The Three Brides

“She has not gone back from you again?—the horrible girl!” (this last aside).

“It is not that she has gone back.  She has never changed.  It is I who have forfeited her.”

“You!—You!—She has not cast you off?”

“You know how it was, and the resolution by which she had bound herself, and how I was maddened.”

“That!  I thought it was all forgiven and forgotten!” cried Rosamond.

“It is not a matter of forgiveness.  She put it to me whether it was possible to begin on a broken word.”

“Worse and worse!  Why, when you’ve spoken a foolish word, it is the foolishest thing in the world to hold to it.”

“If it were a foolish word!” said poor Frank.  “I think I could have atoned for that day, if she could have tried me; but when she left me to judge, and those eyes of sweet, sorrowful—”

“Sweet!  Sorrowful, indeed!  About as sweet and sorrowful as the butcher to the lamb.  Left you to judge!  A refinement of cruelty!  She had better have stayed away when I told her it was the only chance to save your life.”

“Would that she had!” sighed Frank.  “But that was your doing, Rosamond, and what she did in mere humanity can’t be cast back again to bind her against her conscience.”

“Plague on her conscience!” was my Lady’s imprecation.  “I wonder if it is all coquetry!”

“She deserves no blame,” said Frank, understanding the manner, though the words were under Rosamond’s breath.  “Her very troubles in her own family have been the cause of her erecting a standard of what alone she could trust.  Once in better days she fancied I came up to it, and when I know how far I have fallen short of it—”

“Nonsense.  She had no business to make the condition without warning you.”

“She knows more of me than only that,” muttered poor Frank.  “I was an ass in town last summer.  It was the hope of seeing her that drew me; but if I had kept out of that set, all this would never have been.”

“It was all for her sake.”  (A substratum of ‘Ungrateful, ungenerous girl.’)

“For her sake, I thought—not her true sake.”  Then there was a silence, broken by his exclaiming, “Rose, I must get away from here!”

“You can’t,” she called back.  “Here’s your mother coming.  She would be perfectly miserable to find you gone.”

“It is impossible I should stay here.”

“Don’t be so chicken-hearted, Frank.  If she has a heart worth speaking of, she’ll come round, if you only press hard enough.  If not, you are well quit of her.”

He cried out at this, and Rosamond saw that what she called faintness of heart was really reverence and sense of his own failings; but none the less did she scorn such misplaced adoration, as it seemed to her, and scold him in her own fashion, for not rushing on to conquer irresistibly; or else being cool and easy as to his rejection.  He would accept neither alternative, was depressed beyond the power of comfort, bodily weariness adding to his other ills, and went off at last to bed, without retracting his intention of going away.

“Well, Terry, it is a new phase, and a most perplexing one!” said Rosamond, when her brother came back with arch curiosity in his brown eyes.  “The girl has gone and turned him over, and there he lies on his back prostrate, just like Ponto, when he knows he deserves it!”

“Turned him over—you don’t mean that she is off?  I thought she was a perfect angel of loveliness and goodness.”

“Goodness!  It is enough to make one hate goodness, unless this is all mere pretence on her part.  But what I am afraid of is his setting off, no one knows where, before any one is up, and leaving us to confront his mother, while he falls ill in some dog-hole of a place.  He is not fit to go about by himself, and I trust to you to watch him, Terry.”

“Shall I lie on the mat outside his door?” said Terry, half meaning it, and somewhat elated by the romantic situation.

“No, we are not come to quite such extremities.  You need not even turn his key by mistake; only keep your ears open.  He is next to you, is he not?—and go in on pretext of inquiry—if you hear him up to mischief.”

Nothing was heard but the ordinary summons of Boots; and it turned out in the morning that the chill had exasperated his throat, and reduced him to a condition which took away all inclination to move, besides deafening him completely.

Rosamond had to rush about all day, providing plenishing for the lodging.  Once she saw Sir Harry and his daughter in the distance, and dashed into a shop to avoid them, muttering, “I don’t believe she cared for him one bit.  I dare say she has taken up with Lorimer Strangeways after all!  Rather worse than her sister, I declare, for she never pretended to be too good for Raymond,” and then as a curate in a cassock passed—“Ah! some of them have been working on her, and persuading her that he is not good enough for her.  Impertinent prig!  He looks just capable of it!”

Frank was no better as to cold and deafness, though somewhat less uncomfortable the next day in the lodging, and Rosamond went up without him to the station to meet the rest of the party, and arrange for Mrs. Poynsett’s conveyance.  They had accomplished the journey much better than had been, hoped, but it was late and dark enough to make it expedient that Mrs. Poynsett should be carried to bed at once, after her most unwonted fatigue, and only have one glimpse and embrace of Frank, so as to stave off the knowledge of his troubles till after her night’s rest.  He seconded this desire, and indeed Miles and Anne only saw that he had a bad cold; but Rosamond no sooner had her husband to herself, than she raved over his wrongs to her heart’s content, and implored Julius to redress them, though how, she did not well know, since she by turns declared that Frank was well quit of Lenore, and that he would never get over the loss.

Julius demurred a good deal to her wish of sending him on a mission to Eleonora.  All Charnocks naturally swung back to distrust of the Vivians, and he did not like to plead with a girl who seemed only to be making an excuse to reject his brother; while, on the other hand, he knew that Raymond had not been satisfied with Frank’s London habits, nor had he himself been at ease as to his religious practices, which certainly had been the minimum required to suit his mother’s notions.  He had been a communicant on Christmas Day, but he was so entirely out of reach that there was no knowing what difference his illness might have made in him; Eleonora might know more than his own family did, and have good and conscientious reasons for breaking with him; and, aware that his own authority had weight with her, Julius felt it almost too much responsibility to interfere till the next day, when his mother, with tears in her eyes, entreated him to go to Miss Vivian, to find out what was this dreadful misunderstanding, which perhaps might only be from his want of hearing, and implore her, in the name of an old woman, not to break her boy’s heart and darken his life, as it had been with his brother.

Mrs. Poynsett was tremulous and agitated, and grief had evidently told on her high spirit, so that Julius could make no objection, but promised to do his best.

By the time it was possible to Julius to call, Sir Harry and Miss Vivian were out riding, and he had no further chance till at the gaslit Friday evening lecture, to which he had hurried after dinner.  A lady became faint in the heated atmosphere, two rows of chairs before him, and as she turned to make her way out, he saw that it was Eleonora, and was appalled by seeing not only the whiteness of the present faintness, but that thinness and general alteration which had changed the beautiful face so much that he asked himself for a moment whether she could have escaped the fever.  In that moment he had moved forward to her support; and she, seeming to have no one belonging to her, clung to the friendly arm, and was presently in the porch, where the cool night air revived her at once, and she begged him to return, saying nothing ailed her but gas.

“No, I shall see you home, Lena.”

“Indeed, there is no need,” said the trembling voice, in which he detected a sob very near at hand.

“I shall use my own judgment as to that,” said Julius, kindly.

She made no more resistance, but rose from the seat in the porch, and accepted his arm.  He soon felt that her steps were growing firmer, and he ventured to say, “I had been looking for you to-day.”

“Yes, I saw your card.”

“I had a message to you from my mother.”  Lenore trembled again, but did not dare to relax her hold on him.  “I think you can guess what it is.  She thinks poor Frank must have mistaken what you said.”

“No—I wrote it,” said Lena, very low.

“And you really meant that the resolution made last year is to stand between you and Frank?  I am not blaming you, I do not know whether you may not be acting rightly and wisely, and whether you may not have more reason than I know of to shrink from intrusting yourself to Frank; but my mother cannot understand it, and when she sees him heartbroken, and too unwell to act for himself—”

“Oh! is he ill?”

“He has a very bad cold, and could not get up till the afternoon, and he is deafer than ever.”

Lena moaned.

He proceeded: “So as he cannot act for himself, my mother begged me to come to an understanding.”

“I told him to judge,” said Lena faintly, but turning Julius so as to walk back along the parade instead of to her abode.

“Was not that making him his own executioner?” said Julius.

“A promise is binding,” she added.

“Yet, is it quite fair?” said Julius, sure now which way her heart went, and thinking she was really longing to be absolved from a superstitious feeling; “is it fair to expect another person to be bound by a vow of which you have not told him?”

“I never thought he could,” sighed she.

“And you know he was entrapped!” said Julius, roused to defend his brother.

“And by whom?” she said in accents of deep pain.

“I should have thought it just—both by your poor sister and by him—to undo the wrong then wrought,” said Julius, “unless, indeed, you have some further cause for distrusting him?”

“No! no!” cried she.  “Oh, Julius!  I do it for his own good.  Your mother knows not what she wishes, in trying to entangle him again with me.”

“Lenore, will you tell me if anything in him besides that unhappy slip makes you distrust him?”

“I must tell the whole truth,” gasped the poor girl, as they walked along in the sound of the sea, the dark path here and there brightened by the gas-lights, “or you will think it is his fault!  Julius, I know more about my poor father than ever I did before.  I was a child when I lived here before, and then Camilla took all the management.  When we came to London, two months ago, I soon saw the kind of people he got round him for his comforters.  I knew how he spent his evenings.  It is second nature to him—he can’t get put of it, I believe!  I persuaded him to come down here, thinking it a haven of peace and safety.  Alas!  I little knew what old habits there were to resume, nor what was the real reason Camilla brought us away after paying our debts.  I was a happy child then, when I only knew that papa was gone to his club.  Now I know that it is a billiard-room—and that it is doing all the more harm because he is there—and I see him with people whom he does not like me to speak to.  I don’t know whether I could get him away, and it would be as bad anywhere else.  I don’t think he can help it.  And he is often unwell; he can’t do without me when he has the gout, and I ought not to leave him to himself.  And then, if—if we did marry and he lived with us in London, think what it would be for Frank to have such a set brought about him.  I don’t see how he could keep them off.  Or even an engagement bringing him down here—or anywhere, among papa’s friends would be very bad for him.  I saw it in London, even with Camilla to keep things in check.”  She was almost choked with suppressed agony.

“I see,” said Julius, gravely and pitifully, “it would take a man of more age and weight than poor Frank to deal with the habits of a lifetime.  The risk is great.”

“And when I saw it,” added Eleonora, “I felt I must never, never bring him into it.  And how could I tell him?  Your mother does not know, or she could not wish it!”

“It is plain that in the present state of things you ought not to marry, and so far you are judging nobly,” said Julius; “but next comes the question—how far it is well to make that day at the races the pretext?”

“Don’t call it a pretext,” said Lenore, quickly.  “I meant what I said a year ago, with all my soul.  Perhaps it was hasty, when poor Camilla drove me into saying I did not mean only an habitual gambler, but one who had ever betted.  And now, well as I know how cruelly she used that presumptuous vow of mine, and how she repented of it at last, still I feel that to fly in its face might be so wrong, that I should have no right to expect not to drag Frank down.”

“Perhaps I am too much interested to judge fairly,” said Julius.  “I should like you to consult some one—say Dr. Easterby—but it seems to me that it is just such a vow as you may well be absolved from.”

“But is it not Frank’s protection?”

“Put yourself in that poor fellow’s place, Lena, and see what it is to him to be cast off for such a reason.  He did the wrong, I know.  He knew he ought not, apart from your resolution, and he did thus prove his weakness and unfitness—”

“Oh no, no—it was not his fault.”

Julius laughed a little, and added, “I am not saying he deserves you—hush!—or that it would be well to take him now, only that I think to find himself utterly rejected for so insufficient a reason, and when he was really deceived, would not only half kill him now, but do his whole nature cruel harm.”

“What is to be done then?” sighed Eleonora.

“I should say, and I think my mother would put him on some probation if you like, even before you call it an engagement; but give him hope.  Let him know that your attachment is as true and unselfish as ever, and do not let him brood in misery, enhanced by his deafness.”

“I can’t marry while poor papa is like what he is,” said she, as if trying to keep hold of her purpose.

“But you can be Frank’s light and hope—the prize for which he can work.”

“If—your mother will have it so—then,” said Eleonora, and the sigh that followed was one to relieve, not exhaust.

“May I tell her then?”

“You must, I suppose,” said the poor girl; “but she can never wish it to go on!”

Julius left her at her own door and went home.

As Mrs. Poynsett said, she could expect nothing better of him.  “It is quite clear,” she said, “that poor Lena is right, that Frank must not set up housekeeping with him.  Even if he were certain to be proof against temptation, it would be as bad a connection as could be.  I never thought of his being with them; but I suppose there is nothing else to be done with him.”

“Frank ought not to be exposed to the trial.  The old man has a certain influence over him.”

“Though I should have thought such a hoary old wreck was nothing but a warning.  It has been a most unhappy affair from first to last; but Lena is a good, unselfish girl, and nothing else will give Frank a chance of happiness.  Waiting will do them no harm, they are young enough, and have no great sum to marry upon, so if you can bring her to me to-morrow, Julius, I will ask her to grant my poor boy leave to wait till she can see her way to marrying.”

Julius ventured to write down, ‘Hope on!’

To this Frank replied with rather a fiery look, “Mind, I will not have her persuaded or worked on.  It must be all her own doing.  Yes,” answering a look of his brother, “I see what you are about.  You want to tell her it is a superstition about her vow and not using me fairly.  So it may be in some points of view; but the fact remains.  She thought she might trust to my good sense and principle, and it proved that she was wrong.  After that it is not right to force myself on her.  I don’t dare to do it, Julius.  I have not been shut up with myself all these weeks for nothing.  I know now how unworthy I ever was to think of her as mine.  If I can ever prove my repentance she might in time forgive me; but for her to be driven to take me out of either supposed justice or mercy, I will not stand!  A wretched deaf being like me!  It is not fitting, and I will not have it done!”

Julius wrote—“She is suffering greatly.  She nearly fainted at church, and I had to take her out.”

Frank’s face worked, and he put his hand over it as he said, “You are all torturing her; I shall write a letter and settle it myself.”

Frank did write the letter that very night, and when Julius next saw Eleonora her eyes were swollen with weeping, and she said—

“Take me to him!  I must comfort him!”

“You have heard from him?”

“Yes.  Such a beautiful letter.  But he must not think it that.”

She did show the letter, reserved though she was.  She was right about it; Julius was struck with the humble sweetness, which made him think more highly of poor Frank than ever he had done before.  He had decided against himself, feeling how much his fall at the race-ground had been the effect of the manner in which he had allowed himself to be led during the previous season in London, and owning how far his whole aim in life fell short of what it ought to be, asking nothing for himself, not even hope nor patience, though he could not refrain from expressing his own undying love, and his one desire that if she had not attached herself to one more worthy, he might in time be thought to have proved his repentance.  In the meantime she would and could be only his beacon star.

Julius could not but take her home, and leave her with Frank, though his mother was a little annoyed not to have first seen her; but when Frank himself brought her to Mrs. Poynsett’s arms, it turned out that the two ladies were quite of one mind as to the inexpediency of Sir Harry living with Frank.  They said it very covertly, but each understood the other, and Eleonora went home wonderfully happier, and looking as if her fresh beauty would soon return.

There was quite enough to dazzle Miles, whose first opinion was that they were hard on Sir Harry, and that two ladies and a clergyman might be making a great deal too much of an old man’s form of loitering, especially in a female paradise of ritualism, as he was pleased to call Rockpier, where all the male population seemed to be invalids.

However, it was not long before he came round to their view.  He found that Sir Harry, in spite of his gentlemanly speech and bearing, was a battered old roué, who was never happy but when gambling, and whose air and title were baits to victims of a lower class than himself; young clerks and medical students who were flattered by his condescension.  He did not actually fleece them himself, he had too little worldly wisdom for that; but he was the decoy of a coterie of Nyms, Pistols, and Bardolphs, who gathered up the spoil of these and any unwary youth who came to Rockpier in the wake of an invalid, or to ‘see life’ at a fashionable watering-place.  Miles thought the old man was probably reduced to a worse style of company by the very fact of the religious atmosphere of the place, where he himself found so little to do that he longed for the opening of the Session; but he was strongly impressed with the impracticability of a ménage for Frank, with the baronet as father-in-law.

Not so, Sir Harry.  He was rather fond of Frank, and had been glad to be no longer bound to oppose the match, and he had benignantly made up his mind to the great sacrifice of living in his house in London, surrounding himself with all his friends, and making the young couple supply him with pocket-money whenever he had a run of ill-luck.  They would grant it more easily than Camilla, and would never presume to keep him under regulation as she had done.  They would be too grateful to him.

So, after a day or two, he demanded of Eleonora whether her young man had given her up, or what he meant by his coolness in not calling?  Lena answered the last count by explaining how unwell he had been, and how his hearing might be lost by a renewal of his cold.  She was however further pressed, and obliged to say how matters stood, namely, that they were engaged, but meant to wait.

Whereupon, Sir Harry, quite sincerely, poor old man, grew compassionate and grandly benignant.  The young people were prudent, but he would come to their aid.  His pittance added to theirs—even now would set all things straight.  He would never stand in the way of their happiness!

Mrs. Poynsett had bidden Lena cast the whole on her shoulders.  The girl was too truthful and generous to do this, fond as she still was of her father.

“No, dear papa,” she said, “it is very kind in you,” for she knew that so he meant it, “but I am afraid it will not quite do.  You see Frank must be very careful in his situation—and I don’t think so quiet a way of life would suit you.”

“Nonsense, child; I’m an old man, and I want no racketing.  Just house-room for myself and Victor.  That fellow is worth two women in a house.  You’ll keep a good cook.  I’ll never ask for more than a few old friends to dinner, when I don’t feel disposed to have them at the club.”

Old friends!  Yes, Lenore knew them, and her flesh crept to think of Frank’s chief hearing of them constantly at his house.

“I don’t think we should afford it, dear papa,” she said.  “We have agreed that I had better stay with you for the present, and let Frank make his way.”

Then a thought occurred to Sir Harry.  “Is this the Poynsetts’ doing?”

“No,” said Eleonora, stoutly.  “It is mine.  I know that—oh! papa, forgive me!—the things and people you like would not be good for Frank, and I will not leave you nor bring him into them.  Never!”

Sir Harry swore—almost for the first time before her—that this was that old hag Mrs. Poynsett’s doing, and that she would make his child abandon him in his old age.  He would not have his daughter dragged into a long engagement.  Wait—he knew what waiting meant—wait for his death; but they should have her now or not at all; and he flung away from her and her entreaties to announce his determination to the suitor’s family.

He did not find this very easy to accomplish.  Frank’s ears were quite impervious to all his storming, and if he was to reduce his words to paper, they came less easily.  Miles, to whom he tried to speak as a man of the world, would only repeat that his mother would never consent to the marriage, unless the young couple were to live alone; nay, he said, with a grain of justice, he thought that had been Sir Harry’s own view in a former case.  Would he like to see Mrs. Poynsett? she is quite ready.

Again Sir Harry quailed at the notion of encountering Mrs. Poynsett; but Miles, who had a great idea that his mother could deal with everybody, and was the better for doing so, would not let him off, and ushered him in, then stood behind her chair, and thoroughly enjoyed the grand and yet courteous way in which she reduced to nothing Sir Harry’s grand beneficence in eking out the young folks’ income with his own.  She knew very well that even when the estate was sold, at the highest estimate, Eleonora would have the barest maintenance, and that he could hardly expect what the creditors now allowed him, and she made him understand that she knew this, and that she had a right to make conditions, since Frank, like her other sons, could not enter into possession of his share of his father’s fortune unless he married with her consent.

And when he spoke of breaking off the engagement, she was callous, and said that he must do as he pleased, though after young people were grown up, she thought the matter ought to rest with themselves.  She did not wish her son to marry till his character was more confirmed.

He went home very angry, and yet crest-fallen, sought out Eleonora, and informed her of his command, that her engagement should be broken off.

“I do not know how that can be done, papa,” said Eleonora.  “We have never exactly made an engagement; we do not want to marry at once, and we could not help loving each other if we tried.”

“Humph!  And if I laid my commands on you never to marry into that family?”

“I do not think you will do that, papa, after your promise to Camilla.”