During these days there were terrible doings at Exeter. Camilla had sworn that if Mr Gibson did not come to, there should be a tragedy, and it appeared that she was inclined to keep her word. Immediately after the receipt of her letter from Mr Gibson she had had an interview with that gentleman in his lodgings, and had asked him his intentions. He had taken measures to fortify himself against such an attack; but, whatever those measures were, Camilla had broken through them. She had stood before him as he sat in his armchair, and he had been dumb in her presence. It had perhaps been well for him that the eloquence of her indignation had been so great that she had hardly been able to pause a moment for a reply. ‘Will you take your letter back again?’ she had said. ‘I should be wrong to do that,’ he had lisped out in reply, ‘because it is true. As a Christian minister I could not stand with you at the altar with a lie in my mouth.’ In no other way did he attempt to excuse himself but that, twice repeated, filled up all the pause which she made for him.
There never had been such a case before so impudent, so cruel, so gross, so uncalled for, so unmanly, so unnecessary, so unjustifiable, so damnable so sure of eternal condemnation! All this she said to him with loud voice, and clenched fist, and starting eyes regardless utterly of any listeners on the stairs, or of outside passers in the street. In very truth she was moved to a sublimity of indignation. Her low nature became nearly poetic under the wrong inflicted upon her. She was almost tempted to tear him with her hands, and inflict upon him at the moment some terrible vengeance which should be told of for ever in the annals of Exeter. A man so mean as he, so weak, so cowardly, one so little of a hero that he should dare to do it, and dare to sit there before her, and to say that he would do it! ‘Your gown shall be torn off your back, Sir, and the very boys of Exeter shall drag you through the gutters!’ To this threat he said nothing, but sat mute, hiding his face in his hands. ‘And now tell me this, sir, is there anything between you and Bella?’ But there was no voice in reply. ‘Answer my question, sir. I have a right to ask it.’ Still he said not a word. ‘Listen to me. Sooner than that you and she should be man and wife, I would stab her! Yes, I would you poor, paltry, lying, cowardly creature!’ She remained with him for more than half an hour, and then banged out of the room, flashing back a look of scorn at him as she went. Martha, before that day was over, had learned the whole story from Mr Gibson’s cook, and had told her mistress.
‘I did not think he had so much spirit in him,’ was Miss Stanbury’s answer. Throughout Exeter the great wonder arising from the crisis was the amount of spirit which had been displayed by Mr Gibson.
When he was left alone he shook himself, and began to think that if there were danger that such interviews might occur frequently, he had better leave Exeter for good. As he put his hand over his forehead, he declared to himself that a very little more of that kind of thing would kill him. When a couple of hours had passed over his head he shook himself again, and sat down and wrote a letter to his intended mother-inlaw.
‘I do not mean to complain,’ he said, ‘God knows I have no right; but I cannot stand a repetition of what has occurred just now. If your younger daughter comes to see me again I must refuse to see her, and shall leave the town. I am ready to make what reparation may be possible for the mistake into which I have fallen.
‘T. G.’
Mrs French was no doubt much afraid of her younger daughter, but she was less afraid of her than were other people. Familiarity, they say, breeds contempt; and who can be so familiar with a child as its parent? She did not in her heart believe that Camilla would murder anybody, and she fully realised the conviction that, even after all that was come and gone, it would be better that one of her daughters should have a husband than that neither should be so blessed. If only Camilla could be got out of Exeter for a few months how good a thing it would be for them all! She had a brother in Gloucester; if only he could be got to take Camilla for a few months! And then, too, she knew that if the true rights of her two daughters were strictly and impartially examined, Arabella’s claim was much stronger than any that Camilla could put forward to the hand of Mr Gibson.
‘You must not go there again, Camilla,’ the mother said.
‘I shall go whenever I please,’ replied the fury.
‘Now, Camilla, we may as well understand each other. I will not have it done. If I am provoked, I will send to your uncle at Gloucester.’ Now the uncle at Gloucester was a timber merchant, a man with protuberant eyes and a great square chin, known to be a very stern man indeed, and not at all afraid of young women.
‘What do I care for my uncle? My uncle would take my part.’
‘No, he would not. The truth is, Camilla, you interfered with Bella first.’
‘Mamma, how dare you say so!’
‘You did, my dear. And these are the consequences.’
‘And you mean to say that she is to be Mrs Gibson?’
‘I say nothing about that. But I do not see why they shouldn’t be married if their hearts are inclined to each other.’
‘I will die first!’
‘Your dying has nothing to do with it, Camilla.’
‘And I will kill her!’
‘If you speak to me again in that way I will write to your uncle at Gloucester. I have done the best I could for you both, and I will not bear such treatment.’
‘And how am I treated?’
‘You should not have interfered with your sister.’
‘You are all in a conspiracy together,’ shouted Camilla, ‘you are! There never was anybody so badly treated — never, never, never! What will everybody say of me?’
‘They will pity you, if you will be quiet.’
‘I don’t want to be pitied — I won’t be pitied. I wish I could die; and I will die! Anybody else would, at any rate, have had their mother and sister with them!’ Then she burst into a flood of real, true, womanly tears.
After this there was a lull at Heavitree for a few days. Camilla did not speak to her sister, but she condescended to hold some intercourse with her mother, and to take her meals at the family table. She did not go out of the house, but she employed herself in her own room, doing no one knew what, with all that new clothing and household gear which was to have been transferred in her train to Mr Gibson’s house. Mrs French was somewhat uneasy about the new clothing and household gear, feeling that, in the event of Bella’s marriage, at least a considerable portion of it must be transferred to the new bride. But it was impossible at the present moment to open such a subject to Camilla; it would have been as a proposition to a lioness respecting the taking away of her whelps. Nevertheless, the day must soon come in which something must be said about the clothing and household gear. All the property that had been sent into the house at Camilla’s orders could not be allowed to remain as Camilla’s perquisites, now that Camilla was not to be married. ‘Do you know what she is doing, my dear?’ said Mrs French to her elder daughter.
‘Perhaps she is picking out the marks,’ said Bella.
‘I don’t think she would do that as yet,’ said Mrs French.
‘She might just as well leave it alone,’ said Bella, feeling that one of the two letters would do for her. But neither of them dared to speak to her of her occupation in these first days of her despair.
Mr Gibson in the meantime remained at home, or only left his house to go to the Cathedral or to visit the narrow confines of his little parish. When he was out he felt that everybody looked at him, and it seemed to him that people whispered about him when they saw him at his usual desk in the choir. His friends passed him merely bowing to him, and he was aware that he had done that which would be regarded by every one around him as unpardonable. And yet what ought he to have done? He acknowledged to himself that he had been very foolish, mad, quite demented at the moment when he allowed himself to think it possible that he should marry Camilla French. But having found out how mad he had been at that moment, having satisfied himself that to live with her as his wife would be impossible, was he not right to break the engagement? Could anything be so wicked as marrying a woman whom he hated? Thus he tried to excuse himself; but yet he knew that all the world would condemn him. Life in Exeter would be impossible, if no way to social pardon could be opened for him. He was willing to do anything within bounds in mitigation of his offence. He would give up fifty pounds a year to Camilla for his life or he would marry Bella. Yes; he would marry Bella at once if Camilla would only consent, and give up that idea of stabbing some one. Bella French was not very nice in his eyes; but she was quiet, he thought, and it might be possible to live with her. Nevertheless, he told himself over and over again that the manner in which unmarried men with incomes were set upon by ladies in want of husbands was very disgraceful to the country at large. That mission to Natal which had once been offered to him would have had charms for him now, of which he had not recognised the force when he rejected it.
‘Do you think that he ever was really engaged to her?’ Dorothy said to her aunt. Dorothy was now living in a seventh heaven of happiness, writing love-letters to Brooke Burgess every other day, and devoting to this occupation a number of hours of which she ought to have been ashamed; making her purchases for her wedding with nothing, however, of the magnificence of a Camilla, but discussing everything with her aunt, who urged her on to extravagances which seemed beyond the scope of her own economical ideas; settling, or trying to settle, little difficulties which perplexed her somewhat, and wondering at her own career. She could not of course be married without the presence of her mother and sister, and her aunt with something of a grim courtesy had intimated that they should be made welcome to the house in the Close for the special occasion. But nothing had been said about Hugh. The wedding was to be in the Cathedral, and Dorothy had a little scheme in her head for meeting her brother among the aisles. He would no doubt come down with Brooke, and nothing perhaps need be said about it to Aunt Stanbury. But still it was a trouble. Her aunt had been so good that Dorothy felt that no step should be taken which would vex the old woman. It was evident enough that when permission had been given for the visit of Mrs Stanbury and Priscilla, Hugh’s name had been purposely kept back. There had been no accidental omission. Dorothy, therefore, did not dare to mention it, and yet it was essential for her happiness that he should be there. At the present moment Miss Stanbury’s intense interest in the Stanbury wedding was somewhat mitigated by the excitement occasioned by Mr Gibson’s refusal to be married. Dorothy was so shocked that she could not bring herself to believe the statement that had reached them through Martha.
‘Of course he was engaged to her. We all knew that,’ said Miss Stanbury.
‘I think there must have been some mistake,’ said Dorothy. ‘I don’t see how he could do it.’
‘There is no knowing what people can do, my dear, when they’re hard driven. I suppose we shall have a lawsuit now, and he’ll have to pay ever so much money. Well, well, well! see what a deal of trouble you might have saved!’
‘But, he’d have done the same to me, aunt, only, you know, I never could have taken him. Isn’t it better as it is, aunt? Tell me.’
‘I suppose young women always think it best when they can get their own ways. An old woman like me has only got to do what she is bid.’
‘But this was best, aunt, was it not?’
‘My dear, you’ve had your way, and let that be enough. Poor Camilla French is not allowed to have hers at all. Dear, dear, dear! I didn’t think the man would ever have been such a fool to begin with or that he would ever have had the heart to get out of it afterwards.’ It astonished Dorothy to find that her aunt was not loud in reprobation of Mr Gibson’s very dreadful conduct.
In the meantime Mrs French had written to her brother at Gloucester. The maid-servant, in making Miss Camilla’s bed, and in ‘putting the room to rights,’ as she called it — which description probably was intended to cover the circumstances of an accurate search — had discovered, hidden among some linen, a carving knife! such a knife as is used for the cutting up of fowls; and, after two days’ interval, had imparted the discovery to Mrs French. Instant visit was made to the pantry, and it was found that a very aged but unbroken and sharply-pointed weapon was missing. Mrs French at once accused Camilla, and Camilla, after some hesitation, admitted that it might be there. Molly, she said, was a nasty, sly, wicked thing, to go looking in her drawers, and she would never leave anything unlocked again. The knife, she declared, had been taken upstairs, because she had wanted something very sharp to cut the bones of her stays. The knife was given up, but Mrs French thought it best to write to her brother, Mr Crump. She was in great doubt about sundry matters. Had the carving knife really pointed to a domestic tragedy, and if so, what steps ought a poor widow to take with such a daughter? And what ought to be done about Mr Gibson? It ran through Mrs French’s mind that unless something were done at once, Mr Gibson would escape scot-free. It was her wish that he should yet become her son-inlaw. Poor Bella was entitled to her chance. But if Bella was to be disappointed from fear of carving knives, or for other reasons, then there came the question whether Mr Gibson should not be made to pay in purse for the mischief he had done. With all these thoughts and doubts running through her head, Mrs French wrote to her brother at Gloucester.
There came back an answer from Mr Crump, in which that gentleman expressed a very strong idea that Mr Gibson should be prosecuted for damages with the utmost virulence, and with the least possible delay. No compromise should be accepted. Mr Crump would himself come to Exeter and see the lawyer as soon as he should be told that there was a lawyer to be seen. As to the carving knife, Mr Crump was of opinion that it did not mean anything. Mr Crump was a gentleman who did not believe in strong romance, but who had great trust in all pecuniary claims. The Frenches had always been genteel. The late Captain French had been an officer in the army, and at ordinary times and seasons the Frenches were rather ashamed of the Crump connection. But now the timber merchant might prove himself to be a useful friend.
Mrs French shewed her brother’s letter to Bella and poor Bella was again sore-hearted, seeing that nothing was said in it of her claims. ‘It will be dreadful scandal to have it all in the papers!’ said Bella.
‘But what can we do?’
‘Anything would be better than that,’ said Bella. ‘And you don’t want to punish Mr Gibson, mamma.’
‘But my dear, you see what your uncle says. What can I do, except go to him for advice?’
‘Why don’t you go to Mr Gibson yourself, mamma?’
But nothing was said to Camilla about Mr Crump — nothing as yet. Camilla did not love Mr Crump, but there was no other house except that of Mr Crump’s at Gloucester to which she might be sent, if it could be arranged that Mr Gibson and Bella should be made one. Mrs French took her eldest daughter’s advice, and went to Mr Gibson, taking Mr Crump’s letter in her pocket. For herself she wanted nothing, but was it not the duty of her whole life to fight for her daughters? Poor woman! If somebody would only have taught her how that duty might best be done, she would have endeavoured to obey the teaching. ‘You know I do not want to threaten you,’ she said to Mr Gibson; ‘but you see what my brother says. Of course I wrote to my brother. What could a poor woman do in such circumstances except write to her brother?’
‘If you choose to set the bloodhounds of the law at me, of course you can,’ said Mr Gibson.
‘I do not want to go to law at all God; knows I do not!’ said Mrs French. Then there was a pause. ‘Poor dear Bella!’ ejaculated Mrs French.
‘Dear Bella!’ echoed Mr Gibson.
‘What do you mean to do about Bella?’ asked Mrs French.
‘I sometimes think that I had better take poison and have done with it!’ said Mr Gibson, feeling himself to be very hard pressed.
Mr Crump arrived at Exeter. Camilla was not told of his coming till the morning of the day on which he arrived; and then the tidings were communicated, because it was necessary that a change should be made in the bed-rooms. She and her sister had separate rooms when there was no visitor with them, but now Mr Crump must be accommodated. There was a long consultation between Bella and Mrs French, but at last it was decided that Bella should sleep with her mother. There would still be too much of the lioness about Camilla to allow of her being regarded as a safe companion through the watches of the night. ‘Why is Uncle Jonas coming now?’ she asked.
‘I thought it better to ask him,’ said Mrs French.
After a long pause, Camilla asked another question. ‘Does Uncle Jonas mean to see Mr Gibson?’
‘I suppose he will,’ said Mrs French.
‘Then he will see a low, mean fellow: the lowest, meanest fellow that ever was heard of! But that won’t make much difference to Uncle Jonas. I wouldn’t have him now, if he was to ask me ever so, that I wouldn’t!’
Mr Crump came, and kissed his sister and two nieces. The embrace with Camilla was not very affectionate.‘so your Joe has been and jilted you?’ said Uncle Jonas ‘it’s like one of them clergymen. They say so many prayers, they think they may do almost anything afterwards. Another man would have had his head punched.’
‘The less talk there is about it the better,’ said Camilla. On the following day Mr Crump called by appointment on Mr Gibson, and remained closeted with that gentleman for the greater portion of the morning. Camilla knew well that he was going, and went about the house like a perturbed spirit during his absence. There was a look about her that made them all doubt whether she was not, in truth, losing her mind. Her mother more than once went to the pantry to see that the knives were right; and, as regarded that sharp-pointed weapon, was careful to lock it up carefully out of her daughter’s way. Mr Crump had declared himself willing to take Camilla back to Gloucester, and had laughed at the obstacles which his niece might, perhaps, throw in the way of such an arrangement. ‘She mustn’t have much luggage, that is all,’ said Mr Crump. For Mr Crump had been made aware of the circumstances of the trousseau. About three o’clock Mr Crump came back from Mr Gibson’s, and expressed a desire to be left alone with Camilla. Mrs French was prepared for everything; and Mr Crump soon found himself with his younger niece.
‘Camilla, my dear,’ said he, ‘this has been a bad business.’
‘I don’t know what business you mean, Uncle Jonas.’
‘Yes, you do, my dear, you know. And I hope it won’t come too late to prove to you that young women shouldn’t be too keen in setting their caps at the gentlemen. It’s better for them to be hunted, than to hunt.’
‘Uncle Jonas, I will not be insulted.’
‘Stick to that, my dear, and you won’t get into a scrape again. Now, look here. This man can never be made to marry you, anyhow.’
‘I wouldn’t touch him with a pair of tongs, if he were kneeling at my feet!’
‘That’s right; stick to that. Of course, you wouldn’t now, after all that has come and gone. No girl with any spirit would.’
‘He’s a coward and a thief, and he’ll be damned for what he has done, some of these days!’
‘T-ch, t-ch, t-ch! That isn’t a proper way for a young lady to talk. That’s cursing and swearing.’
‘It isn’t cursing and swearing — it’s what the Bible says.’
‘Then we’ll leave him to the Bible. In the meantime, Mr Gibson wants to marry some one else, and that can’t hurt you.’
‘He may marry whom he likes, but he shan’t marry Bella, that’s all!’
‘It is Bella that he means to marry.’
‘Then he won’t. I’ll forbid the banns. I’ll write to the bishop. I’ll go to the church and prevent its being done. I’ll make such a noise in the town that it can’t be done. It’s no use your looking at me like that, Uncle Jonas. I’ve got my own feelings, and he shall never marry Bella. It’s what they have been intending all through, and it shan’t be done!’
‘It will be done.’
‘Uncle Jonas, I’ll stab her to the heart, and him too, before I’ll see it done! Though I were to be killed the next day, I would. Could you bear it?’
‘I’m not a young woman. Now, I’ll tell you what I want you to do.’
‘I’ll not do anything.’
‘Just pack up your things, and start with me to Gloucester tomorrow.’
‘I won’t!’
‘Then you’ll be carried, my dear. I’ll write to your aunt, to say that you’re coming; and we’ll be as jolly as possible when we get you home.’
‘I won’t go to Gloucester, Uncle Jonas. I won’t go away from Exeter. I won’t let it be done. She shall never, never, never be that man’s wife!’
Nevertheless, on the day but one after this, Camilla French did go to Gloucester. Before she went, however, things had to be done in that house which almost made Mrs French repent that she had sent for so stern an assistant. Camilla was at last told, in so many words, that the things which she had prepared for her own wedding must be given up for the wedding of her sister; and it seemed that this item in the list of her sorrows troubled her almost more than any other. She swore that whither she went there should go the dresses, and the handkerchiefs, and the hats, the bonnets, and the boots. ‘Let her have them,’ Bella had pleaded. But Mr Crump was inexorable. He had looked into his sister’s affairs, and found that she was already in debt. To his practical mind, it was an absurdity that the unmarried sister should keep things that were wholly unnecessary, and that the sister that was to be married should be without things that were needed. There was a big trunk, of which Camilla had the key, but which, unfortunately for her, had been deposited in her mother’s room. Upon this she sat, and swore that nothing should move her but a promise that her plunder should remain untouched. But there came this advantage from the terrible question of the wedding raiments, that in her energy to keep possession of them, she gradually abandoned her opposition to her sister’s marriage. She had been driven from one point to another till she was compelled at last to stand solely upon her possessions. ‘Perhaps we had better let her keep them,’ said Mrs French. ‘Trash and nonsense!’ said Mr Crump. ‘If she wants a new frock, let her have it; as for the sheets and tablecloths, you’d better keep them yourself. But Bella must have the rest.’
It was found on the eve of the day on which she was told that she was to depart that she had in truth armed herself with a dagger or clasp knife. She actually displayed it when her uncle told her to come away from the chest on which she was sitting. She declared that she would defend herself there to the last gasp of her life; but of course the knife fell from her hand the first moment that she was touched. ‘I did think once that she was going to make a poke at me,’ Mr Crump said afterwards; ‘but she had screamed herself so weak that she couldn’t do it.’
When the morning came, she was taken to the fly and driven to the station without any further serious outbreak. She had even condescended to select certain articles, leaving the rest of the hymeneal wealth behind her. Bella, early on that morning of departure, with great humility, implored her sister to forgive her; but no entreaties could induce Camilla to address one gracious word to the proposed bride. ‘You’ve been cheating me all along!’ she said; and that was the last word she spoke to poor Bella.
She went, and the field was once more open to the amorous Vicar of St. Peter’s-cum-Pumpkin. It is astonishing how the greatest difficulties will sink away, and become as it were nothing, when they are encountered face to face. It is certain that Mr Gibson’s position had been one most trying to the nerves. He had speculated on various modes of escape; a curacy in the north of England would be welcome, or the duties of a missionary in New Zealand, or death. To tell the truth, he had, during the last week or two, contemplated even a return to the dominion of Camilla. That there should ever again be things pleasant for him in Exeter seemed to be quite impossible. And yet, on the evening of the day but one after the departure of Camilla, he was seated almost comfortably with his own Arabella! There is nothing that a man may not do, nothing that he may not achieve, if he have only pluck enough to go through with it.
‘You do love me?’ Bella said to him. It was natural that she should ask him; but it would have been better perhaps if she had held her tongue. Had she spoken to him about his house, or his income, or the servants, or the duties of his parish church, it would have been easier for him to make a comfortable reply.
‘Yes I love you,’ he replied; ‘of course I love you. We have always been friends, and I hope things will go straight now. I have had a great deal to go through, Bella, and so have you, but God will temper the wind to the shorn lambs.’ How was the wind to be tempered for the poor lamb who had gone forth shorn down to the very skin!
Soon after this Mrs French returned to the room, and then there was no more romance. Mrs French had by no means forgiven Mr Gibson all the trouble he had brought into the family, and mixed a certain amount of acrimony with her entertainment of him. She dictated to him, treated him with but scant respect, and did not hesitate to let him understand that he was to be watched very closely till he was actually and absolutely married. The poor man had in truth no further idea of escape. He was aware that he had done that which made it necessary that he should bear a great deal, and that he had no right to resent suspicion. When a day was fixed in June on which he should be married at the church of Heavitree, and it was proposed that he should be married by banns, he had nothing to urge to the contrary. And when it was also suggested to him by one of the prebendaries of the Cathedral that it might be well for him to change his clerical duties for a period with the vicar of a remote parish in the north of Cornwall so as to be out of the way of remark from those whom he had scandalised by his conduct, he had no objection to make to that arrangement. When Mrs MacHugh met him in the Close, and told him that he was a gay Lothario, he shook his head with a melancholy self-abasement, and passed on without even a feeling of anger. ‘When they smite me on the right cheek, I turn unto them my left,’ he said to himself, when one of the cathedral vergers remarked to him that after all he was going to be married at last. Even Bella became dominant over him, and assumed with him occasionally the air of one who had been injured.
Bella wrote a touching letter to her sister, a letter that ought to have touched Camilla, begging for forgiveness, and for one word of sisterly love. Camilla answered the letter, but did not send a word of sisterly love. ‘According to my way of thinking, you have been a nasty sly thing, and I don’t believe you’ll ever be happy. As for him, I’ll never speak to him again.’ That was nearly the whole of her letter. ‘You must leave it to time,’ said Mrs French wisely;‘she’ll come round some day.’ And then Mrs French thought how bad it would be for her if the daughter who was to be her future companion did not ‘come round’ some day.
And so it was settled that they should be married in Heavitree Church, Mr Gibson and his first love, and things went on pretty much as though nothing had been done amiss. The gentleman from Cornwall came down to take Mr Gibson’s place at St. Peter’s-cum-Pumpkin, while his duties in the Cathedral were temporarily divided among the other priest-vicars -with some amount of grumbling on their part. Bella commenced her modest preparations without any of the eclat which had attended Camilla’s operations, but she felt more certainty of ultimate success than had ever fallen to Camilla’s lot. In spite of all that had come and gone, Bella never feared again that Mr Gibson would be untrue to her. In regard to him, it must be doubted whether Nemesis ever fell upon him with a hand sufficiently heavy to punish him for the great sins which he had manifestly committed. He had encountered a bad week or two, and there had been days in which, as has been said, he thought of Natal, of ecclesiastical censures, and even of annihilation; but no real punishment seemed to fall upon him. It may be doubted whether, when the whole arrangement was settled for him, and when he heard that Camilla had yielded to the decrees of Fate, he did not rather flatter himself on being a successful man of intrigue, whether he did not take some glory to himself for his good fortune with women, and pride himself amidst his self-reproaches for the devotion which had been displayed for him by the fair sex in general. It is quite possible that he taught himself to believe that at one time Dorothy Stanbury was devotedly in love with him, and that when he reckoned up his sins she was one of those in regard to whom he accounted himself to have been a sinner. The spirit of intrigue with women, as to which men will flatter themselves, is customarily so vile, so mean, so vapid a reflection of a feeling, so aimless, resultless, and utterly unworthy! Passion exists and has its sway. Vice has its votaries and there is, too, that worn-out longing for vice, ‘prurient, yet passionless, cold-studied lewdness’, which drags on a feeble continuance with the aid of money. But the commonest folly of man in regard to women is a weak taste for intrigue, with little or nothing on which to feed it a worse than feminine aptitude for male coquetry, which never ascends beyond a desire that somebody shall hint that there is something peculiar; and which is shocked and retreats backwards into its boots when anything like a consequence forces itself on the apprehension. Such men have their glory in their own estimation. We remember how Falstaff flouted the pride of his companion whose victory in the fields of love had been but little glorious. But there are victories going now-a-days so infinitely less glorious, that Falstaff’s page was a Lothario, a very Don Juan, in comparison with the heroes whose praises are too often sung by their own lips. There is this recompense: that their defeats are always sung by lips louder than their own. Mr Gibson, when he found that he was to escape apparently unscathed, that people standing respectably before the world absolutely dared to whisper words to him of congratulation on this third attempt at marriage within little more than a year, took pride to himself, and bethought himself that he was a gay deceiver. He believed that he had selected his wife and that he had done so in circumstances of peculiar difficulty! Poor Mr Gibson — we hardly know whether most to pity him, or the unfortunate, poor woman who ultimately became Mrs Gibson.
‘And so Bella French is to be the fortunate woman after all,’ said Miss Stanbury to her niece.
‘It does seem to me to be so odd,’ said Dorothy. ‘I wonder how he looked when he proposed it.’
‘Like a fool, as he always does.’
Dorothy refrained from remarking that Miss Stanbury had not always thought that Mr Gibson looked like a fool, but the idea occurred to her mind. ‘I hope they will be happy at last,’ she said.
‘Pshaw! Such people can’t be happy, and can’t be unhappy. I don’t suppose it much matters which he marries, or whether he marries them both, or neither. They are to be married by banns, they say at Heavitree.’
‘I don’t see anything bad in that.’
‘Only Camilla might step out and forbid them,’ said Aunt Stanbury. ‘I almost wish she would.’
‘She has gone away, aunt, to an uncle who lives at Gloucester.’
‘It was well to get her out of the way, no doubt. They’ll be married before you now, Dolly.’
‘That won’t break my heart, aunt.’
‘I don’t suppose there’ll be much of a wedding. They haven’t anybody belonging to them, except that uncle at Gloucester.’ Then there was a pause. ‘I think it is a nice thing for friends to collect together at a wedding,’ continued Aunt Stanbury.
‘I think it is,’ said Dorothy, in the mildest, softest voice.
‘I suppose we must make room for that black sheep of a brother of yours, Dolly or else you won’t be contented.’
‘Dear, dear, dearest aunt!’ said Dorothy, falling down on her knees at her aunt’s feet.
Trevelyan, when his wife had left him, sat for hours in silence pondering over his own position and hers. He had taken his child to an upper room, in which was his own bed and the boy’s cot, and before he seated himself, he spread out various toys which he had been at pains to purchase for the unhappy little fellow — a regiment of Garibaldian soldiers all with red shirts, and a drum to give the regiment martial spirit, and a soft fluffy Italian ball, and a battledore, and a shuttlecock — instruments enough for juvenile joy, if only there had been a companion with whom the child could use them. But the toys remained where the father had placed them, almost unheeded, and the child sat looking out of the window, melancholy, silent, and repressed. Even the drum did not tempt him to be noisy. Doubtless he did not know why he was wretched, but he was fully conscious of his wretchedness. In the meantime the father sat motionless, in an old worn-out but once handsome leathern arm-chair, with his eyes fixed against the opposite wall, thinking of the wreck of his life.
Thought — deep, correct, continued, and energetic — is quite compatible with madness. At this time Trevelyan’s mind was so far unhinged, his ordinary faculties were so greatly impaired, that they who declared him to be mad were justified in their declaration. His condition was such that the happiness and welfare of no human being, not even his own, could safely be entrusted to his keeping. He considered himself to have been so injured by the world, to have been the victim of so cruel a conspiracy among those who ought to have been his friends, that there remained nothing for him but to flee away from them and remain in solitude. But yet, through it all, there was something approaching to a conviction that he had brought his misery upon himself by being unlike to other men; and he declared to himself over and over again that it was better that he should suffer than that others should be punished. When he was alone his reflections respecting his wife were much juster than were his words when he spoke either with her, or to others, of her conduct. He would declare to himself not only that he did not believe her to have been false to him, but that he had never accused her of such crime. He had demanded from her obedience, and she had been disobedient. It had been incumbent upon him, so ran his own ideas, as expressed to himself in these long unspoken soliloquies, to exact obedience, or at least compliance, let the consequences be what they might. She had refused to obey or even to comply, and the consequences were very grievous. But, though he pitied himself with a pity that was feminine, yet he acknowledged to himself that her conduct had been the result of his own moody temperament. Every friend had parted from him. All those to whose counsels he had listened, had counselled him that he was wrong. The whole world was against him. Had he remained in England, the doctors and lawyers among them would doubtless have declared him to be mad. He knew all this, and yet he could not yield. He could not say that he had been wrong. He could not even think that he had been wrong as to the cause of the great quarrel. He was one so miserable and so unfortunate, so he thought, that even in doing right he had fallen into perdition!
He had had two enemies, and between them they had worked his ruin. These were Colonel Osborne and Bozzle. It may be doubted whether he did not hate the latter the more strongly of the two. He knew now that Bozzle had been untrue to him, but his disgust did not spring from that so much as from the feeling that he had defiled himself by dealing with the man. Though he was quite assured that he had been right in his first cause of offence, he knew that he had fallen from bad to worse in every step that he had taken since. Colonel Osborne had marred his happiness by vanity, by wicked intrigue, by a devilish delight in doing mischief; but he, he himself, had consummated the evil by his own folly. Why had he not taken Colonel Osborne by the throat, instead of going to a low-born, vile, mercenary spy for assistance? He hated himself for what he had done, and yet it was impossible that he should yield.
It was impossible that he should yield but it was yet open to him to sacrifice himself. He could not go back to his wife and say that he was wrong; but he could determine that the destruction should fall upon him and not upon her. If he gave up his child and then died — died, alone, without any friend near him, with no word of love in his ears, in that solitary and miserable abode which he had found for himself — then it would at least be acknowledged that he had expiated the injury that he had done. She would have his wealth, his name, his child to comfort her and would be troubled no longer by demands for that obedience which she had sworn at the altar to give him, and which she had since declined to render to him. Perhaps there was some feeling that the coals of fire would be hot upon her head when she should think how much she had received from him and how little she had done for him. And yet he loved her, with all his heart, and would even yet dream of bliss that might be possible with her had not the terrible hand of irresistible Fate come between them and marred it all. It was only a dream now. It could be no more than a dream. He put out his thin wasted hands and looked at them, and touched the hollowness of his own cheeks, and coughed that he might hear the hacking sound of his own infirmity, and almost took glory in his weakness. It could not be long before the coals of fire would be heaped upon her head.
‘Louey,’ he said at last, addressing the child who had sat for an hour gazing through the window without stirring a limb or uttering a sound; ‘Louey, my boy, would you like to go back to mamma?’ The child turned round on the floor, and fixed his eyes on his father’s face, but made no immediate reply. ‘Louey, dear, come to papa and tell him. Would it be nice to go back to mamma?’ And he stretched out his hand to the boy. Louey got up, and approached slowly and stood between his father’s knees. ‘Tell me, darling, you understand what papa says?’
‘Altro!’ said the boy, who had been long enough among Italian servants to pick up the common words of the language. Of course he would like to go back. How indeed could it be otherwise?
‘Then you shall go to her, Louey.’
‘To-day, papa?’
‘Not today, nor tomorrow.’
‘But the day after?’
‘That is sufficient. You shall go. It is not so bad with you that one day more need be a sorrow to you. You shall go and then you will never see your father again!’ Trevelyan as he said this drew his hands away so as not to touch the child. The little fellow had put out his arm, but seeing his father’s angry gesture had made no further attempt at a caress. He feared his father from the bottom of his little heart, and yet was aware that it was his duty to try to love papa. He did not understand the meaning of that last threat, but slunk back, passing his untouched toys, to the window, and there seated himself again, filling his mind with the thought that when two more long long days should have crept by, he should once more go to his mother.
Trevelyan had tried his best to be soft and gentle to his child. All that he had said to his wife of his treatment of the boy had been true to the letter. He had spared no personal trouble, he had done all that he had known how to do, he had exercised all his intelligence to procure amusement for the boy, but Louey had hardly smiled since he had been taken from his mother. And now that he was told that he was to go and never see his father again, the tidings were to him simply tidings of joy. ‘There is a curse upon me,’ said Trevelyan; ‘it is written down in the book of my destiny that nothing shall ever love me!’
He went out from the house, and made his way down by the narrow path through the olives and vines to the bottom of the hill in front of the villa. It was evening now, but the evening was very hot, and though the olive trees stood in long rows, there was no shade. Quite at the bottom of the hill there was a little sluggish muddy brook, along the sides of which the reeds grew thickly and the dragon-flies were playing on the water. There was nothing attractive in the spot, but he was weary, and sat himself down on the dry hard bank which had been made by repeated clearing of mud from the bottom of the little rivulet. He sat watching the dragon-flies as they made their short flights in the warm air, and told himself that of all God’s creatures there was not one to whom less power of disporting itself in God’s sun was given than to him. Surely it would be better for him that he should die, than live as he was now living without any of the joys of life. The solitude of Casalunga was intolerable to him, and yet there was no whither that he could go and find society. He could travel if he pleased. He had money at command, and, at any rate as yet, there was no embargo on his personal liberty. But how could he travel alone even if his strength might suffice for the work? There had been moments in which he had thought that he would be happy in the love of his child, that the companionship of an infant would suffice for him if only the infant would love him. But all such dreams as that were over. To repay him for his tenderness, his boy was always dumb before him. Louey would not prattle as he had used to do. He would not even smile, or give back the kisses with which his father had attempted to win him. In mercy to the boy he would send him back to his mother — in mercy to the boy if not to the mother also. It was in vain that he should look for any joy in any quarter. Were he to return to England, they would say that he was mad!
He lay there by the brook-side till the evening was far advanced, and then he arose and slowly returned to the house. The labour of ascending the hill was so great to him that he was forced to pause and hold by the olive trees as he slowly performed his task. The perspiration came in profusion from his pores, and he found himself to be so weak that he must in future regard the brook as being beyond the tether of his daily exercise. Eighteen months ago he had been a strong walker, and the snow-bound paths of Swiss mountains had been a joy to him. He paused as he was slowly dragging himself on, and looked up at the wretched, desolate, comfortless abode which he called his home. Its dreariness was so odious to him that he was half-minded to lay himself down where he was, and let the night air come upon him and do its worst. In such case, however, some Italian doctor would be sent down who would say that he was mad. Above all the things, and to the last, he must save himself from that degradation.
When he had crawled up to the house, he went to his child, and found that the woman had put the boy to bed. Then he was angry with himself in that he himself had not seen to this, and kept up his practice of attending the child to the last. He would, at least, be true to his resolution, and prepare for the boy’s return to his mother. Not knowing how otherwise to manage it, he wrote that night the following note to Mr Glascock:
‘Casalunga,
Thursday night.
My Dear Sir,
Since you last were considerate enough to call upon me I have resolved to take a step in my affairs which, though it will rob me of my only remaining gratification, will tend to lessen the troubles under which Mrs Trevelyan is labouring. If she desires it, as no doubt she does, I will consent to place our boy again in her custody, trusting to her sense of honour to restore him to me should I demand it. In my present unfortunate position I cannot suggest that she should come for the boy. I am unable to support the excitement occasioned by her presence. I will, however, deliver up my darling either to you, or to any messenger sent by you whom I can trust. I beg heartily to apologise for the trouble I am giving you, and to subscribe myself yours very faithfully.
Louis Trevelyan
The Hon. C. Glascock.
P.S. It is as well, perhaps, that I should explain that I must decline to receive any visit from Sir Marmaduke Rowley. Sir Marmaduke has insulted me grossly on each occasion on which I have seen him since his return home.’
June was now far advanced, and the Rowleys and the Spaldings had removed from Florence to the Baths of Lucca. Mr Glascock had followed in their wake, and the whole party were living at the Baths in one of those hotels in which so many English and Americans are wont to congregate in the early weeks of the Italian summer. The marriage was to take place in the last week of the month; and all the party were to return to Florence for the occasion with the exception of Sir Marmaduke and Mrs Trevelyan. She was altogether unfitted for wedding joys, and her father had promised to bear her company when the others left her. Mr Glascock and Caroline Spalding were to be married in Florence, and were to depart immediately from thence for some of the cooler parts of Switzerland. After that Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley were to return to London with their daughters, preparatory to that dreary journey back to the Mandarins; and they had not even yet resolved what they had better do respecting that unfortunate man who was living in seclusion on the hilltop near Siena. They had consulted lawyers and doctors in Florence, but it had seemed that everybody there was afraid of putting the law in force against an Englishman. Doubtless there was a law in respect to the custody of the insane; and it was admitted that if Trevelyan were dangerously mad something could be done; but it seemed that nobody was willing to stir in such a case as that which now existed. Something, it was said, might be done at some future time; but the difficulties were so great that nothing could be done now.
It was very sad, because it was necessary that some decision should be made as to the future residence of Mrs Trevelyan and of Nora. Emily had declared that nothing should induce her to go to the Islands with her father and mother unless her boy went with her. Since her journey to Casalunga she had also expressed her unwillingness to leave her husband. Her heart had been greatly softened towards him, and she had declared that where he remained, there would she remain as near to him as circumstances would admit. It might be that at last her care would be necessary for his comfort. He supplied her with means of living, and she would use these means as well as she might be able in his service.
Then there had arisen the question of Nora’s future residence. And there had come troubles and storms in the family. Nora had said that she would not go back to the Mandarins, but had not at first been able to say where or how she would live. She had suggested that she might stay with her sister, but her father had insisted that she could not live on the income supplied by Trevelyan. Then, when pressed hard, she had declared that she intended to live on Hugh Stanbury’s income. She would marry him at once with her father’s leave, if she could get it, but without it if it needs must be so. Her mother told her that Hugh Stanbury was not himself ready for her; he had not even proposed so hasty a marriage, nor had he any home fitted for her. Lady Rowley, in arguing this, had expressed no assent to the marriage, even as a distant arrangement, but had thought thus to vanquish her daughter by suggesting small but insuperable difficulties. On a sudden, however, Lady Rowley found that all this was turned against her, by an offer that came direct from Mr Glascock. His Caroline, he said, was very anxious that Nora should come to them at Monkhams as soon as they had returned home from Switzerland. They intended to be there by the middle of August, and would hurry there sooner, if there was any immediate difficulty about finding a home for Nora. Mr Glascock said nothing about Hugh Stanbury; but, of course, Lady Rowley understood that Nora had told all her troubles and hopes to Caroline, and that Caroline had told them to her future husband. Lady Rowley, in answer to this, could only say that she would consult her husband.
There was something very grievous in the proposition to Lady Rowley. If Nora had not been self-willed and stiff-necked beyond the usual self-willedness and stiff-neckedness of young women she might have been herself the mistress of Monkhams. It was proposed now that she should go there to wait till a poor man should have got together shillings enough to buy a few chairs and tables, and a bed to lie upon! The thought of this was very bitter. ‘I cannot think, Nora, how you could have the heart to go there,’ said Lady Rowley.
‘I cannot understand why not, mamma. Caroline and I are friends, and surely he and I need not be enemies. He has never injured me; and if he does not take offence, why should I?’
‘If you don’t see it, I can’t help it,’ said Lady Rowley.
And then Mrs Spalding’s triumph was terrible to Lady Rowley. Mrs Spalding knew nothing of her future son-inlaw’s former passion, and spoke of her Caroline as having achieved triumphs beyond the reach of other girls. Lady Rowley bore it, never absolutely telling the tale of her daughter’s fruitless victory. She was too good at heart to utter the boast but it was very hard to repress it. Upon the whole she would have preferred that Mr Glascock and his bride should not have become the fast friends of herself and her family. There was more of pain than of pleasure in the alliance. But circumstances had been too strong for her. Mr Glascock had been of great use in reference to Trevelyan, and Caroline and Nora had become attached to each other almost on their first acquaintance. Here they were together at the Baths of Lucca, and Nora was to be one of the four bridesmaids. When Sir Marmaduke was consulted about this visit to Monkhams, he became fretful, and would give no answer. The marriage, he said, was impossible, and Nora was a fool. He could give her no allowance more than would suffice for her clothes, and it was madness for her to think of stopping in England. But he was so full of cares that he could come to no absolute decision on this matter. Nora, however, had come to a very absolute decision.
‘Caroline,’ she said, ‘if you will have me, I will go to Monkhams.’
‘Of course we will have you. Has not Charles said how delighted he would be?’
‘Oh yes, your Charles,’ said Nora laughing.
‘He is mine now, dear. You must not expect him to change his mind again. I gave him the chance, you know, and he would not take it. But, Nora, come to Monkhams, and stay as long as it suits. I have talked it all over with him, and we both agree that you shall have a home there. You shall be just like a sister. Olivia is coming too after a bit; but he says there is room for a dozen sisters. Of course it will be all right with Mr Stanbury after a while.’ And so it was settled among them that Nora Rowley should find a home at Monkhams, if a home in England should be wanted for her.
It wanted but four days to that fixed for the marriage at Florence, and but six to that on which the Rowleys were to leave Italy for England, when Mr Glascock received Trevelyan’s letter. It was brought to him as he was sitting at a late breakfast in the garden of the hotel; and there were present at the moment not only all the Spalding family, but the Rowleys also. Sir Marmaduke was there and Lady Rowley, and the three unmarried daughters; but Mrs Trevelyan, as was her wont, had remained alone in her own room. Mr Glascock read the letter, and read it again, without attracting much attention. Caroline, who was of course sitting next to him, had her eyes upon him, and could see that the letter moved him; but she was not curious, and at any rate asked no question. He himself understood fully how great was the offer made, how all-important to the happiness of the poor mother, and he was also aware, or thought that he was aware, how likely it might be that the offer would be retracted. As regarded himself, a journey from the Baths at Lucca to Casalunga and back before his marriage, would be a great infliction on his patience. It was his plan to stay where he was till the day before his marriage, and then to return to Florence with the rest of the party. All this must be altered, and sudden changes must be made, if he decided on going to Siena himself. The weather now was very hot, and such a journey would be most disagreeable to him. Of course he had little schemes in his head, little amatory schemes for prenuptial enjoyment, which, in spite of his mature years, were exceedingly agreeable to him. The chestnut woods round the Baths of Lucca are very pleasant in the early summer, and there were excursions planned in which Caroline would be close by his side, almost already his wife. But, if he did not go, whom could he send? It would be necessary at least that he should consult her, the mother of the child, before any decision was formed.
At last he took Lady Rowley aside, and read to her the letter. She understood at once that it opened almost a heaven of bliss to her daughter, and she understood also how probable it might be that wretched man, with his shaken wits, should change his mind. ‘I think I ought to go,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘But how can you go now?’
‘I can go,’ said he. ‘There is time for it. It need not put off my marriage, to which of course I could not consent. I do not know whom I could send.’
‘Moonier could go,’ said Lady Rowley, naming the courier.
‘Yes he could go. But it might be that he would return without the child, and then we should not forgive ourselves. I will go, Lady Rowley. After all, what does it signify? I am a little old, I sometimes think, for this philandering. You shall take his letter to your daughter, and I will explain it all to Caroline.’
Caroline had not a word to say. She could only kiss him, and promise to make him what amends she could when he came back. ‘Of course you are right,’ she said. ‘Do you think that I would say a word against it, even though the marriage were to be postponed?’
‘I should — a good many words. But I will be back in time for that, and will bring the boy with me.’
Mrs Trevelyan, when her husband’s letter was read to her, was almost overcome by the feelings which it excited. In her first paroxysm of joy she declared that she would herself go to Siena, not for her child’s sake, but for that of her husband. She felt at once that the boy was being given up because of the father’s weakness, because he felt himself to be unable to be a protector to his son, and her woman’s heart was melted with softness as she thought of the condition of the man to whom she had once given her whole heart. Since then, doubtless, her heart had revolted from him. Since that time there had come hours in which she had almost hated him for his cruelty to her. There had been moments in which she had almost cursed his name because of the aspersion which it had seemed that he had thrown upon her. But this was now forgotten, and she remembered only his weakness. ‘Mamma,’ she said, ‘I will go. It is my duty to go to him.’ But Lady Rowley withheld her, explaining that were she to go, the mission might probably fail in its express purpose. ‘Let Louey be sent to us first,’ said Lady Rowley, ‘and then we will see what can be done afterwards.’
And so Mr Glascock started, taking with him a maid-servant who might help him with the charge of the child. It was certainly very hard upon him. In order to have time for his journey to Siena and back, and time also to go out to Casalunga, it was necessary that he should leave the Baths at five in the morning. ‘If ever there was a hero of romance, you are he!’ said Nora to him.
‘The heroes of life are so much better than the heroes of romance,’ said Caroline.
‘That is a lesson from the lips of the American Browning,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘Nevertheless, I think I would rather ride a charge against a Paynim knight in Palestine than get up at half-past four in the morning.’
‘We will get up too, and give the knight his coffee,’ said Nora. They did get up, and saw him off; and when Mr Glascock and Caroline parted with a lover’s embrace, Nora stood by as a sister might have done. Let us hope that she remembered that her own time was coming.
There had been a promise given by Nora, when she left London, that she would not correspond with Hugh Stanbury while she was in Italy, and this promise had been kept. It may be remembered that Hugh had made a proposition to his lady-love, that she should walk out of the house one fine morning, and get herself married without any reference to her father’s or her mother’s wishes. But she had not been willing to take upon herself as yet independence so complete as this would have required. She had assured her lover that she did mean to marry him some day, even though it should be in opposition to her father, but that she thought that the period for filial persuasion was not yet over; and then, in explaining all this to her mother, she had given a promise neither to write nor to receive letters during the short period of her sojourn in Italy. She would be an obedient child for so long but, after that, she must claim the right to fight her own battle. She had told her lover that he must not write; and, of course, she had not written a word herself. But now, when her mother threw it in her teeth that Stanbury would not be ready to marry her, she thought that an unfair advantage was being taken of her and of him. How could he be expected to say that he was ready, deprived as he was of the power of saying anything at all?
‘Mamma,’ she said, the day before they went to Florence, ‘has papa fixed about your leaving England yet? I suppose you’ll go now on the last Saturday in July?’
‘I suppose we shall, my dear.’
‘Has not papa written about the berths?’
‘I believe he has, my dear.’
‘Because he ought to know who are going. I will not go.
‘You will not, Nora. Is that a proper way of speaking?’
‘Dear mamma, I mean it to be proper. I hope it is proper. But is it not best that we should understand each other. All my life depends on my going or my staying now. I must decide.’
‘After what has passed, you do not, I suppose, mean to live in Mr Glascock’s house?’
‘Certainly not. I mean to live with with with my husband. Mamma, I promised not to write, and I have not written. And he has not written because I told him not. Therefore, nothing is settled. But it is not fair to throw it in my teeth that nothing is settled.’
‘I have thrown nothing in your teeth, Nora.’
‘Papa talks sneeringly about chairs and tables. Of course, I know what he is thinking of. As I cannot go with him to the Mandarins, I think I ought to be allowed to look after the chairs and tables.’
‘What do you mean, my dear?’
‘That you should absolve me from my promise, and let me write to Mr Stanbury. I do not want to be left without a home.’
‘You cannot wish to write to a gentleman and ask him to marry you!’
‘Why not? We are engaged. I shall not ask him to marry me; that is already settled; but I shall ask him to make arrangements.’
‘Your papa will be very angry if you break your word to him.’
‘I will write, and show you the letter. Papa may see it, and if he will not let it go, it shall not go. He shall not say that I broke my word. But, mamma, I will not go out to the Islands. I should never get back again, and I should be broken-hearted.’ Lady Rowley had nothing to say to this; and Nora went and wrote her letter. ‘Dear Hugh,’ the letter ran, ‘Papa and mamma leave England on the last Saturday in July. I have told mamma that I cannot return with them. Of course, you know why I stay. Mr .Glascock is to be married the day after tomorrow, and they have asked me to go with them to Monkhams some time in August. I think I shall do so, unless Emily wants me to remain with her. At any rate, I shall try to be with her till I go there. You will understand why I tell you all this. Papa and mamma know that I am writing. It is only a business letter, and, therefore, I shall say no more, except that I am ever and always yours NORA.’ ‘There,’ she said, handing her letter to her mother, ‘I think that ought to be sent. If papa chooses to prevent its going, he can.’
Lady Rowley, when she handed the letter to her husband, recommended that it should be allowed to go to its destination. She admitted that, if they sent it, they would thereby signify their consent to her engagement, and she alleged that Nora was so strong in her will, and that the circumstances of their journey out to the Antipodes were so peculiar, that it was of no avail for them any longer to oppose the match. They could not force their daughter to go with them. ‘But I can cast her off from me, if she be disobedient,’ said Sir Marmaduke. Lady Rowley, however, had no desire that her daughter should be cast off, and was aware that Sir Marmaduke, when it came to the point of casting off, would be as little inclined to be stern as she was herself. Sir Marmaduke, still hoping that firmness would carry the day, and believing that it behoved him to maintain his parental authority, ended the discussion by keeping possession of the letter, and saying that he would take time to consider the matter. ‘What security have we that he will ever marry her, if she does stay?’ he asked the next morning. Lady Rowley had no doubt on this score, and protested that her opposition to Hugh Stanbury arose simply from his want of income. ‘I should never be justified,’ said Sir Marmaduke, ‘if I were to go and leave my girl as it were in the hands of a penny-a-liner.’ The letter, in the end, was not sent; and Nora and her father hardly spoke to each other as they made their journey back to Florence together.
Emily Trevelyan, before the arrival of that letter from her husband, had determined that she would not leave Italy. It had been her purpose to remain somewhere in the neighbourhood of her husband and child; and to overcome her difficulties or be overcome by them, as circumstances might direct. Now her plans were again changed or, rather, she was now without a plan. She could form no plan till she should again see Mr Glascock. Should her child be restored to her, would it not be her duty to remain near her husband? All this made Nora’s line of conduct the more difficult for her. It was acknowledged that she could not remain in Italy. Mrs Trevelyan’s position would be most embarrassing; but as all her efforts were to be used towards a reconciliation with her husband, and as his state utterly precluded the idea of a mixed household, of any such a family arrangement as that which had existed in Curzon Street, Nora could not remain with her. Mrs Trevelyan herself had declared that she would not wish it. And, in that case, where was Nora to bestow herself when Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley had sailed? Caroline offered to curtail those honeymoon weeks in Switzerland, but it was impossible to listen to an offer so magnanimous and so unreasonable. Nora had a dim romantic idea of sharing Priscilla’s bedroom in that small cottage near Nuncombe Putney, of which she had heard, and of there learning lessons in strict economy; but of this she said nothing. The short journey from the Baths of Lucca to Florence was not a pleasant one, and the Rowley family were much disturbed as they looked into the future. Lodgings had now been taken for them, and there was the great additional doubt whether Mrs Trevelyan would find her child there on her arrival.
The Spaldings went one way from the Florence station, and the Rowleys another. The American Minister had returned to the city some days previously, drawn there nominally by pleas of business, but, in truth, by the necessities of the wedding breakfast, and he met them at the station. ‘Has Mr Glascock come back?’ Nora was the first to ask. Yes he had come. He had been in the city since two o’clock, and had been up at the American Minister’s house for half a minute. ‘And has he brought the child?’ asked Caroline, relieved of doubt on her own account. Mr Spalding did not know; indeed, he had not interested himself quite so intently about Mrs Trevelyan’s little boy, as had all those who had just returned from the Baths. Mr Glascock had said nothing to him about the child, and he had not quite understood why such a man should have made a journey to Siena, leaving his sweetheart behind him, just on the eve of his marriage. He hurried his women-kind into their carriage, and they were driven away; and then Sir Marmaduke was driven away with his women-kind. Caroline Spalding had perhaps thought that Mr Glascock might have been there to meet her.
A message had been sent by the wires to Trevelyan, to let him know that Mr Glascock was himself coming for the boy. Whether such message would or would not be sent out to Casalunga Mr Glascock had been quite ignorant, but it could, at any rate, do no harm. He did feel it hard as in this hot weather he made the journey, first to Florence, and then on to Siena. What was he to the Rowleys, or to Trevelyan himself, that such a job of work should fall to his lot at such a period of his life? He had been very much in love with Nora, no doubt; but, luckily for him, as he thought, Nora had refused him. As for Trevelyan, Trevelyan had never been his friend. As for Sir Marmaduke, Sir Marmaduke was nothing to him. He was almost angry even with Mrs Trevelyan as he arrived tired, heated, and very dusty, at Siena. It was his purpose to sleep at Siena that night, and to go out to Casalunga early the next morning. If the telegram had not been forwarded, he would send a message on that evening. On inquiry, however, he found that the message had been sent, and that the paper had been put into the Signore’s own hand by the Sienese messenger. Then he got into some discourse with the landlord about the strange gentleman at Casalunga. Trevelyan was beginning to become the subject of gossip in the town, and people were saying that the stranger was very strange indeed. The landlord thought that if the Signore had any friends at all, it would be well that such friends should come and look after him. Mr Glascock asked if Mr Trevelyan was ill. It was not only that the Signore was out of health, so the landlord heard, but that he was also somewhat — and then the landlord touched his head. He eat nothing, and went nowhere, and spoke to no one; and the people at the hospital to which Casalunga belonged were beginning to be uneasy about their tenant. Perhaps Mr Glascock had come to take him away. Mr Glascock explained that he had not come to take Mr Trevelyan away but only to take away a little boy that was with him. For this reason he was travelling with a maid-servant, a fact for which Mr Glascock clearly thought it necessary that he should give an intelligible and credible explanation. The landlord seemed to think that the people at the hospital would have been much rejoiced had Mr Glascock intended to take Mr Trevelyan away also.
He started after a very early breakfast, and found himself walking up over the stone ridges to the house between nine and ten in the morning. He himself had sat beside the driver and had put the maid inside the carriage. He had not deemed it wise to take an undivided charge of the boy even from Casalunga to Siena. At the door of the house, as though waiting for him, he found Trevelyan, not dirty as he had been before, but dressed with much appearance of smartness. He had a brocaded cap on his head, and a shirt with a laced front, and a worked waistcoat, and a frockcoat, and coloured bright trowsers. Mr Glascock knew at once that all the clothes which he saw before him had been made for Italian and not for English wear; and could almost have said that they had been bought in Siena and not in Florence. ‘I had not intended to impose this labour on you, Mr Glascock,’ Trevelyan said, raising his cap to salute his visitor.
‘For fear there might be mistakes, I thought it better to come myself,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘You did not wish to see Sir Marmaduke?’
‘Certainly not Sir Marmaduke,’ said Trevelyan, with a look of anger that was almost grotesque.
‘And you thought it better that Mrs Trevelyan should not come.’
‘Yes, I thought it better, but not from any feeling of anger towards her. If I could welcome my wife here, Mr Glascock, without a risk of wrath on her part, I should be very happy to receive her. I love my wife, Mr Glascock. I love her dearly. But there have been misfortunes. Never mind. There is no reason why I should trouble you with them. Let us go in to breakfast. After your drive you will have an appetite.’
Poor Mr Glascock was afraid to decline to sit down to the meal which was prepared for him. He did mutter something about having already eaten, but Trevelyan put this aside with a wave of his hand as he led the way into a spacious room, in which had been set out a table with almost a sumptuous banquet. The room was very bare and comfortless, having neither curtains nor matting, and containing not above half a dozen chairs. But an effort had been made to give it an air of Italian luxury. The windows were thrown open, down to the ground, and the table was decorated with fruits and three or four long-necked bottles. Trevelyan waved with his hand towards an arm-chair, and Mr Glascock had no alternative but to seat himself. He felt that he was sitting down to breakfast with a madman; but if he did not sit down, the madman might perhaps break out into madness. Then Trevelyan went to the door and called aloud for Catarina. ‘In these remote places,’ said he, ‘one has to do without the civilisation of a bell. Perhaps one gains as much in quiet as one loses in comfort.’ Then Catarina came with hot meats and fried potatoes, and Mr Glascock was compelled to help himself.
‘I am but a bad trencherman myself,’ said Trevelyan, ‘but I shall lament my misfortune doubly if that should interfere with your appetite.’ Then he got up and poured out wine into Mr Glascock’s glass. ‘They tell me that it comes from the Baron’s vineyard,’ said Trevelyan, alluding to the wine-farm of Ricasoli, ‘and that there is none better in Tuscany. I never was myself a judge of the grape, but this to me is as palatable as any of the costlier French wines. How grand a thing would wine really be, if it could make glad the heart of man. How truly would one worship Bacchus if he could make one’s heart to rejoice. But if a man have a real sorrow, wine will not wash it away, not though a man were drowned in it, as Clarence was.’
Mr Glascock hitherto had spoken hardly a word. There was an attempt at joviality about this breakfast or, at any rate, of the usual comfortable luxury of hospitable entertainment which, coming as it did from Trevelyan, almost locked his lips. He had not come there to be jovial or luxurious, but to perform a most melancholy mission; and he had brought with him his saddest looks, and was prepared for a few sad words. Trevelyan’s speech, indeed, was sad enough, but Mr Glascock could not take up questions of the worship of Bacchus at half a minute’s warning. He eat a morsel, and raised his glass to his lips, and felt himself to be very uncomfortable. It was necessary, however, that he should utter a word. ‘Do you not let your little boy come in to breakfast?’ he said.
‘He is better away,’ said Trevelyan gloomily.
‘But as we are to travel together,’ said Mr Glascock, ‘we might as well make acquaintance.’
‘You have been a little hurried with me on that score,’ said Trevelyan. ‘I wrote certainly with a determined mind, but things have changed somewhat since then.’
‘You do not mean that you will not send him?’
‘You have been somewhat hurried with me, I say. If I remember rightly, I named no time, but spoke of the future. Could I have answered the message which I received from you, I would have postponed your visit for a week or so.’
‘Postponed it! Why, I am to be married the day after tomorrow. It was just as much as I was able to do, to come here at all.’ Mr Glascock now pushed his chair back from the table, and prepared himself to speak up. ‘Your wife expects her child now, and you will ever break her heart by refusing to send him.’
‘Nobody thinks of my heart, Mr Glascock.’
‘But this is your own offer.’
‘Yes, it was my own offer, certainly. I am not going to deny my own words, which have no doubt been preserved in testimony against me.’
‘Mr Trevelyan, what do you mean?’ Then, when he was on the point of boiling over with passion, Mr Glascock remembered that his companion was not responsible for his expressions. ‘I do hope you will let the child go away with me,’ he said. ‘You cannot conceive the state of his mother’s anxiety, and she will send him back at once if you demand it.’
‘Is that to be in good faith?’
‘Certainly, in good faith. I would lend myself to nothing, Mr Trevelyan, that was not said and done in good faith.’
‘She will not break her word, excusing herself, because I am mad?’
‘I am sure that there is nothing of the kind in her mind.’
‘Perhaps not now; but such things grow. There is no iniquity, no breach of promise, no treason that a woman will not excuse to herself — or a man either — by the comfortable self-assurance that the person to be injured is mad. A hound without a friend is not so cruelly treated. The outlaw, the murderer, the perjurer has surer privileges than the man who is in the way, and to whom his friends can point as being mad!’ Mr Glascock knew or thought that he knew that his host in truth was mad, and he could not, therefore, answer this tirade by an assurance that no such idea was likely to prevail. ‘Have they told you, I wonder,’ continued Trevelyan, ‘how it was that, driven to force and an ambuscade for the recovery of my own child, I waylaid my wife and took him from her? I have done nothing to forfeit my right as a man to the control of my own family. I demanded that the boy should be sent to me, and she paid no attention to my words. I was compelled to vindicate my own authority; and then, because I claimed the right which belongs to a father, they said that I was mad! Ay, and they would have proved it, too, had I not fled from my country and hidden myself in this desert. Think of that, Mr Glascock! Now they have followed me here, not out of love for me; and that man whom they call a governor comes and insults me; and my wife promises to be good to me, and says that she will forgive and forget! Can she ever forgive herself her own folly, and the cruelty that has made shipwreck of my life? They can do nothing to me here; but they would entice me home because there they have friends, and can fee doctors with my own money and suborn lawyers, and put me away somewhere in the dark, where I shall be no more heard of among men! As you are a man of honour, Mr Glascock tell me; is it not so?’
‘I know nothing of their plans beyond this, that you wrote me word that you would send them the boy.’
‘But I know their plans. What you say is true. I did write you word, and I meant it. Mr Glascock, sitting here alone from morning to night, and lying down from night till morning, without companionship, without love, in utter misery, I taught myself to feel that I should think more of her than of myself.’
‘If you are so unhappy here, come back yourself with the child. Your wife would desire nothing better.’
‘Yes and submit to her, and her father, and her mother. No Mr Glascock; never, never. Let her come to me.’
‘But you will not receive her.’
‘Let her come in a proper spirit, and I will receive her. She is the wife of my bosom, and I will receive her with joy. But if she is to come to me and tell me that she forgives me — forgives me for the evil that she has done — then, sir, she had better stay away. Mr Glascock, you are going to be married. Believe me no man should submit to be forgiven by his wife. Everything must go astray if that be done. I would rather encounter their mad doctors, one of them after another till they had made me mad; I would encounter anything rather than that. But, sir, you neither eat nor drink, and I fear that my speech disturbs you.’
It was like enough that it may have done so. Trevelyan, as he had been speaking, had walked about the room, going from one extremity to the other with hurried steps, gesticulating with his arms, and every now and then pushing back with his hands the long hair from off his forehead. Mr Glascock was in truth very much disturbed. He had come there with an express object; but, whenever he mentioned the child, the father became almost rabid in his wrath. ‘I have done very well, thank you,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘I will not eat any more, and I believe I must be thinking of going back to Siena.’
‘I had hoped you would spend the day with me, Mr Glascock.’
‘I am to be married, you see, in two days; and I must be in Florence early tomorrow. I am to meet my wife, as she will be, and the Rowleys, and your wife. Upon my word I can’t stay. Won’t you just say a word to the young woman and let the boy be got ready?’
‘I think not; no, I think not.’
‘And am I to have had all this journey for nothing? You will have made a fool of me in writing to me.’
‘I intended to be honest, Mr Glascock.’
‘Stick to your honesty, and send the boy back to his mother. It will be better for you, Trevelyan.’
‘Better for me! Nothing can be better for me. All must be worst. It will be better for me, you say; and you ask me to give up the last drop of cold water wherewith I can touch my parched lips. Even in my hell I had so much left to me of a limpid stream, and you tell me that it will be better for me to pour it away. You may take him, Mr Glascock. The woman will make him ready for you. What matters it whether the fiery furnace be heated seven times, or only six; in either degree the flames are enough! You may take him, you may take him!’ So saying, Trevelyan walked out of the window, leaving Mr Glascock seated in his chair. He walked out of the window and went down among the olive trees. He did not go far, however, but stood with his arm round the stem of one of them, playing with the shoots of a vine with his hand. Mr Glascock followed him to the window and stood looking at him for a few moments. But Trevelyan did not turn or move. There he stood gazing at the pale, cloudless, heat-laden, motionless sky, thinking of his own sorrows, and remembering too, doubtless, with the vanity of a madman, that he was probably being watched in his reverie.
Mr Glascock was too practical a man not to make the most of the offer that had been made to him, and he went back among the passages and called for Catarina. Before long he had two or three women with him, including her whom he had brought from Florence, and among them Louey was soon made to appear, dressed for his journey, together with a small trunk in which were his garments. It was quite clear that the order for his departure had been given before that scene at the breakfast-table, and that Trevelyan had not intended to go back on his promise. Nevertheless Mr Glascock thought it might be as well to hurry his departure, and he turned back to say the shortest possible word of farewell to Trevelyan in the garden. But when he got to the window, Trevelyan was not to be found among the olive trees. Mr Glascock walked a few steps down the hill, looking for him, but seeing nothing of him, returned to the house. The elder woman said that her master had not been there, and Mr Glascock started with his charge. Trevelyan was manifestly mad, and it was impossible to treat him as a sane man would have been treated. Nevertheless, Mr Glascock felt much compunction in carrying the child away without a final kiss or word of farewell from its father. But it was not to be so. He had got into the carriage with the child, having the servant seated opposite to him, for he was moved by some undefinable fear which made him determine to keep the boy close to him, and he had not, therefore, returned to the driver’s seat when Trevelyan appeared standing by the road-side at the bottom of the hill. ‘Would you take him away from me without one word!’ said Trevelyan bitterly.
‘I went to look for you, but you were gone,’ said Mr Glascock.
‘No, sir, I was not gone. I am here. It is the last time that I shall ever gladden my eyes with his brightness. Louey, my love, will you come to your father?’ Louey did not seem to be particularly willing to leave the carriage, but he made no loud objection when Mr Glascock held him up to the open space above the door. The child had realised the fact that he was to go, and did not believe that his father would stop him now; but he was probably of opinion that the sooner the carriage began to go on the better it would be for him. Mr Glascock, thinking that his father intended to kiss him over the door, held him by his frock; but the doing of this made Trevelyan very angry. ‘Am I not to be trusted with my own child in my arms?’ said he. ‘Give him to me, sir. I begin to doubt now whether I am right to deliver him to you.’ Mr Glascock immediately let go his hold of the boy’s frock and leaned back in the carriage. ‘Louey will tell papa that he loves him before he goes?’ said Trevelyan. The poor little fellow murmured something, but it did not please his father, who had him in his arms. ‘You are like the rest of them, Louey,’ he said; ‘because I cannot laugh and be gay, all my love for you is nothing — nothing! You may take him. He is all that I have, all that I have, and I shall never see him again!’ So saying he handed the child into the carriage, and sat himself down by the side of the road to watch till the vehicle should be out of sight. As soon as the last speck of it had vanished from his sight, he picked himself up, and dragged his slow footsteps back to the house.
Mr Glascock made sundry attempts to amuse the child, with whom he had to remain all that night at Siena; but his efforts in that line were not very successful. The boy was brisk enough, and happy, and social by nature; but the events, or rather the want of events of the last few months, had so cowed him, that he could not recover his spirits at the bidding of a stranger. ‘If I have any of my own,’ said Mr Glascock to himself, ‘I hope they will be of a more cheerful disposition.’
As we have seen, he did not meet Caroline at the station, thereby incurring his lady-love’s displeasure for the period of half-a-minute; but he did meet Mrs Trevelyan almost at the door of Sir Marmaduke’s lodgings. ‘Yes, Mrs Trevelyan; he is here.’
‘How am I ever to thank you for such goodness?’ said she. ‘And Mr Trevelyan — you saw him?’
‘Yes I saw him.’
Before he could answer her further she was upstairs, and had her child in her arms. It seemed to be an age since the boy had been stolen from her in the early spring in that unknown, dingy street near Tottenham Court Road. Twice she had seen her darling since that, twice during his captivity; but on each of these occasions she had seen him as one not belonging to herself, and had seen him under circumstances which had robbed the greeting of almost all its pleasure. But now he was her own again, to take whither she would, to dress and to undress, to feed, to coax, to teach, and to caress. And the child lay up close to her as she hugged him, putting up his little cheek to her chin, and burying himself happily in her embrace. He had not much as yet to say, but she could feel that he was contented.
Mr Glascock had promised to wait for her a few minutes, even at the risk of Caroline’s displeasure, and Mrs Trevelyan ran down to him as soon as the first craving of her mother’s love was satisfied. Her boy would at any rate be safe with her now, and it was her duty to learn something of her husband. It was more than her duty, if only her services might be of avail to him. ‘And you say he was well?’ she asked. She had taken Mr Glascock apart, and they were alone together, and he had determined that he would tell her the truth.
‘I do not know that he is ill, though he is pale and altered beyond belief.’
‘Yes I saw that.’
‘I never knew a man so thin and haggard.’
‘My poor Louis!’
‘But that is not the worst of it.’
‘What do you mean, Mr Glascock?’
‘I mean that his mind is astray, and that he should not be left alone. There is no knowing what he might do. He is so much more alone there than he would be in England. There is not a soul who could interfere.’
‘Do you mean that you think that he is in danger from himself?’
‘I would not say so, Mrs Trevelyan; but who can tell? I am sure of this, that he should not be left alone. If it were only because of the misery of his life, he should not be left alone.’
‘But what can I do? He would not even see papa.’
‘He would see you.’
‘But he would not let me guide him in anything. I have been to him twice, and he breaks out as if I were a bad woman.’
‘Let him break out. What does it matter?’
‘Am I to own to a falsehood, and such a falsehood?’
‘Own to anything, and you will conquer him at once. That is what I think. You will excuse what I say, Mrs Trevelyan.’
‘Oh, Mr Glascock, you have been such a friend! What should we have done without you!’
‘You cannot take to heart the words that come from a disordered reason. In truth, he believes no ill of you.’
‘But he says so.’
‘It is hard to know what he says. Declare that you will submit to him, and I think that he will be softened towards you. Try to bring him back to his own country. It may be that were he to die there, alone, the memory of his loneliness would be heavy with you in after days.’ Then, having so spoken, he rushed off, declaring, with a forced laugh, that Caroline Spalding would never forgive him.
The next day was the day of the wedding, and Emily Trevelyan was left all alone. It was of course out of the question that she should join any party the purport of which was to be festive. Sir Marmaduke went with some grumbling, declaring that wine and severe food in the mornings were sins against the plainest rules of life. And the three Rowley girls went, Nora officiating as one of the bridesmaids. But Mrs Trevelyan was left with her boy, and during the day she was forced to resolve what should be the immediate course of her life. Two days after the wedding her family would return to England. It was open to her to go with them, and to take her boy with her. But a few days since how happy she would have been could she have been made to believe that such a mode of returning would be within her power! But now she felt that she might not return and leave that poor, suffering wretch behind her. As she thought of him she tried to interrogate herself in regard to her feelings. Was it love, or duty, or compassion which stirred her? She had loved him as fondly as any bright young woman loves the man who is to take her away from everything else, and make her a part of his house and of himself. She had loved him as Nora now loved the man whom she worshipped and thought to be a god, doing godlike work in the dingy recesses of the D. R. office. Emily Trevelyan was forced to tell herself that all that was over with her. Her husband had shown himself to be weak, suspicious, unmanly — by no means like a god. She had learned to feel that she could not trust her comfort in his hands, that she could never know what his thoughts of her might be. But still he was her husband, and the father of her child; and though she could not dare to look forward to happiness in living with him, she could understand that no comfort would be possible to her, were she to return to England and to leave him to perish alone at Casalunga. Fate seemed to have intended that her life should be one of misery, and she must bear it as best she might.
The more she thought of it, however, the greater seemed to be her difficulties. What was she to do when her father and mother should have left her? She could not go to Casalunga if her husband would not give her entrance; and if she did go, would it be safe for her to take her boy with her? Were she to remain in Florence she would be hardly nearer to him for any useful purpose than in England; and even should she pitch her tent at Siena, occupying there some desolate set of huge apartments in a deserted palace, of what use could she be to him? Could she stay there if he desired her to go; and was it probable that he would be willing that she should be at Siena while he was living at Casalunga, no more than two leagues distant? How should she begin her work; and if he repulsed her, how should she then continue it?
But during these wedding hours she did make up her mind as to what she would do for the present. She would certainly not leave Italy while her husband remained there. She would for a while keep her rooms in Florence, and there should her boy abide. But from time to time, twice a week perhaps, she would go down to Siena and Casalunga, and there form her plans in accordance with her husband’s conduct. She was his wife, and nothing should entirely separate her from him, now that he so sorely wanted her aid.
The Glascock marriage was a great affair in Florence so much so, that there were not a few who regarded it as a strengthening of peaceful relations between the United States and the United Kingdom, and who thought that the Alabama claims and the question of naturalisation might now be settled with comparative ease. An English lord was about to marry the niece of an American Minister to a foreign court. The bridegroom was not, indeed, quite a lord as yet, but it was known to all men that he must be a lord in a very short time, and the bride was treated with more than usual bridal honours because she belonged to a legation. She was not, indeed, an ambassador’s daughter, but the niece of a daughterless ambassador, and therefore almost as good as a daughter. The wives and daughters of other ambassadors, and the ambassadors themselves, of course, came to the wedding; and as the palace in which Mr Spalding had apartments stood alone, in a garden, with a separate carriage entrance, it seemed for all wedding purposes as though the whole palace were his own. The English Minister came, and his wife, although she had never quite given over turning up her nose at the American bride whom Mr Glascock had chosen for himself. It was such a pity, she said, that such a man as Mr Glascock should marry a young woman from Providence, Rhode Island. Who in England would know anything of Providence, Rhode Island? And it was so expedient, in her estimation, that a man of family should strengthen himself by marrying a woman of family. It was so necessary, she declared, that a man when marrying should remember that his child would have two grandfathers, and would be called upon to account for four great-grandfathers. Nevertheless Mr Glascock was Mr Glascock; and, let him marry whom he would, his wife would be the future Lady Peterborough. Remembering this, the English Minister’s wife gave up the point when the thing was really settled, and benignly promised to come to the breakfast with all the secretaries and attaches belonging to the legation, and all the wives and daughters thereof. What may a man not do, and do with eclat, if he be heir to a peer and have plenty of money in his pocket?
Mr and Mrs Spalding were covered with glory on the occasion; and perhaps they did not bear their glory as meekly as they should have done. Mrs Spalding laid herself open to some ridicule from the British Minister’s wife because of her inability to understand with absolute clearness the condition of her niece’s husband in respect to his late and future seat in Parliament, to the fact of his being a commoner and a nobleman at the same time, and to certain information which was conveyed to her, surely in a most unnecessary manner, that if Mr Glascock were to die before his father, her niece would never become Lady Peterborough, although her niece’s son, if she had one, would be the future lord. No doubt she blundered, as was most natural; and then the British Minister’s wife made the most of the blunders; and when once Mrs Spalding ventured to speak of Caroline as her ladyship, not to the British Minister’s wife, but to the sister of one of the secretaries, a story was made out of it which was almost as false as it was ill-natured. Poor Caroline was spoken of as her ladyship backward and forwards among the ladies of the legation in a manner which might have vexed her had she known anything about it; but nevertheless, all the ladies prepared their best flounces to go to the wedding. The time would soon come when she would in truth be a ‘ladyship,’ and she might be of social use to any one of the ladies in question.
But Mr Spalding was, for the time, the most disturbed of any of the party concerned. He was a tall, thin, clever Republican of the North, very fond of hearing himself talk, and somewhat apt to take advantage of the courtesies of conversation for the purpose of making unpardonable speeches. As long as there was any give and take going on in the melee of words he would speak quickly and with energy, seizing his chances among others; but the moment he had established his right to the floor, as soon as he had won for himself the position of having his turn at the argument, he would dole out his words with considerable slowness, raise his hand for oratorical effect, and proceed as though Time were annihilated. And he would go further even than this, for fearing by experience the escape of his victims, he would catch a man by the button-hole of his coat, or back him ruthlessly into the corner of a room, and then lay on to him without quarter. Since the affair with Mr Glascock had been settled, he had talked an immensity about England, not absolutely taking honour to himself because of his intended connection with a lord, but making so many references to the aristocratic side of the British constitution as to leave no doubt on the minds of his hearers as to the source of his arguments. In old days, before all this was happening, Mr Spalding, though a courteous man in his personal relations, had constantly spoken of England with the bitter indignation of the ordinary American politician. England must be made to disgorge. England must be made to do justice. England must be taught her place in the world. England must give up her claims. In hot moments he had gone further, and had declared that England must be whipped. He had been specially loud against that aristocracy of England which, according to a figure of speech often used by him, was always feeding on the vitals of the people. But now all this was very much changed. He did not go the length of expressing an opinion that the House of Lords was a valuable institution; but he discussed questions of primogeniture and hereditary legislation, in reference to their fitness for countries which were gradually emerging from feudal systems, with an equanimity, an impartiality, and a perseverance which soon convinced those who listened to him where he had learned his present lessons, and why. ‘The conservative nature of your institutions, sir,’ he said to poor Sir Marmaduke at the Baths of Lucca a very few days before the marriage, ‘has to be studied with great care before its effects can be appreciated in reference to a people who, perhaps, I may be allowed to say, have more in their composition of constitutional reverence than of educated intelligence.’ Sir Marmaduke, having suffered before, had endeavoured to bolt; but the American had caught him and pinned him, and the Governor of the Mandarins was impotent in his hands. ‘The position of the great peer of Parliament is doubtless very splendid, and may be very useful,’ continued Mr Spalding, who was intending to bring round his argument to the evil doings of certain scandalously extravagant young lords, and to offer a suggestion that in such cases a committee of aged and respected peers should sit and decide whether a second son, or some other heir should not be called to the inheritance, both of the title and the property. But Mrs Spalding had seen the sufferings of Sir Marmaduke, and had rescued him. ‘Mr Spalding,’ she had said, ‘it is too late for politics, and Sir Marmaduke has come out here for a holiday.’ Then she took her husband by the arm, and led him away helpless.
In spite of these drawbacks to the success, if ought can be said to be a drawback on success of which the successful one is unconscious, the marriage was prepared with great splendour, and everybody who was anybody in Florence was to be present. There were only to be four bridesmaids, Caroline herself having strongly objected to a greater number. As Wallachia Petrie had fled at the first note of preparation for these trivial and unpalatable festivities, another American young lady was found; and the sister of the English secretary of legation, who had so maliciously spread that report about her ‘ladyship,’ gladly agreed to be the fourth.
As the reader will remember, the whole party from the Baths of Lucca reached Florence only the day before the marriage, and Nora at the station promised to go up to Caroline that same evening. ‘Mr Glascock will tell me about the little boy,’ said Caroline; ‘but I shall be so anxious to hear about your sister.’ So Nora crossed the bridge after dinner, and went up to the American Minister’s palatial residence. Caroline was then in the loggia, and Mr Glascock was with her; and for a while they talked about Emily Trevelyan and her misfortunes. Mr Glascock was clearly of opinion that Trevelyan would soon be either in an asylum or in his grave. ‘I could not bring myself to tell your sister so,’ he said; ‘but I think your father should be told or your mother. Something should be done to put an end to that fearful residence at Casalunga.’ Then by degrees the conversation changed itself to Nora’s prospects; and Caroline, with her friend’s hand in hers, asked after Hugh Stanbury.
‘You will not mind speaking before him will you?’ said Caroline, putting her hand on her own lover’s arm.
‘Not unless he should mind it,’ said Nora, smiling.
She had meant nothing beyond a simple reply to her friend’s question, but he took her words in a different sense, and blushed as he remembered his visit to Nuncombe Putney.
‘He thinks almost more of your happiness than he does of mine,’ said Caroline; ‘which isn’t fair, as I am sure that Mr Stanbury will not reciprocate the attention. And now, dear, when are we to see you?’
‘Who on earth can say?’
‘I suppose Mr Stanbury would say something, only he is not here.’
‘And papa won’t send my letter,’ said Nora.
‘You are sure that you will not go out to the Islands with him?’
‘Quite sure,’ said Nora. ‘I have made up my mind so far as that.’
‘And what will your sister do?’
‘I think she will stay. I think she will say good-bye to papa and mamma here in Florence.’
‘I am quite of opinion that she should not leave her husband alone in Italy,’ said Mr Glascock.
‘She has not told us with certainty,’ said Nora; ‘but I feel sure that she will stay. Papa thinks she ought to go with them to London.’
‘Your papa seems to have two very intractable daughters,’ said Caroline.
‘As for me,’ declared Nora, solemnly, ‘nothing shall make me go back to the Islands unless Mr Stanbury should tell me to do so.’
‘And they start at the end of July?’
‘On the last Saturday.’
‘And what will you do then, Nora?’
‘I believe there are casual wards that people go to.’
‘Casual wards!’ said Caroline.
‘Miss Rowley is condescending to poke her fun at you,’ said Mr Glascock.
‘She is quite welcome, and shall poke as much as she likes; only we must be serious now. If it be necessary, we will get back by the end of July, won’t we, Charles?’
‘You will do nothing of the kind,’ said Nora. ‘What! give up your honeymoon to provide me with board and lodgings! How can you suppose that I am so selfish or so helpless? I would go to my aunt, Mrs Outhouse.’
‘We know that that wouldn’t do,’ said Caroline. ‘You might as well be in Italy as far as Mr Stanbury is concerned.’
‘If Miss Rowley would go to Monkhams, she might wait for us,’ suggested Mr Glascock. ‘Old Mrs Richards is there; and though of course she would be dull —’
‘It is quite unnecessary,’ said Nora. ‘I shall take a two-pair back in a respectable feminine quarter, like any other young woman who wants such accommodation, and shall wait there till my young man can come and give me his arm to church. That is about the way we shall do it. I am not going to give myself any airs, Mr Glascock, or make any difficulties. Papa is always talking to me about chairs and tables and frying-pans, and I shall practise to do with as few of them as possible. As I am headstrong about having my young man, and I own that I am headstrong about that, I guess I’ve got to fit myself for that sort of life.’ And Nora, as she said this, pronounced her words with something of a nasal twang, imitating certain countrywomen of her friend’s.
‘I like to hear you joking about it, Nora; because your voice is so cheery and you are so bright when you joke. But, nevertheless, one has to be reasonable, and to look the facts in the face. I don’t see how you are to be left in London alone, and you know that your aunt Mrs Outhouse or at any rate your uncle would not receive you except on receiving some strong anti-Stanbury pledge.’
‘I certainly shall not give an anti-Stanbury pledge.’
‘And, therefore, that is out of the question. You will have a fortnight or three weeks in London, in all the bustle of their departure, and I declare I think that at the last moment you will go with them.’
‘Never! unless he says so.’
‘I don’t see how you are even to meet “him,” and talk it over.’
‘I’ll manage that. My promise not to write lasts only while we are in Italy.’
‘I think we had better get back to England, Charles, and take pity on this poor destitute one.’
‘If you talk of such a thing I will swear that I will never go to Monkhams. You will find that I shall manage it. It may be that I shall do something very shocking so that all your patronage will hardly be able to bring me round afterwards; but I will do something that will serve my purpose. I have not gone so far as this to be turned back now.’ Nora, as she spoke of having ‘gone so far,’ was looking at Mr Glascock, who was seated in an easy arm-chair close to the girl whom he was to make his wife on the morrow, and she was thinking, no doubt, of the visit which he had made to Nuncombe Putney, and of the first irretrievable step which she had taken when she told him that her love was given to another. That had been her Rubicon. And though there had been periods with her since the passing of it, in which she had felt that she had crossed it in vain, that she had thrown away the splendid security of the other bank without obtaining the perilous object of her ambition, though there had been moments in which she had almost regretted her own courage and noble action, still, having passed the river, there was nothing for her but to go on to Rome. She was not going to be stopped now by the want of a house in which to hide herself for a few weeks. She was without money, except so much as her mother might be able, almost surreptitiously, to give her. She was without friends to help her except these who were now with her, whose friendship had come to her in so singular a mariner, and whose power to aid her at the present moment was cruelly curtailed by their own circumstances. Nothing was settled as to her own marriage. In consequence of the promise that had been extorted from her that she should not correspond with Stanbury, she knew nothing of his present wishes or intention. Her father was so offended by her firmness that he would hardly speak to her. And it was evident to her that her mother, though disposed to yield, was still in hopes that her daughter, in the press and difficulty of the moment, would allow herself to be carried away with the rest of the family to the other side of the world. She knew all this, but she had made up her mind that she would not be carried away. It was not very pleasant, the thought that she would be obliged at last to ask her young man, as she called him, to provide for her; but she would do that and trust herself altogether in his hands sooner than be taken to the Antipodes. ‘I can be very resolute if I please, my dear,’ she said, looking at Caroline. Mr Glascock almost thought that she must have intended to address him.
They sat there discussing the matter for some time through the long, cool, evening hours, but nothing could be settled further except that Nora would write to her friend as soon as her affairs had begun to shape themselves after her return to England. At last Caroline went into the house, and for a few minutes Mr Glascock was alone with Nora. He had remained, determining that the moment should come, but now that it was there he was for awhile unable to say the words that he wished to utter. At last he spoke. ‘Miss Rowley, Caroline is so eager to be your friend.’
‘I know she is, and I do love her so dearly. But, without joke, Mr Glascock, there will be as it were a great gulf between us.’
‘I do not know that there need be any gulf, great or little. But I did not mean to allude to that. What I want to say is this. My feelings are not a bit less warm or sincere than hers. You know of old that I am not very good at expressing myself.’
‘I know nothing of the kind.’
‘There is no such gulf as what you speak of. All that is mostly gone by, and a nobleman in England, though he has advantages as a gentleman, is no more than a gentleman. But that has nothing to do with what I am saying now. I shall never forget my journey to Devonshire. I won’t pretend to say now that I regret its result.’
‘I am quite sure you don’t.’
‘No; I do not, though I thought then that I should regret it always. But remember this, Miss Rowley that you can never ask me to do anything that I will not, if possible, do for you. You are in some little difficulty now —’
‘It will disappear, Mr Glascock. Difficulties always do.’
‘But we will do anything that we are wanted to do; and should a certain event take place —’
‘It will take place some day.’
‘Then I hope that we may be able to make Mr Stanbury and his wife quite at home at Monkhams.’ After that he took Nora’s hand and kissed it, and at that moment Caroline came back to them.
‘Tomorrow, Mr Glascock,’ she said, ‘you will, I believe, be at liberty to kiss everybody; but today you should be more discreet.’
It was generally admitted among the various legations in Florence that there had not been such a wedding in the City of Flowers since it had become the capital of Italia. Mr Glascock and Miss Spalding were married in the chapel of the legation, a legation chapel on the ground floor having been extemporised for the occasion. This greatly enhanced the pleasantness of the thing, and saved the necessity of matrons and bridesmaids packing themselves and their finery into close fusty carriages. A portion of the guests attended in the chapel, and the remainder, when the ceremony was over, were found strolling about the shady garden. The whole affair of the breakfast was very splendid and lasted some hours. In the midst of this the bride and bridegroom were whisked away with a pair of grey horses to the railway station, and before the last toast of the day had been proposed by the Belgian Councillor of Legation, they were half way up the Apennines on their road to Bologna. Mr Spalding behaved himself like a man on the occasion. Nothing was spared in the way of expense, and when he made that celebrated speech, in which he declared that the republican virtue of the New World had linked itself in a happy alliance with the aristocratic splendour of the Old, and went on with a simile about the lion and the lamb, everybody accepted it with good humour in spite of its being a little too long for the occasion.
‘It has gone off very well, mamma; has it not?’ said Nora, as she returned home with her mother to her lodgings.
‘Yes, my dear; much, I fancy, as these things generally do.’
‘I thought it was so nice. And she looked so very well. And he was so pleasant, and so much like a gentleman — not noisy, you know, and yet not too serious.’
‘I dare say, my love.’
‘It is easy enough, mamma, for a girl to be married, for she has nothing to do but to wear her clothes and look as pretty as she can. And if she cries and has a red nose it is forgiven her. But a man has so difficult a part to play! If he tries to carry himself as though it were not a special occasion, he looks like a fool that way; and if he is very special, he looks like a fool the other way. I thought Mr Glascock did it very well.’
‘To tell you the truth, my dear, I did not observe him.’
‘I did narrowly. He hadn’t tied his cravat at all nicely.’
‘How could you think of his cravat, Nora, with such memories as you must have, and such regrets, I cannot understand.’
‘Mamma, my memories of Mr Glascock are pleasant memories, and as for regrets, I have not one. Can I regret, mamma, that I did not marry a man whom I did not love and that I rejected him when I knew that I loved another? You cannot mean that, mamma.’
‘I know this, that I was thinking all the time how proud I should have been, and how much more fortunate he would have been, had you been standing there instead of that American young woman.’ As she said this Lady Rowley burst into tears, and Nora could only answer her mother by embracing her. They were alone together, their party having been too large for one carriage, and Sir Marmaduke having taken his two younger daughters. ‘Of course, I feel it,’ said Lady Rowley, through her tears. ‘It would have been such a position for my child! And that young man without a shilling in the world; and writing in that way, just for bare bread!’ Nora had nothing more to say. A feeling that in herself would have been base, was simply affectionate and maternal in her mother. It was impossible that she should make her mother see it as she saw it.
There was but one intervening day and then the Rowleys returned to England. There had been, as it were, a tacit agreement among them that, in spite of all their troubles, their holiday should be a holiday up to the time of the Glascock marriage. Then must commence at once the stern necessity of their return home home, not only to England, but to those antipodean islands from which it was too probable that some of them might never come back. And the difficulties in their way seemed to be almost insuperable. First of all there was to be the parting from Emily Trevelyan. She had determined to remain in Florence, and had written to her husband saying that she would do so, and declaring her willingness to go out to him, or to receive him in Florence at any time and in any manner that he might appoint. She had taken this as a first step, intending to go to Casalunga very shortly, even though she should receive no answer from him. The parting between her and her mother and father and sisters was very bitter. Sir Marmaduke, as he had become estranged from Nora, had grown to be more and more gentle and loving with his eldest daughter, and was nearly overcome at the idea of leaving her in a strange land, with a husband near her, mad, and yet not within her custody. But he could do nothing could hardly say a word toward opposing her. Though her husband was mad, he supplied her with the means of living; and when she said that it was her duty to be near him, her father could not deny it.
The parting came. ‘I will return to you the moment you send to me,’ were Nora’s last words to her sister. ‘I don’t suppose I shall send,’ said Emily. ‘I shall try to bear it without assistance.’
Then the journey from Italy to England was made without much gratification or excitement, and the Rowley family again found themselves at Gregg’s Hotel.
We must now go back to Exeter and look after Mr Brooke Burgess and Miss Dorothy Stanbury. It is rather hard upon readers that they should be thus hurried from the completion of hymeneals at Florence to the preparations for other hymeneals in Devonshire; but it is the nature of a complex story to be entangled with many weddings towards its close. In this little history there are, we fear, three or four more to come. We will not anticipate by alluding prematurely to Hugh Stanbury’s treachery, or death, or the possibility that he after all may turn out to be the real descendant of the true Lord Peterborough and the actual inheritor of the title and estate of Monkhams, nor will we speak of Nora’s certain fortitude under either of these emergencies. But the instructed reader must be aware that Camilla French ought to have a husband found for her; that Colonel Osborne should be caught in some matrimonial trap, as how otherwise should he be fitly punished? and that something should be at least attempted for Priscilla Stanbury, who from the first has been intended to be the real heroine of these pages. That Martha should marry Giles Hickbody, and Barty Burgess run away with Mrs MacHugh, is of course evident to the meanest novel-expounding capacity; but the fate of Brooke Burgess and of Dorothy will require to be evolved with some delicacy and much detail.
There was considerable difficulty in fixing the day. In the first place Miss Stanbury was not very well and then she was very fidgety. She must see Brooke again before the day was fixed, and after seeing Brooke she must see her lawyer. ‘To have a lot of money to look after is more plague than profit, my dear,’ she said to Dorothy one day; ‘particularly when you don’t quite know what you ought to do with it.’ Dorothy had always avoided any conversation with her aunt about money since the first moment in which she had thought of accepting Brooke Burgess as her husband. She knew that her aunt had some feeling which made her averse to the idea that any portion of the property which she had inherited should be enjoyed by a Stanbury after her death, and Dorothy, guided by this knowledge, had almost convinced herself that her love for Brooke was treason either against him or against her aunt. If, by engaging herself to him, she would rob him of his inheritance, how bitter a burden to him would her love have been! If, on the other hand, she should reward her aunt for all that had been done for her by forcing herself, a Stanbury, into a position not intended for her, how base would be her ingratitude! These thoughts had troubled her much, and had always prevented her from answering any of her aunt’s chance allusions to the property. For her, things had at last gone very right. She did not quite know how it had come about, but she was engaged to marry the man she loved. And her aunt was, at any rate, reconciled to the marriage. But when Miss Stanbury declared that she did not know what to do about the property, Dorothy could only hold her tongue. She had had plenty to say when it had been suggested to her that the marriage should be put off yet for a short while, and that, in the meantime, Brooke should come again to Exeter. She swore that she did not care for how long it was put off, only that she hoped it might not be put off altogether. And as for Brooke’s coming, that, for the present, would be very much nicer than being married out of hand at once. Dorothy, in truth, was not at all in a hurry to be married, but she would have liked to have had her lover always coming and going. Since the courtship had become a thing permitted, she had had the privilege of welcoming him twice at the house in the Close; and that running down to meet him in the little front parlour, and the getting up to make his breakfast for him as he started in the morning, were among the happiest epochs of her life. And then, as soon as ever the breakfast was eaten, and he was gone, she would sit down to write him a letter. Oh, those letters, so beautifully crossed, more than one of which was copied from beginning to end because some word in it was not thought to be sweet enough — what a heaven of happiness they were to her! The writing of the first had disturbed her greatly, and she had almost repented of the privilege before it was ended; but with the first and second the difficulties had disappeared; and, had she not felt somewhat ashamed of the occupation, she could have sat at her desk and written him letters all day. Brooke would answer them, with fair regularity, but in a most cursory manner, sending seven or eight lines in return for two sheets fully crossed; but this did not discompose her in the least. He was worked hard at his office, and had hundreds of other things to do. He, too, could say, so thought Dorothy, more in eight lines than she could put into as many pages.
She was quite happy when she was told that the marriage could not take place till August, but that Brooke must come again in July. Brooke did come in the first week of July, and somewhat horrified Dorothy by declaring to her that Miss Stanbury was unreasonable.
‘If I insist upon leaving London so often for a day or two,’ said he, ‘how am I to get anything like leave of absence when the time comes?’ In answer to this Dorothy tried to make him understand that business should not be neglected, and that, as far as she was concerned, she could do very well without that trip abroad which he had proposed for her. ‘I’m not going to be done in that way,’ said Brooke. ‘And now that I am here she has nothing to say to me. I’ve told her a dozen times that I don’t want to know anything about her will, and that I’ll take it all for granted. There is something to be settled on you, that she calls her own.’
‘She is so generous, Brooke.’
‘She is generous enough, but she is very whimsical. She is going to make her whole will over again, and now she wants to send some message to Uncle Barty. I don’t know what it is yet, but I am to take it. As far as I can understand, she has sent all the way to London for me, in order that I may take a message across the Close.’
‘You talk as though it were very disagreeable, coming to Exeter,’ said Dorothy, with a little pout.
‘So it is very disagreeable.’
‘Oh, Brooke!’
‘Very disagreeable if our marriage is to be put off by it. I think it will be so much nicer making love somewhere on the Rhine than having snatches of it here, and talking all the time about wills and tenements and settlements.’ As he said this, with his arm round her waist and his face quite close to hers, shewing thereby that he was not altogether averse even to his present privileges, she forgave him.
On that same afternoon, just before the banking hours were over, Brooke went across to the house of Cropper and Burgess, having first been closeted for nearly an hour with his aunt and, as he went, his step was sedate and his air was serious. He found his uncle Barty, and was not very long in delivering his message. It was to this effect, that Miss Stanbury particularly wished to see Mr Bartholomew Burgess on business, at some hour on that afternoon or that evening. Brooke himself had been made acquainted with the subject in regard to which this singular interview was desired; but it was not a part of his duty to communicate any information respecting it. It had been necessary that his consent to certain arrangements should be asked before the invitation to Barty Burgess could be given; but his present mission was confined to an authority to give the invitation.
Old Mr Burgess was much surprised, and was at first disposed to decline the proposition made by the ‘old harridan,’ as he called her. He had never put any restraint on his language in talking of Miss Stanbury with his nephew, and was not disposed to do so now, because she had taken a new vagary into her head. But there was something in his nephew’s manner which at last induced him to discuss the matter rationally.
‘And you don’t know what it’s all about?’ said Uncle Barty.
‘I can’t quite say that. I suppose I do know pretty well. At any rate, I know enough to think that you ought to come. But I must not say what it is.’
‘Will it do me or anybody else any good?’
‘It can’t do you any harm. She won’t eat you.’
‘But she can abuse me like a pickpocket, and I should return it, and then there would be a scolding match. I always have kept out of her way, and I think I had better do so still.’
Nevertheless Brooke prevailed, or rather the feeling of curiosity which was naturally engendered prevailed. For very, very many years Barty Burgess had never entered or left his own house of business without seeing the door of that in which Miss Stanbury lived, and he had never seen that door without a feeling of detestation for the owner of it. It would, perhaps, have been a more rational feeling on his part had he confined his hatred to the memory of his brother, by whose will Miss Stanbury had been enriched, and he had been, as he thought, impoverished. But there had been a contest, and litigation, and disputes, and contradictions, and a long course of those incidents in life which lead to rancour and ill blood, after the death of the former Brooke Burgess; and, as the result of all this, Miss Stanbury held the property and Barty Burgess held his hatred. He had never been ashamed of it, and had spoken his mind out to all who would hear him. And, to give Miss Stanbury her due, it must be admitted that she had hardly been behind him in the warmth of her expression, of which old Barty was well aware. He hated, and knew that he was hated in return. And he knew, or thought that he knew, that his enemy was not a woman to relent because old age and weakness and the fear of death were coming on her. His enemy, with all her faults, was no coward. It could not be that now at the eleventh hour she should desire to reconcile him by any act of tardy justice, nor did he wish to be reconciled at this, the eleventh hour. His hatred was a pleasant excitement to him. His abuse of Miss Stanbury was a chosen recreation. His unuttered daily curse, as he looked over to her door, was a relief to him. Nevertheless he would go. As Brooke had said, no harm could come of his going. He would go, and at least listen to her proposition.
About seven in the evening his knock was heard at the door. Miss Stanbury was sitting in the small upstairs parlour, dressed in her second best gown, and was prepared with considerable stiffness and state for the occasion. Dorothy was with her, but was desired in a quick voice to hurry away the moment the knock was heard, as though old Barty would have jumped from the hall door into the room at a bound. Dorothy collected herself with a little start, and went without a word. She had heard much of Barty Burgess, but had never spoken to him, and was subject to a feeling of great awe when she would remember that the grim old man of whom she had heard so much evil would soon be her uncle. According to arrangement, Mr Burgess was shewn upstairs by his nephew. Barty Burgess had been born in this very house, but had not been inside the walls of it for more than thirty years. He also was somewhat awed by the occasion, and followed his nephew without a word. Brooke was to remain at hand, so that he might be summoned should he be wanted; but it had been decided by Miss Stanbury that he should not be present at the interview. As soon as her visitor entered the room she rose in a stately way, and curtseyed, propping herself with one hand upon the table as she did so. She looked him full in the face meanwhile, and curtseying a second time, asked him to seat himself in a chair which had been prepared for him. She did it all very well, and it may be surmised that she had rehearsed the little scene, perhaps more than once, when nobody was looking at her. He bowed, and walked round to the chair and seated himself; but finding that he was so placed that he could not see his neighbour’s face, he moved his chair. He was not going to fight such a duel as this with the disadvantage of the sun in his eyes.
Hitherto there had hardly been a word spoken. Miss Stanbury had muttered something as she was curtseying, and Barty Burgess had made some return. Then she began: ‘Mr Burgess,’ she said, ‘I am indebted to you for your complaisance in coming here at my request.’ To this he bowed again. ‘I should not have ventured thus to trouble you were it not that years are dealing more hardly with me than they are with you, and that I could not have ventured to discuss a matter of deep interest otherwise than in my own room.’ It was her room now, certainly, by law; but Barty Burgess remembered it when it was his mother’s room, and when she used to give them all their meals there now so many, many years ago! He bowed again, and said not a word. He knew well that she could sooner be brought to her point by his silence than by his speech.
She was a long time coming to her point. Before she could do so she was forced to allude to times long past, and to subjects which she found it very difficult to touch without saying that which would either belie herself, or seem to be severe upon him. Though she had prepared herself, she could hardly get the words spoken, and she was greatly impeded by the obstinacy of his silence. But at last her proposition was made to him. She told him that his nephew, Brooke, was about to be married to her niece, Dorothy; and that it was her intention to make Brooke her heir in the bulk of the property which she had received under the will of the late Mr Brooke Burgess. ‘Indeed,’ she said, ‘all that I received at your brother’s hands shall go back to your brother’s family unimpaired’ He only bowed, and would not say a word. Then she went on to say that it had at first been a mater to her of deep regret that Brooke should have set his affections upon her niece, as there had been in her mind a strong desire that none of her own people should enjoy the reversion of the wealth, which she had always regarded as being hers only for the term of her life; but that she had found that the young people had been so much in earnest, and that her own feeling had been so near akin to a prejudice, that she had yielded. When this was said Barty smiled instead of bowing, and Miss Stanbury felt that there might be something worse even than his silence. His smile told her that he believed her to be lying. Nevertheless she went on. She was not fool enough to suppose that the whole nature of the man was to be changed by a few words from her. So she went on. The marriage was a thing fixed, and she was thinking of settlements, and had been talking to lawyers about a new will.
‘I do not know that I can help you,’ said Barty, finding that a longer pause than usual made some word from him absolutely necessary.
‘I am going on to that, and I regret that my story should detain you so long, Mr Burgess’ And she did go on. She had, she said, made some saving out of her income. She was not going to trouble Mr Burgess with this matter, only that she might explain to him that what she would at once give to the young couple, and what she would settle on Dorothy after her own death, would all come from such savings, and that such gifts and bequests would not diminish the family property. Barty again smiled as he heard this, and Miss Stanbury in her heart likened him to the devil in person. But still she went on. She was very desirous that Brooke Burgess should come and live at Exeter. His property would be in the town and the neighbourhood. It would be a seemly thing, such was her word, that he should occupy the house that had belonged to his grandfather and his great-grandfather; and then, moreover, she acknowledged that she spoke selfishly; she dreaded the idea of being left alone for the remainder of her own years. Her proposition at last was uttered. It was simply this, that Barty Burgess should give to his nephew, Brooke, his share in the bank.
‘I am damned, if I do!’ said Barty Burgess, rising up from his chair.
But before he had left the room he had agreed to consider the proposition. Miss Stanbury had of course known that any such suggestion coming from her without an adequate reason assigned, would have been mere idle wind. She was prepared with such adequate reason. If Mr Burgess could see his way to make the proposed transfer of his share of the bank business, she, Miss Stanbury, would hand over to him, for his life, a certain proportion of the Burgess property which lay in the city, the income of which would exceed that drawn by him from the business. Would he, at his time of life, take that for doing nothing which he now got for working hard? That was the meaning of it. And then, too, as far as the portion of the property went, and it extended to the houses owned by Miss Stanbury on the bank side of the Close, it would belong altogether to Barty Burgess for his life. ‘It will simply be this, Mr Burgess, that Brooke will be your heir as would be natural.’
‘I don’t know that it would be at all natural,’ said he. ‘I should prefer to choose my own heir.
‘No doubt, Mr Burgess, in respect to your own property,’ said Miss Stanbury.
At last he said that he would think of it, and consult his partner; and then he got up to take his leave. ‘For myself,’ said Miss Stanbury, ‘I would wish that all animosities might be buried.’
‘We can say that they are buried,’ said the grim old man ‘but nobody will believe us.’
‘What matters if we could believe it ourselves?’
‘But suppose we didn’t. I don’t believe that much good can come from talking of such things, Miss Stanbury. You and I have grown too old to swear a friendship. I will think of this thing, and if I find that it can be made to suit without much difficulty, I will perhaps entertain it.’ Then the interview was over, and old Barty made his way downstairs, and out of the house. He looked over to the tenements in the Close which were offered to him, every circumstance of each one of which he knew, and felt that he might do worse. Were he to leave the bank, he could not take his entire income with him, and it had been long said of him that he ought to leave it. The Croppers, who were his partners and whom he had never loved, would be glad to welcome in his place one of the old family who would have money; and then the name would be perpetuated in Exeter, which, even to Barty Burgess, was something.
On that night the scheme was divulged to Dorothy, and she was in ecstasies. London had always sounded bleak and distant and terrible to her; and her heart had misgiven her at the idea of leaving her aunt. If only this thing might be arranged! When Brooke spoke the next morning of returning at once to his office, he was rebuked by both the ladies. What was the Ecclesiastical Commission Office to any of them, when matters of such importance were concerned? But Brooke would not be talked out of his prudence. He was very willing to be made a banker at Exeter, and to go to school again and learn banking business; but he would not throw up his occupation in London till he knew that there was another ready for him in the country. One day longer he spent in Exeter, and During that day he was more than once with his uncle. He saw also the Messrs Cropper, and was considerably chilled by the manner in which they at first seemed to entertain the proposition. Indeed, for a couple of hours he thought that the scheme must be abandoned. It was pointed out to him that Mr Barty Burgess’s life would probably be short, and that he, Barty, had but a small part of the business at his disposal. But gradually a way to terms was seen, not quite so simple as that which Miss Stanbury had suggested; and Brooke, when he left Exeter, did believe it possible that he, after all, might become the family representative in the old banking-house of the Burgesses.
‘And how long will it take, Aunt Stanbury?’ Dorothy asked.
‘Don’t you be impatient, my dear.’
‘I am not the least impatient; but of course I want to tell mamma and Priscilla. It will be so nice to live here and not go up to London. Are we to stay here in this very house?’
‘Have you not found out yet that Brooke will be likely to have an opinion of his own on such things?’
‘But would you wish us to live here, aunt?’
‘I hardly know, dear. I am a foolish old woman, and cannot say what I would wish. I cannot bear to be alone.’
‘Of course we will stay with you.’
‘And yet I should be jealous if I were not mistress of my own house.’
‘Of course you will be mistress.’
‘I believe, Dolly, that it would be better that I should die. I have come to feel that I can do more good by going out of the world than by remaining in it.’ Dorothy hardly answered this in words, but sat close by her aunt, holding the old woman’s hand and caressing it, and administering that love of which Miss Stanbury had enjoyed so little during her life and which had become so necessary to her.
The news about the bank arrangements, though kept of course as a great secret, soon became common in Exeter. It was known to be a good thing for the firm in general that Barty Burgess should be removed from his share of the management. He was old-fashioned, unpopular, and very stubborn; and he and a certain Mr Julius Cropper, who was the leading man among the Croppers, had not always been comfortable together. It was at first hinted that old Miss Stanbury had been softened by sudden twinges of conscience, and that she had confessed to some terrible crime in the way of forgery, perjury, or perhaps worse, and had relieved herself at last by making full restitution. But such a rumour as this did not last long or receive wide credence. When it was hinted to such old friends as Sir Peter Mancrudy and Mrs MacHugh, they laughed it to scorn, and it did not exist even in the vague form of an undivulged mystery for above three days. Then it was asserted that old Barty had been found to have no real claim to any share in the bank, and that he was to be turned out at Miss Stanbury’s instance that he was to be turned out, and that Brooke had been acknowledged to be the owner of the Burgess share of her business. Then came the fact that old Barty had been bought out, and that the future husband of Miss Stanbury’s niece was to be the junior partner. A general feeling prevailed at last that there had been another great battle between Miss Stanbury and old Barty, and that the old maid had prevailed now, as she had done in former days. Before the end of July the papers were in the lawyer’s hands, and all the terms had been fixed. Brooke came down again and again, to Dorothy’s great delight, and displayed considerable firmness in the management of his own interest. If Fate intended to make him a banker in Exeter instead of a clerk in the Ecclesiastical Commission Office, he would be a banker after a respectable fashion. There was more than one little struggle between him and Mr Julius Cropper, which ended in accession of respect on the part of Mr Cropper for his new partner. Mr Cropper had thought that the establishment might best be known to the commercial world of the West of England as “Croppers’ Bank”; but Broke had been very firm in asserting that if he was to have anything to do with it the old name should be maintained.
‘It’s to be “Cropper and Burgess,” he said to Dorothy one afternoon. ‘They fought hard for “Cropper, Cropper, and Burgess” but I wouldn’t stand more than one Cropper.’
‘Of course not,’ said Dorothy, with something almost of scorn in her voice. By this time Dorothy had gone very deeply into banking business.
Miss Stanbury at this time was known all through Exeter to be very much altered from the Miss Stanbury of old or even from the Miss Stanbury of two years since. The Miss Stanbury of old was a stalwart lady who would play her rubber of whist five nights a week, and could hold her own in conversation against the best woman in Exeter, not to speak of her acknowledged superiority over every man in that city. Now she cared little for the glories of debate; and though she still liked her rubber, and could wake herself up to the old fire in the detection of a revoke or the claim for a second trick, her rubbers were few and far between, and she would leave her own house on an evening only when all circumstances were favourable, and with many precautions against wind and water. Some said that she was becoming old, and that she was going out like the snuff of a candle. But Sir Peter Mancrudy declared that she might live for the next fifteen years, if she would only think so herself. ‘It was true,’ Sir Peter said, ‘that in the winter she had been ill, and that there had been danger as to her throat during the east winds of the spring, but those dangers had passed away, and, if she would only exert herself, she might be almost as good a woman as ever she had been.’ Sir Peter was not a man of many words, or given to talk frequently of his patients; but it was clearly Sir Peter’s opinion that Miss Stanbury’s mind was ill at ease. She had become discontented with life, and therefore it was that she cared no longer for the combat of tongues, and had become cold even towards the card-table. It was so in truth; and yet perhaps the lives of few men or women had been more innocent, and few had struggled harder to be just in their dealings and generous in their thoughts.
There was ever present to her mind an idea of failure and a fear lest she had been mistaken in her views throughout her life. No one had ever been more devoted to peculiar opinions, or more strong in the use of language for their expression; and she was so far true to herself, that she would never seem to retreat from the position she had taken. She would still scorn the new fangles of the world around her, and speak of the changes which she saw as all tending to evil. But, through it all, there was an idea present to herself that it could not be God’s intention that things should really change for the worse, and that the fault must be in her, because she had been unable to move as others had moved. She would sit thinking of the circumstances of her own life and tell herself that with her everything had failed. She had loved, but had quarrelled with her lover; and her love had come to nothing but barren wealth. She had fought for her wealth and had conquered, and had become hard in the fight, and was conscious of her own hardness. In the early days of her riches and power she had taken her nephew by the hand, and had thrown him away from her because he would not dress himself in her mirror. She had believed herself to be right, and would not, even now, tell herself that she had been wrong; but there were doubts, and qualms of conscience, and an uneasiness because her life had been a failure. Now she was seeking to appease her self-accusations by sacrificing everything for the happiness of her niece and her chosen hero; but as she went on with the work she felt that all would be in vain, unless she could sweep herself altogether from off the scene. She had told herself that if she could bring Brooke to Exeter, his prospects would be made infinitely brighter than they would be in London, and that she in her last days would not be left utterly alone. But as the prospect of her future life came nearer to her, she saw, or thought that she saw, that there was still failure before her. Young people would not want an old woman in the house with them even though the old woman would declare that she would be no more in the house than a tame cat. And she knew herself also too well to believe that she could make herself a tame cat in the home that had so long been subject to her dominion. Would it not be better that she should go away somewhere and die?
‘If Mr Brooke is to come here,’ Martha said to her one day, ‘we ought to begin and make the changes, ma’am’.
‘What changes? You are always wanting to make changes’.
‘If they was never made till I wanted them they’d never be made, ma’am. But if there is to be a married couple, there should be things proper. Anyways, ma’am, we ought to know oughtn’t we?’
The truth of this statement was so evident that Miss Stanbury could not contradict it. But she had not even yet made up her mind. Ideas were running through her head which she knew to be very wild, but of which she could not divest herself. ‘Martha,’ she said after a while, ‘I think I shall go away from this myself.’
‘Leave the house, ma’am?’ said Martha, awestruck.
‘There are other houses in the world, I suppose, in which an old woman can live and die.’
‘There is houses, ma’am, of course,’
‘And what is the difference between one and another?’
‘I wouldn’t do it, ma’am, if I was you. I wouldn’t do it if it was ever so. Sure the house is big enough for Mr Brooke and Miss Dorothy along with you. I wouldn’t go and make such change as that, I wouldn’t indeed, ma’am.’ Martha spoke out almost with eloquence, so much expression was there in her face. Miss Stanbury said nothing more at the moment, beyond signifying her indisposition to make up her mind to anything at the present moment. Yes the house was big enough as far as rooms were concerned; but how often had she heard that an old woman must always be in the way, if attempting to live with a newly-married couple? If a mother-inlaw be unendurable, how much more so one whose connection would be less near? She could keep her own house no doubt, and let them go elsewhere; but what then would come of her old dream, that Burgess, the new banker in the city, should live in the very house that had been inhabited by the Burgesses, the bankers of old? There was certainly only one way out of all these troubles, and that way would be that she should go from them and be at rest.
Her will had now been drawn out and completed for the third or fourth time, and she had made no secret of is contents either with Brooke or Dorothy. The whole estate she left to Brooke, including the houses which were to become his after his uncle’s death; and in regard to the property she had made no further stipulation. ‘I might have settled it on your children,’ she said to him, ‘but in doing so I should have settled it on hers. I don’t know why an old woman should try to interfere with things after she has gone. I hope you won’t squander it, Brooke.’
‘I shall be a steady old man by that time,’ he said.
‘I hope you’ll be steady at any rate. But there it is, and God must direct you in the use of it, if He will. It has been a burthen to me; but then I have been a solitary old woman.’ Half of what she had saved she proposed to give Dorothy on her marriage, and for doing this arrangements had already been made. There were various other legacies, and the last she announced was one to her nephew, Hugh. ‘I have left him a thousand pounds,’ she said to Dorothy ‘so that he may remember me kindly at last’ As to this, however, she exacted a pledge that no intimation of the legacy was to be made to Hugh. Then it was that Dorothy told her aunt that Hugh intended to marry Nora Rowley, one of the ladies who had been at the Clock House during the days in which her mother had lived in grandeur; and then it was also that Dorothy obtained leave to invite Hugh to her own wedding. ‘I hope she will be happier than her sister,’ Miss Stanbury said, when she heard of the intended marriage.
‘It wasn’t Mrs Trevelyan’s fault, you know, aunt.’
‘I say nothing about anybody’s fault; but this I do say, that it was a very great misfortune. I fought all that battle with your sister Priscilla, and I don’t mean to fight it again, my dear. If Hugh marries the young lady, I hope she will be more happy than her sister. There can be no harm in saying that.’
Dorothy’s letter to her brother shall be given, because it will inform the reader of all the arrangements as they were made up to that time, and will convey the Exeter news respecting various persons with whom our story is concerned.
‘The Close, July 20, 186-DEAR HUGH,
The day for my marriage is now fixed, and I wish with all my heart that it was the same with you. Pray give my love to Nora. It seems so odd that, though she was living for a while with mamma at Nuncombe Putney, I never should have seen her yet. I am very glad that Brooke has seen her, and he declares that she is quite magnificently beautiful. Those are his own words.
We are to be married on the 10th of August, a Wednesday, and now comes my great news. Aunt Stanbury says that you are to come and stay in the house. She bids me tell you so with her love; and that you can have a room as long as you like. Of course, you must come. In the first place, you must because you are to give me away, and Brooke wouldn’t have me if I wasn’t given away properly; and then it will make me so happy that you and Aunt Stanbury should be friends again. You can stay as long as you like, but, of course, you must come the day before the wedding. We are to be married in the Cathedral, and there are to be two clergymen, but I don’t yet know who they will be — not Mr Gibson, certainly, as you were good enough to suggest.
Mr Gibson is married to Arabella French, and they have gone away somewhere into Cornwall. Camilla has come back, and I have seen her once. She looked ever so fierce, as though she intended to declare that she didn’t mind what anybody may think. They say that she still protests that she never will speak to her sister again.
I was introduced to Mr Barty Burgess the other day. Brooke was here, and we met him in the Close. I hardly knew what he said to me, I was so frightened; but Brooke said that he meant to be civil, and that he is going to send me a present. I have got a quantity of things already, and yesterday Mrs MacHugh sent me such a beautiful cream-jug. If you’ll come in time on the 9th, you shall see them all before they are put away.
‘Mamma and Priscilla are to be here, and they will come on the 9th also. Poor, dear mamma is, I know, terribly flurried about it, and so is Aunt Stanbury. It is so long since they have seen each other. I don’t think Priscilla feels it the same way, because she is so brave. Do you remember when it was first proposed that I should come here? I am so glad I came because of Brooke. He will come on the 9th, quite early, and I do so hope you will come with him.
Yours most affectionately,
DOROTHY STANBURY.
Give my best, best love to Nora’
When the Rowleys were back in London, and began to employ themselves on the terrible work of making ready for their journey to the Islands, Lady Rowley gradually gave way about Hugh Stanbury. She had become aware that Nora would not go back with them unless under an amount of pressure which she would find it impossible to use. And if Nora did not go out to the Islands, what was to become of her unless she married this man? Sir Marmaduke, when all was explained to him, declared that a girl must do what her parents ordered her to do. ‘Other girls live with their fathers and mothers, and so must she.’ Lady Rowley endeavoured to explain that other girls lived with their fathers and mothers, because they found themselves in established homes from which they are not disposed to run away; but Nora’s position was, as she alleged, very different. Nora’s home had latterly been with her sister, and it was hardly to be expected that the parental authority should not find itself impaired by the interregnum which had taken place. Sir Marmaduke would not see the thing in the same light, and was disposed to treat his daughter with a high hand. If she would not do as she was bidden, she should no longer be daughter of his. In answer to this Lady Rowley could only repeat her conviction that Nora would not go out to the Mandarins; and that as for disinheriting her, casting her out, cursing her, and the rest, she had no belief in such doings at all. ‘On the stage they do such things as that’ she said; ‘and, perhaps, they used to do it once in reality. But you know that it’s out of the question now. Fancy your standing up and cursing at the dear girl, just as we are all starting from Southampton!’ Sir Marmaduke knew as well as his wife that it would be impossible, and only muttered something about the ‘dear girl’ behaving herself with great impropriety.
They were all aware that Nora was not going to leave England, because no berth had been taken for her on board the ship, and because, while the other girls were preparing for their long voyage, no preparations were made for her. Of course she was not going. Sir Marmaduke would probably have given way altogether immediately on his return to London, had he not discussed the matter with his friend Colonel Osborne. It became, of course, his duty to make some inquiry as to the Stanbury family, and he knew that Osborne had visited Mrs Stanbury when he made his unfortunate pilgrimage to the porch of Cockchaffington Church. He told Osborne the whole story of Nora’s engagement, telling also that other most heart-breaking tale of her conduct in regard to Mr Glascock, and asked the Colonel what he thought about the Stanburys. Now the Colonel did not hold the Stanburys in high esteem. He had met Hugh, as the reader may perhaps remember, and had had some intercourse with the young man, which had not been quite agreeable to him, on the platform of the railway station at Exeter. And he had also heard something of the ladies at Nuncombe Putney during his short sojourn at the house of Mrs Crocket. ‘My belief is, they are beggars,’ said Colonel Osborne.
‘I suppose so,’ said Sir Marmaduke, shaking his head.
‘When I went over to call on Emily that time I was at Cockchaffington, you know, when Trevelyan made himself such a d fool, I found the mother and sister living in a decentish house enough; but it wasn’t their house.’
‘Not their own, you mean?’
‘It was a place that Trevelyan had got this young man to take for Emily, and they had merely gone there to be with her. They had been living in a little bit of a cottage; a sort of place that any any ploughman would live in. Just that kind of cottage.’
‘Goodness gracious!’
‘And they’ve gone to another just like it so I’m told.’
‘And can’t he do anything better for them than that?’ asked Sir Marmaduke.
‘I know nothing about him. I have met him, you know. He used to be with Trevelyan; that was when Nora took a fancy for him, of course. And I saw him once down in Devonshire, when I must say he behaved uncommonly badly, doing all he could to foster Trevelyan’s stupid jealousy.’
‘He has changed his mind about that, I think.’
‘Perhaps he has; but he behaved very badly then. Let him shew up his income; that, I take it, is the question in such a case as this. His father was a clergyman, and therefore I suppose he must be considered to he a gentleman. But has he means to support a wife, and keep up a house in London? If he has not, that is an end to it, I should say.’
But Sir Marmaduke could not see his way to any such end, and, although he still looked black upon Nora, and talked to his wife of his determination to stand no contumacy, and hinted at cursing, disinheriting, and the like, he began to perceive that Nora would have her own way. In his unhappiness he regretted this visit to England, and almost thought that the Mandarins were a pleasanter residence than London. He could do pretty much as he pleased there, and could live quietly, without the trouble which encountered him now on every side.
Nora, immediately on her return to London, had written a note to Hugh, simply telling him of her arrival and begging him to come and see her. ‘Mamma,’ she said, ‘I must see him, and it would be nonsense to say that he must not come here. I have done what I have said I would do, and you ought not to make difficulties.’ Lady Rowley declared that Sir Marmaduke would be very angry if Hugh were admitted without his express permission. ‘I don’t want to do anything in the dark,’ continued Nora, ‘but of course I must see him. I suppose it will be better that he should come to me than that I should go to him?’ Lady Rowley quite understood the threat that was conveyed in this. It would be much better that Hugh should come to the hotel, and that he should be treated then as an accepted lover. She had come to that conclusion. But she was obliged to vacillate for awhile between her husband and her daughter. Hugh came of course, and Sir Marmaduke, by his wife’s advice, kept out of the way. Lady Rowley, though she was at home, kept herself also out of the way, remaining above with her two other daughters. Nora thus achieved the glory and happiness of receiving her lover alone.
‘My own true girl!’ he said, speaking with his arms still round her waist.
‘I am true enough; but whether I am your own, that is another question.’
‘You mean to be?’
‘But papa doesn’t mean it. Papa says that you are nobody, and that you haven’t got an income; and thinks that I had better go back and be an old maid at the Mandarins.’
‘And what do you think yourself, Nora?’
‘What do I think? As far as I can understand, young ladies are not allowed to think at all. They have to do what their papas tell them. That will do, Hugh. You can talk without taking hold of me.’
‘It is such a time since I have had a hold of you as you call it.’
‘It will be much longer before you can do so again, if I go back to the Islands with papa. I shall expect you to be true, you know; and it will be ten years at the least before I can hope to be home again.’
‘I don’t think you mean to go, Nora.’
‘But what am I to do? That idea of yours of walking out to the next church and getting ourselves married sounds very nice and independent, but you know that it is not practicable.’
‘On the other hand, I know it is.’
‘It is not practicable for me, Hugh. Of all things in the world I don’t want to be a Lydia. I won’t do anything that anybody shall ever say that your wife ought not to have done. Young women when they are married ought to have their papas’ and mammas’ consent. I have been thinking about it a great deal for the last month or two, and I have made up my mind to that.’
‘What is it all to come to, then?’
‘I mean to get papa’s consent. That is what it is to come to.’
‘And if he is obstinate?’
‘I shall coax him round at last. When the time for going comes, he’ll yield then.’
‘But you will not go with them?’ As he asked this he came to her and tried again to take her by the waist; but she retreated from him, and got herself clear from us arm. ‘If you are afraid of me, I shall know that you think it possible that we may be parted.’
‘I am not a bit afraid of you, Hugh.’
‘Nora, I think you ought to tell me something definitely.’
‘I think I have been definite enough, sir. You may be sure of this, however I will not go back to the Islands.’
‘Give me your hand on that.’
‘There is my hand. But, remember, I had told you just as much before. I don’t mean to go back. I mean to stay here. I mean — but I do not think I will tell you all the things I mean to do.’
‘You mean to be my wife?’
‘Certainly, some day, when the difficulty about the chairs and tables can settle itself. The real question now is what am I to do with myself when papa and mamma are gone?’
‘Become Mrs H. Stanbury at once. Chairs and tables! You shall have chairs and tables as many as you want. You won’t be too proud to live in lodgings for a few months?’
‘There must be preliminaries, Hugh even for lodgings, though they may be very slender. Papa goes in less than three weeks now, and mamma has got something else to think of than my marriage garments. And then there are all manner of difficulties, money difficulties and others, out of which I don’t see my way yet’. Hugh began to asseverate that it was his business to help her through all money difficulties as well as others; but she soon stopped his eloquence. ‘It will be by-and-by, Hugh, and I hope you’ll support the burden like a man; but just at present there is a hitch. I shouldn’t have come over at all; I should have stayed with Emily in Italy, had I not thought that I was bound to see you’
‘My own darling!’
‘When papa goes, I think that I had better go back to her.’
‘I’ll take you!’ said Hugh, picturing to himself all the pleasures of such a tour together, over the Alps.
‘No you won’t, because that would be improper. When we travel together we must go Darby and Joan fashion, as man and wife. I think I had better go back to Emily, because her position there is so terrible. There must come some end to it, I suppose soon. He will be better, or he will become so bad that that medical interference will be unavoidable. But I do not like that she should be alone. She gave me a home when she had one, and I must always remember that I met you there.’ After this there was of course another attempt with Hugh’s right arm, which on this occasion was not altogether unsuccessful. And then she told him of her friendship for Mr Glascock’s wife, and of her intention at some future time to visit them at Monkhams.
‘And see all the glories that might have been your own,’ he said.
‘And think of the young man who has robbed me of them all! And you are to go there too, so that you may see what you have done. There was a time, Hugh, when I was very nearly pleasing all my friends and shewing myself to be a young lady of high taste and noble fortune and an obedient, good girl.’
‘And why didn’t you?’
‘I thought I would wait just a little longer. Because, because, because — Oh, Hugh, how cross you were to me afterwards when you came down to Nuncombe and would hardly speak to me!’
‘And why didn’t I speak to you?’
‘I don’t know. Because you were cross, and surly, and thinking of nothing but your tobacco, I believe. Do you remember how we walked to Liddon, and you hadn’t a word for anybody?’
‘I remember I wanted you to go down to the river with me, and you wouldn’t go.’
‘You asked me only once, and I did so long to go with you. Do you remember the rocks in the river? I remember the place as though I saw it now; and how I longed to jump from one stone to another. Hugh, if we are ever married, you must take me there, and let me jump on those stones.’
‘You pretended that you could not think of wetting your feet.’
‘Of course I pretended, because you were so cross, and so cold. Oh, dear! I wonder whether you will ever know it all.’
‘Don’t I know it all now?’
‘I suppose you do, nearly. There is mighty little of a secret in it, and it is the same thing that is going on always. Only it seems so strange to me that I should ever have loved any one so dearly and that for next to no reason at all. You never made yourself very charming that I know of, did you?’
‘I did my best. It wasn’t much, I dare say.’
‘You did nothing, sir, except just let me fall in love with you. And you were not quite sure that you would let me do that.’
‘Nora, I don’t think you do understand.’
‘I do perfectly. Why were you cross with me, instead of saying one nice word when you were down at Nuncombe? I do understand.’
‘Why was it?’
‘Because you did not think well enough of me to believe that I would give myself to a man who had no fortune of his own. I know it now, and I knew it then; and therefore I wouldn’t dabble in the river with you. But it’s all over now, and we’ll go and get wet together like dear little children, and Priscilla shall scold us when we come back.’
They were alone in the sitting-room for more than an hour, and Lady Rowley was patient upstairs; as mothers will be patient in such emergencies. Sophie and Lucy had gone out and left her; and there she remained, telling herself, as the weary minutes went by, that as the thing was to be, it was well that the young people should be together. Hugh Stanbury could never be to her what Mr Glascock would have been — a son-inlaw to sit and think about, and dream of, and be proud of, whose existence as her son-inlaw would in itself have been a happiness to her out in her banishment at the other side of the world; but nevertheless it was natural to her, as a soft-hearted, loving mother with many daughters, that any son-inlaw should be dear to her. Now that she had gradually brought herself round to believe in Nora’s marriage, she was disposed to make the best of Hugh, to remember that he was certainly a clever man, that he was an honest fellow, and that she had heard of him as a good son and a kind brother, and that he had behaved well in reference to her Emily and Trevelyan. She was quite willing now that Hugh should be happy, and she sat there thinking that the time was very long, but still waiting patiently till she should be summoned. ‘You must let me go for mamma for a moment,’ Nora said. ‘I want you to see her and make yourself a good boy before her. If you are ever to be her son-inlaw, you ought to be in her good graces.’ Hugh declared that he would do his best, and Nora fetched her mother.
Stanbury found some difficulty in making himself a ‘good boy’ in Lady Rowley’s presence; and Lady Rowley herself, for sometime, felt very strongly the awkwardness of the meeting. She had never formally recognised the young man as her daughter’s accepted suitor, and as not yet justified in doing so by any permission from Sir Marmaduke; but, as the young people had been for the last hour or two alone together, with her connivance and sanction, it was indispensable that she should in some way signify her parental adherence to the arrangement. Nora began by talking about Emily, and Trevelyan’s condition and mode of living were discussed. Then Lady Rowley said something about their coming journey, and Hugh, with a lucky blunder, spoke of Nora’s intended return to Italy. ‘We don’t know how that may be,’ said Lady Rowley. ‘Her papa still wishes her to go back with us.’
‘Mamma, you know that that is impossible,’ said Nora.
‘Not impossible, my love.’
‘But she will not go back,’ said Hugh. ‘Lady Rowley, you would not propose to separate us by such a distance as that?’
‘It is Sir Marmaduke that you must ask.’
‘Mamma, mamma!’ exclaimed Nora, rushing to her mother’s side, ‘it is not papa that we must ask not now. We want you to be our friend. Don’t we, Hugh? And, mamma, if you will really be our friend, of course, papa will come round.’
‘My dear Nora!’
‘You know he will, mamma; and you know that you mean to be good and kind to us. Of course I can’t go back to the Islands with you. How could I go so far and leave him behind? He might have half-a-dozen wives before I could get back to him —’
‘If you have not more trust in him than that —’
‘Long engagements are awful bores,’ said Hugh, finding it to be necessary that he also should press forward his argument.
‘I can trust him as far as I can see him,’ said Nora, ‘and therefore I do not want to lose sight of him altogether.’
Lady Rowley of course gave way and embraced her accepted son-inlaw. After all it might have been worse. He saw his way clearly, he said, to making six hundred a year, and did not at all doubt that before long he would do better than that. He proposed that they should be married some time in the autumn, but was willing to acknowledge that much must depend on the position of Trevelyan and his wife. He would hold himself ready at any moment, he said, to start to Italy, and would do all that could be done by a brother. Then Lady Rowley gave him her blessing, and kissed him again, and Nora kissed him too, and hung upon him, and did not push him away at all when his arm crept round her waist. And that feeling came upon him which must surely be acknowledged by all engaged young men when they first find themselves encouraged by mammas in the taking of liberties which they have hitherto regarded as mysteries to be hidden, especially from maternal eyes, that feeling of being a fine fat calf decked out with ribbons for a sacrifice.