held.
Among boys at school the same thing is even more conspicuous, because boys have less of conscience than men, are more addicted to tyranny, and when weak are less prone to feel the misery and disgrace of succumbing. Who has been through a large school and does not remember the Maxwells and Grindleys — the tyrants and the slaves — those who domineered and those who submitted? Nor was it, even then, personal strength, nor always superior courage, that gave the power of command.
Nor was it intellect, or thoughtfulness, nor by any means such qualities as make men and boys loveable. It is said by many who have had to deal with boys, that certain among them claim and obtain ascendancy by the spirit within them; but I doubt whether the ascendancy is not rather thrust on them than claimed by them. Here again I think the outward gait of the boy goes far towards obtaining for him the submission of his fellows.
But the tyrant boy does not become the tyrant man, or the slave boy the slave man, because the outward visage, that has been noble or mean in the one, changes and becomes so often mean or noble in the other.
“By George, there’s Pollock!” said Maxwell, as he rode into the field by the church. “I’ll bet half a crown that he’s come down from London this morning, that he was up all night last night, and that he tells us so three times before the hounds go out of the paddock.” Mr Pollock was the heavyweight sporting literary gentleman.
Of all the sights in the world there is, I think, none more beautiful than that of a pack of fox-hounds seated, on a winter morning round the huntsman if the place of meeting has been chosen with anything of artistic skill. It should be in a grassy field and the field should be small. It should not be absolutely away from all buildings, and the hedgerows should not have been clipped and pared, and made straight with reference to modern agricultural economy. There should be trees near, and the ground should be a little uneven, so as to mark some certain small space as the exact spot where the dogs and servants of the hunt should congregate.
There are well-known grand meets in England, in the parks of noblemen, before their houses, or even on what are called their lawns; but these magnificent affairs have but little of the beauty of which I speak. Such assemblies are too grand and too ornate, and, moreover, much too far removed from true sporting proprieties. At them, equipages are shining, and ladies’ dresses are gorgeous, and crowds of tradesmen from the neighbouring town have come there to look at the grand folk. To my eye there is nothing beautiful in that. The meet I speak of is arranged with a view to sport, but the accident of the locality may make it the prettiest thing in the world.
Such, in a special degree, was the case at Edgehill. At Edgehill the whole village consisted of three or four cottages; but there was a small old church, with an old grey tower, and a narrow, green, almost dark, churchyard, surrounded by elm trees. The road from Roebury to the meet passed by the church stile, and turning just beyond it came upon the gate which led into the little field in which the hounds felt themselves as much at home as in their kennels. There might be six or seven acres in the field, which was long and narrow, so that the huntsman had space to walk leisurely up and down with the pack clustering round him, when he considered that longer sitting might chill them. The church tower was close at hand, visible through the trees, and the field itself was green and soft, though never splashing with mud or heavy with holes.
Edgehill was a favourite meet in that country, partly because foxes were very abundant in the great wood adjacent, partly because the whole country around is grassland, and partly, no doubt, from the sporting propensities of the neighbouring population. As regards my own taste, I do not know that I do like beginning a day with a great wood — and if not beginning it, certainly not ending it. It is hard to come upon the cream of hunting, as it is upon the cream of any other delight. Who can always drink Lafitte of the finest, can always talk to a woman who is both beautiful and witty, or can always find the right spirit in the poetry he reads? A man has usually to work through much mud before he gets his nugget. It is so certainly in hunting, and a big wood too frequently afflicts the sportsman, as the mud does the miner. The small gorse cover is the happy, much-envied bit of ground in which the gold is sure to show itself readily. But without the woods the gorse would not hold the foxes, and without the mud the gold would not have found its resting-place.
But, as I have said, Edgehill was a popular meet, and, as regarded the meet itself, was eminently picturesque. On the present occasion the little field was full of horsemen, moving about slowly, chatting together, smoking cigars, getting off from their hacks and mounting their hunters, giving orders to their servants, and preparing for the day. There were old country gentlemen there, greeting each other from far sides of the county; sporting farmers who love to find themselves alongside their landlords, and to feel that the pleasures of the country are common to both; men down from town, like our friends of the Roebury club, who made hunting their chosen pleasure, and who formed, in number, perhaps the largest portion of the field; officers from garrisons round about; a cloud of servants, and a few nondescript stragglers who had picked up horses, hither and thither, round the country. Outside the gate on the road were drawn up a variety of vehicles, open carriages, dogcarts, gigs, and waggonettes, in some few of which were seated ladies who had come over to see the meet. But Edgehill was, essentially, not a ladies’ meet. The distances to it were long, and the rides in Cranby Wood — the big wood — were not adapted for wheels. There were one or two ladies on horseback, as is always the case; but Edgehill was not a place popular, even with hunting ladies. One carriage, that of the old master of the hounds, had entered the sacred precincts of the field, and from this the old baronet was just descending, as Maxwell, Calder Jones, and Vavasor rode into the field.
“I hope I see you well, Sir William,” said Maxwell, greeting the master. Calder Jones also made his little speech, and so did Vavasor.
“Humph — well, yes, I’m pretty well, thank’ee. Just move on, will you? My mare can’t stir here.” Then someone else spoke to him, and he only grunted in answer. Having slowly been assisted up on to his horse — for he was over seventy years of age — he trotted off to the hounds, while all the farmers round him touched their hats to him. But his mind was laden with affairs of import, and he noticed no one. In a whispered voice he gave his instructions to his huntsman, who said, “Yes, Sir William, No, Sir William.”
“No doubt, Sir William.” One long-eared, long-legged fellow, in a hunting cap and scarlet coat, hung listening by, anxious to catch something of the orders for the morning. “Who the devil’s that fellow, that’s all breeches and boots?” said Sir William aloud to someone near him, as the huntsman moved off with the hounds. Sir William knew the man well enough, but was minded to punish him for his discourtesy. “Where shall we find first, Sir William?” said Calder Jones, in a voice that was really very humble. “How the mischief am I to know where the foxes are?” said Sir William, with an oath; and Calder Jones retired unhappy, and for the moment altogether silenced.
And yet Sir William was the most popular man in the county, and no more courteous gentleman ever sat at the bottom of his own table. A mild man he was, too, when out of his saddle, and one by no means disposed to assume special supremacy. But a master of hounds, if he have long held the country — and Sir William had held his for more than thirty years — obtains a power which that of no other potentate can equal. He may say and do what he pleases, and his tyranny is always respected. No conspiracy against him has a chance of success; no sedition will meet with sympathy — that is, if he be successful in showing sport. If a man be sworn at, abused, and put down without cause, let him bear it and think that he has been a victim for the public good. And let him never be angry with the master. That rough tongue is the necessity of the master’s position. They used to say that no captain could manage a ship without swearing at his men. But what are the captain’s troubles in comparison with those of the master of hounds? The captain’s men are under discipline, and can be locked up, flogged, or have their grog stopped. The master of hounds cannot stop the grog of any offender, and he can only stop the tongue, or horse, of such an one by very sharp words.
“Well, Pollock, when did you come?” said Maxwell.
“By George,” said the literary gentleman, “just down from London by the 8.50 from Euston Square, and got over here from Winslow in a trap, with two fellows I never saw in my life before. We came tandem in a fly, and did the nineteen miles in an hour.”
“Come, Athenian, draw it mild,” said Maxwell.
“We did, indeed. I wonder whether they’ll pay me their share of the fly. I had to leave Onslow Crescent at a quarter before eight, and I did three hours’ work before I started.”
“Then you did it by candle-light,” said Grindley.
“Of course I did; and why shouldn’t I? Do you suppose no one can work by candle-light except a lawyer? I suppose you fellows were playing whist, and drinking hard. I’m uncommon glad I wasn’t with you, for I shall be able to ride.”
“I bet you a pound,” said Jones, “if there’s a run, I see more of it than you.”
“I’ll take that bet with Jones,” said Grindley, “and Vavasor shall be the judge.”
“Gentlemen, the hounds can’t get out, if you will stop up the gate,” said Sir William. Then the pack passed through, and they all trotted on for four miles, to Cranby Wood.
Vavasor, as he rode on to the wood, was alone, or speaking, from time to time, a few words to his servant. “I’ll ride the chestnut mare in the wood,” he said, “and do you keep near me.”
“I bean’t to be galloping up and down them rides, I suppose,” said Bat, almost contemptuously.
“I shan’t gallop up and down the rides, myself; but do you mark me, to know where I am, so that I can change if a fox should go away.”
“You’ll be here all day, sir. That’s my belief.”
“If so, I won’t ride the brown horse at all. But do you take care to let me have him if there’s a chance. Do you understand?”
“Oh, yes, I understand, sir. There ain’t no difficulty in my understanding — only I don’t think, sir, you’ll ever get a fox out of that wood today. Why, it stands to reason. The wind’s from the north-east.”
Cranby Wood is very large — there being, in truth, two or three woods together. It was nearly twelve before they found; and then for an hour there was great excitement among the men, who rode up and down the rides as the hounds drove the fox from one end to another of the enclosure. Once or twice the poor animal did try to go away, and then there was great hallooing, galloping, and jumping over unnecessary fences; but he was headed back again, or changed his mind, not liking the north-east wind of which Bat Smithers had predicted such bad things. After one, the crowd of men became rather more indifferent, and clustered together in broad spots, eating their lunch, smoking cigars, and chaffing each other. It was singular to observe the amazing quantity of ham sandwiches and of sherry that had been carried into Cranby Wood on that day. Grooms appeared to have been laden with cases, and men were as well armed with flasks at their saddle-bows as they used to be with pistols. Maxwell and Pollock formed the centre of one of these crowds, and chaffed each other with the utmost industry, till, tired of having inflicted no wounds, they turned upon Grindley and drove him out of the circle. “You’ll make that man cut his throat, if you go on at that,” said Pollock. “Shall I?” said Maxwell. “Then I’ll certainly stick to him for the sake of humanity in general.” During all this time Vavasor sat apart, quite alone, and Bat Smithers grimly kept his place, about three hundred yards from him.
“We shan’t do any good today,” said Grindley, coming up to Vavasor.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Vavasor.
“That old fellow has got to be so stupid, he doesn’t know what he’s about,” said Grindley, meaning Sir William.
“How can he make the fox break?” said Vavasor; and as his voice was by no means encouraging Grindley rode away.
Lunch and cigars lasted till two, during which hour the hounds, the huntsmen, the whips, and old Sir William were hard at work, as also were some few others who persistently followed every chance of the game. From that till three there were two or three flashes in the pan, and false reports as to foxes which had gone away, which first set men galloping, and then made them very angry. After three, men began to say naughty things, to abuse Cranby Wood, to wish violently that they had remained at home or gone elsewhere, and to speak irreverently of their ancient master. “It’s the cussedest place in all creation,” said Maxwell. “I often said I’d not come here any more, and now I say it again.”
“And yet you’ll be here the next meet,” said Grindley, who had sneaked back to his old companions in weariness of spirit.
“Grindems, you know a sight too much,” said Maxwell; “you do indeed. An ordinary fellow has no chance with you.”
Grindley was again going to catch it, but was this time saved by the appearance of the huntsman, who came galloping up one of the rides, with a lot of the hounds at his heels.
“He isn’t away, Tom, surely?” said Maxwell.
“He’s out of the wood somewheres,” said Tom — and off they all went. Vavasor changed his horse, getting on to the brown one, and giving up his chestnut mare to Bat Smithers, who suggested that he might as well go home to Roebury now. Vavasor gave him no answer, but, trotting on to the point where the rides met, stopped a moment and listened carefully. Then he took a path diverging away from that by which the huntsmen and the crowd of horsemen had gone, and made the best of his way through the wood. At the end of this he came upon Sir William, who, with no one near him but his servant, was standing in the pathway of a little hunting gate.
“Hold hard,” said Sir William. “The hounds are not out of the wood yet.”
“Is the fox away, sir?”
“What’s the good of that if we can’t get the hounds out? Yes, he’s away. He passed out where I’m standing.” And then he began to blow his horn lustily, and by degrees other men and a few hounds came down the ride. Then Tom, with his horse almost blown, made his appearance outside the wood, and soon there came a rush of men, nearly on the top of one another, pushing on, not knowing whither, but keenly alive to the fact that the fox had at last consented to move his quarters.
Tom touched his hat, and looked at his master, inquiringly. “He’s gone for Claydon’s,” said the master. “Try them up that hedgerow.” Tom did try them up the hedgerow, and in half a minute the hounds came upon the scent. Then you might see men settling their hats on their heads, and feeling their feet in their stirrups. The moment for which they had so long waited had come, and yet there were many who would now have preferred that the fox should be headed back into cover. Some had but little confidence in their half-blown horses; with many the waiting, though so abused and anathematized, was in truth more to their taste than the run itself — with others the excitement had gone by, and a gallop over a field or two was necessary before it would be restored. With most men at such a moment there is a little nervousness, some fear of making a bad start, a dread lest others should have more of the success of the hunt than falls to them. But there was a great rush and a mighty bustle as the hounds made out their game, and Sir William felt himself called upon to use the rough side of his tongue to more than one delinquent. And then certain sly old stagers might be seen turning off to the left, instead of following the course of the game as indicated by the hounds. They were men who had felt the air as they came out, and knew that the fox must soon run down wind, whatever he might do for the first half mile or so, men who knew also which was the shortest way to Claydon’s by the road. Ah, the satisfaction that there is when these men are thrown out, and their dead knowledge proved to be of no avail! If a fox will only run straight, heading from the cover on his real line, these very sagacious gentlemen seldom come to much honour and glory.
In the present instance the beast seemed determined to go straight enough, for the hounds ran the scent along three or four hedgerows in a line. He had managed to get for himself full ten minutes’ start, and had been able to leave the cover and all his enemies well behind him before he bethought himself as to his best way to his purposed destination. And here, from field to field, there were little hunting gates at which men crowded lustily, poking and shoving each other’s horses, and hating each other with a bitterness of hatred which is, I think, known nowhere else. No hunting man ever wants to jump if he can help it, and the hedges near the gate were not alluring. A few there were who made lines for themselves, taking the next field to the right, or scrambling through the corners of the fences while the rush was going on at the gates; and among these was George Vavasor. He never rode in a crowd, always keeping himself somewhat away from men as well as hounds. He would often be thrown out, and then men would hear no more of him for that day. On such occasions he did not show himself, as other men do, twenty minutes after the fox had been killed or run to ground — but betook himself home by himself, going through the byeways and lanes, thus leaving no report of his failure to be spoken of by his compeers.
As long as the line of gates lasted, the crowd continued as thick as ever, and the best man was he whose horse could shove the hardest. After passing some four or five fields in this way they came out upon a road, and, the scent holding strong, the dogs crossed it without any demurring. Then came doubt into the minds of men, many of whom, before they would venture away from their position on the lane, narrowly watched the leading hounds to see whether there was indication of a turn to the one side or the other. Sir William, whose seventy odd years excused him, turned sharp to the left, knowing that he could make Claydon’s that way; and very many were the submissive horsemen who followed him; a few took the road to the right, having in their minds some little game of their own. The hardest riders there had already crossed from the road into the country, and were going well to the hounds, ignorant, some of them, of the brook before them, and others unheeding. Foremost among these was Burgo Fitzgerald — Burgo Fitzgerald, whom no man had ever known to crane at a fence, or to hug a road, or to spare his own neck or his horse’s. And yet poor Burgo seldom finished well — coming to repeated grief in this matter of his hunting, as he did so constantly in other matters of his life.
But almost neck and neck with Burgo was Pollock, the sporting literary gentleman. Pollock had but two horses to his stud, and was never known to give much money for them — and he weighed without his boots, fifteen stone! No one ever knew how Pollock did it — more especially as all the world declared that he was as ignorant of hunting as any tailor. He could ride, or when he couldn’t ride he could tumble — men said that of him — and he would ride as long as the beast under him could go. But few knew the sad misfortunes which poor Pollock sometimes encountered — the muddy ditches in which he was left; the despair with which he would stand by his unfortunate horse when the poor brute could no longer move across some deep-ploughed field; the miles that he would walk at night beside a tired animal, as he made his way slowly back to Roebury!
Then came Tom the huntsman, with Calder Jones close to him, and Grindley intent on winning his sovereign. Vavasor had also crossed the road somewhat to the left, carrying with him one or two who knew that he was a safe man to follow. Maxwell had been ignominiously turned by the hedge, which, together with its ditch, formed a fence such as all men do not love at the beginning of a run. He had turned from it, acknowledging the cause. “By George!” said he, “that’s too big for me yet awhile; and there’s no end of a river at the bottom,” So he had followed the master down the road.
All those whom we have named managed to get over the brook, Pollock’s horse barely contriving to get up his hind legs from the broken edge of the bank. Some nags refused it, and their riders thus lost all their chance of sport for that day. Such is the lot of men who hunt. A man pays five or six pounds for his day’s amusement, and it is ten to one that the occurrences of the day disgust rather than gratify him! One or two got in, and scrambled out on the other side, but Tufto Pearlings, the Manchester man from Friday Street, stuck in the mud at the bottom, and could not get his mare out till seven men had come with ropes to help him. “Where the devil is my fellow?” Pearlings asked of the countrymen; but the countrymen could not tell him that “his fellow” with his second horse was riding the hunt with great satisfaction to himself.
George Vavasor found that his horse went with him uncommonly well, taking his fences almost in the stride of his gallop, and giving unmistakeable signs of good condition. “I wonder what it is that’s amiss with him,” said George to himself, resolving, however, that he would sell him that day if he got an opportunity. Straight went the line of the fox, up from the brook, and Tom began to say that his master had been wrong about Claydon’s.
“Where are we now?” said Burgo, as four or five of them dashed through the open gate of a farmyard.
“This is Bulby’s farm,” said Tom, “and we’re going right away for Elmham Wood.”
“Elmham Wood be d —” said a stout farmer, who had come as far as that with them. “You won’t see Elmham Wood today.”
“I suppose you know best,” said Tom; and then they were through the yard, across another road, and down a steep ravine by the side of a little copse. “He’s been through them firs, any way,” said Tom. “To him, Gaylass!” Then up they went the other side of the ravine, and saw the body of the hounds almost a field before them at the top.
“I say — that took some of the wind out of a fellow,” said Pollock.
“You mustn’t mind about wind now,” said Burgo, dashing on.
“Wasn’t the pace awful, coming up to that farm-house?” said Calder Jones, looking round to see if Grindley was shaken off. But Grindley, with some six or seven others, was still there. And there, also, always in the next field to the left, was George Vavasor. He had spoken no word to any one since the hunt commenced, nor had he wished to speak to any one. He desired to sell his horse — and he desired also to succeed in the run for other reasons than that, though I think he would have found it difficult to define them.
Now they had open grass land for about a mile, but with very heavy fences — so that the hounds gained upon them a little, and Pollock’s weight began to tell. The huntsman and Burgo were leading with some fortunate country gentleman whose good stars had brought him in upon them at the farmyard gate. It is the injustice of such accidents as this that breaks the heart of a man who has honestly gone through all the heat and work of the struggle! And the hounds had veered a little round to the left, making, after all, for Claydon’s. “Darned if the Squire warn’t right,” said Tom. Sir William, though a baronet, was familiarly called the Squire throughout the hunt.
“We ain’t going for Claydon’s now?” asked Burgo.
“Them’s Claydon beeches we sees over there,” said Tom. “’Tain’t often the Squire’s wrong.”
Here they came to a little double rail and a little quickset hedge. A double rail is a nasty fence always if it has been made any way strong, and one which a man with a wife and a family is justified in avoiding. They mostly can be avoided, having gates; and this could have been avoided. But Burgo never avoided anything, and went over it beautifully. The difficulty is to be discreet when the man before one has been indiscreet. Tom went for the gate, as did Pollock, who knew that he could have no chance at the double rails. But Calder Jones came to infinite grief, striking the top bar of the second rail, and going head foremost out of his saddle, as though thrown by a catapult. There we must leave him. Grindley, rejoicing greatly at this discomfiture, made for the gate; but the country gentleman with the fresh horse accomplished the rails, and was soon alongside of Burgo.
“I didn’t see you at the start,” said Burgo.
“And I didn’t see you,” said the country gentleman; “so it’s even.”
Burgo did not see the thing in the same light, but he said no more. Grindley and Tom were soon after them, Tom doing his utmost to shake off the attorney. Pollock was coming on also; but the pace had been too much for him, and though the ground rode light his poor beast laboured and grunted sorely. The hounds were still veering somewhat to the left, and Burgo, jumping over a small fence into the same field with them, saw that there was a horseman ahead of him. This was George Vavasor, who was going well, without any symptom of distress.
And now they were at Claydon’s, having run over some seven miles of ground in about thirty-five minutes. To those who do not know what hunting is, this pace does not seem very extraordinary; but it had been quite quick enough, as was testified by the horses which had gone the distance. Our party entered Claydon’s Park at back, through a gate in the park palings that was open on hunting days; but a much more numerous lot was there almost as soon as them, who had come in by the main entrance. This lot was headed by Sir William, and our friend Maxwell was with him.
“A jolly thing so far,” said Burgo to Maxwell; “about the best we’ve had this year.”
“I didn’t see a yard of it,” said Maxwell. “I hadn’t nerve to get off the first road, and I haven’t been off it ever since.” Maxwell was a man who never lied about his hunting, or had the slightest shame in riding roads. “Who’s been with you?” said he.
“There’ve been Toni and I— and Calder Jones was there for a while. I think he killed himself somewhere. And there was Pollock, and your friend Grindley, and a chap whose name I don’t know who dropped out of heaven about half-way in the run; and there was another man whose back I saw just now; there he is — by heavens, it’s Vavasor! I didn’t know he was here.”
They hung about the Claydon covers for ten minutes, and then their fox went off again — their fox or another, as to which there was a great discussion afterwards; but he who would have suggested the idea of a new fox to Sir William would have been a bold man. A fox, however, went off, turning still to the left from Claydon’s towards Roebury. Those ten minutes had brought up some fifty men; but it did not bring up Calder Jones nor Tufto Pearlings, nor some half-dozen others who had already come to serious misfortune; but Grindley was there, very triumphant in his own success, and already talking of Jones’s sovereign. And Pollock was there also, thankful for that ten minutes’ law, and trusting that wind might be given to his horse to finish the run triumphantly.
But the pace on leaving Claydon’s was better than ever. This may have come from the fact that the scent was keener, as they got out so close upon their game. But I think they must have changed their fox. Maxwell, who saw him go, swore that he was fresh and clean. Burgo said that he knew it to be the same fox, but gave no reason. “Same fox! in course it was; why shouldn’t it be the same?” said Tom. The country gentleman who had dropped from heaven was quite sure that they had changed, and so were most of those who had ridden the road. Pollock confined himself to hoping that he might soon be killed, and that thus his triumph for the day might be assured.
On they went, and the pace soon became too good for the poor author. His horse at last refused a little hedge, and there was not another trot to be got out of him. That night Pollock turned up at Roebury about nine o’clock, very hungry — and it was known that his animal was alive — but the poor horse ate not a grain of oats that night, nor on the next morning. Vavasor had again taken a line to himself, on this occasion a little to the right of the meet; but Maxwell followed him and rode close with him to the end. Burgo for a while still led the body of the field, incurring at first much condemnation from Sir William — nominally for hurrying on among the hounds, but in truth because he got before Sir William himself. During this latter part of the run Sir William stuck to the hounds in spite of his seventy odd years. Going down into Marham Bottom, some four or five were left behind, for they feared the soft ground near the river, and did not know the pass through it. But Sir William knew it, and those who remained close to him got over that trouble. Burgo, who would still lead, nearly foundered in the bog — but he was light, and his horse pulled him through — leaving a fore-shoe in the mud. After that Burgo was contented to give Sir William the lead.
Then they came up by Marham Pits to Cleshey Small Wood, which they passed without hanging there a minute, and over the grass lands of Cleshey Farm. Here Vavasor and Maxwell joined the others, having gained some three hundred yards in distance by their course, but having been forced to jump the Marham Stream which Sir William had forded. The pace now was as good as the horses could make it — and perhaps something better as regarded some of them. Sir William’s servant had been with him, and he had got his second horse at Claydon’s; Maxwell had been equally fortunate; Tom’s second horse had not come up, and his beast was in great distress; Grindley had remained behind at Marham Bottom, being contented perhaps with having beaten Calder Jones — from whom by-the-by I may here declare that he never got his sovereign. Burgo, Vavasor, and the country gentleman still held on; but it was devoutly desired by all of them that the fox might soon come to the end of his tether. Ah! that intense longing that the fox may fail, when the failing powers of the horse begin to make themselves known — and the consciousness comes on that all that one has done will go for nothing unless the thing can be brought to a close in a field or two! So far you have triumphed, leaving scores of men behind; but of what good is all that, if you also are to be left behind at the last?
It was manifest now to all who knew the country that the fox was making for Thornden Deer Park, but Thornden Deer Park was still two miles ahead of them, and the hounds were so near to their game that the poor beast could hardly hope to live till he got there. He had tried a well-known drain near Cleshey Farm House; but it had been inhospitably, nay cruelly, closed against him. Soon after that he threw himself down in a ditch, and the eager hounds overran him, giving him a moment’s law — and giving also a moment’s law to horses that wanted it as badly. “I’m about done for,” said Burgo to Maxwell. “Luckily for you,” said Maxwell, “the fox is much in the same way.”
But the fox had still more power left in him than poor Burgo Fitzgerald’s horse. He gained a minute’s check and then he started again, being viewed away by Sir William himself. The country gentleman of whom mention has been made also viewed him, and holloa’d as he did so: “Yoicks, tally; gone away!” The unfortunate man! “What the d — are you roaring at?” said Sir William. “Do you suppose I don’t know where the fox is?” Whereupon the country gentleman retreated, and became less conspicuous than he had been.
Away they went again, off Cleshey and into Thornden parish, on the land of Sorrell Farm — a spot well to be remembered by one or two ever afterwards. Here Sir William made for a gate which took him a little out of the line; but Maxwell and Burgo Fitzgerald, followed by Vavasor, went straight ahead. There was a huge ditch and boundary bank there which Sir William had known and had avoided. Maxwell, whose pluck had returned to him at last, took it well. His horse was comparatively fresh and made nothing of it. Then came poor Burgo! Oh, Burgo, hadst thou not have been a very child, thou shouldst have known that now, at this time of the day — after all that thy gallant horse had done for thee — it was impossible to thee or him. But when did Burgo Fitzgerald know anything? He rode at the bank as though it had been the first fence of the day, striking his poor beast with his spurs, as though muscle, strength, and new power could be imparted by their rowels. The animal rose at the bank, and in some way got upon it, scrambling as he struck it with his chest, and then fell headlong into the ditch at the other side, a confused mass of head, limbs, and body. His career was at an end, and he had broken his heart! Poor noble beast, noble in vain! To his very last gasp he had done his best, and had deserved that he should have been in better hands. His master’s ignorance had killed him. There are men who never know how little a horse can do — or how much!
There was to some extent a gap in the fence when Maxwell had first ridden it and Burgo had followed him; a gap, or break in the hedge at the top, indicating plainly the place at which a horse could best get over. To this spot Vavasor followed, and was on the bank at Burgo’s heels before he knew what had happened. But the man had got away and only the horse lay there in the ditch. “Are you hurt?” said Vavasor; “can I do anything?” But he did not stop. “If you can find a chap just send him to me,” said Burgo in a melancholy tone. Then he sat down, with his feet in the ditch, and looked at the carcase of his horse.
There was no more need of jumping that day. The way was open into the next field — a turnip field — and there amidst the crisp breaking turnip-tops, with the breath of his enemies hot upon him, with their sharp teeth at his entrails, biting at them impotently in the agonies of his death struggle, poor Reynard finished his career. Maxwell was certainly the first there — but Sir William and George Vavasor were close upon him. That taking of brushes of which we used to hear is a little out of fashion; but if such honour were due to any one it was due to Vavasor, for he and he only had ridden the hunt throughout. But he claimed no honour, and none was specially given to him. He and Maxwell rode homewards together, having sent assistance to poor Burgo Fitzgerald; and as they went along the road, saying but little to each other, Maxwell, in a very indifferent voice, asked him a question.
“What do you want for that horse, Vavasor?”
“A hundred and fifty,” said Vavasor.
“He’s mine,” said Maxwell. So the brown horse was sold for about half his value, because he had brought with him a bad character.
Burgo Fitzgerald, of whose hunting experiences something has been told in the last chapter, was a young man born in the purple of the English aristocracy. He was related to half the dukes in the kingdom, and had three countesses for his aunts. When he came of age he was master of a sufficient fortune to make it quite out of the question that he should be asked to earn his bread; and though that, and other windfalls that had come to him, had long since been spent, no one had ever made to him so ridiculous a proposition as that. He was now thirty, and for some years past had been known to be much worse than penniless; but still he lived on in the same circles, still slept softly and drank of the best, and went about with his valet and his groom and his horses, and fared sumptuously every day. Some people said the countesses did it for him, and some said that it was the dukes — while others, again, declared that the Jews were his most generous friends. At any rate he still seemed to live as he had always lived, setting tradesmen at defiance, and laughing to scorn all the rules which regulate the lives of other men.
About eighteen months before the time of which I am now speaking, a great chance had come in this young man’s way, and he had almost succeeded in making himself one of the richest men in England. There had been then a great heiress in the land, on whom the properties of half-a-dozen ancient families had concentrated; and Burgo, who in spite of his iniquities still kept his position in the drawing-rooms of the great, had almost succeeded in obtaining the hand and the wealth — as people still said that he had obtained the heart, of the Lady Glencora M’Cluskie. But sundry mighty magnates, driven almost to despair at the prospect of such a sacrifice, had sagaciously put their heads together, and the result had been that the Lady Glencora had heard reason. She had listened, with many haughty tossings indeed of her proud little head, with many throbbings of her passionate young heart; but in the end she listened and heard reason. She saw Burgo, for the last time, and told him that she was the promised bride of Plantagenet Palliser, nephew and heir of the Duke of Omnium.
He had borne it like a man — never having groaned openly, or quivered once before any comrade at the name of the Lady Glencora. She had married Mr Palliser at St George’s Square, and on the morning of the marriage he had hung about his club door in Pall Mall, listening to the bells, and saying a word or two about the wedding, with admirable courage. It had been for him a great chance — and he had lost it. Who can say, too, that his only regret was for the money? He had spoken once of it to a married sister of his, in whose house he had first met Lady Glencora. “I shall never marry now — that is all,” he said — and then he went about, living his old reckless life, with the same recklessness as ever. He was one of those young men with dark hair and blue eyes — who wear no beard, and are certainly among the handsomest of all God’s creatures. No more handsome man than Burgo Fitzgerald lived in his days; and this merit at any rate was his — that he thought nothing of his own beauty. But he lived ever without conscience, without purpose — with no idea that it behoved him as a man to do anything but eat and drink — or ride well to hounds till some poor brute, much nobler than himself, perished beneath him.
He chiefly concerns our story at this present time because the Lady Glencora who had loved him — and would have married him had not those sagacious heads prevented it — was a cousin of Alice Vavasor’s. She was among those very great relations with whom Alice was connected by her mother’s side — being indeed so near to Lady Macleod, that she was first cousin to that lady, only once removed. Lady Midlothian was aunt to the Lady Glencora, and our Alice might have called cousins, and not been forbidden, with the old Lord of the Isles, Lady Glencora’s father — who was dead, however, some time previous to that affair with Burgo — and with the Marquis of Auld Reekie, who was Lady Glencora’s uncle, and had been her guardian. But Alice had kept herself aloof from her grand relations on her mother’s side, choosing rather to hold herself as belonging to those who were her father’s kindred. With Lady Glencora, however, she had for a short time — for some week or ten days — been on terms of almost affectionate intimacy. It had been then, when the wayward heiress with the bright waving locks had been most strongly minded to give herself and her wealth to Burgo Fitzgerald. Burgo had had money dealings with George Vavasor, and knew him — knew him intimately, and had learned the fact of this cousinship between the heiress and his friend’s cousin. Whereupon in the agony of those weeks in which the sagacious heads were resisting her love, Lady Glencora came to her cousin in Queen Anne Street, and told Alice all that tale. “Was Alice”, she asked, “afraid of the marquises and the countesses, or of all the rank and all the money which they boasted?” Alice answered that she was not at all afraid of them. “Then would she permit Lady Glencora and Burgo to see each other in the drawing-room at Queen Anne Street, just once!” Just once — so that they might arrange that little plan of an elopement. But Alice could not do that for her newly found cousin. She endeavoured to explain that it was not the dignity of the sagacious heads which stood in her way, but her woman’s feeling of what was right and wrong in such a matter.
“Why should I not marry him?” said Lady Glencora, with her eyes flashing. “He is my equal.”
Alice explained that she had no word to say against such a marriage. She counselled her cousin to be true to her love if her love was in itself true. But she, an unmarried woman, who had hitherto not known her cousin, might not give such help as that! “If you will not help me, I am helpless!” said the Lady Glencora, and then she kneeled at Alice’s knees and threw her wavy locks abroad on Alice’s lap. “How shall I bribe you?” said Lady Glencora. “Next to him I will love you better than all the world.” But Alice, though she kissed the fair forehead and owned that such reward would be worth much to her, could not take any bribe for such a cause. Then Lady Glencora had been angry with her, calling her heartless, and threatening her that she too might have sorrow of her own and want assistance. Alice told nothing of her own tale — how she had loved her cousin and had been forced to give him up, but said what kind words she could, and she of the waving hair and light blue eyes had been pacified. Then she had come again — had come daily while the sagacious heads were at work — and Alice in her trouble had been a comfort to her.
But the sagacious heads were victorious, as we know, and Lady Glencora M’Cluskie became Lady Glencora Palliser with all the propriety in the world, instead of becoming wife to poor Burgo, with all imaginable impropriety. And then she wrote a letter to Alice, very short and rather sad; but still with a certain sweetness in it. “She had been counselled that it was not fitting for her to love as she had thought to love, and she had resolved to give up her dream. Her cousin Alice, she knew, would respect her secret. She was going to become the wife of the best man, she thought, in all the world; and it should be the one care of her life to make him happy.” She said not a word in all her letter of loving this newly found lord. “She was to be married at once. Would Alice be one among the bevy of bridesmaids who were to grace the ceremony?”
Alice wished her joy heartily — “heartily,” she said, but had declined that office of bridesmaid. She did not wish to undergo the cold looks of the Lady Julias and Lady Janes who all would know each other, but none of whom would know her. So she sent her cousin a little ring, and asked her to keep it amidst all that wealthy tribute of marriage gifts which would be poured forth at her feet.
From that time to this present Alice had heard no more of Lady Glencora. She had been married late in the preceding season and had gone away with Mr Palliser, spending her honeymoon amidst the softnesses of some Italian lake. They had not returned to England till the time had come for them to encounter the magnificent Christmas festivities of Mr Palliser’s uncle, the Duke. On this occasion Gatherum Castle, the vast palace which the Duke had built at a cost of nearly a quarter of a million, was opened, as it had never been opened before; for the Duke’s heir had married to the Duke’s liking, and the Duke was a man who could do such things handsomely when he was well pleased. Then there had been a throng of bridal guests, and a succession of bridal gaieties which had continued themselves even past the time at which Mr Palliser was due at Westminster — and Mr Palliser was a legislator who served his country with the utmost assiduity. So the London season commenced, progressed, and was consumed; and still Alice heard nothing more of her friend and cousin Lady Glencora.
But this had troubled her not at all. A chance circumstance, the story of which she had told to no one, had given her a short intimacy with this fair child of the gold mines, but she had felt that they two could not live together in habits of much intimacy. She had, when thinking of the young bride, only thought of that wild love episode in the girl’s life. It had been strange to her that she should in one week have listened to the most passionate protestations from her friend of love for one man, and then have been told in the next that another man was to be her friend’s husband! But she reflected that her own career was much the same — only with the interval of some longer time.
But her own career was not the same. Glencora had married Mr Palliser — had married him without pausing to doubt; but Alice had gone on doubting till at last she had resolved that she would not marry Mr Grey. She thought of this much in those days at Cheltenham, and wondered often whether Glencora lived with her husband in the full happiness of conjugal love.
One morning, about three days after Mr Grey’s visit, there came to her two letters, as to neither of which did she know the writer by the handwriting. Lady Macleod had told her, with some hesitation, indeed, for Lady Macleod was afraid of her — but had told her, nevertheless, more than once, that those noble relatives had heard of the treatment to which Mr Grey was being subjected, and had expressed their great sorrow, if not dismay or almost anger. Lady Macleod, indeed, had gone as far as she dared, and might have gone further without any sacrifice of truth. Lady Midlothian had said that it would be disgraceful to the family, and Lady Glencora’s aunt, the Marchioness of Auld Reekie, had demanded to be told what it was the girl wanted.
When the letters came Lady Macleod was not present, and I am disposed to think that one of them had been written by concerted arrangement with her. But if so she had not dared to watch the immediate effect of her own projectile. This one was from Lady Midlothian. Of the other Lady Macleod certainly knew nothing, though it also had sprung out of the discussions which had taken place as to Alice’s sins in the Auld Reekie-Midlothian set. This other letter was from Lady Glencora. Alice opened the two, one without reading the other, very slowly. Lady Midlothian’s was the first opened, and there came a spot of anger on Alice’s cheeks as she saw the signature, and caught a word or two as she allowed her eye to glance down the page. Then she opened the other, which was shorter, and when she saw her cousin’s signature, “Glencora Palliser,” she read that letter first — read it twice before she went back to the disagreeable task of perusing Lady Midlothian’s lecture. The reader shall have both the letters, but that from the Countess shall have precedence.
Castle Reekie, N. B. — Oct. 186-.
MY DEAR MISS VAVASOR,
I have not the pleasure of knowing you personally, though I have heard of you very often from our dear mutual friend and relative Lady Macleod, with whom I understand that you are at present on a visit. Your grandmother — by the mother’s side — Lady Flora Macleod, and my mother the Countess of Leith, were half-sisters; and though circumstances since that have prevented our seeing so much of each other as is desirable, I have always remembered the connection, and have ever regarded you as one in whose welfare I am bound by ties of blood to take a warm interest.
(“‘Since that!’ — what does she mean by ‘since that’?” said Alice to herself. “She has never set eyes on me at all. Why does she talk of not having seen as much of me as is desirable?”)
“I had learned with great gratification that you were going to be married to a most worthy gentleman, Mr John Grey of Nethercoats, in Cambridgeshire. When I first heard this I made it my business to institute some inquiries, and I was heartily glad to find that your choice had done you so much credit.” (If the reader has read Alice’s character as I have meant it should be read, it will thoroughly be understood that this was wormwood to her.) “I was informed that Mr Grey is in every respect a gentleman — that he is a man of most excellent habits, and one to whom any young woman could commit her future happiness with security, that his means are very good for his position, and that there was no possible objection to such a marriage. All this gave great satisfaction to me, in which I was joined by the Marchioness of Auld Reekie, who is connected with you almost as nearly as I am, and who, I can assure you, feels a considerable interest in your welfare. I am staying with her now, and in all that I say, she agrees with me.
“You may feel then how dreadfully we were dismayed when we were told by dear Lady Macleod that you had told Mr Grey that you intended to change your mind! My dear Miss Vavasor, can this be true? There are things in which a young lady has no right to change her mind after it has been once made up; and certainly when a young lady has accepted a gentleman, that is one of them. He cannot legally make you become his wife, but he has a right to claim you before God and man. Have you considered that he has probably furnished his house in consequence of his intended marriage — and perhaps in compliance with your own especial wishes?” (I think that Lady Macleod must have told the Countess something that she had heard about the garden.) “Have you reflected that he has of course told all his friends? Have you any reason to give? I am told, none! Nothing should ever be done without a reason; much less such a thing as this in which your own interests and, I may say, respectability are involved. I hope you will think of this before you persist in destroying your own happiness and perhaps that of a very worthy man.
“I had heard, some years ago, when you were much younger, that you had become imprudently attached in another direction — with a gentleman with none of those qualities to recommend him which speak so highly for Mr Grey. It would grieve me very much, as it would also the Marchioness, who in this matter thinks exactly as I do, if I were led to suppose that your rejection of Mr Grey had been caused by any renewal of that project. Nothing, my dear Miss Vavasor, could be more unfortunate — and I might almost add a stronger word.
“I have been advised that a line from me as representing your poor mother’s family, especially as I have at the present moment the opportunity of expressing Lady Auld Reekie’s sentiments as well as my own, might be of service. I implore you, my dear Miss Vavasor, to remember what you owe to God and man, and to carry out an engagement made by yourself, that is in all respects comme il faut, and which will give entire satisfaction to your friends and relatives.
“If you do this you will always find me to be your sincere,
“MARGARET M. MIDLOTHIAN. ”
I think that Lady Macleod had been wrong in supposing that this could do any good. She should have known Alice better; and should also have known the world better. But her own reverence for her own noble relatives was so great that she could not understand, even yet, that all such feeling was wanting to her niece. It was to her impossible that the expressed opinion of such an one as the Countess of Midlothian, owning her relationship and solicitude, and condescending at the same time to express friendship — she could not, I say, understand that that voice of such an one, so speaking, should have no weight whatever. But I think that she had been quite right in keeping out of Alice’s way at the moment of the arrival of the letter. Alice read it, slowly and then replacing it in its envelope, leaned back quietly in her chair — with her eyes fixed upon the teapot on the table. She had, however the other letter on which to occupy her mind, and thus relieve her from the effects of too deep an animosity against the Countess.
The Lady Glencora’s letter was as follows:
“Matching Priory, Thursday.
“DEAR COUSIN,
“I have just come home from Scotland, where they have been telling me something of your little troubles. I had little troubles once too, and you were so good to me! Will you come to us here for a few weeks? We shall be here till Christmas-time, when we go somewhere else. I have told my husband that you are a great friend of mine as well as a cousin, and that he must be good to you. He is very quiet, and works very hard at politics; but I think you will like him. Do come! There will be a good many people here, so that you will not find it dull. If you will name the day we will send the carriage for you to Matching Station, and I dare say I can manage to come myself.
“Yours affectionately, G. PALLISER.”
“P.S. I know what will be in your mind. You will say, why did not she come to me in London? She knew the way to Queen Anne Street well enough. Dear Alice, don’t say that. Believe me, I had much to do and think of in London. And if I was wrong, yet you will forgive me. Mr Palliser says I am to give you his love — as being a cousin — and say that you must come!”
This letter was certainly better than the other, but Alice, on reading it, came to a resolve that she would not accept the invitation. In the first place, even that allusion to her little troubles jarred upon her feelings; and then she thought that her rejection of Mr Grey could be no special reason why she should go to Matching Priory. Was it not very possible that she had been invited that she might meet Lady Midlothian there, and encounter all the strength of a personal battery from the Countess? Lady Glencora’s letter she would of course answer, but to Lady Midlothian she would not condescend to make any reply whatever.
About eleven o’clock Lady Macleod came down to her. For half-an-hour or so Alice said nothing; nor did Lady Macleod ask any question. She looked inquisitively at Alice, eyeing the letter which was lying by the side of her niece’s workbasket, but she said no word about Mr Grey or the Countess. At last Alice spoke.
“Aunt,” she said, “I have had a letter this morning from your friend, Lady Midlothian.”
“She is my cousin, Alice; and yours as much as mine.”
“Your cousin then, aunt. But it is of more moment that she is your friend. She certainly is not mine, nor can her cousinship afford any justification for her interfering in my affairs.”
“Alice — from her position — ”
“Her position can be nothing to me, aunt. I will not submit to it. There is her letter, which you can read if you please. After that you may burn it. I need hardly say that I shall not answer it.”
“And what am I to say to her, Alice?”
“Nothing from me, aunt — from yourself, whatever you please, of course.” Then there was silence between them for a few minutes. “And I have had another letter, from Lady Glencora, who married Mr Palliser, and whom I knew in London last spring.”
“And has that offended you, too?”
“No, there is no offence in that. She asks me to go and see her at Matching Priory, her husband’s house; but I shall not go.”
But at last Alice agreed to pay this visit, and it may be as well to explain here how she was brought to do so. She wrote to Lady Glencora, declining, and explaining frankly that she did decline, because she thought it probable that she might there meet Lady Midlothian. Lady Midlothian, she said, had interfered very unwarrantably in her affairs, and she did not wish to make her acquaintance. To this Lady Glencora replied, post haste, that she had intended no such horrid treachery as that for Alice; that neither would Lady Midlothian be there, nor any of that set; by which Alice knew that Lady Glencora referred specially to her aunt the Marchioness; that no one would be at Matching who could torment Alice, either with right or without it, “except so far as I myself may do so,” Lady Glencora said; and then she named an early day in November, at which she would herself undertake to meet Alice at the Matching Station. On receipt of this letter, Alice, after two days’ doubt, accepted the invitation.
Kate Vavasor, in writing to her cousin Alice, felt some little difficulty in excusing herself for remaining in Norfolk with Mrs Greenow. She had laughed at Mrs Greenow before she went to Yarmouth, and had laughed at herself for going there. And in all her letters since, she had spoken of her aunt as a silly, vain, worldly woman, weeping crocodile tears for an old husband whose death had released her from the tedium of his company, and spreading lures to catch new lovers. But yet she agreed to stay with her aunt, and remain with her in lodgings at Norwich for a month.
But Mrs Greenow had about her something more than Kate had acknowledged when she first attempted to read her aunt’s character. She was clever, and in her own way persuasive. She was very generous, and possessed a certain power of making herself pleasant to those around her. In asking Kate to stay with her she had so asked as to make it appear that Kate was to confer the favour. She had told her niece that she was all alone in the world. “I have money,” she had said, with more appearance of true feeling than Kate had observed before. “I have money, but I have nothing else in the world. I have no home. Why should I not remain here in Norfolk, where I know a few people? If you’ll say that you’ll go anywhere else with me, I’ll go to any place you’ll name.” Kate had believed this to be hardly true. She had felt sure that her aunt wished to remain in the neighbourhood of her seaside admirers; but, nevertheless, she had yielded, and at the end of October the two ladies, with Jeannette, settled themselves in comfortable lodgings within the precincts of the Close at Norwich.
Mr Greenow at this time had been dead very nearly six months, but his widow made some mistake in her dates and appeared to think that the interval had been longer. On the day of their arrival at Norwich it was evident that this error had confirmed itself in her mind. “Only think,” she said, as she unpacked a little miniature of the departed one, and sat with it for a moment in her hands, as she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, “only think, that it is barely nine months since he was with me?”
“Six, you mean, aunt,” said Kate, unadvisedly.
“Only nine months!” repeated Mrs Greenow, as though she had not heard her niece. “Only nine months!” After that Kate attempted to correct no more such errors. “It happened in May, Miss,” Jeannette said afterwards to Miss Vavasor, “and that, as we reckons, will be just a twelvemonth come Christmas.” But Kate paid no attention to this.
And Jeannette was very ungrateful, and certainly should have indulged herself in no such sarcasms. When Mrs Greenow made a slight change in her mourning, which she did on her arrival at Norwich, using a little lace among her crapes, Jeannette reaped a rich harvest in gifts of clothes. Mrs Greenow knew well enough that she expected more from a servant than mere service — that she wanted loyalty, discretion, and perhaps sometimes a little secrecy — and as she paid for these things, she should have had them.
Kate undertook to stay a month with her aunt at Norwich and Mrs Greenow undertook that Mr Cheesacre should declare himself as Kate’s lover, before the expiration of the month. It was in vain that Kate protested that she wanted no such lover, and that she would certainly reject him if he came. “That’s all very well, my dear,” Aunt Greenow would say. “A girl must settle herself some day, you know — and you’d have it all your own way at Oileymead.”
But the offer certainly showed much generosity on the part of Aunt Greenow, inasmuch as Mr Cheesacre’s attentions were apparently paid to herself rather than to her niece. Mr Cheesacre was very attentive. He had taken the lodgings in the Close, and had sent over fowls and cream from Oileymead, and had called on the morning after their arrival; but in all his attentions he distinguished the aunt more particularly than the niece. “I am all for Mr Cheesacre, Miss,” said Jeannette once. “The Captain is perhaps the nicerer-looking gentleman, and he ain’t so podgy like; but what’s good looks if a gentleman hasn’t got nothing? I can’t abide anything that’s poor; neither can’t Missus.” From which it was evident that Jeannette gave Miss Vavasor no credit in having Mr Cheesacre in her train.
Captain Bellfield was also at Norwich, having obtained some quasi-military employment there in the matter of drilling volunteers. Certain capacities in that line it may be supposed that he possessed, and, as his friend Cheesacre said of him, he was going to earn an honest penny once in his life. The Captain and Mr Cheesacre had made up any little differences that had existed between them at Yarmouth, and were close allies again when they left that place. Some little compact on matters of business must have been arranged between them — for the Captain was in funds again. He was in funds again through the liberality of his friend — and no payment of former loans had been made, nor had there been any speech of such. Mr Cheesacre had drawn his purse-strings liberally, and had declared that if all went well the hospitality of Oileymead should not be wanting during the winter. Captain Bellfield had nodded his head and declared that all should go well.
“You won’t see much of the Captain, I suppose,” said Mr Cheesacre to Mrs Greenow on the morning of the day after her arrival at Norwich. He had come across the whole way from Oileymead to ask her if she found herself comfortable, and perhaps with an eye to the Norwich markets at the same time. He now wore a pair of black riding boots over his trousers, and a round topped hat, and looked much more at home than he had done by the seaside.
“Not much, I dare say,” said the widow. “He tells me that he must be on duty ten or twelve hours a day. Poor fellow!”
“It’s a deuced good thing for him, and he ought to be very much obliged to me for putting him in the way of getting it. But he told me to tell you that if he didn’t call, you were not to be angry with him.”
“Oh, no — I shall remember, of course.”
“You see, if he don’t work now he must come to grief. He hasn’t got a shilling that he can call his own.”
“Hasn’t he really?”
“Not a shilling, Mrs Greenow — and then he’s awfully in debt. He isn’t a bad fellow, you know, only there’s no trusting him for anything.” Then after a few further inquiries that were almost tender, and a promise of further supplies from the dairy, Mr Cheesacre took his leave, almost forgetting to ask after Miss Vavasor.
But as he left the house he had a word to say to Jeannette. “He hasn’t been here, has he, Jenny?” “We haven’t seen a sight of him yet, sir — and I have thought it a little odd.” Then Mr Cheesacre gave the girl half-a-crown, and went his way. Jeannette, I think, must have forgotten that the Captain had looked in after leaving his military duties on the preceding evening.
The Captain’s ten or twelve hours of daily work was performed, no doubt, at irregular intervals — some days late and some days early — for he might be seen about Norwich almost at all times, during the early part of that November — and he might be very often seen going into the Close. In Norwich there are two weekly market days, but on those days the Captain was no doubt kept more entirely to his military employment, for at such times he never was seen near the Close. Now Mr Cheesacre’s visits to the town were generally made on market days, and so it happened that they did not meet. On such occasions Mr Cheesacre always was driven to Mrs Greenow’s door in a cab — for he would come into town by railway — and he would deposit a basket bearing the rich produce of his dairy. It was in vain that Mrs Greenow protested against these gifts — for she did protest and declared that if they were continued, they would be sent back. They were, however, continued, and Mrs Greenow was at her wits’ end about them. Cheesacre would not come up with them; but leaving them, would go about his business, and would return to see the ladies. On such occasions he would be very particular in getting his basket from Jeannette. As he did so he would generally ask some question about the Captain, and Jeannette would give him answers confidentially — so that there was a strong friendship between these two.
“What am I to do about it?” said Mrs Greenow, as Kate came into the sitting-room one morning, and saw on the table a small hamper lined with a clean cloth, “It’s as much as Jeannette has been able to carry.”
“So it is, ma’am — quite; and I’m strong in the arm, too, ma’am.”
“What am I to do, Kate? He is such a good creature.”
“And he do admire you both so much,” said Jeannette.
“Of course I don’t want to offend him for many reasons,” said the aunt, looking knowingly at her niece.
“I don’t know anything about your reasons, aunt, but if I were you, I should leave the basket just as it is till he comes in the afternoon.”
“Would you mind seeing him yourself, Kate, and explaining to him that it won’t do to go on in this way. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling him that if he’ll promise not to bring any more, you won’t object to take this one.”
“Indeed, aunt, I can’t do that. They’re not brought to me.”
“Oh, Kate!”
“Nonsense, aunt — I won’t have you say so: before Jeannette, too.”
“I think it’s for both, ma’am; I do indeed. And there certainly ain’t any cream to be bought like it in Norwich — nor yet eggs.”
“I wonder what there is in the basket.” And the widow lifted up the corner of the cloth. “I declare if there isn’t a turkey poult already.”
“My!” said Jeannette. “A turkey poult! Why, that’s worth ten and sixpence in the market if it’s worth a penny.”
“It’s out of the question that I should take upon myself to say anything to him about it,” said Kate.
“Upon my word I don’t see why you shouldn’t, as well as I,” said Mrs Greenow.
“I’ll tell you what, ma’am,” said Jeannette: “let me just ask him who they’re for — he’ll tell me anything.”
“Don’t do anything of the kind, Jeannette,” said Kate. “Of course, aunt, they’re brought for you. There’s no doubt about that. A gentleman doesn’t bring cream and turkeys to — I never heard of such a thing!”
“I don’t see why a gentleman shouldn’t bring cream and turkeys to you just as well as to me. Indeed, he told me once as much himself.”
“Then, if they’re for me, I’ll leave them down outside the front door, and he may find his provisions there.” And Kate proceeded to lift the basket off the table.
“Leave it alone, Kate,” said Mrs Greenow, with a voice that was rather solemn; and which had, too, something of sadness in its tone. “Leave it alone. I’ll see Mr Cheesacre myself.”
“And I do hope you won’t mention my name. It’s the most absurd thing in the world. The man never spoke two dozen words to me in his life.”
“He speaks to me, though,” said Mrs Greenow,
“I dare say he does,” said Kate.
“And about you, too, my dear.”
“He doesn’t come here with those big flowers in his buttonhole for nothing,” said Jeannette — “not if I knows what a gentleman means.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” said Mrs Greenow.
“If you don’t object, aunt,” said Kate, “I will write to grandpapa and tell him that I will return home at once.”
“What! — because of Mr Cheesacre?” said Mrs Greenow. “I don’t think you’ll be so silly as that, my dear.”
On the present occasion Mrs Greenow undertook that she would see the generous gentleman, and endeavour to stop the supplies from his farmyard. It was well understood that he would call about four o’clock, when his business in the town would be over; and that he would bring with him a little boy, who would carry away the basket. At that hour Kate of course was absent, and the widow received Mr Cheesacre alone. The basket and cloth were there, in the sitting-room, and on the table were laid out the rich things which it had contained; the turkey poult first, on a dish provided in the lodging-house, then a dozen fresh eggs in a soup-plate, then the cream in a little tin can, which, for the last fortnight, had passed regularly between Oileymead and the house in the Close, and as to which Mr Cheesacre was very pointed in his inquiries with Jeannette. Then behind the cream there were two or three heads of brocoli, and a stick of celery as thick as a man’s wrist. Altogether the tribute was a very comfortable assistance to the housekeeping of a lady living in a small way in lodgings.
Mr Cheesacre, when he saw the array on the long sofa-table, knew that he was to prepare himself for some resistance; but that resistance would give him, he thought, an opportunity of saying a few words that he was desirous of speaking, and he did not altogether regret it. “I just called in,” he said, “to see how you were.”
“We are not likely to starve,” said Mrs Greenow, pointing to the delicacies from Oileymead.
“Just a few trifles that my old woman asked me to bring in,” said Cheesacre. “She insisted on putting them up.”
“But your old woman is by far too magnificent,” said Mrs Greenow. “She really frightens Kate and me out of our wits.”
Mr Cheesacre had no wish that Miss Vavasor’s name should be brought into play upon the occasion. “Dear Mrs Greenow,” said he, “there is no cause for you to be alarmed, I can assure you. Mere trifles — light as air, you know. I don’t think anything of such things as these.”
“But I and Kate think a great deal of them — a very great deal, I can assure you. Do you know, we had a long debate this morning whether or no we would return them to Oileymead?”
“Return them, Mrs Greenow!”
“Yes, indeed: what are women, situated as we are, to do under such circumstances? When gentlemen will be too liberal, their liberality must be repressed.”
“And have I been too liberal, Mrs Greenow? What is a young turkey and a stick of celery when a man is willing to give everything that he has in the world?”
“You’ve got a great deal more in the world, Mr Cheesacre, than you’d like to part with. But we won’t talk of that, now.”
“When shall we talk of it?”
“If you really have anything to say, you had by far better speak to Kate herself.”
“Mrs Greenow, you mistake me. Indeed you mistake me.”
Just at this moment, as he was drawing close to the widow, she heard, or fancied that she heard, Jeannette’s step, and, going to the sitting-room door, called to her maid. Jeannette did not hear her, but the bell was rung, and then Jeannette came. “You may take these things down, Jeannette,” she said. “Mr Cheesacre has promised that no more shall come.”
“But I haven’t promised,” said Mr Cheesacre.
“You will oblige me and Kate, I know — and, Jeanette, tell Miss Vavasor that I am ready to walk with her.”
Then Mr Cheesacre knew that he could not say those few words on that occasion; and as the hour of his train was near, he took his departure, and went out of the Close, followed by the little boy, carrying the basket, the cloth, and the tin can.
The next day was Sunday, and it was well known at the lodging-house in the Close that Mr Cheesacre would not be seen there then. Mrs Greenow had specially warned him that she was not fond of Sunday visitors, fearing that otherwise he might find it convenient to give them too much of his society on that idle day. In the morning the aunt and niece both went to the Cathedral, and then at three o’clock they dined. But on this occasion they did not dine alone. Charlie Fairstairs, who, with her family, had come home from Yarmouth, had been asked to join them; and in order that Charlie might not feel it dull, Mrs Greenow had, with her usual good nature, invited Captain Bellfield. A very nice little dinner they had. The Captain carved the turkey, giving due honour to Mr Cheesacre as he did so; and when he nibbled his celery with his cheese, he was prettily jocose about the richness of the farmyard at Oileymead.
“He is the most generous man I ever met,” said Mrs Greenow.
“So he is,” said Captain Bellfield, “and we’ll drink his health. Poor old Cheesy! It’s a great pity he shouldn’t get himself a wife.”
“I don’t know any man more calculated to make a young woman happy,” said Mrs Greenow.
“No, indeed,” said Miss Fairstairs. “I’m told that his house and all about it is quite beautiful.”
“Especially the straw-yard and the horse-pond,” said the Captain. And then they drank the health of their absent friend.
It had been arranged that the ladies should go to church in the evening, and it was thought that Captain Bellfield would, perhaps, accompany them; but when the time for starting came, Kate and Charlie were ready, but the widow was not, and she remained — in order, as she afterwards explained to Kate, that Captain Bellfield might not seem to be turned out of the house. He had made no offer churchwards, and — “Poor man,” as Mrs Greenow said in her little explanation, “if I hadn’t let him stay there, he would have had no resting-place for the sole of his foot, but some horrid barrack-room!” Therefore the Captain was allowed to find a resting-place in Mrs Greenow’s drawing-room; but on the return of the young ladies from church, he was not there, and the widow was alone, “looking back,” she said, “to things that were gone — that were gone. But come, dears, I am not going to make you melancholy.” So they had tea, and Mr Cheesacre’s cream was used with liberality.
Captain Bellfield had not allowed the opportunity to slip idly from his hands. In the first quarter of an hour after the younger ladies had gone, he said little or nothing, but sat with a wine-glass before him, which once or twice he filled from the decanter. “I’m afraid the wine is not very good,” said Mrs Greenow. “But one can’t get good wine in lodgings.”
“I’m not thinking very much about it, Mrs Greenow; that’s the truth,” said the Captain. “I daresay the wine is very good of its kind.” Then there was another period of silence between them.
“I suppose you find it rather dull, living in lodgings; don’t you?” asked the Captain.
“I don’t know quite what you mean by dull, Captain Bellfield; but a woman circumstanced as I am, can’t find her life very gay. It’s not a full twelvemonth yet, since I lost all that made life desirable, and sometimes I wonder at myself for holding up as well as I do.”
“It’s wicked to give way to grief too much, Mrs Greenow.”
“That’s what my dear Kate always says to me, and I’m sure I do my best to overcome it.” Upon this some soft tears trickled down her cheek, showing in their course that she at any rate used no paint in producing that freshness of colour which was one of her great charms. Then she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, and removing it, smiled faintly on the Captain. “I didn’t intend to treat you to such a scene as this, Captain Bellfield.”
“There is nothing on earth, Mrs Greenow, I desire so much, as permission to dry those tears.”
“Time alone can do that, Captain Bellfield — time alone.”
“But cannot time be aided by love and friendship and affection?”
“By friendship, yes. What would life be worth without the solace of friendship?”
“And how much better is the warm glow of love?” Captain Bellfield, as he asked this question, deliberately got up, and moved his chair over to the widow’s side. But the widow as deliberately changed her position to the corner of a sofa. The Captain did not at once follow her, nor did he in any way show that he was aware that she had fled from him.
“How much better is the warm glow of love?” he said again, contenting himself with looking into her face with all his eyes. He had hoped that he would have been able to press her hand by this time.
“The warm glow of love, Captain Bellfield, if you have ever felt it — ”
“If I have ever felt it! Do I not feel it now, Mrs Greenow? There can be no longer any mask kept upon my feelings. I never could restrain the yearnings of my heart when they have been strong.”
“Have they often been strong, Captain Bellfield?”
“Yes, often — in various scenes of life; on the field of battle — ”
“I did not know that you had seen active service.”
“What! — not on the plains of Zululand, when with fifty picked men I kept five hundred Caffres at bay for seven weeks — never knew the comfort of a bed, or a pillow to my head, for seven long weeks!”
“Not for seven weeks?” said Mrs Greenow.
“No. Did I not see active service at Essequibo, on the burning coast of Guiana, when all the wild Africans from the woods rose up to destroy the colony; or again at the mouth of the Kitchyhomy River, when I made good the capture of a slaver by my own hand and my own sword!”
“I really hadn’t heard,” said Mrs Greenow.
“Ah, I understand. I know. Cheesy is the best fellow in the world in some respects, but he cannot bring himself to speak well of a fellow behind his back. I know who has belittled me. Who was the first to storm the heights of Inkerman?” demanded the Captain, thinking in the heat of the moment that he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
“But when you spoke of yearnings, I thought you meant yearnings of a softer kind.”
“So I did. So I did. I don’t know why I have been led away to speak of deeds that are very seldom mentioned, at any rate by myself. But I cannot bear that a slanderous backbiting tongue should make you think that I have seen no service. I have served her Majesty in the four quarters of the globe, Mrs Greenow; and now I am ready to serve you in any way in which you will allow me to make my service acceptable.” Whereupon he took one stride over to the sofa, and went down upon his knees before her.
“But, Captain Bellfield, I don’t want any services. Pray get up, now; the girl will come in.”
“I care nothing for any girl. I am planted here till some answer shall have been made to me; till some word shall have been said that may give me a little hope.” Then he attempted to get hold of her hand, but she put them behind her back and shook her head. “Arabella,” he said, “will you not speak a word to me?”
“Not a word, Captain Bellfield, till you get up; and I won’t have you call me Arabella. I am the widow of Samuel Greenow, than whom no man was more respected where he was known, and it is not fitting that I should be addressed in that way.”
“But I want you to become my wife — and then — ”
“Ah, then indeed! But that then isn’t likely to come. Get up, Captain Bellfield, or I’ll push you over and then ring the bell. A man never looks so much like a fool as when he’s kneeling down — unless he’s saying his prayers, as you ought to be doing now. Get up, I tell you. It’s just half past seven, and I told Jeannette to come to me then.”
There was that in the widow’s voice which made him get up, and he rose slowly to his feet. “You’ve pushed all the chairs about, you stupid man,” she said. Then in one minute she had restored the scattered furniture to their proper places, and had rung the bell. When Jeannette came she desired that tea might be ready by the time that the young ladies returned, and asked Captain Bellfield if a cup should be set for him. This he declined, and bade her farewell while Jeannette was still in the room. She shook hands with him without any sign of anger, and even expressed a hope that they might see him again before long.
“He’s a very handsome man, is the Captain,” said Jeannette, as the hero of the Kitchyhomy River descended the stairs.
“You shouldn’t think about handsome men, child,” said Mrs Greenow.
“And I’m sure I don’t,” said Jeannette. “Not no more than anybody else; but if a man is handsome, ma’am, why, it stands to reason that he is handsome.”
“I suppose Captain Bellfield has given you a kiss and a pair of gloves.”
“As for gloves and such like, Mr Cheesacre is much better for giving than the Captain; as we all know; don’t we, ma’am? But in regard to kisses, they’re presents as I never takes from anybody. Let everybody pay his debts. If the Captain ever gets a wife, let him kiss her.”
On the following Tuesday morning Mr Cheesacre as usual called in the Close, but he brought with him no basket. He merely left a winter nosegay made of green leaves and laurestinus flowers, and sent up a message to say that he should call at half past three, and hoped that he might then be able to see Mrs Greenow — on particular business.
“That means you, Kate,” said Mrs Greenow.
“No, it doesn’t; it doesn’t mean me at all. At any rate he won’t see me.”
“I dare say it’s me he wishes to see. It seems to be the fashionable plan now for gentlemen to make offers by deputy. If he says anything, I can only refer him to you, you know.”
“Yes, you can; you can tell him simply that I won’t have him. But he is no more thinking of me than — ”
“Than he is of me, you were going to say.”
“No, aunt; I wasn’t going to say that at all.”
“Well, we shall see. If he does mean anything, of course you can please yourself; but I really think you might do worse.”
“But if I don’t want to do at all?”
“Very well; you must have your own way. I can only tell you what I think.”
At half past three o’clock punctually Mr Cheesacre came to the door, and was shown upstairs. He was told by Jeannette that Captain Bellfield had looked in on the Sunday afternoon, but that Miss Fairstairs and Miss Vavasor had been there the whole time. He had not got on his black boots nor yet had his round topped hat. And as he did wear a new frock coat, and had his left hand thrust into a kid glove, Jeannette was quite sure that he intended business of some kind. With new boots, creaking loudly, he walked up into the drawing-room, and there he found the widow alone.
“Thanks for the flowers,” she said at once. “It was so good of you to bring something that we could accept.”
“As for that,” said he, “I don’t see why you should scruple about a trifle of cream, but I hope that any such feeling as that will be over before long.” To this the widow made no answer, but she looked very sweetly on him as she bade him sit down.
He did sit down; but first he put his hat and stick carefully away in one corner, and then he pulled off his glove — somewhat laboriously, for his hand was warm. He was clearly prepared for great things. As he pushed up his hair with his hands there came from his locks an ambrosial perfume — as of marrow-oil, and there was a fixed propriety of position of every hair of his whiskers, which indicated very plainly that he had been at a hairdresser’s shop since he left the market. Nor do I believe that he had worn that coat when he came to the door earlier in the morning. If I were to say that he had called at his tailor’s also, I do not think that I should be wrong.
“How goes everything at Oileymead?” said Mrs Greenow, seeing that her guest wanted some little assistance in leading off the conversation.
“Pretty well, Mrs Greenow; pretty well. Everything will go very well if I am successful in the object which I have on hand today.”
“I’m sure I hope you’ll be successful in all your undertakings.”
“In all my business undertakings I am, Mrs Greenow. There isn’t a shilling due on my land to e’er a bank in Norwich; and I haven’t thrashed out a quarter of last year’s corn yet, which is more than many of them can say. But there ain’t many of them who don’t have to pay rent, and so perhaps I oughtn’t to boast.”
“I know that Providence has been very good to you, Mr Cheesacre, as regards worldly matters.”
“And I haven’t left it all to Providence, either. Those who do, generally go to the wall, as far as I can see. I’m always at work late and early, and I know when I get a profit out of a man’s labour and when I don’t, as well as though it was my only chance of bread and cheese.”
“I always thought you understood farming business, Mr Cheesacre.”
“Yes, I do. I like a bit of fun well enough, when the time for it comes, as you saw at Yarmouth. And I keep my three or four hunters, as I think a country gentleman should; and I shoot over my own ground. But I always stick to my work. There are men, like Bellfield, who won’t work. What do they come to? They’re always borrowing.”
“But he has fought his county’s battles, Mr Cheesacre.”
“He fight! I suppose he’s been telling you some of his old stories. He was ten years in the West Indies, and all his fighting was with the musquitoes.”
“But he was in the Crimea. At Inkerman, for instance — ”
“He in the Crimea! Well, never mind. But do you inquire before you believe that story. But as I was saying, Mrs Greenow, you have seen my little place at Oileymead.”
“A charming house. All you want is a mistress for it.”
“That’s it; that’s just it. All I want is a mistress for it. And there’s only one woman on earth that I would wish to see in that position. Arabella Greenow, will you be that woman?” As he made the offer he got up and stood before her, placing his right hand upon his heart.
“I, Mr Cheesacre!” she said.
“Yes, you. Who else? Since I saw you what other woman has been anything to me; or, indeed, I may say before? Since the first day I saw you I felt that there my happiness depended.”
“Oh, Mr Cheesacre, I thought you were looking elsewhere.”
“No, no, no. There never was such a mistake as that. I have the highest regard and esteem for Miss Vavasor, but really — ”
“Mr Cheesacre, what am I to say to you?”
“What are you to say to me? Say that you’ll be mine. Say that I shall be yours. Say that all I have at Oileymead shall be yours. Say that the open carriage for a pair of ponies to be driven by a lady which I have been looking at this morning shall be yours. Yes, indeed; the sweetest thing you ever saw in your life, just like one that the lady of the Lord Lieutenant drives about in always. That’s what you must say. Come, Mrs Greenow!”
“Ah, Mr Cheesacre, you don’t know what it is to have buried the pride of your youth hardly yet twelve months.”
“But you have buried him, and there let there be an end of it. Your sitting here all alone, morning, noon, and night, won’t bring him back. I’m sorry for him; I am indeed. Poor Greenow! But what more can I do?”
“I can do more, Mr Cheesacre. I can mourn for him in solitude and in silence.”
“No, no, no. What’s the use of it — breaking your heart for nothing — and my heart too? You never think of that.” And Mr Cheesacre spoke in a tone that was full of reproach.
“It cannot be, Mr Cheesacre.”
“Ah, but it can be. Come, Mrs Greenow. We understand each other well enough now, surely. Come, dearest.” And he approached her as though to put his arm round her waist. But at that moment there came a knock at the door, and Jeannette, entering the room, told her mistress that Captain Bellfield was below, and wanted to know whether he could see her for a minute on particular business.
“Show Captain Bellfield up, certainly,” said Mrs Greenow.
“D— Captain Bellfield!” said Mr Cheesacre.
Before the day came on which Alice was to go to Matching Priory, she had often regretted that she had been induced to make the promise, and yet she had as often resolved that there was no possible reason why she should not go to Matching Priory. But she feared this commencement of a closer connexion with her great relations. She had told herself so often that she was quite separated from them, that the slight accident of blood in no way tied her to them or them to her — this lesson had been so thoroughly taught to her by the injudicious attempts of Lady Macleod to teach an opposite lesson, that she did not like the idea of putting aside the effect of that teaching. And perhaps she was a little afraid of the great folk whom she might probably meet at her cousin’s house. Lady Glencora herself she had liked — and had loved too with that momentary love which certain circumstances of our life will sometimes produce, a love which is strong while it lasts, but which can be laid down when the need of it is passed. She had liked and loved Lady Glencora, and had in no degree been afraid of her during those strange visitings in Queen Anne Street — but she was by no means sure that she should like Lady Glencora in the midst of her grandeur and surrounded by the pomp of her rank. She would have no other friend or acquaintance in that house, and feared that she might find herself desolate, cold, and wounded in her pride. She had been tricked into the visit, too, or rather had tricked herself into it, She had been sure that there had been a joint scheme between her cousin and Lady Midlothian, and could not resist the temptation of repudiating it in her letter to Lady Glencora. But there had been no such scheme; she had wronged Lady Glencora, and had therefore been unable to resist her second request. But she felt unhappy, fearing that she would be out of her element, and more than once half made up her mind to excuse herself.
Her aunt had, from the first, thought well of her going, believing that it might probably be the means of reconciling her to Mr Grey. Moreover, it was a step altogether in the right direction. Lady Glencora would, if she lived, become a Duchess, and as she was decidedly Alice’s cousin, of course Alice should go to her house when invited. It must be acknowledged that Lady Macleod was not selfish in her worship of rank. She had played out her game in life, and there was no probability that she would live to be called cousin by a Duchess of Omnium. She bade Alice go to Matching Priory, simply because she loved her niece, and therefore wished her to live in the best and most eligible way within her reach. “I think you owe it as a duty to your family to go,” said Lady Macleod.
What further correspondence about her affairs had passed between Lady Macleod and Lady Midlothian Alice never knew. She steadily refused all entreaty made that she would answer the Countess’s letter, and at last threatened her aunt that if the request were further urged she would answer it — telling Lady Midlothian that she had been very impertinent.
“I am becoming a very old woman, Alice,” the poor lady said, piteously, “and I suppose I had better not interfere any further. Whatever I have said I have always meant to be for your good.” Then Alice got up, and kissing her aunt, tried to explain to her that she resented no interference from her, and felt grateful for all that she both said and did; but that she could not endure meddling from people whom she did not know, and who thought themselves entitled to meddle by their rank.
“And because they are cousins as well,” said Lady Macleod, in a softly sad, apologetic voice.
Alice left Cheltenham about the middle of November on her road to Matching Priory. She was to sleep in London one night, and go down to Matching in Yorkshire with her maid on the following day. Her father undertook to meet her at the Great Western Station, and to take her on the following morning to the Great Northern. He said nothing in his letter about dining with her, but when he met her, muttered something about a engagement, and taking her home graciously promised that he would breakfast with her on the following morning.
“I’m very glad you are going, Alice,” he said when they were in the cab together.
“Why, papa?”
“Why? — because I think it’s the proper thing to do. You know I’ve never said much to you about these people. They’re not connected with me, and I know that they hate the name of Vavasor — not but what the name is a deal older than any of theirs, and the family too.”
“And therefore I don’t understand why you think I’m specially right. If you were to say I was specially wrong, I should be less surprised, and of course I shouldn’t go.”
“You should go by all means. Rank and wealth are advantages, let anybody say what they will to the contrary. Why else does everybody want to get them?”
“But I shan’t get them by going to Matching Priory.”
“You’ll get part of their value. Take them as a whole, the nobility of England are pleasant acquaintances to have. I haven’t run after them very much myself, though I married, as I may say, among them. That very thing rather stood in my way than otherwise. But you may be sure of this, that men and women ought to grow, like plants, upwards. Everybody should endeavour to stand as well as he can in the world, and if I had a choice of acquaintance between a sugar-baker and a peer, I should prefer the peer — unless, indeed, the sugar-baker had something very strong on his side to offer. I don’t call that tuft-hunting, and it does not necessitate toadying. It’s simply growing up, towards the light, as the trees do.”
Alice listened to her father’s worldly wisdom with a smile, but she did not attempt to answer him. It was very seldom, indeed, that he took upon himself the labour of lecturing her, or that he gave her even as much counsel as he had given now. “Well, papa, I hope I shall find myself growing towards the light,” she said as she got out of the cab. Then he had not entered the house, but had taken the cab on with him to his club.
On her table Alice found a note from her cousin George. “I hear you are going down to the Pallisers at Matching Priory tomorrow, and as I shall be glad to say one word to you before you go, will you let me see you this evening — say at nine? — G. V.” She felt immediately that she could not help seeing him, but she greatly regretted the necessity. She wished that she had gone directly from Cheltenham to the North — regardless even of those changes of wardrobe which her purposed visit required. Then she set herself to considering. How had George heard of her visit to the Priory, and how had he learned the precise evening which she would pass in London? Why should he be so intent on watching all her movements as it seemed that he was? As to seeing him she had no alternative, so she completed her arrangements for her journey before nine, and then awaited him in the drawing-room.
“I’m so glad you’re going to Matching Priory,” were the first words he said. He, too, might have taught her to grow towards the light, if she had asked him for his reasons — but this she did not do just then.
“How did you learn that I was going?” she said.
“I heard it from a friend of mine. Well — from Burgo Fitzgerald, if you must know.”
“From Mr Fitzgerald?” said Alice, in profound astonishment. “How could Mr Fitzgerald have heard of it?”
“That’s more than I know, Alice. Not directly from Lady Glencora, I should say.”
“That would be impossible.”
“Yes; quite so, no doubt. I think she keeps up her intimacy with Burgo’s sister, and perhaps it got round to him in that way.”
“And did he tell you also that I was going tomorrow? He must have known all about it very accurately.”
“No; then I asked Kate, and Kate told me when you were going. Yes; I know. Kate has been wrong, hasn’t she? Kate was cautioned, no doubt, to say nothing about your comings and goings to so inconsiderable a person as myself. But you must not be down upon Kate. She never mentioned it till I showed by my question to her that I knew all about your journey to Matching. I own I do not understand why it should be necessary to keep me so much in the dark.”
Alice felt that she was blushing. The caution had been given to Kate because Kate still transgressed in her letters, by saying little words about her brother. And Alice did not even now believe Kate to have been false to her; but she saw that she herself had been imprudent.
“I cannot understand it,” continued George, speaking without looking at her. “It was but the other day that we were such dear friends! Do you remember the balcony at Basle? and now it seems that we are quite estranged — nay, worse than estranged; that I am, as it were, under some ban. Have I done anything to offend you, Alice? If so, speak out, like a woman of spirit as you are.”
“Nothing,” said Alice.
“Then why am I tabooed? Why was I told the other day that I might not congratulate you on your happy emancipation? I say boldly, that had you resolved on that while we were together in Switzerland, you would have permitted me, as a friend, almost as a brother, to discuss it with you.”
“I think not, George.”
“I am sure you would. And why has Kate been warned not to tell me of this visit to the Pallisers? I know she has been warned though she has not confessed it.”
Alice sat silent, not knowing what to say in answer to this charge brought against her — thinking, perhaps, that the questioner would allow his question to pass without an answer. But Vavasor was not so complaisant. “If there be any reason, Alice, I think that I have a right to ask it.”
For a few seconds she did not speak a word, but sat considering. He also remained silent with his eyes fixed upon her. She looked at him and saw nothing but his scar — nothing but his scar and the brightness of his eyes, which was almost fierce. She knew that he was in earnest, and therefore resolved that she would be in earnest also. “I think that you have such a right,” she said at last.
“Then let me exercise it.”
“I think that you have such a right, but I think also that you are ungenerous to exercise it.”
“I cannot understand that. By heavens, Alice, I cannot be left in this suspense! If I have done anything to offend you, perhaps I can remove the offence by apology.”
“You have done nothing to offend me.”
“Or if there be any cause why our friendship should be dropped — why we should be on a different footing to each other in London than we were in Switzerland, I may acknowledge it, if it be explained to me. But I cannot put up with the doubt, when I am told that I have a right to demand its solution.”
“Then I will be frank with you, George, though my being so will, as you may guess, be very painful.” She paused again, looking at him to see if yet he would spare her; but he was all scar and eyes as before, and there was no mercy in his face.
“Your sister, George, has thought that my parting with Mr Grey might lead to a renewal of a purpose of marriage between you and me. You know her eagerness, and will understand that it may have been necessary that I should require silence from her on that head. You ought now to understand it all.”
“I then am being punished for her sins,” he said; and suddenly the scar on his face was healed up again, and there was something of the old pleasantness in his eyes.
“I have said nothing about any sins, George, but I have found it necessary to be on my guard.”
“Well,” he said, after a short pause, “you are an honest woman, Alice — the honestest I ever knew. I will bring Kate to order — and, now, we may be friends again; may we not?” And he extended his hand to her across the table.
“Yes,” she said, “certainly; if you wish it.” She spoke doubtingly, with indecision in her voice, as though remembering at the moment that he had given her no pledge. “I certainly do wish it very much,” said he; and then she gave him her hand.
“And I may now talk about your new freedom?”
“No,” said she; “no. Do not speak of that. A woman does not do what I have done in that affair without great suffering. I have to think of it daily; but do not make me speak of it.”
“But this other subject, this visit to Matching; surely I may speak of that?” There was something now in his voice so bright, that she felt the influence of it, and answered him cheerfully,
“I don’t see what you can have to say about it.”
“But I have a great deal. I am so glad you are going. Mind you cement a close intimacy with Mr Palliser.”
“With Mr Palliser?”
“Yes; with Mr Palliser. You must read all the blue books about finance. I’ll send them to you if you like it.”
“Oh, George!”
“I’m quite in earnest. That is, not in earnest about the blue books, as you would not have time; but about Mr Palliser. He will be the new Chancellor of the Exchequer without a doubt.”
“Will he indeed? But why should I make a bosom friend of the Chancellor of the Exchequer? I don’t want any public money.”
“But I do, my girl. Don’t you see?”
“No; I don’t.”
“I think I shall get returned at this next election.”
“I’m sure I hope you will.”
“And if I do, of course it will be my game to support the ministry — or rather the new ministry; for of course there will be changes.”
“I hope they will be on the right side.”
“Not a doubt of that, Alice.”
“I wish they might be changed altogether.”
“Ah! that’s impossible. It’s very well as a dream; but there are no such men as you want to see — men really from the people — strong enough to take high office. A man can’t drive four horses because he’s a philanthropist — or rather a philhorseophist, and is desirous that the team should be driven without any hurt to them. A man can’t govern well, simply because he is genuinely anxious that men should be well governed.”
“And will there never be any such men?”
“I won’t say that. I don’t mind confessing to you that it is my ambition to be such a one myself. But a child must crawl before he can walk. Such a one as I, hoping to do something in politics, must spare no chance. It would be something to me that Mr Palliser should become the friend of any dear friend of mine — especially of a dear friend bearing the same name.”
“I’m afraid, George, you’ll find me a bad hand at making any such friendship.”
“They say he is led immensely by his wife, and that she is very clever. But I mean this chiefly, Alice, that I do hope I shall have all your sympathy in any political career that I may make, and all your assistance also.”
“My sympathy I think I can promise you. My assistance, I fear, would be worthless.”
“By no means worthless, Alice; not if I see you take that place in the world which I hope to see you fill. Do you think women nowadays have no bearing upon the politics of the times? Almost as much as men have.” In answer to which Alice shook her head; but, nevertheless, she felt in some way pleased and flattered.
George left her without saying a word more about her marriage prospects past or future, and Alice as she went to bed felt glad that this explanation between them had been made.