Mr Glascock had returned to Naples after his sufferings in the dining-room of the American Minister, and by the middle of February was back again in Florence. His father was still alive, and it was said that the old lord would now probably live through the winter. And it was understood that Mr Glascock would remain in Italy. He had declared that he would pass his time between Naples, Rome, and Florence; but it seemed to his friends that Florence was, of the three, the most to his taste. He liked his room, he said; at the York Hotel, and he liked being in the capital. That was his own statement. His friends said that he liked being with Carry Spalding, the daughter of the American Minister; but none of them, then in Italy, were sufficiently intimate with him to express that opinion to himself.
It had been expressed more than once to Carry Spalding. The world in general says such things to ladies more openly than it does to men, and the probability of a girl’s success in matrimony is canvassed in her hearing by those who are nearest to her with a freedom which can seldom be used in regard to a man. A man’s most intimate friend hardly speaks to him of the prospect of his marriage till he himself has told that the engagement exists. The lips of no living person had suggested to Mr Glascock that the American girl was to become his wife; but a great deal had been said to Carry Spalding about the conquest she had made. Her uncle, her aunt, her sister, and her great friend Miss Petrie, the poetess — the Republican Browning as she was called — had all spoken to her about it frequently. Olivia had declared her conviction that the thing was to be. Miss Petrie had, with considerable eloquence, explained to her friend that that English title, which was but the clatter of a sounding brass, should be regarded as a drawback rather than as an advantage. Mrs Spalding, who was no poetess, would undoubtedly have welcomed Mr Glascock as her niece’s husband with all an aunt’s energy. When told by Miss Petrie that old Lord Peterborough was a tinkling cymbal she snapped angrily at her gifted countrywoman. But she was too honest a woman, and too conscious also of her niece’s strength, to say a word to urge her on. Mr Spalding as an American minister, with full powers at the court of a European sovereign, felt that he had full as much to give as to receive; but he was well inclined to do both. He would have been much pleased to talk about his nephew Lord Peterborough, and he loved his niece dearly. But by the middle of February he was beginning to think that the matter had been long enough in training. If the Honourable Glascock meant anything, why did he not speak out his mind plainly? The American Minister in such matters was accustomed to fewer ambages than were common in the circles among which Mr Glascock had lived.
In the meantime Caroline Spalding was suffering. She had allowed herself to think that Mr Glascock intended to propose to her, and had acknowledged to herself that were he to do so she would certainly accept him. All that she had seen of him, since the day on which he had been courteous to her about the seat in the diligence, had been pleasant to her. She had felt the charm of his manner, his education, and his gentleness; and had told herself that with all her love for her own country, she would willingly become an Englishwoman for the sake of being that man’s wife. But nevertheless the warnings of her great friend, the poetess, had not been thrown away upon her. She would put away from herself as far as she could any desire to become Lady Peterborough. There should be no bias in the man’s favour on that score. The tinkling cymbal and the sounding brass should be nothing to her. But yet — yet what a chance was there here for her? ‘They are dishonest, and rotten at the core,’ said Miss Petrie, trying to make her friend understand that a free American should under no circumstances place trust in an English aristocrat. ‘Their country, Carry, is a game played out, while we are still breasting the hill with our young lungs full of air.’ Carry Spalding was proud of her intimacy with the Republican Browning; but nevertheless she liked Mr Glascock; and when Mr Glascock had been ten days in Florence, on his third visit to the city, and had been four or five times at the embassy without expressing his intentions in the proper form, Carry Spalding began to think that she had better save herself from a heartbreak while salvation might be within her reach. She perceived that her uncle was gloomy and almost angry when he spoke of Mr Glascock, and that her aunt was fretful with disappointment. The Republican Browning had uttered almost a note of triumph; and had it not been that Olivia persisted, Carry Spalding would have consented to go away with Miss Petrie to Rome. ‘The old stones are rotten too,’ said the poetess; ‘but their dust tells no lies.’ That well known piece of hers ‘Ancient Marbles, while ye crumble,’ was written at this time, and contained an occult reference to Mr Glascock and her friend.
But Livy Spalding clung to the alliance. She probably knew her sister’s heart better than did the others; and perhaps also had a clearer insight into Mr Glascock’s character. She was at any rate clearly of opinion that there should be no running away. ‘Either you do like him, or you don’t. If you do, what are you to get by going to Rome?’ said Livy.
‘I shall get quit of doubt and trouble.’
‘I call that cowardice. I would never run away from a man, Carry. Aunt Sophie forgets that they don’t manage these things in England just as we do.’
‘I don’t know why there should be a difference.’
‘Nor do I, only that there is. You haven’t read so many of their novels as I have.’
‘Who would ever think of learning to live out of an English novel?’ said Carry.
‘I am not saying that. You may teach him to live how you like afterwards. But if you have anything to do with people it must be well to know what their manners are. I think the richer sort of people in England slide into these things more gradually than we do. You stand your ground, Carry, and hold your own, and take the goods the gods provide you.’ Though Caroline Spalding opposed her sister’s arguments, and was particularly hard upon that allusion to ‘the richer sort of people,’ which, as she knew, Miss Petrie would have regarded as evidence of reverence for sounding brasses and tinkling cymbals, nevertheless she loved Livy dearly for what she said, and kissed the sweet counsellor, and resolved that she would for the present decline the invitation of the poetess. Then was Miss Petrie somewhat indignant with her friend, and threw out her scorn in those lines which have been mentioned.
But the American Minister hardly knew how to behave himself when he met Mr Glascock, or even when he was called upon to speak of him. Florence no doubt is a large city, and is now the capital of a great kingdom; but still people meet in Florence much more frequently than they do in Paris or in London. It may almost be said that they whose habit it is to go into society, and whose circumstances bring them into the same circles, will see each other every day. Now the American Minister delighted to see and to be seen in all places frequented by persons of a certain rank and position in Florence. Having considered the matter much, he had convinced himself that he could thus best do his duty as minister from the great Republic of Free States to the newest and as he called it ‘the free-est of the European kingdoms.’ The minister from France was a marquis; he from England was an earl; from Spain had come a count and so on. In the domestic privacy of his embassy Mr Spalding would be severe enough upon the sounding brasses and the tinkling cymbals, and was quite content himself to be the Honourable Jonas G. Spalding — Honourable because selected by his country for a post of honour; but he liked to be heard among the cymbals and seen among the brasses, and to feel that his position was as high as theirs. Mr Glascock also was frequently in the same circles, and thus it came to pass that the two gentlemen saw each other almost daily. That Mr Spalding knew well how to bear himself in his high place no one could doubt; but he did not quite know how to carry himself before Mr Glascock. At home at Boston he would have been more completely master of the situation.
He thought too that he began to perceive that Mr Glascock avoided him, though he would hear on his return home that that gentleman had been at the embassy, or had been walking in the Cascine with his nieces. That their young ladies should walk in public places with unmarried gentlemen is nothing to American fathers and guardians. American young ladies are accustomed to choose their own companions. But the minister was tormented by his doubts as to the ways of Englishmen, and as to the phase in which English habits might most properly exhibit themselves in Italy. He knew that people were talking about Mr Glascock and his niece. Why then did Mr Glascock avoid him? It was perhaps natural that Mr Spalding should have omitted to observe that Mr Glascock was not delighted by those lectures on the American constitution which formed so large a part of his ordinary conversation with Englishmen.
It happened one afternoon that they were thrown together so closely for nearly an hour that neither could avoid the other. They were both at the old palace in which the Italian parliament is held, and were kept waiting during some long delay in the ceremonies of the place. They were seated next to each other, and during such delay there was nothing for them but to talk. On the other side of each of them was a stranger, and not to talk in such circumstances would be to quarrel. Mr Glascock began by asking after the ladies.
‘They are quite well, sir, thank you,’ said the minister. ‘I hope that Lord Peterborough was pretty well when last you heard from Naples, Mr Glascock.’ Mr Glascock explained that his father’s condition was not much altered, and then there was silence for a moment.
‘Your nieces will remain with you through the spring I suppose?’ said Mr Glascock.
‘Such is their intention, sir.’
‘They seem to like Florence, I think.’
‘Yes yes; I think they do like Florence. They see this capital, sir, perhaps under more favourable circumstances than are accorded to most of my countrywomen. Our republican simplicity, Mr Glascock, has this drawback, that away from home it subjects us somewhat to the cold shade of unobserved obscurity. That it possesses merits which much more than compensate for this trifling evil I should be the last man in Europe to deny.’ It is to be observed that American citizens are always prone to talk of Europe. It affords the best counterpoise they know to that other term, America, and America and the United States are of course the same. To speak of France or of England as weighing equally against their own country seems to an American to be an absurdity and almost an insult to himself. With Europe he can compare himself, but even this is done generally in the style of the Republican Browning when she addressed the Ancient Marbles.
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Mr Glascock, ‘the family of a minister abroad has great advantages in seeing the country to which he is accredited.’
‘That is my meaning, sir. But, as I was remarking, we carry with us as a people no external symbols of our standing at home. The wives and daughters, sir, of the most honoured of our citizens have no nomenclature different than that which belongs to the least noted among us. It is perhaps a consequence of this that Europeans who are accustomed in their social intercourse to the assistance of titles, will not always trouble themselves to inquire who and what are the American citizens who may sit opposite to them at table. I have known, Mr Glascock, the wife and daughter of a gentleman who has been thrice sent as senator from his native State to Washington, to remain as disregarded in the intercourse of a European city, as though they had formed part of the family of some grocer from your Russell Square!’
‘Let the Miss Spaldings go where they will,’ said Mr Glascock, ‘they will not fare in that way.’
‘The Miss Spaldings, sir, are very much obliged to you,’ said the minister with a bow.
‘I regard it as one of the luckiest chances of my life that I was thrown in with them at St Michael as I was,’ said Mr Glascock with something like warmth.
‘I am sure, sir, they will never forget the courtesy displayed by you on that occasion,’ said the minister bowing again.
‘That was a matter of course. I and my friend would have done the same for the grocer’s wife and daughter of whom you spoke. Little services such as that do not come from appreciation of merit, but are simply the payment of the debt due by all men to all women.’
‘Such is certainly the rule of living in our country, sir,’ said Mr Spalding.
‘The chances are,’ continued the Englishman, ‘that no further observation follows the payment of such a debt. It has been a thing of course.’
‘We delight to think it so, Mr Glascock, in our own cities.’
‘But in this instance it has given rise to one of the pleasantest, and as I hope most enduring friendships that I have ever formed,’ said Mr Glascock with enthusiasm. What could the American Minister do but bow again three times? And what other meaning could he attach to such words than that which so many of his friends had been attributing to Mr Glascock for some weeks past? It had occurred to Mr Spalding, even since he had been sitting in his present close proximity to Mr Glascock, that it might possibly be his duty as an uncle having to deal with an Englishman, to ask that gentleman what were his intentions. He would do his duty let it be what it might; but the asking of such a question would be very disagreeable to him. For the present he satisfied himself with inviting his neighbour to come and drink tea with Mrs Spalding on the next evening but one. ‘The girls will be delighted, I am sure,’ said he, thinking himself to be justified in this friendly familiarity by Mr Glascock’s enthusiasm. For Mr Spalding was clearly of opinion that, let the value of republican simplicity be what it might, an alliance with the crumbling marbles of Europe would in his niece’s circumstances be not inexpedient. Mr Glascock accepted the invitation with alacrity, and the minister when he was closeted with his wife that evening declared his opinion that after all the Britisher meant fighting. The aunt told the girls that Mr Glascock was coming, and in order that it might not seem that a net was being specially spread for him, others were invited to join the party. Miss Petrie consented to be there, and the Italian, Count Buonarosci, to whose presence, though she could not speak to him, Mrs Spalding was becoming accustomed. It was painful to her to feel that she could not communicate with those around her, and for that reason she would have avoided Italians. But she had an idea that she could not thoroughly realise the advantages of foreign travel unless she lived with foreigners; and, therefore, she was glad to become intimate at any rate with the outside of Count Buonarosci.
‘I think your uncle is wrong, dear,’ said Miss Petrie early in the day to her friend.
‘But why? He has done nothing more than what is just civil.’
‘If Mr Glascock kept a store in Broadway he would not have thought it necessary to shew the same civility.’
‘Yes if we all liked the Mr Glascock who kept the store.’
‘Caroline,’ said the poetess with severe eloquence, ‘can you put your hand upon your heart and say that this inherited title, this tinkling cymbal as I call it, has no attraction for you or yours? Is it the unadorned simple man that you welcome to your bosom, or a thing of stars and garters, a patch of parchment, the minion of a throne, the lordling of twenty descents, in which each has been weaker than that before it, the hero of a scutcheon, whose glory is in his quarterings, and whose worldly wealth comes from the sweat of serfs whom the euphonism of an effete country has learned to decorate with the name of tenants?’
But Caroline Spalding had a spirit of her own, and had already made up her mind that she would not be talked down by Miss Petrie. ‘Uncle Jonas,’ said she, ‘asks him because we like him; and would do so too if he kept the store in Broadway. But if he did keep the store perhaps we should not like him.’
‘I trow not,’ said Miss Petrie.
Livy was much more comfortable in her tactics, and without consulting anybody sent for a hairdresser. ‘It’s all very well for Wallachia,’ said Livy Miss Petrie’s name was Wallachia ‘but I know a nice sort of man when I see him, and the ways of the world are not to be altered because Wally writes poetry.’
When Mr Glascock was announced, Mrs Spalding’s handsome rooms were almost filled, as rooms in Florence are filled, obstruction in every avenue, a crowd in every corner, and a block at every doorway, not being among the customs of the place. Mr Spalding immediately caught him, intercepting him between the passages and the ladies, and engaged him at once in conversation.
‘Your John S. Mill is a great man,’ said the minister.
‘They tell me so,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘I don’t read what he writes myself.’
This acknowledgment seemed to the minister to be almost disgraceful, and yet he himself had never read a word of Mr Mill’s writings. ‘He is a far-seeing man,’ continued the minister. ‘He is one of the few Europeans who can look forward, and see how the rivers of civilization are running on. He has understood that women must at last be put upon an equality with men.’
‘Can he manage that men shall have half the babies?’ said Mr Glascock, thinking to escape by an attempt at playfulness.
But the minister was down upon him at once, had him by the lappet of his coat, though he knew how important it was for his dear niece that he should allow Mr Glascock to amuse himself this evening after another fashion. ‘I have an answer ready, sir, for that difficulty,’ he said.‘step aside with me for a moment. The question is important, and I should be glad if you would communicate my ideas to your great philosopher. Nature, sir, has laid down certain laws, which are immutable; and, against them —’
But Mr Glascock had not come to Florence for this. There were circumstances in his present position which made him feel that he would be gratified in escaping, even at the cost of some seeming incivility. ‘I must go in to the ladies at once,’ he said, ‘or I shall never get a word with them.’ There came across the minister’s brow a momentary frown of displeasure, as though he felt that he were being robbed of that which was justly his own. For an instant his grasp fixed itself more tightly to the coat. It was quite within the scope of his courage to hold a struggling listener by physical strength but he remembered that there was a purpose, and he relaxed his hold.
‘I will take another opportunity,’ said the minister. ‘As you have raised that somewhat trite objection of the bearing of children, which we in our country, sir, have altogether got over, I must put you in possession of my views on that subject; but I will find another occasion.’ Then Mr Glascock began to reflect whether an American lady, married in England, would probably want to see much of her uncle in her adopted country.
Mrs Spalding was all smiles when her guest reached her. ‘We did not mean to have such a crowd of people,’ she said, whispering; ‘but you know how one thing leads to another, and people here really like short invitations.’ Then the minister’s wife bowed very low to an Italian lady, and for the moment wished herself in Beacon Street. It was a great trouble to her that she could not pluck up courage to speak a word in Italian. ‘I know more about it than some that are glib enough,’ she would say to her niece Livy, ‘but these Tuscans are so particular with their Bocca Tostana.’
It was almost spiteful on the part of Miss Petrie the manner in which, on this evening, she remained close to her friend Caroline Spalding. It is hardly possible to believe that it came altogether from high principle, from a determination to save her friend from an impending danger. One’s friend has no right to decide for one what is, and what is not dangerous. Mr Glascock after awhile found himself seated on a fixed couch, that ran along the wall, between Carry Spalding and Miss Petrie; but Miss Petrie was almost as bad to him as had been the minister himself. ‘I am afraid,’ she said, looking up into his face with some severity, and rushing upon her subject with audacity, ‘that the works of your Browning have not been received in your country with that veneration to which they are entitled.’
‘Do you mean Mr or Mrs Browning?’ asked Mr Glascock perhaps with some mistaken idea that the lady was out of her depth, and did not know the difference.
‘Either, both; for they are one, the same, and indivisible. The spirit and germ of each is so reflected in the outcome of the other, that one sees only the result of so perfect a combination, and one is tempted to acknowledge that here and there a marriage may have been arranged in Heaven. I don’t think that in your country you have perceived this, Mr Glascock.’
‘I am not quite sure that we have,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘Yours is not altogether an inglorious mission,’ continued Miss Petrie.
‘I’ve got no mission,’ said Mr Glascock ‘either from the Foreign Office, or from my own inner convictions.’
Miss Petrie laughed with a scornful laugh. ‘I spoke, sir, of the mission of that small speck on the earth’s broad surface, of which you think so much, and which we call Great Britain.’
‘I do think a good deal of it,’ said Mr Glascock.
‘It has been more thought of than any other speck of the same size,’ said Carry Spalding.
‘True,’ said Miss Petrie, sharply ‘because of its iron and coal. But the mission I spoke of was this.’ And she put forth her hand with an artistic motion as she spoke. ‘It utters prophecies, though it cannot read them. It sends forth truth, though it cannot understand it. Though its own ears are deaf as adder’s, it is the nursery of poets, who sing not for their own countrymen, but for the higher sensibilities and newer intelligences of lands in which philanthropy has made education as common as the air that is breathed.’
‘Wally,’ said Olivia, coming up to the poetess, in anger that was almost apparent, ‘I want to take you, and introduce you to the Marchesa Pulti.’
But Miss Petrie no doubt knew that the eldest son of an English lord was at least as good as an Italian marchesa. ‘Let her come here,’ said the poetess, with her grandest smile.
When Caroline Spalding perceived how direct an attempt had been made by her sister to take the poetess away, in order that she might thus be left alone with Mr Glascock, her spirit revolted against the manoeuvre, and she took herself away amidst the crowd. If Mr Glascock should wish to find her again he could do so. And there came across her mind something of a half-formed idea that, perhaps after all her friend Wallachia was right. Were this man ready to take her and she ready to be taken, would such an arrangement be a happy one for both of them? His high-born, wealthy friends might very probably despise her, and it was quite possible that she also might despise them. To be Lady Peterborough, and have the spending of a large fortune, would not suffice for her happiness. She was sure of that. It would be a leap in the dark’ and all such leaps must needs be dangerous, and therefore should be avoided. But she did like the man. Her friend was untrue to her and cruel in those allusions to tinkling cymbals. It might be well for her to get over her liking, and to think no more of one who was to her a foreigner and a stranger, of whose ways of living in his own home she knew so little, whose people might be antipathetic to her, enemies instead of friends, among whom her life would be one long misery; but it was not on that ground that Miss Petrie had recommended her to start for Rome as soon as Mr Glascock had reached Florence. ‘There is no reason,’ she said to herself, ‘why I should not marry a man if I like him, even though he be a lord. And of him I should not be the least afraid. It’s the women that I fear.’ And then she called to mind all that she had ever heard of English countesses and duchesses. She thought that she knew that they were generally cold and proud, and very little given to receive outsiders graciously within their ranks. Mr Glascock had an aunt who was a Duchess, and a sister who would be a Countess. Caroline Spalding felt how her back would rise against these new relations, if it should come to pass that they should look unkindly upon her when she was taken to her own home; how she would fight with them, giving them scorn for scorn; how unutterably miserable she would be; how she would long to be back among her own equals, in spite even of her love for her husband. ‘How grand a thing it is,’ she said, ‘to be equal with those whom you love!’ And yet she was to some extent allured by the social position of the man. She could perceive that he had a charm of manner which her countrymen lacked. He had read, perhaps, less than her uncle knew, perhaps, less than most of those men with whom she had been wont to associate in her own city life at home, was not braver, or more virtuous, or more self-denying than they; but there was a softness and an ease in his manner which was palatable to her, and an absence of that too visible effort of the intellect which is so apt to mark and mar the conversation of Americans. She almost wished that she had been English, in order that the man’s home and friends might have suited her. She was thinking of all this as she stood pretending to talk to an American lady, who was very eloquent on the delights of Florence.
In the meantime Olivia and Mr Glascock had moved away together, and Miss Petrie was left alone. This was no injury to Miss Petrie, as her mind at once set itself to work on a sonnet touching the frivolity of modern social gatherings; and when she complained afterwards to Caroline that it was the curse of their mode of life that no moment could be allowed for thought, in which she referred specially to a few words that Mr Gore had addressed to her at this moment of her meditations, she was not wilfully a hypocrite. She was painfully turning her second set of rhymes, and really believed that she had been subjected to a hardship. In the meantime Olivia and Mr Glascock were discussing her at a distance.
‘You were being put through your facings, Mr Glascock,’ Olivia had said.
‘Well; yes; and your dear friend, Miss Petrie, is rather a stern examiner.’
‘She is Carry’s ally, not mine,’ said Olivia. Then she remembered that by saying this she might be doing her sister an injury. Mr Glascock might object to such a bosom friend for his wife. ‘That is to say, of course we are all intimate with her? but just at this moment Carry is most in favour.’
‘She is very clever, I am quite sure,’ said he.
‘Oh yes she’s a genius. You must not doubt that on the peril of making every American in Italy your enemy.’
‘She is a poet is she not?’
‘Mr Glascock!’
‘Have I said anything wrong?’ he asked.
‘Do you mean to look me in the face and tell me that you are not acquainted with her works, that you don’t know pages of them by heart, that you don’t sleep with them under your pillow, don’t travel about with them in your dressing-bag? I’m afraid we have mistaken you, Mr Glascock.’
‘Is it so great a sin?’
‘If you’ll own up honestly, I’ll tell you something in a whisper. You have not read a word of her poems?’
‘Not a word.’
‘Neither have I. Isn’t it horrible? But, perhaps, if I heard Tennyson talking every day, I shouldn’t read Tennyson. Familiarity does breed contempt, doesn’t it? And then poor dear Wallachia is such a bore. I sometimes wonder, when English people are listening to her, whether they think that American girls generally talk like that.’
‘Not all, perhaps, with that perfected eloquence.’
‘I dare say you do,’ continued Olivia, craftily. ‘That is just the way in which people form their opinions about foreigners. Some specially self-asserting American speaks his mind louder than other people, and then you say that all Americans are self-asserting.’
‘But you are a little that way given, Miss Spalding.’
‘Because we are always called upon to answer accusations against us, expressed or unexpressed. We don’t think ourselves a bit better than you; or, if the truth were known, half as good. We are always struggling to be as polished and easy as the French, or as sensible and dignified as the English; but when our defects are thrown in our teeth —’
‘Who throws them in your teeth, Miss Spalding?’
‘You look it, all of you, if you do not speak it out. You do assume a superiority, Mr Glascock; and that we cannot endure.’
‘I do not feel that I assume anything,’ said Mr Glascock, meekly.
‘If three gentlemen be together, an Englishman, a Frenchman, and an American, is not the American obliged to be on his mettle to prove that he is somebody among the three? I admit that he is always claiming to be the first; but he does so only that he may not be too evidently the last. If you knew us, Mr Glascock, you would find us to be very mild, and humble, and nice, and good, and clever, and kind, and charitable, and beautiful — in short, the finest people that have as yet been created on the broad face of God’s smiling earth.’ These last words she pronounced with a nasal twang, and in a tone of voice which almost seemed to him to be a direct mimicry of the American Minister. The upshot of the conversation, however, was that the disgust against Americans which, to a certain degree, had been excited in Mr Glascock’s mind by the united efforts of Mr Spalding and the poetess, had been almost entirely dispelled. From all of which the reader ought to understand that Miss Olivia Spalding was a very clever young woman.
But nevertheless Mr Glascock had not quite made up his mind to ask the elder sister to be his wife. He was one of those men to whom love-making does not come very easy, although he was never so much at his ease as when he was in company with ladies. He was sorely in want of a wife, but he was aware that at different periods during the last fifteen years he had been angled for as a fish. Mothers in England had tried to catch him, and of such mothers he had come to have the strongest possible detestation. He had seen the hooks or perhaps had fancied that he saw them when they were not there. Lady Janes and Lady Sarahs had been hard upon him, till he learned to buckle himself into triple armour when he went amongst them, and yet he wanted a wife; no man more sorely wanted one. The reader will perhaps remember how he went down to Nuncombe Putney in quest of a wife, but all in vain. The lady in that case had been so explicit with him that he could not hope for a more favourable answer; and, indeed, he would not have cared to marry a girl who had told him that she preferred another man to himself, even if it had been possible for him to do so. Now he had met a lady very different from those with whom he had hitherto associated but not the less manifestly a lady. Caroline Spalding was bright, pleasant, attractive, very easy to talk to, and yet quite able to hold her own. But the American Minister was a bore; and Miss Petrie was unbearable. He had often told himself that in this matter of marrying a wife he would please himself altogether, that he would allow himself to be tied down by no consideration of family pride, that he would consult nothing but his own heart and feelings.
As for rank, he could give that to his wife. As for money, he had plenty of that also. He wanted a woman that was not blasee with the world, that was not a fool, and who would respect him. The more he thought of it, the more sure he was that he had seen none who pleased him so well as Caroline Spalding; and yet he was a little afraid of taking a step that would be irrevocable. Perhaps the American Minister might express a wish to end his days at Monkhams, and might think it desirable to have Miss Petrie always with him as a private secretary in poetry!
‘Between you and us, Mr Glascock, the spark of sympathy does not pass with a strong flash,’ said a voice in his ear. As he turned round rapidly to face his foe, he was quite sure, for the moment, that under no possible circumstances would he ever take an American woman to his bosom as his wife.
‘No,’ said he; ‘no, no. I rather think that I agree with you.’
‘The antipathy is one,’ continued Miss Petrie, ‘which has been common on the face of the earth since the clown first trod upon the courtier’s heels. It is the instinct of fallen man to hate equality, to desire ascendancy, to crush, to oppress, to tyrannise, to enslave. Then, when the slave is at last free, and in his freedom demands equality, man is not great enough to take his enfranchised brother to his bosom.’
‘You mean negroes,’ said Mr Glascock, looking round and planning for himself a mode of escape.
‘Not negroes only, not the enslaved blacks, who are now enslaved no more, but the rising nations of white men wherever they are to be seen. You English have no sympathy with a people who claim to be at least your equals. The clown has trod upon the courtier’s heels till the clown is clown no longer, and the courtier has hardly a court in which he may dangle his sword-knot.’
‘If so the clown might as well spare the courtier,’ not meaning the rebuke which his words implied.
‘Ah h but the clown will not spare the courtier, Mr Glascock. I understand the gibe, and I tell you that the courtier shall be spared no longer because he is useless. He shall be cut down together with the withered grasses and thrown into the oven, and there shall be an end of him.’ Then she turned round to appeal to an American gentleman who had joined them, and Mr Glascock made his escape. ‘I hold it to be the holiest duty which I owe to my country never to spare one of them when I meet him.’
‘They are all very well in their way,’ said the American gentleman.
‘Down with them, down with them!’ exclaimed the poetess, with a beautiful enthusiasm. In the meantime Mr Glascock had made up his mind that he could not dare to ask Caroline Spalding to be his wife. There were certain forms of the American female so dreadful that no wise man would wilfully come in contact with them. Miss Petrie’s ferocity was distressing to him, but her eloquence and enthusiasm were worse even than her ferocity. The personal incivility of which she had been guilty in calling him a withered grass was distasteful to him, as being opposed to his ideas of the customs of society; but what would be his fate if his wife’s chosen friend should be for ever dinning her denunciation of withered grasses into his ear?
He was still thinking of all this when he was accosted by Mrs Spalding. ‘Are you going to dear Lady Banbury’s tomorrow?’ she asked. Lady Banbury was the wife of the English Minister.
‘I suppose I shall be there in the course of the evening.’
‘How very nice she is; is she not? I do like Lady Banbury — so soft, and gentle, and kind.’
‘One of the pleasantest old ladies I know,’ said Mr Glascock.
‘It does not strike you so much as it does me,’ said Mrs Spalding, with one of her sweetest smiles. ‘The truth is, we all value what we have not got. There are no Lady Banburys in our country, and therefore we think the more of them when we meet them here. She is talking of going to Rome for the Carnival, and has asked Caroline to go with her. I am so pleased to find that my dear girl is such a favourite.’
Mr Glascock immediately told himself that he saw the hook. If he were to be fished for by this American aunt as he had been fished for by English mothers, all his pleasure in the society of Caroline Spalding would be at once over. It would be too much, indeed, if in this American household he were to find the old vices of an aristocracy superadded to young republican sins! Nevertheless Lady Banbury was, as he knew well, a person whose opinion about young people was supposed to be very good. She noticed those only who were worthy of notice; and to have been taken by the hand by Lady Banbury was acknowledged to be a passport into good society. If Caroline Spalding was in truth going to Rome with Lady Banbury, that fact was in itself a great confirmation of Mr Glascock’s good opinion of her. Mrs Spalding had perhaps understood this; but had not understood that having just hinted that it was so, she should have abstained from saying a word more about her dear girl. Clever and well-practised must, indeed, be the hand of the fisherwoman in matrimonial waters who is able to throw her fly without showing any glimpse of the hook to the fish for whom she angles. Poor Mrs Spalding, though with kindly instincts towards her niece she did on this occasion make some slight attempt at angling, was innocent of any concerted plan. It seemed to her to be so natural to say a good word in praise of her niece to the man whom she believed to be in love with her niece.
Caroline and Mr Glascock did not meet each other again till late in the evening, and just as he was about to take his leave. As they came together each of them involuntarily looked round to see whether Miss Petrie was near. Had she been there nothing would have been said beyond the shortest farewell greeting. But Miss Petrie was afar off, electrifying some Italian by the vehemence of her sentiments, and the audacious volubility of a language in which all arbitrary restrictions were ignored. ‘Are you going?’ she asked.
‘Well I believe I am. Since I saw you last I’ve encountered Miss Petrie again, and I’m rather depressed.’
‘Ah you don’t know her. If you did you wouldn’t laugh at her.’
‘Laugh at her! Indeed I do not do that; but when I’m told that I’m to be thrown into the oven and burned because I’m such a worn-out old institution —’
‘You don’t mean to say that you mind that!’
‘Not much, when it comes up in the ordinary course of conversation; but it palls upon one when it is asserted for the fourth or fifth time in an evening.’
‘Alas, alas!’ exclaimed Miss. Spalding, with mock energy.
‘And why, alas?’
‘Because it is so impossible to make the oil and vinegar of the old world and of the new mix together and suit each other.’
‘You think it is impossible, Miss Spalding?’
‘I fear so. We are so terribly tender, and you are always pinching us on our most tender spot. And we never meet you without treading on your gouty toes.’
‘I don’t think my toes are gouty,’ said he.
‘I apologise to your own, individually, Mr Glascock; but I must assert that nationally you are subject to the gout.’
‘That is, when I’m told over and over again that I’m to be cut down and thrown into the oven —’
‘Never mind the oven now, Mr Glascock. If my friend has been over-zealous I will beg pardon for her. But it does seem to me, indeed it does, with all the reverence and partiality I have for everything European,’ the word European was an offence to him, and he shewed that it was so by his countenance ‘that the idiosyncrasies of you and of us are so radically different, that we cannot be made to amalgamate and sympathise with each other thoroughly.’
He paused for some seconds before he answered her, but it was so evident by his manner that he was going to speak, that she could neither leave him nor interrupt him. ‘I had thought that it might have been otherwise,’ he said at last, and the tone of his voice was so changed as to make her know that he was in earnest.
But she did not change her voice by a single note. ‘I’m afraid it cannot be so,’ she said, speaking after her old fashion half in earnest, half in banter. ‘We may make up our minds to be very civil to each other when we meet. The threats of the oven may no doubt be dropped on our side, and you may abstain from expressing in words your sense of our inferiority.’
‘I never expressed anything of the kind,’ he said, quite in anger.
‘I am taking you simply as the sample Englishman, not as Mr Glascock, who helped me and my sister over the mountains. Such of us as have to meet in society may agree to be very courteous; but courtesy and cordiality are not only not the same, but they are incompatible.’
‘Why so?’
‘Courtesy is an effort, and cordiality is free. I must be allowed to contradict the friend that I love; but I assent too often falsely to what is said to me by a passing acquaintance. In spite of what the Scripture says, I think it is one of the greatest privileges of a brother that he may call his brother a fool.’
‘Shall you desire to call your husband a fool?’
‘My husband!’
‘He will, I suppose, be at least as dear to you as a brother?’
‘I never had a brother.’
‘Your sister, then! It is the same, I suppose?’
‘If I were to have a husband, I hope he would be the dearest to me of all. Unless he were so, he certainly would not be my husband. But between a man and his wife there does not spring up that playful, violent intimacy admitting of all liberties, which comes from early nursery associations; and, then, there is the difference of sex.’
‘I should not like my wife to call me a fool,’ he said.
‘I hope she may never have occasion to do so, Mr Glascock. Marry an English wife in your own class as, of course, you will and then you will be safe.’
‘But I have set my heart fast on marrying an American wife,’ he said.
‘Then I can’t tell what may befall you. It’s like enough, if you do that, that you may be called by some name you will think hard to bear. But you’ll think better of it. Like should pair with like, Mr Glascock. If you were to marry one of our young women, you would lose in dignity as much as she would lose in comfort.’ Then they parted, and she went off to say farewell to other guests. The manner in which she had answered what he had said to her had certainly been of a nature to stop any further speech of the same kind. Had she been gentle with him, then he would certainly have told her that she was the American woman whom he desired to take with him to his home in England.
Towards the end of February Sir Peter Mancrudy declared Miss Stanbury to be out of danger, and Mr Martin began to be sprightly on the subject, taking to himself no inconsiderable share of the praise accruing to the medical faculty in Exeter generally for the saving of a life so valuable to the city. ‘Yes, Mr Burgess,’ Sir Peter said to old Barty of the bank, ‘our friend will get over it this time, and without any serious damage to her constitution, if she will only take care of herself.’ Barty made some inaudible grunt, intended to indicate his own indifference on the subject, and expressed his opinion to the chief clerk that old Jemima Wideawake as he was pleased to call her was one of those tough customers who would never die. ‘It would be nothing to us, Mr Barty, one way or the other,’ said the clerk; to which Barty Burgess assented with another grunt.
Camilla French declared that she was delighted to hear the news. At this time there had been some sort of a reconciliation between her and her lover. Mrs French had extracted from him a promise that he would not go to Natal; and Camilla had commenced the preparations for her wedding. His visits to Heavitree were as few and far between as he could make them with any regard to decency; but the 31st of March was coming on quickly, and as he was to be made a possession of them for ever, it was considered to be safe and well to allow him some liberty in his present condition. ‘My dear, if they are driven, there is no knowing what they won’t do,’ Mrs French said to her daughter. Camilla had submitted with compressed lips and a slight nod of her head. She had worked very hard, but her day of reward was coming. It was impossible not to perceive both for her and her mother that the scantiness of Mr Gibson’s attention to his future bride was cause of some weak triumph to Arabella. She said that it was very odd that he did not come and once added with a little sigh that he used to come in former days, alluding to those happy days in which another love was paramount. Camilla could not endure this with an equal mind. ‘Bella, dear,’ she said, ‘we know what all that means. He has made his choice, and if I am satisfied with what he does now, surely you need not grumble.’ Miss Stanbury’s illness had undoubtedly been a great source of contentment to the family at Heavitree, as they had all been able to argue that her impending demise was the natural consequence of her great sin in the matter of Dorothy’s proposed marriage. When, however, they heard from Mr Martin that she would certainly recover, that Sir Peter’s edict to that effect had gone forth, they were willing to acknowledge that Providence, having so far punished the sinner, was right in staying its hand and abstaining from the final blow. ‘I’m sure we are delighted,’ said Mrs French, ‘for though she has said cruel things of us and so untrue, too, yet of course it is our duty to forgive her. And we do forgive her.’
Dorothy had written three or four notes to Brooke since his departure, which contained simple bulletins of her aunt’s health. She always began her letters with ‘My dear Mr Burgess,’ and ended them with ‘yours truly.’ She never made any allusion to Brooke’s declaration of love, or gave the slightest sign in her letters to shew that she even remembered it. At last she wrote to say that her aunt was convalescent; and, in making this announcement, she allowed herself some enthusiasm of expression. She was so happy, and was so sure that Mr Burgess would be equally so! And her aunt had asked after her ‘dear Brooke,’ expressing her great satisfaction with him, in that he had come down to see her when she had been almost too ill to see anyone. In answer to this there came to her a real love-letter from Brooke Burgess. It was the first occasion on which he had written to her. The little bulletins had demanded no replies, and had received none. Perhaps there had been a shade of disappointment on Dorothy’s side, in that she had written thrice, and had been made rich with no word in return. But, although her heart had palpitated on hearing the postman’s knock, and had palpitated in vain, she had told herself that it was all as it should be. She wrote to him, because she possessed information which it was necessary that she should communicate. He did not write to her, because there was nothing for him to tell. Then had come the love-letter, and in the love-letter there was an imperative demand for a reply.
What was she to do? To have recourse to Priscilla for advice was her first idea; but she herself believed that she owed a debt of gratitude to her aunt, which Priscilla would not take into account — the existence of which Priscilla would by no means admit. She knew Priscilla’s mind in this matter, and was sure that Priscilla’s advice, whatever it might be, would be given without any regard to her aunt’s views. And then Dorothy was altogether ignorant of her aunt’s views. Her aunt had been very anxious that she should marry Mr Gibson, but had clearly never admitted into her mind the idea that she might possibly marry Brooke Burgess; and it seemed to her that she herself would be dishonest, both to her aunt and to her lover, if she were to bind this man to herself without her aunt’s knowledge. He was to be her aunt’s heir, and she was maintained by her aunt’s liberality! Thinking of all this, she at last resolved that she would take the bull by the horns, and tell her aunt. She felt that the task would be one almost beyond her strength. Thrice she went into her aunt’s room, intending to make a clean breast; Thrice her courage failed her, and she left the room with her tale untold, excusing herself on various pretexts. Her aunt had seemed to be not quite so well, or had declared herself to be tired, or had been a little cross or else Martha had come in at the nick of time. But there was Brooke Burgess’s letter unanswered, a letter that was read night and morning, and which was never for an instant out of her mind. He had demanded a reply, and he had a right at least to that. The letter had been with her for four entire days before she had ventured to speak to her aunt on the subject.
On the first of March Miss Stanbury came out of her bed-room for the first time. Dorothy, on the previous day, had decided on postponing her communication for this occasion; but, when she found herself sitting in the little sitting-room up stairs close at her aunt’s elbow, and perceived the signs of weakness which the new move had made conspicuous, and heard the invalid declare that the little journey had been almost too much for her, her heart misgave her. She ought to have told her tale while her aunt was still in bed. But presently there came a question, which put her into such a flutter that she was for the time devoid of all resolution. ‘Has Brooke written?’ said Miss Stanbury.
‘Yes aunt; he has written.’
‘And what did he say?’ Dorothy was struck quite dumb. ‘Is there anything wrong?’ And now, as Miss Stanbury asked the question, she seemed herself to have forgotten that she had two minutes before declared herself to be almost too feeble to speak. ‘I’m sure there is something wrong. What is it? I will know’
‘There is nothing wrong, Aunt Stanbury’
‘Where is the letter? Let me see it.’
‘I mean there is nothing wrong about him.’
‘What is it, then?’
‘He is quite well, Aunt Stanbury.’
‘Shew me the letter. I will see the letter. I know that there is something the matter. Do you mean to say you won’t shew me Brooke’s letter?’
There was a moment’s pause before Dorothy answered. ‘I will shew you his letter though I am sure he didn’t mean that I should shew it to anyone.’
‘He hasn’t written evil of me?’
‘No; no; no. He would sooner cut his hand off than say a word bad of you. He never says or writes anything bad of anybody. But Oh, aunt; I’ll tell you everything. I should have told you before, only that you were ill.’
Then Miss Stanbury was frightened. ‘What is it?’ she said hoarsely, clasping the arms of the great chair, each with a thin, shrivelled hand.
‘Aunt Stanbury, Brooke — Brooke wants me to be his wife!’
‘What!’
‘You cannot be more surprised than I have been, Aunt Stanbury; and there has been no fault of mine.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said the old woman.
‘Now you may read the letter,’ said Dorothy, standing up. She was quite prepared to be obedient, but she felt that her aunt’s manner of receiving the information was almost an insult.
‘He must be a fool,’ said Miss Stanbury.
This was hard to hear, and the colour went and came rapidly across Dorothy’s cheeks as she gave herself a few moments to prepare an answer. She already perceived that her aunt would be altogether adverse to the marriage, and that therefore the marriage could never take place. She had never for a moment allowed herself to think otherwise, but, nevertheless, the blow was heavy on her. We all know how constantly hope and expectation will rise high within our own bosoms in opposition to our own judgment, how we become sanguine in regard to events which we almost know can never come to pass. So it had been with Dorothy. Her heart had been almost in a flutter of happiness since she had had Brooke’s letter in her possession, and yet she never ceased to declare to herself her own conviction that that letter could lead to no good result. In regard to her own wishes on the subject she had never asked herself a single question. As it had been quite beyond her power to bring herself to endure the idea of marrying Mr Gibson, so it had been quite impossible to her not to long to be Brooke’s wife from the moment in which a suggestion to that effect had fallen from his lips. This was a state of things so certain, so much a matter of course, that, though she had not spoken a word to him in which she owned her love, she had never for a moment doubted that he knew the truth and that everybody else concerned would know it too. But she did not suppose that her wishes would go for anything with her aunt. Brooke Burgess was to become a rich man as her aunt’s heir, and her aunt would of course have her own ideas about Brooke’s advancement in life. She was quite prepared to submit without quarrelling when her aunt should tell her that the idea must not be entertained. But the order might be given, the prohibition might be pronounced, without an insult to her own feelings as a woman. ‘He must he a fool,’ Miss Stanbury had said, and Dorothy took time to collect her thoughts before she would reply. In the meantime her aunt finished the reading of the letter.
‘He may be foolish in this,’ Dorothy said; ‘but I don’t think you should call him a fool.’
‘I shall call him what I please. I suppose this was going on at the time when you refused Mr Gibson.’
‘Nothing was going on. Nothing has gone on at all,’ said Dorothy, with as much indignation as she was able to assume.
‘How can you tell me that? That is an untruth.’
‘It is not an untruth,’ said Dorothy, almost sobbing, but driven at the same time to much anger.
‘Do you mean to say that this is the first you ever heard of it?’ And she held out the letter, shaking it in her thin hand.
‘I have never said so, Aunt Stanbury.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘I said that nothing was going on, when Mr Gibson was —. If you choose to suspect me, Aunt Stanbury, I’ll go away. I won’t stay here if you suspect me. When Brooke spoke to me, I told him you wouldn’t like it.’
‘Of course I don’t like it.’ But she gave no reason why she did not like it.
‘And there was nothing more till this letter came. I couldn’t help his writing to me. It wasn’t my fault.’
‘Psha!’
‘If you are angry, I am very sorry. But you haven’t a right to be angry.’
‘Go on, Dorothy; go on. I’m so weak that I can hardly stir myself; it’s the first moment that I’ve been out of my bed for weeks and of course you can say what you please. I know what it will be. I shall have to take to my bed again, and then in a very little time you can both make fools of yourselves just as you like.’
This was an argument against which Dorothy of course found it to be quite impossible to make continued combat. She could only shuffle her letter back into her pocket, and be, if possible, more assiduous than ever in her attentions to the invalid. She knew that she had been treated most unjustly, and there would be a question to be answered as soon as her aunt should be well as to the possibility of her remaining in the Close subject to such injustice; but let her aunt say what she might, or do what she might, Dorothy could not leave her for the present. Miss Stanbury sat for a considerable time quite motionless, with her eyes closed, and did not stir or make signs of life till Dorothy touched her arm, asking her whether she would not take some broth which had been prepared for her. ‘Where’s Martha? Why does not Martha come?’ said Miss Stanbury. This was a hard blow, and from that moment Dorothy believed that it would be expedient that she should return to Nuncombe Putney. The broth, however, was taken, while Dorothy sat by in silence. Only one word further was said that evening by Miss Stanbury about Brooke and his love-affair. ‘There must be nothing more about this, Dorothy; remember that; nothing at all. I won’t have it.’ Dorothy made no reply. Brooke’s letter was in her pocket, and it should be answered that night. On the following day she would let her aunt know what she had said to Brooke. Her aunt should not see the letter, but should be made acquainted with its purport in reference to Brooke’s proposal of marriage.
‘I won’t have it!’ That had been her aunt’s command. What right had her aunt to give any command upon the matter? Then crossed Dorothy’s mind, as she thought of this, a glimmering of an idea that no one can be entitled to issue commands who cannot enforce obedience. If Brooke and she chose to become man and wife by mutual consent, how could her aunt prohibit the marriage? Then there followed another idea, that commands are enforced by the threatening and, if necessary, by the enforcement of penalties. Her aunt had within her hand no penalty of which Dorothy was afraid on her own behalf; but she had the power of inflicting a terrible punishment on Brooke Burgess. Now Dorothy conceived that she herself would be the meanest creature alive if she were actuated by fears as to money in her acceptance or rejection of a man whom she loved as she did Brooke Burgess. Brooke had an income of his own which seemed to her to be ample for all purposes. But that which would have been sordid in her, did not seem to her to have any stain of sordidness for him. He was a man, and was bound to be rich if he could. And, moreover, what had she to offer in herself, such a poor thing as was she, to make compensation to him for the loss of fortune? Her aunt could inflict this penalty, and therefore the power was hers, and the power must be obeyed. She would write to Brooke in a manner that should convey to him her firm decision.
But not the less on that account would she let her aunt know that she thought herself to have been ill-used. It was an insult to her, a most ill-natured insult that telling her that Brooke had been a fool for loving her. And then that accusation against her of having been false, of having given one reason for refusing Mr Gibson, while there was another reason in her heart, of having been cunning and then untrue, was not to be endured. What would her aunt think of her if she were to bear such allegations without indignant protest? She would write her letter, and speak her mind to her aunt as soon as her aunt should be well enough to hear it.
As she had resolved, she wrote her letter that night before she went to bed. She wrote it with floods of tears, and a bitterness of heart which almost conquered her. She too had heard of love, and had been taught to feel that the success or failure of a woman’s life depended upon that whether she did, or whether she did not, by such gifts as God might have given to her, attract to herself some man strong enough, and good enough, and loving enough to make straight for her her paths, to bear for her her burdens, to be the father of her children, the staff on which she might lean, and the wall against which she might grow, feeling the sunshine, and sheltered from the wind. She had ever estimated her own value so lowly as to have told herself often that such success could never come in her way. From her earliest years she had regarded herself as outside the pale within which such joys are to be found. She had so strictly taught herself to look forward to a blank existence, that she had learned to do so without active misery. But not the less did she know where happiness lay; and when the good thing came almost within her reach, when it seemed that God had given her gifts which might have sufficed, when a man had sought her hand whose nature was such that she could have leaned on him with a true worship, could have grown against him as against a wall with perfect confidence, could have lain with her head upon his bosom, and have felt that of all spots that in the world was the most fitting for her when this was all but grasped, and must yet be abandoned, there came upon her spirit an agony so bitter that she had not before known how great might be the depth of human disappointment. But the letter was at last written, and when finished was as follows:
‘The Close, Exeter, March 1, 186-.
DEAR BROOKE.’
There had been many doubts about this; but at last they were conquered, and the name was written.
‘I have shewn your letter to my aunt, as I am sure you will think was best. I should have answered it before, only that I thought that she was not quite well enough to talk about it. She says, as I was sure she would, that what you propose is quite out of the question. I am aware that I am bound to obey her; and as I think that you also ought to do so, I shall think no more of what you have said to me and have written. It is quite impossible now, even if it might have been possible under other circumstances. I shall always remember your great kindness to me. Perhaps I ought to say that I am very grateful for the compliment you have paid me. I shall think of you always till I die.
Believe me to be,
Your very sincere friend,
DOROTHY STANBURY.’
The next day Miss Stanbury again came out of her room, and on the third day she was manifestly becoming stronger. Dorothy had as yet not spoken of her letter, but was prepared to do so as soon as she thought that a fitting opportunity had come. She had a word or two to say for herself; but she must not again subject herself to being told that she was taking her will of her aunt because her aunt was too ill to defend herself. But on the third day Miss Stanbury herself asked the question. ‘Have you written anything to Brooke?’ she asked.
‘I have answered his letter, Aunt Stanbury.’
‘And what have you said to him?’
‘I have told him that you disapproved of it, and that nothing more must be said about it.’
‘Yes of course you made me out to be an ogre.’
‘I don’t know what you mean by that, aunt. I am sure that I told him the truth.’
‘May I see the letter?’
‘It has gone.’
‘But you have kept a copy,’ said Miss Stanbury.
‘Yes; I have got a copy,’ replied Dorothy; ‘but I would rather not shew it. I told him just what I tell you.’
‘Dorothy, it is not at all becoming that you should have a correspondence with any young man of such a nature that you should be ashamed to shew it to your aunt.’
‘I am not ashamed of anything,’ said Dorothy sturdily.
‘I don’t know what young women in these days have come to,’ continued Miss Stanbury. ‘There is no respect, no subjection, no obedience, and too often no modesty.’
‘Does that mean me, Aunt Stanbury?’ asked Dorothy.
‘To tell you the truth, Dorothy, I don’t think you ought to have been receiving love-letters from Brooke Burgess when I was lying ill in bed. I didn’t expect it of you. I tell you fairly that I didn’t expect it of you.’
Then Dorothy spoke out her mind. ‘As you think that, Aunt Stanbury, I had better go away. And if you please I will when you are well enough to spare me.’
‘Pray don’t think of me at all,’ said her aunt.
‘And as for love-letters, Mr Burgess has written to me once. I don’t think that there can be anything immodest in opening a letter when it comes by the post. And as soon as I had it I determined to shew it to you. As for what happened before, when Mr Burgess spoke to me, which was long, long after all that about Mr Gibson was over, I told him that it couldn’t be so; and I thought there would be no more about it. You were so ill that I could not tell you. Now you know it all.’
‘I have not seen your letter to him.’
‘I shall never shew it to anybody. But you have said things, Aunt Stanbury, that are very cruel.’
‘Of course! Everything I say is wrong.’
‘You have told me that I was telling untruths, and you have called me immodest. That is a terrible word.’
‘You shouldn’t deserve it then.’
‘I never have deserved it, and I won’t bear it. No; I won’t. If Hugh heard me called that word, I believe he’d tear the house down.’
‘Hugh, indeed! He’s to be brought in between us is he?’
‘He’s my brother, and of course I’m obliged to think of him. And if you please, I’ll go home as soon as you are well enough to spare me.’
Quickly after this there were many letters coming and going between the house in the Close and the ladies at Nuncombe Putney, and Hugh Stanbury, and Brooke Burgess. The correspondent of Brooke Burgess was of course Miss Stanbury herself. The letters to Hugh and to Nuncombe Putney were written by Dorothy. Of the former we need be told nothing at the present moment; but the upshot of all poor Dolly’s letters was, that on the tenth of March she was to return home to Nuncombe Putney, share once more her sister’s bed and mother’s poverty, and abandon the comforts of the Close. Before this became a definite arrangement Miss Stanbury had given way in a certain small degree. She had acknowledged that Dorothy had intended no harm. But this was not enough for Dorothy, who was conscious of no harm either done or intended. She did not specify her terms, or require specifically that her aunt should make apology for that word, immodest, or at least withdraw it; but she resolved that she would go unless it was most absolutely declared to have been applied to her without the slightest reason. She felt, moreover, that her aunt’s house ought to be open to Brooke Burgess, and that it could not be open to them both. And so she went having resided under her aunt’s roof between nine and ten months.
‘Good-bye, Aunt Stanbury,’ said Dorothy, kissing her aunt, with a tear in her eye and a sob in her throat.
‘Good-bye, my dear, good-bye.’ And Miss Stanbury, as she pressed her niece’s hand, left in it a bank-note.
‘I’m much obliged, aunt; I am indeed; but I’d rather not.’ And the bank-note was left on the parlour table.
Dorothy was received at home with so much affection and such expressions of esteem as to afford her much consolation in her misery. Both her mother and her sister approved of her conduct. Mrs Stanbury’s approval was indeed accompanied by many expressions of regret as to the good things lost. She was fully alive to the fact that life in the Close at Exeter was better for her daughter than life in their little cottage at Nuncombe Putney. The outward appearance which Dorothy bore on her return home was proof of this. Her clothes, the set of her hair, her very gestures and motions had framed themselves on town ideas. The faded, wildered, washed-out look, the uncertain, purposeless bearing which had come from her secluded life and subjection to her sister had vanished from her. She had lived among people, and had learned something of their gait and carriage. Money we know will do almost everything, and no doubt money had had much to do with this. It is very pretty to talk of the alluring simplicity of a clean calico gown; but poverty will shew itself to be meagre, dowdy, and draggled in a woman’s dress, let the woman be ever so simple, ever so neat, ever so independent, and ever so high-hearted. Mrs Stanbury was quite alive to all that her younger daughter was losing. Had she not received two offers of marriage while she was at Exeter? There was no possibility that offers of marriage should be made in the cottage at Nuncombe Putney. A man within the walls of the cottage would have been considered as much out of place as a wild bull. It had been matter of deep regret to Mrs Stanbury that her daughter should not have found herself able to marry Mr Gibson. She knew that there was no matter for reproach in this, but it was a misfortune, a great misfortune. And in the mother’s breast there had been a sad, unrepressed feeling of regret that young people should so often lose their chances in the world through over-fancifulness, and ignorance as to their own good. Now when she heard the story of Brooke Burgess, she could not but think that had Dorothy remained at Exeter, enduring patiently such hard words as her aunt might speak, the love affair might have been brought at some future time to a happy conclusion. She did not say all this; but there came on her a silent melancholy, made expressive by constant little shakings of the head and a continued reproachful sadness of demeanour, which was quite as intelligible to Priscilla as would have been any spoken words. But Priscilla’s approval of her sister’s conduct was clear, outspoken, and satisfactory. She had been quite sure that her sister had been right about Mr Gibson; and was equally sure that she was now right about Brooke Burgess. Priscilla had in her mind an idea that if B. B., as they called him, was half as good as her sister represented him to be — for indeed Dorothy endowed him with every virtue consistent with humanity — he would not be deterred from his pursuit either by Dolly’s letter or by Aunt Stanbury’s commands. But of this she thought it wise to say nothing. She paid Dolly the warm and hitherto unaccustomed compliment of equality, assuming to regard her sister’s judgment and persistent independence to be equally strong with her own; and, as she knew well, she could not have gone further than this. ‘I never shall agree with you about Aunt Stanbury,’ she said. ‘To me she seems to be so imperious, so exacting, and also so unjust, as to be unbearable.’
‘But she is affectionate,’ said Dolly.
‘So is the dog that bites you, and, for aught I know, the horse that kicks you. But it is ill living with biting dogs and kicking horses. But all that matters little as you are still your own mistress. How strange these nine months have been, with you in Exeter, while we have been at the Clock House. And here we are, together again in the old way, just as though nothing had happened.’ But Dorothy knew well that a great deal had happened, and that her life could never be as it had been heretofore. The very tone in which her sister spoke to her was proof of this. She had an infinitely greater possession in herself than had belonged to her before her residence at Exeter; but that possession was so heavily mortgaged and so burthened as to make her believe that the change was to be regretted.
At the end of the first week there came a letter from Aunt Stanbury to Dorothy. It began by saying that Dolly had left behind her certain small properties which had now been made up in a parcel and sent by the railway, carriage paid. ‘But they weren’t mine at all,’ said Dolly, alluding to certain books in which she had taken delight.’ She means to give them to you,’ said Priscilla, ‘and I think you must take them.’ ‘And the shawl is no more mine than it is yours, though I wore it two or three times in the winter.’ Priscilla was of opinion that the shawl must be taken also. Then the letter spoke of the writer’s health, and at last fell into such a strain of confidential gossip that Mrs Stanbury, when she read it, could not understand that there had been a quarrel. ‘Martha says that she saw Camilla French in the street today, such a guy in her new finery as never was seen before except on May-day.’ Then in the postscript Dorothy was enjoined to answer this letter quickly. ‘None of your short scraps, my dear,’ said Aunt Stanbury.
‘She must mean you to go back to her,’ said Mrs Stanbury.
‘No doubt she does,’ said Priscilla; ‘but Dolly need not go because my aunt means it. We are not her creatures.’
But Dorothy answered her aunt’s letter in the spirit in which it had been written. She asked after her aunt’s health, thanked her aunt for the gift of the books in each of which her name had been clearly written, protested about the shawl, sent her love to Martha and her kind regards to Jane, and expressed a hope that C. F. enjoyed her new clothes. She described the cottage, and was funny about the cabbage stumps in the garden, and at last succeeded in concocting a long epistle. ‘I suppose there will he a regular correspondence,’ said Priscilla.
Two days afterwards, however, the correspondence took altogether another form. The cottage in which they now lived was supposed to be beyond the beat of the wooden-legged postman, and therefore it was necessary that they should call at the post-office for their letters. On the morning in question Priscilla obtained a thick letter from Exeter for her mother, and knew that it had come from her aunt. Her aunt could hardly have found it necessary to correspond with Dorothy’s mother so soon after that letter to Dorothy had been written had there not arisen some very peculiar cause. Priscilla, after much meditation, thought it better that the letter should be opened in Dorothy’s absence, and in Dorothy’s absence the following letter was read both by Priscilla and her mother.
‘The Close, March 19, 186-.
DEAR SISTER STANBURY,
After much consideration, I think it best to send under cover to you the enclosed letter from Mr Brooke Burgess, intended for your daughter Dorothy. You will see that I have opened it and read it as I was clearly entitled to do, the letter having been addressed to my niece while she was supposed to be under my care. I do not like to destroy the letter, though, perhaps, that would be best; but I would advise you to do so, if it be possible, without shewing it to Dorothy. I have told Mr Brooke Burgess what I have done.
I have also told him that I cannot sanction a marriage between him and your daughter. There are many reasons of old date, not to speak of present reasons, also, which would make such a marriage highly inexpedient. Mr Brooke Burgess is, of course, his own master, but your daughter understands completely how the matter stands.
Yours truly,
JEMIMA STANBURY.’
‘What a wicked old woman!’ said Priscilla. Then there arose a question whether they should read Brooke’s letter, or whether they should give it unread to Dorothy. Priscilla denounced her aunt in the strongest language she could use for having broken the seal. “Clearly entitled,” because Dorothy had been living with her!’ exclaimed Priscilla. ‘She can have no proper conception of honour or of honesty. She had no more right to open Dorothy’s letter than she had to take her money.’ Mrs Stanbury was very, anxious to read Brooke’s letter, alleging that they would then be able to judge whether it should be handed over to Dorothy. But Priscilla’s sense of right would not admit of this. Dorothy must receive the letter from her lover with no further stain from unauthorised eyes than that to which it had been already subjected. She was called in, therefore, from the kitchen, and the whole packet was given to her. ‘Your aunt has read the enclosure, Dolly; but we have not opened it.’
Dorothy took the packet without a word and sat herself down. She first read her aunt’s letter very slowly. ‘I understand perfectly,’ she said, folding it up, almost listlessly, while Brooke’s letter lay still unopened on her lap. Then she took it up, and held it awhile in both hands, while her mother and Priscilla watched her. ‘Priscilla,’ she said, ‘do you read it first.’
Priscilla was immediately at her side, kissing her. ‘No, my darling; no,’ she said; ‘it is for you to read it.’ Then Dorothy took the precious contents from the envelope, and opened the folds of the paper. When she had read a dozen words, her eyes were so suffused with tears, that she could hardly make herself mistress of the contents of the letter; but she knew that it contained renewed assurances of her lover’s love, and assurance on his part that he would take no refusal from her based on any other ground than that of her own indifference to him. He had written to Miss Stanbury to the same effect; but he had not thought it necessary to explain this to Dorothy; nor did Miss Stanbury in her letter tell them that she had received any communication from him.‘shall I read it now?’ said Priscilla, as soon as Dorothy again allowed the letter to fall into her lap.
Both Priscilla and Mrs Stanbury read it, and for awhile they sat with the two letters among them without much speech about them. Mrs Stanbury was endeavouring to make herself believe that her sister-inlaw’s opposition might be overcome, and that then Dorothy might be married. Priscilla was inquiring of herself whether it would be well that Dorothy should defy her aunt so much, at any rate, and marry the man, even to his deprivation of the old woman’s fortune. Priscilla had her doubts about this, being very strong in her ideas of self-denial. That her sister should put up with the bitterest disappointment rather than injure the man she loved was right but then it would also be so extremely right to defy Aunt Stanbury to her teeth! But Dorothy, in whose character was mixed with her mother’s softness much of the old Stanbury strength, had no doubt in her mind. It was very sweet to be so loved. What gratitude did she not owe to a man who was so true to her! What was she that she should stand in his way? To lay herself down that she might be crushed in his path was no more than she owed to him. Mrs Stanbury was the first to speak.
‘I suppose he is a very good young man,’ she said.
‘I am sure he is a noble, true-hearted man,’ said Priscilla.
‘And why shouldn’t he marry whom he pleases, as long as she is respectable?’ said Mrs Stanbury.
‘In some people’s eyes poverty is more disreputable than vice,’ said Priscilla.
‘Your aunt has been so fond of Dorothy,’ pleaded Mrs Stanbury.
‘Just as she is of her servants,’ said Priscilla.
But Dorothy said nothing. Her heart was too full to enable her to defend her aunt; nor at the present moment was she strong enough to make her mother understand that no hope was to be entertained. In the course of the day she walked out with her sister on the road towards Ridleigh, and there, standing among the rocks and ferns, looking down upon the river, with the buzz of the little mill within her ears, she explained the feelings of her heart and her many thoughts with a flow of words stronger, as Priscilla thought, than she had ever used before.
‘It is not what he would suffer now, Pris, or what he would feel, but what he would feel ten, twenty years hence, when he would know that his children would have been all provided for, had, he not lost his fortune by marrying me.’
‘He must be the only judge whether he prefers you to the old woman’s money,’ said Priscilla.
‘No, dear; not the only judge. And it isn’t that, Pris, not which he likes best now, but which it is best for him that he should have. What could I do for him?’
‘You can love him.’
‘Yes I can do that.’ And Dorothy paused a moment, to think how exceedingly well she could do that one thing. ‘But what is that? As you said the other day, a dog can do that. I am not clever. I can’t play, or talk French, or do things that men like their wives to do. And I have lived here all my life; and what am I, that for me he should lose a great fortune?’
‘That is his look out.’
‘No, dearest, it is mine, and I will look out. I shall be able, at any rate, to remember always that I have loved him, and have not injured him. He may be angry with me now,’ and there was a feeling of pride at her heart, as she thought that he would be angry with her, because she did not go to him ‘but he will know at last that I have been as good to him as I knew how to be.’
Then Priscilla wound her arms round Dorothy, and kissed her. ‘My sister,’ she said; ‘my own sister!’ They walked on further, discussing the matter in all its bearings, talking of the act of self-denial which Dorothy was called on to perform, as though it were some abstract thing, the performance of which was, or perhaps was not, imperatively demanded by the laws which should govern humanity; but with no idea on the mind of either of them that there was any longer a doubt as to this special matter in hand. They were away from home over three hours; and, when they returned, Dorothy at once wrote her two letters. They were very simple, and very short. She told Brooke, whom she now addressed as ‘Dear Mr Burgess,’ that it could not be as he would have it; and she told her aunt with some terse independence of expression, which Miss Stanbury quite understood, that she had considered the matter, and had thought it right to refuse Mr Burgess’s offer.
‘Don’t you think she is very much changed?’ said Mrs Stanbury to her eldest daughter.
‘Not changed in the least, mother; but the sun has opened the bud, and now we see the fruit.’
It had now come to pass that Trevelyan had not a friend in the world to whom he could apply in the matter of his wife and family. In the last communication which he had received from Lady Milborough she had scolded him, in terms that were for her severe, because he had not returned to his wife and taken her off with him to Naples. Mr Bideawhile had found himself obliged to decline to move in the matter at all. With Hugh Stanbury, Trevelyan had had a direct quarrel. Mr and Mrs Outhouse he regarded as bitter enemies, who had taken the part of his wife without any regard to the decencies of life. And now it had come to pass that his sole remaining ally, Mr Samuel Bozzle, the ex-policeman, was becoming weary of his service. Trevelyan remained in the north of Italy up to the middle of March, spending a fortune in sending telegrams to Bozzle, instigating Bozzle by all the means in his power to obtain possession of the child, desiring him at one time to pounce down upon the parsonage of St. Diddulph’s with a battalion of policemen armed to the teeth with the law’s authority, and at another time suggesting to him to find his way by stratagem into Mr Outhouse’s castle and carry off the child in his arms. At last he sent word to say that he himself would be in England before the end of March, and would see that the majesty of the law should be vindicated in his favour.
Bozzle had in truth made but one personal application for the child at St. Diddulph’s. In making this he had expected no success, though, from the energetic nature of his disposition, he had made the attempt with some zeal. But he had never applied again at the parsonage, disregarding the letters, the telegrams, and even the promises which had come to him from his employer with such frequency. The truth was that Mrs Bozzle was opposed to the proposed separation of the mother and the child, and that Bozzle was a man who listened to the words of his wife. Mrs Bozzle was quite prepared to admit that Madame T. as Mrs Trevelyan had come to be called at No. 55, Stony Walk was no better than she should be. Mrs Bozzle was disposed to think that ladies of quality, among whom Madame T. was entitled in her estimation to take rank, were seldom better than they ought to be, and she was quite willing that her husband should earn his bread by watching the lady or the lady’s lover. She had participated in Bozzle’s triumph when he had discovered that the Colonel had gone to Devonshire, and again when he had learned that the Lothario had been at St. Diddulph’s. And had the case been brought before the judge ordinary by means of her husband’s exertions, she would have taken pleasure in reading every word of the evidence, even though her husband should have been ever so roughly handled by the lawyers. But now, when a demand was made upon Bozzle to violate the sanctity of the clergyman’s house, and withdraw the child by force or stratagem, she began to perceive that the palmy days of the Trevelyan affair were over for them, and that it would be wise on her husband’s part gradually to back out of the gentleman’s employment. ‘Just put it on the fire-back, Bozzle,’ she said one morning, as her husband stood before her reading for the second time a somewhat lengthy epistle which had reached him from Italy, while he held the baby over his shoulder with his left arm. He had just washed himself at the sink, and though his face was clean, his hair was rough, and his shirt sleeves were tucked up.
‘That’s all very well, Maryanne; but when a party has took a gent’s money, a party is bound to go through with the job.’
‘Gammon, Bozzle.’
‘It’s all very well to say gammon; but his money has been took and there’s more to come.’
‘And ain’t you worked for the money down to Hexeter one time, across the water pretty well day and night watching that ere clergyman’s ’ouse like a cat? What more’d he have? As to the child, I won’t hear of it, B. The child shan’t come here. We’d all be shewed up in the papers as that black, that they’d hoot us along the streets. It ain’t the regular line of business, Bozzle; and there ain’t no good to be got, never, by going off the regular line.’ Whereupon Bozzle scratched his head and again read the letter. A distinct promise of a hundred pounds was made to him, if he would have the child ready to hand over to Trevelyan on Trevelyan’s arrival in England.
‘It ain’t to be done, you know,’ said Bozzle.
‘Of course it ain’t,’ said Mrs Bozzle.
‘It ain’t to be done, anyways, not in my way of business. Why didn’t he go to Skint, as I told him, when his own lawyer was too dainty for the job? The paternal parent has a right to his hinfants, no doubt.’ That was Bozzle’s law.
‘I don’t believe it, B.’
‘But he have, I tell you.’
‘He can’t suckle ’em can he? I don’t believe a bit of his rights.’
‘When a married woman has followers, and the husband don’t go the wrong side of the post too, or it ain’t proved again him that he do, they’ll never let her have nothing to do with the children. It’s been before the court a hundred times. He’ll get the child fast enough if he’ll go before the court.’
‘Anyways it ain’t your business, Bozzle, and don’t you meddle nor make. The money’s good money as long as it’s honest earned; but when you come to rampaging and breaking into a gent’s house, then I say money may be had a deal too hard.’ In this special letter, which had now come to hand, Bozzle was not instructed to ‘rampage.’ He was simply desired to make a further official requisition for the boy at the parsonage, and to explain to Mr Outhouse, Mrs Outhouse, and Mrs Trevelyan, or to as many of them as he could contrive to see, that Mr Trevelyan was immediately about to return to London, and that he would put the law into execution if his son were not given up to him at once. ‘I’ll tell you what it is, B.,’ exclaimed Mrs Bozzle, ‘it’s my belief as he ain’t quite right up here;’ and Mrs Bozzle touched her forehead.
‘It’s love for her as has done it then,’ said Bozzle, shaking his head.
‘I’m not a taking of her part, B. A woman as has a husband as finds her with her wittels regular, and with what’s decent and comfortable beside, ought to be contented. I’ve never said no other than that. I ain’t no patience with your saucy madames as can’t remember as they’re eating an honest man’s bread. Drat ’em all; what is it they wants? They don’t know what they wants. It’s just hidleness cause there ain’t a ha’porth for ’em to do. It’s that as makes ’em, I won’t say what. But as for this here child, B . . . .’ At that moment there came a knock at the door. Mrs Bozzle going into the passage, opened it herself, and saw a strange gentleman. Bozzle, who had stood at the inner door, saw that the gentleman was Mr Trevelyan.
The letter, which was still in the ex-policeman’s hand, had reached Stony Walk on the previous day; but the master of the house had been absent, finding out facts, following up his profession, and earning an honest penny. Trevelyan had followed his letter quicker than he had intended when it was written, and was now with his prime minister, before his prime minister had been able to take any action on the last instruction received. ‘Does one Mr Samuel Bozzle live here?’ asked Trevelyan. Then Bozzle came forward and introduced his wife. There was no one else present except the baby, and Bozzle intimated that let matters be as delicate as they might, they could be discussed with perfect security in his wife’s presence. But Trevelyan was of a different opinion, and he was disgusted and revolted most unreasonably by the appearance of his minister’s domestic arrangements. Bozzle had always waited upon him with a decent coat, and a well-brushed hat, and clean shoes. It is very much easier for such men as Mr Bozzle to carry decency of appearance about with them than to keep it at home. Trevelyan had never believed his ally to be more than an ordinary ex-policeman, but he had not considered how unattractive might be the interior of a private detective’s private residence. Mrs Bozzle had set a chair for him, but he had declined to sit down. The room was dirty, and very close as though no breath of air was ever allowed to find entrance there. ‘Perhaps you could put on your coat, and walk out with me for a few minutes,’ said Trevelyan. Mrs Bozzle, who well understood that business was business, and that wives were not business, felt no anger at this, and handed her husband his best coat. The well-brushed hat was fetched from a cupboard, and it was astonishing to see how easily and how quickly the outer respectability of Bozzle was restored.
‘Well?’ said Trevelyan, as soon as they were together in the middle of Stony Walk.
‘There hasn’t been nothing to be done, sir,’ said Bozzle.
‘Why not?’ Trevelyan could perceive at once that the authority which he had once respected had gone from the man. Bozzle away from his own home, out on business, with his coat buttoned over his breast, and his best hat in his hand, was aware that he commanded respect and he could carry himself accordingly. He knew himself to be somebody, and could be easy, self-confident, confidential, severe, authoritative, or even arrogant, as the circumstances of the moment might demand. But he had been found with his coat off, and a baby in his arms, and he could not recover himself. ‘I do not suppose that anybody will question my right to have the care of my own child,’ said Trevelyan.
‘If you would have gone to Mr Skint, sir,’ suggested Bozzle. ‘There ain’t no smarter gent in all the profession, sir, than Mr Skint.’
Mr Trevelyan made no reply to this, but walked on in silence, with his minister at his elbow. He was very wretched, understanding well the degradation to which he was subjecting himself in discussing his wife’s conduct with this man; but with whom else could he discuss it? The man seemed to be meaner now than he had been before he had been seen in his own home. And Trevelyan was conscious too that he himself was not in outward appearance as he used to be, that he was ill-dressed, and haggard, and worn, and visibly a wretched being. How can any man care to dress himself with attention who is always alone, and always miserable when alone? During the months which had passed over him since he had sent his wife away from him, his very nature had been altered, and he himself was aware of the change. As he went about, his eyes were ever cast downwards, and he walked with a quick shuffling gait, and he suspected others, feeling that he himself was suspected. And all work had ceased with him. Since she had left him he had not read a single book that was worth the reading. And he knew it all. He was conscious that he was becoming disgraced and degraded. He would sooner have shot himself than have walked into his club, or even have allowed himself to be seen by daylight in Pall Mall, or Piccadilly. He had taken in his misery to drinking little drops of brandy in the morning, although he knew well that there was no shorter road to the devil than that opened by such a habit. He looked up for a moment at Bozzle, and then asked him a question. ‘Where is he now?’
‘You mean the Colonel, sir. He up in town, sir, a minding of his parliamentary duties. He have been up all this month, sir.’
‘They haven’t met?’
Bozzle paused a moment before he replied, and then smiled as he spoke. ‘It is so hard, to say, sir. Ladies is so cute and cunning. I’ve watched as sharp as watching can go, pretty near. I’ve put a youngster on at each bend, and both of ’em’d hear a mouse stirring in his sleep. I ain’t got no evidence, Mr Trevelyan. But if you ask me my opinion, why in course they’ve been together somewhere. It stands to reason, Mr Trevelyan; don’t it?’ And Bozzle as he said this smiled almost aloud.
‘D n and b t it all for ever!’ said Trevelyan, gnashing his teeth, and moving away into Union Street as fast as he could walk. And he did go away, leaving Bozzle standing in the middle of Stony Walk.
‘He’s disturbed in his mind quite ‘orrid,’ Bozzle said when he got back to his wife. ‘He cursed and swore as made even me feel bad.’
‘B.,’ said is wife, ‘do you listen to me. Get in what’s a howing and don’t you have any more to do with it.’
Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley were to reach England about the end of March or the beginning of April, and both Mrs Trevelyan and Nora Rowley were almost sick for their arrival. Both their uncle and aunt had done very much for them, had been true to them in their need, and had submitted to endless discomforts in order that their nieces might have respectable shelter in their great need; but nevertheless their conduct had not been of a kind to produce either love or friendship. Each of the sisters felt that she had been much better off at Nuncombe Putney; and that either the weakness of Mrs Stanbury, or the hardness of Priscilla, was preferable to the repulsive forbearance of their clerical host. He did not scold them. He never threw it in Mrs Trevelyan’s teeth that she had been separated from her husband by her own fault; he did not tell them of his own discomfort. But he showed it in every gesture, and spoke of it in every tone of his voice, so that Mrs Trevelyan could not refrain from apologising for the misfortune of her presence.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘things can’t be pleasant and unpleasant at the same time. You were quite right to come here. I am glad for all our sakes that Sir Marmaduke will be with us so soon.’
She had almost given up in her mind the hope that she had long cherished, that she might some day be able to live again with her husband. Every step which he now took in reference to her seemed to be prompted by so bitter an hostility, that she could not but believe that she was hateful to him. How was it possible that a husband and his wife should again come together, when there had been between them such an emissary as a detective policeman? Mrs Trevelyan had gradually come to learn that Bozzle had been at Nuncombe Putney, watching her, and to be aware that she was still under the surveillance of his eye. For some months past now she had neither seen Colonel Osborne, nor heard from him. He had certainly by his folly done much to produce the ruin which had fallen upon her; but it never occurred to her to blame him. Indeed she did not know that he was liable to blame. Mr Outhouse always spoke of him with indignant scorn, and Nora had learned to think that much of their misery was due to his imprudence. But Mrs Trevelyan would not see this, and, not seeing it, was more widely separated from her husband than she would have been had she acknowledged that any excuse for his misconduct had been afforded by the vanity and folly of the other man.
Lady Rowley had written to have a furnished house taken for them from the first of April, and a house had been secured in Manchester Street. The situation in question is not one which is of itself very charming, nor is it supposed to be in a high degree fashionable; but Nora looked forward to her escape from St. Diddulph’s to Manchester Street as though Paradise were to be re-opened to her as soon as she should be there with her father and mother. She was quite clear now as to her course about Hugh Stanbury. She did not doubt that that she could so argue the matter as to get the consent of her father and mother. She felt herself to be altogether altered in her views of life, since experience had come upon her, first at Nuncombe Putney, and after that, much more heavily and seriously, at St. Diddulph’s. She looked back as though to a childish dream to the ideas which had prevailed with her when she had told herself, as she used to do so frequently, that she was unfit to be a poor man’s wife. Why should she be more unfit for such a position than another? Of course there were many thoughts in her mind, much of memory if nothing of regret, in regard to Mr Glascock and the splendour that had been offered to her. She had had her chance of being a rich man’s wife, and had rejected it — had rejected it twice, with her eyes open. Readers will say that if she loved Hugh Stanbury with all her heart, there could be nothing of regret in her reflections. But we are perhaps accustomed in judging for ourselves and of others to draw the lines too sharply, and to say that on this side lie vice, folly, heartlessness, and greed and on the other honour, love, truth, and wisdom, the good and the bad each in its own domain. But the good and the bad mix themselves so thoroughly in our thoughts, even in our aspirations, that we must look for excellence rather in overcoming evil than in freeing ourselves from its influence. There had been many moments of regret with Nora but none of remorse. At the very moment in which she had sent Mr Glascock away from her, and had felt that he had now been sent away for always, she had been full of regret. Since that there had been many hours in which she had thought of her own self-lesson, of that teaching by which she had striven to convince herself that she could never fitly become a poor man’s wife. But the upshot of it all was a healthy pride in what she had done, and a strong resolution that she would make shirts and hem towels for her husband if he required it. It had been given her to choose, and she had chosen. She had found herself unable to tell a man that she loved him when she did not love him and equally unable to conceal the love which she did feel. ‘If he wheeled a barrow of turnips about the street, I’d marry him tomorrow,’ she said to her sister one afternoon as they were sitting together in the room which ought to have been her uncle’s study.
‘If he wheeled a big barrow, you’d have to wheel a little one,’ said her sister.
‘Then I’d do it. I shouldn’t mind. There has been this advantage in St. Diddulph’s, that nothing can be triste, nothing dull, nothing ugly after it.’
‘It may be so with you, Nora, that is in imagination.’
‘What I mean is that living here has taught me much that I never could have learned in Curzon Street. I used to think myself such a fine young woman but, upon my word, I think myself a finer one now.’
‘I don’t quite know what you mean.’
‘I don’t quite know myself; but I nearly know. I do know this, that I’ve made up my own mind about what I mean to do.’
‘You’ll change it, dear, when mamma is here, and things are comfortable again. It’s my belief that Mr Glascock would come to you again tomorrow if you would let him.’ Mrs Trevelyan was, naturally, in complete ignorance of the experience of transatlantic excellence which Mr Glascock had encountered in Italy.
‘But I certainly should not let him. How would it be possible after what I wrote to Hugh?’
‘All that might pass away,’ said Mrs Trevelyan slowly, after a long pause.
‘All what might pass away? Have I not given him a distinct promise? Have I not told him that I loved him, and sworn that I would be true to him? Can that be made to pass away, even if one wished it?’
‘Of course it can. Nothing need be fixed for you till you have stood at the altar with a man and been made his wife. You may choose still. I can never choose again.’
‘I never will, at any rate,’ said Nora.
Then there was another pause. ‘It seems strange to me, Nora,’ said the elder sister, ‘that after what you have seen you should be so keen to be married to any one.’
‘What is a girl to do?’
‘Better drown herself than do as I have done. Only think what there is before me. What I have gone through is nothing to it. Of course I must go back to the Islands. Where else am I to live? Who else will take me?’
‘Come to us,’ said Nora.
‘Us, Nora! Who are the us? But in no way would that be possible. Papa will be here, perhaps, for six months.’ Nora thought it quite possible that she might have a home of her own before six months were passed, even though she might be wheeling the smaller barrow, but she would not say so. ‘And by that time everything must be decided.’
‘I suppose it must.’
‘Of course papa and mamma must go back,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
‘Papa might take a pension. He’s entitled to a pension now.’
‘He’ll never do that as long as he can have employment. They’ll go back, and I must go with them. Who else would take me in?’
‘I know who would take you in, Emily.’
‘My darling, that is romance. As for myself, I should not care where I went. If it were even to remain here, I could bear it.’
‘I could not,’ said Nora, decisively.
‘It is so different with you, dear. I don’t suppose it is possible I should take my boy with me to the Islands; and how am I to go anywhere without him?’ Then she broke down, and fell into a paroxysm of sobs, and was in very truth a broken-hearted woman.
Nora was silent for some minutes, but at last she spoke. ‘Why do you not go back to him, Emily?’
‘How am I to go back to him? What am I to do to make him take me back?’ At this very moment Trevelyan was in the house, but they did not know it.
‘Write to him,’ said Nora.
‘What am I to say? In very truth I do believe that he is mad. If I write to him, should I defend myself or accuse myself? A dozen times I have striven to write such a letter, not that I might send it, but that I might find what I could say should I ever wish to send it. And it is impossible. I can only tell him how unjust he has been, how cruel, how mad, how wicked!’
‘Could you not say to him simply this? “Let us be together, wherever it may be; and let bygones be bygones.”’
‘While he is watching me with a policeman? While he is still thinking that I entertain a lover? While he believes that I am the base thing that he has dared to think me?’
‘He has never believed it.’
‘Then how can he be such a villain as to treat me like this? I could not go to him, Nora not unless I went to him as one who was known to be mad, over whom in his wretched condition it would be my duty to keep watch. In no other way could I overcome my abhorrence of the outrages to which he has subjected me.’
‘But for the child’s sake, Emily.’
‘Ah, yes! If it were simply to grovel in the dust before him it should be done. If humiliation would suffice, or any self-abasement that were possible to me! But I should be false if I said that I look forward to any such possibility. How can he wish to have me back again after what he has said and done? I am his wife, and he has disgraced me before all men by his own words. And what have I done, that I should not have done; what left undone on his behalf that I should have done? It is hard that the foolish workings of a weak man’s mind should be able so completely to ruin the prospects of a woman’s life!’
Nora was beginning to answer this by attempting to shew that the husband’s madness was, perhaps, only temporary, when there came a knock at the door, and Mrs Outhouse was at once in the room. It will be well that the reader should know what had taken place at the parsonage while the two sisters had been together upstairs, so that the nature of Mrs Outhouse’s mission to them may explain itself. Mr Outhouse had been in his closet downstairs, when the maid-servant brought word to him that Mr Trevelyan was in the parlour, and was desirous of seeing him.
‘Mr Trevelyan!’ said the unfortunate clergyman, holding up both his hands. The servant understood the tragic importance of the occasion quite as well as did her master, and simply shook her head. ‘Has your mistress seen him?’ said the master. The girl again shook her head. ‘Ask your mistress to come to me,’ said the clergyman. Then the girl disappeared; and in a few minutes Mrs Outhouse, equally imbued with the tragic elements of the day, was with her husband.
Mr Outhouse began by declaring that no consideration should induce him to see Trevelyan, and commissioned his wife to go to the man and tell him that he must leave the house. When the unfortunate woman expressed an opinion that Trevelyan had some legal rights upon which he might probably insist, Mr Outhouse asserted roundly that he could have no legal right to remain in that parsonage against the will of the rector. ‘If he wants to claim his wife and child, he must do it by law not by force; and thank God, Sir Marmaduke will be here before he can do that.’ ‘But I can’t make him go,’ said Mrs Outhouse. ‘Tell him that you’ll send for a policeman,’ said the clergyman.
It had come to pass that there had been messages backwards and forwards between the visitor and the master of the house, all carried by that unfortunate lady.
Trevelyan did not demand that his wife and child should be given up to him, did not even, on this occasion, demand that his boy should be surrendered to him now, at once. He did say, very repeatedly, that of course he must have his boy, but seemed to imply that, under certain circumstances, he would be willing to take his wife to live with him again. This appeared to Mrs Outhouse to be so manifestly the one thing that was desirable, to be the only solution of the difficulty that could be admitted as a solution at all, that she went to work on that hint, and ventured to entertain a hope that a reconciliation might be effected. She implored her husband to lend a hand to the work, by which she intended to imply that he should not only see Trevelyan, but consent to meet the sinner on friendly terms. But Mr Outhouse was on the occasion ever more than customarily obstinate. His wife might do what she liked. He would neither meddle nor make. He would not willingly see Mr Trevelyan in his own house unless, indeed, Mr Trevelyan should attempt to force his way up into the nursery. Then he said that which left no doubt on his wife’s mind that, should any violence be attempted, her husband would manfully join the melee.
But it soon became evident that no such attempt was to be made on that day. Trevelyan was lachrymose, heartbroken, and a sight pitiable to behold. When Mrs Outhouse loudly asserted that his wife had not sinned against him in the least ‘not in a tittle, Mr Trevelyan,’ she repeated over and over again he began to assert himself, declaring that she had seen the man in Devonshire, and corresponded with him since she had been at St. Diddulph’s; and when the lady had declared that the latter assertion was untrue, he had shaken his head, and had told her that perhaps she did not know all. But the misery of the man had its effect upon her, and at last she proposed to be the bearer of a message to his wife. He had demanded to see his child, offering his promise that he would not attempt to take the boy by force on this occasion saying, also, that his claim by law was so good, that no force could be necessary. It was proposed by Mrs Outhouse that he should first see the mother, and to this he at last assented. How blessed a thing would it be if these two persons could be induced to forget the troubles of the last twelve months, and once more to love and trust each other! ‘But, sir,’ said Mrs Outhouse, putting her hand upon his arm ‘you must not upbraid her, for she will not bear it. ‘She knows nothing of what is due to a husband,’ said Trevelyan, gloomily. The task was not hopeful; but, nevertheless, the poor woman resolved to do her best.
And now Mrs Outhouse was in her niece’s room, asking her to go down and see her husband. Little Louis had at the time been with the nurse, and the very moment that the mother heard that the child’s father was in the house, she jumped up and rushed away to get possession of her treasure. ‘Has he come for baby?’ Nora asked in dismay. Then Mrs Outhouse, anxious to obtain a convert to her present views, boldly declared that Mr Trevelyan had no such intention. Mrs Trevelyan came back at once with the boy, and then listened to all her aunt’s arguments. ‘But I will not take baby with me,’ she said. At last it was decided that she should go down alone, and that the child should afterwards be taken to his father in the drawing-room; Mrs Outhouse pledging herself that the whole household should combine in her defence if Mr Trevelyan should attempt to take the child out of that room. ‘But what am I to say to him?’ she asked.
‘Say as little as possible,’ said Mrs Outhouse ‘except to make him understand that he has been in error in imputing fault to you.’
‘He will never understand that,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
A considerable time elapsed after that before she could bring herself to descend the stairs. Now that her husband was so near her, and that her aunt had assured her that she might reinstate herself in her position, if she could only abstain from saying hard words to him, she wished that he was away from her again, in Italy. She knew that she could not refrain from hard words.
How was it possible that she should vindicate her own honour, without asserting with all her strength that she had been ill-used; and, to speak truth on the matter, her love for the man, which had once been true and eager, had been quelled by the treatment she had received. She had clung to her love in some shape, in spite of the accusations made against her, till she had heard that the policeman had been set upon her heels. Could it be possible that any woman should love a man, or at least that any wife should love a husband, after such usage as that? At last she crept gently down the stairs, and stood at the parlour-door. She listened, and could hear his steps, as he paced backwards and forwards through the room. She looked back, and could see the face of the servant peering round from the kitchen-stairs. She could not endure to be watched in her misery, and, thus driven, she opened the parlour-door.’ ‘Louis,’ she said, walking into the room, ‘Aunt Mary has desired me to come to you.’
‘Emily!’ he exclaimed, and ran to her and embraced her. She did not seek to stop him, but she did not return the kiss which he gave her. Then he held her by her hands, and looked into her face, and she could see how strangely he was altered. She thought that she would hardly have known him, had she not been sure that it was he. She herself was also changed. Who can bear sorrow without such change, till age has fixed the lines of the face, or till care has made them hard and unmalleable? But the effect on her was as nothing to that which grief, remorse, and desolation had made on him. He had had no child with him, no sister, no friend. Bozzle had been his only refuge, a refuge not adapted to make life easier to such a man as Trevelyan; and he, in spite of the accusations made by himself against his wife, within his own breast hourly since he had left her had found it to be very difficult to satisfy his own conscience. He told himself from hour to hour that he knew that he was right, but in very truth he was ever doubting his own conduct.
‘You have been ill, Louis,’ she said, looking at him.
‘Ill at ease, Emily, very ill at ease! A sore heart will make the face thin, as well as fever or ague. Since we parted I have not had much to comfort me.’
‘Nor have I, nor any of us,’ said she. ‘How was comfort to come from such a parting?’
Then they both stood silent together. He was still holding her by the hand, but she was careful not to return his pressure. She would not take her hand away from him; but she would show him no sign of softness till he should have absolutely acquitted her of the accusation he had made against her. ‘We are man and wife,’ he said after awhile. ‘In spite of all that has come and gone, I am yours, and you are mine.’
‘You should have remembered that always, Louis.’
‘I have never forgotten it, never. In no thought have I been untrue to you. My heart has never changed since first I gave it you.’ There came a bitter frown upon her face, of which she was so conscious herself, that she turned her face away from him. She still remembered her lesson, that she was not to anger him, and, therefore, she refrained from answering him at all.
But the answer was there, hot within her bosom. Had he loved her and yet suspected that she was false to him and to her vows, simply because she had been on terms of intimacy with an old friend? Had he loved her, and yet turned her from his house? Had he loved her and set a policeman to watch her? Had he loved her, and yet spoken evil of her to all their friends? Had he loved her, and yet striven to rob her of her child? ‘Will you come to me?’ he said.
‘I suppose it will be better so,’ she answered slowly.
‘Then you will promise me —’ He paused, and attempted to turn her towards him, so that he might look her in the face.
‘Promise what?’ she said, quickly glancing round at him, and drawing her hand away from him as she did so.
‘That all intercourse with Colonel Osborne shall be at an end.’
‘I will make no promise. You come to me to add one insult to another. Had you been a man, you would not have named him to me after what you have done to me.’
‘That is absurd. I have a right to demand from you such a pledge. I am willing to believe that you have not —’
‘Have not what?’
‘That you have not utterly disgraced me.’
‘God in heaven, that I should hear this!’ she exclaimed. ‘Louis Trevelyan, I have not disgraced you at all in thought, in word, in deed, in look, or in gesture. It is you that have disgraced yourself, and ruined me, and degraded even your own child.’
‘Is this the way in which you welcome me?’
‘Certainly it is in this way and in no other if you speak to me of what is past, without acknowledging your error.’ Her brow became blacker and blacker as she continued to speak to him. ‘It would be best that nothing should be said, not a word. That it all should be regarded as an ugly dream. But, when you come to me and at once go back to it all, and ask me for a promise’
‘Am I to understand then that all idea of submission to your husband is to be at an end?’
‘I will submit to no imputation on my honour even from you. One would have thought that it would have been for you to preserve it untarnished.’
‘And you will give me no assurance as to your future life?’
‘None, certainly none. If you want promises from me, there can be no hope for the future. What am I to promise? That I will not have a lover? What respect can I enjoy as your wife if such a promise be needed? If you should choose to fancy that it had been broken you would set your policeman to watch me again! Louis, we can never live together again, ever, with comfort, unless you acknowledge in your own heart that you have used me shamefully.’
‘Were you right to see him in Devonshire?’
‘Of course I was right. Why should I not see him or any one?’
‘And you will see him again?’
‘When papa comes, of course I shall see him.’
‘Then it is hopeless,’ said he, turning away from her.
‘If that man is to be a source of disquiet to you, it is hopeless,’ she answered. ‘If you cannot so school yourself that he shall be the same to you as other men, it is quite hopeless. You must still be mad as you have been mad hitherto.’
He walked about the room restlessly for a time, while she stood with assumed composure near the window.‘send me my child,’ he said at last.
‘He shall come to you, Louis for a little; but he is not to be taken out from hence. Is that a promise?’
‘You are to exact promises from me, where my own rights are concerned, while you refuse to give me any, though I am entitled to demand them! I order you to send the boy to me. Is he not my own?’
‘Is he not mine too? And is he not all that you have left to me?’
He paused again, and then gave the promise. ‘Let him be brought to me. He shall not be removed now. I intend to have him. I tell you so fairly. He shall be taken from you unless you come back to me with such assurances as to your future conduct as I have a right to demand. There is much that the law cannot give me. It cannot procure wife-like submission, love, gratitude, or even decent matronly conduct. But that which it can give me, I will have.’
She walked off to the door, and then as she was quitting the room she spoke to him once again. ‘Alas, Louis,’ she said, ‘neither can the law, nor medicine, nor religion, restore to you that fine intellect which foolish suspicions have destroyed.’ Then she left him and returned to the room in which her aunt, and Nora, and the child were all clustered together, waiting to learn the effects of the interview. The two women asked their questions with their eyes, rather than with spoken words. ‘It is all over,’ said Mrs Trevelyan. ‘There is nothing left for me but to go back to papa. I only hear the same accusations, repeated again and again, and make myself subject to the old insults.’ Then Mrs Outhouse knew that she could interfere no further, and that in truth nothing could be done till the return of Sir Marmaduke should relieve her and her husband from all further active concern in the matter.
But Trevelyan was still down-stairs waiting for the child. At last it was arranged that Nora should take the boy into the drawing-room, and that Mrs Outhouse should fetch the father up from the parlour to the room above it. Angry as was Mrs Trevelyan with her husband, not the less was she anxious to make the boy good-looking and seemly in his father’s eyes. She washed the child’s face, put on him a clean frill and a pretty ribbon; and, as she did so, she bade him kiss his papa, and speak nicely to him, and love him. ‘Poor papa is unhappy,’ she said, ‘and Louey must be very good to him.’ The boy, child though he was, understood much more of what was passing around him than his mother knew. How was he to love papa when mamma did not do so? In some shape that idea had framed itself in his mind; and, as he was taken down, he knew it was impossible that he should speak nicely to his papa. Nora did as she was bidden, and went down to the first-floor. Mrs Outhouse, promising that even if she were put out of the room by Mr Trevelyan she would not stir from the landing outside the door, descended to the parlour and quickly returned with the unfortunate father. Mr Outhouse, in the meantime, was still sitting in his closet, tormented with curiosity, but yet determined not to be seen till the intruder should have left his house.
‘I hope you are well, Nora,’ he said, as he entered the room with Mrs Outhouse.
‘Quite well, thank you, Louis.’
‘I am sorry that our troubles should have deprived you of the home you had been taught to expect.’ To this Nora made no reply, but escaped, and went up to her sister. ‘My poor little boy,’ said Trevelyan, taking the child and placing it on his knee. ‘I suppose you have forgotten your unfortunate father.’ The child, of course, said nothing, but just allowed himself to be kissed.
‘He is looking very well,’ said Mrs Outhouse.
‘Is he? I dare say he is well. Louey, my boy, are you happy?’ The question was asked in a voice that was dismal beyond compare, and it also remained unanswered. He had been desired to speak nicely to his papa; but how was it possible that a child should speak nicely under such a load of melancholy? ‘He will not speak to me,’ said Trevelyan. ‘I suppose it is what I might have expected.’ Then the child was put off his knee on to the floor, and began to whimper. ‘A few months since he would sit there for hours, with his head upon my breast,’ said Trevelyan.
‘A few months is a long time in the life of such an infant,’ said Mrs Outhouse.
‘He may go away,’ said Trevelyan. Then the child was led out of the room, and sent up to his mother.
‘Emily has done all she can to make the child love your memory,’ said Mrs Outhouse.
‘To love my memory! What, as though I were dead. I will teach him to love me as I am, Mrs Outhouse. I do not think that it is too late. Will you tell your husband from me, with my compliments, that I shall cause him to be served with a legal demand for the restitution of my child?’
‘But Sir Marmaduke will be here in a few days.’
‘I know nothing of that. Sir Marmaduke is nothing to me now. My child is my own and so is my wife. Sir Marmaduke has no authority over either one or the other. I find my child here, and it is here that I must look for him. I am sorry that you should be troubled, but the fault does not rest with me. Mr Outhouse has refused to give me up my own child, and I am driven to take such steps for his recovery as the law has put within my reach.’
‘Why did you turn your wife out of doors, Mr Trevelyan?’ asked Mrs Outhouse boldly.
‘I did not turn her out of doors. I provided a fitting shelter for her. I gave her everything that she could want. You know what happened. That man went down and was received there. I defy you, Mrs Outhouse, to say that it was my fault.’
Mrs Outhouse did attempt to show him that it was his fault; but while she was doing so he left the house. ‘I don’t think she could go back to him,’ said Mrs Outhouse to her husband. ‘He is quite insane upon this matter.’
‘I shall be insane, I know,’ said Mr Outhouse, ‘if Sir Marmaduke does not come home very quickly.’ Nevertheless he quite ignored any legal power that might be brought to bear against him as to the restitution of the child to its father.
Within a week of the occurrence which is related in the last chapter, there came a telegram from Southampton to the parsonage at St. Diddulph’s, saying that Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley had reached England. On the evening of that day they were to lodge at a small family hotel in Baker Street, and both Mrs Trevelyan and Nora were to be with them. The leave-taking at the parsonage was painful, as on both sides there existed a feeling that affection and sympathy were wanting. The uncle and aunt had done their duty, and both Mrs Trevelyan and Nora felt that they ought to have been demonstrative and cordial in their gratitude, but they found it impossible to become so. And the rector could not pretend but that he was glad to be rid of his guests. There were, too, some last words about money to be spoken, which were grievous thorns in the poor man’s flesh. Two bank notes, however, were put upon his table, and he knew that unless he took them he could not pay for the provisions which his unwelcome visitors had consumed. Surely there never was a man so cruelly ill-used as had been Mr Outhouse in all this matter. ‘Another such winter as that would put me in my grave,’ he said, when his wife tried to comfort him after they were gone. ‘I know that they have both been very good to us,’ said Mrs Trevelyan, as she and her sister, together with the child and the nurse, hurried away toward Baker Street in a cab, ‘but I have never for a moment felt that they were glad to have us.’ ‘But how could they have been glad to have us,’ she added afterwards, ‘when we brought such trouble with us?’ But they to whom they were going now would receive her with joy, would make her welcome with all her load of sorrows, would give to her a sympathy which it was impossible that she should receive from others. Though she might not be happy now, for in truth how could she be ever really happy again, there would be a joy to her in placing her child in her mother’s arms, and in receiving her father’s warm caresses. That her father would be very vehement in his anger against her husband she knew well, for Sir Marmaduke was a vehement man. But there would be some support for her in the very violence of his wrath, and at this moment it was such support that she most needed. As they journeyed together in the cab, the married sister seemed to be in the higher spirits of the two. She was sure, at any rate, that those to whom she was going would place themselves on her side. Nora had her own story to tell about Hugh Stanbury, and was by no means so sure that her tale would be received with cordial agreement. ‘Let me tell them myself,’ she whispered to her sister. ‘Not to-night, because they will have so much to say to you; but I shall tell mamma tomorrow.’
The train by which the Rowleys were to reach London was due at the station at 7.30 p.m., and the two sisters timed their despatch from St. Diddulph’s so as to enable them to reach the hotel at eight. ‘We shall be there now before mamma,’ said Nora, ‘because they will have so much luggage, and so many things, and the trains are always late.’ When they started from the door of the parsonage, Mr Outhouse gave the direction to the cabman, ‘Gregg’s Hotel, Baker Street.’ Then at once he began to console himself in that they were gone.
It was a long drive from St. Diddulph’s in the east, to Marylebone in the west, of London. None of the party in the cab knew anything of the region through which they passed. The cabman took the line by the back of the Bank, and Finsbury Square and the City Road, thinking it best, probably, to avoid the crush at Holborn Hill, though at the expense of something of a circuit. But of this Mrs Trevelyan and Nora knew nothing. Had their way taken them along Piccadilly, or through Mayfair, or across Grosvenor Square, they would have known where they were; but at present they were not thinking of those once much-loved localities. The cab passed the Angel, and up and down the hill at Pentonville, and by the King’s Cross stations, and through Euston Square and then it turned up Gower Street. Surely the man should have gone on along the New Road, now that he had come so far out of his way. But of this the two ladies knew nothing nor did the nurse. It was a dark, windy night, but the lamps in the streets had given them light, so that they had not noticed the night. Nor did they notice it now as the streets became narrower and darker. They were hardly thinking that their journey was yet at an end, and the mother was in the act of covering her boy’s face as he lay asleep on the nurse’s lap, when the cab was stopped. Nora looking out through the window, saw the word ‘Hotel’ over a doorway, and was satisfied.‘shall I take the child, ma’am?’ said a man in black, and the child was handed out. Nora was the first to follow, and she then perceived that the door of the hotel was not open. Mrs Trevelyan followed; and then they looked round them and the child was gone. They heard the rattle of another cab as it was carried away at a gallop round a distant corner and then some inkling of what had happened came upon them. The father had succeeded in getting possession of his child.
It was a narrow, dark street, very quiet, having about it a certain air of poor respectability an obscure, noiseless street, without even a sign of life. Some unfortunate one had endeavoured here to keep an hotel, but there was no hotel kept there now. There had been much craft in selecting the place in which the child had been taken from them. As they looked around them, perceiving the terrible misfortune which had befallen them, there was not a human being near them save the cabman, who was occupied in unchaining, or pretending to unchain the heavy mass of luggage on the roof. The windows of the house before which they were stopping, were closed, and Nora perceived at once that the hotel was not inhabited. The cabman must have perceived it also. As for the man who had taken the child, the nurse could only say that he was dressed in black, like a waiter, that he had a napkin under his arm, and no hat on his head. He had taken the boy tenderly in his arms and then she had seen nothing further. The first thing that Nora had seen, as she stood on the pavement, was the other cab moving off rapidly.
Mrs Trevelyan had staggered against the railings, and was soon screaming in her wretchedness. Before long there was a small crowd around them, comprising three or four women, a few boys, an old man or two and a policeman. To the policeman Nora had soon told the whole story, and the cabman was of course attacked. But the cabman played his part very well. He declared that he had done just what he had been told to do. Nora was indeed sure that she had heard her uncle desire him to drive to Gregg’s Hotel in Baker Street. The cabman in answer to this, declared that he had not clearly heard the old gentleman’s directions; but that a man whom he had conceived to be a servant, had very plainly told him to drive to Parker’s Hotel, Mowbray Street, Gower Street. ‘I comed ever so far out of my way,’ said the cabman, ‘to avoid the rumpus with the homnibuses at the hill cause the ladies things is so heavy we’d never got up if the ‘otherwise had once jibbed.’ All which, though it had nothing to do with the matter, seemed to impress the policeman with the idea that the cabman, if not a true man, was going to be too clever for them on this occasion. And the crafty cabman went on to declare that his horse was so tired with the road that he could not go on to Baker Street. They must get another cab. Take his number! Of course they could take his number. There was his number. His fare was four and six, that is, if the ladies wouldn’t pay him anything extra for the terrible load; and he meant to have it. It would be sixpence more if they kept him there many minutes longer. The number was taken, and another cab was got, and the luggage was transferred, and the money was paid, while the unhappy mother was still screaming in hysterics against the railings. What had been done was soon clear enough to all those around her. Nora had told the policeman, and had told one of the women, thinking to obtain their sympathy and assistance. ‘It’s the kid’s dada as has taken it,’ said one man, ‘and there ain’t nothing to be done.’ There was nothing to be done, nothing, at any rate, then and there.
Nora had been very eager that the cabman should be arrested; but the policeman assured her that such an arrest was out of the question, and would have been useless had it been possible. The man would be forthcoming if his presence should be again desired, but he had probably, so said the policeman, really been desired to drive to Mowbray Street. ‘They knows where to find me if they wants me, only I must be paid my time,’ said the cabman confidently. And the policeman was of opinion that as the boy had been kidnapped on behalf of the father, no legal steps could be taken either for the recovery of the child or for the punishment of the perpetrators of the act. He got up, however, on the box of the cab, and accompanied the party to the hotel in Baker Street. They reached it almost exactly at the same time with Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley, and the reader must imagine the confusion, the anguish, and the disappointment of that meeting. Mrs Trevelyan was hardly in possession of her senses when she reached her mother, and could not be induced to be tranquil even when she was assured by her father that her son would suffer no immediate evil by being transferred to his father’s hands. She in her frenzy declared that she would never see her little one again, and seemed to think that the father might not improbably destroy the child. ‘He is mad, papa, and does not know what he does. Do you mean to say that a madman may do as he pleases? that he may rob my child from me in the streets? that he may take him out of my very arms in that way?’ And she was almost angry with her father because no attempt was made that night to recover the boy.
Sir Marmaduke, who was not himself a good lawyer, had been closeted with the policeman for a quarter of an hour, and had learned the policeman’s views. Of course, the father of the child was the person who had done the deed. Whether the cabman had been in the plot or not, was not matter of much consequence. There could be no doubt that some one had told the man to go to Parker’s Hotel, as the cab was starting; and it would probably be impossible to punish him in the teeth of such instructions. Sir Marmaduke, however, could doubtless have the cabman summoned. And as for the absolute abduction of the child, the policeman was of opinion that a father could not be punished for obtaining possession of his son by such a stratagem, unless the custody of the child had been made over to the mother by some court of law. The policeman, indeed, seemed to think that nothing could be done, and Sir Marmaduke was inclined to agree with him. When this was explained to Mrs Trevelyan by her mother, she again became hysterical in her agony, and could hardly be restrained from going forth herself to look for her lost treasure.
It need hardly be further explained that Trevelyan had planned the stratagem in concert with Mr Bozzle. Bozzle, though strongly cautioned by his wife to keep himself out of danger in the matter, was sorely tempted by his employer’s offer of a hundred pounds. He positively refused to be a party to any attempt at violence at St. Diddulph’s; but when he learned, as he did learn, that Mrs Trevelyan, with her sister and baby, were to be transferred from St. Diddulph’s in a cab to Baker Street, and that the journey was luckily to be made during the shades of evening, his active mind went to work, and he arranged the plan. There were many difficulties, and even some pecuniary difficulty. He bargained that he should have his hundred pounds clear of all deduction for expenses, and then the attendant expenses were not insignificant. It was necessary that there should be four men in the service, all good and true; and men require to be well paid for such goodness and truth. There was the man, himself an ex-policeman, who gave the instructions to the first cabman, as he was starting. The cabman would not undertake the job at all unless he were so instructed on the spot, asserting that in this way he would be able to prove that the orders he obeyed came from the lady’s husband. And there was the crafty pseudo-waiter, with the napkin and no hat, who had carried the boy to the cab in which his father was sitting. And there were the two cabmen. Bozzle planned it all, and with some difficulty arranged the preliminaries. How successful was the scheme, we have seen; and Bozzle, for a month, was able to assume a superiority over his wife, which that honest woman found to be very disagreeable.
‘There ain’t no fraudulent abduction in it at all,’ Bozzle exclaimed, ‘because a wife ain’t got no rights again her husband, not in such a matter as that.’ Mrs Bozzle replied that if her husband were to take her child away from her without her leave, she’d let him know something about it. But as the husband had in his possession the note for a hundred pounds, realized, Mrs Bozzle had not much to say in support of her view of the case.
On the morning after the occurrence, while Sir Marmaduke was waiting with his solicitor upon a magistrate to find whether anything could be done, the following letter was brought to Mrs Trevelyan at Gregg’s Hotel:
‘Our child is safe with me, and will remain so. If you care to obtain legal advice you will find that I as his father have a right to keep him under my protection. I shall do so; but will allow you to see him as soon as I shall have received a full guarantee that you have no idea of withdrawing him from my charge.
‘A home for yourself with me is still open to you on condition that you will give me the promise that I have demanded from you; and as long as I shall not hear that you again see or communicate with the person to whose acquaintance I object. While, you remain away from me I will cause you to be paid 50 a month, as I do not wish that you should be a burden on others. But this payment will depend also on your not seeing or holding any communication with the person to whom I have alluded.
Your affectionate and offended husband,
Louis TREVELYAN.
A letter addressed to The Acrobats’ Club will reach me.’
Sir Rowley came home dispirited and unhappy, and could not give much comfort to his daughter. The magistrate had told him that though the cabman might probably be punished for taking the ladies otherwise than as directed, if the direction to Baker Street could be proved, nothing could be done to punish the father. The magistrate explained that under a certain Act of Parliament the mother might apply to the Court of Chancery for the custody of any children under seven years of age, and that the court would probably grant such custody unless it were shewn that the wife had left her husband without sufficient cause. The magistrate could not undertake to say whether or no sufficient cause had here been given or whether the husband was in fault or the wife. It was, however, clear that nothing could be done without application to the Court of Chancery. It appeared, so said the magistrate, that the husband had offered a home to his wife, and that in offering it he had attempted to impose no conditions which could be shewn to be cruel before a judge. The magistrate thought that Mr Trevelyan had done nothing illegal in taking the child from the cab. Sir Marmaduke, on hearing this, was of opinion that nothing could be gained by legal interference. His private desire was to get hold of Trevelyan and pull him limb from limb. Lady Rowley thought that her daughter had better go back to her husband, let the future consequences be what they might. And the poor desolate mother herself had almost brought herself to offer to do so, having in her brain some idea that she would after a while be able to escape with her boy. As for love for her husband, certainly there was none now left in her bosom. Nor could she teach herself to think it possible that she should ever live with him again on friendly terms. But she would submit to anything with the object of getting back her boy. Three or four letters were written to Mr Trevelyan in as many days from his wife, from Lady Rowley, and from Nora; in which various overtures were made. Trevelyan wrote once again to his wife. She knew, he said, already the terms on which she might come back. These terms were still open to her. As for the boy, he certainly should not leave his father. A meeting might be planned on condition that he, Trevelyan, were provided with a written assurance from his wife that she would not endeavour to remove the boy, and that he himself should be present at the meeting.
Thus the first week was passed after Sir Marmaduke’s return, and a most wretched time it was for all the party at Gregg’s Hotel.
Nothing could be more uncomfortable than the state of Sir Marmaduke Rowley’s family for the first ten days after the arrival in London of the Governor of the Mandarin Islands. Lady Rowley had brought with her two of her girls, the third and fourth, and, as we know, had been joined by the two eldest, so that there was a large family of ladies gathered together. A house had been taken in Manchester Street, to which they had intended to transfer themselves after a single night passed at Gregg’s Hotel. But the trouble and sorrow inflicted upon them by the abduction of Mrs Trevelyan’s child, and the consequent labours thrust upon Sir Marmaduke’s shoulders had been so heavy, that they had slept six nights at the hotel, before they were able to move themselves into the house prepared for them. By that time all idea had been abandoned of recovering the child by any legal means to be taken as a consequence of the illegality of the abduction. The boy was with his father, and the lawyers seemed to think that the father’s rights were paramount as he had offered a home to his wife without any conditions which a court of law would adjudge to be cruel. If she could shew that he had driven her to live apart from him by his own bad conduct, then probably the custody of her boy might be awarded to her, until the child should be seven years old. But when the circumstances of the case were explained to Sir Marmaduke’s lawyer by Lady Rowley, that gentleman shook his head. Mrs Trevelyan had, he said, no case with which she could go into court. Then by degrees there were words whispered as to the husband’s madness. The lawyer said that that was a matter for the doctors. If a certain amount of medical evidence could be obtained to show that the husband was in truth mad, the wife could, no doubt, obtain the custody of the child. When this was reported to Mrs Trevelyan, she declared that conduct such as her husband’s must suffice to prove any man to be mad; but at this Sir Marmaduke shook his head, and Lady Rowley sat, sadly silent, with her daughter’s hand within her own. They would not dare to tell her that she could regain her child by that plea.
During those ten days they did not learn whither the boy had been carried, nor did they know even where the father might be found. Sir Marmaduke followed up the address as given in the letter, and learned from the porter at ‘The Acrobats’ that the gentleman’s letters were sent to No. 65, Stony Walk, Union Street, Borough. To this uncomfortable locality Sir Marmaduke travelled more than once. Thrice he went thither, intent on finding his son-inlaw’s residence. On the two first occasions he saw no one but Mrs Bozzle; and the discretion of that lady in declining to give any information was most admirable. ‘Trewillian!’ Yes, she had heard the name certainly. It might be that her husband had business engagements with a gent of that name. She would not say even that for certain, as it was not her custom ever to make any inquiries as to her husband’s business engagements. Her husband’s business engagements were, she said, much too important for the ‘likes of she’ to know anything about them. When was Bozzle likely to be at home? Bozzle was never likely to be at home. According to her showing, Bozzle was of all husbands the most erratic. He might perhaps come in for an hour or two in the middle of the day on a Wednesday, or perhaps would take a cup of tea at home on Friday evening. But anything so fitful and uncertain as were Bozzle’s appearances in the bosom of his family was not to be conceived in the mind of woman. Sir Marmaduke then called in the middle of the day on Wednesday, but Bozzle was reported to be away in the provinces. His wife had no idea in which of the provinces he was at that moment engaged. The persevering governor from the islands called again on the Friday evening, and then, by chance, Bozzle was found at home. But Sir Marmaduke succeeded in gaining very little information even from Bozzle. The man acknowledged that he was employed by Mr Trevelyan. Any letter or parcel left with him for Mr Trevelyan should be duly sent to that gentleman. If Sir Marmaduke wanted Mr Trevelyan’s address, he could write to Mr Trevelyan and ask for it. If Mr Trevelyan declined to give it, was it likely that he, Bozzle, should betray it? Sir Marmaduke explained who he was at some length. Bozzle with a smile assured the governor that he knew very well who he was. He let drop a few words to show that he was intimately acquainted with the whole course of Sir Marmaduke’s family affairs. He knew all about the Mandarins, and Colonel Osborne, and Gregg’s Hotel — not that he said anything about Parker’s Hotel — and the Colonial Office. He spoke of Miss Nora, and even knew the names of the other two young ladies, Miss Sophia and Miss Lucy. It was a weakness with Bozzle, that of displaying his information. He would have much liked to be able to startle Sir Marmaduke by describing the Government House in the island, or by telling him something of his old carriage-horses. But of such information as Sir Marmaduke desired, Sir Marmaduke got none.
And there were other troubles which fell very heavily upon the poor governor, who had come home as it were for a holiday, and who was a man hating work naturally, and who, from the circumstances of his life, had never been called on to do much work. A man may govern the Mandarins and yet live in comparative idleness. To do such governing work well a man should have a good presence, a flow of words which should mean nothing, an excellent temper, and a love of hospitality. With these attributes Sir Rowley was endowed; for, though his disposition was by nature hot, for governing purposes it had been brought by practice under good control. He had now been summoned home through the machinations of his dangerous old friend Colonel Osborne, in order that he might give the results of his experience in governing before a committee of the House of Commons. In coming to England on this business he had thought much more of his holiday, of his wife and children, of his daughters at home, of his allowance per day while he was to be away from his government, and of his salary to be paid to him entire during his absence, instead of being halved as it would be if he were away on leave; he had thought much more in coming home on these easy and pleasant matters, than he did on the work that was to be required from him when he arrived. And then it came to pass that he felt himself almost injured, when the Colonial Office demanded his presence from day to day, and when clerks bothered him with questions as to which they expected ready replies, but in replying to which Sir Marmaduke was by no means ready. The working men at the Colonial Office had not quite thought that Sir Marmaduke was the most fitting man for the job in hand. There was a certain Mr Thomas Smith at another set of islands in quite another part of the world, who was supposed by these working men at home to be a very paragon of a governor. If he had been had home, so said the working men, no Committee of the House would have been able to make anything of him. They might have asked him questions week after week, and he would have answered them all fluently and would have committed nobody. He knew all the ins and outs of governing, did Mr Thomas Smith, and was a match for the sharpest Committee that ever sat at Westminster. Poor Sir Marmaduke was a man of a very different sort; all of which was known by the working men; but the Parliamentary interest had been too strong, and here was Sir Marmaduke at home. But the working men were not disposed to make matters so pleasant for Sir Marmaduke as Sir Marmaduke had expected. The Committee would not examine Sir Marmaduke till after Easter, in the middle of April; but it was expected of him that, he should read blue-books without number, and he was so catechised by the working men that he almost began to wish himself back at the Mandarins. In this way the new establishment in Manchester Street was not at first in a happy or even in a contented condition.
At last, after about ten days, Lady Rowley did succeed in obtaining an interview with Trevelyan. A meeting was arranged through Bozzle, and took place in a very dark and gloomy room at an inn in the City. Why Bozzle should have selected the Bremen Coffee House, in Poulter’s Alley, for this meeting no fit reason can surely be given, unless it was that he conceived himself bound to select the most dreary locality within his knowledge on so melancholy an occasion. Poulter’s Alley is a narrow dark passage somewhere behind the Mansion House; and the Bremen Coffee House — why so called no one can now tell — is one of those strange houses of public resort in the City at which the guests seem never to eat, never to drink, never to sleep, but to come in and out after a mysterious and almost ghostly fashion, seeing their friends or perhaps their enemies, in nooks and corners, and carrying on their conferences in low melancholy whispers. There is an aged waiter at the Bremen Coffee House; and there is certainly one private sitting-room upstairs. It was a dingy, ill-furnished room, with an old large mahogany table, an old horse-hair sofa, six horse-hair chairs, two old round mirrors, and an old mahogany press in a corner. It was a chamber so sad in its appearance that no wholesome useful work could have been done within it; nor could men have eaten there with any appetite, or have drained the flowing bowl with any touch of joviality. It was generally used for such purposes as that to which it was now appropriated, and no doubt had been taken by Bozzle on more than one previous occasion. Here Lady Rowley arrived precisely at the hour fixed, and was told that the gentleman was waiting up stairs for her.
There had, of course, been many family consultations as to the manner in which this meeting should be arranged. Should Sir Marmaduke accompany his wife or, perhaps, should Sir Marmaduke go alone? Lady Rowley had been very much in favour of meeting Mr Trevelyan without any one to assist her in the conference. As for Sir Marmaduke, no meeting could be concluded between him and his son-inlaw without a personal, and probably a violent quarrel. Of that Lady Rowley had been quite sure. Sir Marmaduke, since he had been home, had, in the midst of his various troubles, been driven into so vehement a state of indignation against his son-inlaw as to be unable to speak of the wretched man without strongest terms of opprobrium. Nothing was too bad to be said by him of one who had ill-treated his dearest daughter. It must be admitted that Sir Marmaduke had heard only one side of the question. He had questioned his daughter, and had constantly seen his old friend Osborne. The colonel’s journey down to Devonshire had been made to appear the most natural proceeding in the world. The correspondence of which Trevelyan thought so much had been shown to consist of such notes as might pass between any old gentleman and any young woman. The promise which Trevelyan had endeavoured to exact, and which Mrs Trevelyan had declined to give, appeared to the angry father to be a monstrous insult. He knew that the colonel was an older man than himself, and his Emily was still to him only a young girl. It was incredible to him that anybody should have regarded his old comrade as his daughter’s lover. He did not believe that anybody had, in truth, so regarded the man. The tale had been a monstrous invention on the part of the husband, got up because he had become tired of his young wife. According to Sir Marmaduke’s way of thinking, Trevelyan should either be thrashed within an inch of his life, or else locked up in a mad-house. Colonel Osborne shook his head, and expressed a conviction that the poor man was mad.
But Lady Rowley was more hopeful. Though she was as confident about her daughter as was the father, she was less confident about the old friend. She, probably, was alive to the fact that a man of fifty might put on the airs and assume the character of a young lover; and acting on that suspicion, entertaining also some hope that bad as matters now were they might be mended, she had taken care that Colonel Osborne and Mrs Trevelyan should not be brought together. Sir Marmaduke had fumed, but Lady Rowley had been firm. ‘If you think so, mamma,’ Mrs Trevelyan had said, with something of scorn in her tone ‘of course let it be so.’ Lady Rowley had said that it would be better so; and the two had not seen each other since the memorable visit to Nuncombe Putney. And now Lady Rowley was about to meet her son-in law with some slight hope that she might arrange affairs. She was quite aware that present indignation, though certainly a gratification, might be indulged in at much too great a cost. It would be better for all reasons that Emily should go back to her husband and her home, and that Trevelyan should be forgiven for his iniquities.
Bozzle was at the tavern during the interview, but he was not seen by Lady Rowley. He remained seated downstairs, in one of the dingy corners, ready to give assistance to his patron should assistance be needed. When Lady Rowley was shown into the gloomy sitting-room by the old waiter, she found Trevelyan alone, standing in the middle of the room, and waiting for her. ‘This is a sad occasion,’ he said, as he advanced to give her his hand.
‘A very sad occasion, Louis.’
‘I do not know what you may have heard of what has occurred, Lady Rowley. It is natural, however, to suppose that you must have heard me spoken of with censure.’
‘I think my child has been ill used, Louis,’ she replied.
‘Of course you do. I could not expect that it should be otherwise. When it was arranged that I should meet you here, I was quite aware that you would have taken the side against me before you had heard my story. It is I that have been ill used — cruelly misused; but I do not expect that you should believe me. I do not wish you to do. I would not for worlds separate the mother from her daughter.’
‘But why have you separated your own wife from her child?’
‘Because it was my duty. What! Is a father not to have the charge of his own son. I have done nothing, Lady Rowley, to justify a separation which is contrary to the laws of nature.’
‘Where is the boy, Louis?’
‘Ah that is just what I am not prepared to tell any one who has taken my wife’s side till I know that my wife has consented to pay to me that obedience which I, as her husband, have a right to demand. If Emily will do as I request of her, as I command her,’ as Trevelyan said this, he spoke in a tone which was intended to give the highest possible idea of his own authority and dignity, ‘then she may see her child without delay.’
‘What is it you request of my daughter?’
‘Obedience, simply that. Submission to my will, which is surely a wife’s duty. Let her beg my pardon for what has occurred.’
‘She cannot do that, Louis.’
‘And solemnly promise me,’ continued Trevelyan, not deigning to notice Lady Rowley’s interruption, ‘that she will hold no further intercourse with that snake in the grass who wormed his way into my house; let her be humble, and penitent, and affectionate, and then she shall be restored to her husband and to her child.’ He said this walking up and down the room, and waving his hand, as though he were making a speech that was intended to be eloquent, as though he had conceived that he was to overcome his mother-inlaw by the weight of his words and the magnificence of his demeanour. And yet his demeanour was ridiculous, and his words would have had no weight had they not tended to show Lady Rowley how little prospect there was that she should be able to heal this breach. He himself, too, was so altered in appearance since she had last seen him, bright with the hopes of his young married happiness, that she would hardly have recognised him had she met him in the street. He was thin, and pale, and haggard, and mean. And as he stalked up and down the room, it seemed to her that the very character of the man was changed. She had not previously known him to be pompous, unreasonable, and absurd. She did not answer him at once, as she perceived that he had not finished his address and, after a moment’s pause, he continued. ‘Lady Rowley, there is nothing I would not have done for your daughter, for my wife. All that I had was hers. I did not dictate to her any mode of life; I required from her no sacrifices; I subjected her to no caprices; but I was determined to be master in my own house.’
‘I do not think, Louis, that she has ever denied your right to be master.’
‘To be master in my own house, and to be paramount in my influence over her. So much I had a right to demand.’
‘Who has denied your right?’
‘She has submitted herself to the counsels and to the influences of a man who has endeavoured to undermine me in her affection. In saying that I make my accusation as light against her as is possible. I might make it much heavier, and yet not sin against the truth.’
‘This is an illusion, Louis.’
‘Ah well. No doubt it becomes you to defend your child. Was it an illusion when he went to Devonshire? Was it an illusion when he corresponded with her contrary to my express orders both before and after that unhallowed journey? Lady Rowley, there must be no more such illusions. If my wife means to come back to me, and to have her child in her own hands, she must be penitent as regards the past, and obedient as regards the future.’
There was a wicked bitterness in that word penitent which almost maddened Lady Rowley. She had come to this meeting believing that Trevelyan would be rejoiced to take back his wife, if details could be arranged for his doing so which should not subject him to the necessity of crying, peccavi; but she found him speaking of his wife as though he would be doing her the greatest possible favour in allowing her to come back to him dressed in sackcloth, and with ashes on her head. She could understand from what she had heard that his tone and manner were much changed since he obtained possession of the child, and that he now conceived that he had his wife within his power. That he should become a tyrant because he had the power to tyrannise was not in accordance with her former conception of the man’s character, but then he was so changed, that she felt that she knew nothing of the man who now stood before her. ‘I cannot acknowledge that my daughter has done anything that requires penitence,’ said Lady Rowley.
‘I dare say not, but my view is different.’
‘She cannot admit herself to be wrong when she knows herself to be right. You would not have her confess to a fault, the very idea of which has always been abhorrent to her?’
‘She must be crushed in spirit, Lady Rowley, before she can again become a pure and happy woman.’
‘This is more than I can bear,’ said Lady Rowley, now, at last, worked up to a fever of indignation. ‘My daughter, sir, is as pure a woman as you have ever known, or are likely to know. You, who should have protected her against the world, will some day take blame to yourself as you remember that you have so cruelly maligned her.’ Then she walked away to the door, and would not listen to the words which he was hurling after her. She went down the stairs, and out of the house, and at the end of Poulter’s Alley found the cab which was waiting for her.
Trevelyan, as soon as he was alone, rang the bell, and sent for Bozzle. And while the waiter was coming to him, and until his myrmidon had appeared, he continued to stalk up and down the room, waving his hand in the air as though he were continuing his speech. ‘Bozzle,’ said he, as soon as the man had closed the door, ‘I have changed my mind.’
‘As how, Mr Trewillian?’
‘I shall make no further attempt. I have done all that man can do, and have done it in vain. Her father and mother uphold her in her conduct, and she is lost to me for ever.’
‘But the boy, Mr T.?’
‘I have my child. Yes I have my child. Poor infant. Bozzle, I look to you to see that none of them learn our retreat.’
‘As for that, Mr Trewillian, why, facts is to be come at by one party pretty well as much as by another. Now, suppose the things was changed, wicey warsey, and as I was hacting for the Colonel’s party.’
‘D the Colonel!’ exclaimed Trevelyan.
‘Just so, Mr Trewillian; but if I was hacting for the other party, and they said to me, “Bozzle where’s the boy?” why, in three days I’d be down on the facts. Facts is open, Mr Trewillian, if you knows where to look for them.’
‘I shall take him abroad at once.’
‘Think twice of it, Mr T. The boy is so young, you see, and a mother’s ‘art is softer and lovinger than anything. I’d think twice of it, Mr T., before I kept ’em apart.’ This was a line of thought which Mr Bozzle’s conscience had not forced him to entertain to the prejudice of his professional arrangements; but now, as he conversed with his employer, and became by degrees aware of the failure of Trevelyan’s mind, some shade of remorse came upon him, and made him say a word on behalf of the ‘other party.’
‘Am I not always thinking of it? What else have they left me to think of? That will do for today. You had better come down to me tomorrow afternoon.’ Bozzle promised obedience to these instructions, and as soon as his patron had started he paid the bill, and took himself home.
Lady Rowley, as she travelled back to her house in Manchester Street, almost made up her mind that the separation between her daughter and her son-inlaw had better be continued. It was a very sad conclusion to which to come, but she could not believe that any high-spirited woman could long continue to submit herself to the caprices of a man so unreasonable and dictatorial as he to whom she had just been listening. Were it not for the boy, there would, she felt, be no doubt upon the matter. And now, as matters stood, she thought that it should be their great object to regain possession of the child. Then she endeavoured to calculate what would be the result to her daughter, if in very truth it should be found that the wretched man was mad. To hope for such a result seemed to her to be very wicked and yet she hardly knew how not to hope for it.
‘Well, mamma,’ said Emily Trevelyan, with a faint attempt at a smile, ‘you saw him?’
‘Yes, dearest, I saw him. I can only say that he is a most unreasonable man.’
‘And he would tell you nothing of Louey?’
‘No dear not a word.’
Nora Rowley had told her lover that there was to be no further communication between them till her father and mother should be in England; but in telling him so, had so frankly confessed her own affection for him and had so sturdily promised to be true to him, that no lover could have been reasonably aggrieved by such an interdiction. Nora was quite conscious of this, and was aware that Hugh Stanbury had received such encouragement as ought, at any rate to, bring him to the new Rowley establishment, as soon as he should learn where it had fixed itself. But when at the end of ten days he had not shown himself, she began to feel doubts. Could it be that he had changed his mind, that he was unwilling to encounter refusal from her father, or that he had found, on looking into his own affairs more closely, that it would be absurd for him to propose to take a wife to himself while his means were so poor and so precarious? Sir Marmaduke during this time had been so unhappy, so fretful, so indignant, and so much worried, that Nora herself had become almost afraid of him; and, without much reasoning on the matter, had taught herself to believe that Hugh might be actuated by similar fears. She had intended to tell her mother of what had occurred between her and Stanbury the first moment that she and Lady Rowley were together; but then there had fallen upon them that terrible incident of the loss of the child, and the whole family had become at once so wrapped up in the agony of the bereaved mother, and so full of rage against the unreasonable father, that there seemed to Nora to be no possible opportunity for the telling of her own love-story. Emily herself appeared to have forgotten it in the midst of her own misery, and had not mentioned Hugh Stanbury’s name since they had been in Manchester Street. We have all felt how on occasions our own hopes and fears, nay, almost our own individuality, become absorbed in and obliterated by the more pressing cares and louder voices of those around us. Nora hardly dared to allude to herself while her sister’s grief was still so prominent, and while her father was daily complaining of his own personal annoyances at the Colonial Office. It seemed to her that at such a moment she could not introduce a new matter for dispute, and perhaps a new subject of dismay.
Nevertheless, as the days passed by, and as she saw nothing of Hugh Stanbury, her heart became sore and her spirit vexed. It seemed to her that if she were now deserted by him, all the world would be over for her. The Glascock episode in her life had passed by, that episode which might have been her history, which might have been a history so prosperous, so magnificent, and probably so happy. As she thought of herself and of circumstances as they had happened to her, of the resolutions which she had made as to her own career when she first came to London, and of the way in which she had thrown all those resolutions away in spite of the wonderful success which had come in her path, she could not refrain from thinking that she had brought herself to shipwreck by her own indecision. It must not be imagined that she regretted what she had done. She knew very well that to have acted otherwise than she did when Mr Glascock came to her at Nuncombe Putney would have proved her to be heartless, selfish, and unwomanly. Long before that time she had determined that it was her duty to marry a rich man and, if possible, a man in high position. Such a one had come to her, one endowed with all the good things of the world beyond her most sanguine expectation, and she had rejected him! She knew that she had been right because she had allowed herself to love the other man. She did not repent what she had done, the circumstances being as they were, but she almost regretted that she had been so soft in heart, so susceptible of the weakness of love, so little able to do as she pleased with herself. Of what use to her was it that she loved this man with all her strength of affection when he never came to her, although the time at which he had been told that he might come was now ten days past?
She was sitting one afternoon in the drawing-room listlessly reading, or pretending to read, a novel, when, on a sudden, Hugh Stanbury was announced. The circumstances of the moment were most unfortunate for such a visit. Sir Marmaduke, who had been down at Whitehall in the morning, and from thence had made a journey to St. Diddulph’s-in-the-East and back, was exceedingly cross and out of temper. They had told him at his office that they feared he would not suffice to carry through the purpose for which he had been brought home. And his brother-inlaw, the parson, had expressed to him an opinion that he was in great part responsible for the misfortune of his daughter, by the encouragement which he had given to such a man as Colonel Osborne. Sir Marmaduke had in consequence quarrelled both with the chief clerk and with Mr Outhouse, and had come home surly and discontented. Lady Rowley and her eldest daughter were away, closeted at the moment with Lady Milborough, with whom they were endeavouring to arrange some plan by which the boy might at any rate be given back. Poor Emily Trevelyan was humble enough now to Lady Milborough, was prepared to be humble to any one, and in any circumstances, so that she should not be required to acknowledge that she had entertained Colonel Osborne as her lover. The two younger girls, Sophy and Lucy, were in the room when Stanbury was announced, as was also Sir Marmaduke, who at that very moment was uttering angry growls at the obstinacy and want of reason with which he had been treated by Mr Outhouse. Now Sir Marmaduke had not so much as heard the name of Hugh Stanbury as yet; and Nora, though her listlessness was all at an end, at once felt how impossible it would be to explain any of the circumstances of her case in such an interview as this. While, however, Hugh’s dear steps were heard upon the stairs, her feminine mind at once went to work to ascertain in what best mode, with what most attractive reason for his presence, she might introduce the young man to her father. Had not the girls been then present, she thought that it might have been expedient to leave Hugh to tell his own story to Sir Marmaduke. But she had no opportunity of sending her sisters away; and, unless chance should remove them, this could not be done.
‘He is son of the lady we were with at Nuncombe Putney,’ she whispered to her father as she got up to move across the room to welcome her lover. Now Sir Marmaduke had expressed great disapproval of that retreat to Dartmoor, and had only understood respecting it that it had been arranged between Trevelyan and the family in whose custody his two daughters had been sent away into banishment. He was not therefore specially disposed to welcome Hugh Stanbury in consequence of this mode of introduction.
Hugh, who had asked for Lady Rowley and Mrs Trevelyan and had learned that they were out before he had mentioned Miss Rowley’s name, was almost prepared to take his sweetheart into his arms. In that half-minute he had taught himself to expect that he would meet her alone, and had altogether forgotten Sir Marmaduke. Young men when they call at four o’clock in the day never expect to find papas at home. And of Sophia and Lucy he had either heard nothing or had forgotten what he had heard. He repressed himself however in time, and did not commit either Nora or himself by any very vehement demonstration of affection. But he did hold her hand longer than he should have done, and Sir Marmaduke saw that he did so.
‘This is papa,’ said Nora. ‘Papa, this is our friend, Mr Hugh Stanbury.’ The introduction was made in a manner almost absurdly formal, but poor Nora’s difficulties lay heavy upon her. Sir Marmaduke muttered something but it was little more than a grunt. ‘Mamma and Emily are out,’ continued Nora. ‘I dare say they will be in soon.’ Sir Marmaduke looked round sharply at the man. Why was he to be encouraged to stay till Lady Rowley should return? Lady Rowley did not want to see him. It seemed to Sir Marmaduke, in the midst of his troubles, that this was no time to be making new acquaintances. ‘These are my sisters, Mr Stanbury,’ continued Nora. ‘This is Sophia, and this is Lucy.’ Sophia and Lucy would have been thoroughly willing to receive their sister’s lover with genial kindness if they had been properly instructed, and if the time had been opportune; but, as it was, they had nothing to say. They, also, could only mutter some little sound intended to be more courteous than their father’s grunt. Poor Nora!
‘I hope you are comfortable here,’ said Hugh.
‘The house is all very well,’ said Nora, ‘but we don’t like the neighbourhood.’
Hugh also felt that conversation was difficult. He had soon come to perceive before he had been in the room half a minute that the atmosphere was not favourable to his mission. There was to be no embracing or permission for embracing on the present occasion. Had he been left alone with Sir Marmaduke he would probably have told his business plainly, let Sir Marmaduke’s manner to him have been what it might; but it was impossible for him to do this with three young ladies in the room with him. Seeing that Nora was embarrassed by her difficulties, and that Nora’s father was cross and silent, he endeavoured to talk to the other girls, and asked them concerning their journey and the ship in which they had come. But it was very up-hill work. Lucy and Sophy could talk as glibly as any young ladies home from any colony, and no higher degree of fluency can be expressed, but now they were cowed. Their elder sister was shamefully and most undeservedly disgraced, and this man had had something — they knew not what — to do with it. ‘Is Priscilla quite well?’ Nora asked at last.
‘Quite well. I heard from her yesterday. You know they have left the Clock House.’
‘I had not heard it.’
‘Oh yes and they are living in a small cottage just outside the village. And what else do you think has happened?’
‘Nothing bad, I hope, Mr Stanbury.’
‘My sister Dorothy has left her aunt, and is living with them again at Nuncombe.’
‘Has there been a quarrel, Mr Stanbury?’
‘Well, yes after a fashion there has, I suppose. But it is a long story and would not interest Sir Marmaduke. The wonder is that Dorothy should have been able to stay so long with my aunt. I will tell it you all some day.’ Sir Marmaduke could not understand why a long story about this man’s aunt and sister should be told to his daughter. He forgot, as men always do in such circumstances forget that, while he was living in the Mandarins, his daughter, living in England, would of course pick up new interest and become intimate with new histories. But he did not forget that pressure of the hand which he had seen, and he determined that his daughter Nora could not have any worse lover than the friend of his elder daughter’s husband.
Stanbury had just determined that he must go, that there was no possibility for him either to say or do anything to promote his cause at the present moment, when the circumstances were all changed by the return home of Lady Rowley and Mrs Trevelyan. Lady Rowley knew, and had for some days known, much more of Stanbury than had come to the ears of Sir Marmaduke. She understood in the first place that the Stanburys had been very good to her daughter, and she was aware that Hugh Stanbury had thoroughly taken her daughter’s part against his old friend Trevelyan. She would therefore have been prepared to receive him kindly had he not on this very morning been the subject of special conversation between her and Emily. But, as it had happened, Mrs Trevelyan had this very day told Lady Rowley the whole story of Nora’s love. The elder sister had not intended to be treacherous to the younger; but in the thorough confidence which mutual grief and close conference had created between the mother and daughter, everything had at last come out, and Lady Rowley had learned the story, not only of Hugh Stanbury’s courtship, but of those rich offers which had been made by the heir to the barony of Peterborough.
It must be acknowledged that Lady Rowley was greatly grieved and thoroughly dismayed. It was not only that Mr Glascock was the eldest son of a peer, but that he was represented by the poor suffering wife of the ill-tempered man to be a man blessed with a disposition sweet as an angel’s. ‘And she would have liked him,’ Emily had said, ‘if it had not been for this unfortunate young man.’ Lady Rowley was not worse than are other mothers, not more ambitious, or more heartless, or more worldly. She was a good mother, loving her children, and thoroughly anxious for their welfare. But she would have liked to be the mother-inlaw of Lord Peterborough, and she would have liked, dearly, to see her second daughter removed from the danger of those rocks against which her eldest child had been shipwrecked. And when she asked after Hugh Stanbury, and his means of maintaining a wife, the statement which Mrs Trevelyan made was not comforting. ‘He writes for a penny newspaper and, I believe, writes very well,’ Mrs Trevelyan had said.
‘For a penny newspaper! Is that respectable?’
‘His aunt, Miss Stanbury, seemed to think not. But I suppose men of education do write for such things now. He says himself that it is very precarious as an employment.’
‘It must be precarious, Emily. And has he got nothing?’
‘Not a penny of his own,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
Then Lady Rowley had thought again of Mr Glascock, and of the family title, and of Markhams. And she thought of her present troubles, and of the Mandarins, and the state of Sir Marmaduke’s balance at the bankers and of the other girls, and of all there was before her to do. Here had been a very Apollo among suitors kneeling at her child’s feet, and the foolish girl had sent him away for the sake of a young man who wrote for a penny newspaper! Was it worth the while of any woman to bring up daughters with such results? Lady Rowley, therefore, when she was first introduced to Hugh Stanbury, was not prepared to receive him with open arms.
On this occasion the task of introducing him fell to Mrs Trevelyan, and was done with much graciousness. Emily knew that Hugh Stanbury was her friend, and would sympathise with her respecting her child. ‘You have heard what has happened to me?’ she said. Stanbury, however, had heard nothing of that kidnapping of the child. Though to the Rowleys it seemed that such a deed of iniquity, done in the middle of London, must have been known to all the world, he had not as yet been told of it, and now the story was given to him. Mrs Trevelyan herself told it, with many tears and an agony of fresh grief; but still she told it as to one whom she regarded as a sure friend, and from whom she knew that she would receive sympathy. Sir Marmaduke sat by the while, still gloomy and out of humour. Why was their family sorrow to be laid bare to this stranger?
‘It is the cruellest thing I ever heard,’ said Hugh.
‘A dastardly deed,’ said Lady Rowley.
‘But we all feel that for the time he can hardly know what he does,’ said Nora.
‘And where is the child?’ Stanbury asked.
‘We have not the slightest idea,’ said Lady Rowley. ‘I have seen him, and he refuses to tell us. He did say that my daughter should see her boy; but he now accompanies his offer with such conditions that it is impossible to listen to him.’
‘And where is he?’
‘We do not know where he lives. We can reach him only through a certain man.’
‘Ah, I know the man,’ said Stanbury; ‘one who was a policeman once. His name is Bozzle.’
‘That is the man,’ said Sir Marmaduke. ‘I have seen him.’
‘And of course he will tell us nothing but what he is told to tell us,’ continued Lady Rowley. ‘Can there be anything so horrible as this that a wife should be bound to communicate with her own husband respecting her own child through such a man as that?’
‘One might possibly find out where he keeps the child,’ said Hugh.
‘If you could manage that, Mr Stanbury!’ said Lady Rowley.
‘I hardly see that it would do much good,’ said Hugh. ‘Indeed I do not know why he should keep the place a secret. I suppose he has a right to the boy until the mother shall have made good her claim before the court.’ He promised, however, that he would do his best to ascertain where the child was kept, and where Trevelyan resided, and then having been nearly an hour at the house he was forced to get up and take his leave. He had said not a word to any one of the business that had brought him there. He had not even whispered an assurance of his affection to Nora. Till the two elder ladies had come in, and the subject of the taking of the boy had been mooted, he had sat there as a perfect stranger. He thought that it was manifest enough that Nora had told her secret to no one. It seemed to him that Mrs Trevelyan must have forgotten it — that Nora herself must have forgotten it, if such forgetting could be possible! He got up, however, and took his leave, and was comforted in some slight degree by seeing that there was a tear in Nora’s eye.
‘Who is he?’ demanded Sir Marmaduke, as soon as the door was closed.
‘He is a young man who was an intimate friend of Louis’s,’ answered Mrs Trevelyan; ‘but he is so no longer, because he sees how infatuated Louis has been.’
‘And why does he come here?’
‘We know him very well,’ continued Mrs Trevelyan. ‘It was he that arranged our journey down to Devonshire. He was very kind about it, and so were his mother and sister. We have every reason to be grateful to Mr Stanbury.’ This was all very well, but Nora nevertheless felt that the interview had been anything but successful.
‘Has he any profession?’ asked Sir Marmaduke.
‘He writes for the press,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
‘What do you mean — books?’
‘No, for a newspaper.’
‘For a penny newspaper,’ said Nora boldly ‘for the Daily Record.’
‘Then I hope he won’t come here any more,’ said Sir Marmaduke. Nora paused a moment, striving to find words for some speech which might be true to her love and yet not unseemly; but finding no such words ready, she got up from her seat and walked out of the room. ‘What is the meaning of it all?’ asked Sir Marmaduke. There was a silence for a while, and then he repeated his question in another form. ‘Is there any reason for his coming here — about Nora?’
‘I think he is attached to Nora,’ said Mrs Trevelyan. ‘My dear,’ said Lady Rowley, ‘perhaps we had better not speak about it just now.’
‘I suppose he has not a penny in the world,’ said Sir Marmaduke.
‘He has what he earns,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
‘If Nora understands her duty she will never let me hear his name again,’ said Sir Marmaduke. Then there was nothing more said, and as soon as they could escape, both Lady Rowley and Mrs Trevelyan left the room.
‘I should have told you everything,’ said Nora to her mother that night. ‘I had no intention to keep anything a secret from you. But we have all been so unhappy about Louey, that we have had no heart to talk of anything else.’
‘I understand all that, my darling.’
‘And I had meant that you should tell papa, for I supposed that he would come. And I meant that he should go to papa himself. He intended that himself, only, today as things turned out.’
‘Just so, dearest, but it does not seem that he has got any income. It would be very rash, wouldn’t it?’
‘People must be rash sometimes. Everybody can’t have an income without earning it. I suppose people in professions do marry without having fortunes.’
‘When they have settled professions, Nora.’
‘And why is not his a settled profession? I believe he receives quite as much at seven and twenty as Uncle Oliphant does at sixty.’
‘But your Uncle Oliphant’s income is permanent.’
‘Lawyers don’t have permanent incomes, or doctors or merchants.’
‘But those professions are regular and sure. They don’t marry, without fortunes, till they have made their incomes sure.’
‘Mr Stanbury’s income is sure. I don’t know why it shouldn’t be sure. He goes on writing and writing every day, and it seems to me that of all professions in the world it is the finest. I’d much sooner write for a newspaper than be one of those old musty, fusty lawyers, who’ll say anything that they’re paid to say.’
‘My dearest Nora, all that is nonsense. You know as well as I do that you should not marry a man when there is a doubt whether he can keep a house over your head that is his position.’
‘It is good enough for me, mamma.’
‘And what is his income from writing?’
‘It is quite enough for me, mamma. The truth is I have promised, and I cannot go back from it. Dear, dear mamma, you won’t quarrel with us, and oppose us, and make papa hard against us. You can do what you like with papa. I know that. Look at poor Emily. Plenty of money has not made her happy.’
‘If Mr Glascock had only asked you a week sooner,’ said Lady Rowley, with a handkerchief to her eyes.
‘But you see, he didn’t, mamma.’
‘When I think of it I cannot but weep;’ and the poor mother burst out into a full flood of tears ‘such a man, so good, so gentle, and so truly devoted to you.’
‘Mamma, what’s the good of that now?’
‘Going down all the way to Devonshire after you!’
‘So did Hugh, mamma.’
‘A position that any girl in England would have envied you. I cannot but feel it. And Emily says she is sure he would come back, if he got the very slightest encouragement.’
‘That is quite impossible, mamma.’
‘Why should it be impossible? Emily declares that she never saw a man so much in love in her life, and she says also that she believes he is abroad now simply because he is broken-hearted about it.’
‘Mr Glascock, mamma, was very nice and good and all that; but indeed he is not the man to suffer from a broken heart. And Emily is quite mistaken. I told him the whole truth.’
‘What truth?’
‘That there was somebody else that I did love. Then he said that of course that put an end to it all, and he wished me good-bye ever so calmly.’
‘How could you be so infatuated? Why should you have cut the ground away from your feet in that way?’
‘Because I chose that there should be an end to it. Now there has been an end to it; and it is much better, mamma, that we should not think about Mr Glascock any more. He will never come again to me and if he did, I could only say the same thing.’
‘You mustn’t be surprised, Nora, if I’m unhappy; that is all. Of course I must feel it. Such a connection as it would have been for your sisters! Such a home for poor Emily in her trouble! And as for this other man —’
‘Mamma, don’t speak ill of him.’
‘If I say anything of him, I must say the truth,’ said Lady Rowley.
‘Don’t say anything against him, mamma, because he is to be my husband. Dear, dear mamma, you can’t change me by anything you say. Perhaps I have been foolish; but it is settled now. Don’t make me wretched by speaking against the man whom I mean to love all my life better than all the world.’
‘Think of Louis Trevelyan.’
‘I will think of no one but Hugh Stanbury. I tried not to love him, mamma. I tried to think that it was better to make believe that I loved Mr Glascock. But he got the better of me, and conquered me, and I will never rebel against him. You may help me, mamma but you can’t change me.’