The Three Brides
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“A betting man, who regularly went in for it! You little goose, to think that I would ask you to do that! As you say we have had enough of that! But to renounce every man who has set foot on a course, or staked a pair of gloves, is to renounce nine out of ten of the world one lives in.”
“I do renounce them. Camilla, remember that my mind is made up for ever, and that nothing shall ever induce me to marry a man who meddles with the evils of races.”
“Meddles with the evils? I understand, my dear Lena.”
“A man who makes a bet,” repeated Eleonora.
“We shall see,” was her ladyship’s light answer, in contrast to the grave tones; “no rules are without exceptions, and I only ask for one.”
“I shall make none.”
“I confess I thought you were coming to your senses; you have been acting so wisely and sensibly ever since you came home, about that young Frank Charnock.”
Lady Tyrrell heard a little rustle, but could not see that it was the clasping of two hands over a throbbing heart. “I am very glad you are reasonable enough to keep him at a distance. Poor boy, it was all very well to be friendly with him when we met him in a place like Rockpier, and you were both children; but you are quite right not to let it go on. It would be mere madness.”
“For him, yes,” murmured the girl.
“And even more so for you. Why, if he had any property worth speaking of, it would be a wretched thing to marry into that family! I am sure I pity those three poor girls! Miles’s wife looks perfectly miserable, poor thing, and the other two can’t conceal the state of things. She is just the sort of woman who cannot endure a daughter-in-law.”
“I thought I heard Lady Rosamond talking very affectionately of her.”
“Very excitedly, as one who felt it her duty to stand up for her out-of-doors, whatever she may do indoors. I saw victory in those plump white shoulders, which must have cost a battle; but whatever Lady Rosamond gains, will make it all the worse for the others. No, Eleonora, I have known Mrs. Poynsett’s rancour for many years, and I would wish no one a worse lot than to be her son’s fiancée, except to be his wife.”
“She did not seem to object to these marriages.”
“The sons took her by surprise. Besides, Raymond’s was the very parti mothers seek out for their sons. Depend upon it, she sent him off with her blessing to court the unexceptionable cousin with the family property. Poor Raymond, he is a dutiful son, and he has done the deed; but, if I am not much mistaken the little lady is made of something neither mother nor son is prepared for, and he has not love enough to tame her with.”
“That may be seen at a glance. He can’t help it, poor fellow; he would have had it if he could, like anything else that is proper.”
There was a moment’s silence; then the exclamation, “Just look there!”
One of the hats was nodding on the box in a perilous manner.
“It is only James,” said Lady Tyrrell; “as long as it is not the coachman, it matters the less. There’s no danger.”
“You will not keep him, though!”
“I don’t know. He is much the best looking and handiest of the men; and your page, Master Joshua, is no great acquisition yet.”
“I wish you would not call him mine; I wish you would send him back to his grandmother. I can’t bear his being among those men.”
“Very complimentary to my household! They are not a bit worse than the company he came from! You don’t believe in rural simplicity, eh?”
“I believe that taking that boy from his home makes us responsible.”
“And do I hinder you from catechizing him to your heart’s content? or sending him to the school of design?”
Again Eleonora was silent. Perhaps the balancing of the footman’s head occupied her mind. At any rate, no more was said till the sisters had reached their home. Then, at the last moment, when there was no time left for a reply, Eleonora cleared and steadied her voice, and said, “Camilla, understand two things for truth’s sake. First, I mean what I say. Nothing shall ever induce me to marry a man who bets. Next, I never have forgotten Frank Charnock for one moment. If I have been cold and distant to him, it is because I will not draw him near me to be cruelly scorned and disappointed!”
“I don’t mind the why, if the effect is the same,” were Lady Tyrrell’s last words, as the door opened.
Eleonora’s little white feet sped quickly up the steps, and with a hasty good night, she sped across the hall, but paused at the door. “Papa must not be disappointed,” she whispered to herself, and dashed her hand over her eyes; and at the moment the lock turned, and a gray head appeared, with a mighty odour of smoke. “Ah! I thought my little Lena would not pass me by! Have you had a pleasant party, my dear? Was young Strangeways there?”
She had nestled in his arms, and hoped to avoid notice by keeping her head bent against him, as she hastily responded to his questions; but he detected something.
“Eh? Camilla been lecturing? Is that it? You’ve not been crying, little one? It is all right, you know! You and I were jolly enough at Rockpier; but it was time we were taken in hand, or you would have grown into a regular little nun, among all those black coats.”
“I wish I were.”
“Nonsense! You don’t know life! You’ll tell another story one of these days; and hark childie, when you’ve married, and saved the old place, you’ll keep the old room for the old man, and we’ll have our own way again.”
She could but kiss him, and hide her agitation in caresses, ere hurrying up the stairs she reached her own rooms, a single bed-chamber opening into a more spacious sitting-room, now partially lighted by the candles on the toilette-table within.
She flung herself down on a chair beyond the line of light, and panted out half aloud, “Oh! I am in the toils! Oh for help! Oh for advice! Oh! if I knew the right! Am I unfair? am I cold and hard and proud? Is she telling me true? No, I know she is not—not the whole truth, and I don’t know what is left out, or what is false! And I’m as bad—making them think I give in and discard Frank! Oh! is that my pride—or that it is too bad to encourage him now I know more? He’ll soon scorn me, and leave off—whatever he ever thought of me. She has taken me from all my friends—and she will take him away! No one is left me but papa; and though she can’t hurt his love, she has got his confidence away, and made him join against me! But that one thing I’ll never, never do!”
She started up, and opened a locked purple photograph-album, with ‘In Memoriam’ inscribed on it—her hands trembling so that she could hardly turn the key. She turned to the likeness of a young man—a painful likeness of a handsome face, where the hard verities of sun-painting had refused to veil the haggard trace of early dissipation, though the eyes had still the fascinating smile that had made her brother Tom, with his flashes of fitful good-nature, the idol of his little sister’s girlhood. The deadly shock of his sudden death had been her first sorrow; and those ghastly whispers which she had heard from the servants in the nursery, and had never forgotten, because of the hushed and mysterious manner, had but lately started into full force and meaning, on the tongues of the plain-spoken poor.
She gazed, and thought of the wrecked life that might have been so rich in joys; nay, her tenderness for her father could not hide from her how unlike his old age was from that of Mr. Bowater, or of any men who had done their service to their generation in all noble exertion. He had always indeed been her darling, her charge; but she had never known what it was to look up to him with the fervent belief and enthusiasm she had seen in other girls. To have him amused, loitering from reading-room to parade or billiard-room, had been all that she aspired to, and only lately had she unwillingly awakened to the sense how and why this was—and why the family were aliens in their ancestral home.
“And Camilla, who knew all—knew, and lived through the full force of the blight and misery—would persuade me that it all means nothing, and is a mere amusing trifle! Trifle, indeed, that breaks hearts and leads to despair and self-destruction and dishonour! No, no, no—nothing shall lead me to a gamester! though Frank may be lost to me! He will be! he will be! We deserve that he should be! I deserve it—if family sins fall on individuals—I deserve it! It is better for him—better—better. And yet, can he forget—any more than I—that sunny day—? Oh! was she luring him on false pretences? What shall I do? How will it be? Where is my counsellor? Emily, Emily, why did you die?”
Emily’s portrait—calm, sweet, wasted, with grave trustful eyes—was in the next page. The lonely girl turned to it, and gazed, and drank in the soothing influence of the countenance that had never failed to reply with motherly aid and counsel. It rested the throbbing heart; and presently, with hands clasped and head bent, Eleonora Vivian knelt in the little light closet she had fitted as an oratory, and there poured out her perplexities and sorrows.
CHAPTER X
A Truant
Since for your pleasure you came here,You shall go back for mine.—COWPER“How like Dunstone you have made this room!” said Raymond, entering his wife’s apartment with a compliment that he knew would be appreciated.
Cecil turned round from her piano, to smile and say, “I wish papa could see it.”
“I hope he will next spring; but he will hardly bring Mrs. Charnock home this winter. I am afraid you are a good deal alone here, Cecil. Is there no one you would like to ask?”
“The Venns,” suggested Cecil; “only we do not like them to leave home when we are away; but perhaps they would come.”
Raymond could not look as if the proposal were a very pleasing one. “Have you no young-lady friends?” he asked.
“We never thought it expedient to have intimacies in the neighbourhood,” said Cecil.
“Well, we shall have Jenny Bowater here in a week or two.”
“I thought she was your mother’s friend.”
“So she is. She is quite young enough to be yours.”
“I do not see anything remarkable about her.”
“No, I suppose there is not; but she is a very sensible superior person.”
“Indeed! In that commonplace family.”
“Poor Jenny has had an episode that removes her from the commonplace. Did you ever hear of poor Archie Douglas?”
“Was not he a good-for-nothing relation of your mother?”
“Not that exactly. He was the son of a good-for-nothing, I grant, whom a favourite cousin had unfortunately married, but he was an excellent fellow himself; and when his father died, she had Mrs. Douglas to live in that cottage by the Rectory, and sent the boy to school with us; then she got him into Proudfoot’s office—the solicitor at Backsworth, agent for everybody’s estates hereabouts. Well, there arose an attachment between him and Jenny; the Bowaters did not much like it, of course; but they are kind-hearted and good-natured, and gave consent, provided Archie got on in his profession. It was just at the time when poor Tom Vivian was exercising a great deal more influence than was good among the young men in the neighbourhood; and George Proudfoot was rather a joke for imitating him in every respect—from the colour of his dog-cart to the curl of his dog’s tail. I remember his laying a wager, and winning it too, that if he rode a donkey with his face to the tail, Proudfoot would do the same; but then, Vivian did everything with a grace and originality.”
“Like his sister.”
“And doubly dangerous. Every one liked him, and we were all more together than was prudent. At last, two thousand pounds of my mother’s money, which was passing through the Proudfoots’ hands, disappeared; and at the same time poor Archie fled. No one who knew him could have any reasonable doubt that he did but bear the blame of some one else’s guilt, most likely that of George Proudfoot; but he died a year or two back without a word, and no proof has ever been found; and alas! the week after Archie sailed, we saw his name in the list of sufferers in a vessel that was burnt. His mother happily had died before all this, but there were plenty to grieve bitterly for him; and poor Jenny has been the more like one of ourselves in consequence. He had left a note for Jenny, and she always trusted him; and we all of us believe that he was innocent.”
“I can’t think how a person can go about as usual, or ever get over such a thing as that.”
“Perhaps she hasn’t,” said Raymond, with a little colour on his brown cheek. “But I’m afraid I can’t make those visits with you to-day. I am wanted to see the plans for the new town-hall at Wil’sbro’. Will you pick me up there?”
“There would be sure to be a dreadful long waiting, so I will luncheon at Sirenwood instead; Lady Tyrrell asked me to come over any day.”
“Alone? I think you had better wait for me.”
“I can take Frank.”
“I should prefer a regular invitation to us both.”
“She did not mean to make a formal affair.”
“Forms are a protection, and I do not wish for an intimacy there, especially on Frank’s account.”
“It would be an excellent match for Frank.”
“Indeed, no; the estate is terribly involved, and there are three daughters; besides which, the family would despise a younger son. An attachment could only lead to unhappiness now, besides the positive harm of unsettling him. His tutor tells me that as it is he is very uneasy about his examination—his mind is evidently preoccupied. No, no, Cecil, don’t make the intercourse unnecessarily close. The Vivians have not behaved well to my mother, and it is not desirable to begin a renewal. But you shall not lose your ride, Cecil; I’ll ask one of the boys to go with you to the Beeches, and perhaps I shall meet you there.”
“He talks of my lonely life,” said Cecil, to herself, “and yet he wants to keep me from the only person who really understands me, all for some rancorous old prejudice of Mrs. Poynsett’s. It is very hard. There’s no one in the house to make a friend of—Rosamond, a mere garrison belle; and Anne, bornée and half a dissenter; and as soon as I try to make a friend, I am tyrannized over, and this Miss Bowater thrust on me.”
She was pounding these sentiments into a sonata with great energy, when her door re-opened, and Raymond again appeared. “I am looking for two books of Mudie’s. Do you know where they can be? I can’t make up the number.”
“They are here,” said Cecil; “Lanfrey’s Vie de Napoleon; but I have not finished them.”
“The box should have gone ten days ago. My mother has nothing to read, and has been waiting all this time for the next part of Middlemarch,” said Raymond.
“She said there was no hurry,” murmured Cecil.
“No doubt she did; but we must not take advantage of her consideration. Reading is her one great resource, and we must so contrive that your studies shall not interfere with it.”
He waited for some word of regret, but none came; and he was obliged to add, “I must deprive you of the books for the present, for she must not be kept waiting any longer; but I will see about getting them for you in some other way. I must take the box to the station in the dog-cart.” He went without a word from her. It was an entirely new light to her that her self-improvement could possibly be otherwise than the first object with everyone. At home, father and mother told one another complacently what Cecil was reading, and never dreamt of obstructing the virtuous action. Were her studies to be sacrificed to an old woman’s taste for novels?
Cecil had that pertinacity of nature that is stimulated to resistance by opposition; and she thought of the Egyptian campaign, and her desire to understand the siege of Acre. Then she recollected that Miss Vivian had spoken of reading the book, and this decided her. “I’ll go to Sirenwood, look at it, and order it. No one can expect me to submit to have no friends abroad nor books at home. Besides, it is all some foolish old family feud; and what a noble thing it will be for my resolution and independence to force the two parties to heal the breach, and bridge it over by giving Miss Vivian to Frank.”
In this mood she rang the bell, and ordered her horses; not however till she had reason to believe the dog-cart on the way down the avenue. As she came down in her habit, she was met by Frank, returning from his tutor.
“Have I made a mistake, Cecil! I thought we were to go out together this afternoon!”
“Yes; but Raymond was wanted at Willansborough, and I am going to lunch at Sirenwood. I want to borrow a book.”
“Oh, very well, I’ll come, if you don’t mind. Sir Harry asked me to drop in and look at his dogs.”
This was irresistible; and Frank decided on riding the groom’s horse, and leaving him to conduct Anne to the rendezvous in the afternoon—for Charlie had been at Sandhurst for the last week—running in first to impart the change of scheme to her, as she was performing her daily task of reading to his mother.
He did so thus: “I say, Anne, Cecil wants to go to Sirenwood first to get a book, so Lee will bring you to meet us at the Beeches at 2.30.”
“Are you going to luncheon at Sirenwood?” asked Mrs. Poynsett.
“Yes; Cecil wants to go,” said the dutiful younger brother.
“I wish you would ask Cecil to come in. Raymond put himself into such a state of mind at finding me reading Madame de Sévigné, that I am afraid he carried off her books summarily, though I told him I was glad of a little space for my old favourites.”
Cecil was, however, mounted by the time Frank came out, and they cantered away together, reaching the portico of Sirenwood in about twenty minutes.
Cecil had never been in the house before, having only left her card, though she had often met the sisters. She found herself in a carpeted hall, like a supplementary sitting-room, where two gentlemen had been leaning over the wide hearth. One, a handsome benignant-looking old man, with a ruddy face and abundant white whiskers, came forward with a hearty greeting. “Ah! young Mrs. Poynsett! Delighted to see you!—Frank Charnock, you’re come in good time; we are just going down to see the puppies before luncheon. Only I’ll take Mrs. Poynsett to the ladies first. Duncombe, you don’t know Mrs. Raymond Poynsett—one must not say senior bride, but the senior’s bride. Is that right?”
“No papa,” said a bright voice from the stairs, “you haven’t it at all right; Mrs. Charnock Poynsett, if you please—isn’t it?”
“I believe so,” replied Cecil. “Charnock always seems my right name.”
“And you have all the right to retain it that Mrs. Poynsett had to keep hers,” said Lady Tyrrell, as they went up-stairs to her bedroom. “How is she?”
“As usual, thank you; always on the sofa.”
“But managing everything from it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Never was there such a set of devoted sons, models for the neighbourhood.”
Cecil felt a sense of something chiming in with her sources of vexation, but she only answered, “They are passionately fond of her.”
“Talk of despotism! Commend me to an invalid! Ah! how delightfully you contrive to keep your hair in order! I am always scolding Lenore for coming in dishevelled, and you look so fresh and compact! Here is my sanctum. You’ll find Mrs. Duncombe there. She drove over in the drag with her husband on their way to Backsworth. I am so glad you came, there is so much to talk over.”
“If our gentlemen will give us time,” said Mrs. Duncombe; “but I am afraid your senator will not be as much absorbed in the dogs as my captain.”
“I did not come with my husband,” said Cecil; “he is gone to Willansborough to meet the architect.”
“Ah, about the new buildings. I do hope and trust the opportunity will not be wasted, and that the drainage will be provided for.”
“You are longing to have a voice there,” said Lady Tyrrell, laughing.
“I am. It is pre-eminently a woman’s question, and this is a great opportunity. I shall talk to every one. Little Pettitt, the hair-dresser, has some ground there, and he is the most intelligent of the tradesmen. I gave him one of those excellent little hand-bills, put forth by the Social Science Committee, on sanitary arrangements. I thought of asking you to join us in ordering some down, and never letting a woman leave our work-room without one.”
“You couldn’t do better, I am sure,” said Lady Tyrrell; “only, what’s the use of preaching to the poor creatures to live in good houses, when their landlords won’t build them, and they must live somewhere?”
“Make them coerce the landlords,” said Mrs. Duncombe; “that’s the only way. Upheave the masses from beneath.”
“But that’s an earthquake,” said Cecil.
“Earthquakes are sometimes wholesome.”
“But the process is not so agreeable that we had not rather avert it,” said Lady Tyrrell.
“All ours at Dunstone are model cottages,” said Cecil; “it is my father’s great hobby.”
“Squires’ hobbies are generally like the silver trough the lady gave her sow,” said Mrs. Duncombe; “they come before the poor are prepared, and with a spice of the autocrat.”
“Come, I won’t have you shock Mrs. Charnock Poynsett,” said Lady Tyrrell. “You illogical woman! The poor are to demand better houses, and the squires are not to build them!”
“The poor are to be fitly housed, as a matter of right, and from their own sense of self-respect,” returned Mrs. Duncombe; “not a few favourites, who will endure dictation, picked out for the model cottage. It is the hobby system against which I protest.”
“Without quite knowing what was conveyed by it in this instance?” said Lady Tyrrell. “I am sure there is nothing I wish more than that we had any power of improvement of the cottages here; but influence is our only weapon.”
“By the bye, Mrs. Poynsett,” continued Mrs. Duncombe, “will you give a hint to Mrs. Miles Charnock that it will never do to preach to the women at the working-room? I don’t mean holding forth,” she added, seeing Cecil’s look of amazement; “but improving the occasion, talking piously, giving tracts, and so forth.”
“I thought you gave sanitary tracts!” said Lady Tyrrell.
“That is quite different.”
“I doubt whether the women would see the distinction. A little book is a tract to them.”
“I would abstain rather than let our work get a goody reputation for indoctrinating sectarianism. It would be all up with us; we might as well keep a charity school.”
“I don’t think the women dislike it,” said Cecil.
“Most likely they think it the correct thing, the grain which they must swallow with our benefits; but for that very reason it injures the whole tone, and prevents them learning independence. Put it in that light; I know you can.”
“I don’t think Anne would understand,” said Cecil, somewhat flattered.
“I doubt whether there are three women in the neighbourhood who would,” said Lady Tyrrell.
“People always think charity—how I hate the word!—a means of forcing their own tenets down the throats of the poor,” said Mrs. Duncombe. “And certainly this neighbourhood is as narrow as any I ever saw. Nobody but you and—shall I say the present company?—has any ideas. I wonder how they will receive Clio Tallboys and her husband?”
“Ah! you have not heard about them,” said Lady Tyrrell. “Most delightful people, whom Mrs. Duncombe met on the Righi. He is a Cambridge professor.”
“Taillebois—I don’t remember the name,” said Cecil, “and we know a great many Cambridge men. We went to a Commencement there.”
“Oh, not Cambridge on the Cam! the American Cambridge,” said Mrs. Duncombe. “He is a quiet, inoffensive man, great on political economy; but his wife is the character. Wonderfully brilliant and original, and such a lecturer!”
“Ladies’ lectures would startle the natives,” said Lady Tyrrell.
“Besides, the town-hall is lacking,” said Mrs. Duncombe; “but when the Tallboys come we might arrange a succession of soirées, where she might gather her audience.”
“But where?” said Lady Tyrrell. “It would be great fun, and you might reckon on me; but where else? Mrs. Charnock Poynsett has to think of la belle mère.”
“She has given up the management of all matters of society to me,” said Cecil with dignity; “you may reckon on me.”
“No hope of the Bowaters, of course,” said Mrs. Duncombe.