The Three Brides
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“I can’t tell what she said. It was just a little murmur over the work.”
“Not preaching?”
“Not in that sense,” said Cecil, with a little compunction.
“I am glad to hear it; it makes a great difference.”
“You see,” said the lady, “our institution is merely intended to support these women in the time of want; and if we were to couple our assistance with religion we should just sink into a mothers’ meeting, and make the women think—”
“Think that you prize the soul more than the body,” said Julius, as she halted in search of a word. “I understand, Cecil; you would not be in the prevailing fashion. I don’t want to argue that point, only to understand about Anne.”
So saying, he went at once to Anne’s abode, the old schoolroom, which, like everything else belonging to Mrs. Miles Charnock, had a sad-coloured aspect, although it had been fitted up very prettily. The light was sombre, and all the brighter pictures and ornaments seemed to have been effaced by a whole gallery of amateur photographs, in which the glories of the African bush were represented by brown masses of shade variegated by blotches of white. Even in Miles’s own portrait on the table, the gold seemed overwhelmed by the dark blue; and even as Julius entered, she shut it up in its brown case, as too sacred for even his brother’s eyes.
However, a flush of pleasure came to her pale face at the invitation to take a class, and to read to a good old woman, whom in his secret soul he thought so nearly a dissenter, that she could not be made more so. She promised her help with some eagerness for as long as she should remain in England, and accepted the books he gave her without protest. Nay, that same evening she took Jenny off into her gray abode, to consult her whether, since she must now join the early breakfast, she could go to daily service without becoming formal.
She even recurred to her question, whether Julius was a Christian, without nearly as much negation in her tones as before; and Jenny, taking it as it was meant, vouched for his piety, so as might render it a little more comprehensible to one matured on Scottish Calvinism and English Methodism, diluted in devout undogmatic minds, with no principle more developed than horror of Popery and of worldliness. Turned loose in solitude, reserve, and sadness, on her husband’s family, who did nothing but shock her with manifestations of the latter, she could hardly turn even to the clerical portion of it, while Julius, as well as his curates, bore all the tokens by which she had been taught to know a Papist. Daily intercourse was perhaps drawing her a little towards her brother-in-law; but Herbert Bowater united these obnoxious externals to a careless tongue, and joyous easy-going manner, and taste for amusement, which so horrified Anne, that she once condoled with his sister, and proposed to unite in prayer for his conversion; but this was more than Joanna could bear, and she cried, “I only wish I were as good a Christian as dear Herbert!”
For indeed, the sister’s heart intensely esteemed his sweetness, honesty, and simplicity, even while she found it an uphill task to coax him to steady work. After that first morning he was indeed ashamed to let her see the proportion between his pastoral visits and his theological reading; but the newspapers (he had two or three weekly ones) had a curious facility of expansion, and there was a perilous sound in “I’ll just see where the meet is,”—not that he had the most distant idea of repairing thither; it was pure filial interest in learning where his father and Edith would be.
Jenny could not tell whether her presence conduced to diligence or to chatter, but he minded her more than any one else, and always stuck close to her, insisting on her admiring all his protégés. There was one with whom he was certainly doing a work, which, as Julius truly said, no one more clerical could have done so well—namely, the son of his landlady, a youth who held a small clerkship in an office at Willansborough, and who had fallen this year under the attraction of the Backsworth races, so as to get into serious difficulties with his master, and narrowly escape dismissal for the sake of his mother.
The exceeding good-nature and muscular Christian side of the lodger’s character was having a most happy effect on the lad. He had set up a regular hero-worship, which Herbert encouraged by always calling for him when going to the choral practices, getting him into the choir, lending him books, and inviting him to read in his room in the evening. How much they played with the dogs was not known; but at any rate, Harry Hornblower was out of mischief, and his mother was so grateful to Mr. Bowater, that she even went the length of preferring his sermons to those of both his seniors.
The discovery that most vexed Jenny was that Sirenwood had so much of his time. He seemed to be asked to come to dinner whenever Sir Harry saw him, or a chair was left vacant at a party; and though his Rector was inexorable as to releasing him on casual notice from the parish avocations of three nights in the week, the effect was grumbling as savage as was possible from so good-humoured a being; and now and then a regular absence without leave, and a double growl at the consequent displeasure. It was true that in ten minutes he was as hearty and friendly as ever to his colleagues, but that might be only a proof of his disregard of their reproofs, and their small effect.
Eleonora Vivian was not the attraction. No; Herbert thought her a proud, silent, disagreeable girl, and could see no beauty in her; but he had a boy’s passion for the matured splendour of her sister’s beauty; and she was so kind to him!
What could Jenny mean by looking glum about it? She was stunningly good, and all that. She had done no end of good with clubs and mothers’ meetings at her married home; and it was no end of a pity she was not in Compton parish, instead of under poor wretched old Fuller, whom you could not stir—no, not if you tied a firebrand to his tail.
CHAPTER XIII
Withered Leaves and Fresh Buds
Lady Rosamond and Joanna Bowater could not fail to be good friends; Herbert was a great bond of union, and so was Mrs. Poynsett. Rosamond found it hard to recover from the rejection of her scheme of the wheeled-chair, and begged Jenny to become its advocate; but Mrs. Poynsett listened with a smile of the unpromising kind—“You too, Jenny?”
“Why not, dear Mrs. Poynsett? How nice it would be to see you in your own corner again!”
“I don’t think my own corner remains.”
“Oh! but it could be restored at once.”
“Do you think so? No, no, Jenny my dear; cracked china is better left on the shelf out of the way, even if it could bear the move, which it can’t.”
Then Jenny understood, and advised Rosamond to bide her time, and wait till the session of parliament, when the house would be quieter; and Rosamond nodded and held her peace.
The only person who held aloof was Cecil, who would not rise to the bait when Raymond tried to exhibit Miss Bowater as a superior intellectual woman.
Unluckily, too, Jenny observed one evening at the five o’clock tea, “I hear that Mrs. Duncombe has picked up some very funny people—a lady lecturer, who is coming to set us all to rights.”
“A wonderful pair, I hear!” said Frank. “Mrs. Clio Tallboys, she calls herself, and a poor little husband, whom she carries about to show the superiority of her sex.”
“A Cambridge professor and a great political economist!” observed Cecil, in a low but indignant voice.
“The Yankee Cambridge!” quoth Frank.
“The American Cambridge is a distinguished university,” returned Cecil.
“Cecil is right, Master Frank,” laughed his mother; “Cam and Isis are not the only streams of learning in the world.”
“I never heard of him,” said Jenny; “he is a mere satellite to the great luminary.”
“They are worth seeing,” added Frank; “she is one of those regular American beauties one would pay to get a sight of.”
“Where did you get all this information?” asked Cecil.
“From Duncombe himself. They met on the Righi; and nothing is more comical than to near him describe the ladies’ fraternization over female doctors and lawyers, till they rushed into each other’s arms, and the Clio promised to come down on a crusade and convert you all.”
“There are two ways of telling a story,” said Cecil.
“No wonder the gentlemen quake!” said Mrs. Poynsett.
“I don’t,” said Frank, boyishly.
“Because you’ve no wife to take you in hand,” retorted Jenny.
“For my part,” said Mrs. Poynsett, “I can’t see what women want. I have always had as many rights as I could exercise.”
“Ah! but we are not all ladies of the manor,” said Jenny, “nor do we all drive coaches.”
“I observe,” said Cecil, with dignity, “that there is supposed to be a license to laugh at Mrs. Duncombe and whatever she does.”
“She would do better to mind her children,” said Frank.
“Children! Has she children?” broke in Anne and Rosamond, both at once.
“Didn’t you know it?” said Jenny.
“No, indeed! I didn’t think her the sort of woman,” said Rosamond. “What does she do with them?”
“Drops them in the gutter,” said Frank. “Literally, as I came home, I heard a squeak, and found a child flat in a little watercourse. I picked it out, and the elder one told me it was Ducky Duncombe, or some such word. Its little boots had holes in them, mother; its legs were purple, and there was a fine smart foreign woman flirting round the corner with young Hornblower.”
“Boys with long red hair, and Highland dresses?” exclaimed Rosamond. “Yes, the same we saw with Miss Vivian!”
“Exactly!” said Frank, eagerly. “She is quite a mother to those poor little wretches; they watch for her at the Sirenwood gate, and she walks with them. The boy’s cry was not for mother or nurse, but for Lena!”
“Pray, did she come at his call?”
“No; but when I carried the brat home, poor Duncombe told me almost with tears, how good she is to them. I fancy he feels their mother’s neglect of them.”
“I’m sure I gave her credit for having none,” said Rosamond.
“Ah!” said Jenny, “you should have heard her condolences with my sister Mary on her last infliction. Fancy Mary’s face!”
“No doubt it was to stem a torrent of nursery discussions,” said Cecil. “Such bad taste!”
“Which?” murmured Rosamond under her breath, with an arched eyebrow.
“Plain enough,” said Frank: “if a woman is a woman, the bad taste is to be ashamed of it.”
“Yes,” said Cecil, “that is the way with men; they would fain keep us down to the level of the nursery.”
“I thought nurseries were usually at the top of the house.”
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Poynsett, disregarding this mischievous suggestion, “they mean that organization, like charity, should begin at home.”
“You say that meaningly,” said Rosamond. “I have heard very odd stories of domestic affairs at Aucuba Villa, and that she can’t get a servant to stay there.”
“That man, Alexander, has always been there,” said Frank.
“Yes; but he has occasionally to do all the work of the house. Yes, I can’t help it, Cecil, Susan will regale me with cook-stories sometimes; and I have heard of the whole establishment turning out on being required to eat funguses.”
“I shall beware of dining there!” said Rosamond.
“Don’t they dine here to-morrow?” asked Frank.
“No, they are engaged to the Moys,” said Cecil.
“But the Vivians come?”
“Oh yes.”
Every one knew that already; but Frank could not help having it repeated. It was a mere formal necessity to ask them, and had been accepted as such; but there was some amazement when Cecil brought home Lady Tyrrell and Miss Vivian to lunch and spend the afternoon. It might be intended as one of her demonstrations; for though it was understood that any of the inmates were free to bring home friends to luncheon, it was not done—except with a casual gentleman—without notice to the mistress of the house. Cecil, however, comported herself entirely as in that position, explaining that Lady Tyrrell was come to give her advice upon an intended fernery, and would perform her toilette here, so as to have plenty of time. Frank, little knowing what was passing, was working the whole day at his tutor’s for the closely imminent examination; Julius and Raymond were gravely polite; Eleonora very silent; and as soon as the meal was over, Rosamond declared that she should not come out to stand planning in the cold; and though Herbert would have liked nothing better in that company, his Rector carried him off to arrange an Advent service in a distant hamlet; Anne’s horse came to the door; and only Joanna remained to accompany the gardening party, except that Raymond came out with them to mark the limits of permissible alteration.
“How unchanged!” exclaimed Lady Tyrrell. “Time stands still here; only where is the grand old magnolia? How sweet it used to be!”
“Killed by the frost,” said Raymond, shortly, not choosing to undergo a course of reminiscences, and chafing his wife by his repressive manner towards her guest. When he had pointed out the bed of Americans that were to be her boundary, he excused himself as having letters to finish; and as he went away Cecil gave vent to her distaste to the old shrubs and borders, now, of course, at their worst—the azaleas mere dead branches, the roses with a few yellow night-capped buds still lingering, and fuchsias with a scanty bell or two.
Jenny fought for their spring beauty, all the more because Lady Tyrrell was encouraging the wife to criticize the very things she had tried to sentimentalize over with the husband; but seeing that she was only doing harm, she proposed a brisk walk to Eleonora, who gladly assented, though her sister made a protest about damp, and her being a bad walker. The last things they heard was Cecil’s sigh, “It is all so shut in, wherever there is level ground, that the bazaar would be impossible.”
“I should hope so!” muttered Jenny.
“What do you mean to do about this bazaar?” asked Eleonora, as they sped away.
“I don’t know. Those things so often go off in smoke, that I don’t make up my mind till they become imminent.”
“I am afraid this will go on,” said Eleonora. “Camilla means it and she always carries out her plans; I wish I saw the right line.”
“About that?”
“About everything. It seems to me that there never was any one so cut off from help and advice as I am;” then, as Joanna made some mute sign of sympathy, “I knew you would understand; I have been longing to be with you, for there has been no one to whom I could speak freely since I left Rockpier.”
“And I have been longing to have you. Mamma would have asked you to stay with us before, only we had the house full. Can’t you come now?”
“You will see that I shall not be allowed. It is of no use to think about it!” said the girl, with a sigh. “Here, let us get out of this broad path, or she may yet come after us—persuade Mrs. Charnock Poynsett it is too cold to stand about—anything to break up a tête-à-tête.”
Jenny saw she really was in absolute fear of pursuit; but hardly yet understood the nervous haste to turn into a not very inviting side-path, veiled by the trees, whose wet leaves were falling.
“Do you mind the damp?” asked the girl, anxiously.
“No, not at all; but—”
“You don’t know what it is never to feel free, but be like a French girl, always watched—at least whenever I am with any one I care to speak to.”
“Are you quite sure it is not imagination?”
“O, Joanna, don’t be like all the rest, blinded by her! You knew her always!”
“Only from below. I am four years younger; you know dear Emily was my contemporary.”
“Dear Emily! I miss her more now than even at Rockpier. But you, who were her friend, and knew Camilla of old, I know you can help me as no one else can.”
Jenny returned a caress; and Eleonora spoke on. “You know I was only eight years old when Camilla married, and I had scarcely seen her till she came to us at Rockpier, on Lord Tyrrell’s death, and then she was most delightful. I thought her like mother and sister both in one, even more tender than dear Emily. How could I have thought so for a moment? But she enchanted everybody. Clergy, ladies, and all came under the spell; and I can’t get advice from any of them—even from Miss Coles—you remember her?”
“Your governess? How nice she was!”
“Emily and I owed everything to her! She was as near being a mother to us as any one could be; and Camilla could not say enough of gratitude, or show esteem enough, and fascinated her like all the rest of us; but she never rested till she had got her off to a situation in Russia. I did not perceive the game at the time, but I see now how all the proposals for situations within reach of me were quashed.”
“But you write to her?”
“Yes; but as soon as I showed any of my troubles she reproved me for self-will and wanting to judge for myself, and not submit to my sister. That’s the way with all at Rockpier. Camilla has gone about pitying me to them for having to give way to my married sister, but saying it was quite time that she took charge of us; and on that notion they all wrote to me. Then she persuaded papa to go abroad; and I was delighted, little thinking she never meant me to go back again.”
“Did she not?”
“Listen! I’ve heard her praise Rockpier and its church to the skies to one person—say Mr. Bindon. To another, such as our own Vicar, she says it was much too ultra, and she likes moderation; she tells your father that she wants to see papa among his old friends; and to Mrs. Duncombe, I’ve heard her go as near the truth as is possible to her, and call it a wearisome place, with an atmosphere of incense, curates, and old maids, from whom she had carried me off before I grew fit for nothing else!”
“I dare say all these are true in turn, or seem so to her, or she would not say them before you.”
“She has left off trying to gloss it over with me, except so far as it is part of her nature. She did at first, but she knows it is of no use now.”
“Really, Lenore, you must be going too far.”
“I have shocked you; but you can’t conceive what it is to live with perpetual falsity. No, I can’t use any other word. I am always mistrusting and being angered, and my senses of right and wrong get so confused, that it is like groping in a maze.” Her eyes were full of tears, but she exclaimed, “Tell me, Joanna, was there ever anything between Camilla and Mr. Poynsett?”
“Why bring that up again now?”
“Why did it go off?” insisted Lenore.
“Because Mrs. Poynsett could not give up and turn into a dowager, as if she were not the mistress herself.”
“Was that all?”
“So it was said.”
“I want to get to the bottom of it. It was not because Lord Tyrrell came in the way.”
“I am afraid they thought so here.”
“Then,” said Eleonora, in a hard, dry way, “I know the reason of our being brought back here, and of a good deal besides.”
“My dear Lena, I am very sorry for you; but I think you had better keep this out of your mind, or you will fall into a hard, bitter, suspicious mood.”
“That is the very thing. I am in a hard, bitter, suspicious mood, and I can’t see how to keep out of it; I don’t know when opposition is right and firm, and when it is only my own self-will.”
“Would it not be a good thing to talk to Julius Charnock? You would not be betraying anything.”
“No! I can’t seem to make up to the good clergyman! Certainly not. Besides, I’ve heard Camilla talking to his wife!”
“Talking?”
“Admiring that dress, which she had been sneering at to your mother, don’t you remember? It was one of her honey-cups with venom below—only happily, Lady Rosamond saw through the flattery. I’m ashamed whenever I see her!”
“I don’t think that need cut you off from Julius.”
“Tell me truly,” again broke in Lenore, “what Mrs. Poynsett really is. She is a standing proverb with us for tyranny over her sons; not with Camilla alone, but with papa.”
“See how they love her!” cried Jenny, hotly.
“Camilla thinks that abject; but I can’t forget how Frank talked of her in those happy Rockpier days.”
“When you first knew him?” said Jenny.
They must have come at length to the real point, for Eleonora began at once—“Yes; he was with his sick friend, and we were so happy; and now he is being shamefully used, and I don’t know what to do!”
“Indeed, Lenore,” said Jenny, in her downright way, “I do not understand. You do not seem to care for him.”
“Of course I am wrong,” said the poor girl; “but I hoped I was doing the best thing for him.” Then, as Jenny made an indignant sound, “See, Jenny, when he came to Rockpier, Camilla had been a widow about three months. She never had been very sad, for Lord Tyrrell had been quite imbecile for a year, poor man! And when Frank came, she could not make enough of him; and he and I both thought the two families had been devotedly fond of each other, and that she was only too glad to meet one of them.”
“I suppose that was true.”
“So do I, as things stood then. She meant Frank to be a sort of connecting link, against the time when she could come back here; but we, poor children, never thought of that, and went on together, not exactly saying anything, but quite understanding how much we cared. Indeed, I know Camilla impressed on him that, for his mother’s sake, it must go no farther then, while he was still so young; and next came our journey on the Continent, ending in our coming back here last July.”
Jenny remembered that Raymond’s engagement had not been made known till August, and Frank had only returned from a grouse-shooting holiday a week or two before the arrival of the brides.
“Now,” added Eleonora, “Camilla has made me understand that nothing will induce her to let papa consent; and though I know he would, if he were left to himself, I also see how all this family must hate and loathe the connection.”
“May I ask, has Frank ever spoken?”
“Oh no! I think he implied it all to Camilla when she bade him wait till our return, fancying, I suppose, that one could forget the other.”
“But why does she seem so friendly with him?”
“It is her way; she can’t be other than smooth and caressing, and likes to have young men about; and I try to be grave and distant, because—the sooner he is cured of me the better for him,” she uttered, with a sob; “but when he is there, and I see those grieved eyes of his, I can’t keep it up! And papa does like him! Oh! if Camilla would but leave us alone! See here, Jenny!” and she showed, on her watch-chain, a bit of ruddy polished pebble. “Is it wrong to keep this? He and I found the stone in two halves, on the beach, the last day we were together, and had them set, pretending to one another it was only play. Sometimes I think I ought to send mine back; I know he has his, he let me see it one day. Do you think I ought to give it up?”
“Why should you?”
“Because then he would know that it must be all over.”
“But is it all over? Within, I mean?”
“Jenny, you know better!”
“Then, Lenore, if so, and it is only your sister who objects, not your father himself, ought you to torment poor Frank by acting indifference when you do not feel it?”
“Am I untrue? I never thought of that. I thought I should be sacrificing myself for his good!”
“His good? O, Lenore, I believe it is the worst wrong a woman can do a man, to let him think he has wasted his heart upon her, and that she is trifling with him. You don’t know what a bad effect this is having, even on his prospects. He cannot get his brain or spirits free to work for his examination.”
“How hard it is to know what is right! Here have I been thinking that what made me so miserable must be the best for him, and would it not make it all the worse to relax, and let him see?”
“I do not think so,” returned Jenny. “His spirits would not be worn by doubt of you—the worst doubt of all: and he would feel that he had something to strive for.”
Eleonora walked on for some steps in silence, then exclaimed, “Yes, but there’s his family. It would only stir up trouble for them there. They can’t approve of me.”
“They don’t know you. When they do, they will. Now they only see what looks like—forgive me, Lena—caprice and coquetry; they will know you in earnest, if you will let them.”