Miss Stanbury perfectly understood that Martha was to come back by the train reaching Exeter at 7 p.m., and that she might be expected in the Close about a quarter-of-an-hour after that time. She had been nervous and anxious all day, so much so that Mr Martin had told her that she must be very careful. ‘That’s all very well,’ the old woman had said, ‘but you haven’t got any medicine for my complaint, Mr Martin.’ The apothecary had assured her that the worst of her complaint was in the east wind, and had gone away begging her to be very careful. ‘It is not God’s breezes that are hard to any one,’ the old lady had said to herself ‘but our own hearts.’ After her lonely dinner she had fidgeted about the room, and had rung twice for the girl, not knowing what order to give when the servant came to her. She was very anxious about her tea, but would not have it brought to her till after Martha should have arrived. She was half-minded to order that a second cup and saucer should be placed there, but she had not the courage to face the disappointment which would fall upon her, should the cup and saucer stand there for no purpose. And yet, should she come, how nice it would be to shew her girl that her old aunt had been ready for her. Thrice she went to the window after the cathedral clock had struck seven, to see whether her ambassador was returning. From her window there was only one very short space of pathway on which she could have seen her and, as it happened, there came the ring at the door, and no ambassador had as yet been viewed. Miss Stanbury was immediately off her seat, and out upon the landing. ‘Here we are again, Miss Dorothy,’ said Martha. Then Miss Stanbury could not restrain herself but descended the stairs, moving as she had never moved since she had first been ill. ‘My bairn,’ she said; ‘my dearest bairn! I thought that perhaps it might be so. Jane, another tea-cup and saucer up-stairs.’ What a pity that she had not ordered it before! ‘And get a hot cake, Jane. You will be ever so hungry, my darling, after your journey.’
‘Are you glad to see me, Aunt Stanbury?’ said Dorothy.
‘Glad, my pretty one!’ Then she put up her hands, and smoothed down the girl’s cheeks, and kissed her, and patted Martha on the back, and scolded her at the same time for not bringing Miss Dorothy from the station in a cab. ‘And what is the meaning of that little bag?’ she said. ‘You shall go back for the rest yourself, Martha, because it is your own fault.’ Martha knew that all this was pleasant enough, but then her mistress’s moods would sometimes be changed so suddenly! How would it be when Miss Stanbury knew that Brooke Burgess had been left behind at Nuncombe Putney?
‘You see I didn’t stay to eat any of the lamb,’ said Dorothy, smiling.
‘You shall have a calf instead, my dear,’ said Miss Stanbury, ‘because you are a returned prodigal.’
All this was very pleasant, and Miss Stanbury was so happy dispensing her tea, and the hot cake, and the clotted cream, and was so intent upon her little methods of caressing and petting her niece, that Dorothy had no heart to tell her story while the plates and cups were still upon the table. She had not, perhaps, cared much for the hot cake, having such a weight upon her mind, but she had seemed to care, understanding well that she might so best conduce to her aunt’s comfort. Miss Stanbury was a woman who could not bear that the good things which she had provided for a guest should not be enjoyed. She could taste with a friend’s palate, and drink with a friend’s throat. But when debarred these vicarious pleasures by what seemed to her to be the caprice of her guests, she would be offended. It had been one of the original sins of Camilla and Arabella French that they would declare at her tea-table that they had dined late and could not eat tea-cake. Dorothy knew all this and did her duty, but with a heavy heart. There was the story to be told, and she had promised Martha that it should be told tonight. She was quite aware, too, independently of her promise, that it was necessary that it should be told tonight. It was very sad very grievous that the dear old lady’s happiness should be disturbed so soon; but it must be done. When the tea-things were being taken away her aunt was still purring round her, and saying gentle, loving words. Dorothy bore it as well as she could bore it well, smiling and kissing her aunt’s hand, and uttering now and then some word of affection. But the thing had to be done; and as soon as the room was quiet for a moment, she jumped up from her chair and began. ‘Aunt Stanbury, I must tell you something at once. Who, do you think, is at Nuncombe Putney?’
‘Not Brooke Burgess?’
‘Yes, he is. He is there now, and is to be here with you tomorrow.’
The whole colour and character of Miss Stanbury’s face was changed in a moment. She had been still purring up to the moment in which this communication had been made to her. Her gratification had come to her from the idea that her pet had come back to her from love of her as in very truth had been the case; but now it seemed that Dorothy had returned to ask for a great favour for herself. And she reflected at once that Brooke had passed through Exeter without seeing her. If he was determined to marry without reference to her, he might at any rate have had the grace to come to her and say so. She, in the fulness of her heart, had written words of affection to Dorothy, and both Dorothy and Brooke had at once taken advantage of her expressions for their own purposes. Such was her reading of the story of the day. ‘He need not trouble himself to come here now,’ she said.
‘Dear aunt, do not say that.’
‘I do say it. He need not trouble himself to come now. When I said that I should be glad to see you, I did not intend that you should meet Mr Burgess under my roof. I did not wish to have you both together.’
‘How could I help coming, when you wrote to me like that?’
‘It is very well, but he need not come. He knows the way from Nuncombe to London without stopping at Exeter.’
‘Aunt Stanbury, you must let me tell it you all.’
‘There is no more to tell, I should think.’
‘But there is more. You knew what he thought about me, and what he wished.’
‘He is his own master, my dear and you are your own mistress.’
‘If you speak to me like that you will kill me, Aunt Stanbury. I did not think of coming, only when Martha brought your dear letter I could not help it. But he was coming. He meant to come tomorrow, and he will. Of course he must defend himself, if you are angry with him.’
‘He need not defend himself at all.’
‘I told them, and I told him, that I would only stay one night if you did not wish that we should be here together. You must see him, Aunt Stanbury. You would not refuse to see him.’
‘If you please, my dear, you must allow me to judge whom I will see.’
After that the discussion ceased between them for awhile, and Miss Stanbury left the room that she might hold a consultation with Martha. Dorothy went up to her chamber, and saw that everything had been prepared for her with most scrupulous care. Nothing could be whiter, neater, cleaner, nicer than was everything that surrounded her. She had perceived while living under her aunt’s roof, how, gradually, small delicate feminine comforts had been increased for her. Martha had been told that Miss Dorothy ought to have this, and that Miss Dorothy ought to have that; till at last she, who had hitherto known nothing of the small luxuries that come from an easy income, had felt ashamed of the prettinesses that had been added to her. Now she could see at once that infinite care had been used to make her room bright and smiling only in the hope that she would return. As soon as she saw it all, she sat down on her bed and burst out into tears. Was it not hard upon her that she should be forced into such ingratitude! Every comfort prepared for her was a coal of hot fire upon her head. And yet, what had she done that she ought not to have done? Was it unreasonable that she should have loved this man, when they two were brought together? And had she even dared to think of him otherwise than as an acquaintance till he had compelled her to confess her love? And after that had she not tried to separate herself from him, so that they two, her aunt and her lover, might be divided by no quarrel? Had not Priscilla told her that she was right in all that she was doing? Nevertheless, in spite of all this, she could not refrain from accusing herself of ingratitude towards her aunt. And she began to think it would have been better for her now to have remained at home, and have allowed Brooke to come alone to Exeter than to have obeyed the impulse which had arisen from the receipt of her aunt’s letter. When she went down again she found herself alone in the room, and she was beginning to think that it was intended that she should go to bed without again seeing her aunt; but at last Miss Stanbury came to her, with a sad countenance, but without that look of wrath which Dorothy knew so well. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘it will be better that Mr Burgess should go up to London tomorrow. I will see him, of course, if he chooses to come, and Martha shall meet him at the station and explain it. If you do not mind, I would prefer that you should not meet him here.’
‘I meant only to stay one night, aunt.’
‘That is nonsense. If I am to part with either of you, I will part with him. You are dearer to me than he is. Dorothy, you do not know how dear to me you are.’
Dorothy immediately fell on her knees at her aunt’s feet, and hid her face in her aunt’s lap. Miss Stanbury twined round her fingers the soft hair, which she loved so well because it was a grace given by God and not bought out of a shop, and caressed the girl’s head, and muttered something that was intended for a prayer. ‘If he will let me, aunt, I will give him up,’ said Dorothy, looking up into her aunt’s face. ‘If he will say that I may, though I shall love him always, he may go.’
‘He is his own master,’ said Miss Stanbury. ‘Of course he is his own master.’
‘Will you let me return tomorrow just for a few days and then you can talk to him as you please. I did not mean to come to stay. I wished him good-bye because I knew that I should not meet him here.’
‘You always talk of going away, Dorothy, as soon as ever you are in the house. You are always threatening me.’
‘I will come again, the moment you tell me. If he goes in the morning, I will be here the same evening. And I will write to him, Aunt Stanbury, and tell him that he is quite free, quite free, quite free.’
Miss Stanbury made no reply to this, but sat, still playing with her niece’s hair. ‘I think I will go to bed,’ she said at last. ‘It is past ten. You need not go to Nuncombe, Dorothy. Martha shall meet him, and he can see me here. But I do not wish him to stay in the house. You can go over and call on Mrs MacHugh. Mrs MacHugh will take it well of you that you should call on her.’ Dorothy made no further opposition to this arrangement, but kissed her aunt, and went to her chamber.
How was it all to be for her? For the last two days she had been radiant with new happiness. Everything had seemed to be settled. Her lover, in his high-handed way, had declared that in no important crisis of life would he allow himself to be driven out of his way by the fear of what an old woman might do in her will. When Dorothy assured him that not for worlds would she, though she loved him dearly, injure his material prospects, he had thrown it all aside, after a grand fashion, that had really made the girl think that all Miss Stanbury’s money was as nothing to his love for her. She and Priscilla and her mother had been carried away so entirely by Brooke’s oratory as to feel for the time that the difficulties were entirely conquered. But now the aspect of things was so different! Whatever Brooke might owe to Miss Stanbury, she, Dorothy, owed her aunt everything. She would immolate herself if Brooke would only let her. She did not quite understand her aunt’s stubborn opposition; but she knew that there was some great cause for her aunt’s feeling on the matter. There had been a promise made, or an oath sworn, that the property of the Burgess family should not go into the hands of any Stanbury. Dorothy told herself that, were she married, she would be a Stanbury no longer, that her aunt would still comply with the obligation she had fixed for herself; but, nevertheless, she was ready to believe that her aunt might be right. Her aunt had always declared that it should be so; and Dorothy, knowing this, confessed to herself that she should have kept her heart under better control. Thinking of these things, she went to the table where paper and ink and pens had all been prepared for her so prettily, and began her letter to Brooke. ‘Dearest, dearest Brooke.’ But then she thought that this was not a fair keeping of her promise, and she began again. ‘My dear Brooke.’ The letter, however, did not get itself written that night. It was almost impossible for her to write it. ‘I think it will be better for you,’ she had tried to say, ‘to be guided by my aunt.’ But how could she say this when she did not believe it? It was her wish to make him understand that she would never think ill of him, for a moment, if he would make up his mind to abandon her — but she could not find the words to express herself, and she went, at last, to bed, leaving the half-covered paper upon the table.
She went to bed, and cried herself to sleep. It had been so sweet to have a lover, a man of her own, to whom she could say what she pleased, from whom she had a right to ask for counsel and protection, a man who delighted to be near her, and to make much of her. In comparison with her old mode of living, her old ideas of life, her life with such a lover was passed in an elysium. She had entered from barren lands into so rich a paradise! But there is no paradise, as she now found, without apples which must be eaten, and which lead to sorrow. She regretted in this hour that she had ever seen Brooke Burgess. After all, with her aunt’s love and care for her, with her mother and sister near her, with the respect of those who knew her, why should the lands have been barren, even had there been no entrance for her into that elysium? And did it not all result in this, that the elysium to be desired should not be here; that the paradise, without the apples, must be waited for till beyond the grave? It is when things go badly with us here, and for most of us only then, that we think that we can see through the dark clouds into the joys of heaven. But at last she slept, and in her dreams Brooke was sitting with her in Niddon Park with his arm tight clasped round her waist.
She slept so soundly, that when a step crept silently into her room, and when a light was held for awhile over her face, neither the step nor the light awakened her. She was lying with her head back upon the pillow, and her arm hung by the bedside, and her lips were open, and her loose hair was spread upon the pillow. The person who stood there with the light thought that there never had been a fairer sight. Everything there was so pure, so sweet, so good! She was one whose only selfish happiness could come to her from the belief that others loved her. The step had been very soft, and even the breath of the intruder was not allowed to pass heavily into the air, but the light of the candle shone upon the eyelids of the sleeper, and she moved her head restlessly on the pillow. ‘Dorothy, are you awake? Can you speak to me?’
Then the disturbed girl gradually opened her eyes and gazed upwards, and raised herself in her bed, and sat wondering. ‘Is anything the matter, aunt?’ she said.
‘Only the vagaries of an old woman, my pet, of an old woman who cannot sleep in her bed.’
‘But what is it, aunt?’
‘Kiss me, dearest.’ Then, with something of slumber still about her, Dorothy raised herself in her bed, and placed her arm on her aunt’s shoulder and embraced her. ‘And now for my news,’ said Miss Stanbury.
‘What news, aunt? It isn’t morning yet; is it?’
‘No it is not morning. You shall sleep again presently. I have thought of it, and you shall be Brooke’s wife, and I will have it here, and we will all be friends.’
‘What!’
‘You will like that will you not?’
‘And you will not quarrel with him? What am I to say? What am I to do?’ She was, in truth, awake now, and, not knowing what she did, she jumped out of bed, and stood holding her aunt by the arm.
‘It is not a dream,’ said Miss Stanbury.
‘Are you sure that it is not a dream? And may he come here tomorrow?’
‘Of course he will come tomorrow.’
‘And may I see him, Aunt Stanbury?’
‘Not if you go home, my dear.’
‘But I won’t go home. And will you tell him? Oh dear, oh dear! Aunt Stanbury, I do not think that I believe it yet.’
‘You will catch cold, my dear, if you stay there trying to believe it. You have nothing on. Get into bed and believe it there. You will have time to think of it before the morning.’ Then Miss Stanbury went back to her own chamber, and Dorothy was left alone to realise her bliss.
She thought of all her life for the last twelve months, of the first invitation to Exeter, and the doubts of the family as to its acceptance, of her arrival and of her own doubts as to the possibility of her remaining, of Mr Gibson’s courtship and her aunt’s disappointment, of Brooke’s coming, of her love and of his, and then of her departure back to Nuncombe. After that had come the triumph of Brooke’s visit, and then the terrible sadness of her aunt’s displeasure. But now everything was good and glorious. She did not care for money herself. She thought that she never could care much for being rich. But had she made Brooke poor by marrying him, that must always have been to her matter of regret, if not of remorse. But now it was all to be smooth and sweet. Now a paradise was to be opened to her, with no apples which she might not eat, no apples which might not, but still must, be eaten. She thought that it would be impossible that she should sleep again that night; but she did sleep, and dreamed that Brooke was holding her in Niddon Park, tighter than ever.
When the morning came she trembled as she walked down into the parlour. Might it not still be possible that it was all a dream? or what if her aunt should again have changed her purpose? But the first moment of her aunt’s presence told her that there was nothing to fear. ‘How did you sleep, Dorothy?’ said the old lady.
‘Dear aunt, I do not know. Was it all sleep?’
‘What shall we say to Brooke when he comes?’
‘You shall tell him.’
‘No, dearest, you must tell him. And you must say to him that if he is not good to my girl, and does not love her always, and cling to her, and keep her from harm, and be in truth her loving husband, I will hold him to be the most ungrateful of human beings.’ And before Brooke came, she spoke again. ‘I wonder whether he thinks you as pretty as I do, Dolly?’
‘He never said that he thought me pretty at all.’
‘Did he not? Then he shall say so, or he shall not have you. It was your looks won me first, Dolly, like an old fool as I am. It is so pleasant to have a little nature after such a deal of artifice.’ In which latter remarks it was quite understood that Miss Stanbury was alluding to her enemies at Heavitree.
Brooke Burgess had been to Exeter and had gone, for he only remained there one night, and everything was apparently settled. It was not exactly told through Exeter that Miss Stanbury’s heir was to be allowed to marry Miss Stanbury’s niece; but Martha knew it, and Giles Hickbody guessed it, and Dorothy was allowed to tell her mother and sister, and Brooke himself, in his own careless way, had mentioned the matter to his uncle Barty. As Miss Stanbury had also told the secret in confidence to Mrs MacHugh, it cannot be said that it was altogether well kept. Four days after Brooke’s departure the news reached the Frenches at Heavitree. It was whispered to Camilla by one of the shopmen with whom she was still arranging her marriage trousseau, and was repeated by her to her mother and sister with some additions which were not intended to be good-natured. ‘He gets her and the money together as a bargain of course,’ said Camilla. ‘I only hope the money won’t be found too dear.’
‘Perhaps he won’t get it after all,’ said Arabella.
‘That would be cruel,’ replied Camilla. ‘I don’t think that even Miss Stanbury is so false as that.’
Things were going very badly at Heavitree. There was war there, almost everlastingly, though such little playful conversations as the above shewed that there might be an occasional lull in the battle. Mr Gibson was not doing his duty. That was clear enough. Even Mrs French, when she was appealed to with almost frantic energy by her younger daughter, could not but acknowledge that he was very remiss as a lover. And Camilla, in her fury, was very imprudent. That very frantic energy which induced her to appeal to her mother was, in itself, proof of her imprudence. She knew that she was foolish, but she could not control her passion. Twice had she detected Arabella in receiving notes from Mr Gibson, which she did not see, and of which it had been intended that she should know nothing. And once, when she spent a night away at Ottery St. Mary with a friend, a visit which was specially prefatory to marriage, and made in reference to bridesmaids’ dresses, Arabella had had — so at least Camilla was made to believe — a secret meeting with Mr Gibson in some of the lanes which lead down from Heavitree to the Topsham road.
‘I happened to meet him, and spoke two words to him,’ said Arabella. ‘Would you have me cut him?’
‘I’ll tell you what it is, Bella, if there is any underhand game going on that I don’t understand, all Exeter shall be on fire before you shall carry it out.’
Bella made no answer to this, but shrugged her shoulders. Camilla was almost at a loss to guess what might be the truth. Would not any sister, so accused on such an occasion, rebut the accusation with awful wrath? But Arabella simply shrugged her shoulders, and went her way. It was now the 16th of April, and there wanted but one short fortnight to their marriage. The man had not the courage to jilt her! She felt sure that he had not heart enough to do a deed of such audacity. And her sister, too, was weak and a coward, and would lack the power to stand on her legs and declare herself to be the perpetrator of such villany. Her mother, as she knew well, would always have preferred that her elder daughter should be the bride; but her mother was not the woman to have the hardihood, now, in the eleventh hour, to favour such an intrigue. Let her wish be what it might, she would not be strong enough to carry through the accomplishment of it. They would all know that that threat of hers of setting Exeter on fire would be carried out after some fashion that would not be inadequate to the occasion. A sister, a mother, a promised lover, all false — all so damnably, cruelly false! It was impossible. No history, no novel of most sensational interest, no wonderful villany that had ever been wrought into prose or poetry, would have been equal to this. It was impossible. She told herself so a score of times a day. And yet the circumstances were so terribly suspicious! Mr Gibson’s conduct as a lover was simply disgraceful to him as a man and a clergyman. He was full of excuses, which she knew to be false. He would never come near her if he could help it. When he was with her, he was as cold as an archbishop both in word and in action. Nothing would tempt him to any outward manifestation of affection. He would talk of nothing but the poor women of St. Peter-cum-Pumpkin in the city, and the fraudulent idleness of a certain colleague in the cathedral services, who was always shirking his work. He made her no presents. He never walked with her. He was always gloomy, and he had indeed so behaved himself in public that people were beginning to talk of ‘poor Mr Gibson.’ And yet he could meet Arabella on the sly in the lanes, and send notes to her by the green-grocer’s boy! Poor Mr Gibson indeed! Let her once get him well over the 29th of April, and the people of Exeter might talk about poor Mr Gibson if they pleased. And Bella’s conduct was more wonderful almost than that of Mr Gibson. With all her cowardice, she still held up her head, held it perhaps a little higher than was usual with her. And when that grievous accusation was made against her — made and repeated — an accusation the very thought and sound of which would almost have annihilated her had there been a decent feeling in her bosom, she would simply shrug her shoulders and walk away. ‘Camilla,’ she had once said, ‘you will drive that man mad before you have done.’ ‘What is it to you how I drive him?’ Camilla had answered in her fury. Then Arabella had again shrugged her shoulders and walked away. Between Camilla and her mother, too, there had come to be an almost internecine quarrel on a collateral point. Camilla was still carrying on a vast arrangement which she called the preparation of her trousseau, but which both Mrs French and Bella regarded as a spoliation of the domestic nest, for the proud purposes of one of the younger birds. And this had grown so fearfully that in two different places Mrs French had found herself compelled to request that no further articles might be supplied to Miss Camilla. The bride elect had rebelled, alleging that as no fortune was to be provided for her, she had a right to take with her such things as she could carry away in her trunks and boxes. Money could be had at the bank, she said; and, after all, what were fifty pounds more or less on such an occasion as this? And then she went into a calculation to prove that her mother and sister would be made so much richer by her absence, and that she was doing so much for them by her marriage, that nothing could be more mean in them than that they should hesitate to supply her with such things as she desired to make her entrance into Mr Gibson’s house respectable. But Mrs French was obdurate, and Mr Gibson was desired to speak to her. Mr Gibson, in fear and trembling, told her that she ought to repress her spirit of extravagance, and Camilla at once foresaw that he would avail himself of this plea against her should he find it possible at any time to avail himself of any plea. She became ferocious, and, turning upon him, told him to mind his own business. Was it not all for him that she was doing it? ‘She was not,’ she said, ‘disposed to submit to any control in such matters from him till he had assumed his legal right to it by standing with her before the altar.’ It came, however, to be known all over Exeter that Miss Camilla’s expenditure had been checked, and that, in spite of the joys naturally incidental to a wedding, things were not going well with the ladies at Heavitree.
At last the blow came. Camilla was aware that on a certain morning her mother had been to Mr Gibson’s house, and had held a long conference with him. She could learn nothing of what took place there, for at that moment she had taken upon herself to place herself on non-speaking terms with her mother in consequence of those disgraceful orders which had been given to the tradesmen. But Bella had not been at Mr Gibson’s house at the time, and Camilla, though she presumed that her own conduct had been discussed in a manner very injurious to herself, did not believe that any step was being then arranged which would be positively antagonistic to her own views. The day fixed was now so very near that there could, she felt, be no escape for the victim. But she was wrong.
Mr Gibson had been found by Mrs French in a very excited state on that occasion. He had wept, and pulled his hair, and torn open his waistcoat, had spoken of himself as a wretch, pleading, however, at the same time, that he was more sinned against than sinning, had paced about the room with his hands dashing against his brows, and at last had flung himself prostrate on the ground. The meaning of it all was that he had tried very hard, and had found at last that ‘he couldn’t do it.’ ‘I am ready to submit,’ said he, ‘to any verdict that you may pronounce against me, but I should deceive you and deceive her if I didn’t say at once that I can’t do it.’ He went on to explain that since he had unfortunately entered into his present engagement with Camilla, of whose position he spoke in quite a touching manner, and since he had found what was the condition of his own heart and feelings, he had consulted a friend who, if any merely human being was capable of advising, might be implicitly trusted for advice in such a matter, and that this friend had told him that he was bound to give up the marriage, let the consequences to himself or to others be what they might. ‘Although the skies should fall on me, I cannot stand at the hymeneal altar with a lie in my mouth,’ said Mr Gibson immediately upon his rising from his prostrate condition on the floor. In such a position as this a mother’s fury would surely be very great! But Mrs French was hardly furious. She cried, and begged him to think better of it, and assured him that Camilla, when she should be calmed down by matrimony, would not be so bad as she seemed, but she was not furious. ‘The truth is, Mr Gibson,’ she said through her tears, ‘that, after all, you like Bella best.’ Mr Gibson owned that he did like Bella best, and although no bargain was made between them then and there — and such making of a bargain then and there would hardly have been practicable — it was understood that Mrs French would not proceed to extremities if Mr Gibson would still make himself forthcoming as a husband for the advantage of one of the daughters of the family.
So far Mr Gibson had progressed towards a partial liberation from his thraldom with a considerable amount of courage; but he was well aware that the great act of daring still remained to be done. He had suggested to Mrs French that she should settle the matter with Camilla, but this Mrs French had altogether declined to do. It must, she said, come from himself. If she were to do it, she must sympathise with her child; and such sympathy would be obstructive of the future arrangements which were still to be made. ‘She always knew that I liked Bella best,’ said Mr Gibson still sobbing, still tearing his hair, still pacing the room with his waistcoat torn open. ‘I would not advise you to tell her that,’ said Mrs French. Then Mrs French went home, and early on the following morning it was thought good by Arabella that she also should pay a visit at Ottery St. Mary’s. ‘Good-bye, Cammy,’ said Arabella as she went. ‘Bella,’ said Camilla, ‘I wonder whether you are a serpent. I do not think you can be so base a serpent as that.’ ‘I declare, Cammy, you do say such odd things that no one can understand what you mean.’ And so she went.
On that morning Mr Gibson was walking at an early hour along the road from Exeter to Cowley, contemplating his position and striving to arrange his plans. What was he to do, and how was he to do it? He was prepared to throw up his living, to abandon the cathedral, to leave the diocese, to make any sacrifice rather than take Camilla to his bosom. Within the last six weeks he had learned to regard her with almost a holy horror. He could not understand by what miracle of self-neglect he had fallen into so perilous an abyss. He had long known Camilla’s temper. But in those days in which he had been beaten like a shuttlecock between the Stanburys and the Frenches, he had lost his head and had done he knew not what. ‘Those whom the God chooses to destroy, he first maddens,’ said Mr Gibson to himself of himself, throwing himself back upon early erudition and pagan philosophy. Then he looked across to the river Exe, and thought that there was hardly water enough there to cover the multiplicity of his sorrows.
But something must be done. He had proceeded so far in forming a resolution, as he reached St. David’s Church on his return homewards. His sagacious friend had told him that as soon as he had altered his mind, he was bound to let the lady know of it without delay. ‘You must remember,’ said the sagacious friend, ‘that you will owe her much very much.’ Mr Gibson was perplexed in his mind when he reflected how much he might possibly be made to owe her if she should decide on appealing to a jury of her countrymen for justice. But anything would be better than his home at St. Peter’s-cum-Pumpkin with Camilla sitting opposite to him as his wife. Were there not distant lands in which a clergyman, unfortunate but still energetic, might find work to do? Was there not all America? And were there not Australia, New Zealand, Natal, all open to him? Would not a missionary career among the Chinese be better for him than St. Peter’s-cum-Pumpkin with Camilla French for his wife? By the time he had reached home his mind was made up. He would write a letter to Camilla at once; and he would marry Arabella at once on any day that might be fixed on condition that Camilla would submit to her defeat without legal redress. If legal redress should be demanded, he would put in evidence the fact that her own mother had been compelled to caution the tradesmen of the city in regard to her extravagance.
He did write his letter in an agony of spirit. ‘I sit down, Camilla, with a sad heart and a reluctant hand,’ he said, ‘to communicate to you a fatal truth. But truth should be made to prevail, and there is nothing in man so cowardly, so detrimental, and so unmanly as its concealment. I have looked into myself, and have inquired of myself, and have assured myself, that were I to become your husband, I should not make you happy. It would be of no use for me now to dilate on the reasons which have convinced me, but I am convinced, and I consider it my duty to inform you so at once. I have been closeted with your mother, and have made her understand that it is so.
I have not a word to say in my own justification but this: that I am sure I am acting honestly in telling you the truth. I would not wish to say a word animadverting on yourself. If there must be blame in this matter, I am willing to take it all on my own shoulders. But things have been done of late, and words have been spoken, and habits have displayed themselves, which would not, I am sure, conduce to our mutual comfort in this world, or to our assistance to each other in our struggles to reach the happiness of the world to come.
I think that you will agree with me, Camilla, that when a man or a woman has fallen into such a mistake as that which I have now made, it is best that it should be acknowledged. I know well that such a change of arrangements as that which I now propose will be regarded most unfavourably. But will not anything be better than the binding of a matrimonial knot which cannot be again unloosed, and which we should both regret?
I do not know that I need add anything further. What can I add further? Only this, that I am inflexible. Having resolved to take this step and to bear the evil things that may be said of me, for your happiness and for my own tranquillity, I shall not now relinquish my resolution. I do not ask you to forgive me. I doubt much whether I shall ever be quite able to forgive myself. The mistake which I have made is one which should not have been committed. I do not ask you to forgive me; but I do ask you to pray that I may be forgiven.
Yours, with feelings of the truest friendship,
THOMAS GIBSON.’
The letter had been very difficult, but he was rather proud of it than otherwise when it was completed. He had felt that he was writing a letter which not improbably might become public property. It was necessary that he should be firm, that he should accuse himself a little in order that he might excuse himself much, and that he should hint at causes which might justify the rupture, though he should so veil them as not to appear to defend his own delinquency by ungenerous counter-accusation. When he had completed the letter, he thought that he had done all this rather well, and he sent the despatch off to Heavitree by the clerk of St. Peter’s Church, with something of that feeling of expressible relief which attends the final conquest over some fatal and all but insuperable misfortune. He thought that he was sure now that he would not have to marry Camilla on the 29th of the month and there would probably be a period of some hours before he would be called upon to hear or read Camilla’s reply.
Camilla was alone when she received the letter, but she rushed at once to her mother. ‘There,’ said she; ‘there I knew that it was coming!’ Mrs French took the paper into her hands and gasped, and gazed at her daughter without speaking. ‘You knew of it, mother.’
‘Yesterday when he told me, I knew of it.’
‘And Bella knows it.’
‘Not a word of it.’
‘She does. I am sure she does. But it is all nothing. I will not accept it. He cannot treat me so. I will drag him there, but he shall come.’
‘You can’t make him, my dear.’
‘I will make him. And you would help me, mamma, if you had any spirit. What, a fortnight before the time, when the things are all bought! Look at the presents that have been sent! Mamma, he doesn’t know me. And he never would have done it, if it had not been for Bella, never. She had better take care, or there shall be such a tragedy that nobody ever heard the like. If she thinks that she is going to be that man’s wife she is mistaken.’ Then there was a pause for a moment.
‘Mamma,’ she said, ‘I shall go to him at once. I do not care in the least what anybody may say. I shall go to him at once.’ Mrs French felt that at this moment it was best that she should be silent.
By the thirteenth of May the Rowley family had established itself in Florence, purposing to remain either there or at the baths of Lucca till the end of June, at which time it was thought that Sir Marmaduke should begin to make preparations for his journey back to the Islands. Their future prospects were not altogether settled. It was not decided whether Lady Rowley should at once return with him, whether Mrs Trevelyan should return with him, nor was it settled among them what should be the fate of Nora Rowley. Nora Rowley was quite resolved herself that she would not go back to the Islands, and had said as much to her mother. Lady Rowley had not repeated this to Sir Marmaduke, and was herself in doubt as to what might best be done. Girls are understood by their mothers better than they are by their fathers. Lady Rowley was beginning to be aware that Nora’s obstinacy was too strong to be overcome by mere words, and that other steps must be taken if she were to be weaned from her pernicious passion for Hugh Stanbury. Mr Glascock was still in Florence. Might she not be cured by further overtures from Mr Glascock? The chance of securing such a son-inlaw was so important, so valuable, that no trouble was too great to be incurred, even though the probability of success might not be great.
It must not, however, be supposed that Lady Rowley carried off all the family to Italy, including Sir Marmaduke, simply in chase of Mr Glascock. Anxious as she was on the subject, she was too proud, and also too well-conditioned, to have suggested to herself such a journey with such an object. Trevelyan had escaped from Willesden with the child, and they had heard again through Stanbury that he had returned to Italy. They had all agreed that it would be well that they should leave London for awhile, and see something of the continent; and when it was told to them that little Louis was probably in Florence, that alone was reason enough for them to go thither. They would go to the city till the heat was too great and the mosquitoes too powerful, and then they would visit the baths of Lucca for a month. This was their plan of action, and the cause for their plan; but Lady Rowley found herself able to weave into it another little plan of her own, of which she said nothing to anybody. She was not running after Mr Glascock; but if Mr Glascock should choose to run after them or her, who could say that any harm had been done?
Nora had answered that proposition of her lover’s to walk out of the house in Manchester Street, and get married at the next church, in a most discreet manner. She had declared that she would be true and firm, but that she did not wish to draw upon herself the displeasure of her father and mother. She did not, she said, look upon a clandestine marriage as a happy resource. But this she added at the end of a long and very sensible letter: she intended to abide by her engagement, and she did not intend to go back to the Mandarins. She did not say what alternative she would choose in the event of her being unable to obtain her father’s consent before his return. She did not suggest what was to become of her when Sir Marmaduke’s leave of absence should be expired. But her statement that she would not go back to the islands was certainly made with more substantial vigour, though, perhaps, with less of reasoning, than any other of the propositions made in her letter. Then, in her postscript, she told him that they were all going to Italy. ‘Papa and mamma think that we ought to follow poor Mr Trevelyan. The lawyer says that nothing can be done while he is away with the boy. We are therefore all going to start to Florence. The journey is delightful. I will not say whose presence will be wanting to make it perfect.’
Before they started there came a letter to Nora from Dorothy, which shall be given entire, because it will tell the reader more of Dorothy’s happiness than would be learned from any other mode of narrative.
‘The Close, Thursday.
Dearest Nora,
I have just had a letter from Hugh, and that makes me feel that I should like to write to you. Dear Hugh has told me all about it, and I do so hope that things may come right and that we may be sisters. He is so good that I do not wonder that you should love him. He has been the best son and the best brother in the world, and everybody speaks well of him except my dear aunt, who is prejudiced because she does not like newspapers. I need not praise him to you, for I dare say you think quite as well of him as I do. I cannot tell you all the beautiful things he says about you, but I dare say he has told them to you himself.
I seem to know you so well because Priscilla has talked about you so often. She says that she knew that you and my brother were fond of each other because you growled at each other when you were together at the Clock House, and never had any civil words to say before people. I don’t know whether growling is a sign of love, but Hugh does growl sometimes when he is most affectionate. He growls at me, and I understand him, and I like to be growled at. I wonder whether you like him to growl at you.
And now I must tell you something about myself because if you are to be my sister you ought to know it all. I also am going to be married to a man whom I love oh, so dearly! His name is Mr Brooke Burgess, and he is a great friend of my aunt’s. At first she did not like our being engaged, because of some family reason — but she has got over that, and nothing can be kinder and nicer than she is. We are to be married here, some day in June, the 11th I think it will be. How I do wish you could have been here to be my bridesmaid. It would have been so nice to have had Hugh’s sweetheart with me. He is a friend of Hugh’s, and no doubt you will hear all about him. The worst of it is that we must live in London, because my husband as will be — you see I call him mine already — is in an office there. And so poor Aunt Stanbury will be left all alone. It will be very sad, and she is so wedded to Exeter that I fear we shall not get her up to London.
I would describe Mr Burgess to you, only I do not suppose you would care to hear about him. He is not so tall as Hugh, but he is a great deal better looking. With you two the good looks are to be with the wife; but, with us, with the husband. Perhaps you think Hugh is handsome. We used to declare that he was the ugliest boy in the country. I don’t suppose it makes very much difference. Brooke is handsome, but I don’t think I should like him the less if he were ever so ugly.
Do you remember hearing about the Miss Frenches when you were in Devonshire? There has come up such a terrible affair about them. A Mr Gibson, a clergyman, was going to marry the younger; but has changed his mind and wants to take the elder. I think he was in love with her first.’ Dorothy did not say a word about the little intermediate stage of attachment to herself. ‘All this is making a great noise in the city, and some people think he should be punished severely. It seems to me that a gentleman ought not to make such a mistake; but if he does, he ought to own it. I hope they will let him marry the eider one. Aunt Stanbury says it all comes from their wearing chignons. I wish you knew Aunt Stanbury, because she is so good. Perhaps you wear a chignon. I think Priscilla said that you did. It must not be large, if you come to see Aunt Stanbury.
Pray write to me and believe that I hope to be your most affectionate sister,
Dorothy Stanbury.
P.S. I am so happy, and I do so hope that you will be the same.’
This was received only a day before the departure of the Rowleys for Italy, and was answered by a short note promising that Nora would write to her correspondent from Florence.
There could be no doubt that Trevelyan had started with his boy, fearing the result of the medical or legal interference with his affairs which was about to be made at Sir Marmaduke’s instance. He had written a few words to his wife, neither commencing nor ending his note after any usual fashion, telling her that he thought it expedient to travel, that he had secured the services of a nurse for the little boy, and that during his absence a certain income would, as heretofore, be paid to her. He said nothing as to his probable return, or as to her future life; nor was there anything to indicate whither he was going. Stanbury, however, had learned from the faithless and frightened Bozzle that Trevelyan’s letters were to be sent after him to Florence. Mr Bozzle, in giving this information, had acknowledged that his employer was ‘becoming no longer quite himself under his troubles,’ and had expressed his opinion that he ought to be ‘looked after.’ Bozzle had made his money; and now, with a grain of humanity mixed with many grains of faithlessness, reconciled it to himself to tell his master’s secrets to his master’s enemies. What would a counsel be able to say about his conduct in a court of law? That was the question which Bozzle was always asking himself as to his own business. That he should be abused by a barrister to a jury, and exposed as a spy and a fiend, was, he thought, a matter of course. To be so abused was a part of his profession. But it was expedient for him in all cases to secure some loop-hole of apparent duty by which he might in part escape from such censures. He was untrue to his employer now, because he thought that his employer ought to be ‘looked after.’ He did, no doubt, take a five-pound note from Hugh Stanbury; but then it was necessary that he should live. He must be paid for his time. In this way Trevelyan started for Florence, and within a week afterwards the Rowleys were upon his track.
Nothing had been said by Sir Marmaduke to Nora as to her lover since that stormy interview in which both father and daughter had expressed their opinions very strongly, and very little had been said by Lady Rowley. Lady Rowley had spoken more than once of Nora’s return to the Mandarins, and had once alluded to it as a certainty. ‘But I do not know that I shall go back,’ Nora had said. ‘My dear,’ the mother had replied, ‘unless you are married, I suppose your home must be with your parents.’ Nora, having made her protest, did not think it necessary to persevere, and so the matter was dropped. It was known, however, that they must all come back to London before they started for their seat of government, and therefore the subject did not at present assume its difficult aspect. There was a tacit understanding among them that everything should be done to make the journey pleasant to the young mother who was in search of her son; and, in addition to this, Lady Rowley had her own little understanding, which was very tacit indeed, that in Mr Glascock might be found an escape from one of their great family difficulties.
‘You had better take this, papa,’ Mrs Trevelyan had said, when she received from the office of Mr Bideawhile a cheque payable to her order for the money sent to her by her husband’s direction.
‘I do not want the man’s money,’ said Sir Marmaduke. ‘But you are going to this place for my sake, papa and it is right that he should bear the expense for his own wife. And, papa, you must remember always that though his mind is distracted on this horrible business, he is not a bad man. No one is more liberal or more just about money.’ Sir Marmaduke’s feelings on the matter were very much the same as those which had troubled Mr Outhouse, and he, personally, refused to touch the money; but his daughter paid her own share of the expenses of the journey.
They travelled at their ease, stopping at Paris, and at Geneva, and at Milan. Lady Rowley thought that she was taken very fast, because she was allowed to sleep only two nights at each of these places, and Sir Rowley himself thought that he had achieved something of a Hannibalian enterprise in taking five ladies and two maids over the Simplon and down into the plains of Lombardy, with nobody to protect him but a single courier. He had been a little nervous about it, being unaccustomed to European travelling, and had not at first realised the fact that the journey is to be made with less trouble than one from the Marble Arch to Mile End. ‘My dears,’ he said to his younger daughters, as they were rattling round the steep downward twists and turns of the great road, ‘you must sit quite still on these descents, or you do not know where you may go. The least thing would overset us.’ But Lucy and Sophy soon knew better, and became so intimate with the mountain, under the friendly guidance of their courier, that before the plains were reached, they were in and out, and here and there, and up and down, as though they had been bred among the valleys of the pass. There would come a ringing laugh from some rock above their head, and Lady Rowley looking up would see their dresses fluttering on a pinnacle which appeared to her to be fit only for a bird; and there would be the courier behind them, with two parasols, and a shawl, and a cloak, and an eye-glass, and a fine pair of grizzled whiskers. They made an Alpine club of their own, refusing to admit their father because he would not climb up a rock, and Nora thought of the letters about it which she would write to her lover, only that she had determined that she would not write to him at all without telling her mother, and Mrs Trevelyan would for moments almost forget that she had been robbed of her child.
From Milan they went on to Florence, and though they were by that time quite at home in Italy, and had become critical judges of Italian inns and Italian railways, they did not find that journey to be quite so pleasant. There is a romance to us still in the name of Italy which a near view of many details in the country fails to realise. Shall we say that a journey through Lombardy is about as interesting as one through the flats of Cambridgeshire and the fens of Norfolk? And the station of Bologna is not an interesting spot in which to spend an hour or two, although it may be conceded that provisions may be had there much better than any that can be procured at our own railway stations. From thence they went, still by rail, over the Apennines, and unfortunately slept during the whole time. The courier had assured them that if they would only look out they would see the castles of which they had read in novels; but the day had been very hot, and Sir Marmaduke had been cross, and Lady Rowley had been weary, and so not a castle was seen. ‘Pistoia, me lady, this,’ said the courier opening the door ‘to stop half an hour.’ ‘Oh, why was it not Florence?’ Another hour and a half! So they all went to sleep again, and were very tired when they reached the beautiful city.
During the next day they rested at their inn, and sauntered through the Duomo, and broke their necks looking up at the inimitable glories of the campanile. Such a one as Sir Marmaduke had of course not come to Florence without introductions. The Foreign Office is always very civil to its next-door neighbours of the colonies, civil and cordial, though perhaps a little patronising. A minister is a bigger man than a governor; and the smallest of the diplomatic fry are greater swells than even secretaries in quite important dependencies. The attache, though he be unpaid, dwells in a capital, and flirts with a countess. The governor’s right-hand man is confined to an island, and dances with a planter’s daughter. The distinction is quite understood, but is not incompatible with much excellent good feeling on the part of the superior department. Sir Marmaduke had come to Florence fairly provided with passports to Florentine society, and had been mentioned in more than one letter as the distinguished Governor of the Mandarins, who had been called home from his seat of government on a special mission of great importance. On the second day he went out to call at the embassy and to leave his cards. ‘Have you been able to learn whether he is here?’ asked Lady Rowley of her husband in a whisper, as soon as they were alone.
‘Who, Trevelyan?’
I did not suppose you could learn about him, because he would be hiding himself. But is Mr Glascock here?’
‘I forgot to ask,’ said Sir Marmaduke.
Lady Rowley did not reproach him. It is impossible that any father should altogether share a mother’s anxiety in regard to the marriage of their daughters. But what a thing it would be! Lady Rowley thought that she could compound for all misfortunes in other respects, if she could have a daughter married to the future Lord Peterborough. She had been told in England that he was faultless not very clever, not very active, not likely to be very famous; but, as a husband, simply faultless. He was very rich, very good-natured, easily managed, more likely to be proud of his wife than of himself, addicted to no jealousies, afflicted by no vices, so respectable in every way that he was sure to become great as an English nobleman by the very weight of his virtues. And it had been represented also to Lady Rowley that this paragon among men had been passionately attached to her daughter! Perhaps she magnified a little the romance of the story; but it seemed to her that this greatly endowed lover had rushed away from his country in despair, because her daughter Nora would not smile upon him. Now they were, as she hoped, in the same city with him. But it was indispensable to her success that she should not seem to be running after him. To Nora, not a word had been said of the prospect of meeting Mr Glascock at Florence. Hardly more than a word had been said to her sister Emily, and that under injunction of strictest secrecy. It must be made to appear to all the world that other motives had brought them to Florence as, indeed, other motives had brought them. Not for worlds would Lady Rowley have run after a man for her daughter; but still, still — still, seeing that the man was himself so unutterably in love with her girl, seeing that he was so fully justified by his position to be in love with any girl, seeing that such a maximum of happiness would be the result of such a marriage, she did feel that, even for his sake, she must be doing a good thing to bring them together! Something, though not much of all this, she had been obliged to explain to Sir Marmaduke and yet he had not taken the trouble to inquire whether Mr Glascock was in Florence!
On the third day after their arrival, the wife of the British minister came to call upon Lady Rowley, and the wife of the British minister was good-natured, easy-mannered, and very much given to conversation. She preferred talking to listening, and in the course of a quarter of an hour had told Lady Rowley a good deal about Florence; but she had not mentioned Mr Glascock’s name. It would have been so pleasant if the requisite information could have been obtained without the asking of any direct question on the subject! But Lady Rowley, who from many years’ practice of similar, though perhaps less distinguished, courtesies on her part, knew well the first symptom of the coming end of her guest’s visit, found that the minister’s wife was about to take her departure without an allusion to Mr Glascock. And yet the names had been mentioned of so many English residents in Florence, who neither in wealth, rank, or virtue, were competent to hold a candle to that phoenix! She was forced, therefore, to pluck up courage, and to ask the question. ‘Have you had a Mr Glascock here this spring?’ said Lady Rowley.
‘What Lord Peterborough’s son? Oh, dear, yes. Such a singular being!’
Lady Rowley thought that she could perceive that her phoenix had not made himself agreeable at the embassy. It might perhaps be that he had buried himself away from society because of his love. ‘And is here now?’ asked Lady Rowley.
‘I cannot say at all. He is sometimes here and sometimes with his father at Naples. But when here, he lives chiefly with the Americans. They say he is going to marry an American girl their minister’s niece. There are three of-them, I think, and he is to take the eldest.’ Lady Rowley asked no more questions, and let her august visitor go, almost without another word.
Mr Glascock at that moment was not only in Florence, but was occupying rooms in the very hotel in which the Rowleys were staying. Lady Rowley, when she heard that he was engaged to marry an American lady, became suddenly very sick at heart sick with a sickness that almost went beyond her heart. She felt ill, and was glad to be alone. The rumour might be untrue. Such rumours generally are untrue. But then, as Lady Rowley knew very well, they generally have some foundation in truth. Mr Glascock, if he were not actually engaged to the American girl, had probably been flirting with her and, if so, where was that picture which Lady Rowley had been painting for herself of a love-lorn swain to be brought back to the pleasures and occupations of the world only by the girl of whom he was enamoured? But still she would not quite give up the project. Mr Glascock, if he was in Italy, would no doubt see by the newspapers that Sir Marmaduke and his family were in Florence and would probably come to them. Then, if Nora would only behave herself, the American girl might still be conquered.
During two or three days after this nothing was seen or heard of Mr Glascock. Had Lady Rowley thought of mentioning the name to the waiter at the hotel, she would have learned that he was living in the next passage; but it did not occur to her to seek information in that fashion. Nor did she ask direct questions in other quarters about Mr Glascock himself. She did, however, make inquiry about Americans living in Florence, especially about the American Minister and, before a week had passed overhead, had been introduced to the Spaldings. Mrs Spalding was very civil, and invited Lady Rowley and all the girls and Sir Marmaduke to come to her on her ‘Fridays.’ She received her friends every Friday, and would continue to do so till the middle of June. She had nieces who would, she said, be so happy to make the acquaintance of the Miss Rowleys.
By this time the picture galleries, the churches, and the palaces in Florence had nearly all been visited. Poor Lady Rowley had dragged herself wearily from sight to sight, hoping always to meet with Mr Glascock, ignorant of the fact that residents in a town do not pass their mornings habitually in looking after pictures. During this time inquiries were being made, through the police, respecting Trevelyan; and Sir Marmaduke had obtained information that an English gentleman, with a little boy, had gone on to Siena, and had located himself there. There seemed to be but little doubt that this was Trevelyan, though nothing had been learned with certainty as to the gentleman’s name. It had been decided that Sir Marmaduke, with his courier and Mrs Trevelyan, should go on to Siena, and endeavour to come upon the fugitive, and they had taken their departure on a certain morning. On that same day Lady Rowley was walking with Nora and one of the other girls through the hall of the hotel, when they were met in full face by Mr Glascock! Lady Rowley and Lucy were in front, and they, of course, did not know the man. Nora had seen him at once, and in her confusion hardly knew how to bear herself. Mr Glascock was passing by her without recognising her had passed her mother and sister, and had so far gone on, that Nora had determined to make no sign, when he chanced to look up and see who it was that was so close to him. ‘Miss Rowley,’ he said, ‘who thought of meeting you in Florence!’ Lady Rowley, of course, turned round, and there was an introduction. Poor Nora, though she knew nothing of her mother’s schemes, was confused and ill at ease. Mr Glascock was very civil, but at the same time rather cold. Lady Rowley was all smiles and courtesy. She had, she said, heard his name from her daughters, and was very happy to make his acquaintance. Lucy looked on somewhat astonished to find that the lover whom her sister had been blamed for rejecting, and who was spoken of with so many encomiums, was so old a man. Mr Glascock asked after Mrs Trevelyan; and Lady Rowley, in a low, melancholy whisper, told him that they were now all in Florence, in the hope of meeting Mr Trevelyan. ‘You have heard the sad story, I know, Mr Glascock, and therefore I do not mind telling you.’ Mr Glascock acknowledged that he did know the story, and informed her that he had seen Mr Trevelyan in Florence within the last ten days. This was so interesting, that, at Lady Rowley’s request, he went with them up to their rooms, and in this way the acquaintance was made. It turned out that Mr Glascock had spoken to Mr Trevelyan, and that Trevelyan had told him that he meant for the present to take up his residence in some small Italian town. ‘And how was he looking, Mr Glascock?’
‘Very ill, Lady Rowley, very ill, indeed.’
‘Do not tell her so, Mr Glascock. She has gone now with her father to Siena. We think that he is there, with the boy or, at least, that he may be heard of there. And you you are living here?’ Mr Glascock said that he was living between Naples and Florence, going occasionally to Naples, a place that he hated, to see his father, and coming back at intervals to the capital. Nora sat by, and hardly spoke a word. She was nicely dressed, with an exquisite little bonnet, which had been bought as they came through Paris; and Lady Rowley, with natural pride, felt that if he was ever in love with her child, that love must come back upon him now. American girls, she had been told, were hard, and dry, and sharp, and angular. She had seen some at the Mandarins, with whom she thought it must be impossible that any Englishman should be in love. There never, surely, had been an American girl like her Nora. ‘Are you fond of pictures, Mr Glascock?’ she asked. Mr Glascock was not very fond of pictures, and thought that he was rather tired of them. What was he fond of? Of sitting at home and doing nothing. That was his reply, at least; and a very unsatisfactory reply it was, as Lady Rowley could hardly propose that they should come and sit and do nothing with him. Could he have been lured into churches or galleries, Nora might have been once more thrown into his company. Then Lady Rowley took courage, and asked him whether he knew the Spaldings. They were going to Mrs Spalding’s that very evening, she and her daughters. Mr Glascock replied that he did know the Spaldings, and that he also should be at their house. Lady Rowley thought that she discovered something like a blush about his cheekbones and brow, as he made his answer. Then he left them, giving his hand to Nora as he went but there was nothing in his manner to justify the slightest hope.
‘I don’t think he is nice at all,’ said Lucy.
‘Don’t be so foolish, Lucy,’ said Lady Rowley angrily.
‘I think he is very nice,’ said Nora. ‘He was only talking nonsense when he said that he liked to sit still and do nothing. He is not at all an idle man; at least I am told so.’
‘But he is as old as Methuselah,’ said Lucy.
‘He is between thirty and forty,’ said Lady Rowley.
‘Of course we know that from the peerage.’ Lady Rowley, however, was wrong. Had she consulted the peerage, she would have seen that Mr Glascock was over forty.
Nora, as soon as she was alone and could think about it all, felt quite sure that Mr Glascock would never make her another offer. This ought not to have caused her any sorrow, as she was very well aware that she would not accept him, should he do so. Yet, perhaps, there was a moment of some feeling akin to disappointment. Of course she would not have accepted him. How could she? Her faith was so plighted to Hugh Stanbury that she would be a by-word among women for ever, were she to be so false. And, as she told herself, she had not the slightest feeling of affection for Mr Glascock. It was quite out of the question, and a matter simply for speculation. Nevertheless it would have been a very grand thing to be Lady Peterborough, and she almost regretted that she had a heart in her bosom.
She had become fully aware during that interview that her mother still entertained hopes, and almost suspected that Lady Rowley had known something of Mr Glascock’s residence in Florence. She had seen that her mother had met Mr Glascock almost as though some such meeting had been expected, and had spoken to him almost as though she had expected to have to speak to him. Would it not be better that she should at once make her mother understand that all this could be of no avail? If she were to declare plainly that nothing could bring about such a marriage, would not her mother desist? She almost made up her mind to do so; but as her mother said nothing to her before they started for Mr Spalding’s house, neither did she say anything to her mother. She did not wish to have angry words if they could be avoided, and she felt that there might be anger and unpleasant words were she to insist upon her devotion to Hugh Stanbury while this rich prize was in sight. If her mother should speak to her, then, indeed, she would declare her own settled purpose; but she would do nothing to accelerate the evil hour.
There were but few people in Mrs Spalding’s drawing-room when they were announced, and Mr Glascock was not among them. Miss Wallachia Petrie was there, and in the confusion of the introduction was presumed by Lady Rowley to be one of the nieces introduced. She had been distinctly told that Mr Glascock was to marry the eldest, and this lady was certainly older than the other two. In this way Lady Rowley decided that Miss Wallachia Petrie was her daughter’s hated rival, and she certainly was much surprised at the gentleman’s taste. But there is nothing nothing in the way of an absurd matrimonial engagement into which a man will not allow himself to be entrapped by pique. Nora would have a great deal to answer for, Lady Rowley thought, if the unfortunate man should be driven by her cruelty to marry such a woman as this one now before her.
It happened that Lady Rowley soon found herself seated by Miss Petrie, and she at once commenced her questionings. She intended to be very discreet, but the subject was too near her heart to allow her to be altogether silent. ‘I believe you know Mr Glascock?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Wallachia, ‘I do know him.’ Now the peculiar nasal twang which our cousins over the water have learned to use, and which has grown out of a certain national instinct which coerces them to express themselves with self-assertion — let the reader go into his closet and talk through his nose for awhile with steady attention to the effect which his own voice will have, and he will find that this theory is correct — this intonation, which is so peculiar among intelligent Americans, had been adopted con amore, and, as it were, taken to her bosom by Miss Petrie. Her ears had taught themselves to feel that there could be no vitality in speech without it, and that all utterance unsustained by such tone was effeminate, vapid, useless, unpersuasive, unmusical and English. It was a complaint frequently made by her against her friends Caroline and Olivia that they debased their voices, and taught themselves the puling British mode of speech. ‘I do know the gentleman,’ said Wallachia, and Lady Rowley shuddered. Could it be that such a woman as this was to reign over Monkhams, and become the future Lady Peterborough?
‘He told me that he is acquainted with the family,’ said Lady Rowley. ‘He is staying at our hotel, and my daughter knew him very well when he was living in London.’
‘I dare say. I believe that in London the titled aristocrats do hang pretty much together.’ It had never occurred to poor Lady Rowley, since the day in which her husband had been made a knight, at the advice of the Colonial Minister, in order that the inhabitants of some island might be gratified by the opportunity of using the title, that she and her children had thereby become aristocrats. Were her daughter Nora to marry Mr Glascock, Nora would become an aristocrat or would, rather, be ennobled, all which Lady Rowley understood perfectly.
‘I don’t know that London society is very exclusive in that respect,’ said Lady Rowley.
‘I guess you are pretty particular,’ said Miss Petrie, ‘and it seems to me you don’t have much regard to intellect or erudition but fix things up straight according to birth and money.’
‘I hope we are not quite so bad as that,’ said Lady Rowley. ‘I do not know London well myself, as I have passed my life in very distant places.’
‘The distant places are, in my estimation, the best. The further the mind is removed from the contamination incidental to the centres of long-established luxury, the more chance it has of developing itself according to the intention of the Creator, when he bestowed his gifts of intellect upon us.’ Lady Rowley, when she heard this eloquence, could hardly believe that such a man as Mr Glascock should really be intent upon marrying such a lady as this who was sitting next to her.
In the meantime, Nora and the real rival were together, and they also were talking of Mr Glascock. Caroline Spalding had said that Mr Glascock had spoken to her of Nora Rowley, and Nora acknowledged that there had been some acquaintance between them in London. ‘Almost more than that, I should have thought,’ said Miss Spalding, ‘if one might judge by his manner of speaking of you.’
‘He is a little given to be enthusiastic,’ said Nora, laughing.
‘The least so of all mankind, I should have said. You must know he is very intimate in this house. It begun in this way. Olivia and I were travelling together, and there was a difficulty, as we say in our country when three or four gentlemen shoot each other. Then there came up Mr Glascock and another gentleman. By-the-bye, the other gentleman was your brother-inlaw.’
‘Poor Mr Trevelyan!’
‘He is very ill, is he not?’
‘We think so. My sister is with us, you know. That is to say, she is at Siena today.’
‘I have heard about him, and it is so sad. Mr Glascock knows him. As I said, they were travelling together, when Mr Glascock came to our assistance. Since that, we have seen him very frequently. I don’t think he is enthusiastic except when he talks of you.’
‘I ought to be very proud,’ said Nora.
‘I think you ought, as Mr Glascock is a man whose good opinion is certainly worth having. Here he is. Mr Glascock, I hope your ears are tingling. They ought to do so, because we are saying all manner of fine things about you.’
‘I could not be well spoken of by two on whose good word I should set a higher value,’ said he.
‘And whose do you value the most?’ said Caroline.
‘I must first know whose eulogium will run the highest.’
Then Nora answered him. ‘Mr Glascock, other people may praise you louder than I can do, but no one will ever do so with more sincerity.’ There was a pretty earnestness about her as she spoke, which Lady Rowley ought to have heard. Mr Glascock bowed, and Miss Spalding smiled, and Nora blushed.
‘If you are not overwhelmed now,’ said Miss Spalding, ‘you must be so used to flattery, that it has no longer any effect upon you. You must be like a drunkard, to whom wine is as water, and who thinks that brandy is not strong enough.’
‘I think I had better go away,’ said Mr Glascock, ‘for fear the brandy should be watered by degrees.’ And so he left them.
Nora had become quite aware, without much process of thinking about it, that her former lover and this American young lady were very intimate with each other. The tone of the conversation had shewn that it was so and, then, how had it come to pass that Mr Glascock had spoken to this American girl about her, Nora Rowley? It was evident that he had spoken of her with warmth, and had done so in a manner to impress his hearer. For a minute or two they sat together in silence after Mr Glascock had left them, but neither of them stirred. Then Caroline Spalding turned suddenly upon Nora, and took her by the hand. ‘I must tell you something,’ said she, ‘only it must be a secret for awhile.’
‘I will not repeat it.’
‘Thank you, dear. I am engaged to him as his wife. He asked me this very afternoon, and nobody knows it but my aunt. When I had accepted him, he told me all the story about you. He had very often spoken of you before, and I had guessed how it must have been. He wears his heart so open for those whom he loves, that there is nothing concealed. He had seen you just before he came to me. But perhaps I am wrong to tell you that now. He ought to have been thinking of you again at such a time.’
‘I did not want him to think of me again.’
‘Of course you did not. Of course I am joking. You might have been his wife if you wished it. He has told me all that. And he especially wants us to be friends. Is there anything to prevent it?’
‘On my part? Oh, dear, no except that you will be such grand folk, and we shall be so poor.’
‘We!’ said Caroline, laughing. ‘I am so glad that there is a “we.”’
‘If you have not sold yourself for British gold, and for British acres, and for British rank, I have nothing to say against it,’ said Miss Wallachia Petrie that same evening to her friend Caroline Spalding.
‘You know that I have not sold myself, as you call it,’ said Caroline. There had been a long friendship between these two ladies, and the younger one knew that it behoved her to bear a good deal from the elder. Miss Petrie was honest, clever, and in earnest. We in England are not usually favourably disposed to women who take a pride in a certain antagonism to men in general, and who are anxious to shew the world that they can get on very well without male assistance; but there are many such in America who have noble aspirations, good intellects, much energy, and who are by no means unworthy of friendship. The hope in regard to all such women — the hope entertained not by themselves, but by those who are solicitous for them — is that they will be cured at last by a husband and half-a-dozen children. In regard to Wallachia Petrie there was not, perhaps, much ground for such hope. She was so positively wedded to women’s rights in general, and to her own rights in particular, that it was improbable that she should ever succumb to any man, and where would be the man brave enough to make the effort? From circumstances Caroline Spalding had been the beloved of her heart since Caroline Spalding was a very little girl; and she had hoped that Caroline would through life have borne arms along with her in that contest which she was determined to wage against man, and which she always waged with the greatest animosity against men of the British race. She hated rank; she hated riches; she hated monarchy and with a true woman’s instinct in battle, felt that she had a specially strong point against Englishmen, in that they submitted themselves to dominion from a woman monarch.
And now the chosen friend of her youth, the friend who had copied out all her poetry, who had learned by heart all her sonnets, who had, as she thought, reciprocated all her ideas, was going to be married and to be married to an English lord! She had seen that it was coming for some time, and had spoken out very plainly, hoping that she might still save the brand from the burning. Now the evil was done; and Caroline Spalding, when she told her news, knew well that she would have to bear some heavy reproaches.
‘How many of us are there who never know whether we sell ourselves or not?’ said Wallachia. ‘The senator who longs for office, and who votes this way instead of that in order that he may get it, thinks that he is voting honestly. The minister who calls himself a teacher of God’s word, thinks that it is God’s word that he preaches when he strains his lungs to fill his church. The question is this, Caroline would you have loved the same man had he come to you with a woodman’s axe in his hand or a clerk’s quill behind his ear? I guess not.’
‘As to the woodman’s axe, Wally, it is very well in theory; but —’
‘Things good in theory, Caroline, will be good also when practised. You may be sure of that. We dislike theory simply because our intelligences are higher than our wills. But we will let that pass.’
‘Pray let it pass, Wally. Do not preach me sermons tonight. I am so happy, and you ought to wish me joy.’
‘If wishing you joy would get you joy, I would wish it you while I lived. I cannot be happy that you should be taken from us whither I shall never see you again.’
‘But you are to come to us. I have told him so, and it is settled.’
‘No, dear; I shall not do that. What should I be in the glittering halls of an English baron? Could there be any visiting less fitting, any admixture less appropriate? Could I who have held up my voice in the Music Hall of Lacedaemon amidst the glories of the West, in the great and free State of Illinois, against the corruption of an English aristocracy, could I, who have been listened to by two thousand of my countrywomen and men while I spurned the unmanly, inhuman errors of primogeniture, could I, think you, hold my tongue beneath the roof of a feudal lord!’ Caroline Spalding knew that her friend could not hold her tongue, and hesitated to answer. There had been that fatal triumph of a lecture on the joint rights of men and women, and it had rendered poor Wallachia Petrie unfit for ordinary society.
‘You might come there without talking politics, Wally,’ said Caroline.
‘No, Caroline; no. I will go into the house of no man in which the free expression of my opinion is debarred me. I will not sit even at your table with a muzzled tongue. When you are gone, Caroline, I shall devote myself to what, after all, must be the work of my life, and I shall finish the biographical history of our great hero in verse which I hope may at least be not ephemeral. From month to month I shall send you what I do, and you will not refuse me your friendly criticism and, perhaps, some slight meed of approbation because you are dwelling beneath the shade of a throne. Oh, Caroline, let it not be a upas tree!’
The Miss Petries of the world have this advantage, an advantage which rarely if ever falls to the lot of a man, that they are never convinced of error. Men, let them be ever so much devoted to their closets, let them keep their work ever so closely veiled from public scrutiny, still find themselves subjected to criticism, and under the necessity of either defending themselves or of succumbing. If, indeed, a man neither speaks, nor writes, if he be dumb as regards opinion, he passes simply as one of the crowd, and is in the way neither of convincing nor of being convinced; but a woman may speak, and almost write, as she likes, without danger of being wounded by sustained conflict. Who would have the courage to begin with such a one as Miss Petrie, and endeavour to prove to her that she is wrong from the beginning. A little word of half-dissent, a smile, a shrug, and an ambiguous compliment which is misunderstood, are all the forms of argument which can be used against her. Wallachia Petrie, in her heart of hearts, conceived that she had fairly discussed her great projects from year to year with indomitable eloquence and unanswerable truth and that none of her opponents had had a leg to stand upon. And this she believed because the chivalry of men had given to her sex that protection against which her life was one continued protest.
‘Here he is,’ said Caroline, as Mr Glascock came up to them. ‘Try and say a civil word to him, if he speaks about it. Though he is to be a lord, still he is a man and a brother.’
‘Caroline,’ said the stern monitress, ‘you are already learning to laugh at principles which have been dear to you since you left your mother’s breast. Alas, how true it is, “You cannot touch pitch and not be defiled.”’
The further progress of these friendly and feminine amenities was stopped by the presence of the gentleman who had occasioned them. ‘Miss Petrie,’ said the hero of the hour, ‘Caroline was to tell you of my good fortune, and no doubt she has done so.’
‘I cannot wait to hear the pretty things he has to say,’ said Caroline, ‘and I must look after my aunt’s guests. There is poor Signor Buonarosci without a soul to say a syllable to him, and I must go and use my ten Italian words.’
‘You are about to take with you to your old country, Mr Glascock,’ said Miss Petrie, ‘one of the brightest stars in our young American firmament.’ There could be no doubt, from the tone of Miss Petrie’s voice, that she now regarded this star, however bright, as one of a sort which is subjected to falling.
‘I am going to take a very nice young woman,’ said Mr Glascock.
‘I hate that word woman, sir, uttered with the halfhidden sneer which always accompanies its expression from the mouth of a man.’
‘Sneer, Miss Petrie!’
‘I quite allow that it is involuntary, and not analysed or understood by yourselves. If you speak of a dog, you intend to do so with affection, but there is always contempt mixed with it. The so-called chivalry of man to woman is all begotten in the same spirit. I want no favour, but I claim to be your equal.’
‘I thought that American ladies were generally somewhat exacting as to those privileges which chivalry gives them.’
‘It is true, sir, that the only rank we know in our country is in that precedence which man gives to woman. Whether we maintain that, or whether we abandon it, we do not intend to purchase it at the price of an acknowledgment of intellectual inferiority. For myself, I hate chivalry — what you call chivalry. I can carry my own chair, and I claim the right to carry it whithersoever I may please.’
Mr Glascock remained with her for some time, but made no opportunity for giving that invitation to Monkhams of which Caroline had spoken. As he said afterwards, he found it impossible to expect her to attend to any subject so trivial; and when, afterwards, Caroline told him, with some slight mirth, the capability of which on such a subject was coming to her with her new ideas of life, that, though he was partly saved as a man and a brother, still he was partly the reverse as a feudal lord, he began to reflect that Wallachia Petrie would be a guest with whom he would find it very difficult to make things go pleasantly at Monkhams.
‘Does she not bully you horribly?’ he asked.
‘Of course she bullies me,’ Caroline answered; ‘and I cannot expect you to understand as yet how it is that I love her and like her; but I do. If I were in distress tomorrow, she would give everything she has in the world to put me right.’
‘So would I,’ said he.
‘Ah, you, that is a matter of course. That is your business now. And she would give everything she has in the world to set the world right. Would you do that?’
‘It would depend on the amount of my faith. If I could believe in the result, I suppose I should do it.’
‘She would do it on the slightest hope that such giving would have any tendency that way. Her philanthropy is all real. Of course she is a bore to you.’
‘I am very patient.’
‘I hope I shall find you so always. And, of course, she is ridiculous in your eyes. I have learned to see it, and to regret it; but I shall never cease to love her.’
‘I have not the slightest objection. Her lessons will come from over the water, and mine will come from where shall I say? over the table. If I can’t talk her down with so much advantage on my side, I ought to be made a woman’s-right man myself.’
Poor Lady Rowley had watched Miss Petrie and Mr Glascock during those moments that they had been together, and had half believed the rumour, and had half doubted, thinking in the moments of her belief that Mr Glascock must be mad, and in the moments of unbelief that the rumours had been set afloat by the English Minister’s wife with the express intention of turning Mr Glascock into ridicule. It had never occurred to her to doubt that Wallachia was the eldest of that family of nieces. Could it be possible that a man who had known her Nora, who had undoubtedly loved her Nora, who had travelled all the way from London to Nuncombe Putney to ask Nora to be his wife, should within twelve months of that time have resolved to marry a woman whom he must have selected simply as being the most opposite to Nora of any female human being that he could find? It was not credible to her; and if it were not true, there might still be a hope. Nora had met him, and had spoken to him, and it had seemed that for a moment or two they had spoken as friends. Lady Rowley, when talking to Mrs Spalding, had watched them closely; and she had seen that Nora’s eyes had been bright, and that there had been something between them which was pleasant. Suddenly she found herself close to Wallachia, and thought that she would trust herself to a word.
‘Have you been long in Florence?’ asked Lady Rowley in her softest voice.
‘A pretty considerable time, ma’am, that is, since the fall began.’
What a voice; what an accent; and what words! Was there a man living with sufficient courage to take this woman to England, and shew her to the world as Lady Peterborough?
‘Are you going to remain in Italy for the summer?’ continued Lady Rowley.
‘I guess I shall or, perhaps, locate myself in the purer atmosphere of the Swiss mountains.’
‘Switzerland in summer must certainly be much pleasanter.’
‘I was thinking at the moment of the political atmosphere,’ said Miss Petrie; ‘for although, certainly, much has been done in this country in the way of striking off shackles and treading sceptres under foot, still, Lady Rowley, there remains here that pernicious thing — a king. The feeling of the dominion of a single man and that of a single woman is, for aught I know, worse with me, so clouds the air, that the breath I breathe fails to fill my lungs.’ Wallachia, as she said this, put forth her hand, and raised her chin, and extended her arm. She paused, feeling that justice demanded that Lady Rowley should have a right of reply. But Lady Rowley had not a word to say, and Wallachia Petrie went on. ‘I cannot adapt my body to the sweet savours and the soft luxuries of the outer world with any comfort to my inner self, while the circumstances of the society around me are oppressive to my spirit. When our war was raging all around me I was light-spirited as the lark that mounts through the morning sky.’
‘I should have thought it was very dreadful,’ said Lady Rowley.
‘Full of dread, of awe, and of horror, were those fiery days of indiscriminate slaughter; but they were not days of desolation, because hope was always there by our side. There was a hope in which the soul could trust, and the trusting soul is ever light and buoyant.’
‘I dare say it is,’ said Lady Rowley.
‘But apathy, and serfdom, and kinghood, and dominion, drain the fountain of its living springs, and the soul becomes like the plummet of lead, whose only tendency is to hide itself in subaqueous mud and unsavoury slush.’
Subaqueous mud and unsavoury slush! Lady Rowley repeated the words to herself as she made good her escape, and again expressed to herself her conviction that it could not possibly be so. The ‘subaqueous mud and unsavoury slush,’ with all that had gone before it about the soul, was altogether unintelligible to her; but she knew that it was American buncom of a high order of eloquence, and she told herself again and again that it could not be so. She continued to keep her eyes upon Mr Glascock, and soon saw him again talking to Nora. It was hardly possible, she thought, that Nora should speak to him with so much animation, or he to her, unless there was some feeling between them which, if properly handled, might lead to a renewal of the old tenderness. She went up to Nora, having collected the other girls, and said that the carriage was then waiting for them. Mr Glascock immediately offered Lady Rowley his arm, and took her down to the hall. Could it be that she was leaning upon a future son-inlaw? There was something in the thought which made her lay her weight upon him with a freedom which she would not otherwise have used. Oh! that her Nora should live to be Lady Peterborough! We are apt to abuse mothers for wanting high husbands for their daughters but can there be any point in which the true maternal instinct can shew itself with more affectionate enthusiasm? This poor mother wanted nothing for herself from Mr Glascock. She knew very well that it was her fate to go back to the Mandarins, and probably to die there. She knew also that such men as Mr Glascock, when they marry beneath themselves in rank and fortune, will not ordinarily trouble themselves much with their mothers-inlaw. There was nothing desired for herself. Were such a match accomplished, she might, perhaps, indulge herself in talking among the planters’ wives of her daughter’s coronet; but at the present moment there was no idea even of this in her mind. It was of Nora herself, and of Nora’s sisters, that she was thinking, for them that she was plotting that the one might be rich and splendid, and the others have some path opened for them to riches and splendour. Husband-hunting mothers may be injudicious; but surely they are maternal and unselfish. Mr Glascock put her into the carriage, and squeezed her hand and then he squeezed Nora’s hand. She saw it, and was sure of it. ‘I am so glad you are going to be happy,’ Nora had said to him before this. ‘As far as I have seen her, I like her so much.’ ‘If you do not come and visit her in her own house, I shall think you have no spirit of friendship,’ he said. ‘I will,’ Nora had replied ‘I will.’ This had been said just as Lady Rowley was coming to them, and on this understanding, on this footing, Mr Glascock had pressed her hand.
As she went home, Lady Rowley’s mind was full of doubt as to the course which it was best that she should follow with her daughter. She was not unaware how great was the difficulty before her. Hugh Stanbury’s name had not been mentioned since they left London, but at that time Nora was obstinately bent on throwing herself away upon the ‘penny-a-liner.’ She had never been brought to acknowledge that such a marriage would be even inappropriate, and had withstood gallantly the expression of her father’s displeasure. But with such a spirit as Nora’s, it might be easier to prevail by silence than by many words. Lady Rowley was quite sure of this: that it would be far better to say nothing further of Hugh Stanbury. Let the cure come, if it might be possible, from absence and from her daughter’s good sense. The only question was whether it would be wise to say any word about Mr Glascock. In the carriage she was not only forbearing but flattering in her manner to Nora. She caressed her girl’s hand and spoke to her as mothers know how to speak when they want to make much of their girls, and to have it understood that those girls are behaving as girls should behave. There was to be nobody to meet them tonight, as it had been arranged that Sir Marmaduke and Mrs Trevelyan should sleep at Siena. Hardly a word had been spoken in the carriage; but upstairs, in their drawing-room, there came a moment in which Lucy and Sophie had left them, and Nora was alone with her mother. Lady Rowley almost knew that it would be most prudent to be silent; but a word spoken in season, how good it is! And the thing was so near to her that she could not hold her peace. ‘I must say, Nora,’ she began, ‘that I do like your Mr Glascock.’
‘He is not my Mr Glascock, mamma,’ said Nora, smiling.
‘You know what I mean, dear.’ Lady Rowley had not intended to utter a word that should appear like pressure on her daughter at this moment. She had felt how imprudent it would be to do so. But now Nora seemed to be leading the way herself to such discourse. ‘Of course, he is not your Mr Glascock. You cannot eat your cake and have it, nor can you throw it away and have it.’
‘I have thrown my cake away altogether, and certainly I cannot have it.’ She was still smiling as she spoke, and seemed to be quite merry at the idea of regarding Mr Glascock as the cake which she had declined to eat.
‘I can see one thing quite plainly, dear.’
‘What is that, mamma?’
‘That in spite of what you have done, you can still have your cake whenever you choose to take it.’
‘Why, mamma, he is engaged to be married!’
‘Mr Glascock?’
‘Yes, Mr Glascock. It’s quite settled. Is it not sad?’
‘To whom is he engaged?’ Lady Rowley’s solemnity as she asked this question was piteous to behold.
‘To Miss Spalding Caroline Spalding.’
‘The eldest of those nieces?’
‘Yes the eldest.’
‘I cannot believe it.’
‘Mamma, they both told me so. I have sworn an eternal friendship with her already.’
‘I did not see you speaking to her.’
‘But I did talk to her a great deal.’
‘And he is really going to marry that dreadful woman?’
‘Dreadful, mamma!’
‘Perfectly awful! She talked to me in a way that I have read about in books, but which I did not before believe to be possible. Do you mean that he is going to be married to that hideous old maid, that bell-clapper?’
‘Oh, mamma, what slander! I think her so pretty.’
‘Pretty!’
‘Very pretty. And, mamma, ought I not to be happy that he should have been able to make himself so happy? It was quite, quite, quite impossible that I should have been his wife. I have thought about it ever so much, and I am so glad of it! I think she is just the girl that is fit for him.’
Lady Rowley took her candle and went to bed, professing to herself that she could not understand it. But what did it signify? It was, at any rate, certain now that the man had put himself out of Nora’s reach, and if he chose to marry a republican virago, with a red nose, it could now make no difference to Nora. Lady Rowley almost felt a touch of satisfaction in reflecting on the future misery of his married life.
Sir Marmaduke had been told at the Florence post-office that he would no doubt be able to hear tidings of Trevelyan, and to learn his address, from the officials in the post-office at Siena. At Florence he had been introduced to some gentleman who was certainly of importance, a superintendent who had clerks under him and who was a big man. This person had been very courteous to him, and he had gone to Siena thinking that he would find it easy to obtain Trevelyan’s address or to learn that there was no such person there. But at Siena he and his courier together could obtain no information. They rambled about the huge cathedral and the picturesque market-place of that quaint old city for the whole day, and on the next morning after breakfast they returned to Florence. They had learned nothing. The young man at the post-office had simply protested that he knew nothing of the name of Trevelyan. If letters should come addressed to such a name, he would keep them till they were called for; but, to the best of his knowledge, he had never seen or heard the name. At the guard-house of the gendarmerie they could not, or would not, give him any information, and Sir Marmaduke came back with an impression that everybody at Siena was ignorant, idiotic, and brutal. Mrs Trevelyan was so dispirited as to be ill, and both Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley were disposed to think that the world was all against them. ‘You have no conception of the sort of woman that man is going to marry,’ said Lady Rowley.
‘What man?’
‘Mr Glascock! A horrid American female, as old almost as I am, who talks through her nose, and preaches sermons about the rights of women. It is incredible! And Nora might have had him just for lifting up her hand.’ But Sir Marmaduke could not interest himself much about Mr Glascock. When he had been told that his daughter had refused the heir to a great estate and a peerage, it had been matter of regret; but he had looked upon the affair as done, and cared nothing now though Mr Glascock should marry a transatlantic Xantippe. He was angry with Nora because by her obstinacy she was adding to the general perplexities of the family, but he could not make comparisons on Mr Glascock’s behalf between her and Miss Spalding as his wife was doing, either mentally or aloud, from hour to hour. ‘I suppose it ‘is too late now,’ said Lady Rowley, shaking her head.
‘Of course it is too late. The man must marry whom he pleases. I am beginning to wonder that anybody should ever want to get married. I am indeed.’
‘But what are the girls to do?’
‘I don’t know what anybody is to do. Here is a man as mad as a March hare, and yet nobody can touch him. If it was not for the child, I should advise Emily to put him out of her head altogether.’
But though Sir Marmaduke could not bring himself to take any interest in Mr Glascock’s affairs, and would not ask a single question respecting the fearful American female whom this unfortunate man was about to translate to the position of an English peeress, yet circumstances so fell out that before three days were over he and Mr Glascock were thrown together in very intimate relations. Sir Marmaduke had learned that Mr Glascock was the only Englishman in Florence to whom Trevelyan had been known, and that he was the only person with whom Trevelyan had been seen to speak while passing through the city. In his despair, therefore, Sir Marmaduke had gone to Mr Glascock, and it was soon arranged that the two gentlemen should renew the search at Siena together, without having with them either Mrs Trevelyan or the courier. Mr Glascock knew the ways of the people better than did Sir Marmaduke, and could speak the language. He obtained a passport to the good offices of the police at Siena, and went prepared to demand rather than to ask for assistance. They started very early, before breakfast, and on arriving at Siena at about noon, first employed themselves in recruiting exhausted nature. By the time that they had both declared that the hotel at Siena was the very worst in all Italy, and that a breakfast without eatable butter was not to be considered a breakfast at all, they had become so intimate that Mr Glascock spoke of his own intended marriage. He must have done this with the conviction on his mind that Nora Rowley would have told her mother of his former intention, and that Lady Rowley would have told Sir Marmaduke; but he did not feel it to be incumbent on himself to say anything on that subject. He had nothing to excuse. He had behaved fairly and honourably. It was not to be expected that he should remain unmarried for ever for the sake of a girl who had twice refused him. ‘Of course there are very many in England,’ he said, ‘who will think me foolish to marry a girl from another country.’
‘It is done every day,’ said Sir Marmaduke.
‘No doubt it is. I admit, however, that I ought to be more careful than some other persons. There is a title and an estate to be perpetuated, and I cannot, perhaps, be justified in taking quite so much liberty as some other men may do; but I think I have chosen a woman born to have a high position, and who will make her own way in any society in which she may be placed.’
‘I have no doubt she will,’ said Sir Marmaduke, who had still sounding in his ears the alarming description which his wife had given him of this infatuated man’s proposed bride. But he would have been bound to say as much had Mr Glascock intended to marry as lowly as did King Cophetua.
‘She is highly educated, gentle-mannered, as sweetly soft as any English girl I ever met, and very pretty. You have met her, I think.’
‘I do not remember that I have observed her.’
‘She is too young for me, perhaps,’ said Mr Glascock; ‘but that is a fault on the right side.’ Sir Marmaduke, as he wiped his beard after his breakfast, remembered what his wife had told him about the lady’s age. But it was nothing to him.‘she is four-and-twenty, I think,’ said Mr Glascock. If Mr Glascock chose to believe that his intended wife was four-and-twenty instead of something over forty, that was nothing to Sir Marmaduke.
‘The very best age in the world,’ said he.
They had sent for an officer of the police, and before they had been three hours in Siena they had been told that Trevelyan lived about seven miles from the town, in a small and very remote country house, which he had hired for twelve months from one of the city hospitals. He had hired it furnished, and had purchased a horse and small carriage from a man in the town. To this man they went, and it soon became evident to them that he of whom they were in search was living at this house, which was called Casalunga, and was not, as the police officer told them, on the way to any place. They must leave Siena by the road for Rome, take a turn to the left about a mile beyond the city gate, and continue on along the country lane till they saw a certain round hill to the right. On the top of that round hill was Casalunga. As the country about Siena all lies in round hills, this was no adequate description, but it was suggested that the country people would know all about it. They got a small open carriage in the market-place, and were driven out. Their driver knew nothing of Casalunga, and simply went whither he was told. But by the aid of the country people they got along over the unmade lanes, and in little more than an hour were told, at the bottom of the hill, that they must now walk up to Casalunga. Though the hill was round-topped, and no more than a hill, still the ascent at last was very steep, and was paved with stones set edgeway in a manner that could hardly have been intended to accommodate wheels. When Mr Glascock asserted that the signor who lived there had a carriage of his own, the driver suggested that he must keep it at the bottom of the hill. It was clearly not his intention to attempt to drive up the ascent, and Sir Marmaduke and Mr Glascock were therefore obliged to walk. It was now in the latter half of May, and there was a blazing Italian sky over their heads. Mr Glascock was acclimated to Italian skies, and did not much mind the work; but Sir Marmaduke, who never did much in walking, declared that Italy was infinitely hotter than the Mandarins, and could hardly make his way as far as the house door.
It seemed to both of them to be a most singular abode for such a man as Trevelyan. At the top of the hill there was a huge entrance through a wooden gateway, which seemed to have been constructed with the intention of defying any intruders not provided with warlike ammunition. The gates were, indeed, open at the period of their visit, but it must be supposed that they were intended to be closed at any rate at night. Immediately on the right, as they entered through the gates, there was a large barn, in which two men were coopering wine vats. From thence a path led slanting to the house, of which the door was shut, and all the front windows blocked with shutters. The house was very long, and only of one story for a portion of its length. Over that end at which the door was placed there were upper rooms, and there must have been space enough for a large family with many domestics. There was nothing round or near the residence which could be called a garden, so that its look of desolation was extreme. There were various large barns and outhouses, as though it had been intended by the builder that corn and hay and cattle should be kept there; but it seemed now that there was nothing there except the empty vats at which the two men were coopering. Had the Englishmen gone farther into the granary, they would have seen that there were wine-presses stored away in the dark corners.
They stopped and looked at the men, and the men halted for a moment from their work and looked at them; but the men spoke never a word. Mr Glascock then asked after Mr Trevelyan, and one of the coopers pointed to the house. Then they crossed over to the door, and Mr Glascock finding there neither knocker nor bell, first tapped with his knuckles, and then struck with his stick. But no one came. There was not a sound in the house, and no shutter was removed. ‘I don’t believe that there is a soul here,’ said Sir Marmaduke.
‘We’ll not give it up till we’ve seen it all at any rate,’ said Mr Glascock. And so they went round to the other front.
On this side of the house the tilled ground, either ploughed or dug with the spade, came up to the very windows. There was hardly even a particle of grass to be seen. A short way down the hill there were rows of olive trees, standing in prim order and at regular distances, from which hung the vines that made the coopering of the vats necessary. Olives and vines have pretty names, and call up associations of landscape beauty. But here they were in no way beautiful. The ground beneath them was turned up, and brown, and arid, so that there was not a blade of grass to be seen. On some furrows the maize or Indian corn was sprouting, and there were patches of growth of other kinds, each patch closely marked by its own straight lines; and there were narrow paths, so constructed as to take as little room as possible. But all that had been done had been done for economy, and nothing for beauty. The occupiers of Casalunga had thought more of the produce of their land than of picturesque or attractive appearance.
The sun was blazing fiercely hot, hotter on this side, Sir Marmaduke thought, even than on the other; and there was not a wavelet of a cloud in the sky. A balcony ran the whole length of the house, and under this Sir Marmaduke took shelter at once, leaning with his back against the wall. ‘There is not a soul here at all,’ said he.
‘The men in the barn told us that there was,’ said Mr Glascock; ‘and, at any rate, we will try the windows.’ So saying, he walked along the front of the house, Sir Marmaduke following him slowly, till they came to a door, the upper half of which was glazed, and through which they looked into one of the rooms. Two or three of the other windows in this frontage of the house came down to the ground, and were made for egress and ingress; but they had all been closed with shutters, as though the house was deserted. But they now looked into a room which contained some signs of habitation. There was a small table with a marble top, on which lay two or three books, and there were two arm-chairs in the room, with gilded arms and legs, and a morsel of carpet, and a clock on, a shelf over a stove, and a rocking-horse. ‘The boy is here, you may be sure,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘The rocking-horse makes that certain. But how are we to get at any one!’
‘I never saw such a place for an Englishman to come and live in before,’ said Sir Marmaduke. ‘What on earth can he do here all day!’ As he spoke the door of the room was opened, and there was Trevelyan standing before them, looking at them through the window. He wore an old red English dressing-gown, which came down to his feet, and a small braided Italian cap on his head. His beard had been allowed to grow, and he had neither collar nor cravat. His trousers were unbraced, and he shuffled in with a pair of slippers, which would hardly cling to his feet. He was paler and still thinner than when he had been visited at Willesden, and his eyes seemed to be larger, and shone almost with a brighter brilliancy.
Mr Glascock tried to open the door, but found that it was closed. ‘Sir Marmaduke and I have come to visit you,’ said Mr Glascock, aloud. ‘Is there any means by which we can get into the house?’ Trevelyan stood still and stared at them. ‘We knocked at the front door, but nobody came,’ continued Mr Glascock. ‘I suppose this is the way you usually go in and out.’
‘He does not mean to let us in,’ whispered Sir Marmaduke.
‘Can you open this door,’ said Mr Glascock, ‘or shall we go round again?’ Trevelyan had stood still contemplating them, but at last came forward and put back the bolt. ‘That is all right,’ said Mr Glascock, entering. ‘I am sure you will be glad to see Sir Marmaduke.’
‘I should be glad to see him or you, if I could entertain you,’ said Trevelyan. His voice was harsh and hard, and his words were uttered with a certain amount of intended grandeur. ‘Any of the family would be welcome were it not —’
‘Were it not what?’ asked Mr Glascock.
‘It can be nothing to you, sir, what troubles I have here. This is my own abode, in which I had flattered myself that I could be free from intruders. I do not want visitors. I am sorry that you should have had trouble in coming here, but I do not want visitors. I am very sorry that I have nothing that I can offer you, Mr Glascock.’
‘Emily is in Florence,’ said Sir Marmaduke.
‘Who brought her? Did I tell her to come? Let her go back to her home. I have come here to be free from her, and I mean to be free. If she wants my money, let her take it.’
‘She wants her child,’ said Mr Glascock.
‘He is my child,’ said Trevelyan, ‘and my right to him is better than hers. Let her try it in a court of law, and she shall see. Why did she deceive me with that man? Why has she driven me to this? Look here, Mr Glascock my whole life is spent in this seclusion, and it is her fault.’
‘Your wife is innocent of all fault, Trevelyan,’ said Mr Glascock.
‘Any woman can say as much as that and all women do say it. Yet what are they worth?’
‘Do you mean, sir, to take away your wife’s character?’ said Sir Marmaduke, coming up in wrath. ‘Remember that she is my daughter, and that there are things which flesh and blood cannot stand.’
‘She is my wife, sir, and that is ten times more. Do you think that you would do more for her than I would do, drink more of Esill? You had better go away, Sir Marmaduke. You can do no good by coming here and talking of your daughter. I would have given the world to save her but she would not be saved.’
‘You are a slanderer!’ said Sir Marmaduke, in his wrath.
Mr Glascock turned round to the father, and tried to quiet him. It was so manifest to him that the balance of the poor man’s mind was gone, that it seemed to him to be ridiculous to upbraid the sufferer. He was such a piteous sight to behold, that it was almost impossible to feel indignation against him. ‘You cannot wonder,’ said Mr Glascock, advancing close to the master of the house, ‘that the mother should want to see her only child. You do not wish that your wife should be the most wretched woman in the world.’
‘Am not I the most wretched of men? Can anything be more wretched than this? Is her life worse than mine? And whose fault was it? Had I any friend to whom she objected? Was I untrue to her in a single thought?’
‘If you say that she was untrue, it is a falsehood,’ said Sir Marmaduke.
‘You allow yourself a liberty of expression, sir, because you are my wife’s father,’ said Trevelyan, ‘which you would not dare to take in other circumstances.’
‘I say that it is a false calumny, a lie! And I would say so to any man on earth who should dare to slander my child’s name.’
‘Your child, sir! She is my wife, my wife, my wife!’ Trevelyan, as he spoke, advanced close up to his father-inlaw; and at last hissed out his words, with his lips close to Sir Marmaduke’s face. ‘Your right in her is gone, sir. She is mine, mine, mine! And you see the way in which she has treated me, Mr Glascock. Everything I had was hers; but the words of a grey-haired sinner were sweeter to her than all my love. I wonder whether you think that it is a pleasant thing for such a one as I to come out here and live in such a place as this? I have not a friend, a companion, hardly a book. There is nothing that I can eat or drink! I do not stir out of the house, and I am ill, very ill! Look at me. See what she has brought me to! Mr Glascock, on my honour as a man, I never wronged her in a thought or a word.’
Mr Glascock had come to think that his best chance of doing any good was to get Trevelyan into conversation with himself, free from the interruption of Sir Marmaduke. The father of the injured woman could not bring himself to endure the hard words that were spoken of his daughter. During this last speech he had broken out once or twice; but Trevelyan, not heeding him, had clung to Mr Glascock’s arm. ‘Sir Marmaduke,’ said he, ‘would you not like to see the boy?’
‘He shall not see the boy,’ said Trevelyan. ‘You may see him. He shall not. What is he that he should have control over me?’
‘This is the most fearful thing I ever heard of,’ said Sir Marmaduke. ‘What are we to do with him?’
Mr Glascock whispered a few words to Sir Marmaduke, and then declared that he was ready to be taken to the child. ‘And he will remain here?’ asked Trevelyan.. A pledge was then given by Sir Marmaduke that he would not force his way farther into the house, and the two other men left the chamber together. Sir Marmaduke, as he paced up and down the room alone, perspiring at every pore, thoroughly uncomfortable and ill at ease, thought of all the hard positions of which he had ever read, and that his was harder than them all. Here was a man married to his daughter, in possession of his daughter’s child, manifestly mad, and yet he could do nothing to him! He was about to return to the seat of his government, and he must leave his own child in this madman’s power! Of course, his daughter could not go with him, leaving her child in this madman’s hands. He had been told that even were he to attempt to prove the man to be mad in Italy, the process would be slow; and, before it could be well commenced, Trevelyan would be off with the child elsewhere. There never was an embarrassment, thought Sir Marmaduke, out of which it was so impossible to find a clear way.
In the meantime, Mr Glascock and Trevelyan were visiting the child. It was evident that the father, let him be ever so mad, had discerned the expediency of allowing some one to see that his son was alive and in health. Mr Glascock did not know much of children, and could only say afterwards that the boy was silent and very melancholy, but clean, and apparently well. It appeared that he was taken out daily by his father in the cool hours of the morning, and that his father hardly left him from the time that he was taken up till he was put to bed. But Mr Glascock’s desire was to see Trevelyan alone, and this he did after they had left the boy. ‘And now, Trevelyan,’ he said, ‘what do you mean to do?’
‘To do?’
‘In what way do you propose to live? I want you to be reasonable with me.’
‘They do not treat me reasonably.’
‘Are you going to measure your own conduct by that of other people? In the first place, you should go back to England. What good can you do here?’ Trevelyan shook his head, but remained silent. ‘You cannot like this life.’
‘No, indeed. But whither can I go now that I shall like to live?’
‘Why not home?’
‘I have no home.’
‘Why not go back to England? Ask your wife to join you, and return with her. She would go at a word.’ The poor wretch again shook his head. ‘I hope you think that I speak as your friend,’ said Mr Glascock.
‘I believe you do.’
‘I will say nothing of any imprudence; but you cannot believe that she has been untrue to you?’ Trevelyan would say nothing to this, but stood silent waiting for Mr Glascock to continue. ‘Let her come back to you here; and then, as soon as you can arrange it, go to your own home.’
‘Shall I tell you something?’ said Trevelyan.
‘What is it?’
He came up close to Mr Glascock, and put his hand upon his visitor’s shoulder. ‘I will tell you what she would do at once. I dare say that she would come to me. I dare say that she would go with me. I am sure she would. And directly she got me there, she would say that I was mad! She my wife, would do it! He, that furious, ignorant old man below, tried to do it before. His wife said that I was mad.’ He paused a moment, as though waiting for a reply; but Mr Glascock had none to make. It had not been his object, in the advice which he had given, to entrap the poor fellow by a snare, and to induce him so to act that he should deliver himself up to keepers; but he was well aware that wherever Trevelyan might be, it would be desirable that he should be placed for awhile in the charge of some physician. He could not bring himself at the spur of the moment to repudiate the idea by which Trevelyan was actuated. ‘Perhaps you think that she would be right?’ said Trevelyan.
‘I am quite sure that she would do nothing that is not for the best,’ said Mr Glascock.
‘I can see it all. I will not go back to England, Mr Glascock. I intend to travel. I shall probably leave this and go to to to Greece, perhaps. It is a healthy place, this, and I like it for that reason; but I shall not stay here. If my wife likes to travel with me, she can come. But to England I will not go.’
‘You will let the child go to his mother?’
‘Certainly not. If she wants to see the child, he is here. If she will come without her father she shall see him. She shall not take him from hence. Nor shall she return to live with me, without full acknowledgment of her fault, and promises of an amended life. I know what I am saying, Mr Glascock, and have thought of these things perhaps more than you have done. I am obliged to you for coming to me; but now, if you please, I would prefer to be alone.’
Mr Glascock, seeing that nothing further could be done, joined Sir Marmaduke, and the two walked down to their carriage at the bottom of the hill. Mr Glascock, as he went, declared his conviction that the unfortunate man was altogether mad, and that it would be necessary to obtain some interference on the part of the authorities for the protection of the child. How this could be done, or whether it could be done in time to intercept a further flight on the part of Trevelyan, Mr Glascock could not say. It was his idea that Mrs Trevelyan should herself go out to Casalunga, and try the force of her own persuasion.
‘I believe that he would murder her,’ said Sir Marmaduke.
‘He would not do that. There is a glimmer of sense in all his madness, which will keep him from any actual violence.’
Three days after this there came another carriage to the bottom of the hill on which Casalunga stood, and a lady got out of it all alone. It was Emily Trevelyan, and she had come thither from Siena in quest of her husband and her child. On the previous day Sir Marmaduke’s courier had been at the house with a note from the wife to the husband, and had returned with an answer, in which Mrs Trevelyan was told that, if she would come quite alone, she should see her child. Sir Marmaduke had been averse to any further intercourse with the man, other than what might be made in accordance with medical advice, and, if possible, with government authority. Lady Rowley had assented to her daughter’s wish, but had suggested that she should at least be allowed to go also at any rate, as far as the bottom of the hill. But Emily had been very firm, and Mr Glascock had supported her. He was confident that the man would do no harm to her, and he was indisposed to believe that any interference on the part of the Italian Government could be procured in such a case with sufficient celerity to be of use. He still thought it might be possible that the wife might prevail over the husband, or the mother over the father. Sir Marmaduke was at last obliged to yield, and Mrs Trevelyan went to Siena with no other companion but the courier. From Siena she made the journey quite alone; and having learned the circumstances of the house from Mr Glascock, she got out of the carriage, and walked up the hill. There were still the two men coopering at the vats, but she did not stay to speak to them. She went through the big gates, and along the slanting path to the door, not doubting of her way, for Mr Glascock had described it all to her, making a small plan of the premises, and even explaining to her the position of the room in which her boy and her husband slept. She found the door open, and an Italian maid-servant at once welcomed her to the house, and assured her that the signor would be with her immediately. She was sure that the girl knew that she was the boy’s mother, and was almost tempted to ask questions at once as to the state of the household; but her knowledge of Italian was slight, and she felt that she was so utterly a stranger in the land that she could dare to trust no one. Though the heat was great, her face was covered with a thick veil. Her dress was black, from head to foot, and she was as a woman who mourned for her husband. She was led into the room which her father had been allowed to enter through the window; and here she sat, in her husband’s house, feeling that in no position in the world could she be more utterly separated from the interests of all around her. In a few minutes the door was opened, and her husband was with her, bringing the boy in his hand. He had dressed himself with some care; but it may be doubted whether the garments which he wore did not make him appear thinner even and more haggard than he had looked to be in his old dressing-gown. He had not shaved himself, but his long hair was brushed back from his forehead, after a fashion quaint and very foreign to his former ideas of dress. His wife had not expected that her child would come to her at once, had thought that some entreaties would be necessary, some obedience perhaps exacted from her, before she would be allowed to see him; and now her heart was softened, and she was grateful to her husband. But she could not speak to him till she had had the boy in her arms. She tore off her bonnet, and then clinging to the child, covered him with kisses. ‘Louey, my darling! Louey; you remember mamma?’ The child pressed himself close to his mother’s bosom, but spoke never a word. He was cowed and overcome, not only by the incidents of the moment, but by the terrible melancholy of his whole life. He had been taught to understand, without actual spoken lessons, that he was to live with his father, and that the former woman-given happinesses of his life were at an end. In this second visit from his mother he did not forget her. He recognised the luxury of her love; but it did not occur to him even to hope that she might have come to rescue him from the evil of his days. Trevelyan was standing by, the while, looking on; but he did not speak till she addressed him.
‘I am so thankful to you for bringing him to me,’ she said.
‘I told you that you should see him,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it might have been better that I should have sent him by a servant; but there are circumstances which make me fear to let him out of my sight.’
‘Do you think that I did not wish to see you also? Louis, why do you do me so much wrong? Why do you treat me with such cruelty?’ Then she threw her arms round his neck, and before he could repulse her before he could reflect whether it would be well that he should repulse her or not she had covered his brow and cheeks and lips with kisses. ‘Louis,’ she said; ‘Louis, speak to me!’
‘It is hard to speak sometimes,’ he said.
‘You love me, Louis?’
‘Yes I love you. But I am afraid of you!’
‘What is it that you fear? I would give my life for you, if you would only come back to me and let me feel that you believed me to be true.’ He shook his head, and began to think while she still clung to him. He was quite sure that her father and mother had intended to bring a mad doctor down upon him, and he knew that his wife was in her mother’s hands. Should he yield to her now, should he make her any promise, might not the result be that he would be shut up in dark rooms, robbed of his liberty, robbed of what he loved better than his liberty, his power as a man. She would thus get the better of him and take the child, and the world would say that in this contest between him and her he had been the sinning one, and she the one against whom the sin had been done. It was the chief object of his mind, the one thing for which he was eager, that this should never come to pass. Let it once be conceded to him from all sides that he had been right, and then she might do with him almost as she willed. He knew well that he was ill. When he thought of his child, he would tell himself that he was dying. He was at some moments of his miserable existence fearfully anxious to come to terms with his wife, in order that at his death his boy might not be without a protector. Were he to die, then it would be better that his child should be with its mother. In his happy days, immediately after his marriage, he had made a will, in which he had left his entire property to his wife for her life, providing for its subsequent descent to his child or children. It had never even occurred to his poor shattered brain that it would be well for him to alter his will. Had he really believed that his wife had betrayed him, doubtless he would have done so. He would have hated her, have distrusted her altogether, and have believed her to be an evil thing. He had no such belief. But in his desire to achieve empire, and in the sorrows which had come upon him in his unsuccessful struggle, his mind had wavered so frequently, that his spoken words were no true indicators of his thoughts; and in all his arguments he failed to express either his convictions or his desires. When he would say something stronger than he intended, and it would be put to him by his wife, by her father or mother, or by some friend of hers, whether he did believe that she had been untrue to him, he would recoil from the answer which his heart would dictate, lest he should seem to make an acknowledgment that might weaken the ground upon which he stood. Then he would satisfy his own conscience by assuring himself that he had never accused her of such sin. She was still clinging to him now as his mind was working after this fashion. ‘Louis,’ she said, ‘let it all be as though there had been nothing.’
‘How can that be, my dear?’
‘Not to others, but to us it can be so. There shall be no word spoken of the past.’ Again he shook his head. ‘Will it not be best that there should be no word spoken?’
‘“Forgiveness may be spoken with the tongue,”’ he said, beginning to quote from a poem which had formerly been frequent in his hands.
‘Cannot there be real forgiveness between you and me, between husband and wife who, in truth, love each other? Do you think that I would tell you of it again?’ He felt that in all that she said there was an assumption that she had been right, and that he had been wrong. She was promising to forgive. She was undertaking to forget. She was willing to take him back to the warmth of her love, and the comfort of her kindness but was not asking to be taken back. This was what he could not and would not endure. He had determined that if she behaved well to him, he would not be harsh to her, and he was struggling to keep up to his resolve. He would accuse her of nothing if he could help it. But he could not say a word that would even imply that she need forget that she should forgive. It was for him to forgive and he was willing to do it, if she would accept forgiveness: ‘I will never speak a word, Louis,’ she said, laying her head upon his shoulder.
‘Your heart is still hardened,’ he replied slowly.
‘Hard to you?’
‘And your mind is dark. You do not see what you have done. In our religion, Emily, forgiveness is sure, not after penitence, but with repentance.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means this, that though I would welcome you back to my arms with joy, I cannot do so, till you have confessed your fault.’
‘What fault, Louis? If I have made you unhappy, I do, indeed, grieve that it has been so.’
‘It is of no use,’ said he. ‘I cannot talk about it. Do you suppose that it does not tear me to the very soul to think of it?’
‘What is it that you think, Louis?’ As she had been travelling thither, she had determined that she would say anything that he wished her to say, make any admission that might satisfy him. That she could be happy again as other women are happy, she did not expect; but if it could be conceded between them that bygones should be bygones, she might live with him and do her duty, and, at least, have her child with her.
Her father had told her that her husband was mad; but she was willing to put up with his madness on such terms as these. What could her husband do to her in his madness that he could not do also to the child? ‘Tell me what you want me to say, and I will say it,’ she said.
‘You have sinned against me,’ he said, raising her head gently from his shoulder.
‘Never!’ she exclaimed. ‘As God is my judge, I never have!’ As she said this, she retreated and took the sobbing boy again into her arms.
He was at once placed upon his guard, telling himself that he saw the necessity of holding by his child. How could he tell? Might there not be policemen down from Florence, ready round the house, to seize the boy and carry him away. Though all his remaining life should be a torment to him, though infinite plagues should be poured upon his head, though he should die like a dog, alone, unfriended, and in despair, while he was fighting this battle of his, he would not give way. ‘That is sufficient,’ he said. ‘Louey must return now to his own chamber.’
‘I may go with him?’
‘No, Emily. You cannot go with him now. I will thank you to release him, that I may take him.’ She still held the little fellow closely pressed in her arms. ‘Do not reward me for my courtesy by further disobedience,’ he said.
‘You will let me come again?’ To this he made no reply. ‘Tell me that I may come again.’
‘I do not think that I shall remain here long.’
‘And I may not stay now?’
‘That would be impossible. There is no accommodation for you.’
‘I could sleep on the boards beside his cot,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.
‘That is my place,’ he replied. ‘You may know that he is not disregarded. With my own hands I tend him every morning. I take him out myself. I feed him myself. He says his prayers to me. He learns from me, and can say his letters nicely. You need not fear for him. No mother was ever more tender with her child than I am with him.’ Then he gently withdrew the boy from her arms, and she let her child go, lest he should learn to know that there was a quarrel between his father and his mother. ‘If you will excuse me,’ he said, ‘I will not come down to you again today. My servant will see you to your carriage.’
So he left her; and she, with an Italian girl at her heels, got into her vehicle, and was taken back to Siena. There she passed the night alone at the inn, and on the next morning returned to Florence by the railway.
Gradually the news of the intended marriage between Mr Glascock and Miss Spalding spread itself over Florence, and people talked about it with that energy which subjects of such moment certainly deserve. That Caroline Spalding had achieved a very great triumph, was, of course, the verdict of all men and of all women; and I fear that there was a corresponding feeling that poor Mr Glascock had been triumphed over, and, as it were, subjugated. In some respects he had been remiss in his duties as a bachelor visitor to Florence, as a visitor to Florence who had manifestly been much in want of a wife. He had not given other girls a fair chance, but had thrown himself down at the feet of this American female in the weakest possible manner. And then it got about the town that he had been refused over and over again by Nora Rowley. It is too probable that Lady Rowley in her despair and dismay had been indiscreet, and had told secrets which should never have been mentioned by her. And the wife of the English minister, who had some grudges of her own, lifted her eyebrows and shook her head and declared that all the Glascocks at home would be outraged to the last degree. ‘My dear Lady Rowley,’ she said, ‘I don’t know whether it won’t become a question with them whether they should issue a commission de lunatico.’ Lady Rowley did not know what a commission de lunatico meant, but was quite willing to regard poor Mr Glascock as a lunatic. ‘And there is poor Lord Peterborough at Naples just at death’s door,’ continued the British Ministers wife. In this she was perhaps nearly correct; but as Lord Peterborough had now been in the same condition for many months, as his mind had altogether gone, and as the doctor declared that he might live in his present condition for a year, or for years, it could not fairly be said that Mr Glascock was acting without due filial feeling in engaging himself to marry a young lady. ‘And she such a creature!’ said Lady Rowley, with emphasis. This the British Minister’s wife noticed simply by shaking her head. Caroline Spalding was undoubtedly a pretty girl; but, as the British Minister’s wife said afterwards, it was not surprising that poor Lady Rowley should be nearly out of her mind.
This had occurred a full week after the evening spent at Mr Spalding’s house; and even yet Lady Rowley had never been put right as to that mistake of hers about Wallachia Petrie. That other trouble of hers, and her eldest daughter’s journey to Siena, had prevented them from going out; and though the matter had often been discussed between Lady Rowley and Nora, there had not as yet come between them any proper explanation. Nora would declare that the future bride was very pretty and very delightful; and Lady Rowley would throw up her hands in despair and protest that her daughter was insane. ‘Why should he not marry whom he likes, mamma?’ Nora once said, almost with indignation.
‘Because he will disgrace his family.’
‘I cannot understand what you mean, mamma. They are, at any rate, as good as we are. Mr Spalding stands quite as high as papa does.’
‘She is an American,’ said Lady Rowley.
‘And her family might say that he is an Englishman,’ said Nora.
‘My dear, if you do not understand the incongruity between an English peer and a Yankee female, I cannot help you. I suppose it is because you have been brought up within the limited society of a small colony. If so, it is not your fault. But I had hoped you had been in Europe long enough to have learned what was what. Do you think, my dear, that she will look well when she is presented to her Majesty as Lord Peterborough’s wife?’
‘Splendid,’ said Nora.‘she has just the brow for a coronet.’
‘Heavens and earth!’ said Lady Rowley, throwing up her hands. ‘And you believe that he will be proud of her in England?’
‘I am sure he will.’
‘My belief is that he will leave her behind him, or that they will settle somewhere in the wilds of America out in Mexico, or Massachusetts, or the Rocky Mountains. I do not think that he will have the courage to shew her in London.’
The marriage was to take place in the Protestant church at Florence early in June, and then the bride and bridegroom were to go over the Alps, and to remain there subject to tidings as to the health of the old man at Naples. Mr Glascock had thrown up his seat in Parliament, some month or two ago, knowing that he could not get back to his duties during the present session, and feeling that he would shortly be called upon to sit in the other House. He was thus free to use his time and to fix his days as he pleased; and it was certainly clear to those who knew him, that he was not ashamed of his American bride. He spent much of his time at the Spaldings’ house, and was always to be seen with them in the Casino and at the Opera. Mrs Spalding, the aunt, was, of course, in great glory. A triumphant, happy, or even simply a splendid marriage, for the rising girl of a family is a great glory to the maternal mind. Mrs Spalding could not but be aware that the very air around her seemed to breathe congratulations into her ears. Her friends spoke to her, even on indifferent subjects, as though everything was going well with her, better with her than with anybody else; and there came upon her in these days a dangerous feeling, that in spite of all the preachings of the preachers, the next world might perhaps be not so very much better than this. She was, in fact, the reverse of the medal of which poor Lady Rowley filled the obverse. And the American Minister was certainly an inch taller than before, and made longer speeches, being much more regardless of interruption. Olivia was delighted at her sister’s success, and heard with rapture the description of Monkhams, which came to her second-hand through her sister. It was already settled that she was to spend her next Christmas at Monkhams, and perhaps there might be an idea in her mind that there were other eldest sons of old lords who would like American brides. Everything around Caroline Spalding was pleasant except the words of Wallachia Petrie.
Everything around her was pleasant till there came to her a touch of a suspicion that the marriage which Mr Glascock was going to make would be detrimental to her intended husband in his own country. There were many in Florence who were saying this besides the wife of the English Minister and Lady Rowley. Of course Caroline Spalding herself was the last to hear it, and to her the idea was brought by Wallachia Petrie. ‘I wish I could think you would make yourself happy, or him,’ Wallachia had said, croaking.
‘Why should I fail to make him happy?’
‘Because you are not of the same blood, or race, or manners as himself. They say that he is very wealthy in his own country, and that those who live around him will look coldly on you.’
‘So that he does not look coldly, I do not care how others may look,’ said Caroline proudly.
‘But when he finds that he has injured himself by such a marriage in the estimation of all his friends, how will it be then?’
This set Caroline Spalding thinking of what she was doing. She began to realise the feeling that perhaps she might not be a fit bride for an English lord’s son, and in her agony she came to Nora Rowley for counsel. After all, how little was it that she knew of the home and the country to which she was to be carried! She might not, perhaps, get adequate advice from Nora, but she would probably learn something on which she could act. There was no one else among the English at Florence to whom she could speak with freedom. When she mentioned her fears to her aunt, her aunt of course laughed at her. Mrs Spalding told her that Mr Glascock might be presumed to know his own business best, and that she, as an American lady of high standing — the niece of a minister!— was a fitting match for any Englishman, let him be ever so much a lord. But Caroline was not comforted by this, and in her suspense she went to Nora Rowley. She wrote a line to Nora, and when she called at the hotel, was taken up to her friend’s bedroom. She found great difficulty in telling her story, but she did tell it. ‘Miss Rowley,’ she said, ‘if this is a silly thing that he is going to do, I am bound to save him from his own folly. You know your own country better than I do. Will they think that he has disgraced himself?’
‘Certainly not that,’ said Nora.
‘Shall I be a load round his neck? Miss Rowley, for my own sake I would not endure such a position as that, not even though I love him. But for his sake! Think of that. If I find that people think ill of him because of me!’
‘No one will think ill of him.’
‘Is it esteemed needful that such a one as he should marry a woman of his own rank. I can bear to end it all now; but I shall not be able to bear his humiliation, and my own despair, if I find that I have injured him. Tell me plainly, is it a marriage that he should not make?’ Nora paused for a while before she answered, and as she sat silent the other girl watched her face carefully. Nora on being thus consulted, was very careful that her tongue should utter nothing that was not her true opinion as best she knew how to express it. Her sympathy would have prompted her to give such an answer as would at once have made Caroline happy in her mind. She would have been delighted to have been able to declare that these doubts were utterly groundless, and this hesitation needless. But she conceived that she owed it as a duty from one woman to another to speak the truth as she conceived it on so momentous an occasion, and she was not sure but that Mr Glascock would be considered by his friends in England to be doing badly in marrying an American girl. What she did not remember was this that her very hesitation was in fact an answer, and such an answer as she was most unwilling to give. ‘I see that it would be so,’ said Caroline Spalding.
‘No, not that.’
‘What then? Will they despise him and me?’
‘No one who knows you can despise you. No one who sees you can fail to admire you.’ Nora, as she said this, thought of her mother, but told herself at once that in this matter her mother’s judgment had been altogether destroyed by her disappointment. ‘What I think will take place will be this. His family, when first they hear of it, will be sorry.’
‘Then,’ said Caroline, ‘I will put an end to it.’
‘You can’t do that, dear. You are engaged, and you haven’t a right. I am engaged to a man, and all my friends object to it. But I shan’t put an end to it. I don’t think I have a right. I shall not do it any way, however.’
‘But if it were for his good?’
‘It couldn’t be for his good. He and I have got to go along together somehow.’
‘You wouldn’t hurt him,’ said Caroline.
‘I won’t if I can help it, but he has got to take me along with him any how; and Mr Glascock has got to take you. If I were you, I shouldn’t ask any more questions.’
‘It isn’t the same. You said that you were to be poor, but he is very rich. And I am beginning to understand that these titles of yours are something like kings’ crowns. The man who has to wear them can’t do just as he pleases with them. Noblesse oblige. I can see the meaning of that, even when the obligation itself is trumpery in its nature. If it is a man’s duty to marry a Talbot because he’s a Howard, I suppose he ought to do his duty.’ After a pause she went on again. ‘I do believe that I have made a mistake. It seemed to be absurd at the first to think of it, but I do believe it now. Even what you say to me makes me think it.’
‘At any rate you can’t go back,’ said Nora enthusiastically.
‘I will try.’
‘Go to himself and ask him. You must leave him to decide it at last. I don’t see how a girl when she is engaged, is to throw a man over unless he consents. Of course you can throw yourself into the Arno.’
‘And get the water into my shoes, for it wouldn’t do much more at present.’
‘And you can jilt him,’ said Nora.
‘It would not be jilting him.’
‘He must decide that. If he so regards it, it will be so. I advise you to think no more about it; but if you speak to anybody it should be to him.’ This was at last the result of Nora’s wisdom, and then the two girls descended together to the room in which Lady Rowley was sitting with her other daughters. Lady Rowley was very careful in asking after Miss Spalding’s sister, and Miss Spalding assured her that Olivia was quite well. Then Lady Rowley made some inquiry about Olivia and Mr Glascock, and Miss Spalding assured her that no two persons were ever such allies, and that she believed that they were together at this moment investigating some old church. Lady Rowley simpered, and declared that nothing could be more proper, and expressed a hope that Olivia would like England. Caroline Spalding, having still in her mind the trouble that had brought her to Nora, had not much to say about this. ‘If she goes again to England I am sure she will like it,’ replied Miss Spalding.
‘But of course she is going,’ said Lady Rowley.
‘Of course she will some day, and of course she’ll like it,’ said Miss Spalding. ‘We both of us have been there already.’
‘But I mean Monkhams,’ said Lady Rowley, still simpering.
‘I declare I believe mamma thinks that your sister is to be married to Mr Glascock!’ said Lucy.
‘And so she is, isn’t she?’ said Lady Rowley.
‘Oh, mamma!’ said Nora, jumping up. ‘It is Caroline, this one, this one, this one,’ and Nora took her friend by the arm as she spoke ‘it is this one that is to be Mrs Glascock.’
‘It is a most natural mistake to make,’ said Caroline. Lady Rowley became very red in the face, and was unhappy. ‘I declare,’ she said, ‘that they told me it was your elder sister.’
‘But I have no elder sister,’ said Caroline, laughing. ‘Of course she is oldest,’ said Nora ‘and looks to be so, ever so much. Don’t you, Miss Spalding?’
‘I have always supposed so.’
‘I don’t understand it at all,’ said Lady Rowley, who had no image before her mind’s eye but that of Wallachia Petrie, and who was beginning to feel that she had disgraced her own judgment by the criticisms she had expressed everywhere as to Mr Glascock’s bride. ‘I don’t understand it at all. Do you mean that both your sisters are younger than you, Miss Spalding?’
‘I have only got one, Lady Rowley.’
‘Mamma, you are thinking of Miss Petrie,’ said Nora, clapping both her hands together.
‘I mean the lady that wears the black bugles.’
‘Of course you do, Miss Petrie. Mamma has all along thought that Mr Glascock was going to carry away with him the republican Browning!’
‘Oh, mamma, how can you have made such a blunder!’ said Sophie Rowley. ‘Mamma does make such delicious blunders.’
‘Sophie, my dear, that is not a proper way of speaking.’
‘But, dear mamma, don’t you?’
‘If somebody has told me wrong, that has not been my fault,’ said Lady Rowley.
The poor woman was so evidently disconcerted that Caroline Spalding was quite unhappy.
‘My dear Lady Rowley, there has been no fault. And why shouldn’t it have been so. Wallachia is so clever, that it is the most natural thing in the world to have thought.’
‘I cannot say that I agree with you there,’ said Lady Rowley, somewhat recovering herself.
‘You must know the whole truth now,’ said Nora, turning to her friend, ‘and you must not be angry with us if we laugh a little at your poetess. Mamma has been frantic with Mr Glascock because he has been going to marry — whom shall I say — her edition of you. She has sworn that he must be insane. When we have sworn how beautiful you were, and how nice, and how jolly, and all the rest of it she has sworn that you were at least a hundred and that you had a red nose. You must admit that Miss Petrie has a red nose.’
‘Is that a sin?’
‘Not at all in the woman who has it; but in the man who is going to marry it, yes. Can’t you see how we have all been at cross-purposes, and what mamma has been thinking and saying of poor Mr Glascock? You mustn’t repeat it, of course; but we have had such a battle here about it. We thought that mamma had lost her eyes and her ears and her knowledge of things in general. And now it has all come out! You won’t be angry?’
‘Why should I be angry?’
‘Miss Spalding,’ said Lady Rowley, ‘I am really unhappy at what has occurred, and I hope that there may be nothing more said about it. I am quite sure that somebody told me wrong, or I should not have fallen into such an error. I beg your pardon and Mr Glascock’s!’
‘Beg Mr Glascock’s pardon, certainly,’ said Lucy.
Miss Spalding looked very pretty, smiled very gracefully, and coming up to Lady Rowley to say good-bye, kissed her on her cheeks. This overcame the spirit of the disappointed mother, and Lady Rowley never said another word against Caroline Spalding or her marriage. ‘Now, mamma, what do you think of her?’ said Nora, as soon as Caroline was gone.
‘Was it odd, my dear, that I should be astonished at his wanting to marry that other woman?’
‘But, mamma, when we told you that she was young and pretty and bright!’
‘I thought that you were all demented. I did indeed. I still think it a pity that he should take an American. I think that Miss Spalding is very nice, but there are English girls quite as nice-looking as her.’ After that there was not another word said by Lady Rowley against Caroline Spalding.
Nora, when she thought of it all that night, felt that she had hardly spoken to Miss Spalding as she should have spoken as to the treatment in England which would be accorded to Mr Glascock’s wife. She became aware of the effect which her own hesitation must have had, and thought that it was her duty to endeavour to remove it. Perhaps, too, the conversion of her mother had some effect in making her feel that she had been wrong in supposing that there would be any difficulty in Caroline’s position in England. She had heard so much adverse criticism from her mother that she had doubted in spite of her own convictions; but now it had come to light that Lady Rowley’s criticisms had all come from a most absurd blunder. ‘Only fancy;’ she said to herself ‘Miss Petrie coming out as Lady Peterborough! Poor mamma!’ And then she thought of the reception which would be given to Caroline, and of the place the future Lady Peterborough would fill in the world, and of the glories of Monkhams! Resolving that she would do her best to counteract any evil which she might have done, she seated herself at her desk, and wrote the following letter to Miss Spalding:
‘My Dear Caroline,
I am sure you will let me call you so, as had you not felt towards me like a friend, you would not have come to me today and told me of your doubts. I think that I did not answer you as I ought to have done when you spoke to me. I did not like to say anything off-hand, and in that way I misled you. I feel quite sure that you will encounter nothing in England as Mr Glascock’s wife to make you uncomfortable, and that he will have nothing to repent. Of course Englishmen generally marry Englishwomen; and, perhaps, there may be some people who will think that such a prize should not be lost to their countrywomen. But that will be all. Mr Glascock commands such universal respect that his wife will certainly be respected, and I do not suppose that anything will ever come in your way that can possibly make you feel that he is looked down upon. I hope you will understand what I mean.
As for your changing now, that is quite impossible. If I were you, I would not say a word about it to any living being; but just go on straight forward in your own way, and take the good the gods provide you, as the poet says to the king in the ode. And I think the gods have provided for you very well and for him.
I do hope that I may see you sometimes. I cannot explain to you how very much out of your line “we” shall be, for of course there is a “we.” People are more separated with us than they are, I suppose, with you. And my “we” is a very poor man, who works hard at writing in a dingy newspaper office, and we shall live in a garret and have brown sugar in our tea, and eat hashed mutton. And I shall have nothing a year to buy my clothes with. Still I mean to do it; and I don’t mean to be long before I do do it. When a girl has made up her mind to be married, she had better go on with it at once, and take it all afterwards as it may come. Nevertheless, perhaps, we may see each other somewhere, and I may be able to introduce you to the dearest, honestest, very best, and most affectionate man in the world. And he is very, very clever.
Yours very affectionately,
NORA ROWLEY.
‘Thursday morning.’
Caroline Spalding, when she received Nora’s letter, was not disposed to give much weight to it. She declared to herself that the girl’s unpremeditated expression of opinion was worth more than her studied words. But she was not the less grateful or the less loving towards her new friend. She thought how nice it would be to have Nora at that splendid abode in England of which she had heard so much, but she thought also that in that splendid abode she herself ought never to have part or share. If it were the case that this were an unfitting match, it was clearly her duty to decide that there should be no marriage. Nora had been quite right in bidding her speak to Mr Glascock himself, and to Mr Glascock she would go. But it was very difficult for her to determine on the manner in which she would discuss the subject with him. She thought that she could be firm if her mind were once made up. She believed that perhaps she was by nature more firm than he. In all their intercourse together he had ever yielded to her; and though she had been always pleased and grateful, there had grown upon her an idea that he was perhaps too easy, that he was a man as to whom it was necessary that they who loved him should see that he was not led away by weakness into folly. But she would want to learn something from him before her decision was finally reached, and in this she foresaw a great difficulty. In her trouble she went to her usual counsellor, the Republican Browning. In such an emergency she could hardly have done worse. ‘Wally,’ she said, ‘we talk about England, and Italy, and France, as though we knew all about them; but how hard it is to realise the difference between one’s own country and others.’
‘We can at least learn a great deal that is satisfactory,’ said Wallachia. ‘About one out of every five Italians can read a book, about two out of every five Englishmen can read a book. Out of every five New Englanders four and four-fifths can read a book. I guess that is knowing a good deal.’
‘I don’t mean in statistics.’
‘I cannot conceive how you are to learn anything about any country except by statistics. I have just discovered that the number of illegitimate children —’
‘Oh, Wally, I can’t talk about that — not now, at least. What I cannot realise is this, what sort of a life it is that they will lead at Monkhams.’
‘Plenty to eat and drink, I guess; and you’ll always have to go around in fine clothes.’
‘And that will be all?’
‘No not all. There will be carriages and horses, and all manner of people there who won’t care much about you. If he is firm, very firm, if he have that firmness which one does not often meet, even in an American man, he will be able, after a while, to give you a position as an English woman of rank.’ It is to be feared that Wallachia Petrie had been made aware of Caroline’s idea as to Mr Glascock’s want of purpose.
‘And that will be all?’
‘If you have a baby, they’ll let you go and see it two or three times a day. I don’t suppose you will be allowed to nurse it, because they never do in England. You have read what the Saturday Review says. In every other respect the Saturday Review has been the falsest of all false periodicals, but I guess it has been pretty true in what it has said about English women.’
‘I wish I knew more about it really.’
‘When a man has to leap through a window in the dark, Caroline, of course he doubts whether the feather bed said to be below will be soft enough for him.’
‘I shouldn’t fear the leap for myself, if it wouldn’t hurt him. Do you think it possible that society can be so formed that a man should lose caste because he doesn’t marry just one of his own set?’
‘It has been so all over the world, my dear. If like to like is to be true anywhere, it should be true in marriage.’
‘Yes but with a difference. He and I are like to like. We come of the same race, we speak the same language, we worship the same God, we have the same ideas of culture and of pleasures. The difference is one that is not patent to the eye or to the ear. It is a difference of accidental incident, not of nature or of acquirement.’
‘I guess you would find, Caroline, that a jury of English matrons sworn to try you fairly, would not find you to be entitled to come among them as one of themselves.’
‘And how will that affect him?’
‘Less powerfully than many others, because he is not impassioned. He is, perhaps, lethargic.’
‘No, Wally, he is not lethargic.’
‘If you ask me I must speak. It would harass some men almost to death; it will not do so with him. He would probably find his happiness best in leaving his old country and coming among your people.’
The idea of Mr Glascock, the future Lord Peterborough, leaving England, abandoning Monkhams, deserting his duty in the House of Lords, and going away to live in an American town, in order that he might escape the miseries which his wife had brought upon him in his own country, was more than Caroline could bear. She knew that, at any rate, it would not come to that. The lord of Monkhams would live at Monkhams, though the heavens should fall in regard to domestic comforts. It was clear to Caroline that Wallachia Petrie had in truth never brought home to her own imagination the position of an English peer. ‘I don’t think you understand the people at all,’ she said angrily.
‘You think that you can understand them better because you are engaged to this man!’ said Miss Petrie, with well-pronounced irony. ‘You have found generally that when the sun shines in your eyes your sight is improved by it! You think that the love-talk of a few weeks gives clearer instruction than the laborious reading of many volumes and thoughtful converse with thinking persons! I hope that you may find it so, Caroline.’ So saying Wallachia Petrie walked off in great dudgeon.
Miss Petrie, not having learned from her many volumes and her much converse with thoughtful persons to read human nature aright, was convinced by this conversation that her friend Caroline was blind to all results, and was determined to go on with this dangerous marriage, having the rays of that sun of Monkhams so full upon her eyes that she could not see at all. She was specially indignant at finding that her own words had no effect. But, unfortunately, her words had had much effect; and Caroline, though she had contested her points, had done so only with the intention of producing her Mentor’s admonitions. Of course it was out of the question that Mr Glascock should go and live in Providence, Rhode Island, from which thriving town Caroline Spalding had come; but, because that was impossible, it was not the less probable that he might be degraded and made miserable in his own home. That suggested jury of British matrons was a frightful conclave to contemplate, and Caroline was disposed to believe that the verdict given in reference to herself would be adverse to her. So she sat and meditated, and spoke not a word further to any one on the subject till she was alone with the man that she loved.
Mr Spalding at this time inhabited the ground floor of a large palace in the city, from which there was access to a garden, which at this period of the year was green, bright, and shady, and which, as being in the centre of a city, was large and luxurious. From one end of the house there projected a covered terrace, or loggia, in which there were chairs and tables, sculptured ornaments, busts, and old monumental relics let into the wall in profusion. It was half chamber and half garden, such an adjunct to a house as in our climate would give only an idea of cold, rheumatism, and a false romance, but under an Italian sky is a luxury daily to be enjoyed during most months of the year. Here Mr Glascock and Caroline had passed many hours and here they were now seated, late in the evening, while all others of the family were away. As far as regarded the rooms occupied by the American Minister, they had the house and garden to themselves, and there never could come a time more appropriate for the saying of a thing difficult to be said. Mr Glascock had heard from his father’s physician, and had said that it was nearly certain now that he need not go down to Naples again before his marriage. Caroline was trembling, not knowing how to speak, not knowing how to begin but resolved that the thing should be done. ‘He will never know you, Carry,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘It is, perhaps, hardly a sorrow to me, but it is a regret.’
‘It would have been a sorrow, perhaps, to him had he been able to know me,’ said she, taking the opportunity of rushing at her subject.
‘Why so? Of all human beings he was the softest-hearted.’
‘Not softer-hearted than you, Charles. But soft hearts have to be hardened.’
‘What do you mean? Am I becoming obdurate?’
‘I am, Charles,’ she said. ‘I have got something to say to you. What will your uncles and aunts and your mother’s relations say of me when they see me at Monkhams?’
‘They will swear to me that you are charming; and then when my back is turned they’ll pick you to pieces a little among themselves. I believe that is the way of the world, and I don’t suppose that we are to do better than others.’
‘And if you had married an English girl, a Lady Augusta Somebody, would they pick her to pieces?’
‘I guess they would, as you say.’
‘Just the same?’
‘I don’t think anybody escapes, as far as I can see. But that won’t prevent their becoming your bosom friends in a few weeks’ time.’
‘No one will say that you have been wrong to marry an American girl?’
‘Now, Carry, what is the meaning of all this?’
‘Do you know any man in your position who ever did marry an American girl, any man of your rank in England?’ Mr Glascock began to think of the case, and could not at the moment remember any instance. ‘Charles, I do not think you ought to be the first.’
‘And yet somebody must be first, if the thing is ever to be done, and I am too old to wait on the chance of being the second.’
She felt that at the rate she was now progressing she would only run from one little suggestion to another, and that he, either wilfully or in sheer simplicity, would take such suggestions simply as jokes; and she was aware that she lacked the skill to bring the conversation round gradually to the point which she was bound to reach. She must make another dash, let it be ever so sudden. Her mode of doing so would be crude, ugly, almost vulgar, she feared; but she would attain her object and say what she had to say. When once she had warmed herself with the heat which argument would produce, then, she was pretty sure, she would find herself at least as strong as he. ‘I don’t know that the thing ought to be done at all,’ she said. During the last moment or two he had put his arm round her waist; and she, not choosing to bid him desist from embracing her, but unwilling in her present mood to be embraced, got up and stood before him. ‘I have thought, and thought, and thought, and feel that it should not be done. In marriage, like should go to like.’ She despised herself for using Wallachia’s words, but they fitted in so usefully, that she could not refrain from them. ‘I was wrong not to know it before, but it is better to know it now, than not to have known it till too late. Everything that I hear and see tells me that it would be so. If you were simply an Englishman, I would go anywhere with you; but I am not fit to be the wife of an English lord. The time would come when I should be a disgrace to you, and then I should die.’
‘I think I should go near dying myself,’ said he, ‘if you were a disgrace to me.’ He had not risen from his chair, and sat calmly looking up into her face.
‘We have made a mistake, and let us unmake it,’ she continued. ‘I will always be your friend. I will correspond with you. I will come and see your wife.’
‘That will be very kind!’
‘Charles, if you laugh at me, I shall be angry with you. It is right that you should look to your future life, as it is right that I should do so also. Do you think that I am joking? Do you suppose that I do not mean it?’
‘You have taken an extra dose this morning of Wallachia Petrie, and of course you mean it.’
‘If you think that I am speaking her mind and not my own, you do not know me.’
‘And what is it you propose?’ he said, still keeping his seat and looking calmly up into her face.
‘Simply that our engagement should be over.’
‘And why?’
‘Because it is not a fitting one for you to have made. I did not understand it before, but now I do. It will not be good for you to marry an American girl. It will not add to your happiness, and may destroy it. I have learned, at last, to know how much higher is your position than mine.’
‘And I am to be supposed to know nothing about it?’
‘Your fault is only this that you have been too generous. I can be generous also.’
‘Now, look here, Caroline, you must not be angry with me if on such a subject I speak plainly. You must not even be angry if I laugh a little.’
‘Pray do not laugh at me! not now.’
‘I must a little, Carry. Why am I supposed to be so ignorant of what concerns my own happiness and my own duties? If you will not sit down, I will get up, and we will take a turn together.’ He rose from his seat, but they did not leave the covered terrace. They moved on to the extremity, and then he stood hemming her in against a marble table in the corner. ‘In making this rather wild proposition, have you considered me at all?’
‘I have endeavoured to consider you, and you only.’
‘And how have you done it? By the aid of some misty, far-fetched ideas respecting English society, for which you have no basis except your own dreams, and by the fantasies of a rabid enthusiast.’
‘She is not rabid,’ said Caroline earnestly; ‘other people think just the same.’
‘My dear, there is only one person whose thinking on this subject is of any avail, and I am that person. Of course, I can’t drag you into church to be married, but practically you can not help yourself from being taken there now. As there need be no question about our marriage which is a thing as good as done —’
‘It is not done at all,’ said Caroline.
‘I feel quite satisfied you will not jilt me, and as I shall insist on having the ceremony performed, I choose to regard it as a certainty. Passing that by, then, I will go on to the results. My uncles, and aunts, and cousins, and the people you talk of, were very reasonable folk when I last saw them, and quite sufficiently alive to the fact that they had to regard me as the head of their family. I do not doubt that we shall find them equally reasonable when we get home; but should they be changed, should there be any sign shewn that my choice of a wife had occasioned displeasure, such displeasure would not affect you.’
‘But it would affect you.’
‘Not at all. In my own house I am master, and I mean to continue to be so. You will be mistress there, and the only fear touching such a position is that it may be recognised by others too strongly. You have nothing to fear, Carry.’
‘It is of you I am thinking.’
‘Nor have I. What if some old women, or even some young women, should turn up their noses at the wife I have chosen, because she has not been chosen from among their own countrywomen, is that to be a cause of suffering to us? Can not we rise above that, lasting as it would do for a few weeks, a month or two perhaps, say a year, till my Caroline shall have made herself known? I think that we are strong enough to live down a trouble so light.’ He had come close to her as he was speaking, and had again put his arm round her waist.
She tried to escape from his embrace, not with persistency, not with the strength which always suffices for a woman when the embrace is in truth a thing to be avoided, but clutching at his fingers with hers, pressing them rather than loosening their grasp. ‘No, Carry,’ he continued; ‘we have got to go through with it now, and we will try and make the best of it. You may trust me that we shall not find it difficult — not, at least, on the ground of your present fears. I can bear a heavier burden than you will bring upon me.’
‘I know that I ought to prove to you that I am right,’ she said, still struggling with his hand.
‘And I know that you can prove nothing of the kind. Dearest, it is fixed between us now, and do not let us be so silly as to raise imaginary difficulties. Of course you would have to marry me, even if there were cause for such fears. If there were any great cause, still the game would be worth the candle. There could be no going back, let the fear be what it might. But there need be no fear if you will only love me.’ She felt that he was altogether too strong for her that she had mistaken his character in supposing that she could be more firm than he. He was so strong that he treated her almost as a child, and yet she loved him infinitely the better for so treating her. Of course, she knew now that her objection, whether true or unsubstantial, could not avail. As he stood with his arm round her, she was powerless to contradict him in anything. She had so far acknowledged this that she no longer struggled with him, but allowed her hand to remain quietly within his. If there was no going back from this bargain that had been made, why, then, there was no need for combating. And when he stooped over her and kissed her lips, she had not a word to say. ‘Be good to me,’ he said, ‘and tell me that I am right.’
‘You must be master, I suppose, whether you are right or wrong. A man always thinks himself entitled to his own way.’
‘Why, yes. When he has won the battle, he claims his captive. Now, the truth is this, I have won the battle, and your friend, Miss Petrie, has lost it. I hope she will understand that she has been beaten at last out of the field.’ As he said this, he heard a step behind them, and turning round saw Wallachia there almost before he could drop his arm.
‘I am sorry that I have intruded on you,’ she said very grimly.
‘Not in the least,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘Caroline and I have had a little dispute, but we have settled it without coming to blows.’
‘I do not suppose that an English gentleman ever absolutely strikes a lady,’ said Wallachia Petrie.
‘Not except on strong provocation,’ said Mr Glascock. ‘In reference to wives, a stick is allowed as big as your thumb.’
‘I have heard that it is so by the laws of England,’ said Wallachia.
‘How can you be so ridiculous, Wally!’ said Caroline. ‘There is nothing that you would not believe.’
‘I hope that it may never be true in your case,’ said Wallachia.
A couple of days after this Miss Spalding found that it was absolutely necessary that she should explain the circumstances of her position to Nora. She had left Nora with the purpose of performing a very high-minded action, of sacrificing herself for the sake of her lover, of giving up all her golden prospects, and of becoming once again the bosom friend of Wallachia Petrie, with this simple consolation for her future life, that she had refused to marry an English nobleman because the English nobleman’s condition was unsuited to her. It would have been an episode in female life in which pride might be taken, but all that was now changed. She had made her little attempt, had made it, as she felt, in a very languid manner, and had found herself treated as a child for doing so. Of course she was happy in her ill success; of course she would have been broken-hearted had she succeeded. But, nevertheless, she was somewhat lowered in her own esteem, and it was necessary that she should acknowledge the truth to the friend whom she had consulted. A day or two had passed before she found herself alone with Nora, but when she did so she confessed her failure at once.
‘You told him all, then?’ said Nora.
‘Oh yes, I told him all. That is, I could not really tell him. When the moment came I had no words.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He had words enough. I never knew him to be eloquent before.’
‘He can speak out if he likes,’ said Nora.
‘So I have found with a vengeance. Nobody was ever so put down as I was. Don’t you know that there are times when it does not seem to be worth your while to put out your strength against an adversary? So it was with him. He just told me that he was my master, and that I was to do as he bade me.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I promised to be a good girl,’ said Caroline, ‘and not to pretend to have any opinion of my own ever again. And so we kissed, and were friends.’
‘I dare say there was a kiss, my dear.’
‘Of course there was, and he held me in his arms, and comforted me, and told me how to behave just as you would do a little girl. It’s all over now, of course; and if there be a mistake, it is his fault. I feel that all responsibility is gone from myself, and that for all the rest of my life I have to do just what he tells me.’
‘And what says the divine Wallachia?’
‘Poor Wally! She says nothing, but she thinks that I am a castaway and a recreant. I am a recreant, I know but yet I think that I was right. I know I could not help myself.’
‘Of course you were right, my dear,’ said the sage Nora. ‘If you had the notion in your head, it was wise to get rid of it; but I knew how it would be when you spoke to him.’
‘You were not so weak when he came to you.’
‘That was altogether another thing. It was not arranged in heaven that I was to become his captive.’
After that Wallachia Petrie never again tried her influence on her former friend, but admitted to herself that the evil was done, and that it could not be remedied. According to her theory of life, Caroline Spalding had been wrong, and weak — had shewn herself to be comfort-loving and luxuriously-minded, had looked to get her happiness from soft effeminate pleasures rather than from rational work and the useful, independent exercise of her own intelligence. In the privacy of her little chamber Wallachia Petrie shed not absolute tears but many tearful thoughts over her friend. It was to her a thing very terrible that the chosen one of her heart should prefer the career of an English lord’s wife to that of an American citizeness, with all manner of capability for female voting, female speechmaking, female poetising, and, perhaps, female political action before her. It was a thousand pities! ‘You may take a horse to water,’ said Wallachia to herself, thinking of the ever-freshly springing fountain of her own mind, at which Caroline Spalding would always have been made welcome freely to quench her thirst ‘but you cannot make him drink if he be not athirst.’ In the future she would have no friend. Never again would she subject herself to the disgrace of such a failure. But the sacrifice was to be made, and she knew that it was bootless to waste her words further on Caroline Spalding. She left Florence before the wedding, and returned alone to the land of liberty. She wrote a letter to Caroline explaining her conduct, and Caroline Spalding shewed the letter to her husband as one that was both loving and eloquent.
‘Very loving and eloquent,’ he said. ‘But, nevertheless, one does think of sour grapes.’
‘There I am sure you wrong her,’ said Caroline.