In the second week in October, Mr Glascock returned to Florence, intending to remain there till the weather should have become bearable at Naples. His father was said to be better, but was in such a condition as hardly to receive much comfort from his son’s presence. His mind was gone, and he knew no one but his nurse; and, though Mr Glascock was unwilling to put himself altogether out of the reach of returning at a day’s notice, he did not find himself obliged to remain in Naples during the heat of the autumn. So Mr Glascock returned to the hotel at Florence, accompanied by the tall man who wore the buttons. The hotel-keeper did not allow such a light to remain long hidden under a bushel, and it was soon spread far and wide that the Honourable Charles Glascock and his suite were again in the beautiful city.
And the fact was soon known to the American Minister and his family. Mr Spalding was a man who at home had been very hostile to English interests. Many American gentlemen are known for such hostility. They make anti-English speeches about the country, as though they thought that war with England would produce certain triumph to the States, certain increase to American trade, and certain downfall to a tyranny which no Anglo-Saxon nation ought to endure. But such is hardly their real opinion. There, in the States, as also here in England, you shall from day to day hear men propounding, in very loud language, advanced theories of political action, the assertion of which is supposed to be necessary to the end which they have in view. Men whom we know to have been as mild as sucking doves in the political aspiration of their whole lives, suddenly jump up, and with infuriated gestures declare themselves the enemies of everything existing. When they have obtained their little purpose or have failed to do so they revert naturally into their sucking-dove elements. It is so with Americans as frequently as with ourselves and there is no political subject on which it is considered more expedient to express pseudo-enthusiasm than on that of the sins of England. It is understood that we do not resent it. It is presumed that we regard it as the Irishman regarded his wife’s cuffs. In the States a large party, which consists chiefly of those who have lately left English rule, amid who are keen to prove to themselves how wise they have been in doing so, is pleased by this strong language against England; and, therefore, the strong language is spoken. But the speakers, who are, probably, men knowing something of the world, mean it not at all; they have no more idea of war with England than they have of war with all Europe; and their respect for England and for English opinion is unbounded. In their political tones of speech and modes of action they strive to be as English as possible. Mr Spalding’s aspirations were of this nature. He had uttered speeches against England which would make the hair stand on end on the head of an uninitiated English reader. He had told his countrymen that Englishmen hugged their chains, and would do so until American hammers had knocked those chains from off their wounded wrists and bleeding ankles. He had declared that, if certain American claims were not satisfied, there was nothing left for Americans to do but to cross the ferry with such a sheriff’s officer as would be able to make distraint on the great English household. He had declared that the sheriff’s officer would have very little trouble. He had spoken of Canada as an outlying American territory, not yet quite sufficiently redeemed from savage life to be received into the Union as a State. There is a multiplicity of subjects of this kind ready to the hand of the American orator. Mr Spalding had been quite successful, and was now Minister at Florence; but, perhaps, one of the greatest pleasures coming to him from his prosperity was the enjoyment of the society of well-bred Englishmen in the capital to which he had been sent. When, therefore, his wife and nieces pointed out to him the fact that it was manifestly his duty to call upon Mr Glascock after what had passed between them on that night under the Campanile, he did not rebel for an instant against the order given to him. His mind never reverted for a moment to that opinion which had gained for him such a round of applause, when expressed on the platform of the Temperance Hall at Nubbly Creek, State of Illinois, to the effect that the English aristocrat, thorough-born and thorough-bred, who inherited acres and title from his father, could never be fitting company for a thoughtful Christian American citizen. He at once had his hat brushed, and took up his best gloves and umbrella, and went off to Mr Glascock’s hotel. He was strictly enjoined by the ladies to fix a day on which Mr Glascock would come and dine at the American embassy.
‘“C. G.” has come back to see you,’ said Olivia to her elder sister. They had always called him ‘C. G.’ since the initials had been seen on the travelling bag.
‘Probably,’ said Carry. ‘There is so very little else to bring people to Florence, that there can hardly be any other reason for his coming. They do say it’s terribly hot at Naples just now; but that can have had nothing to do with it.’
‘We shall see,’ said Livy. ‘I’m sure he’s in love with you. He looked to me just like a proper sort of lover for you, when I saw his long legs creeping up over our heads into the banquette.’
‘You ought to have been very much obliged to his long legs so sick as you were at the time.’
‘I like him amazingly,’ said Livy, ‘legs and all. I only hope Uncle Jonas won’t bore him, so as to prevent his coming.’
‘His father is very ill,’ said Carry, ‘and I don’t suppose we shall see him at all.’
But the American Minister was successful. He found Mr Glascock sitting in his dressing-gown, smoking a cigar, and reading a newspaper. The English aristocrat seemed very glad to see his visitor, and assumed no airs at all. The American altogether forgot his speech at Nubbly Creek, and found the aristocrat’s society to be very pleasant. He lit a cigar, and they talked about Naples, Rome, and Florence. Mr Spalding, when the marbles of old Rome were mentioned, was a little too keen in insisting on the merits of Story, Miss Hosmer, and Hiram Powers, and hardly carried his listener with him in the parallel which he drew between Greenough and Phidias; and he was somewhat repressed by the apathetic curtness of Mr Glascock’s reply, when he suggested that the victory gained by the gunboats at Vicksburg, on the Mississippi, was vividly brought to his mind by an account which he had just been reading of the battle of Actium; but he succeeded in inducing Mr Glascock to accept an invitation to dinner for the next day but one, and the two gentlemen parted on the most amicable terms.
Everybody meets everybody in Florence every day. Carry and Livy Spalding had met Mr Glascock twice before the dinner at their uncle’s house, so that they met at dinner quite as intimate friends. Mrs Spalding had very large rooms, up three flights of stairs, on the Lungarno. The height of her abode was attributed by Mrs Spalding to her dread of mosquitoes. She had not yet learned that people in Florence require no excuse for being asked to walk up three flights of stairs. The rooms, when they were reached, were very lofty, floored with what seemed to be marble, and were of a nature almost to warrant Mrs Spalding in feeling that nature had made her more akin to an Italian countess than to a matron of Nubbly Creek, State of Illinois, where Mr Spalding had found her and made her his own. There was one other Englishman present, Mr Harris Hyde Granville Gore, from the Foreign Office, now serving temporarily at the English Legation in Florence; and an American, Mr Jackson Unthank, a man of wealth and taste, who was resolved on having such a collection of pictures at his house in Baltimore that no English private collection should in any way come near to it; and a Tuscan, from the Italian Foreign Office, to whom nobody could speak except Mr Harris Hyde Granville Gore, who did not indeed seem to enjoy the efforts of conversation which were expected of him. The Italian, who had a handle to his name — he was a Count Buonarosci — took Mrs Spalding into dinner. Mrs Spalding had been at great trouble to ascertain whether this was proper, or whether she should not entrust herself to Mr Glascock. There were different points to be considered in the matter. She did not quite know whether she was in Italy or in America. She had glimmerings on the subject of her privilege to carry her own nationality into her own drawing-room. And then she was called upon to deal between an Italian Count with an elder brother, and an English Honourable, who had no such encumbrance. Which of the two was possessed of the higher rank? ‘I’ve found it all out, Aunt Mary,’ said Livy. ‘You must take the Count.’ For Livy wanted to give her sister every chance. ‘How have you found it out?’ said the aunt. ‘You may be sure it is so,’ said Livy.
And the lady in her doubt yielded the point. Mrs Spalding, as she walked along the passage on the Count’s arm, determined that she would learn Italian. She would have given all Nubbly Creek to have been able to speak a word to Count Buonarosci. To do her justice, it must be admitted that she had studied a few words. But her courage failed her, and she could not speak them. She was very careful, however, that Mr H. H. G. Gore was placed in the chair next to the Count.
‘We are very glad to see you here,’ said Mr Spalding, addressing himself especially to Mr Glascock, as he stood up at his own seat at the round table. ‘In leaving my own country, sir, there is nothing that I value more than the privilege of becoming acquainted with those whose historic names and existing positions are of such inestimable value to the world at large.’ In saying this, Mr Spalding was not in the least insincere, nor did his conscience at all prick him in reference to that speech at Nubbly Creek. On both occasions he half thought as he spoke or thought that he thought so. Unless it be on subjects especially endeared to us the thoughts of but few of us go much beyond this.
Mr Glascock, who sat between Mrs Spalding and her niece, was soon asked by the elder lady whether he had been in the States. No; he had not been in the States. ‘Then you must come, Mr Glascock,’ said Mrs Spalding, ‘though I will not say, dwelling as we now are in the metropolis of the world of art, that we in our own homes have as much of the outer beauty of form to charm the stranger as is to be found in other lands. Yet I think that the busy lives of men, and the varied institutions of a free country, must always have an interest peculiarly their own.’ Mr Glascock declared that he quite agreed with her, and expressed a hope that he might some day find himself in New York.
‘You wouldn’t like it at all,’ said Carry; ‘because you are an aristocrat. I don’t mean that it would be your fault.’
‘Why should that prevent my liking it even if I were an aristocrat?’
‘One half of the people would run after you, and the other half would run away from you,’ said Carry.
‘Then I’d take to the people who ran after me, and would not regard the others.’
‘That’s all very well but you wouldn’t like it. And then you would become unfair to what you saw. When some of our speechifying people talked to you about our institutions through their noses, you would think that the institutions themselves must be bad. And we have nothing to show except our institutions.’
‘What are American institutions? asked Mr Glascock.
‘Everything is an institution. Having iced water to drink in every room of the house is an institution. Having hospitals in every town is an institution. Travelling altogether in one class of railway cars is an institution. Saying sir, is an institution. Teaching all the children mathematics is an institution. Plenty of food is an institution. Getting drunk is an institution in a great many towns. Lecturing is an institution. There are plenty of them, and some are very good but you wouldn’t like it.’
‘At any rate, I’ll go and see,’ said Mr Glascock.
‘If you do, I hope we may be at home,’ said Miss Spalding.
Mr Spalding, in the mean time, with the assistance of his countryman, the man of taste, was endeavouring to explain a certain point in American politics to the count. As, in doing this, they called upon Mr Gore to translate every speech they made into Italian, and as Mr Gore had never offered his services as an interpreter, and as the Italian did not quite catch the subtle meanings of the Americans in Mr Gore’s Tuscan version, and did not in the least wish to understand the things that were explained to him, Mr Gore and the Italian began to think that the two Americans were bores. ‘The truth is, Mr Spalding,’ said Mr Gore, ‘I’ve got such a cold in my head, that I don’t think I can explain it any more.’ Then Livy Spalding laughed aloud, and the two American gentlemen began to eat their dinner. ‘It sounds ridiculous, don’t it?’ said Mr Gore, in a whisper.
‘I ought not to have laughed, I know,’ said Livy.
‘The very best thing you could have done. I shan’t be troubled any more now. The fact is, I know just nine words of Italian. Now there is a difficulty in having to explain the whole theory of American politics to an Italian, who doesn’t want to know anything about it, with so very small a repertory of words at one’s command.’
‘How well you did it!’
‘Too well. I felt that. So well that, unless I had stopped it, I shouldn’t have been able to say a word to you all through dinner. Your laughter clenched it, and Buonarosci and I will be grateful to you for ever.’
After the ladies went there was rather a bad half hour for Mr Glascock. He was button-holed by the minister, and found it oppressive before he was enabled to escape into the drawing-room. ‘Mr Glascock,’ said the minister, ‘an English gentleman, sir, like you, who has the privilege of an hereditary seat in your parliament’— Mr Glascock was not quite sure whether he were being accused of having an hereditary seat in the House of Commons, but he would not stop to correct any possible error on that point —‘and who has been born to all the gifts of fortune, rank, and social eminence, should never think that his education is complete till he has visited our great cities in the west.’ Mr Glascock hinted that he by no means conceived his education to be complete; but the minister went on without attending to this. ‘Till you have seen, sir, what men can do who are placed upon the earth with all God’s gifts of free intelligence, free air, and a free soil, but without any of those other good things which we are accustomed to call the gifts of fortune, you can never become aware of the infinite ingenuity of man.’ There had been much said before, but just at this moment Mr Gore and the American left the room, and the Italian followed them briskly. Mr Glascock at once made a decided attempt to bolt; but the minister was on the alert, and was too quick for him. And he was by no means ashamed of what he was doing. He had got his guest by the coat, and openly declared his intention of holding him. ‘Let me keep you for a few minutes, sir,’ said he, ‘while I dilate on this point in one direction. In the drawing-room female spells are too potent for us male orators. In going among us, Mr Glascock, you must not look for luxury or refinement, for you will find them not. Nor must you hope to encounter the highest order of erudition. The lofty summits of acquired knowledge tower in your country with an altitude we have not reached yet.’ ‘It’s very good of you to say so,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘No, sir. In our new country and in our new cities we still lack the luxurious perfection of fastidious civilisation. But, sir, regard our level. That’s what I say to every unprejudiced Britisher that comes among us; look at our level. And when you have looked at our level, I think that you will confess that we live on the highest table-land that the world has yet afforded to mankind. You follow my meaning, Mr Glascock?’ Mr Glascock was not sure that he did, but the minister went on to make that meaning clear. ‘It is the multitude that with us is educated. Go into their houses, sir, and see how they thumb their books. Look at the domestic correspondence of our helps and servants, and see how they write and spell. We haven’t got the mountains, sir, but our table-lands are the highest on which the bright sun of our Almighty God has as yet shone with its illuminating splendour in this improving world of ours! It is because we are a young people, sir with nothing as yet near to us of the decrepitude of age. The weakness of age, sir, is the penalty paid by the folly of youth. We are not so wise, sir, but what we too shall suffer from its effects as years roll over our heads.’ There was a great deal more, but at last Mr Glascock did escape into the drawing-room.
‘My uncle has been saying a few words to you perhaps,’ said Carry Spalding.
‘Yes; he has,’ said Mr Glascock.
‘He usually does,’ said Carry Spalding.
The feud between Miss Stanbury and Mr Gibson raged violently in Exeter, and produced many complications which were very difficult indeed of management. Each belligerent party felt that a special injury had been inflicted upon it. Mr Gibson was quite sure that he had been grossly misused by Miss Stanbury the elder, and strongly suspected that Miss Stanbury the younger had had a hand in this misconduct. It had been positively asserted to him, at least so he thought, but in this was probably in error, that the lady would accept him if he proposed to her. All Exeter had been made aware of the intended compact. He, indeed, had denied its existence to Miss French, comforting himself, as best he might, with the reflection that all is fair in love and war; but when he counted over his injuries he did not think of this denial. All Exeter, so to say, had known of it. And yet, when he had come with his proposal, he had been refused without a moment’s consideration, first by the aunt, and then by the niece and, after that, had been violently abused, and at last turned out of the house! Surely, no gentleman had ever before been subjected to ill-usage so violent! But Miss Stanbury the elder was quite as assured that the injury had been done to her. As to the matter of the compact itself, she knew very well that she had been as true as steel. She had done everything in her power to bring about the marriage. She had been generous in her offers of money. She had used all her powers of persuasion on Dorothy, and she had given every opportunity to Mr Gibson. It was not her fault if he had not been able to avail himself of the good things which she had put in his way. He had first been, as she thought, ignorant and arrogant, fancying that the good things ought to be made his own without any trouble on his part, and then awkward, not knowing how to take the trouble when trouble was necessary. And as to that matter of abusive language and turning out of the house, Miss Stanbury was quite convinced that she was sinned against, and not herself the sinner. She declared to Martha, more than once, that Mr Gibson had used such language to her that, coming out of a clergyman’s mouth, it had quite dismayed her. Martha, who knew her mistress, probably felt that Mr Gibson had at least received as good as he gave; but she had made no attempt to set her mistress right on that point.
But the cause of Miss Stanbury’s sharpest anger was not to be found in Mr Gibson’s conduct either before Dorothy’s refusal of his offer, or on the occasion of his being turned out of the house. A base rumour was spread about the city that Dorothy Stanbury had been offered to Mr Gibson, that Mr Gibson had civilly declined the offer, and that hence had arisen the wrath of the Juno of the Close. Now this was not to be endured by Miss Stanbury. She had felt even in the moment of her original anger against Mr Gibson that she was bound in honour not to tell the story against him. She had brought him into the little difficulty, and she at least would hold her tongue. She was quite sure that Dorothy would never boast of her triumph. And Martha had been strictly cautioned as indeed, also, had Brooke Burgess. The man had behaved like an idiot, Miss Stanbury said; but he had been brought into a little dilemma, and nothing should be said about it from the house in the Close. But when the other rumour reached Miss Stanbury’s ears, when Mrs Crumbie condoled with her on her niece’s misfortune, when Mrs MacHugh asked whether Mr Gibson had not behaved rather badly to the young lady, then our Juno’s celestial mind was filled with a divine anger. But even then she did not declare the truth. She asked a question of Mrs Crumbie, and was enabled, as she thought, to trace the falsehood to the Frenches. She did not think that Mr Gibson could on a sudden have become so base a liar. ‘Mr Gibson fast and loose with my niece?’ she said to Mrs MacHugh. ‘You have not got the story quite right, my dear friend. Pray, believe me there has been nothing of that sort.’ ‘I dare say not,’ said Mrs MacHugh, ‘and I’m sure I don’t care. Mr Gibson has been going to marry one of the French girls for the last ten years, and I think he ought to make up his mind and do it at last.’
‘I can assure you he is quite welcome as far as Dorothy is concerned,’ said Miss Stanbury.
Without a doubt the opinion did prevail throughout Exeter that Mr Gibson, who had been regarded time out of mind as the property of the Miss Frenches, had been angled for by the ladies in the Close, that he had nearly been caught, but that he had slipped the hook out of his mouth, and was now about to subside quietly into the net which had been originally prepared for him. Arabella French had not spoken loudly on the subject, but Camilla had declared in more than one house that she had most direct authority for stating that the gentleman had never dreamed of offering to the young lady. ‘Why he should not do so if he pleases, I don’t know,’ said Camilla. ‘Only the fact is that he has not pleased. The rumour of course has reached him, and, as we happen to be very old friends we have authority for denying it altogether.’ All this came round to Miss Stanbury, and she was divine in her wrath.
‘If they drive me to it,’ she said to Dorothy, ‘I’ll have the whole truth told by the bellman through the city, or I’ll publish it in the County Gazette.’
‘Pray don’t say a word about it, Aunt Stanbury.’
‘It is those odious girls. He’s there now every day.’
‘Why shouldn’t he go there, Aunt Stanbury?’
‘If he’s fool enough, let him go. I don’t care where he goes. But I do care about these lies. They wouldn’t dare to say it only they think my mouth is closed. They’ve no honour themselves, but they screen themselves behind mine.’
‘I’m sure they won’t find themselves mistaken in what they trust to,’ said Dorothy, with a spirit that her aunt had not expected from her. Miss Stanbury at this time had told nobody that the offer to her niece had been made and repeated and finally rejected, but she found it very difficult to hold her tongue.
In the meantime Mr Gibson spent a good deal of his time at Heavitree. It should not perhaps be asserted broadly that he had made up his mind that marriage would be good for him; but he had made up his mind, at least, to this, that it was no longer to be postponed without a balance of disadvantage. The Charybdis in the Close drove him helpless into the whirlpool of the Heavitree Scylla. He had no longer an escape from the perils of the latter shore. He had been so mauled by the opposite waves, that he had neither spirit nor skill left to him to keep in the middle track. He was almost daily at Heavitree, and did not attempt to conceal from himself the approach of his doom.
But still there were two of them. He knew that he must become a prey, but was there any choice left to him as to which siren should have him? He had been quite aware in his more gallant days, before he had been knocked about on that Charybdis rock, that he might sip, and taste, and choose between the sweets. He had come to think lately that the younger young lady was the sweeter. Eight years ago indeed the passages between him and the elder had been tender; but Camilla had then been simply a romping girl, hardly more than a year or two beyond her teens. Now, with her matured charms, Camilla was certainly the more engaging, as far as outward form went. Arabella’s cheeks were thin and long, and her front teeth had come to show themselves. Her eyes were no doubt still bright, and what she had of hair was soft and dark. But it was very thin in front, and what there was of supplemental mass behind the bandbox by which Miss Stanbury was so much aggrieved was worn with an indifference to the lines of beauty, which Mr Gibson himself found to be very depressing. A man with a fair burden on his back is not a grievous sight; but when we see a small human being attached to a bale of goods which he can hardly manage to move, we feel that the poor fellow has been cruelly over-weighted. Mr Gibson certainly had that sensation about Arabella’s chignon. And as he regarded it in a nearer and a dearer light as a chignon that might possibly become his own, as a burden which in one sense he might himself be called upon to bear, as a domestic utensil of which he himself might be called upon to inspect, and, perhaps, to aid the shifting on and the shifting off, he did begin to think that that side of the Scylla gulf ought to be avoided if possible. And probably this propensity on his part, this feeling that he would like to reconsider the matter dispassionately before he gave himself up for good to his old love, may have been increased by Camilla’s apparent withdrawal of her claims. He felt mildly grateful to the Heavitree household in general for accepting him in this time of his affliction, but he could not admit to himself that they had a right to decide upon him in private conclave, and allot him either to the one or to the other nuptials without consultation with himself. To be swallowed up by Scylla he now recognised as his doom; but he thought he ought to be asked on which side of the gulf he would prefer to go down. The way in which Camilla spoke of him as a thing that wasn’t hers, but another’s; and the way in which Arabella looked at him, as though he were hers and could never be another’s, wounded his manly pride. He had always understood that he might have his choice, and he could not understand that the little mishap which had befallen him in the Close was to rob him of that privilege.
He used to drink tea at Heavitree in those days. On one evening on going in he found himself alone with Arabella. ‘Oh, Mr Gibson,’ she said, ‘we weren’t sure whether you’d come. And mamma and Camilla have gone out to Mrs Camadge’s.’ Mr Gibson muttered some word to the effect that he hoped he had kept nobody at home; and, as he did so, he remembered that he had distinctly said that he would come on this evening. ‘I don’t know that I should have gone,’ sad Arabella, ‘because I am not quite not quite myself at present. No, not ill; not at all. Don’t you know what it is, Mr Gibson, to be to be to be not quite yourself?’ Mr Gibson said that he had very often felt like that. ‘And one can’t get over it can one?’ continued Arabella. ‘There comes a presentiment that something is going to happen, and a kind of belief that something has happened, though you don’t know what; and the heart refuses to be light, and the spirit becomes abashed, and the mind, though it creates new thoughts, will not settle itself to its accustomed work. I suppose it’s what the novels have called Melancholy.’
‘I suppose it is,’ said Mr Gibson. ‘But there’s generally some cause for it. Debt for instance.’
‘It’s nothing of that kind with me. Its no debt, at least, that can be written down in the figures of ordinary arithmetic. Sit down, Mr Gibson, and we will have some tea.’ Then, as she stretched forward to ring the bell, he thought that he never in his life had seen anything so unshapely as that huge wen at the back of her head. ‘Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens!’ He could not help quoting the words to himself. She was dressed with some attempt at being smart, but her ribbons were soiled, and her lace was tawdry, and the fabric of her dress was old and dowdy. He was quite sure that he would feel no pride in calling her Mrs Gibson, no pleasure in having her all to himself at his own hearth. ‘I hope we shall escape the bitterness of Miss Stanbury’s tongue if we drink tea tete-a-tete,’ she said, with her sweetest smile.
‘I don’t suppose she’ll know anything about it.’
‘She knows about everything, Mr Gibson. It’s astonishing what she knows. She has eyes and ears everywhere. I shouldn’t care, if she didn’t see and hear so very incorrectly. I’m told now that she declares — but it doesn’t signify.’
‘Declares what?’ asked Mr Gibson.
‘Never mind. But wasn’t it odd how all Exeter believed that you were going to be married in that house, and to live there all the rest of your life, and be one of Miss Stanbury’s slaves. I never believed it, Mr Gibson.’ This she said with a sad smile, that ought to have brought him on his knees, in spite of the chignon.
‘One can’t help these things,’ said Mr Gibson.
‘I never could have believed it, not even if you had not given me an assurance so solemn, and so sweet, that there was nothing in it.’ The poor man had given the assurance, and could not deny the solemnity and the sweetness. ‘That was a happy moment for us, Mr Gibson; because, though we never believed it, when it was dinned into our ears so frequently, when it was made such a triumph in the Close, it was impossible not to fear that there might be something in it.’ He felt that he ought to make some reply, but he did not know what to say. He was thoroughly ashamed of the lie he had told, but he could not untell it. ‘Camilla reproached me afterwards for asking you,’ whispered Arabella, in her softest, tenderest voice.‘she said that it was unmaidenly. I hope you did not think it unmaidenly, Mr Gibson?’
‘Oh dear, no, not at all,’ said he.
Arabella French was painfully alive to the fact that she must do something. She had her fish on the hook; but of what use is a fish on your hook, if you cannot land him? When could she have a better opportunity than this of landing the scaly darling out of the fresh and free waters of his bachelor stream, and sousing him into the pool of domestic life, to be ready there for her own household purposes? ‘I had known you so long, Mr Gibson,’ she said, ‘and had valued your friendship so so deeply.’ As he looked at her, he could see nothing but the shapeless excrescence to which his eyes had been so painfully called by Miss Stanbury’s satire. It is true that he had formerly been very tender with her, but she had not then carried about with her that distorted monster. He did not believe himself to be at all bound by anything which had passed between them in circumstances so very different. But yet he ought to say something. He ought to have said something; but he said nothing. She was patient, however, very patient; and she went on playing him with her hook. ‘I am so glad that I did not go out to-night with mamma. It has been such a pleasure to me to have this conversation with you. Camilla, perhaps, would say that I am unmaidenly.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘That is all that I care for, Mr Gibson. If you acquit me, I do not mind who accuses. I should not like to suppose that you thought me unmaidenly. Anything would be better than that; but I can throw all such considerations to the wind when true true friendship is concerned. Don’t you think that one ought, Mr Gibson?’
If it had not been for the thing at the back of her head, he would have done it now. Nothing but that gave him courage to abstain. It grew bigger and bigger, more shapeless, monstrous, absurd, and abominable, as he looked at it. Nothing should force upon him the necessity of assisting to carry such an abortion through the world. ‘One ought to sacrifice everything to friendship,’ said Mr Gibson, ‘except self-respect.’
He meant nothing personal. Something special, in the way of an opinion, was expected of him; and, therefore, he had striven to say something special. But she was in tears in a moment. ‘Oh, Mr Gibson,’ she exclaimed; ‘oh, Mr Gibson!’
‘What is the matter, Miss French?’
‘Have I lost your respect? Is it that that you mean?’
‘Certainly not, Miss French.’
‘Do not call me Miss French, or I shall be sure that you condemn me. Miss French sounds so very cold. You used to call me Bella.’ That was quite true; but it was long ago, thought Mr Gibson, before the monster had been attached. ‘Will you not call me Bella now?’
He thought that he had rather not; and yet, how was he to avoid it? On a sudden he became very crafty. Had it not been for the sharpness of his mother-wit, he would certainly have been landed at that moment. ‘As you truly observed just now,’ he said, ‘the tongues of people are so malignant. There are little birds that hear everything.’
‘I don’t care what the little birds hear,’ said Miss French, through her tears. ‘I am a very unhappy girl — I know that; and I don’t care what anybody says. It is nothing to me what anybody says. I know what I feel.’ At this moment there was some dash of truth about her. The fish was so very heavy on hand that, do what she would, she could not land him. Her hopes before this had been very low, hopes that had once been high; but they had been depressed gradually; and, in the slow, dull routine of her daily life, she had learned to bear disappointment by degrees, without sign of outward suffering, without consciousness of acute pain. The task of her life had been weary, and the wished-for goal was ever becoming more and more distant; but there had been still a chance, and she had fallen away into a lethargy of lessening expectation, from which joy, indeed, had been banished, but in which there had been nothing of agony. Then had come upon the whole house at Heavitree the great Stanbury peril, and, arising out of that, had sprung new hopes to Arabella, which made her again capable of all the miseries of a foiled ambition. She could again be patient, if patience might be of any service; but in such a condition an eternity of patience is simply suicidal. She was willing to work hard, but how could she work harder than she had worked. Poor young woman perishing beneath an incubus which a false idea of fashion had imposed on her!
‘I hope I have said nothing that makes you unhappy,’ pleaded Mr Gibson. ‘I’m sure I haven’t meant it.’
‘But you have,’ she said. ‘You make me very unhappy. You condemn me. I see you do. And if I have done wrong it had been all because — Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!’
‘But who says you have done wrong?’
‘You won’t call me Bella because you say the little birds will hear it. If I don’t care for the little birds, why should you?’
There is no question more difficult than this for a gentleman to answer. Circumstances do not often admit of its being asked by a lady with that courageous simplicity which had come upon Miss French in this moment of her agonising struggle; but nevertheless it is one which, in a more complicated form, is often put, and to which some reply, more or less complicated, is expected. ‘If I, a woman, can dare, for your sake, to encounter the public tongue, will you, a man, be afraid?’ The true answer, if it could be given, would probably be this; ‘I am afraid, though a man, because I have much to lose and little to get. You are not afraid, though a woman, because you have much to get and little to lose.’ But such an answer would be uncivil, and is not often given. Therefore men shuffle and lie, and tell themselves that in love — love here being taken to mean all antenuptial contests between man and woman — everything is fair. Mr Gibson had the above answer in his mind, though he did not frame it into words. He was neither sufficiently brave nor sufficiently cruel to speak to her in such language. There was nothing for him, therefore, but that he must shuffle and lie.
‘I only meant,’ said he, ‘that I would not for worlds do anything to make you uneasy.’
She did not see how she could again revert to the subject of her own Christian name. She had made her little tender, loving request, and it had been refused. Of course she knew that it had been refused as a matter of caution. She was not angry with him because of his caution, as she had expected him to be cautious. The barriers over which she had to climb were no more than she had expected to find in her way, but they were so very high and so very difficult! Of course she was aware that he would escape if he could. She was not angry with him on that account. Anger could not have helped her. Indeed, she did not price herself highly enough to make her feel that she would be justified in being angry. It was natural enough that he shouldn’t want her. She knew herself to be a poor, thin, vapid, tawdry creature, with nothing to recommend her to any man except a sort of second-rate, provincial-town fashion which, infatuated as she was, she attributed in a great degree to the thing she carried on her head. She knew nothing. She could do nothing. She possessed nothing. She was not angry with him because he so evidently wished to avoid her. But she thought that if she could only be successful she would be good and loving and obedient and that it was fair for her at any rate to try. Each created animal must live and get its food by the gifts which the Creator has given to it, let those gifts be as poor as they may, let them be even as distasteful as they may to other members of the great created family. The rat, the toad, the slug, the flea, must each live according to its appointed mode of existence. Animals which are parasites by nature can only live by attaching themselves to life that is strong. To Arabella, Mr Gibson would be strong enough, and it seemed to her that it she could fix herself permanently upon his strength, that would be her proper mode of living. She was not angry with him because he resisted the attempt, but she had nothing of conscience to tell her that she should spare him as long as there remained to her a chance of success. And should not her plea of excuse, her justification be admitted? There are tormentors as to which no man argues that they are iniquitous, though they be very troublesome. He either rids himself of them, or suffers as quiescently as he may.
‘We used to be such great friends, she said, still crying, ‘and I am afraid you don’t like me a bit now.’
‘Indeed, I do I have always liked you. But —’
‘But what? Do tell me what the but means. I will do anything that you bid me.’
Then it occurred to him that if, after such a promise, he were to confide to her his feeling that the chignon which she wore was ugly and unbecoming, she would probably be induced to change her mode of head-dress. It was a foolish idea, because, had he followed it out, he would have seen that compliance on her part in such a matter could only be given with the distinct understanding that a certain reward should be the consequence. When an unmarried gentleman calls upon an unmarried lady to change the fashion of her personal adornments, the unmarried lady has a right to expect that the unmarried gentleman means to make her his wife. But Mr Gibson had no such meaning; and was led into error by the necessity for sudden action. When she offered to do anything that he might bid her do, he could not take up his hat and go away he looked up into his face, expecting that he would give her some order and he fell into the temptation that was spread for him.
‘If I might say a word,’ he began.
‘You may say anything,’ she exclaimed.
‘If I were you I don’t think —’
‘You don’t think what, Mr Gibson?’
He found it to be a matter very difficult of approach. ‘Do you know, I don’t think the fashion that has come up about wearing your hair quite suits you — not so well as the way you used to do it.’ She became on a sudden very red in the face, and he thought that she was angry. Vexed she was, but still, accompanying her vexation, there was a remembrance that she was achieving victory even by her own humiliation. She loved her chignon; but she was ready to abandon even that for him. Nevertheless she could not speak for a moment or two, and he was forced to continue his criticism. ‘I have no doubt those things are very becoming and all that, and I dare say they are comfortable.’
‘Oh, very,’ she said.
‘But there was a simplicity that I liked about the other.’
Could it be then that for the last five years he had stood aloof from her because she had arrayed herself in fashionable attire? She was still very red in the face, still suffering from wounded vanity, still conscious of that soreness which affects us all when we are made to understand that we are considered to have failed there, where we have most thought that we excelled. But her womanly art enabled her quickly to conceal the pain. ‘I have made a promise,’ she said, ‘and you will find that I will keep it.’
‘What promise?’ asked Mr Gibson.
‘I said that I would do as you bade me, and so I will. I would have done it sooner if I had known that you wished it. I would never have worn it at all if I had thought that you disliked it.’
‘I think that a little of them is very nice,’ said Mr Gibson. Mr Gibson was certainly an awkward man. But there are men so awkward that it seems to be their especial province to say always the very worst thing at the very worst moment.
She became redder than ever as she was thus told of the hugeness of her favourite ornament. She was almost angry now. But she restrained herself, thinking perhaps of how she might teach him taste in days to come as he was teaching her now. ‘I will change it tomorrow,’ she said with a smile. ‘You come and see tomorrow.’
Upon this he got up and took his hat and made his escape, assuring her that he would come and see her on the morrow. She let him go now without any attempt at further tenderness. Certainly she had gained much during the interview. He had as good as told her in what had been her offence, and of course, when she had remedied that offence, he could hardly refuse to return to her. She got up as soon as she was alone, and looked at her head in the glass, and told herself that the pity would be great. It was not that the chignon was in itself a thing of beauty, but that it imparted so unmistakable an air of fashion! It divested her of that dowdiness which she feared above all things, and enabled her to hold her own among other young women, without feeling that she was absolutely destitute of attraction. There had been a certain homage paid to it, which she had recognised and enjoyed. But it was her ambition to hold her own, not among young women, but among clergymen’s wives, and she would certainly obey his orders. She could not make the attempt now because of the complications; but she certainly would make it before she laid her head on the pillow — and would explain to Camilla that it was a little joke between herself and Mr Gibson.
Miss Stanbury was divine in her wrath, and became more and more so daily as new testimony reached her of dishonesty on the part of the Frenches and of treachery on the part of Mr Gibson. And these people, so empty, so vain, so weak, were getting the better of her, were conquering her, were robbing her of her prestige and her ancient glory, simply because she herself was too generous to speak out and tell the truth! There was a martyrdom to her in this which was almost unendurable.
Now there came to her one day at luncheon time, on the day succeeding that on which Miss French had promised to sacrifice her chignon, a certain Mrs Clifford from Budleigh Salterton, to whom she was much attached. Perhaps the distance of Budleigh Salterton from Exeter added somewhat to this affection, so that Mrs Clifford was almost closer to our friend’s heart even than Mrs MacHugh, who lived just at the other end of the cathedral. And in truth Mrs Clifford was a woman more serious in her mode of thought than Mrs MacHugh, and one who had more in common with Miss Stanbury than that other lady. Mrs Clifford had been a Miss Noel of Doddiscombe Leigh, and she and Miss Stanbury had been engaged to be married at the same time each to a man of fortune. One match had been completed in the ordinary course of matches. What had been the course of the other we already know. But the friendship had been maintained on very close terms. Mrs MacHugh was a Gallio at heart, anxious chiefly to remove from herself and from her friends also all the troubles of life, and make things smooth and easy. She was one who disregarded great questions; who cared little or nothing what people said of her; who considered nothing worth the trouble of a fight. Epicuri de grege porca. But there was nothing swinish about Mrs Clifford of Budleigh Salterton. She took life thoroughly in earnest. She was a Tory who sorrowed heartily for her country, believing that it was being brought to ruin by the counsels of evil men. She prayed daily to be delivered from dissenters, radicals, and wolves in sheep’s clothing by which latter bad name she meant especially a certain leading politician of the day who had, with the cunning of the devil, tempted and perverted the virtue of her own political friends. And she was one who thought that the slightest breath of scandal on a young woman’s name should be stopped at once. An antique, pure-minded, anxious, self-sacrificing matron was Mrs Clifford, and very dear to the heart of Miss Stanbury.
After lunch was over on the day in question Mrs Clifford got Miss Stanbury into some closet retirement, and there spoke her mind as to the things which were being said. It had been asserted in her presence by Camilla French that she, Camilla, was authorised by Mr Gibson to declare that he had never thought of proposing to Dorothy Stanbury, and that Miss Stanbury had been ‘labouring under some strange misapprehension in the matter.’ ‘Now, my dear, I don’t care very much for the young lady in question,’ said Mrs Clifford, alluding to Camilla French.
‘Very little, indeed, I should think,’ said Miss Stanbury, with a shake of her head.
‘Quite true, my dear, but that does not make the words out of her mouth the less efficacious for evil. She clearly insinuated that you had endeavoured to make up a match between this gentleman and your niece, and that you had failed.’ So much was at least true. Miss Stanbury felt this, and felt also that she could not explain the truth, even to her dear old friend. In the midst of her divine wrath she had acknowledged to herself that she had brought Mr Gibson into his difficulty, and that it would not become her to tell any one of his failure. And in this matter she did not herself accuse Mr Gibson. She believed that the lie originated with Camilla French, and it was against Camilla that her wrath raged the fiercest.
‘She is a poor, mean, disappointed thing,’ said Miss Stanbury.
‘Very probably, but I think I should ask her to hold her tongue about Miss Dorothy,’ said Mrs Clifford.
The consultation in the closet was carried on for about half-an-hour, and then Miss Stanbury put on her bonnet and shawl and descended into Mrs Clifford’s carriage. The carriage took the Heavitree road, and deposited Miss Stanbury at the door of Mrs French’s house. The walk home from Heavitree would be nothing, and Mrs Clifford proceeded on her way, having given this little help in counsel, and conveyance to her friend. Mrs French was at home, and Miss Stanbury was shown up into the room in which, the three ladies were sitting.
The reader will doubtless remember the promise which Arabella had made to Mr Gibson. That promise she had already fulfilled to the amazement of her mother and sister; and when Miss Stanbury entered the room the elder daughter of the family was seen without her accustomed head-gear. If the truth is to be owned, Miss Stanbury gave the poor young woman no credit for her new simplicity, but put down the deficiency to the charge of domestic slatternliness. She was unjust enough to declare afterwards that she had found Arabella French only half dressed at between three and four o’clock in the afternoon! From which this lesson may surely be learned: that though the way down Avernus may be, and customarily is, made with great celerity, the return journey, if made at all, must be made slowly. A young woman may commence in chignons by attaching any amount of an edifice to her head; but the reduction should be made by degrees. Arabella’s edifice had, in Miss Stanbury’s eyes, been the ugliest thing in art that she had known; but, now, its absence offended her, and she most untruly declared that she had come upon the young woman in the middle of the day just out of her bed-room and almost in her dressing-gown.
And the whole French family suffered a diminution of power from the strange phantasy which had come upon Arabella. They all felt, in sight of the enemy, that they had to a certain degree lowered their flag. One of the ships, at least, had shown signs of striking, and this element of weakness made itself felt through the whole fleet. Arabella, herself, when she saw Miss Stanbury, was painfully conscious of her head, and wished that she had postponed the operation till the evening. She smiled with a faint watery smile, and was aware that something ailed her.
The greetings at first were civil, but very formal, as are those between nations which are nominally at peace, but which are waiting for a sign at which each may spring at the other’s throat. In this instance the Juno from the Close had come quite prepared to declare her casus belli as complete, and to fling down her gauntlet, unless the enemy should at once yield to her everything demanded with an abject submission. ‘Mrs French,’ she said, ‘I have called today for a particular purpose, and I must address myself chiefly to Miss Camilla.’
‘Oh, certainly,’ said Mrs French.
‘I shall be delighted to hear anything from you, Miss Stanbury,’ said Camilla not without an air of bravado. Arabella said nothing, but she put her hand up almost convulsively to the back of her head.
‘I have been told today by a friend of mine, Miss Camilla,’ began Miss Stanbury, ‘that you declared yourself, in her presence, authorised by Mr Gibson to make a statement about my niece Dorothy.’
‘May I ask who was your friend?’ demanded Mrs French.
‘It was Mrs Clifford, of course,’ said Camilla. ‘There is nobody else would try to make difficulties.’
‘There need be no difficulty at all, Miss Camilla,’ said Miss Stanbury, ‘if you will promise me that you will not repeat the statement. It can’t be true.’
‘But it is true,’ said Camilla.
‘What is true?’ asked Miss Stanbury, surprised by the audacity of the girl.
‘It is true that Mr Gibson authorised us to state what I did state when Mrs Clifford heard me.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Only this, that people had been saying all about Exeter that he was going to be married to a young lady, and that as the report was incorrect, and as he had never had the remotest idea in his mind of making the young lady his wife.’ Camilla, as she said this, spoke with a great deal of emphasis, putting forward her chin and shaking her head, ‘and as he thought it was uncomfortable both for the young lady and for himself, and as there was nothing in it, the least in the world, nothing at all, no glimmer of a foundation for the report, it would be better to have it denied everywhere. That is what I said; and we had authority from the gentleman himself. Arabella can say the same, and so can mamma, only mamma did not hear him.’ Nor had Camilla heard him, but that incident she did not mention.
The circumstances were, in Miss Stanbury’s judgment, becoming very remarkable. She did not for a moment believe Camilla. She did not believe that Mr Gibson had given to either of the Frenches any justification for the statement just made. But Camilla had been so much more audacious than Miss Stanbury had expected, that that lady was for a moment struck dumb. ‘I’m sure, Miss Stanbury,’ said Mrs French, ‘we don’t want to give any offence to your niece — very far from it.’
‘My niece doesn’t care about it two straws,’ said Miss Stanbury. ‘It is I that care. And I care very much. The things that have been said have been altogether false.’
‘How false, Miss Stanbury?’ asked Camilla.
‘Altogether false; as false as they can be.’
‘Mr Gibson must know his own mind,’ said Camilla.
‘My dear, there’s a little disappointment,’ said Miss French, ‘and it don’t signify.’
‘There’s no disappointment at all,’ said Miss Stanbury, ‘and it does signify very much. Now that I’ve begun, I’ll go to the bottom of it. If you say that Mr Gibson told you to make these statements, I’ll go to Mr Gibson. I’ll have it out somehow.’
‘You may have what you like out for us, Miss Stanbury,’ said Camilla.
‘I don’t believe Mr Gibson said anything of the kind.’
‘That’s civil,’ said Camilla.
‘But why shouldn’t he?’ asked Arabella.
‘There were the reports, you know,’ said Mrs French.
‘And why shouldn’t he deny them when there wasn’t a word of truth in them?’ continued Camilla. ‘For my part, I think the gentleman is bound for the lady’s sake to declare that there’s nothing in it when there is nothing in it.’ This was more than Miss Stanbury could bear. Hitherto the enemy had seemed to have the best of it. Camilla was firing broadside after broadside, as though she was assured of victory. Even Mrs French was becoming courageous; and Arabella was forgetting the place where her chignon ought to have been. ‘I really do not know what else there is for me to say,’ remarked Camilla, with a toss of her head, ‘and an air of impudence that almost drove poor Miss Stanbury frantic.
It was on her tongue to declare the whole truth, but she refrained. She had schooled herself on this subject vigorously. She would not betray Mr Gibson.’ Had she known all the truth or had she believed Camilla French’s version of the story there would have been no betrayal. But looking at the matter with such knowledge as she had at present, she did not even yet feel herself justified in declaring that Mr Gibson had offered his hand to her niece, and had been refused. She was, however, sorely tempted. ‘Very well, ladies,’ she said. ‘I shall now see Mr Gibson, and ask him whether he did give you authority to make such statements as you have been spreading abroad everywhere.’ Then the door of the room was opened, and in a moment Mr Gibson was among them. He was true to his promise, and had come to see Arabella with her altered headdress, but he had come at this hour thinking that escape in the morning would be easier and quicker than it might have been in the evening. His mind had been full of Arabella and her head-dress even up to the moment of his knocking at the door; but all that was driven out of his brain at once when he saw Miss Stanbury.
‘Here is Mr Gibson himself,’ said Mrs French.
‘How do you do, Mr Gibson?’ said Miss Stanbury, with a very stately courtesy. They had never met since the day on which he had been, as he stated, turned out of Miss Stanbury’s house. He now bowed to her; but there was no friendly greeting, and the Frenches were able to congratulate themselves on the apparent loyalty to themselves of the gentleman who stood among them. ‘I have come here, Mr Gibson,’ continued Miss Stanbury, ‘to put a small matter right in which you are concerned.’
‘It seems to me to be the most insignificant thing in the world,’ said Camilla.
‘Very likely,’ said Miss Stanbury. ‘But it is not insignificant to me. Miss Camilla French has asserted publicly that you have authorised her to make a statement about my niece Dorothy.’
Mr Gibson looked into Camilla’s face doubtingly, inquisitively, almost piteously.’ ‘You had better let her go on,’ said Camilla.‘she will make a great many mistakes, no doubt, but you had better let her go on to the end.’
‘I have made no mistake as yet, Miss Camilla. She so asserted, Mr Gibson, in the hearing of a friend of mine, and she repeated the assertion here in this room to me just before you came in. She says that you have authorised her to declare that — that — that; I had better speak it out plainly at once.’
‘Much better,’ said Camilla.
‘That you never entertained an idea of offering your hand to my niece.’ Miss Stanbury paused, and Mr Gibson’s jaw fell visibly. But he was not expected to speak as yet; and Miss Stanbury continued her accusation. ‘Beyond that, I don’t want to mention my niece’s name, if it can be avoided.’
‘But it can’t be avoided,’ said Camilla.
‘If you please, I will continue. Mr Gibson will understand me. I will not, if I can help it, mention my niece’s name again, Mr Gibson. But I still have that confidence in you that I do not think that you would have made such a statement in reference to yourself and any young lady unless it were some young lady who had absolutely thrown herself at your head.’ And in saying this she paused, and looked very hard at Camilla.
‘That’s just what Dorothy Stanbury has been doing,’ said Camilla.
‘She has been doing nothing of the kind, and you know she hasn’t,’ said Miss Stanbury, raising her arm as though she were going to strike her opponent. ‘But I am quite sure, Mr Gibson, that you never could have authorised these young ladies to make such an assertion publicly on your behalf. Whatever there may have been of misunderstanding between you and me, I can’t believe that of you.’ Then she paused for a reply. ‘If you will be good enough to set us right on that point, I shall be obliged to you.’
Mr Gibson’s position was one of great discomfort. He had given no authority to anyone to make such a statement. He had said nothing about Dorothy Stanbury to Camilla; but he had told Arabella, when hard pressed by that lady, that he did not mean to propose to Dorothy. He could not satisfy Miss Stanbury because he feared Arabella. He could not satisfy the Frenches because he feared Miss Stanbury. ‘I really do not think,’ said he, ‘that we ought to talk about a young lady in this way.’
‘That’s my opinion too,’ said Camilla; ‘but Miss Stanbury will.’
‘Exactly so. Miss Stanbury will,’ said that lady. ‘Mr Gibson, I insist upon it, that you tell me whether you did give any such authority to Miss Camilla French, or to Miss French.’
‘I wouldn’t answer her, if I were you,’ said Camilla.
‘I really don’t think this can do any good,’ said Mrs French.
‘And it is so very harassing to our nerves,’ said Arabella.
‘Nerves! Pooh!’ exclaimed Miss Stanbury. ‘Now, Mr Gibson, I am waiting for an answer.’
‘My dear Miss Stanbury, I really think it better the situation is so peculiar, and, upon my word, I hardly know how not to give offence, which I wouldn’t do for the world.’
‘Do you mean to tell me that you won’t answer my question?’ demanded Miss Stanbury.
‘I really think that I had better hold my tongue,’ pleaded Mr Gibson.
‘You are quite right, Mr Gibson,’ said Camilla.
‘Indeed, it is wisest,’ said Mrs French.
‘I don’t see what else he can do,’ said Arabella.
Then was Miss Stanbury driven altogether beyond her powers of endurance. ‘If that be so,’ said she, ‘I must speak out, though I should have preferred to hold my tongue. Mr Gibson did offer to my niece the week before last twice, and was refused by her. My niece, Dorothy, took it into her head that she did not like him; and, upon my word, I think she was right. We should have said nothing about this, not a word; but when these false assertions are made on Mr Gibson’s alleged authority, and Mr Gibson won’t deny it, I must tell the truth.’ Then there was silence among them for a few seconds, and Mr Gibson struggled hard, but vainly, to clothe his face in a pleasant smile. ‘Mr Gibson, is that true?’ said Miss Stanbury. But Mr Gibson made no reply. ‘It is as true as heaven,’ said Miss Stanbury, striking her hand upon the table. ‘And now you had better, all of you, hold your tongues about my niece, and she will hold her tongue about you. And as for Mr Gibson, anybody who wants him after this is welcome to him for us. Good-morning, Mrs French; good-morning, young ladies.’ And so she stalked out of the room, and out of the house, and walked back to her house in the Close.
‘Mamma,’ said Arabella as soon as the enemy was gone, ‘I have got such a headache that I think I will go upstairs.’
‘And I will go with you, dear,’ said Camilla.
Mr Gibson, before he left the house, confided his secret to the maternal ears of Mrs French. He certainly had been allured into making an offer to Dorothy Stanbury, but was ready to atone for this crime by marrying her daughter Camilla as soon as might be convenient. He was certainly driven to make this declaration by intense cowardice — not to excuse himself, for in that there could be no excuse — but how else should he dare to suggest that he might as well leave the house? ‘Shall I tell the dear girl?’ asked Mrs French. But Mr Gibson requested a fortnight, in which to consider how the proposition had best be made.
Brooke Burgess was a clerk in the office of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in London, and as such had to do with things very solemn, grave, and almost melancholy. He had to deal with the rents of episcopal properties, to correspond with clerical claimants, and to be at home with the circumstances of underpaid vicars and perpetual curates with much less than 300 pounds a-year; but yet he was as jolly and pleasant at his desk as though he were busied about the collection of the malt tax, or wrote his letters to admirals and captains instead of to deans and prebendaries. Brooke Burgess had risen to be a senior clerk, and was held in some respect in his office; but it was not perhaps for the amount of work he did, nor yet on account of the gravity of his demeanour, nor for the brilliancy of his intellect. But if not clever, he was sensible; though he was not a dragon of official virtue, he had a conscience and he possessed those small but most valuable gifts by which a man becomes popular among men. And thus it had come to pass in all those battles as to competitive merit which had taken place in his as in other public offices, that no one had ever dreamed of putting a junior over the head of Brooke Burgess. He was tractable, easy, pleasant, and therefore deservedly successful. All his brother clerks called him Brooke except the young lads who, for the first year or two of their service, still denominated him Mr Burgess.
‘Brooke,’ said one of his juniors, coming into his room and standing before the fireplace with a cigar in his mouth, ‘have you heard who is to be the new Commissioner?’
‘Colenso, to be sure,’ said Brooke.
‘What a lark that would be. And I don’t see why he shouldn’t. But it isn’t Colenso. The name has just come down.’
‘And who is it?’
‘Old Proudie, from Barchester.’
‘Why, we had him here years ago, and he resigned.’
‘But he’s to come on again now for a spell. It always seems to me that the bishops ain’t a bit of use here. They only get blown up, and snubbed, and shoved into corners by the others.’
‘You young reprobate, to talk of shoving an archbishop into a corner.’
‘Well don’t they? It’s only for the name of it they have them. There’s the Bishop of Broomsgrove; he’s always sauntering about the place, looking as though he’d be so much obliged if somebody would give him something to do. He’s always smiling, and so gracious just as if he didn’t feel above half sure that he had any right to be where he is, and he thought that perhaps somebody was going to kick him.’
‘And so old Proudie is coming up again,’ said Brooke.
‘It certainly is very much the same to us whom they send. He’ll get shoved into a corner, as you call it, only that he’ll go into the corner without any shoving.’ Then there came in a messenger with a card, and Brooke learned that Hugh Stanbury was waiting for him in the stranger’s room. In performing the promise made to Dorothy, he had called upon her brother as soon as he was back in London, but had not found him. This now was the return visit.
‘I thought I was sure to find you here,’ said Hugh. ‘Pretty nearly sure from eleven till five,’ said Brooke. ‘A hard stepmother like the Civil Service does not allow one much chance of relief. I do get across to the club sometimes for a glass of sherry and a biscuit but here I am now, at any rate; and I’m very glad you have come.’ Then there was some talk between them about affairs at Exeter; but as they were interrupted before half an hour was over their heads by a summons brought for Burgess from one of the secretaries, it was agreed that they should dine together at Burgess’s club on the following day. ‘We can manage a pretty good beef-steak,’ said Brooke, ‘and have a fair glass of sherry. I don’t think you can get much more than that anywhere nowadays unless you want a dinner for eight at three guineas a head. The magnificence of men has become so intolerable now that one is driven to be humble in one’s self-defence.’ Stanbury assured his acquaintance that he was anything but magnificent in his own ideas, that cold beef and beer was his usual fare, and at last allowed the clerk to wait upon the secretary.
‘I wouldn’t have any other fellow to meet you,’ said Brooke as they sat at their dinners, ‘because in this way we can talk over the dear old woman at Exeter. Yes, our fellow does make good soup, and it’s about all that he does do well. As for getting a potato properly boiled, that’s quite out of the question. Yes, it is a good glass of sherry. I told you we’d a fairish tap of sherry on. Well, I was there, backwards and forwards, for nearly six weeks.’
‘And how did you get on with the old woman?’
‘Like a house on fire,’ said Brooke.
‘She didn’t quarrel with you?’
‘No upon the whole she did not. I always felt that it was touch and go. She might or she might not. Every now and then she looked at me, and said a sharp word, as though it was about to come. But I had determined when I went there altogether to disregard that kind of thing.’
‘It’s rather important to you is it not?’
‘You mean about her money?’
‘Of course, I mean about her money,’ said Stanbury.
‘It is important and so it was to you.’
‘Not in the same degree, or nearly so. And as for me, it was not on the cards that we shouldn’t quarrel. I am so utterly a Bohemian in all my ideas of life, and she is so absolutely the reverse, that not to have quarrelled would have been hypocritical on my part or on hers. She had got it into her head that she had a right to rule my life; and, of course, she quarrelled with me when I made her understand that she should do nothing of the kind. Now, she won’t want to rule you.’
‘I hope not.’
‘She has taken you up,’ continued Stanbury, ‘on altogether a different understanding. You are to her the representative of a family to whom she thinks she owes the restitution of the property which se enjoys. I was simply a member of her own family, to which she owes nothing. She thought it well to help one of us out of what she regarded as her private purse, and she chose me. But the matter is quite different with you.’
‘She might have given everything to you, as well as to me,’ said Brooke.
‘That’s not her idea. She conceives herself bound to leave all she has back to a Burgess, except anything she may save as she says, off her own back, or out of her own belly. She has told me so a score of times.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I always told her that, let her do as she would, I should never ask any question about her will.’
‘But she hates us all like poison except me,’ said Brooke. ‘I never knew people so absurdly hostile as are your aunt and my uncle Barty. Each thinks the other the most wicked person in the world.’
‘I suppose your uncle was hard upon her once.’
‘Very likely. He is a hard man and has, very warmly, all the feelings of an injured man. I suppose my uncle Brooke’s will was a cruel blow to him. He professes to believe that Miss Stanbury will never leave me a shilling.’
‘He is wrong, then,’ said Stanbury.
‘Oh yes he’s wrong, because he thinks that that’s her present intention. I don’t know that he’s wrong as to the probable result.’
‘Who will have it, then?’
‘There are ever so many horses in the race,’ said Brooke. ‘I’m one.’
‘You’re the favourite,’ said Stanbury.
‘For the moment I am. Then there’s yourself.’
‘I’ve been scratched, and am altogether out of the betting.’
‘And your sister,’ continued Brooke.
‘She’s only entered to run for the second money; and, if she’ll trot over the course quietly, and not go the wrong side of the posts, she’ll win that.’
‘She may do more than that. Then there’s Martha.’
‘My aunt will never leave her money to a servant. What she may give to Martha would come from her own savings.’
‘The next is a dark horse, but one that wins a good many races of this kind. He’s apt to come in with a fatal rush at the end.’
‘Who is it?’
‘The hospitals. When an old lady finds in her latter days that she hates everybody, and fancies that the people around her are all thinking of her motley, she’s uncommon likely to indulge herself a little bit of revenge, and solace herself with large-handed charity.’
‘But she’s so good a woman at heart,’ said Hugh.
‘And what can a good woman do better than promote hospitals?’
‘She’ll never do that. She’s too strong. It’s a maudlin sort of thing, after all, for a person to leave everything to a hospital.’
‘But people are maudlin when they’re dying,’ said Brooke ‘or even when they think they’re dying. How else did the Church get the estates, of which we are now distributing so bountifully some of the last remnants down at our office? Come into the next room, and we’ll have a smoke.’
They had their smoke, and then they went at half-price to the play; and, after the play was over, they eat three or four dozen of oysters between them. Brooke Burgess was a little too old for oysters at midnight in September; but he went through his work like a man. Hugh Stanbury’s powers were so great, that he could have got up and done the same thing again, after he had been an hour in bed, without any serious inconvenience.
But, in truth, Brooke Burgess had still another word or two to say before he went to his rest, They supped somewhere near the Haymarket, and then he offered to walk home with Stanbury, to his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn. ‘Do you know that Mr Gibson at Exeter?’ he asked, as they passed through Leicester Square.
‘Yes; I knew him. He was a sort of tame-cat parson at my aunt’s house, in my days.’
‘Exactly but I fancy that has come to an end now. Have you heard anything about him lately?’
‘Well yes I have,’ said Stanbury, feeling that dislike to speak of his sister which is common to most brothers when in company with other men.
‘I suppose you’ve heard of it, and, as I was in the middle of it all, of course I couldn’t but know all about it too. Your aunt wanted him to marry your sister.’
‘So I was told.’
‘But your sister didn’t see it,’ said Brooke.
‘So I understand,’ said Stanbury. ‘I believe my aunt was exceedingly liberal,’ and meant to do the best she could for poor Dorothy; but, if she didn’t like him, I suppose she was right not to have him,’ said Hugh.
‘Of course she was right,’ said Brooke, with a good deal of enthusiasm.
‘I believe Gibson to be a very decent sort of fellow,’ said Stanbury.
‘A mean, paltry dog,’ said Brooke. There had been a little whisky-toddy after the oysters, and Mr Burgess was perhaps moved to a warmer expression of feeling than he might have displayed had he discussed this branch of the subject before supper. ‘I knew from the first that she would have nothing to say to him. He is such a poor creature!’
‘I always thought well of him,’ said Stanbury, ‘and was inclined to think that Dolly might have done worse.’
‘It is hard to say what is the worst a girl might do; but I think she might do, perhaps, a little better.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Hugh.
‘I think I shall go down, and ask her to take myself.’
‘Do you mean it in earnest?’
‘I do,’ said Brooke. ‘Of course, I hadn’t a chance when I was there. She told me —’
‘Who told you, Dorothy?’
‘No, your aunt she told me that Mr Gibson was to marry your sister. You know your aunt’s way. She spoke of it as though the thing were settled as soon as she had got it into her own head; and she was as hot upon it as though Mr Gibson had been an archbishop. I had nothing to do then but to wait and see.’
‘I had no idea of Dolly being fought for by rivals.’
‘Brothers never think much of their sisters,’ said Brooke Burgess.
‘I can assure you I think a great deal of Dorothy,’ said Hugh. ‘I believe her to be as sweet a woman as God ever made. She hardly knows that she has a self belonging to herself.’
‘I’m sure she doesn’t,’ said Brooke.
‘She is a dear, loving, sweet-tempered creature, who is only too ready to yield in all things.’
‘But she wouldn’t yield about Gibson,’ said Brooke.
‘How did she and my aunt manage?’
‘Your sister simply said she couldn’t and then that she wouldn’t. I never thought from the first moment that she’d take that fellow. In the first place he can’t say boo to a goose.’
‘But Dolly wouldn’t want a man to say boo.’
‘I’m not so sure of that, old fellow. At any rate I mean to try myself. Now what’ll the old woman say?’
‘She’ll be pleased as Punch, I should think,’ said Stanbury.
‘Either that or else she’ll swear that she’ll never speak another word to either of us. However, I shall go on with it.’
‘Does Dorothy know anything of this?’ asked Stanbury.
‘Not a word,’ said Brooke. ‘I came away a day or so after Gibson was settled; and as I had been talked to all through the affair by both of them, I couldn’t turn round and offer myself the moment he was gone. You won’t object will you?’
‘Who; I?’ said Stanbury. ‘I shall have no objection as long as Dolly pleases herself. Of course you know that we haven’t as much as a brass farthing among us?’
‘That won’t matter if the old lady takes it kindly,’ said Brooke. Then they parted, at the corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and Hugh as he went up to his own rooms, reflected with something of wonderment on the success of Dorothy’s charms. She had always been the poor one of the family, the chick out of the nest which would most require assistance from the stronger birds; but it now appeared that she would become the first among all the Stanburys. Wealth had first flowed down upon the Stanbury family from the will of old Brooke Burgess; and it now seemed probable that poor Dolly would ultimately have the enjoyment of it all.
It was now New Year’s day, and there was some grief and perhaps more excitement in Exeter for it was rumoured that Miss Stanbury lay very ill at her house in the Close. But in order that our somewhat uneven story may run as smoothly as it may be made to do, the little history of the French family for the intervening months shall be told in this chapter, in order that it may be understood how matters were with them when the tidings of Miss Stanbury’s severe illness first reached their house at Heavitree.
After that terrible scene in which Miss Stanbury had so dreadfully confounded Mr Gibson by declaring the manner in which he had been rebuffed by Dorothy, the unfortunate clergyman had endeavoured to make his peace with the French family by assuring the mother that in very truth it was the dearest wish of his heart to make her daughter Camilla his wife. Mrs French, who had ever been disposed to favour Arabella’s ambition, well knowing its priority and ancient right, and who of late had been taught to consider that even Camilla had consented to waive any claim that she might have once possessed, could not refrain from the expression of some surprise. That he should be recovered at all out of the Stanbury clutches was very much to Mrs French — was so much that, had time been given her for consideration, she would have acknowledged to herself readily that the property had best be secured at once to the family, without incurring that amount of risk, which must unquestionably attend any attempt on her part to direct Mr Gibson’s purpose hither or thither. But the proposition came so suddenly, that time was not allowed to her to be altogether wise. ‘I thought it was poor Bella,’ she said, with something of a piteous whine in her voice. At the moment Mr Gibson was so humble, that he was half inclined to give way even on that head. He felt himself to have been brought so low in the market by that terrible story of Miss Stanbury’s which he had been unable either to contradict or to explain that there was but little power of fighting left in him. He was, however, just able to speak a word for himself, and that sufficed, ‘I hope there has been no mistake,’ he said; ‘but really it is Camilla that has my heart.’ Mrs French made no rejoinder to this. It was so much to her to know that Mr Gibson’s heart was among them at all after what had occurred in the Close, that she acknowledged to herself after that moment of reflection that Arabella must be sacrificed for the good of the family interests. Poor, dear, loving, misguided, and spiritless mother! She would have given the blood out of her bosom to get husbands for her daughters, though it was not of her own experience that she had learned that of all worldly goods a husband is the best. But it was the possession which they had from their earliest years thought of acquiring, which they first expected, for which they had then hoped, and afterwards worked and schemed and striven with every energy and as to which they had at last almost despaired. And now Arabella’s fire had been rekindled with a new spark, which, alas, was to be quenched so suddenly! ‘And am I to tell them?’ asked Mrs French, ‘with a tremor in her voice. To this, however, Mr Gibson demurred. He said that for certain reasons he should like a fortnight’s grace; and that at the end of the fortnight he would be prepared to speak. The interval was granted without further questions, and Mr Gibson was allowed to leave the house.
After that Mrs French was not very comfortable at home. As soon as Mr Gibson had departed, Camilla at once returned to her mother and desired to know what had taken place. Was it true that the perjured man had proposed to that young woman in the Close? Mrs French was not clever at keeping a secret, and she could not keep this by her own aid. She told all that happened to Camilla, and between them they agreed that Arabella should be kept in ignorance till the fatal fortnight should have passed. When Camilla was interrogated as to her own purpose, she said she should like a day to think of it. She took the twenty-four hours, and then made the following confession of her passion to her mother. ‘You see, mamma, I always liked Mr Gibson, always.’
‘So did Arabella, ‘my dear before you thought of such things.’
‘I dare say that may be true, mamma; but that is not my fault. He came here among us on such sweetly intimate terms that the feeling grew up with me before I knew what it meant. As to any idea of cutting out Arabella, my conscience is quite clear. If I thought there had been anything really between them. I would have gone anywhere, to the top of a mountain, rather than rob my sister of a heart that belonged to her.’
‘He has been so slow about it,’ said Mrs French.
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Camilla. ‘Gentlemen have to be slow, I suppose, when they think of their incomes. He only got St. Peter’s-cum-Pumpkin three years ago, and didn’t know for the first year whether he could hold that and the minor canonry together. Of course a gentleman has to think of these things before he comes forward.’
‘My dear, he has been very backward.’
‘If I’m to be Mrs Gibson, mamma, I beg that I mayn’t hear anything said against him. Then there came all this about that young woman; and when I saw that Arabella took on so, which I must say was very absurd, I’m sure I put myself out of the way entirely. If I’d buried myself under the ground I couldn’t have done it more. And it’s my belief that what I’ve said, all for Arabella’s sake, has put the old woman into such a rage that it has made a quarrel between him and the niece; otherwise that wouldn’t be off. I don’t believe a word of her refusing him, and never shall. Is it in the course of things, mamma?’ Mrs French shook her head. ‘Of course not. Then when you question him very properly he says that he’s devoted to poor me. If I was to refuse him, he wouldn’t put up with Bella.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Mrs French.
‘He hates Bella. I’ve known it all along, though I wouldn’t say so. If I were to sacrifice myself ever so it wouldn’t be of any good and I shan’t do it.’ In this way the matter was arranged.
At the end of the fortnight, however, Mr Gibson did not come, nor at the end of three weeks. Inquiries had of course been made, and it was ascertained that he had gone into Cornwall for a parson’s holiday of thirteen days. That might be all very well. A man might want the recruiting vigour of some change of air after such scenes as those Mr Gibson had gone through with the Stanburys, and before his proposed encounter with new perils. And he was a man so tied by the leg that his escape could not be for any long time. He was back on the appointed Sunday, and on the Wednesday Mrs French, under Camilla’s instruction, wrote to him a pretty little note. He replied that he would be with her on the Saturday. It would then be nearly four weeks after the great day with Miss Stanbury, but no one would be inclined to quarrel with so short a delay as that. Arabella in the meantime had become fidgety and unhappy. She seemed to understand that something was expected, being quite unable to guess what that something might be. She was true throughout these days to the simplicity of head-gear which Mr Gibson had recommended to her, and seemed in her questions to her mother and to Camilla to be more fearful of Dorothy Stanbury than of any other enemy. ‘Mamma, I think you ought to tell her,’ said Camilla more than once. But she had not been told when Mr Gibson came on the Saturday. It may truly be said that the poor mother’s pleasure in the prospects of one daughter was altogether destroyed by the anticipation of the other daughter’s misery. Had Mr Gibson made Dorothy Stanbury his wife they could have all comforted themselves together by the heat of their joint animosity.
He came on the Saturday, and it was so managed that he was closeted with Camilla before Arabella knew that he was in the house. There was a quarter of an hour during which his work was easy, and perhaps pleasant. When he began to explain his intention, Camilla, with the utmost frankness, informed him that her mother had told her all about it. Then she turned her face on one side and put her hand in his; he got his arm round her waist, gave her a kiss, and the thing was done. Camilla was fully resolved that after such a betrothal it should not be undone. She had behaved with sisterly forbearance, and would not now lose the reward of virtue. Not a word was said of Arabella at this interview till he was pressed to come and drink tea with them all that night. He hesitated a moment; and then Camilla declared, with something perhaps of imperious roughness in her manner, that he had better face it all at once. ‘Mamma will tell her, and she will understand,’ said Camilla. He hesitated again, but at last promised that he would come.
Whilst he was yet in the house Mrs French had told the whole story to her poor elder daughter. ‘What is he doing with Camilla?’ Arabella had asked with feverish excitement.
‘Bella, darling don’t you know?’ said the mother.
‘I know nothing. Everybody keeps me in the dark, and I am badly used. What is it that he is doing?’ Then Mrs French tried to take the poor young woman in her arms, but Arabella would not submit to be embraced. ‘Don’t!’ she exclaimed. ‘Leave me alone. Nobody likes me, or cares a bit about me! Why is Cammy with him there, all alone?’
‘I suppose he is asking her to be his wife.’ Then Arabella threw herself in despair upon the bed, and wept without any further attempt at control over her feelings. It was a death-blow to her last hope, and all the world, as she looked upon the world then, was over for her. ‘If I could have arranged it the other way, you know that I would,’ said the mother.
‘Mamma,’ said Arabella jumping up, ‘he shan’t do it. He hasn’t a right. And as for her Oh, that she should treat me in this way! Didn’t he tell me the other night, when he drank tea here with me alone —’
‘What did he tell you, Bella?’
‘Never mind. Nothing shall ever make me speak to him again, not if he married her three times over; nor to her. She is a nasty, sly, good-for-nothing thing!’
‘But, Bella —’
‘Don’t talk to me, mamma. There never was such a thing done before since people were people at all. She has been doing it all the time. I know she has.’
Nevertheless Arabella did sit down to tea with the two lovers that night. There was a terrible scene between her and Camilla; but Camilla held her own; and Arabella, being the weaker of the two, was vanquished by the expenditure of her own small energies. Camilla argued that as her sister’s chance was gone, and as the prize had come in her own way, there was no good reason why it should be lost to the family altogether, because Arabella could not win it. When Arabella called her a treacherous vixen and a heartless, profligate hussy, she spoke out freely, and said that she wasn’t going to be abused. A gentleman to whom she was attached had asked her for her hand, and she had given it. If Arabella chose to make herself a fool she might but what would be the effect? Simply that all the world would know that she, Arabella, was disappointed. Poor Bella at last gave way, put on her discarded chignon, and came down to tea. Mr Gibson was already in the room when she entered it. ‘Arabella,’ he said, getting up to greet her, ‘I hope you will congratulate me.’ He had planned his little speech and his manner of making it, and had wisely decided that in this way might he best get over the difficulty.
‘Oh yes of course,’ she said, with a little giggle, and then a sob, and then a flood of tears.
‘Dear Bella feels these things so strongly,’ said Mrs French.
‘We have never been parted yet,’ said Camilla. Then Arabella tapped the head of the sofa three or four times sharply with her knuckles. It was the only protest against the reading of the scene which Camilla had given of which she was capable at that moment. After that Mrs French gave out the tea, Arabella curled herself upon the sofa as though she were asleep, and the two lovers settled down to proper lover-like conversation.
The reader may be sure that Camilla was not slow in making the fact of her engagement notorious through the city. It was not probably true that the tidings of her success had anything to do with Miss Stanbury’s illness; but it was reported by many that such was the case. It was in November that the arrangement was made, and it certainly was true that Miss Stanbury was rather ill about the same time. ‘You know, you naughty Lothario, that you did give her some ground to hope that she might dispose of her unfortunate niece,’ said Camilla playfully to her own one, when this illness was discussed between them. ‘But you are caught now, and your wings are clipped, and you are never to be a naughty Lothario again.’ The clerical Don Juan bore it all, awkwardly indeed, but with good humour, and declared that all his troubles of that sort were over, now and for ever. Nevertheless he did not name the day, and Camilla began to feel that there might be occasion for a little more of that imperious roughness which she had at her command.
November was nearly over and nothing had been fixed about the day. Arabella never condescended to speak to her sister on the subject; but on more than one occasion made some inquiry of her mother. And she came to perceive, or to think that she perceived, that her mother was still anxious on the subject. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if he wasn’t off some day now,’ she said at last to her mother.
‘Don’t say anything so dreadful, Bella.’
‘It would serve Cammy quite right, and it’s just what he’s likely to do.’
‘It would kill me,’ said the mother.
‘I don’t know about killing,’ said Arabella; ‘it’s nothing to what I’ve had to go through. I shouldn’t pretend to be sorry if he were to go to Hong-Kong tomorrow.’
But Mr Gibson had no idea of going to Hong-Kong. He was simply carrying out his little scheme for securing the advantages of a ‘long day’. He was fully resolved to be married, and was contented to think that his engagement was the best thing for him. To one or two male friends he spoke of Camilla as the perfection of female virtue, and entertained no smallest idea of ultimate escape. But a ‘long day’ is often a convenience. A bill at three months sits easier on a man than one at sixty days; and a bill at six months is almost as little of a burden as no bill at all.
But Camilla was resolved that some day should be fixed. ‘Thomas,’ she said to her lover one morning, as they were walking home together after service at the cathedral, ‘isn’t this rather a fool’s Paradise of ours?’
‘How a fool’s Paradise?’ asked the happy Thomas.
‘What I mean is, dearest, that we ought to fix something. Mamma is getting uneasy about her own plans.’
‘In what way, dearest?’
‘About a thousand things. She can’t arrange anything till our plans are made. Of course there are little troubles about money when people ain’t rich.’ Then it occurred to her that this might seem to be a plea for postponing rather than for hurrying the marriage, and she mended her argument. ‘The truth is, Thomas, she wants to know when the day is to be fixed, and I’ve promised to ask. She said she’d ask you herself, but I wouldn’t let her do that.’
‘We must think about it, of course,’ said Thomas.
‘But, my dear, there has been plenty of time for thinking. What do you say to January?’ This was on the last day of November.
‘January!’ exclaimed Thomas, in a tone that betrayed no triumph. ‘I couldn’t get my services arranged for in January.’
‘I thought a clergyman could always manage that for his marriage,’ said Camilla.
‘Not in January. Besides, I was thinking you would like to be away in warmer weather.’
They were still in November, and he was thinking of postponing it till the summer! Camilla immediately perceived how necessary it was that she should be plain with him. ‘We shall not have warm weather, as you call it, for a very long time, Thomas and I don’t think that it would be wise to wait for the weather at all. Indeed, I’ve begun to get my things for doing it in the winter. Mamma said that she was sure January would be the very latest. And it isn’t as though we had to get furniture or anything of that kind. Of course a lady shouldn’t be pressing.’ She smiled sweetly and leaned on his arm as she said this. ‘But I hate all girlish nonsense and that kind of thing. It is such a bore to be kept waiting. I’m sure there’s nothing to prevent it coming off in February.’
The 31st of March was fixed before they reached Heavitree, and Camilla went into her mother’s house a happy woman. But Mr Gibson, as he went home, thought that he had been hardly used. Here was a girl who hadn’t a shilling of money, not a shilling till her mother died, and who already talked about his house, and his furniture, and his income as if it were all her own! Circumstanced as she was, what right had she to press for an early day? He was quite sure that Arabella would have been more discreet and less exacting. He was very angry with his dear Cammy as he went across the Close to his house.
It was on Christmas-day that Sir Peter Mancrudy, the highest authority on such matters in the west of England, was sent for to see Miss Stanbury; and Sir Peter had acknowledged that things were very serious. He took Dorothy on one side, and told her that Mr Martin, the ordinary practitioner, had treated the case, no doubt, quite wisely throughout; that there was not a word to be said against Mr Martin, whose experience was great, and whose discretion was undeniable; but, nevertheless, at least it seemed to Dorothy, that this was the only meaning to be attributed to Sir Peter’s words: Mr Martin had in this case taken one line of treatment, when he ought to have taken another. The plan of action was undoubtedly changed, and Mr Martin became very fidgety, and ordered nothing without Sir Peter’s sanction. Miss Stanbury was suffering from bronchitis, and a complication of diseases about her throat and chest. Barty Burgess declared to more than one acquaintance in the little parlour behind the bank, that she would go on drinking four or five glasses of new port wine every day, in direct opposition to Martin’s request. Camilla French heard the report, and repeated it to her lover, and perhaps another person or two, with an expression of her assured conviction that it must be false at any rate, as regarded the fifth glass. Mrs MacHugh, who saw Martha daily, was much frightened. The peril of such a friend disturbed equally the repose and the pleasures of her life. Mrs Clifford was often at Miss Stanbury’s bedside and would have sat there reading for hours together, had she not been made to understand by Martha that Miss Stanbury preferred that Miss Dorothy should read to her. The sick woman received the Sacrament weekly not from Mr Gibson, but from the hands of another minor canon; and, though she never would admit her own danger, or allow others to talk to her of it, it was known to them all that she admitted it to herself because she had, with much personal annoyance, caused a codicil to be added to her will. ‘As you didn’t marry that man,’ she said to Dorothy, ‘I must change it again.’ It was in vain that Dorothy begged her not to trouble herself with such thoughts. ‘That’s trash,’ said Miss Stanbury, angrily. ‘A person who has it is bound to trouble himself about it. You don’t suppose I’m afraid of dying do you?’ she added. Dorothy answered her with some commonplace declaring how strongly they all expected to see her as well as ever. ‘I’m not a bit afraid to die,’ said the old woman, wheezing, struggling with such voice as she possessed; ‘I’m not afraid of it, and I don’t think I shall die this time; but I’m not going to have mistakes when I’m gone.’ This was on the eve of the new year, and on the same night she asked Dorothy to write to Brooke Burgess, and request him to come to Exeter. This was Dorothy’s letter:
‘Exeter, 31st December, 186-.
MY DEAR MR BURGESS,
Perhaps I ought to have written before, to say that Aunt Stanbury is not as well as we could wish her; but, as I know that you cannot very well leave your office, I have thought it best not to say anything to frighten you. But tonight Aunt herself has desired me to tell you that she thinks you ought to know that she is ill, and that she wishes you to come to Exeter for a day or two, if it is possible. Sir Peter Mancrudy has been here every day since Christmas-day, and I believe he thinks she may get over it. It is chiefly in the throat what they call bronchitis and she has got to be very weak with it, and at the same time very liable to inflammation. So I know that you will come if you can.
Yours very truly,
DOROTHY STANBURY.
Perhaps I ought to tell you that she had her lawyer here with her the day before yesterday; but she does not seem to think that she herself is in danger. I read to her a good deal, and I think she is generally asleep; when I stop she wakes, and I don’t believe she gets any other rest at all.’
When it was known in Exeter that Brooke Burgess had been sent for, then the opinion became general that Miss Stanbury’s days were numbered. Questions were asked of Sir Peter at every corner of the street; but Sir Peter was a discreet man, who could answer such questions without giving any information. If it so pleased God, his patient would die; but it was quite possible that she might live. That was the tenor of Sir Peter’s replies and they were read in any light, according to the idiosyncrasies of the reader. Mrs MacHugh was quite sure that the danger was over, and had a little game of cribbage on the sly with old Miss Wright for, during the severity of Miss Stanbury’s illness, whist was put on one side in the vicinity of the Close. Barty Burgess was still obdurate, and shook his head. He was of opinion that they might soon gratify their curiosity, and see the last crowning iniquity of this wickedest of old women. Mrs Clifford declared that it was all in the hands of God; but that she saw no reason why Miss Stanbury should not get about again. Mr Gibson thought that it was all up with his late friend; and Camilla wished that at their last interview there had been more of charity on the part of one whom she had regarded in past days with respect and esteem. Mrs French, despondent about everything, was quite despondent in this case. Martha almost despaired, and already was burdened with the cares of a whole wardrobe of solemn funereal clothing. She was seen peering in for half-an-hour at the windows and doorway of a large warehouse for the sale of mourning. Giles Hickbody would not speak above his breath, and took his beer standing; but Dorothy was hopeful, and really believed that her aunt would recover. Perhaps Sir Peter had spoken to her in terms less oracular than those which he used towards the public.
Brooke Burgess came, and had an interview with Sir Peter, and to him Sir Peter was under some obligation to speak plainly, as being the person whom Miss Stanbury recognised as her heir. So Sir Peter declared that his patient might perhaps live, and perhaps might die. ‘The truth is, Mr Burgess,’ said Sir Peter, ‘a doctor doesn’t know so very much more about these things than other people.’ It was understood that Brooke was to remain three days in Exeter, and then return to London. He would, of course, come again if if anything should happen. Sir Peter had been quite clear in his opinion, that no immediate result was to be anticipated either in the one direction or the other. His patient was doomed to a long illness; she might get over it, or she might succumb to it.
Dorothy and Brooke were thus thrown much together during these three days. Dorothy, indeed, spent most of her hours beside her aunt’s bed, instigating sleep by the reading of a certain series of sermons in which Miss Stanbury had great faith; but nevertheless, there were some minutes in which she and Brooke were necessarily together. They eat their meals in each other’s company, and there was a period in the evening, before Dorothy began her night-watch in her aunt’s room, at which she took her tea while Martha was nurse in the room above. At this time of the day she would remain an hour or more with Brooke; and a great deal may be said between a man and a woman in an hour when the will to say it is there. Brooke Burgess had by no means changed his mind since he had declared it to Hugh Stanbury under the midnight lamps of Long Acre, when warmed by the influence of oysters and whisky toddy. The whisky toddy had in that instance brought out truth and not falsehood as is ever the nature of whisky toddy and similar dangerous provocatives. There is no saying truer than that which declares that there is truth in wine. Wine is a dangerous thing, and should not be made the exponent of truth, let the truth be good as it may; but it has the merit of forcing a man to show his true colours. A man who is a gentleman in his cups may be trusted to be a gentleman at all times. I trust that the severe censor will not turn upon me, and tell me that no gentleman in these days is ever to be seen in his cups. There are cups of different degrees of depth; and cups do exist, even among gentlemen, and seem disposed to hold their own let the censor be ever so severe. The gentleman in his cups is a gentleman always; and the man who tells his friend in his cups that he is in love, does so because the fact has been very present to himself in his cooler and calmer moments. Brooke Burgess, who had seen Hugh Stanbury on two or three occasions since that of the oysters and toddy, had not spoken again of his regard for Hugh’s sister; but not the less was he determined to carry out his plan and make Dorothy his wife if she would accept him. But could he ask her while the old lady was, as it might be, dying in the house? He put this question to himself as he travelled down to Exeter, and had told himself that he must be guided for an answer by circumstances as they might occur. Hugh had met him at the station as he started for Exeter, and there had been a consultation between them as to the propriety of bringing about, or of attempting to bring about, an interview between Hugh and his aunt. ‘Do whatever you like,’ Hugh had said. ‘I would go down to her at a moment’s warning, if she should express a desire to see me.’
On the first night of Brooke’s arrival this question had been discussed between him and Dorothy. Dorothy had declared herself unable to give advice. If any message were given to her she would deliver it to her aunt; but she thought that anything said to her aunt on the subject had better come from Brooke himself. ‘You evidently are the person most important to her,’ Dorothy said, ‘and she would listen to you when she would not let any one else say a word.’ Brooke promised that he would think of it; and then Dorothy tripped up to relieve Martha, dreaming nothing at all of that other doubt to which the important personage downstairs was now subject. Dorothy was, in truth, very fond of the new friend she had made; but it had never occurred to her that he might be a possible suitor to her. Her old conception of herself that she was beneath the notice of any man had only been partly disturbed by the absolute fact of Mr Gibson’s courtship. She had now heard of his engagement with Camilla French, and saw in that complete proof that the foolish man had been induced to offer his hand to her by the promise of her aunt’s money. If there had been a moment of exaltation, a period in which she had allowed herself to think that she was, as other women, capable of making herself dear to a man, it had been but a moment. And now she rejoiced greatly that she had not acceded to the wishes of one to whom it was so manifest that she had not made herself in the least dear.
On the second day of his visit, Brooke was summoned to Miss Stanbury’s room at noon. She was forbidden to talk, and during a great portion of the day could hardly speak without an effort; but there would be half hours now and again in which she would become stronger than usual, at which time nothing that Martha and Dorothy could say would induce her to hold her tongue. When Brooke came to her on this occasion he found her sitting up in bed with a great shawl round her; and he at once perceived she was much more like her own self than on the former day. She told him that she had been an old fool for sending for him, that she had nothing special to say to him, that she had made no alteration in her will in regard to him ‘except that I have done something for Dolly that will have to come out of your pocket, Brooke.’ Brooke declared that too much could not be done for a person so good, and dear, and excellent as Dorothy Stanbury, let it come out of whose pocket it might. ‘She is nothing to you, you know,’ said Miss Stanbury.
‘She is a great deal to me,’ said Brooke.
‘What is she?’ asked Miss Stanbury.
‘Oh a friend; a great friend.’
‘Well; yes. I hope it may be so. But she won’t have anything that I haven’t saved,’ said Miss Stanbury. ‘There are two houses at St. Thomas’s; but I bought them myself, Brooke out of the income.’ Brooke could only declare that as the whole property was hers, to do what she liked with it as completely as though she had inherited it from her own father, no one could have any right to ask questions as to when or how this or that portion of the property had accrued. ‘But I don’t think I’m going to die yet, Brooke,’ she said. ‘If it is God’s will, I am ready. Not that I’m fit, Brooke. God forbid that I should ever think that. But I doubt whether I shall ever be fitter. I can go without repining if He thinks best to take me.’ Then he stood up by her bedside, with his hand upon hers, and after some hesitation asked her whether she would wish to see her nephew Hugh. ‘No,’ said she, sharply. Brooke went on to say how pleased Hugh would have been to come to her. ‘I don’t think much of death-bed reconciliations,’ said the old woman grimly. ‘I loved him dearly, but he didn’t love me, and I don’t know what good we should do each other.’ Brooke declared that Hugh did love her; but he could not press the matter, and it was dropped.
On that evening at eight Dorothy came down to her tea. She had dined at the same table with Brooke that afternoon, but a servant had been in the room all the time and nothing had been said between them. As soon as Brooke had got his tea he began to tell the story of his failure about Hugh. He was sorry, he said, that he had spoken on the subject as it had moved Miss Stanbury to an acrimony which he had not expected.
‘She always declares that he never loved her,’ said Dorothy.‘she has told me so twenty times.’
‘There are people who fancy that nobody cares for them,’ said Brooke.
‘Indeed there are, Mr Burgess; and it is so natural.’
‘Why natural?’
‘Just as it is natural that there should be dogs and cats that are petted and loved and made much of, and others that have to crawl through life as they can, cuffed and kicked and starved.’
‘That depends on the accident of possession,’ said Brooke.
‘So does the other. How many people there are that don’t seem to belong to anybody and if they do, they’re no good to anybody. They’re not cuffed exactly, or starved; but —’
‘You mean that they don’t get their share of affection?’
‘They get perhaps as much as they deserve,’ said Dorothy.
‘Because they’re cross-grained, or ill-tempered, or disagreeable?’
‘Not exactly that.’
‘What then?’ asked Brooke.
‘Because they’re just nobodies. They are not anything particular to anybody, and so they go on living till they die. You know what I mean, Mr Burgess. A man who is a nobody can perhaps make himself somebody or, at any rate, he can try; but a woman has no means of trying. She is a nobody and a nobody she must remain. She has her clothes and her food, but she isn’t wanted anywhere. People put up with her, and that is about the best of her luck. If she were to die somebody perhaps would be sorry for her, but nobody would be worse off. She doesn’t earn anything or do any good. She is just there and that’s all.’
Brooke had never heard her speak after this fashion before, had never known her to utter so many consecutive words, or to put forward any opinion of her own with so much vigour. And Dorothy herself, when she had concluded her speech, was frightened by her own energy and grew red in the face, and shewed very plainly that she was half ashamed of herself. Brooke thought that he had never seen her look so pretty before, and was pleased by her enthusiasm. He understood perfectly that she was thinking of her own position, though she had entertained no idea that he would so read her meaning; and he felt that it was incumbent on him to undeceive her, and make her know that she was not one of those women who are ‘just there and that’s all.’ ‘One does see such a woman as that now and again,’ he said.
‘There are hundreds of them,’ said Dorothy. ‘And of course it can’t be helped.’
‘Such as Arabella French,’ said he, laughing.
‘Well yes; if she is one. It is very easy to see the difference. Some people are of use and are always doing things. There are others, generally women, who have nothing to do, but who can’t be got rid of. It is a melancholy sort of feeling.’
‘You at least are not one of them.’
‘I didn’t mean to complain about myself,’ she said. ‘I have got a great deal to make me happy.’
‘I don’t suppose you regard yourself as an Arabella French,’ said he.
‘How angry Miss French would be if she heard you.. She considers herself to be one of the reigning beauties of Exeter.’
‘She has had a very long reign, and dominion of that sort to be successful ought to be short.’
‘That is spiteful, Mr Burgess.’
‘I don’t feel spiteful against her, poor woman. I own I do not love Camilla. Not that I begrudge Camilla her present prosperity.’
‘Nor I either, Mr Burgess.’
‘She and Mr Gibson will do very well together, I dare say.’
‘I hope they will,’ said Dorothy, ‘and I do not see any reason against it. They have known each other a long time.’
‘A very long time,’ said Brooke. Then he paused for a minute, thinking how he might best tell her that which he had now resolved should be told on this occasion. Dorothy finished her tea and got up as though she were about to go to her duty upstairs. She had been as yet hardly an hour in the room, and the period of her relief was not fairly over. But there had come something of a personal flavour in their conversation which prompted her, unconsciously, to leave him. She had, without any special indication of herself, included herself among that company of old maids who are born and live and die without that vital interest in the affairs of life which nothing but family duties, the care of children, or at least of a husband, will give to a woman. If she had not meant this she had felt it. He had understood her meaning, or at least her feeling, and had taken upon himself to assure her that she was not one of the company whose privations she had endeavoured to describe. Her instinct rather than her reason put her at once upon her guard, and she prepared to leave the room. ‘You are not going yet,’ he said.
‘I think I might as well. Martha has so much to do, and she comes to me again at five in the morning.’
‘Don’t go quite yet,’ he said, pulling out his watch. ‘I know all about the hours, and it wants twenty minutes to the proper time.’
‘There is no proper time, Mr Burgess.’
‘Then you can remain a few minutes longer. The fact is, I’ve got something I want to say to you.’
He was now standing between her and the door, so that she could not get away from him; but at this moment she was absolutely ignorant of his purpose, expecting nothing of love from him more than she would from Sir Peter Mancrudy. Her face had become flushed when she made her long speech, but there was no blush on it as she answered him now. ‘Of course, I can wait,’ she said, ‘if you have anything to say to me.’
‘Well I have. I should have said it before, only that that other man was here.’ He was blushing now up to the roots of his hair, and felt that he was in a difficulty. There are men, to whom such moments of their lives are pleasurable, but Brooke Burgess was not one of them. He would have been glad to have had it done and over so that then he might take pleasure in it.
‘What man?’ asked Dorothy, in perfect innocence.
‘Mr Gibson, to be sure. I don’t know that there is anybody else.’
‘Oh, Mr Gibson. He never comes here now, and I don’t suppose he will again. Aunt Stanbury is so very angry with him.’
‘I don’t care whether he comes or not. What I mean is this. When I was here before, I was told that you were going to marry him.’
‘But I wasn’t.’
‘How was I to know that, when you didn’t tell me? I certainly did know it after I came back from Dartmoor.’ He paused a moment, as though she might have a word to say. She had no word to say, and did not in the least know what was coming. She was so far from anticipating the truth, that she was composed and easy in her mind. ‘But all that is of no use at all,’ he continued. ‘When I was here before Miss Stanbury wanted you to marry Mr Gibson; and, of course, I had nothing to say about it. Now I want you to marry me.’
‘Mr Burgess!’
‘Dorothy, my darling, I love you better than all the world. I do, indeed.’ As soon as he had commenced his protestations he became profuse enough with them, and made a strong attempt to support them by the action of his hands. But she retreated from him step by step, till she had regained her chair by the tea-table, and there she seated herself safely, as she thought; but he was close to her, over her shoulder, still continuing his protestations, offering up his vows, and imploring her to reply to him. She, as yet, had not answered him by a word, save by that one half-terrified exclamation of his name. ‘Tell me, at any rate, that you believe me, when I assure you that I love you,’ he said. The room was going round with Dorothy, and the world was going round, and there had come upon her so strong a feeling of the disruption of things in general, that she was at the moment anything but happy. Had it been possible for her to find that the last ten minutes had been a dream, she would at this moment have wished that it might become one. A trouble had come upon her, out of which she did not see her way. To dive among the waters in warm weather is very pleasant; there is nothing pleasanter. But when the young swimmer first feels the thorough immersion of his plunge, there comes upon him a strong desire to be quickly out again. He will remember afterwards how joyous it was; but now, at this moment, the dry land is everything to him. So it was with Dorothy. She had thought of Brooke Burgess as one of those bright ones of the world, with whom everything is happy and pleasant, whom everybody loves, who may have whatever they please, whose lines have been laid in pleasant places. She thought of him as a man who might some day make some woman very happy as his wife. To be the wife of such a man was, in Dorothy’s estimation, one of those blessed chances which come to some women, but which she never regarded as being within her own reach. Though she had thought much about him, she had never thought of him as a possible possession for herself; and now that he was offering himself to her, she was not at once made happy by his love. Her ideas of herself and of her life were all dislocated for the moment, and she required to be alone, that she might set herself in order, and try herself all over, and find whether her bones were broken.‘say that you believe me,’ he repeated.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she whispered.
‘I’ll tell you what to say. Say at once that you will be my wife.’
‘I can’t say that, Mr Burgess.’
‘Why not? Do you mean that you cannot love me?’
‘I think, if you please, I’ll go up to Aunt Stanbury. It is time for me; indeed it is; and she will be wondering, and Martha will be put out. Indeed I must go up.’
‘And will you not answer me?’
‘I don’t know what to say. You must give me a little time to consider. I don’t quite think you’re serious.’
‘Heaven and earth!’ began Brooke.
‘And I’m sure it would never do. At any rate, I must go now. I must, indeed.’
And so she escaped, and went up to her aunt’s room, which she reached at ten minutes after her usual time, and before Martha had begun to be put out. She was very civil to Martha, as though Martha had been injured; and she put her hand on her aunt’s arm, with a soft, caressing, apologetic touch, feeling conscious that she had given cause for offence. ‘What has he been saying to you?’ said her aunt, as soon as Martha had closed the door. This was a question which Dorothy, certainly, could not answer. Miss Stanbury meant nothing by it nothing beyond a sick woman’s desire that something of the conversation of those who were not sick should be retailed to her; but to Dorothy the question meant so much! How should her aunt have known that he had said anything? She sat herself down and waited, giving no answer to the question. ‘I hope he gets his meals comfortably,’ said Miss Stanbury.
‘I am sure he does,’ said Dorothy, infinitely relieved. Then, knowing how important it was that her aunt should sleep, she took up the volume of Jeremy Taylor, and, with so great a burden on her mind, she went on painfully and distinctly with the second sermon on the Marriage Ring. She strove valiantly to keep her mind to the godliness of the discourse, so that it might be of some possible service to herself; and to keep her voice to the tone that might be of service to her aunt. Presently she heard the grateful sound which indicated her aunt’s repose, but she knew of experience that were she to stop, the sound and the sleep would come to an end also. For a whole hour she persevered, reading the sermon of the Marriage Ring with such attention to the godly principles of the teaching as she could give with that terrible burden upon her mind.
‘Thank you thank you; that will do, my dear. Shut it up,’ said the sick woman. ‘It’s time now for the draught.’ Then Dorothy moved quietly about the room, and did her nurse’s work with soft hand, and soft touch, and soft tread. After that her aunt kissed her, and bade her sit down and sleep.
‘I’ll go on reading, aunt, if you’ll let me,’ said Dorothy. But Miss Stanbury, who was not a cruel woman, would have no more of the reading, and Dorothy’s mind was left at liberty to think of the proposition that had been made to her. To one resolution she came very quickly. The period of her aunt’s illness could not be a proper time for marriage vows, or the amenities of love-making. She did not feel that he, being a man, had offended; but she was quite sure that were she, a woman, the niece of so kind an aunt, the nurse at the bedside of such an invalid were she at such a time to consent to talk of love, she would never deserve to have a lover. And from this resolve she got great comfort. It would give her an excuse for making no more assured answer at present, and would enable her to reflect at leisure as to the reply she would give him, should he ever, by any chance, renew his offer. If he did not, and probably he would not, then it would have been very well that he should not have been made the victim of a momentary generosity. She had complained of the dullness of her life, and that complaint from her had produced his noble, kind, generous, dear, enthusiastic benevolence towards her. As she thought of it all, and by degrees she took great pleasure in thinking of it, her mind bestowed upon him all manner of eulogies. She could not persuade herself that he really loved her, and yet she was full at heart of gratitude to him for the expression of his love. And as for herself, could she love him? We who are looking on of course know that she loved him; that from this moment there was nothing belonging to him, down to his shoe-tie, that would not be dear to her heart and an emblem so tender as to force a tear from her. He had already become her god, though she did not know it. She made comparisons between him and Mr Gibson, and tried to convince herself that the judgment, which was always pronounced very clearly in Brooke’s favour, came from anything but her heart. And thus through the long watches of the night she became very happy, feeling but not knowing that the whole aspect of the world was changed to her by those few words which her lover had spoken to her. She thought now that it would be consolation enough to her in future to know that such a man as Brooke Burgess had once asked her to be the partner of his life, and that it would be almost ungenerous in her to push her advantage further and attempt to take him at his word. Besides, there would be obstacles. Her aunt would dislike such a marriage for him, and he would be bound to obey her aunt in such a matter. She would not allow herself to think that she could ever become Brooke’s wife, but nothing could rob her of the treasure of the offer which he had made her. Then Martha came to her at five o’clock, and she went to her bed to dream for an hour or two of Brooke Burgess and her future life.
On the next morning she met him at breakfast. She went down stairs later than usual, not till ten, having hung about her aunt’s room, thinking that thus she would escape him for the present. She would wait till he was gone out, and then she would go down. She did wait; but she could not hear the front door, and then her aunt murmured something about Brooke’s breakfast. She was told to go down, and she went. But when on the stairs she slunk back to her own room, and stood there for awhile, aimless, motionless, not knowing what to do. Then one of the girls came to her, and told her that Mr Burgess was waiting breakfast for her. She knew not what excuse to make, and at last descended slowly to the parlour. She was very happy, but had it been possible for her to have run away she would have gone.
‘Dear Dorothy,’ he said at once. ‘I may call you so, may I not?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And you will love me and be my own, own wife?’
‘No, Mr Burgess.’
‘No?’
‘I mean that is to say —’
‘Do you love me, Dorothy?’
‘Only think how ill Aunt Stanbury is, Mr Burgess; perhaps dying! How can I have any thought now except about her? It wouldn’t be right would it?’
‘You may say that you love me.’
‘Mr Burgess, pray, pray don’t speak of it now. If you do I must go away.’
‘But do you love me?’
‘Pray, pray don’t, Mr Burgess!’
There was nothing more to be got from her during the whole day than that. He told her in the evening that as soon as Miss Stanbury was well, he would come again, that in any case he would come again. She sat quite still as he said this, with a solemn face but smiling at heart, laughing at heart, so happy! When she got up to leave him, and was forced to give him her hand, he seized her in his arms and kissed her. ‘That is very, very wrong,’ she said, sobbing, and then ran to her room the happiest girl in all Exeter. He was to start early on the following morning, and she knew that she would not be forced to see him again. Thinking of him was so much pleasanter than seeing him!
Life had gone on during the winter at St Diddulph’s Parsonage in a dull, weary, painful manner. There had come a letter in November from Trevelyan to his wife, saying that as he could trust neither her nor her uncle with the custody of his child, he should send a person armed with due legal authority, addressed to Mr Outhouse, for the recovery of the boy, and desiring that little Louis might be at once surrendered to the messenger. Then of course there had arisen great trouble in the house. Both Mrs Trevelyan and Nora Rowley had learned by this time that, as regarded the master of the house, they were not welcome guests at St Diddulph’s. When the threat was shewn to Mr Outhouse, he did not say a word to indicate that the child should be given up. He muttered something, indeed, about impotent nonsense, which seemed to imply that the threat could be of no avail; but there was none of that reassurance to be obtained from him which a positive promise on his part to hold the bairn against all corners would have given. Mrs Outhouse told her niece more than once that the child would be given to no messenger whatever; but even she did not give the assurance with that energy which the mother would have liked. ‘They shall drag him away from me by force if they do take him!’ said the mother, gnashing her teeth. Oh, if her father would but come! For some weeks she did not let the boy out of her sight; but when no messenger had presented himself by Christmas time, they all began to believe that the threat had in truth meant nothing, that it had been part of the ravings of a madman.
But the threat had meant something. Early on one morning in January Mr Outhouse was told that a person in the hall wanted to see him, and Mrs Trevelyan, who was sitting at breakfast, the child being at the moment upstairs, started from her seat. The maid described the man as being ‘All as one as a gentleman,’ though she would not go so far as to say that he was a gentleman in fact. Mr Outhouse slowly rose from his breakfast, went out to the man in the passage, and bade him follow into the little closet that was now used as a study. It is needless perhaps to say that the man was Bozzle.
‘I dare say, Mr Houthouse, you don’t know me,’ said Bozzle. Mr Outhouse, disdaining all complimentary language, said that he certainly did not. ‘My name, Mr Houthouse, is Samuel Bozzle, and I live at No. 55, Stony Walk, Union Street, Borough. I was in the Force once, but I work on my own ‘ook now.’
‘What do you want with me, Mr Bozzle?’
‘It isn’t so much with you, sir, as it is with a lady as is under your protection; and it isn’t so much with the lady as it is with her infant.’
‘Then you may go away, Mr Bozzle,’ said Mr Outhouse, impatiently. ‘You may as well go away at once.’
‘Will you please read them few lines, sir,’ said Mr Bozzle. ‘They is in Mr Trewilyan’s handwriting, which will no doubt be familiar characters leastways to Mrs T., if you don’t know the gent’s fist.’ Mr Outhouse, after looking at the paper for a minute, and considering deeply what in this emergency he had better do, did take the paper and read it. The words ran as follows: ‘I hereby give full authority to Mr Samuel Bozzle, of 55, Stony Walk, Union Street, Borough, to claim and to enforce possession of the body of my child, Louis Trevelyan; and I require that any person whatsoever who may now have the custody of the said child, whether it be my wife or any of her friends, shall at once deliver him up to Mr Bozzle on the production of this authority, LOUIS TREVELYAN.’ It may be explained that before this document had been written there had been much correspondence on the subject between Bozzle and his employer. To give the ex-policeman his due, he had not at first wished to meddle in the matter of the child. He had a wife at home who expressed an opinion with much vigour that the boy should be left with its mother, and that he, Bozzle, should he succeed in getting hold of the child, would not know what to do with it. Bozzle was aware, moreover, that it was his business to find out facts, and not to perform actions. But his employer had become very urgent with him. Mr Bideawhile had positively refused to move in the matter; and Trevelyan, mad as he was, had felt a disinclination to throw his affairs into the hands of a certain Mr Skint, of Stamford Street, whom Bozzle had recommended to him as a lawyer. Trevelyan had hinted, moreover, that if Bozzle would make the application in person, that application, if not obeyed, would act with usefulness as a preliminary step for further personal measures to be taken by himself. He intended to return to England for the purpose, but he desired that the order for the child’s rendition should be made at once. Therefore Bozzle had come. He was an earnest man, and had now worked himself up to a certain degree of energy in the matter. He was a man loving power, and specially anxious to enforce obedience from those with whom he came in contact by the production of the law’s mysterious authority. In his heart he was ever tapping people on the shoulder, and telling them that they were wanted. Thus, when he displayed his document to Mr Outhouse, he had taught himself at least to desire that that document should be obeyed.
Mr Outhouse read the paper and turned up his nose at it. ‘You had better go away,’ said he, as he thrust it back into Bozzle’s hand.
‘Of course I shall go away when I have the child.’
‘Psha!’ said Mr Outhouse.
‘What does that mean, Mr Houthouse? I presume you’ll not dispute the paternal parent’s legal authority?’
‘Go away, sir,’ said Mr Outhouse.
‘Go away!’
‘Yes out of this house. It’s my belief that you’re a knave.’
‘A knave, Mr Houthouse?’
‘Yes a knave. No one who was not a knave would lend a hand towards separating a little child from its mother. I think you are a knave, but I don’t think you are fool enough to suppose that the child will he given up to you.’
‘It’s my belief that knave is hactionable,’ said Bozzle whose respect, however, for the clergyman was rising fast. ‘Would you mind ringing the bell, Mr Houthouse, and calling me a knave again before the young woman?’
‘Go away,’ said Mr Outhouse.
‘If you have no objection, sir, I should be glad to see the lady before I goes.’
‘You won’t see any lady here; and if you don’t get out of my house when I tell you, I’ll send for a real policeman.’ Then was Bozzle conquered; and, as he went, he admitted to himself that he had sinned against all the rules of his life in attempting to go beyond the legitimate line of his profession. As long as he confined himself to the getting up of facts nobody could threaten him with ‘a real policeman.’ But one fact he had learned today. The clergyman of St Diddulph’s, who had been represented to him as a weak, foolish man, was anything but that. Bozzle was much impressed in favour of Mr Outhouse, and would have been glad to have done that gentleman a kindness had an opportunity come in his way.
‘What does he want, Uncle Oliphant?’ said Mrs Trevelyan at the foot of the stairs, guarding the way up to the nursery. At this moment the front door had just been closed behind the back of Mr Bozzle.
‘You had better ask no questions,’ said Mr Outhouse.
‘But is it about Louis?’
‘Yes, he came about him.’
‘Well? Of course you must tell me, Uncle Oliphant. Think of my condition.’
‘He had some stupid paper in his hand from your husband, but it meant nothing.’
‘He was the messenger, then?’
‘Yes, he was the messenger. But I don’t suppose he expected to get anything. Never mind. Go up and look after the child.’ Then Mrs Trevelyan returned to her boy, and Mr Outhouse went back to his papers.
It was very hard upon him, Mr Outhouse thought, very hard. He was threatened with an action now, and most probably would become subject to one. Though he had been spirited enough in presence of the enemy, he was very much out of spirits at this moment. Though he had admitted to himself that his duty required him to protect his wife’s niece, he had never taken the poor woman to his heart with a loving, generous feeling of true guardianship. Though he would not give up the child to Bozzle, he thoroughly wished that the child was out of his house. Though he called Bozzle a knave and Trevelyan a madman, still he considered that Colonel Osborne was the chief sinner, and that Emily Trevelyan had behaved badly. He constantly repeated to himself the old adage, that there was no smoke without fire; and lamented the misfortune that had brought him into close relation with things and people that were so little to his taste. He sat for awhile, with a pen in his hand, at the miserable little substitute for a library table which had been provided for him, and strove to collect his thoughts and go on with his work. But the effort was in vain. Bozzle would be there, presenting his document, and begging that the maid might be rung for, in order that she might hear him called a knave. And then he knew that on this very day his niece intended to hand him money, which he could not refuse. Of what use would it be to refuse it now, after it had been once taken? As he could not write a word, he rose and went away to his wife.
‘If this goes on much longer,’ said he, ‘I shall be in Bedlam.’
‘My dear, don’t speak of it in that way!’
‘That’s all very well. I suppose I ought to say that I like it. There has been a policeman here who is going to bring an action against me.’
‘A policeman!’
‘Some one that her husband has sent for the child.’
‘The boy must not be given up, Oliphant.’
‘It’s all very well to say that, but I suppose we must obey the law. The Parsonage of St Diddulph’s isn’t a castle in the Apennines. When it comes to this, that a policeman is sent here to fetch any man’s child, and threatens me with an action because I tell him to leave my house, it is very hard upon me, seeing how very little I’ve had to do with it. It’s all over the parish now that my niece is kept here away from her husband, and that a lover comes to see her. This about a policeman will be known now, of course. I only say it is hard; that’s all.’ The wife did all that she could to comfort him, reminding him that Sir Marmaduke would be home soon, and that then the burden would be taken from his shoulders. But she was forced to admit that it was very hard.
Many weeks had now passed since Hugh Stanbury had paid his visit to St Diddulph’s, and Nora Rowley was beginning to believe that her rejection of her lover had been so firm and decided that she would never see him or hear from him more, and she had long since confessed to herself that if she did not see him or hear from him soon, life would not be worth a straw to her. To all of us a single treasure counts for much more when the outward circumstances of our life are dull, unvaried, and melancholy, than it does when our days are full of pleasure, or excitement, or even of business. With Nora Rowley at St Diddulph’s life at present was very melancholy. There was little or no society to enliven her. Her sister was sick at heart, and becoming ill in health under the burden of her troubles. Mr Outhouse was moody and wretched; and Mrs Outhouse, though she did her best to make her house comfortable to her unwelcome inmates, could not make it appear that their presence there was a pleasure to her. Nora understood better than did her sister how distasteful the present arrangement was to their uncle, and was consequently very uncomfortable on that score. And in the midst of that unhappiness, she of course told herself that she was a young woman miserable and unfortunate altogether. It is always so with us. The heart when it is burdened, though it may have ample strength to bear the burden, loses its buoyancy and doubts its own power. It is like the springs of a carriage which are pressed flat by the superincumbent weight. But, because the springs are good, the weight is carried safely, and they are the better afterwards for their required purposes because of the trial to which they have been subjected.
Nora had sent her lover away, and now at the end of three months from the day of his dismissal she had taught herself to believe that he would never come again. Amidst the sadness of her life at St Diddulph’s some confidence in a lover expected to come again would have done much to cheer her. The more she thought of Hugh Stanbury, the more fully she became convinced that he was the man who as a lover, as a husband, and as a companion, would just suit all her tastes. She endowed him liberally with a hundred good gifts in the disposal of which Nature had been much more sparing. She made for herself a mental portrait of him more gracious in its flattery than ever was canvas coming from the hand of a Court limner. She gave him all gifts of manliness, honesty, truth, and energy, and felt regarding him that he was a Paladin such as Paladins are in this age, that he was indomitable, sure of success, and fitted in all respects to take the high position which he would certainly win for himself. But she did not presume him to be endowed with such a constancy as would make him come to seek her hand again. Had Nora at this time of her life been living at the West-end of London, and going out to parties three or four times a week, she would have been quite easy about his coming. The springs would not have been weighted so heavily, and her heart would have been elastic.
No doubt she had forgotten many of the circumstances of his visit and of his departure. Immediately on his going she had told her sister that he would certainly come again, but had said at the same time that his coming could be of no use. He was so poor a man; and she, though poorer than he, had been so little accustomed to poverty of life, that she had then acknowledged to herself that she was not fit to be his wife. Gradually, as the slow weeks went by her, there had come a change in her ideas. She now thought that he never would come again; but that if he did she would confess to him that her own views about life were changed. ‘I would tell him frankly that I could eat a crust with him in any garret in London.’ But this was said to herself, never to her sister. Emily and Mrs Outhouse had determined together that it would be wise to abstain from all mention of Hugh Stanbury’s name. Nora had felt that her sister had so abstained, and this reticence had assisted in producing the despair which had come upon her. Hugh, when he had left her, had certainly given her encouragement to expect that he would return. She had been sure then that he would return. She had been sure of it, though she had told him that it would be useless. But now, when these sad weeks had slowly crept over her head, when during the long hours of the long days she had thought of him continually, telling herself that it was impossible that she should ever become the wife of any man if she did not become his, she assured herself that she had seen and heard the last of him. She must surely have forgotten his hot words and that daring embrace.
Then there came a letter to her. The question of the management of letters for young ladies is handled very differently in different houses. In some establishments the post is as free to young ladies as it is to the reverend seniors of the household. In others it is considered to be quite a matter of course that some experienced discretion should sit in judgment on the correspondence of the daughters of the family. When Nora Rowley was living with her sister in Curzon Street, she would have been very indignant indeed had it been suggested to her that there was any authority over her letters vested in her sister. But now, circumstanced as she was at St Diddulph’s, she did understand that no letter would reach her without her aunt knowing that it had come. All this was distasteful to her, as were indeed all the details of her life at St Diddulph’s, but she could not help herself. Had her aunt told her that she should never be allowed to receive a letter at all, she must have submitted till her mother had come to her relief. The letter which reached her now was put into her hands by her sister, but it had been given to Mrs Trevelyan by Mrs Outhouse. ‘Nora,’ said Mrs Trevelyan, ‘here is a letter for you. I think it is from Mr Stanbury.’
‘Give it me,’ said Nora greedily.
‘Of course I will give it you. But I hope you do not intend to correspond with him.’
‘If he has written to me I shall answer him of course,’ said Nora, holding her treasure.
‘Aunt Mary thinks that you should not do so till papa and mamma have arrived.’
‘If Aunt Mary is afraid of me let her tell me so, and I will contrive to go somewhere else.’ Poor Nora knew that this threat was futile. There was no house to which she could take herself.
‘She is not afraid of you at all, Nora. She only says that she thinks you should not write to Mr Stanbury.’ Then Nora escaped to the cold but solitary seclusion of her bed-room and there she read her letter.
The reader may remember that Hugh Stanbury when he last left St Diddulph’s had not been oppressed by any of the gloomy reveries of a despairing lover. He had spoken his mind freely to Nora, and had felt himself justified in believing that he had not spoken in vain. He had had her in his arms, and she had found it impossible to say that she did not love him. But then she had been quite firm in her purpose to give him no encouragement that she could avoid. She had said no word that would justify him in considering that there was any engagement between them; and, moreover, he had been warned not to come to the house by its mistress. From day to day he thought of it all, now telling himself that there was nothing to be done but to trust in her fidelity till he should be in a position to offer her a fitting home, and then reflecting that he could not expect such a girl as Nora Rowley to wait for him, unless he could succeed in making her understand that he at any rate intended to wait for her. On one day he would think that good faith and proper consideration for Nora herself required him to keep silent; on the next he would tell himself that such maudlin chivalry as he was proposing to himself was sure to go to the wall and be neither rewarded nor recognised. So at last he sat down and wrote the following letter:
‘Lincoln’s Inn Fields, January, 186-.
Dearest Nora,
Ever since I last saw you at St Diddulph’s, I have been trying to teach myself what I ought to do in reference to you. Sometimes I think that because I am poor I ought to hold my tongue. At others I feel sure that I ought to speak out loud, because I love you so dearly. You may presume that just at this moment the latter opinion is in the ascendant.
As I do write I mean to be very bold — so bold that if I am wrong you will be thoroughly disgusted with me and will never willingly see me again. But I think it best to be true, and to say what I think. I do believe that you love me. According to all precedent I ought not to say so, but I do believe it. Ever since I was at St Diddulph’s that belief has made me happy though there have been moments of doubt. If I thought that you did not love me, I would trouble you no further. A man may win his way to love when social circumstances are such as to throw him and the girl together; but such is not the case with us; and unless you love me now, you never will love me.’ ‘I do I do!’ said Nora, pressing the letter to her bosom. ‘If you do, I think that you owe it me to say so, and to let me have all the joy and all the feeling of responsibility which such am assurance will give me.’ ‘I will tell him so,’ said Nora; ‘I don’t care what may come afterwards, but I will tell him the truth.’ ‘I know,’ continued Hugh, ‘that an engagement with me now would be hazardous, because what I earn is both scanty and precarious; but it seems to me that nothing could ever be done without some risk. There are risks of different kinds.’ She wondered whether he was thinking when he wrote this of the rock on which her sister’s barque had been split to pieces ‘and we may hardly hope to avoid them all. For myself, I own that life would be tame to me, if there were no dangers to be overcome.
If you do love me, and will say so, I will not ask you to be my wife till I can give you a proper home; but the knowledge that I am the master of the treasure which I desire will give me a double energy, and will make me feel that when I have gained so much I cannot fail of adding to it all other smaller things that may be necessary.
Pray, pray send me an answer. I cannot reach you except by writing, as I was told by your aunt not to come to the house again.
Dearest Nora, pray believe
That I shall always be truly yours only,
HUGH STANBURY.’
Write to him! Of course she would write to him. Of course she would confess to him the truth. ‘He tells me that I owe it to him to say so, and I acknowledge the debt,’ she said aloud to herself. ‘And as for a proper home, he shall be the judge of that.’ She resolved that she would not be a fine lady, not fastidious, not coy, not afraid to take her full share of the risk of which he spoke in such manly terms. ‘It is quite true. As he has been able to make me love him, I have no right to stand aloof even if I wished it.’ As she was walking up and down the room so resolving her sister came to her.
‘Well, dear!’ said Emily. ‘May I ask what it is he says?’
Nora paused a moment, holding the letter tight in her hand, and then she held it out to her sister. ‘There it is. You may read it.’ Mrs Trevelyan took the letter and read it slowly, during which Nora stood looking out of the window. She would not watch her sister’s face, as she did not wish to have to reply to any outward signs of disapproval. ‘Give it me back,’ she said, when she heard by the refolding of the paper that the perusal was finished.
‘Of course I shall give it you back, dear.’
‘Yes thanks. I did not mean to doubt you.’
‘And what will you do, Nora?’
‘Answer it of course.’
‘I would think a little before I answered it,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
‘I have thought a great deal, already.’
‘And how will you answer it?’
Nora paused again before she replied. ‘As nearly as I know how to do in such words as he would put into my mouth. I shall strive to write just what I think he would wish me to write.’
‘Then you will engage yourself to him, Nora?’
‘Certainly I shall. I am engaged to him already. I have been ever since he came here.’
‘You told me that there was nothing of the kind.’
‘I told you that I loved him better than anybody in the world, and that ought to have made you know what it must come to. When I am thinking of him every day, and every hour, how can I not be glad to have an engagement settled with him? I couldn’t marry anybody else, and I don’t want to remain as I am.’ The tears came into the married sister’s eyes, and rolled down her cheeks, as this was said to her. Would it not have been better for her had she remained as she was? ‘Dear Emily,’ said Nora, ‘you have got Louey still.’
‘Yes and they mean to take him from me. But I do not wish to speak of myself. Will you postpone your answer till mamma is here?’
‘I cannot do that, Emily. What; receive such a letter as that, and send no reply to it!’
‘I would write a line for you, and explain —’
‘No, indeed, Emily. I choose to answer my own letters. I have shewn you that, because I trust you; but I have fully made up my mind as to what I shall write. It will have been written and sent before dinner.’
‘I think you will be wrong, Nora.’
‘Why wrong! When I came over here to stay with you, would mamma ever have thought of directing me not to accept any offer till her consent had been obtained all the way from the Mandarins? She would never have dreamed of such a thing.’
‘Will you ask Aunt Mary?’
‘Certainly not. What is Aunt Mary to me? We are here in her house for a time, under the press of circumstances; but I owe her no obedience. She told Mr Stanbury not to come here; and he has not come; and I shall not ask him to come. I would not willingly bring any one into Uncle Oliphant’s house that he and she do not wish to see. But I will not admit that either of them have any authority over me.’
‘Then who has, dearest?’
‘Nobody except papa and mamma; and they have chosen to leave me to myself.’
Mrs Trevelyan found it impossible to shake her sister’s firmness, and could herself do nothing, except tell Mrs Outhouse what was the state of affairs. When she said that she should do this, there almost came to be a flow of high words between the sisters; but at last Nora assented. ‘As for knowing, I don’t care if all the world knows it. I shall do nothing in a corner. I don’t suppose Aunt Mary will endeavour to prevent my posting my letter.’
Emily at last went to seek Mrs Outhouse, and Nora at once sat down to her desk. Neither of the sisters felt at all sure that Mrs Outhouse would not attempt to stop the emission of the letter from her house; but, as it happened, she was out, and did not return till Nora had come back from her journey to the neighbouring post-office. She would trust her letter, when written, to no hands but her own; and as she herself dropped it into the safe custody of the Postmaster-General, it also shall be revealed to the public:
‘Parsonage, St Diddulph’s, January, 186-.
DEAR HUGH,
For I suppose I may as well write to you in that way now. I have been made so happy by your affectionate letter. Is not that a candid confession for a young lady? But you tell me that I owe you the truth, and so I tell you the truth. Nobody will ever be anything to me, except you; and you are everything. I do love you; and should it ever be possible, I will become your wife.
I have said so much, because I feel that I ought to obey the order you have given me; but pray do not try to see me or write to me till mamma has arrived. She and papa will be here in the spring, quite early in the spring, we hope; and then you may come to us. What they may say, of course, I cannot tell; but I shall be true to you.
Your own, with truest affection,
NORA.
Of course, you knew that I loved you, and I don’t think that you are a conjuror at all.’
As soon as ever the letter was written, she put on her bonnet, and went forth with it herself to the post-office. Mrs Trevelyan stopped her on the stairs, and endeavoured to detain her, but Nora would not be detained. ‘I must judge for myself about this,’ she said. ‘If mamma were here, it would be different, but, as she is not here, I must judge for myself.’
What Mrs Outhouse might have done had she been at home at the time, it would be useless to surmise. She was told what had happened when it occurred, and questioned Nora on the subject. ‘I thought I understood from you,’ she said, with something of severity in her countenance, ‘that there was to be nothing between you and Mr Stanbury at any rate, till my brother came home?’
‘I never pledged myself to anything of the kind, Aunt Mary,’ Nora said. ‘I think he promised that he would not come here, and I don’t suppose that he means to come. If he should do so, I shall not see him.’
With this Mrs Outhouse was obliged to be content. The letter was gone, and could not be stopped. Nor, indeed, had any authority been delegated to her by which she would have been justified in stopping it. She could only join her husband in wishing that they both might be relieved, as soon as possible, from the terrible burden which had been thrown upon them. ‘I call it very hard,’ said Mr Outhouse ‘very hard, indeed. If we were to desire them to leave the house, everybody would cry out upon us for our cruelty; and yet, while they remain here, they will submit themselves to no authority. As far as I can see, they may, both of them, do just what they please, and we can’t stop it.’
Miss Stanbury for a long time persisted in being neither better nor worse. Sir Peter would not declare her state to be precarious, nor would he say that she was out of danger; and Mr Martin had been so utterly prostrated by the nearly-fatal effects of his own mistake that he was quite unable to rally himself and talk on the subject with any spirit or confidence. When interrogated he would simply reply that Sir Peter said this and Sir Peter said that, and thus add to, rather than diminish, the doubt, and excitement, and varied opinion which prevailed through the city. On one morning it was absolutely asserted within the limits of the Close that Miss Stanbury was dying, and it was believed for half a day at the bank that she was then lying in articulo mortis. There had got about, too, a report that a portion of the property had only been left to Miss Stanbury for her life, that the Burgesses would be able to reclaim the houses in the city, and that a will had been made altogether in favour of Dorothy, cutting out even Brooke from any share in the inheritance; and thus Exeter had a good deal to say respecting the affairs and state of health of our old friend. Miss Stanbury’s illness, however, was true enough. She was much too ill to hear anything of what was going on, too ill to allow Martha to talk to her at all about the outside public. When the invalid herself would ask questions about the affairs of the world, Martha would be very discreet and turn away from the subject. Miss Stanbury, for instance, ill as she was, exhibited a most mundane interest, not exactly in Camilla French’s marriage, but in the delay which that marriage seemed destined to encounter. ‘I dare say he’ll slip out of it yet,’ said the sick lady to her confidential servant. Then Martha had thought it right to change the subject, feeling it to be wrong that an old lady on her death-bed should be taking joy in the disappointment of her young neighbour. Martha changed the subject, first to jelly, and then to the psalms of the day. Miss Stanbury was too weak to resist; but the last verse of the last psalm of the evening had hardly been finished before she remarked that she would never believe it till she saw it. ‘It’s all in the hands of Him as is on high, mum,’ said Martha, turning her eyes up to the ceiling, and closing the book at the same time, with a look strongly indicative of displeasure.
Miss Stanbury understood it all as well as though she were in perfect health. She knew her own failings, was conscious of her worldly tendencies, and perceived that her old servant was thinking of it. And then sundry odd thoughts, half-digested thoughts, ideas too difficult for her present strength, crossed her brain. Had it been wicked of her when she was well to hope that a scheming woman should not succeed in betraying a man by her schemes into an ill-assorted marriage; and if not wicked then, was it wicked now because she was ill? And from that thought her mind travelled on to the ordinary practices of death-bed piety. Could an assumed devotion be of use to her now, such a devotion as Martha was enjoining upon her from hour to hour, in pure and affectionate solicitude for her soul? She had spoken one evening of a game of cards, saying that a game of cribbage would have consoled her. Then Martha, with a shudder, had suggested a hymn, and had had recourse at once to a sleeping draught. Miss Stanbury had submitted, but had understood it all. If cards were wicked, she had indeed been a terrible sinner. What hope could there be now, on her death-bed, for one so sinful? And she could not repent of her cards, and would not try to repent of them, not seeing the evil of them; and if they were innocent, why should she not have the consolation now when she so much wanted it? Yet she knew that the whole household, even Dorothy, would be in arms against her, were she to suggest such a thing. She took the hymn and the sleeping draught, telling herself that it would be best for her to banish such ideas from her mind. Pastors and masters had laid down for her a mode of living, which she had followed, but indifferently perhaps, but still with an intention of obedience. They had also laid down a mode of dying, and it would be well that she should follow that as closely as possible. She would say nothing more about cards. She would think nothing more of Camilla French. But, as she so resolved, with intellect half asleep, with her mind wandering between fact and dream, she was unconsciously comfortable with an assurance that if Mr Gibson did marry Camilla French, Camilla French would lead him the very devil of a life.
During three days Dorothy went about the house as quiet as a mouse, sitting nightly at her aunt’s bedside, and tending the sick woman with the closest care. She, too, had been now and again somewhat startled by the seeming worldliness of her aunt in her illness. Her aunt talked to her about rents, and gave her messages for Brooke Burgess on subjects which seemed to Dorothy to be profane when spoken of on what might perhaps be a death-bed. And this struck her the more strongly, because she had a matter of her own on which she would have much wished to ascertain her aunt’s opinion, if she had not thought that it would have been exceedingly wrong of her to trouble her aunt’s mind at such a time by any such matter. Hitherto she had said not a word of Brooke’s proposal to any living being. At present it was a secret with herself, but a secret so big that it almost caused her bosom to burst with the load that it bore. She could not, she thought, write to Priscilla till she had told her aunt. If she were to write a word on the subject to any one, she could not fail to make manifest the extreme longing of her own heart. She could not have written Brooke’s name on paper, in reference to his words to herself without covering it with epithets of love. But all that must be known to no one if her love was to be of no avail to her. And she had an idea that her aunt would not wish Brooke to marry her, would think that Brooke should do better; and she was quite clear that in such a matter as this her aunt’s wishes must be law. Had not her aunt the power of disinheriting Brooke altogether? And what then if her aunt should die, should die now, leaving Brooke at liberty to do as he pleased? There was something so distasteful to her in this view of the matter that she would not look at it. She would not allow herself to think of any success which might possibly accrue to herself by reason of her aunt’s death. Intense as was the longing in her heart for permission from those in authority over her to give herself to Brooke Burgess, perfect as was the earthly Paradise which appeared to be open to her when she thought of the good thing which had befallen her in that matter, she conceived that she would be guilty of the grossest ingratitude were she in any degree to curtail even her own estimate of her aunt’s prohibitory powers because of her aunt’s illness. The remembrance of the words which Brooke had spoken to her was with her quite perfect. She was entirely conscious of the joy which would he hers, if she might accept those words as properly sanctioned; but she was a creature in her aunt’s hands according to her own ideas of her own duties; and while her aunt was ill she could not even learn what might be the behests which she would be called on to obey.
She was sitting one evening alone, thinking of all this, having left Martha with her aunt, and was trying to reconcile the circumstances of her life as it now existed with the circumstances as they had been with her in the old days at Nuncombe Putney, wondering at herself in that she should have a lover, and trying to convince herself that for her this little episode of romance could mean nothing serious, when Martha crept down into the room to her. Of late days — the alteration might perhaps be dated from the rejection of Mr Gibson — Martha, who had always been very kind, had become more respectful in her manner to Dorothy than had heretofore been usual with her. Dorothy was quite aware of it, and was not unconscious of a certain rise in the world which was thereby indicated. ‘If you please, miss,’ said Martha, ‘who do you think is here?’
‘But there is nobody with my aunt?’ said Dorothy.
‘She is sleeping like a babby, and I came down just for a moment. Mr Gibson is here, miss in the house! He asked for your aunt, and when, of course, he could not see her, he asked for you.’ Dorothy for a few minutes was utterly disconcerted, but at last she consented to see Mr Gibson. ‘I think it is best,’ said Martha, ‘because it is bad to be fighting, and missus so ill. “Blessed are the peace-makers,” miss, “for they shall be called the children of God.”’ Convinced by this argument, or by the working of her own mind, Dorothy directed that Mr Gibson might be shewn into the room. When he came, she found herself unable to address him. She remembered the last time in which she had seen him, and was lost in wonder that he should be there. But she shook hands with him, and went through some form of greeting in which no word was uttered.
‘I hope you will not think that I have done wrong,’ said he, ‘in calling to ask after my old friend’s state of health?’
‘Oh dear, no,’ said Dorothy, quite bewildered.
‘I have known her for so very long, Miss Dorothy, that now in the hour of her distress, and perhaps mortal malady, I cannot stop to remember the few harsh words that she spoke to me lately.’
‘She never means to be harsh, Mr Gibson.’
‘Ah; well; no perhaps not. At any rate I have learned to forgive and forget. I am afraid your aunt is very ill, Miss Dorothy.’
‘She is ill, certainly, Mr Gibson.’
‘Dear, dear! We are all as the grass of the field, Miss Dorothy, here today and gone tomorrow, as sparks fly upwards. Just fit to be cut down and cast into the oven. Mr Jennings has been with her, I believe?’ Mr Jennings was the other minor canon.
‘He comes three times a week, Mr Gibson.’
‘He is an excellent young man, a very good young man. It has been a great comfort to me to have Jennings with me. But he’s very young, Miss Dorothy; isn’t he?’ Dorothy muttered something, purporting to declare, that she was not acquainted with the exact circumstances of Mr Jennings’ age. ‘I should be so glad to come if my old friend would allow me,’ said Mr Gibson, almost with a sigh. Dorothy was clearly of opinion that any change at the present would be bad for her aunt, but she did not know how to express her opinion; so she stood silent and looked at him. ‘There needn’t be a word spoken, you know, about the ladies at Heavitree,’ said Mr Gibson.
‘Oh dear, no,’ said Dorothy. And yet she knew well that there would be such words spoken if Mr Gibson were to make his way into her aunt’s room. Her aunt was constantly alluding to the ladies at Heavitree, in spite of all the efforts of her old servant to restrain her.
‘There was some little misunderstanding,’ said Mr Gibson; ‘but all that should be over now. We both intended for the best, Miss Dorothy; and I’m sure nobody here can say that I wasn’t sincere.’ But Dorothy, though she could not bring herself to answer Mr Gibson plainly, could not be induced to assent to his proposition. She muttered something about her aunt’s weakness, and the great attention which Mr Jennings shewed. Her aunt had become very fond of Mr Jennings, and she did at last express her opinion, with some clearness, that her aunt should not be disturbed by any changes at present. ‘After that I should not think of pressing it, Miss Dorothy,’ said Mr Gibson; ‘but, still, I do hope that I may have the privilege of seeing her yet once again in the flesh. And touching my approaching marriage, Miss Dorothy —’ He paused, and Dorothy felt that she was blushing up to the roots of her hair. ‘Touching my marriage,’ continued Mr Gibson, ‘which however will not be solemnized till the end of March;’— it was manifest that he regarded this as a point that would in that household be regarded as an argument in his favour —‘I do hope that you will look upon it in the most favourable light and your excellent aunt also, if she be spared to us.’
‘I am sure we hope that you will be happy, Mr Gibson.’
‘What was I to do, Miss Dorothy? I know that I have been very much blamed but so unfairly! I have never meant to be untrue to a mouse, Miss Dorothy.’ Dorothy did not at all understand whether she were the mouse, or Camilla French, or Arabella. ‘And it is so hard to find that one is ill-spoken of because things have gone a little amiss.’ It was quite impossible that Dorothy should make any answer to this, and at last Mr Gibson left her, assuring her with his last word that nothing would give him so much pleasure as to be called upon once more to see his old friend in her last moments.
Though Miss Stanbury had been described as sleeping ‘like a babby,’ she had heard the footsteps of a strange man in the house, and had made Martha tell her whose footsteps they were. As soon as Dorothy went to her, she darted upon the subject with all her old keenness.
‘What did he want here, Dolly?’
‘He said he would like to see you, aunt when you are a little better, you know. He spoke a good deal of his old friendship and respect.’
‘He should have thought of that before. How am I to see people now?’
‘But when you are better, aunt?’
‘How do I know that I shall ever be better? He isn’t off with those people at Heavitree is he?’
‘I hope not, aunt.’
‘Psha! A poor, weak, insufficient creature, that’s what he is. Mr Jennings is worth twenty of him.’ Dorothy, though she put the question again in its most alluring form of Christian charity and forgiveness, could not induce her aunt to say that she would see Mr Gibson. ‘How can I see him, when you know that Sir Peter has forbidden me to see anybody, except Mrs Clifford and Mr Jennings?’
Two days afterwards there was an uncomfortable little scene at Heavitree. It must, no doubt, have been the case, that the same train of circumstances which had produced Mr Gibson’s visit to the Close, produced also the scene in question. It was suggested by some who were attending closely to the matter that Mr Gibson had already come to repent his engagement with Camilla French; and, indeed, there were those who pretended to believe that he was induced, by the prospect of Miss Stanbury’s demise, to transfer his allegiance yet again, and to bestow his hand upon Dorothy at last. There were many in the city who could never be persuaded that Dorothy had refused him, these being, for the most part, ladies in whose estimation the value of a husband was counted so great, and a beneficed clergyman so valuable among suitors, that it was to their thinking impossible that Dorothy Stanbury should in her sound senses have rejected such an offer. ‘I don’t believe a bit of it,’ said Mrs Crumbie to Mrs Apjohn; ‘is it likely?’ The ears of all the French family were keenly alive to rumours, and to rumours of rumours. Reports of these opinions respecting Mr Gibson reached Heavitree, and had their effect. As long as Mr Gibson was behaving well as a suitor, they were inoperative there. What did it matter to them how the prize might have been struggled for, might still be struggled for elsewhere, while they enjoyed the consciousness of possession? But when the consciousness of possession became marred by a cankerous doubt, such rumours were very important. Camilla heard of the visit in the Close, and swore that she would have justice done her. She gave her mother to understand that, if any trick were played upon her, the diocese should be made to ring of it, in a fashion that would astonish them all, from the bishop downwards. Whereupon Mrs French, putting much faith in her daughter’s threats, sent for Mr Gibson.
‘The truth is, Mr Gibson,’ said Mrs French, when the civilities of their first greeting had been completed, ‘my poor child is pining.’
‘Pining, Mrs French!’
‘Yes pining, Mr Gibson. I am afraid that you little understand how sensitive is that young heart. Of course, she is your own now. To her thinking, it would be treason to you for her to indulge in conversation with any other gentleman; but, then, she expects that you should spend your evenings with her of course!’
‘But, Mrs French, think of my engagements, as a clergyman.’
‘We know all about that, Mr Gibson. We know what a clergyman’s calls are. It isn’t like a doctor’s, Mr Gibson.’
‘It’s very often worse, Mrs French.’
‘Why should you go calling in the Close, Mr Gibson?’ Here was the gist of the accusation.
‘Wouldn’t you have me make my peace with a poor dying sister?’ pleaded Mr Gibson.
‘After what has occurred,’ said Mrs French, shaking her head at him, ‘and while things are just as they are now, it would be more like an honest man of you to stay away. And, of course, Camilla feels it. She feels it very much and she won’t put up with it neither.’
‘I think this is the cruellest, cruellest thing I ever heard,’ said Mr Gibson.
‘It is you that are cruel, sir.’
Then the wretched man turned at bay. ‘I tell you what it is, Mrs French if I am treated in this way, I won’t stand it. I won’t, indeed. I’ll go away. I’m not going to be suspected, nor yet blown up. I think I’ve behaved handsomely, at any rate to Camilla.’
‘Quite so, Mr Gibson, if you would come and see her on evenings,’ said Mrs French, who was falling back into her usual state of timidity.
‘But, if I’m to be treated in this way, I will go away. I’ve thoughts of it as it is. I’ve been already invited to go to Natal, and if I hear anything more of these accusations, I shall certainly make up my mind to go.’ Then he left the house, before Camilla could be down upon him from her perch on the landing-place.