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Title: An odd couple
Author: Mrs. Oliphant
Release date: April 7, 2026 [eBook #78381]
Language: English
Original publication: Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1900
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78381
Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ODD COUPLE ***
AN
ODD COUPLE
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT,
AUTHOR OF “CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,” “SALEM CHAPEL,”
“THE MINISTER’S WIFE,” &C.
PHILADELPHIA:
PORTER AND COATES,
NO. 822 CHESTNUT STREET.
PRESS OF
HENRY B. ASHMEAD,
1102 and 1104 Sansom St.
AN ODD COUPLE.
CONTENTS.
_CHAPTER I._
PAGE
_He, and She_ 7
_CHAPTER II._
_Conjugality_ 27
_CHAPTER III._
_A Mediator_ 42
_CHAPTER IV._
_The Breach Accomplished_ 56
_CHAPTER V._
_Education_ 74
_CHAPTER VI._
_The Captain of the Eleven_ 91
_CHAPTER VII._
_A Dinner at Hyde Park Square_ 111
_CHAPTER VIII._
_The Villa_ 130
_CHAPTER IX._
_The Villa_ (_continued_) 141
_CHAPTER X._
_Edward_ 153
_CHAPTER XI._
_The Day After_ 163
_CHAPTER XII._
_Romance_ 178
_CHAPTER XIII._
_An Anxious Mother_ 193
_CHAPTER XIV._
_The Boy’s Appeal_ 214
_CHAPTER XV._
_The Girl’s Escape_ 229
_CHAPTER XVI._
_Conclusion--The Father’s Share_ 244
AN ODD COUPLE.
CHAPTER I.
HE, AND SHE.
“In that case, perhaps, it would be better that we should part!”
These ominous words were said very steadily and precisely, but with a
certain sense of nervous excitement in the utterance, by Mr. Charles
Tremenheere, one morning in November, in his own drawing-room, and were,
I need scarcely say, addressed to his own wife. To whom else could they
have been said? He was not the kind of man who might have been expected
to speak words striking at the very root of family existence, being,
indeed, a very orderly and respectable personage,--anything but a
revolutionary. The amount of provocation which he had endured before he
said them need not be entered into here. He had been married about ten
years, and had two children, a boy of nine and a girl of seven. Mrs.
Tremenheere was seated opposite to him at a small work-table knitting,
with a composure which was aggravating to the last degree. Her needles
met each other with tranquil regularity, and not a single dropped stitch
or irregular line bore witness to any excitement of feeling. They were
middle-aged people, and might very well have been married twenty years
instead of ten. He was standing in the favorite attitude of Englishmen,
in front of the fire, a thin angular man, moving with a certain
jerkiness and rapidity, slightly bald, with refined features, and hair
growing gray, and looking very much what he was, a clerk in a public
office, much more experienced and learned in the country’s business than
was in general the distinguished “chief” at the head of the department,
though he was a Minister of State and probably a Grand Seigneur, Knight
of the Garter, and everything that was splendid--while his instructor
and referee who kept him out of mischief was only Mr. Charles
Tremenheere. Nevertheless, the injustice in this respect was more
apparent than real, for Mr. Tremenheere was a man as well known in those
high regions from which the country is ruled as the Queen herself, and
most people whose opinion he cared about were perfectly acquainted with
the real standing of which the vulgar knew nothing. “Tremenheere will
keep him right,” the Premier himself said when he appointed the rising
man of the day Secretary of State for _that_ department. Indeed, I need
not tell you, dear reader, which department it was. It is in very good
hands and does not require our interference, and it is enough for the
purpose of the narrative that you should know who this gentleman was. He
had been very much in society in his younger days, and still kept up his
old friends, though his wife, whose taste was somewhat different from
his own, had separated him from the tide of fashion; and he loved
society, judging men and things by the standard in favor there, and
making but small account of qualities which were not appreciated in
these finest circles. This was a grave ground of debate between his wife
and himself. They did not quarrel according to the ordinary pattern of
conjugal quarrels. She was not a scold nor he a villain; he behaved as a
gentleman should and she like a well-bred woman. But they differed
incessantly, continually, with the heat of people who quarrel about
convictions, a thing more persistent than the light differences which
arise on every-day subjects; and so at last it had come to
this--“Perhaps in that case it would be better that we should part!”
Mr. Tremenheere felt when he said this that he had discharged his last
volley. What more could he say or do? and he expected it to startle and
appal his calm antagonist. He thought that an utterance so trenchant, so
final, would penetrate through all her defences, and make her feel what
it was to defy a man who was her natural head, her social
representative. Almost, he expected to see the common appeal of
womankind which he had read of in books, and which everybody, so far as
he knew (who was not married to Mrs. Tremenheere), believed in. Mrs.
Tremenheere had never yet wept to him nor pleaded for forgiveness. She
had never broken down under any of his reproaches--never been melted
into helplessness by his appeals. Would she do it now--would she
cry--would she throw herself at his feet or on his neck and ask him to
take back that cruel suggestion? Inevitably it must bring her to
herself.
But, indeed, the result was not as he anticipated. Mrs. Tremenheere bore
the shock with wonderful composure. She scarcely raised her head; she
scarcely paused in her knitting. She allowed him to speak as calmly as
if he had been saying, “I will dine at my club.” And then there followed
an interval of silence which was as if the spheres stood still to Mr.
Tremenheere. His eyes were upon her, but she did not look at him. Was it
that she did not dare to look at him? Was it her pride which kept her
eyes on her knitting, her head bowed down? one or the other it must be.
But if she did not feel the shock, he did, when Mrs. Tremenheere,
raising her head and looking at him, without any of the excitement in
her eyes which blinded his, replied quietly, “I have no doubt, as things
have gone so far, that it would be the best--in every way.”
“Good God! Ada,” he said in sudden horror. “What do you mean?”
“It is not what I mean, Mr. Tremenheere. I have not taken any
initiative. We do not agree, unfortunately, or think alike in anything;
but it was not I who called attention to this. I had made up my mind to
go on and make the best of it. But when you see it so clearly I feel
that it would be foolish to contradict you. Yes,” she said with a sigh;
“it is a pity, but I think you are right: and separation would be the
best.”
“You think so!” he said, furious. “Oh, you think so! Good heavens! and
this is what it is to end in, after all that has come and gone!”
“It was not I who suggested it,” she said, resuming her knitting; “but
since you think so, dear----”
“Dear! dear comes in well in such a discussion,” said the husband
furiously. He left the fire and strode across to the window, and stood
gazing out with his back to her. The sight of her composure made him
wild. “If we are to arrange this let it be without any pretence of false
affection. Conventional humbug may at least be put away now.”
“I am never conventional that I know of,” she said slightly roused. “We
do not agree, Charles; but why should we hate each other? It is this
that would be conventional, not an innocent word.”
“Oh, confound your innocent words,” he muttered through his teeth; but
this she did not hear, nor was she intended to hear it. He could hear
the slight stir of her needles where he stood looking out upon the
rolling of the fog which now lifted a little, now came down heavier.
Nothing could be more doleful than the prospect out-of-doors. Hyde Park,
which was opposite, threw up a line of spectral trees into the yellow of
the atmosphere. The passengers went by slipping upon the greasy
pavement, the horses surrounded themselves with a halo of white breath
like the _nimbus_ of a mediæval saint; the kind of day from which you
shrink and turn to the cheerful fire within; but to poor Mr. Tremenheere
the fog itself was more cheerful than the genial blaze near which the
wife sat in her warm velvet dress, the impersonation of domestic
comfort. How comfortable she looked! He saw her very well, though his
back was turned. With a matronly fulness of person,--not too much, only
enough to be becoming,--light brown hair, not changed or touched by
time, and a great deal more abundant than is usual nowadays. It seemed
suddenly to flash upon him how changed the room would look without her,
and the house and all his daily life. Was it possible that she could be
so hard-hearted, so cruel, so blind to every duty? If it had not been
his own suggestion he would have turned round and laughed in her face.
She go away after ten years’ companionship and quarrelling! Quarreling
when it is continuous and familiar endears just as much as anything
else. She could not think of it. It must be a bit of bravado to frighten
him and make him give in on the subject they had disagreed upon. Women
were bad enough; but they were not so bad, not so heartless as this. So
Mr. Tremenheere considered that the wisest thing he could do was to show
the impatience, but not the uneasiness he felt, and to rush off to the
office, where he ought to have been some time ago, but for the
disagreement which had brought matters all at once and unexpectedly to a
crisis so terrible.
“I am aware that you have plenty of time to talk,” he said, “but I have
not. I am off to the office. You have detained me too long already with
this ridiculous discussion. Why should we have these continual
misunderstandings? I advise you to put folly out of your head, and try
to find some way by which we can get on like other people. I shall be
back at seven to-night.”
And he turned round and looked at her. Surely at least she would show
some natural feeling now. But she did not. She bent her head a little
and said, “Very well, good morning,” and went on with her knitting. Good
morning! Good heavens! What did she mean by that “good morning!” Was it
anxiety! Was it determination? He would rather have seen her eyes, and
then he might have known what she meant. But he would not resign the
superior position he had assumed by waiting to see what her eyes meant.
He had to go, as he said, shutting the door with some energy behind him.
He stumbled over the children at the door, and, instead of stopping to
kiss them, as was his wont, pushed the little things away, who were all
done up in their winter gear, great coats and furs.
“Is this a day to take the children out? Go back to the nursery at
once,” he said, not stopping to hear what the nurse, indignant, said
about Missis. Missis! what was she that she must argue about everything,
instead of taking her husband’s opinion like other people?--when of
course he must know best; he a man of the world. But Mr. Tremenheere
went to the office that day with a heavy heart. He had “shot an arrow
into the air,” and he did not know where he should find that inadvertent
missile. And all without meaning it! meaning nothing more than to
frighten her; to show her what terrors might be if she did not mind what
she was about--to warn her of possibilities which perhaps had never
dawned upon her before.
Mrs. Tremenheere, however, was much more startled by her husband’s
suggestion than she allowed to appear; but scarcely in the way a wife
might be supposed to be startled. It was not the fear of lost love or
any sentimental disturbance which was in her mind. There are wives, and
even some whose married life is not particularly harmonious, to whom
such words would be as the rending asunder of heaven and earth; but this
lady was not one of them. She did not feel the soil crumbling under her
feet or the skies dividing over her head because her husband threw out
the suggestion, that probably they might be better apart. She was not
wounded in this profound and poignant way, but she was startled by the
sudden introduction to her of a new idea, a something previously
unthought of which was evidently worthy of thought. And perhaps she was
a little piqued and slightly stung in her pride that the idea had not
originated with herself. Even the most philosophical woman, she who has
least care to preserve the often humiliating privileges of sex, has a
kind of prejudice in favor of all such suggestions originating with
herself. That her husband should be able calmly to contemplate a
separation did not throw her into hysterics or into despair, but yet she
should have liked to have been the first to suggest the separation.
When, however, she had got over this she was seriously struck by the new
idea. Separation! it meant a great deal which Mrs. Tremenheere had never
considered before, and which she began to consider with the seriousness
which became a very important matter. Living separate was easy enough to
friends who perhaps might be better friends apart than if thrown
continually together. It was nothing very dreadful even for members of
the same family. Brothers and sisters separated continually, yet
remained brotherly and sisterly all their lives; but a man and
wife,--this was something totally different, involving a very great deal
more. A separation of this sort is seldom considered in the reflective
and calm spirit in which Mrs. Tremenheere regarded it. Usually it is
decided upon in mere heat of passion, or under the sting of some
intolerable wrong--and only when the misery of the two compelled to live
together has become past bearing. All this was very different from her
sentiments; she sat very still going on with her knitting, her needles
perhaps moving a little more quickly than usual, and her eyes very
intent upon what she was doing, until at last she dropped her work on
her lap, letting fall the ball of wool with which she was knitting, and
which a playful kitten from the hearthrug immediately sprang upon. The
kitten thought her mistress had done it on purpose, and that this was an
invitation to play, and purred loudly to show her satisfaction, arching
her back and looking up into Mrs. Tremenheere’s abstracted face as she
put her foot upon the ball. It was a pretty Persian kitten with a long
sweeping tail, and the room was very pretty, with harmonious furniture
and fine water-color drawings, a carefully selected collection, for both
husband and wife prided themselves on knowing something about art. The
chair upon which Mrs. Tremenheere sat was an elegant Chippendale, which
she preferred to the usual luxurious articles of the drawing-room. The
table by her side was spider-legged, and daintily carved in ebony. An
old Italian cabinet in the same wood, inlaid with silver, stood against
the wall behind. Careful thought and taste, and some amount of culture,
showed in every part of the room. A bright fire blazed, throwing
pleasant lights about, sparkling in the glasses of the old Venice
chandelier, and doing its best to neutralize the effects of the fog
without. When Mrs. Tremenheere dropped her knitting in her lap she
raised her head with a sigh and turned her eyes to the window, as it is
so natural to do when one is in trouble. She was not young; but she was
a handsome woman, with clear high features, blue eyes, and abundant
hair--not fat, though that is the usual epithet to apply to a woman of
forty, which was her age, but tall and of an imposing presence. And she
was very well dressed in a dark velvet gown, which threw up her
fairness, with old-fashioned ornaments such as betrayed the same
prevailing taste as that which was apparent in the room. She was so
entirely in keeping with the place that it may be supposed the idea of
leaving it was not agreeable to her. But even this was not how the
matter appeared at the present moment to Mrs. Tremenheere. She had not
yet come so far as to think of leaving her home, or of any of the
material consequences to follow, but was only startled into serious
consideration of the idea and of what it meant, and if it really would
be “best,” as her husband had said.
She was asking herself this question when the nurse and children burst
into the room in full walking array, as when Mr. Tremenheere had turned
them back--every ribbon on nurse’s bonnet (and there were a great many),
and every hair on her head, though they were less abundant, was bridling
with indignation. The little girl had her finger in her mouth, and was
whimpering in sympathy. The boy, more indifferent, received imaginary
balls upon the short hoop-stick which he held like a cricket-bat, and
let the woman talk with masculine composure.
“Please ma’am, master-has-turned-us-back,” said nurse, running all her
words into one. “It’s-a-fog-and-we-ain’t-to-go-out-in-a-fog; and a deal
of exercise the dear children will get in London if we don’t never go
out in fogs. I said as it was you, but he said as it was me, and gave
’em a push which it isn’t like a gentleman,” said the nurse out of
breath; while little Vera, stamping her little foot, cried, “Naughty
papa!”
“And master is as unreasonable as unreasonable, as well you knows,
ma’am, though you might’nt say it,” nurse added, before she could be
stopped.
Mrs. Tremenheere colored high, and when she flushed the color remained,
as she was well aware, on the ridge of her delicate high nose much
longer than was becoming or agreeable, which made her still more angry.
“You are very impertinent to speak of your master so,” she said. “Take
the children’s things off at once, and send them to me; and Vera, if you
whimper you shall have a punishment. Go directly. I am very much
displeased.”
“It ain’t us, ma’am, that you’ve occasion to be displeased with,” nurse
began. “It’s Mr. ----”
“Do you wish me to send you away at an hour’s notice?” said Mrs.
Tremenheere in a low voice, hastily rising from her chair and putting
down the knitting with some impatience on the table, as she dismissed
the party peremptorily. Was this the end of it all? She had meant well,
as well as ever woman meant, or so at least she thought; but this was
the end. A servant who ventured to appeal to her knowledge of her
husband’s unreasonableness--a child who felt itself justified in saying
“Naughty papa.” Was this what she had done, betraying herself and
betraying him, bringing down the credit and good reputation which she
was bound to preserve? Then indeed he was right, and it would be best
for them to part.
She had, however, little time to pursue these reflections, for soon
after the door again opened, and the little pair came back, Vera in a
little velvet frock like her mother’s, with the hair cut square on her
forehead and falling behind upon her shoulders, leading the way,--Eddy
behind, still with the hoop-stick of which he made an imaginary
cricket-bat. Vera had a lapful of dolls in her pinafore--dolls without
noses, without arms, with feet twisted off, with necks wrung, with hair
torn from their heads, but only the dearer for all their misfortunes, as
Othello was “for the dangers he had known.” Vera tripped in light as a
little fairy, her pretty hair streaming over her shoulders. She was one
of those born actors who (up to the age of ten or so) are always
consciously playing some _rôle_ or other, and to-day her part was that
of an anxious mother taking care of her offspring. The little creature
took no notice of her own mother, who sat gazing at her with many
thoughts in her heart, but seating herself on the other side of the
fireplace began to arrange her family. She put her dolls round her like
a class at school, setting them up to sit with their miserable legs
thrust out on all the stools she could find, and then began to address
them with busy gravity--now pulling a dress straight, now arranging a
wig of tow. The busy little human thing among all these wooden
counterfeits of herself was as curious a sight as one could wish to see.
How she managed them, pulling this one roughly about, coaxing another,
according to their character! and indeed there were to the child’s
lively imagination distinct traces of character in the very attitude of
these ungainly babes.
“Try and sit up like a lady,” she said, taking up unceremoniously one of
her collected family by the head and setting it down again with a shake,
“is that how a lady sits? If you are all good and don’t make a noise,
nor spoil your pinnies, I will tell you a story. Oh you disagreeable
little fright, why can’t you hold your toes straight? Now listen!” Vera
held up a small finger in the air to enforce attention. “There was once
a little girl, and she was sometimes naughty just like you, and she had
a great many little children belonging to her, and one that was called
Rose, and one that was called Violet, and one that was called Lily, just
the same names as you have; ain’t it strange? And this little girl had a
mamma, the same as you have, but she had a papa too, and you never had a
papa. You hold your tongue, you naughty Rose. You want to know what a
papa is like--you all want to know? Well, a papa is a very funny thing.
Sometimes he is good and gives you new dolls, but I do not like any new
dolls, the nicest that could be got, so much as I love you, you dear old
dirty naughty ones; so be quiet and don’t interfere ever any more. But
then a papa is sometimes cross. He is very funny to look at, and doesn’t
wear frocks like us; and some of them have beards, great hairy things
like your muff stuck on to your chin, and when they kiss you it pricks.
But that is not all. Now you shall hear about the little girl in the
story. Once she met her papa when she was just going out for a walk, and
her nurse was going to take her to the Baker Street Bazaar, and she was
so happy; and what do you think this naughty, naughty, cross, unkind
papa did?----”
“Vera, what are you talking about?”
“I was not talking, mamma; I was only telling Rose and Violet and the
rest, a story. I often tell them stories--like what you used to tell
me--that begin--‘There was once a little girl.’ I never liked to hear
about that little girl,” said Vera, shaking her head; “she was always
doing silly things, and I knew she was me.”
“Vera, it is very naughty either to your dolls, or any one, to talk so
of your papa.”
“My papa!” said Vera with well-feigned surprise. “I was only talking of
the little girl’s papa.”
But here the boy, who had been silent, interposed with masculine
reproof, “What stupids girls are with their dolls! You might come and
bowl for me,” said Eddy, who was still playing imaginary cricket.
Vera threw all her dolls into a heap in a corner and went with
light-hearted fickleness; while the mother sat by and went on with her
thoughts.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
CONJUGALITY.
Mr. Tremenheere came home that evening at seven o’clock. It was not his
custom to be quite so early. He went late in the morning, and was not
unwilling to stay late, and to get all the evening’s news before he went
home, so that the dinners generally were very late in Hyde Park Square.
Mrs. Tremenheere, who was a busy woman with many occupations of her own,
did not object to this--indeed she was (as he remembered on his way
home) on the whole a very easy woman to live with, and disposed to use
mutual toleration in respect to a great many things which women in
general are inclined to make unnecessary fusses about. Oddly enough,
when he came to think of it, there were a great many things in respect
to which she was very easy. It was ideas that she fought about, but of
all things that make a woman disagreeable, ideas, it must be allowed,
are among the worst.
However, he dressed and made himself particularly pleasant at dinner.
They were people who took pleasure in the table after a more refined
fashion than that generally understood by these words. Mr. Tremenheere
indeed liked a good dinner with that _naive_ devotion which is common
among men of his age, but Mrs. Tremenheere considered cookery one of the
fine arts, and studied it in an elevated and elevating way. Mr.
Tremenheere had made up his mind when he married, with a certain rueful
submission, that it would be madness to expect in an imperfect and
newly-constituted establishment under the charge of a lady whom he knew
to be much too enlightened on other subjects, and consequently expected
little from on this, the carefully-regulated cuisine, the excellent
cookery which to a man of many clubs, with a tolerable income, had
become second nature. He had even had jokes made upon him on the
subject, and had made jokes of a melancholy nature in return. But to his
great and delightful surprise he had been able to turn the tables upon
his sympathizers by giving them dinners which the best _chef_ could not
have surpassed. “I don’t suppose you want banquets,” Mrs. Tremenheere
had said, “but I think we are capable of dinners of eight--or even of
ten, if you please;” and she had kept her word in the most noble way. To
such a philosophical artist as she had proved herself, it need not be
said that a dinner for two--a delicate composition which answers to a
copy of verses from a poet, or a short story from a novelist--was a
special triumph of art; but on this particular evening, when Mr.
Tremenheere came home, trembling with suppressed anxiety, from his
office, and not very sure as to whether Fate and his offended wife would
allow him any dinner at all, the _ménu_ of the little repast was
unusually exquisite. He took this, deluded man, for a good sign. He
thought if she had been going to take those idle words of his at their
full value and act upon them, that it was not female nature (of which,
like many men, he thought he knew much) to have taken so much trouble
about what he ate. He believed that she would have been spiteful, and
refused him such a meal as he could sit down to with any pleasure. But
on the contrary--! Mr. Tremenheere’s courage rose. It is impossible to
describe how genial he was. He praised every dish; the fish was a wonder
of freshness--the _entrêes_ were perfect--the birds were cooked as one
scarcely ever saw them out of Scotland. He glowed and beamed over the
well-spread table. Was it not a promise, a foretaste of years of good
dinners and friendly conjugalities--all the better, perhaps, for this
sudden and alarming cloud--to come?
And he was equally genial to the children, whose introduction at dessert
did not always please him. To-night he was the politest and most amiable
of fathers. Vera, taking advantage of the opportunity, though most
inopportunely, so far as his feelings were concerned, plunged
immediately into comment upon the transactions of the morning.
“We have never been out all day, not one little bit,” she said. “Why
mustn’t we go out when its a fog? We have been ever so often before, and
no one found fault. Papa, you know it was because you were cross you
turned us back; and we were going to the Bazaar to see all the things
for Christmas. Naughty papa!”
“Vera, I must send you to bed,” said Mrs. Tremenheere.
“Let her talk--let her talk,” said the conciliating father. “Going to
the Bazaar, were you! I will take you myself when it is a fine day and
buy you something.”
“You!” Vera’s delight was great. “Do you hear, Eddy? Papa himself! But
you never did it before.”
“I am always so busy, my dear.”
“Are you busy? I should like to go with you; shouldn’t you, Eddy? better
than with nurse--better than with mamma.”
“Vera, that is very ungrateful,” said Mr. Tremenheere, secretly
flattered by the preference, “and, besides, I don’t believe it. You
would rather go with mamma.”
“No; she would come any time. I should like you because you never, never
did it before. I like everything that is new,” cried Vera, clapping her
hands; “and then you would be stupid--you would not know where to go, or
anything. You would not know which was the place for the dolls, nor
where those funny Japan things are. Will you come to-morrow, papa?”
“That is abrupt,” he said. “Yes, perhaps, Vera, if nothing happens to
interfere I will go to-morrow. Will that please you? and then I shall be
made, I suppose, to buy half the dolls in the Bazaar.”
“Vera, it is your hour for bed,” said her mother; and the remonstrances
which were on the child’s lips were hushed by the fact that just then
nurse came in solemnly and took her place at the door. As is usual in
well-regulated families, mothers and fathers may yield, but nurse is
inexorable. The children did not even attempt by any unnecessary
blandishments to work upon the feelings of that Rhadamantha. They
yielded at once. Eddy rose from his oranges without much reluctance, and
Vera slid down unwillingly from her father’s knee. At the same moment
Mrs. Tremenheere rose. “You will find me in the drawing-room if you want
me, Charles,” she said quietly. Alas, he felt there was more in these
words than met the ear.
And then an interval ensued which was not delightful for either of them.
Mr. Tremenheere was long of making his appearance that night--which was
not even to be explained by the fact that he took a glass of wine more
than usual to strengthen him for the evening trial--not even that; he
did it on purpose, poor man, thinking that her courage would ooze out at
her fingers’ end, when she saw how late it was and how little time there
was for talk. He strolled in at length in a careless way.
“Give me a cup of tea, my dear,” he said, with ostentatious
friendliness. “I have brought some work home with me from the office,
and I want to have all my wits about me. In such cases there is nothing
so good as a cup of your tea----”
“I am sorry, Charles, that you have work to-night.”
“Yes?--well, so am I. I don’t like it much, I assure you--but the
country’s business must be attended to,” he said, rubbing his hands with
premature delight over the success of his scheme.
“I don’t doubt it; still our own life is sometimes more important to us
than even the country’s business--though I have never, that I know of,
interfered with that.”
“Never, Ada, never,” he answered, briskly, “--of course, you are a
sensible woman and know the importance of it as well as I do.”
“And I have never wasted your time or kept you from your work for my own
pleasure----”
“Never, my dear, never!” He interrupted her more nervously this time,
feeling that so strenuous a self-defence must mean something more.
“Then I need the less excuse for now occupying your time, Charles. I
must speak to you. Things are involved of more consequence to us than
there can be in your office papers for the country. The country is not
in mortal peril, that I know of, but our house is----”
“My dear, you astonish me----”
“No indeed, I don’t astonish you. You know very well what I mean. You
cannot have passed the day without thinking of it. I do not think it is
worthy of you to suppose that we can get over this by simply ignoring
the whole matter. Something was said this morning----”
“Yes, yes! I knew you would come back to that,” he said, pettishly.
“Well, it was a foolish speech on my part. I said it in the heat of
discussion, not meaning it. Will that satisfy you? When a man is very
much provoked he is not always master of what he says. There, Ada! I did
think that to ignore the whole business was the best--but since you
insist upon it, I apologize, and I hope now you are content.”
“The view you take of this is not the same as mine,” said Mrs.
Tremenheere. “You laugh: you are accustomed to hear such words from me.
But don’t laugh, I beg of you, for this is far more serious than any
disagreement we have ever had. Charles, you said it would be best for us
to separate. I have thought of little else since.”
“Nor I, for that matter,--if that will be any consolation to you,” he
muttered between his teeth.
“Why should it be a consolation to me? It is not that I want to get the
better of you, to be apologized to, or think myself the wiser. Again,”
cried Mrs. Tremenheere, “it is the old difficulty. You will not go to
the heart of the matter. You will think only of the outside.”
“It has no heart that I know of,” he said, with a sullen acceptance of
the new controversy, placing himself once more in that citadel of
argument, the front of the fire. “The whole affair lies in a nutshell.
In one of our continual and apparently inevitable quarrels, I said some
inadvertent words which I am sorry for. They were struck out of me in
the heat of quarrel, and I tell you I am sorry for them; what more is to
be done? I have said all a man can say.”
“But yet you have not touched the heart of the subject. If, indeed, our
quarrels are continual and apparently inevitable, that gives double
force to your words. Charles, I have been thinking it over all day, and
I think perhaps you are right. It will make a wonderful change in our
lives, and it is not a thing to be done lightly--but yet I think you are
right. We do quarrel a great deal. I don’t know whose fault it is, but
it is very undignified and unseemly. We will do our duty better and fill
our place in the world better--apart.”
“Apart?”
She said the last word so low that he stooped to hear what it was.
“Yes--apart!” Mrs. Tremenheere spoke tremulously, but firmly. Never was
woman stronger in her own opinion, and, perhaps, in all her life she
had never formed a more decided opinion than now.
“You speak like a fool, Ada,” he said, with a rudeness quite unusual to
him. “This is carrying matters ridiculously far. And yet you are not a
silly woman to leap to conclusions. You know, as well as I do, that
there is a great deal more involved than mere agreement or disagreement.
We can always wash our dirty linen at home, at all events. If we
quarrel, there is no occasion to publish it to all the world. And this
must be done if we separate; nonsense; separate! for one ill-advised and
hasty word! Expose ourselves, break up our house, put a stigma on our
children! You cannot think of such a thing. One can surely trust to your
good sense to see that.”
“I have thought of it all,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, “and painfully
enough. That is the outside view of the question--but the other aspect
of it is this. Which is best? To undergo what you have described once
for all: or to go on quarrelling, never taking the same view of
anything, bringing up our children without any feeling of household
sanctity, to see their father and mother in a perpetual struggle, to
take sides, perhaps, and fight too, after our fashion, and think of us
as of antagonistic powers? Apparently, so far as I can make out, one or
the other of these must be.”
“Folly! utterly far-fetched, and unlike your good sense. Why should
either of them be?”
“Do not you see why? Charles, Vera came to me this morning, quite ready
to enter on the fray. You had turned them back when they were ready to
go out, unreasonably. Yes, I cannot deny it was unreasonably. You were
angry, and you made them turn back, saying it was the fog, and they came
to me to complain. Of course, I had to maintain your authority; but I
did so simply as a matter of duty. And children are very quick to notice
this, Mr. Tremenheere.”
“Oh! confound the children!” he cried. “This question surely may be
allowed to be between us; it does not affect the children. Why should
they be brought into it? Surely nothing can be more distinctly between
you and me.”
“It was you who brought in the children first, not I,” she said.
“So! so!” cried Mr. Tremenheere, rubbing his hands together with growing
rage, “and thus the whole old business commences again. It was not I but
you--it is not one incidental question or another, but the entire matter
between us, how we are to get on at all, what is to become of the
family! I take heaven to witness it is not my fault. I said a few hasty
unintentional words. I have withdrawn them--I have begged you pardon,
which is a great deal for a man in my circumstances to do. If you are
determined to go on, well! do it on your own responsibility. It is
true,” he continued, growing in excitement as he went on, “that this
house is a perfect hell upon earth, that one is never safe from argument
even at the moment one is least inclined for it. That is what comes of
your educated women,” cried the unlucky man. “This is the Attic salt
they season their husband’s daily fare with! Give me the old domestic
drudge, the one that suckled fools, and gave her family a little
peace.--This new edition of a wife is not the thing for me.”
Mrs. Tremenheere grew red and then pale, but with that ridge of color on
her nose of which she was always so unpleasantly conscious. She could
bear (she thought) a great deal of individual abuse, but general abuse
addressed to her as a woman cut her to the heart. But she did not show
anger as he did. She waited until he came to a pause, and then said,
deliberately:
“It is unnecessary, Mr. Tremenheere, to assail all women on my account.
There are women enough in the world of the kind you like, who might have
married you perhaps had you asked them, so in that matter at least you
have only yourself to blame. The question is strictly between
individuals, not between the sexes--and I must remind you that you
yourself said it lay in a nutshell. We cannot agree. Therefore you think
it is best we should separate--and so do I.”
“That is putting it in a nutshell, indeed,” he cried. “I never made any
such cut-and-dry statement. I spoke inadvertently in a moment of
excitement.--No doubt it was true enough, if you come to that--but I
have withdrawn it. I do withdraw it----”
“How can you withdraw it,” she said, quietly, “if still it is true?”
“Ada, you will drive me mad!” he exclaimed, wiping his forehead
violently. She looked at him with a slight shrug of her shoulders, and
no visible sign of her corresponding excitement except that red line
down the high ridge of her handsome nose.
“Mr. Tremenheere,” she said, “you withdraw everything and then you
repeat it. Be logical. If I drive you mad--if our house is hell upon
earth--why then it is unquestionable that to separate is the only
possible thing for us to do----”
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III.
A MEDIATOR.
Mr. Tremenheere took a very strange step on the morning after this
discussion. He went to call on his wife’s chief friend, Miss Elinor
Meadows, a single woman of fortune and advanced opinions, his aversion
hitherto, and the very impersonation of everything he disliked--and put
the case into her hands. And in less than an hour after, Miss Meadows
burst into the drawing-room at Hyde Park Square. She was a handsome
woman, with a wind of motion always about her, a “tempestuous
petticoat,” and hair somewhat wild at the best of times. Her hair was
gray, curly, and frizzy, and full of life, running into curls and
eddies, even when the most decorous attempts had been made to get it
into order. On this occasion, when she had walked, and walked quickly,
in the teeth of a breeze which had dragged it out from under her
bonnet, and twisted it up in her veil, her broad white forehead shone
out among the unruly locks with greater solidity and breadth than ever.
She had an eager heartiness of manner which corresponded with her
wind-tossed aspect. Her clear brown eyes shone with the excitement of
her mission. When she came into the orderly room it was as if a fresh
breeze had been let loose there. She rushed up to Mrs. Tremenheere, put
her hands on her shoulders, and gave her a kiss upon either cheek.
“Why, Ada,” she said, “what is this? What have you been doing? Do you
mean it, or are you only frightening this poor man?”
“What poor man? Of course it is you, Nelly. No one else comes in like a
gale.”
“I have come to puff the cobwebs away,” said Miss Meadows. “I have had a
penitent husband with me this morning. Fancy! you may imagine how very
droll I found it that he should appeal to me.”
“Before you go further, let us understand each other,” said her friend,
steadily. “The poor man and the penitent husband do not of course mean
Mr. Tremenheere. Any one else you please you can speak of so, but not
him.”
“Ada, he has been making me his confidant. It is very strange, I allow,
but still he has done it. Are you both out of your senses, or what on
earth do you mean?”
“We mean, my dear Nelly, as he has taken you into his confidence, to do
the wisest thing we have done for a long time--to withdraw amicably from
each other’s society. I don’t know what he may have said to you, but
this is really how it is. We differ very much in sentiment and opinion.
We have different ways of regarding things. He considers all subjects by
their bearing on society,--I for what they are in themselves. This makes
frequent dissensions between us. We don’t seem able to modify our views,
or rather, our way of looking at life, and we cannot allow the children
to grow up in constant presence of that which, while it is only
reasonable controversy to us, will look like strife and discord to them.
There! you have the whole affair in a nutshell, as Mr. Tremenheere
says.”
Mrs. Tremenheere warmed unconsciously as she spoke, and her voice
quivered till it ended in a little outburst. She was perfectly
self-possessed, but not unmoved or callous. In the little tremblings of
her dress, in the slight vibration of her head when she ceased speaking,
in the movements of her hand, she betrayed excitement which was almost
passionate, though so powerfully restrained.
“Ada, I don’t know what you have been quarrelling about,” said the
intercessor, with deprecating meekness of speech, “but I could see he is
very sorry. If he has provoked you badly, as I suppose, I could almost
promise he will never do it again. Come, Ada----”
“Is it Mr. Tremenheere you are speaking of, as if he was a child who had
gone wrong? I cannot allow it--this is taking an entirely false view of
the subject.”
“Upon my word! and so because he is _your_ husband no one is to say a
word about him. You will quarrel with him yourself, but to others he
shall be a demigod!” said Miss Meadows. “_I_ don’t care for the man. I
never did, as you know. I don’t care for men generally. There is not
good enough in them, to make amends for the trouble they give. It is
just like you. At all times everything that was yours was better than
anybody else’s. But I am not going to be put down; I have a mission, and
I must do my duty to my principal. Come, Ada, be reasonable. Fight it
out and be done with it. After all, I don’t suppose he is any worse than
other people. He likes his own way, and so do you, and I, and all of us.
That is why I never understood your marriage at all, for any one more
determined to be in the right than you are I never saw. Give in a
little, and things will come round.”
At this moment the door slowly opened, and the small figure of Vera,
fully equipped, appeared, framed in by the doorway. The child stood in
her little velvet coat and furs, her little hat, with its long feather
pushed off her forehead, everything perfect and carefully arranged about
her, an example of luxury and warmth and comfort. But Vera, though she
loved her best hat as a little woman ought, was not thinking of it for
the moment. She stood on the threshhold of the room and searched it with
widening eyes of wonder and anxiety and dismay. The changes on her
little countenance amused the visitor, who had stopped short in her
speech to look at the child. All expectation, pleasure and brightness,
just clouded with the suspense of a moment, was the little face when it
first appeared; then the blue eyes grew bigger and searched with a
slight shade of fear in them; then the corners of her mouth began to
droop. “Perhaps he is in the library,” said Vera, slowly. “It is not
possible that he can have forgotten;” and then the little mouth
quivered, and a shower of quick tears came down in a moment. “But no,
no; Aunt Elinor is there, and he does not like her, and she has
frightened him away.”
“I am much obliged to you, Vera,” said Miss Meadows, laughing; “but on
the contrary, my dear, your father likes me very well, and it is he who
has sent me----”
“To take us to meet him,” cried the child, with a sudden recovery of
sunshine, despising all probabilities; upon which a gruffer voice arose
behind her, and Eddy said curtly, himself unseen: “He never intended it.
I told you so. Vera, come along and don’t cry!”
“Your papa is very busy; he was obliged to go out early. I will remind
him when he comes home,” said Mrs. Tremenheere.
Vera rushed into the room and pulled off her best hat violently, pulling
off along with it the pretty ribbon that tied her hair. She clenched her
fists like a little fury, looking out through a mist of shiny locks with
tears and rage in her eyes, and stamped her little foot on the carpet.
“Eddy said so,” she cried, “but I could not believe him. I would not
believe him. Oh, isn’t it dreadful; isn’t it shameful! To break his
word: You would kill me for it if it was me.”
“Vera, you forget yourself,” said her mother.
“But I don’t forget my promises!” cried the child, “and why should big
people be let do things which children musn’t! No, I shan’t come, Eddy.
I’ll stay here. I don’t want to go out. I don’t care for anything. I
have had a disappointment;” and Vera marched to a corner of the room and
sat down, gloomily turning her face to the wall.
The two women looked on with more interest than the situation warranted,
Vera ought to have been whipped, I allow; but the circumstances gave a
certain changed character to her childish petulance. Elinor Meadows went
up to her friend and stood over her chair, stooping to whisper that the
child might not hear. “If you carry out your intentions,” she said,
feeling herself to be delivering a stroke against which no woman could
have any defence, “what is to be done about _them_? Are they to be
divided and separated like your other goods? Ada, Ada, you can never
have thought of that.”
“I have thought of little else,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, with a twitching
about her lips. “Of course it is the chief thing to think of. It has
been my thought night and day. In the ordinary way of arranging such
matters Vera would go with me, and Eddy with his father; but----”
“But----?”
“If you only knew how long and how much I have thought of it! Yes--if I
had Vera I should bring her up to be like myself--and I am not such a
great success as I might have been, Nelly; while his father would chill
Eddy into a nobody, and leave him to grow up as he pleased, or as his
schoolmaster pleased. But Mr. Tremenheere is proud of _the child_.”
Here Mrs. Tremenheere’s voice grew choked, and for the moment she broke
down.
“Ada,” cried her friend, “for heaven’s sake don’t be obstinate. Why
should you bring all this pain upon yourself?”
“I do it for the best,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, faintly; then she
recovered her tone of authority. “There is, I believe a principle in
human nature which makes men kinder to women (in the abstract) and women
kinder to men than either are to their own sex--at least such is the
general opinion. Bringing up Vera would be to me a matter of course; one
knows all about it--it is a thing of routine; as we were trained
ourselves--or exactly the reverse--we train our daughters; but a
boy--that requires thought. Therefore, Nelly, it is my opinion that I
could do most justice to Eddy.”
“And Vera?” said Miss Meadows, “she whom you call _the child_? I know
she is the apple of your eye, however you may choose to deny it; is Mr.
Tremenheere, do you think, likely to do the most justice to her?”
Vera’s mother bore her friend’s satirical gaze for a moment, then she
put up her hands and covered her face. Vera, who was sitting somewhat
sullen on a stool in the corner after her outbreak, her pretty hair
dishevelled, and her pretty face stained with crying, had begun to wake
up from the monotony of a fit of ill-temper, which had lasted two whole
minutes, and as her eyes began to wander round the room in search of
some excitement, she suddenly perceived this group, which surprised her.
Elinor Meadows, with her finger elevated in the air, scolding--as Vera
thought--and mamma crying. Such an extraordinary concatenation of
circumstances had never happened to her knowledge before. She started up
from her seat, and threw herself between them.
“Aunt Elinor!” cried Vera, thrusting her small person in front of her
mother. “You can tell _me_ what it is if you want to scold--but you
shan’t make mamma cry.”
Upon this Elinor, strong-minded woman as she was, began to whimper too.
“Child, you are a darling!” she cried, making a sudden attempt to kiss
her; which Vera repulsed, standing up like a little lioness, at her
mother’s knee.
Then Mrs. Tremenheere raised her head, and putting an arm round her
little defender, drew Vera to her side. Vera deserved that whipping all
the same, I do not deny, and her mother knew it; but it was not in human
courage to administer it now. She took the little impatient hand which
had been raised in her defence, and held it between her own and kissed
it. Though she had so much self-command it took her some time to clear
her voice.
“Mr. Tremenheere is a good man,” she said, still faltering. “He will do
as I mean to do myself. He will feel that it is a new thing, and that he
does not understand it, and he will study what is best.”
“But for a girl! A man, without any experience or understanding, left in
charge of a girl!”
“Hush!” said Mrs. Tremenheere.
Vera turned round from one to the other, her eyes widening once more
with curiosity and eagerness. “Something is going to happen,” she said.
“Mamma, tell me what it is?”
“I cannot tell you yet, dear, for I don’t know. Go, Vera, Eddy is
calling you.--Who has taught her that something is going to happen?” she
said, with a sigh, when they had watched the child’s unwilling
departure. She herself looked so melancholy and depressed that Elinor
saw her opportunity. She was of an oratorical turn, and, indeed had
given some attention to the art of public speaking. She withdrew a step
for the greater effect, and shaking her curly gray locks off her broad
fair forehead, began:
“Ada! What kind of a woman are you? flesh and blood or rock and stone,
to look at that child and leave her, and make up your mind in cold blood
to give her up! I say nothing about your boy. He won’t talk to me; I
don’t understand him. Mothers have weaknesses for their boys which are
inexplicable; the most uninteresting, speechless, stolid beings! (I
don’t mean Eddy) and yet women will stand by them--for no reason but an
accident of birth--while a child like that!---- If she was mine, they
should cut me in little pieces before I parted with her. They should
take everything else I possess. Ada! I tell you, if she was mine I
should not care for all the men in the world. I should take her,
whatever they did--steal her, if it was necessary; run away, hide
myself; but part with her!--never--not for the world!”
“I see what you mean,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, with a trembling voice;
“don’t take the devil’s part and tempt me. I must be just. There are two
of us, and two of them, father and mother, boy and girl. He has a right
to his share as well as I. We must be just. If it is barbarous to give
all to the father, it would be equally barbarous to give all to the
mother. Nelly, say no more! that would be a crime.”
“Then I should risk the crime,” cried Elinor. “I should care nothing for
justice in comparison with Vera. Bah! abstract justice! who minds it? It
is a thing to frighten babies with. Do you think Mr. Tremenheere would
mind about justice, if he could get the better of you?”
“You are talking of my husband,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, with dignity,
“besides, if he were to do wrong a hundred times (which he would not)
that would be no excuse for me. I will do him no injustice, whatever
happens.”
“Then put up with him, Ada! It is your only alternative. Good heavens!
what does it matter? An argument more or less, a discussion here or
there. You have always been fond of argument. Make it up! For my part,
I’d almost marry him myself,” cried Elinor, in a burst of energy, “to
have that child--and you have married him, and got all the worst over.
Make it up, Ada; don’t be foolish--make up!”
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV.
THE BREACH ACCOMPLISHED.
Before Christmas it was all over. Christmas! Perhaps we make a good deal
of unnecessary fuss about this festival--not that the associations about
it, the traditions of universal kindness and good-will which,
fortunately for us, are so English, and still more fortunately are more
or less so honestly carried out, can ever be exaggerated. Yet it is no
doubt true that the universal jollity, the rude fun and sometimes
mawkish sentiment which have got to be associated with the name, just as
often disgust and sadden as delight those who have learned by time or
trouble that Christmas does not always bring the reunion and happiness
which are supposed to be its particular privilege. Alas! on the
contrary, how sharply it reminds some of us of gaps not to be filled
again, of empty places, of life diminished and wearing out! But whether
we do rightly or not in making a saturnalia of its homely delights,
certain it is that of all times to choose for a parting, Christmas is
the least appropriate. I don’t think Mrs. Tremenheere thought of this;
she had so many things to think about, how should she remember dates? It
was the morning of the 24th of December, but she had forgotten, so full
was her mind of other things, that the 24th of December was Christmas
eve. She went away in the afternoon in a cab to the railway station,
with Eddy by her side, dull and lowering and miserable, not knowing why
she was so unhappy. No explanations had been entered into with the
children. Mrs. Tremenheere was in reality so miserable that she desired
to avoid dramatic effect as far as this was possible, and her husband,
naturally, as a man and an Englishman, hated scenes. So the curious boy
and girl, full of secret interest in the something going on which was
not confided to them, were put off with the intimation that mamma was
going away for a time, taking Eddy with her, while Vera was to stay at
home to “take care of papa.” Eddy for one was never taken in by this
false explanation, but Vera in the delight of her own importance,
contrived to stave off her vague inquietude on the subject, and accepted
it. The boy’s inquietude was equally vague, but it was stronger. He felt
himself a very forlorn waif and stray as the dreary cab traversed the
streets, where all the shops were decked for Christmas, and where so
many holiday parties were wandering about, looking in at the shop
windows for their Christmas presents. “Mamma,” he said at last, when his
heart was too full to bear the pressure longer, “isn’t it very odd to
leave home to-day when to-morrow is Christmas?” A big tear was forming
in the corner of his eye. He did not like to look up at her, lest she
should see it, or lest--still more terrible possibility--it should fall.
Mrs. Tremenheere put her arm round him. I will not say that she was in
much better plight than Eddy was, though a strong sense of duty held her
up. Something was choking in her throat which was not exactly the fog,
and her heart was wrung with a sterner pang. She paused a moment, to be
quite firm and collected, and drew him close to her. “Yes,” she said,
“it is very odd, very odd; but I can’t help it, Eddy.” There was a kind
of apology, a kind of appeal in her voice, and it went to Eddy’s heart,
who vaguely comprehended, though it would have been utterly impossible
for him to put in words what it was he felt and understood. He crouched
himself up close against his mother, and caressed the hand that was
round him, and allowed those two tears with which his eyes were big to
drop upon it; and thus the pain in both was a little softened and
sweetened, though the child was as far from understanding intellectually
what the woman had in her mind as if they had been creatures of
different species. But to go away to a hotel in Brighton through the
cold, through the wintry dimness and brightness, through the crowds of
travellers that encumbered every railway, the clusters of happy holiday
people, and all the hampers and all the presents--one must have done it
to know what it is. Mrs. Tremenheere bought some Christmas numbers of
various periodicals at the station to amuse the boy. They were all about
meetings, dances, mistletoe, wanderers returning and hard hearts
relenting, and every kind of revolution made in every kind of life by
the simple agency of Christmas carols, snow, church-bells and sentiment.
“Merry Christmas!” the very shops flaunted at them in big print. “Merry
Christmas!” the porter said when he got his sixpence. And so the
strong-minded woman and her boy went off into the yellow misty distance
which led to Brighton, if you please, but which was the cold outside
world,--outside of home.
Elinor Meadows joined them next day, in the strange hotel looking out
upon the quay, which Mrs. Tremenheere had chosen as the first step in
her self-banishment. It was not that Miss Meadows had not many cheerful
houses to which to go for Christmas, but being a kind-hearted soul, as
well as a strong-minded woman, she preferred to come to Brighton, and
spend the festival in the dismallest way, over the fire in a
sitting-room of a big vulgar inn, with her depressed and somewhat
irritable friend. Never was a work more worthy of a good Samaritan. She
came in the middle of the day, after church, which was the only cheerful
portion of the Christmas to poor Eddy. The holly-berries and the wreaths
pleased the child, and the Christmas hymns which he could sing, and
which did him good, till they came out of church into the dreary world
again. To be sure, Eddy wanted a hundred times during the service to
nudge Vera, and call her attention to a bit of decoration that pleased
him, or to the little girl in the next pew who fell asleep, or to the
clergyman curtesying to the altar in his long cassock and surplice, or
some one of the other anythings, nothings, that caught his childish
eyes; but still church is church, wherever you are, and not so terribly
dull as a strange place far from home. And then it was a hopeless sort
of Christmas day, with neither sunshine nor frost, such as are orthodox
and befitting, but a drizzling dull rain, and skies so low, so leaden,
and so cloudy that they seemed to Eddy to be coming down upon him,
threatening to crush him every minute. After Elinor came (whom the
children called Aunt Elinor, for friendship’s sake, though there was no
relationship between them), it grew duller and duller for Eddy. He had
not anything to do with the conversation of his mother and her friend,
which was carried on in subdued tones, and with occasional warning
glances from one to the other at himself, which showed him that he was
in the way--upon which, being proud, Eddy gathered together the
Christmas papers his mother had bought him, and drew a chair to the
window, in front of which he placed himself, shutting out half of the
gray and stifled daylight there was, and pored over first one and then
another of his stories, wondering to himself rather why all those tales
were of people who came back, and not one of people who went away just
at Christmas. He read and read, hearing behind him the murmur of the two
voices, the sound of the sparkling, crackling fire, and seeing, when by
chance he lifted his eyes, the gray sea breaking in a muddy soiled rim
of white upon the gray pebbles, and the street, which looked like a very
dismal Sunday street--“only rather more so,” Eddy thought. But he did
not often raise his eyes. He read on and on, one tale after another,
scarcely quite sure where one ended and another began, till the monotony
of his reading and of the lapping waves outside, and the murmuring
voices within, lulled the lonely boy into a kind of dream.
The ladies had drawn their chairs to the fire; they had eaten their
luncheon, they had done their best to be cheerful; and now the floods of
remark and criticism and question which were in Elinor’s mind could be
contained no longer. She began even before poor Eddy withdrew, leaving
them at liberty; and showed her sympathy, as so many friends do, by
taunt and sudden reproach.
“Well,” she said, “you have done it now. It is all over, and every place
of repentance comfortably cut off. How do you like it? You have given up
your husband to confusion and remorse. You have left your child----”
“Mr. Tremenheere has nothing to be remorseful about,” said his wife,
with a slight shiver, turning away from the last suggestion. “You
mistake the matter altogether, Elinor. You do not understand either me
or him. I blame him for nothing. He has no need to be remorseful on my
account.”
“Then why, in the name of heaven, did you go away? I never believed you
would carry it out. I expected you to threaten and frighten him, and
then to relent.”
“That is to say,” cried Mrs. Tremenheere, “that you expected me to do
exactly what the woman does whom you find fault with in books, and are
indignant about as a man’s idea of women. You expect me to say things I
don’t mean, and do the reverse of what I say, and act like a creature
without conscience, or honor, or moral responsibility.”
“Ada! No, I don’t do anything of the sort. Don’t please come down upon
an unoffending person in that way. I don’t quite see why, in a case
where the feelings are concerned, you should not act as a great many
other people act, who are not without honor or conscience.”
“I may be wrong,” said Mrs. Tremenheere. “No one is free from the risk
of taking a wrong view, but to threaten anything without meaning to do
it is not possible to me. This seemed to me right----”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Elinor. “We need not discuss it over again.
Isn’t there a book which is called ‘He Knew He was Right?’ We must put
it the other way now. You are right and you are satisfied. And now what
are you going to do? You can’t stay always here.”
“No, I am going--to devote myself to _his_ education.”
She would not say Eddy’s name to attract his attention. Was he not
happily unconscious, absorbed in his Christmas stories? so, at least,
she thought.
“That too is abstract, Ada. Don’t tell me where you mean to go unless
you like--but give me some idea of your plans.”
“I have not any yet. I must find out what is best.”
“Put him to school, Ada. That is always best for boys. Put him to some
good school, and then when you are free of responsibility, come abroad
with me. I have been thinking of it all the morning. You want change,
you want refreshment. You have been worried and tired. Get the boy
comfortably disposed of, so that you need have no anxiety about him, and
come with me.”
“Get him comfortably disposed of, where I shall have no anxiety about
him!” Mrs. Tremenheere repeated slowly, with a smile.
“Yes,” said Elinor, suspecting no sarcasm in her tone, “it would be the
very thing to do. That is the chief good of children at his age; you can
dispose of them in so satisfactory a way. Vera under the care of her
father, Eddy at school; and then you and I----”
“Can go and enjoy ourselves?” Said Mrs. Tremenheere with a forced laugh.
“Why not? Of course we should enjoy ourselves. Don’t you recollect,
before you were married, that trip we took? I was not much more than a
girl, and how I did enjoy it! I never thought there would be such luck
for me again. Come, Ada, now you are free, with only the boy to dispose
of, this is the very thing to do. We might start almost at once; stay at
Nice or Cannes, to rest ourselves a little, and then on to Rome.”
Mrs. Tremenheere rose before eager Elinor had got this length, and began
to walk about the room in an agitated way. Then she went across to where
Eddy, in front of the window, had dropped half asleep over the stories,
with the monotony and the misery and the stillness. She woke him up
bending over him, taking his curly head between her hands and kissing
his forehead, a caress which the drowsy, confused child responded to by
stumbling from his chair with a sudden start, and all but knocking her
down.
“Mamma!” cried Eddy, overpowered, and beginning in spite of his manhood,
to cry without knowing it.
“Yes, my darling,” she said, with quivering lips, soothing him. Elinor
sat still, turning round in her chair, gazing eagerly at her, not
knowing what it all meant. What had this sudden demonstration to do with
what she had been saying--with that plan of hers which would be so
pleasant and so easily carried out?
While Eddy and his mother got through this dreary Christmas afternoon a
great many things had happened to Vera. She had managed to keep herself
going all the previous day. A lively, vivacious, independent
disposition, and a great sense of importance were as wings to the little
heroine. She gave herself a great many airs, to the pitying wonder and
admiration of the servants, who, I need not say, were indignant beyond
the power of utterance at Mrs. Tremenheere. Vera walked about over the
house to see that everything was ready for her father when it came to be
time for his return. She interfered with the butler in laying out his
things in his dressing-room. She interfered with the cook, requesting to
know what was ordered for dinner, and suggesting an additional pudding
“out of her own head.” She went to the dining-room and insisted upon
helping to arrange the dessert. Her mind was full of a lofty
determination to make her father so comfortable that “he should not miss
mamma!” Accordingly she took care to remove his claret from the fire
where it had been carefully placed, and let fall the bottle, which was
warm, from her small fingers.
“If it hadn’t a been for the hearthrug, miss, you’d have broke it, and
spilt the wine all over the floor,” said Jervis.
“But why do you put it there? Gentlemen take ice in their wine, they
don’t like it hot!” cried Vera, stamping her foot, as she saw it put
back again. “Take it away, take it away!”
Then when Mr. Tremenheere came in, Vera placed herself at the table
beside him, and pressed him to eat of every dish, especially the pudding
she had ordered.
“I told cook to make it myself, papa.”
“Then you had better have some of it,” he said, and Vera was nothing
loth. She sat with him while he took his wine, chattering without pause
or intermission, and she led him up-stairs and made tea for him, her
little heart beating with a mingled pain and pleasure which she did not
analyze, poor child, but which excited her as either sensation unmingled
seldom does.
“When mamma comes back you can tell her how I took care of you,” she
cried in triumph. “I do love to pour out your tea, papa!”
All this touched him beyond description with a strange little flavor of
sharp sweetness amid a great deal of pain. Mr. Tremenheere felt the
world’s comments hanging over him, felt that already the servants were
all “sitting upon” himself and his private affairs, and that ere a day
had passed “everybody” in the narrow sense that belongs to that word in
society, would be aware of what had happened, and would discuss them
too. How was he to face their remarks, what account was he to give even
to his best friends? “Incompatibility of temper;” but how few people
would believe that there was not something else below that well-worn
plea? Some _faux pas_ on her part, some atrocity on his--which was being
veiled on one side or the other. As it was, he was very irritable to
the servants, and launched out upon poor Jervis about that very claret
which he had saved from Vera’s meddling little hands.
“But, Lord bless you, to see her there a setting beside him, comforting
of him, I hadn’t the heart to say as it was Miss Vera’s fault,” that
dignitary said, when he went down-stairs; “and though he’s in the
devil’s own temper, I could’nt stand up to him, not to-night. Poor
beggar, it ain’t very nice for him, whatever you may say.” Nobody,
however, down-stairs took up this challenge, or had a word to say in
favor of Mrs. Tremenheere. She was universally condemned.
“A woman as thinks of herself first didn’t ought to have children,” said
cook, who was a great domestic authority.
“And how any woman as hadn’t a heart of stone could go and leave my
little Duckie!” whimpered the nurse.
In short the house was in a state of moral indignation. But Vera went to
bed, straight from the drawing-room, after tea, supported by her own
elation; and only wept two or three tears when she remembered that
mamma would not come to kiss after she was asleep.
Next morning, however, it was different. Mr. Tremenheere did not go to
church, but he stayed at home with a sullen respect for the festival
which was so far from being a festival to him. What a day it was! A
drizzling dull Christmas, with scarcely anybody about the streets, the
shops shut, the houses either shut up or turned outside in, as it were,
everything cheerful being concentrated in doors. Vera came down full of
prattle to breakfast, but her father replied to her with an effort. He
was very kind, and kissed her, and gave her a little locket which he had
bought for her for Christmas, and which made her quite happy for five
minutes; but after that he let the child run on without any reply, and
got impatient when she clamored for an answer. “Hush child, I am busy,”
he said. As soon as he had finished his breakfast he went off to the
library to write letters; and Vera went up-stairs, her heart sinking
more and more, and sat down on the carpet close to one of the long
drawing-room windows. She leaned her poor little head against the pane,
looking out. There were only a few people passing under dripping
umbrellas. Everybody who was not out of town was at church, or else
preparing for the festivities of the evening. The house was very still;
there were no preparations going on in Hyde Park Square. Vera’s little
heart sank lower and lower--all the world seemed to ebb away from
her,--mother, brother, even nurse and cook; only herself and her father
remained, two forlorn and shipwrecked people. There came into Vera’s
mind a picture of the Flood, which she had seen somewhere, in which two
people perched on the smallest point of rock were holding by each other.
“Like me and poor papa!” she said to herself, with a rising sob in her
lonely little bosom. Just at that moment, however, she heard her
father’s voice down-stairs.
“I am going out,” Mr. Tremenheere was saying. “Probably I shall dine
out. You needn’t prepare anything; and tell nurse to look after Miss
Vera.” When nurse did go, very ill-tempered to have her holiday thus
interfered with, she found Vera lying on the floor, crying her little
heart out. The loneliness had swallowed up all her little bravery, her
resolution and courage. She put her hand to the locket round her neck
to try and console herself; but even that did not reanimate her failing
spirit. Poor little Vera! It was she now who was on that peak alone,
with the hurrying muddy waters sweeping round her, and nobody to lay
hold of. She sank down like a weak little unfledged bird. Was mamma in
that cruel ark, floating, floating away, taking no thought for her? Love
and help and kindness seemed to have abandoned the child. Her pretty
hair was ruffled, her eyes blind with tears; she laid down her head and
thought she would die. And it was Christmas day!
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V.
EDUCATION.
Whether Mrs. Tremenheere had any foundation of justice in the theory
which made her take her boy’s education in hand instead of her girl’s, I
cannot venture to say; but in the meantime the poor children had a
troubled interval to go through. She devoted herself to Eddy, walking
with him, superintending his lessons, doing everything the most anxious
care could do. The toys she bought him, the books she accumulated, the
common people with children whose acquaintance she permitted herself to
make on her boy’s account, that he might have some one to play with, are
not to be described. And she had a tutor for him, who came daily and
drove him quickly along the stony ways of learning, and took him out for
walks upon the Downs, and told his mother he was one of the brightest
of boys, not convincing her much, though he pleased her by so saying.
She had settled herself in Brighton with the express idea that it would
be good for him and cheerful, and I cannot tell with what anxiety, poor
soul, she watched over him, straining every faculty to amuse and cheer
him. But the more she devoted herself to Eddy the paler and quieter he
grew. He became as mild as a little invalid, and weak, though there was
nothing the matter with him. He clung to his mother, as sick children
do, stealing his hand into her’s when he walked with her, pressing close
up to her when she talked to any one, never leaving her when he could
help it, he who had been so little amenable to female government in
those old days at home. She perceived it and yet she did not perceive
it, as people do who resolutely shut their eyes and will not see; and it
was again her friend Elinor who first really called her attention to the
state of affairs, which had then lasted more than a year.
“Do you remember telling me your ideas about men training girls and
women boys?” said Elinor. Eddy was in the room with them as usual. It
was a warm day in the early spring, and the boy sat half out in the
balcony, with a book over which he pored. He heard what they were
saying, and yet did not hear, in his abstracted way.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, raising herself up. “What then? You have
seen my Vera, Elinor!”
“I have seen her; but that is not what I was thinking of.”
“What were you thinking of? Her letters are full of bright spirits, and
amusing, as she always was. Is her father not doing his duty to her?
Tell me, tell me, Nelly!”
“She is very well--quite well. I was not thinking of anything so far
off.”
Mrs. Tremenheere sat upright on her chair, very upright, grasping as it
were instinctively for her weapons of defence. “You are thinking of me?”
Elinor stretched out her oratorical right hand. “Look at that child,
Ada! is that a good specimen of a woman’s training? You are bringing him
up entirely as you would bring up a girl. Look at the color of his
hands--are these like a boy’s hands? Look at his quiet timid way. You
are ruining him, both health and spirit. I don’t know what you mean by
it; while Vera, whom you could have managed----”
“Nelly, you have heard something about my child.”
She began to tremble, she who was so firm and steady. Somehow any
mistakes she herself might have made seemed so trivial, so easily
rectified, in comparison with the mistakes that might be made on the
other side.
“It is not Vera,” said Elinor. “Vera is running wild; she is growing a
romp and a tomboy; but that is less harm. Her health will not suffer,
nor her mind much, at her age. But, Ada, look there! Is that pale, still
child, poring over his book, the sort of creature you wish your son to
be? You are bringing him up like a girl, not like a boy.”
“I thought you and your friends maintained that there should be no
difference between girls and boys,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, with a faint
smile. She had received the arrow into her very heart; but she did not
mean to show it now, however it might affect her afterwards. She was too
proud all at once to own herself in the wrong.
“You need not sneer about my friends,” said Miss Meadows, warmly. “I
thought, too, that you had been one of them, that you had yourself shown
some interest in such questions. I don’t care whether I am consistent or
not, any more than I care whether you are angry or not. Girls and boys
may be the same in the abstract, and it may be good for girls perhaps to
have more of a boy’s training; but for a boy to be thrown back into the
domestic bondage which I hope we shall break for girls, is monstrous--it
is a disgrace--it is against nature.”
“Do you wish me to quarrel with you, Nelly?”
“I don’t care whether you quarrel or not,” cried the orator, with a
large gesture of indifference. “Quarrel as you like, so long as you open
your eyes and see what you are doing to that boy.”
After this there was a long pause. Elinor, somewhat agitated by her own
boldness, sat still and began to work with great but fatal ardor at a
piece of embroidery she found on the table, and to which she did untold
damage. She was so carried away by her feelings that she did not
perceive that her friend had left the room. But when Mrs. Tremenheere
came down-stairs again, though there were traces of emotion about her
face she was as friendly as ever. She had put on her hat, and invited
Elinor to come out for a walk.
“Eddy, I see the Troutbeck boys going out to play cricket,” she said,
“could not you join them?”
A flash of boyish triumph came into Eddy’s still eyes.
“Cricket, mamma! What can you be thinking of? There is no cricket at
this time of the year.”
“What does it matter for the name? They are going to play at something.”
“Jumping, perhaps, or football. Some people still play football at this
season; or hare and hounds.”
“What does it matter which it is? but it does matter that you should
play and get a little color in your cheeks.”
“They are jumping,” said Eddy, from the window, with a sparkle of
energy, “but then there is a lot of them,” he added, falling back, “they
won’t want me.”
“Nonsense--go!” said his mother, peremptorily.
He got up from his book with reluctance. He did care for the jumping,
but was it worth while to disturb himself for that, or anything else? He
was quite comfortable and interested in his story. The two ladies stood
still and watched him creeping away, languid and indifferent. For the
first time Mrs. Tremenheere noticed the change in the boy. A great
wrinkle of anxiety came into her forehead. “Nelly, I am very much
obliged to you,” she cried. “What shall I do?”
Miss Meadows glowed and expanded with the sense of victory. “Ada,” she
said, “it is not many people who have the sense to see where they have
been wrong. I always said you were no ordinary woman. Send him to
school, my dear--send him to school; let him be among other boys; try
him with wholesome neglect; and come off to Italy with me.”
Mrs. Tremenheere listened very seriously till Elinor came to her last
clause, then she laughed, though her face was still clouded. “Come and
walk,” she said.
In the meantime things were going on very differently, and yet with much
the same result, at Hyde Park Square. Mr. Tremenheere was very kind to
Vera when she came immediately under his notice. He still allowed her to
pour out his tea for him in the morning while he read his newspaper, and
had her down-stairs to amuse him after dinner, when now and then he
dined at home. But in a very short time after his wife left him, this
ceased to be his ordinary custom. He got over the scandal much better
than he had hoped. It had taken place when Society was out of town, and
therefore had passed comparatively without notice; and without much
difficulty he fell back into his bachelor habits. He had suffered more
at the moment than she did, but he did not suffer very much after it was
over, and when the secondary consequences he feared proved in great part
illusory. He had liked his old life, with all its varieties and
comforts, and now, notwithstanding the interval of ten years which he
had spent in trying to learn how to be happy otherwise, he took it up
again with unfeigned pleasure. Now and then a few men dined with him at
home, and then Vera would come down in her best frock, and chatter to
them, and do the honors with childish excitement, her eyes blazing with
the novelty and pride of her position. Mr. Tremenheere had been
considerably startled, it is not to be denied, by her talk on several of
these occasions, and one morning he remonstrated gently.
“When there is company, as the servants say, a little girl of your age
should be very quiet, Vera. It is not to you, my dear, that my friends
look for amusement. You must be quiet and good, and answer when people
speak to you.”
“Why, papa, they all like to talk to me best,” said Vera, tossing her
little head. “They all laugh and say I am clever. Why shouldn’t I talk?
I am very fond of talking. I talk to everybody, and that is why people
like me, and say I am not at all proud.”
“What sort of people do you talk to?” said her father, half alarmed,
half amused.
“Oh, all sorts of people; not only gentlemen, papa. When Nurse goes to
see her friends I go with her, and they all say it is nice of me not to
be proud. They are going to have a party in the kitchen to-night. It is
such fun. They have tea, and then they dance, and then they have supper,
and Nurse says if I am good I may stay to supper this time.”
“This time!” said Mr. Tremenheere, with horror; “have you gone to
anything of the sort before?”
“Oh yes, papa, several! I went with Nurse to the servants’ party next
door; but oh,” said Vera, suddenly, “I am afraid I ought not have talked
of it. I don’t think they like the masters to know.”
Mr. Tremenheere rose and walked about the room in great agitation. Here
was an unlooked-for disclosure. For a moment he was quite appalled by
the discovery he had made. “Vera,” he said in a voice which trembled,
“you must promise not to go to this affair to-night.”
“Papa! not to go!” cried Vera, the corners of her mouth dropping; “oh,
you can’t mean it! you can’t mean it! It is such a nice party, papa, and
they take such care of me. I sit next to Nurse or the cook always, and I
dance with the nicest people only. There was once somebody quite as
nicely dressed as you, and with beautiful diamond studs, and who could
speak French and do all sorts of things. Papa, you can’t mean it. Nurse
says it is the only party I ever have, and that it would be cruel to
send me to bed.”
“The only party you ever have! I thought you went out a great deal, and
had a great many parties?”
“Yes, baby parties; I don’t care for them,” said Vera, with serene
fatuity, looking her father in the face, and holding up her little head.
After this a storm arose. Mr. Tremenheere sent for his three principal
functionaries, Jervis, the cook, and the nurse, and demanded to know how
they dared to take Miss Vera to their d---- parties. He was not a man
who interfered much in his household, and when he did so he was usually
calm and polite, a thing which the domestics understood much less and
resented much more deeply than the chance blasphemy, which they forgave
easily. Jervis stammered out excuses, and apologies, and protestations.
“As I was always against it, and knew it wasn’t no place for Miss Vera.”
Nurse retired in floods of tears, which threatened every moment to
become hysterics, and cook, who was hot-tempered, threw up her place.
Vera, very red and very angry, darted in front of the accused to defend
them. “Papa! when it was I who told you! They will never trust me any
more; they will think I am a traitor and betrayed them! Papa, you are
not to scold them, when it is all my fault!”
“Take Miss Vera up-stairs,” said Mr. Tremenheere to the housemaid, who,
stood by. “Go at once without a word,” he cried, and very reluctantly
the child, still hot and red with excitement, was forced to obey. Vera
was shut up all day, and overwhelmed by reproaches from the nurse. “You
see what comes of it with your tongue, Miss,” cried this weeping
sufferer. “Can’t you never hold your tongue, as I’m a telling of you,
night and day? Them as can’t hold their tongues should never be let into
secrets, and it’s all over Miss Vera, I can tell you, between you and
me. No more parties in this house, nor no other house; no more cakes as
I asked cook to make for you--no more nice suppers. After this you’ll go
to bed at eight o’clock regular, as you used to in your mamma’s time,
and when you feel to want something nice you needn’t look to me. And
here’s poor cook losing her good place along of your chatter!” she
added, discharging this last arrow with full confidence in its effect.
There was no party in the house that night; but nobody informed Vera of
this fact, which might have been partially consolatory. She was put to
bed, and left there in solitude to cry her eyes out, no one coming near
her. “Oh, mamma, mamma!” cried poor little Vera, forlorn in the
darkness. Her mother was miles off, and could not hear; her father was
at his club; the servants were having an indignation supper down-stairs,
four stories off, and there was nobody to say a word of consolation to
the poor little abandoned girl.
However, after these very different scenes, both husband and wife set
themselves to think on the subject, as Mrs. Tremenheere had predicted.
“He shall not say that the boy is ruined by a woman’s training,” she
said to herself; and “She shall not taunt me that I have not been able
to look after the girl,” said Mr. Tremenheere. This delightful spirit of
opposition worked strongly in concert with other feelings more laudable,
for indeed both parents were fond of their children, in their different
ways. Mrs. Tremenheere’s part was the easiest of the two, and she took
her steps promptly. The very next day after that revelation had been
made to her, she went off to one of the great public schools and put
Eddy’s name down, and began herself to look for a house in the
neighborhood, for she did not mean to throw the boy off entirely, as her
childless friend thought right and expedient. Before Easter, at which
time Eddy began his school-life, she had found the house she wanted, a
villa on a hillside, which was not high indeed, but which had all the
advantages of much greater height, since it looked over a great plain of
rich cultivated country, fields, and hedges, and fine trees, and red
farmhouses, with here and there a great mansion gleaming away into the
far distance, till it got indistinct like the sea, and almost as
suggestive. Here she settled and furnished her house, which was
agreeable work, and tossed the pale boy into the sea of life and youth
close by--where he soon ceased to be pale.
Mr. Tremenheere, poor man, had a more difficult task. The first thing he
did was to reflect bitterly upon his wife’s abandonment of her natural
duty. “It is just like a woman,” he said to himself through his teeth.
“They profess to love their children beyond everything, and yet they
will give up their children rather than give in or own themselves
wrong.” But this reflection, though it was in its way satisfactory, did
not help him to the solution of his problem. How was he to bring up his
daughter? In his perplexity he betook himself wisely to a friend who was
a clergyman, and had to do with all kind of educational and benevolent
institutions. “I suppose I want a governess,” he said. “She must be old
to avoid scandal, and well educated and so forth, but chiefly she must
be a dragon--recollect this. She must never relax, night or day. I will
have my girl well looked after; that is one thing I am determined on. A
woman who will suspect everything, believe nothing, and keep an eye upon
her for ever.”
“Surely this is going too far. It is against the spirit of the time.
Everything tends to emancipate women, Tremenheere, not to make slaves of
them.”
“I hate the spirit of the time,” he said. “I hate your enlightened
women, that know the world as well as we do. I want my girl to be of the
old type. I want her to be seen and not heard, like our grandmothers.
And therefore I want a dragon for her governess--a woman that will allow
nothing out of the regulation in point of propriety--an iceberg, a
machine, whatever you please, but one that will guard the child, and
watch her and make her incapable of mischief. Now, if you have any
regard for me, bestir yourself and find out what I want.”
“I have her,” said the clergyman, sighing. “So few people want dragons
nowadays that I feared she would have to fall back upon the Home, poor
lady. But, as that is what you want--only I don’t think you’ll find it
successful with a high-spirited child like Vera.”
“Vera’s high spirits must come down,” said her father. “I want a soft,
submissive, yielding girl, and not a self-opinionated being that will
set up for a mind of her own. What do they want with minds of their
own?”
“Tremenheere, you speak like a Turk.”
“Perhaps I feel like one,” he said, dismissing the subject with a forced
laugh. And this was how he found his way out of the dilemma. Miss
Campbell arrived at the end of the week, a tall, severe Scotswoman, with
a large nose and high cheekbones. She was over fifty, and she had been
trained in the belief that young ladies ought to be kept in absolute
subjection. A girl who had no will but that of her parents, and who
consulted her mother with her eyes before she took a piece of bread and
butter, was Miss Campbell’s ideal; she was exactly the kind of person to
satisfy Mr. Tremenheere.
Thus father and mother entered at the same time into the right way, or
into what they thought to be the right way; and the two experiments of
education began.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI.
THE CAPTAIN OF THE ELEVEN.
A bright July day, early in the month, with London still full, and all
the world weary yet toiling on, more or less, in the treadmill work of
society; such a day as revives the toilers in that everlasting round,
and breathes into hundreds of worn-out minds an air of freshness, waking
them up from the fatigue of their pleasures and of their disgust. Stands
all round, with ladies ranged one row above another like banks of
flowers, carriages thronging twenty deep, and crowds standing in a deep
inner ring. But it is not a race-course, like Ascot or Epsom. It is in
the heart of London; and all these thousands of fine people surround a
green smooth lawn, on which a set of lads are playing--no such great
matter, one would suppose, and little comprehensible to a foreigner.
Yet surely this is one of the most innocent, the kindliest of all freaks
of fashion. The fine ladies are turned as by magic into mothers and
sisters. They have their parasols and their dresses and their horses’
heads trimmed with symbolical ribbons. Many of the younger ones watch
the game with an anxiety as great as if the welfare of the kingdom
depended upon it; and the men, world-worn men from all sorts of unlikely
places, men from the clubs and the public offices, and Parliament, and
business, carry their ensigns too, if not so openly, in some snip of
blue somewhere about them, a forget-me-not in a button-hole, a tassel to
an umbrella. And this is all, need I say, for Eton against Harrow, the
Public Schools Match. Not to a hundredth part of these crowds is it
given to have a personal interest in the sublime band on either side.
But as every smallest imp, with his knot of blue ribbon, feels himself
Eton or Harrow impersonated against all the world, so all the elder
people stand by the school to which they are vaguely attached in the
person of that smallest of schoolboys, with as much fervor as if they
belonged to the Captain of the Eleven. But those who do belong to the
Captain of the Eleven--those who can with exultant yet anxious eyes
follow the apparition of that demigod, as he comes and goes--who can
describe the feelings that agitate their bosoms? Such feelings had full
sway on the special occasion to which we refer, in a certain modest
carriage, holding two ladies, which occupied one of the places in the
front rank at Lord’s, carefully placed there before daylight to make
sure of a good view. The elder lady in it took but little interest in
what was going on, but then, though the elder, she was the least
important, and her young companion was entirely absorbed in the scene.
She was but sixteen, dressed in the simplest demure costume of white,
and sometimes whiter still than her dress with agitation, sometimes all
flushed and rose-red with excitement. Her eyes, her whole soul, her
whole heart were fixed on the game and the players. Her young bosom gave
a great throb whenever there was a good hit on her own side. Her heart
sank when the good hit was on the other. She had neither sight, nor
hearing, nor understanding for anything else. And who will wonder? She
was the sister of the Captain of the Eleven. It is unnecessary to say
which of the blues that captain wore. Tremenheere had played once before
for his school, but as this was almost by an accident, and not known
until the last moment, “his people” did not have the glory of it as they
ought; but with full announcement and preparation the once backward
Eddy, the boy whom his mother had spoilt, burst suddenly upon the world
now. And everything else was dwarfed to Vera by this event. All other
honors and delights grew dim before it. She watched her brother (whom
she scarcely knew) with a strange enthusiasm, and eagerness, and anxiety
which it is impossible to describe. How could she bear to see him
beaten? If life and death had been on it she could not have taken it
more seriously. Her hand was on the door of the carriage, sometimes
trembling, sometimes holding it tight with agony when the other side
seemed to be making progress; the pretty girlish figure bent a little
forward, her eyes intent, never losing a movement, seeing nothing,
hearing nothing, unaware who came near her, who passed, even who spoke
to her,--and all this for a cricket match! But then it was much more
than a cricket match for Vera. Her brother seemed to her the very
foremost young man in England. Had not he and his comrades eclipsed all
other incidents in busy London on this hot day? Parliament itself was
diminished. There was nobody in the Row; afternoon teas were as good as
done away with; telegrams from hour to hour appeared in all the papers;
the streets were full of the two different blues. What wonder that Vera,
only sixteen, should think her brother the very greatest personage that
ever girl belonged to? She looked at the card in her hand now and then
when Edward was not playing, to read his name with a thrill of fresh
excitement. “Tremenheere, captain.” If he had come to this honor and
glory when he was only eighteen, what prizes must not life hold for such
a hero?
“Vera, my dear, I think you should put down your veil? People are
remarking you. I don’t think it is nice to be so absorbed in anything.
You forget yourself altogether, my dear.”
“Why should I remember myself?--there is nothing in me to remember,” she
said, in her excitement. Then coming to herself, “Oh please, Miss
Campbell, I do so hate a veil. It gets in one’s eyes, and one can’t
see.”
“Dear, how often must I tell you that a well-bred girl expresses herself
much more quietly. Take the opera-glass, then, that conceals the face.”
“But I can see very well without it. I can see Eddy quite plain. Look,
Miss Campbell! I can always make him out. There! four for us!”
“I don’t understand the interest you all take in this game,” said Miss
Campbell. “In Scotland the gentlemen play golf, which they tell me is
much finer exercise. All this I think is very bad for the boys. All
London coming out to look at them hitting a ball with a stick. And bad
for you too, Vera. If you get so very much excited I think I must take
you away.”
Vera knew that this could not be done, and therefore heard the threat
calmly. Fortunately, after a while, Miss Campbell got engrossed with
something else, and with a sigh of relief she let the glass drop, thus
revealing her moving animated countenance all at once to two people to
whom the sight of it was like something from heaven. The one was a
middle-aged woman, no more or less than Vera’s mother; the other a
young man. Let us keep the more interesting personage to the last. Mrs.
Tremenheere has the best right to come forward. She stood at a little
distance among the crowd looking at her child. She had always called
Vera by this name. After years of virtual separation--though there never
had been any personal objection made on either side to either parent
seeing the children when he or she pleased--here was the child she had
left, grown into a woman. I cannot describe the feelings with which her
mother regarded her, gazing at the young absorbed countenance. Little
Vera, the baby, the plaything, the amusement of the house, the little
bud of life whom she had left behind, not knowing what was to come of
her!
“Look, Elinor!” she said, grasping the arm of her inseparable companion,
and leaning on her with a trembling which she could not command.
“I see her,” said Miss Meadows, cheerfully. “Hasn’t she grown up pretty?
Come and speak to her, Ada. She must be looking for you.”
“She is looking for her brother, nothing else,” said Mrs. Tremenheere.
“Wait a little, Nelly; I feel like a divorced woman, with no right to go
near my child. God help us! what those wretched beings must suffer! I
never thought of it before.”
“One never does think of other people’s sufferings till one shares
them,” said Elinor, oracularly. “Thank heaven, you are not so bad as
that! Come along. Shall I go first and tell her.”
“Wait a little.”
Mrs. Tremenheere, though she was a strong-minded woman, trembled for the
meeting. What would the child think of the mother who had deserted her?
If she had been only a child! but a woman with a mind and judgment--who
could understand and perhaps condemn. She stood by and looked at this
creature of sixteen with her heart in a flutter. The judgment of a child
is a terrible tribunal. One can face the world and one’s equals, knowing
all that is in one’s favor, and feeling the full force of one’s rights.
But the secret verdict of a boy or girl, whom natural respect will
prevent from expressing it or even defining it to themselves--what a
thing that is to encounter! Very seldom do fathers or mothers encounter
this judgment in so dramatically distinct a manner as Mrs. Tremenheere
had to do; and she trembled and held back. What if she should read
dislike, disapproval, the pained and wondering sentence of the innocent
in Vera’s eyes?
In the meantime the other individual of whom I have spoken had gone past
again, gazing furtively at the carriage. “Jove! how pretty she is,” he
was saying to himself. “How absorbed she is, not seeing me nor any one!
That’s what I like in a girl; never to see you if you stare like a
madman. Why should she? The ones that are thinking of themselves see you
fast enough. She is not thinking of herself, bless her. I wonder who
she’s thinking of? one of those fellows in their flannels? Idiots! with
nothing but hits to leg, and catches got, or missed, in their empty
heads. I beg your pardon, Miss Meadows, I am very sorry. I hope I did
not hurt a ribbon or a feather.”
“You are very saucy to talk of feathers and ribbons. You have hurt _me_.
Where are you going with your head over your shoulder? Who are you
gazing at?”
“Look here,” cried the young man, drawing her aside. “Look at that
girl’s face. What is she, a St. Cecilia or a rapt young Madonna intent
upon the angel? No, perhaps she is not exactly beautiful. I don’t care
for your beautiful faces, all feature and nothing else.”
“Oswald! when you do nothing but rave about form. Greek, forsooth! As if
good English flesh and blood was not finer than your marbles!”
“Miss Meadows, you were always a woman of the most just ideas. Precisely
what I think. Look at her! the features are not much, but the expression
is divine. I should like to paint her, I should like to carry her off! I
should like to----”
“Not eat her I hope, though your eyes look like it--for, hush! here is
her mother,” cried Elinor. Mr. Oswald Fane started, and grew red, and
drew back a step. He turned to the other face behind him in which he was
not so interested; and yet that, too, if painting had been all that he
was thinking of! Mrs. Tremenheere had not heard what was going on
between the others. She, too, was absorbed, thinking only of one
thing,--how Vera would look at her, what she should see in the child’s
eyes. The young man gave a glance at her, then turned back to the first
object of his admiration.
“Is it only that they resemble each other,” he whispered, “or what gives
them both that rapt look? It is interesting.--Do you know them?--I
should like to be you. I wonder if that girl is like her face.”
“If you are patient and wait, perhaps I may introduce you,” said Elinor.
“I don’t know that she is like her face. That is one side of her.
Wait--I must introduce her mother to her first.”
“Introduce--her mother!”
“Hush! It’s a story. I’ll tell it you afterwards.--Ada, come! you are
wasting all the morning, and I tell you she expects you. That is what
she is looking for.”
“She is looking for her brother,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, “and it is
quite right; I don’t complain. Stand by me, Nelly. I feel very silly, as
if I might make a scene.”
“Don’t make a scene, whatever you do!” cried Elinor. “Nonsense; there is
nothing so dreadful about it. Come!”
Vera’s attention was aroused a moment after by the shock of finding a
hand laid upon hers. She looked up quickly with a start, and saw the
mother of whom she had seen so little, and whom at the first moment she
scarcely recognised, standing beside her. The girl’s heart gave a
violent jump--sudden tears came into her eyes and a choking in her
throat.
“Mamma?” she said, interrogatively. The shock brought all the blood to
her heart. She looked wistfully, anxiously at this sudden claimant. Miss
Campbell sat looking on, somewhat uneasy. She had never believed in the
pretence about Mrs. Tremenheere’s separation from her husband.
Incompatibility! It was no use telling a woman of her experience this.
She looked at the stranger with a mixture of disapproval and dislike,
and bent forward across the carriage, as if to ask what she wanted,
pretending she did not know.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, taking her daughter’s hand between her
own, and holding it closely, “I have been looking for you, Vera.”
What was in Vera’s face? Her eyes were not so limpid, so frankly and
tenderly eager as when she gazed at her brother; a shadow was over the
young countenance--but what? Mrs. Tremenheere could not tell what it was
that clouded her eyes.
“Oh, mamma! you will get into the carriage, won’t you?” she said, trying
to open the door.
“I will stand here and talk to you a little. Stoop down and give me a
kiss, Vera, my darling,” cried the poor woman.
Vera put down her soft, youthful face, upon which the same doubtful,
wondering, troubled expression still hung. She did not know what to
think. Her brother--yes, that was right, that was nature. But her
mother? Could she sit here and let her stand by her. Should not she get
out, and follow her, and cease to be a stranger to her; or should she be
cold and keep back and take papa’s part? Vera did not know what to do.
The triumphant satisfaction died out of her face. Eddy was the sunshine
of this picture, but her mother was the inevitable shadow. She put her
soft face down to meet Mrs. Tremenheere’s kiss, but raised it again
tingling with blushes, as if it had been a stranger who had kissed her.
She could not look at her brother again, with this figure at her elbow.
Ought she not to give her entire attention to the new-comer? So many
emotions chased each other over her face that the young man in the crowd
who was still looking at her groped in his pockets instinctively for a
pencil, and then laughed at himself. “Draw all that--a whole volume in
two lines?” he said to himself. “What a fool I am.”
“Vera, you have grown almost a woman----”
“Yes, mamma.” She made a little pause, panting in her agitation and
bewilderment, which poor Mrs. Tremenheere feared was reluctance to give
her that title. This went to her heart, but she would not show it. She
began bravely again.
“And Eddy is almost a man. You are like each other; he has grown
stronger and taller than I expected. You are pleased to see him, Vera?
and of course you have got his colors. Poor boy, I suppose he is very
happy with all these people staring at him; and that pleases you too?”
“Pleases me! oh, more than that! I am so proud I don’t know what to
say--no word is strong enough. Are not you proud and happy, too, mamma?”
“I proud and happy? I don’t know, my darling, I do not use such words.
I am pleased that you are all pleased----”
“Oh, mamma! What could you wish, what could you have more?” said Vera,
indignant with fire in her eyes.
“Vera, I beg you will not be so vehement. It is quite out of place,”
said Miss Campbell with dignity, “in a well-bred girl.”
The blood rushed to Mrs. Tremenheere’s face. She felt herself stung to
the very heart. Of all that had happened to her this reproof, addressed
by another woman to her child in her presence, was, I think, the very
hardest blow she had yet had to bear. She made a strenuous effort to
command herself. “I must beg pardon,” she said, “for forgetting Miss
Campbell in the agitation of seeing Vera for the first time after a long
separation; and I owe you many, many thanks for your good offices to my
child.” She held out her hand across Vera. Miss Campbell touched the
tips of her fingers with reluctance. All very well to talk of
incompatibility! She, an experienced woman, felt sure that there was
more in it than that, and she did not like to touch the erring woman,
even with her finger tips.
“I wish Vera would profit more by my lessons; but it is a thankless
task,” she said.
“Mamma,” said Vera, “it is impossible that I can sit here and see you
standing there; either you must come into the carriage or I must get
down; this sort of thing cannot be!”
At this moment, however, another personage came suddenly on the scene,
whose appearance stilled Vera and had the strangest effect upon her
mother,--Mr. Tremenheere, with Edward’s colors in his button-hole, and a
glow of pleasure on his face which smoothed away all harshness from it.
He came up to his wife with outstretched hands. “How do you do, Ada? I
am very glad to see you looking so well,” he said heartily, “though here
you are, triumphing over me with your boy.”
“Triumphing over you? I had no such meaning.” It seemed impossible not
to contradict him, do what she would. She saw this, and her voice sank a
little. Then she said with a smile: “He is your boy as well as mine.”
“I am taking all the credit of him, I assure you,” he said. “I never
thought Eddy would have turned out so well. He does you credit. The most
prominent young person in England for the moment; to be sure it won’t
last long, but still it is always something. Look at Vera, as proud as a
little peacock!”
“What an idiot the man is!” whispered Oswald Fane, behind backs, to
Elinor Meadows; for they were all within hearing, and quite innocently
so in consequence of the crowd, “he means like a little white dove.”
“Not such a dove either,” said Elinor. “Vera has a spirit--but she has a
dragon by her side, and is kept down dreadfully, poor little darling.”
“I wish mine might be the hand to free her.”
“What do you say? Oswald, she is too young to flirt.--Promise me you
will attempt no flirtation if I introduce you. She is only a child, and
you are, as you know, not so----”
“Angelic as I ought to be,” he answered, laughing. “No, I promise you,
on my honor, there shall be no flirtation, properly so-called. But
stop--If I can make her like me? I won’t deceive you----”
“Then I shan’t introduce you at all,” said Elinor, putting back from her
forehead those gray curls, like a child’s, which the wind kept ruffling
out.
“I want mamma to come into the carriage, please,” said Vera.
“Of course, she must,” Mr. Tremenheere cried, opening the door, “and you
are coming home with us, the boy and you? Nobody can have so good a
claim upon you. Where are you staying--with Elinor Meadows? Well, she
shall come too; and you will tell me, Ada, if you approve of my work as
much as I approve of yours. Come, Vera will be unhappy otherwise--and so
shall I.”
Mrs. Tremenheere kept asking herself all this time whether the nerves of
a woman like herself, always strong and steady, as she liked to think
them, were to be less under command than the nerves of a man. If he took
it as a matter of course, must not she do the same? But it cost her an
effort--for sentiment, perhaps, in all circumstances has more power,
whether she will own it or not, over a woman than over a man. She
answered, however, cheerfully, after that struggle.
“To be sure--it is the natural arrangement. Eddy will be very glad to
spend an evening with his sister--and I----”
Nobody heard the end of the sentence. Her husband had given her his hand
to help her into the carriage; where she sat down by the side of prim
Miss Campbell, who did not budge, and who kept thinking to herself with
_naïve_ disregard of grammar--“Me to be sitting by the side of a woman
compromised!” And there Mrs. Tremenheere sat for the first half hour in
a sort of dream, Vera opposite to her, all apparently as it might have
been had she never deserted her home; apparently--yet without any
reality in the appearance. By and by old friends began to find her out,
and one brought another to greet and congratulate her.
“All made up, I suppose?” these visitors whispered to Elinor Meadows as
they passed. “Absurd business altogether?” But no one was prim except
Miss Campbell, who scarcely condescended to notice the mother of her
charge. As for Mr. Tremenheere, he went about among the crowd radiant.
“Tremenheere must be a relative of yours,” his friends said to him.
“Yes;--only my son,” he said, his countenance expanding. Eddy might have
attained a much more substantial success without pleasing him half so
much. Pride very often puts on the very guise of love, so that one
cannot tell them apart. Mr. Tremenheere had thought but little of Eddy
hitherto; he took all the credit, as he said, and really felt that he
had everything to do with the boy. A boy who had put himself in the
front so easily, and was for the moment the observed of all observers,
the very centre to which was directed the gaze of society, was
indisputably a son of whom every parent was entitled to be proud.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VII.
A DINNER AT HYDE PARK SQUARE.
I do not know by what charm Miss Meadows had been gained over to tell a
fib, and enact a whole little drama of domestic perfidy; but she did it.
When Mr. Tremenheere in his satisfaction asked her to dinner she told
him unblushingly that she had just invited young Oswald Fane, a
connection of Lord Fanebury’s, a very clever young man, in whom she took
a great interest, to dine with her, and did not see how she could put
him off. “Clever young men were always Elinor’s weakness,” said Mr.
Tremenheere, so intoxicated with his own contentment that he forgot for
the moment that it was not his habit to call Miss Meadows by her
Christian name. “But if he is one of the Fanes of Fanebury I know his
uncle. Bring him with you. That will make it all right.”
And thus accidentally Oswald Fane was introduced into Hyde Park Square.
He was not so near a relation of Lord Fanebury’s as Mr. Tremenheere in
his moment of elation was ready to suppose. As he waited till his son
had changed his dress, and walked out with him to the crowded streets,
feeling sure that everybody he met knew that the blushing youth was the
hero of the day, that proud father was ready to receive as an heir
presumptive at the least, anybody who might have been presented to him.
His gratified pride threw a radiance over all the world. He was for the
time being the most proud of fathers, the most kind of men. He put his
arm through Eddy’s who was two inches taller than himself, with that
delightful mixture of the familiar friend with the father which
everybody says it is so pleasant to see, and introduced him to several
men they met, with overflowing satisfaction. Then when they got out of
the lingering crowd, away into the more quiet streets, Mr. Tremenheere
began to inquire into his son’s hopes and intentions for the future, as
a father should.
“Is this your last year at school,” he said. “How old are you? Eighteen!
Are you expected to stay another year?”
“I think, sir,” said Edward, “that my mother means me to leave and go to
Oxford at once. But--I don’t think anything is settled. If you
thought----”
“I have left all that to your mother,” said Mr. Tremenheere. “That was a
bargain, and I don’t mean to interfere with her. Your mother is a very
sensible woman. We did not get on when we were together, which was
unfortunate, but she has managed admirably with you, and I approve all
she does. And after Oxford, Ned, what then, my boy? What do you think of
doing then?”
“Well, sir,” said Eddy, “that is a thing there has been no decision
about--I think my mother----”
“Yes, but in the choice of a profession one must act for one’s self.
What do _you_ think? You will have your mother’s money, of course, but
it will scarcely be enough to enable you to take the position I should
like to see you take. You must do something----”
“My mother’s money is her own,” said Edward, with a slight flush upon
his face. “I don’t want her to give it me. I am very willing to do
something. Indeed, I am not at all sure about Oxford for my part,
except that she wishes it. For you ought to know, sir,” he added,
looking down with another flush of color, “I am not clever; good enough
as a bat and that sort of thing, but not much good in school.”!
“Is that so?” said Mr. Tremenheere. But he said it without anything of
that half shame, half pity, both sentiments generally concealed by a
caress, with which the women among whom Edward Tremenheere had been
brought up regarded his want of success in school. The boy had learned
to divine this though nobody ever put it into words, and the easy tone
of his father cheered and eased him in the most wonderful way. Was it
then perhaps not so humiliating after all to be without cleverness?
Might a fellow still do something though he could not get Greek and
Latin into his head, and had no hope of a scholarship? Edward felt
cheered and encouraged, he could scarcely tell why.
“Yes, I am afraid it is so, I have got such a bad memory or something. I
do my work, but it goes out of my head again just as fast. That is why I
think it is money wasted sending me to Oxford.”
“Not at all,” said Mr. Tremenheere. “It is not for work alone that men
go to Oxford. It always tells well in society. Not a high degree, or
honors or anything of that sort; for unless you are going into a
profession, the world cares very little for Senior Wranglers, &c. But
you make friends who can help you in life, and widen your acquaintance,
and learn a great deal that is quite as important. Yes, yes, you must go
to college; but after? as I asked before----”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Edward, “my mother used to talk of the Bar,
not knowing how stupid I was. But that would never do. I don’t seem to
have any particular choice; anything that pleases other people----”
“You are too good, I am afraid,” said his father. “Your mother can’t go
on thinking for you----”
“So she says,” said the boy with a laugh. At this moment they met a
group of other lads with blue ribbons who stared at Eddy’s appearance
here; he nodded to them with a look of dejection. “The rest of the
fellows are dining together,” he said. “It is rather fun; but I don’t
suppose I shall mind.”
“And you came away without telling me! That was kind of you, Ned. But I
hope you will enjoy yourself with us. You will see a great difference in
Vera. She is almost grown up, and I shall soon have to think of getting
her brought out and introduced into society, which is a great bore for
me. So you see we all have our difficulties. I am still in that same old
house which you remember. It will be pleasant to dine together this one
night.”
“Yes,” said Edward, somewhat disconsolately. He would have liked the
dinner with his comrades better, but he was too good to put his own
wishes forward. And Mr. Tremenheere thought no more about it. He told
him of several young potentates at Oxford whom he should introduce him
to. “And I hope you will be very careful about the set you get into.
Whatever you may do in the way of scholarship you must never be
indifferent to the art of making friends.”
“That is what my mother says,” said the lad, a statement which made his
father stare. “She says that if I get into a good reading set----”
Mr. Tremenheere laughed. “That is very like your mother,” he said, “but
not exactly what I meant. If you are weak in scholarship don’t go in
for it, my boy. What I mean is a good set of men, men whom it will be of
use for you to know, who may give you a helping hand in life, or at
least in society. A great deal depends on that.”
“Yes,” said Eddy, dutifully. “A good set of men” sounded much better to
him than “the reading set” of whom he had been thinking with some alarm,
but he did not so well understand about the “helping hand in life” to
which his father referred. He was a perfectly humble simple-minded
fellow, but yet he was not without a certain pride of his own.
Thus they went home to Hyde Park Square, where Mrs. Tremenheere,
agitated by many thoughts, was preparing for dinner in her old room, now
empty, swept, and garnished, and asking herself various questions which
she could not answer, which she did not like even to put in words. There
was a little pause when they all came together in the drawing-room, a
little holding of the breath, or so, she thought. It was late and
beginning to be twilight, and I cannot describe with what a strange
thrill of curiosity Edward looked at his two parents thus brought
together. What could they be thinking, these two people who belonged to
each other, yet did not belong to each other? And--whose fault was it?
The boy was instinctively respectful and dutiful, and made no reply to
himself, but yet the question arose in his mind whether he would or not.
“I have been speaking to Ned about his future,” said Mr. Tremenheere.
“He does not seem to be very clear what he is to do after Oxford.”
“No. We must let circumstances decide,” said his mother. “Perhaps if he
reads hard----”
“My dear Ada, I wouldn’t interfere with you for the world, but why
should he read if that is not the turn of his mind?” said Mr.
Tremenheere.
“It is the turn his mind ought to take,” she said. “It is the only use
so far as I can see of a University. What were colleges instituted for
but reading? And it is his duty as well as the best thing to do.”
“Well, I think there are other uses for Universities,” said Mr.
Tremenheere. “Is that you, Vera? Come here; your mother cannot see you
in this light. You would not think, would you,” he added, with some
pride, “that this demure little person was the saucy Vera who used to
poke her small fingers into everything?” He laid his hand upon her head
caressingly--not that he was much in the habit of caressing her, but he
felt a natural impulse to put forth his own production, as it were, by
the side of his wife’s, in an amiable rivalry which had no evil
intention in it. For, indeed, though he felt proud of his son, and was
pleased with him, he was not at all jealous of his son’s mother, to whom
the boy specially belonged, and could not have understood the sharp and
keen jealousy of himself, almost bitter, which shot like an arrow
through Mrs. Tremenheere’s heart as he laid his hand on Vera’s head.
“I had no objections to the saucy Vera,” she said, hurriedly forcing
herself to smile.
“Ah, that is not my ideal of a young woman,” said the father, equally
unaware how much of the original leaven remained in the demure little
person of whose quietness he was so proud.
Mrs. Tremenheere restrained herself as by force and made no reply,
though all the old lively impulses of contradiction seemed to spring up
in her as she listened; and thus the divided family remained for a
moment silent, the father and son standing together, the mother and
daughter seated in the shadow. Miss Campbell kept apart at the furthest
window, with a book in her hand. She disapproved profoundly of Mrs.
Tremenheere. What did she want in this house which she had left of her
own accord? Did she mean to come back, disturbing other people in the
established routine of their life, perhaps turning the carefully-trained
Vera into something fast and disorderly? Such a woman was capable of
anything, Miss Campbell thought, and the poor lady had an excuse for her
dislike in her growing alarm and terror. She had a very comfortable
position in Mr. Tremenheere’s house, and was fond of Vera in her way,
and if she left Hyde Park Square there was at her age little before her,
except poor genteel lodgings on a small annuity, or the “Home.”
When Miss Meadows came in with young Fane, followed at a moment’s
interval by the stray man, adapted to fill a place at an emergency, whom
Mr. Tremenheere had met at Lords’, the family were not sorry. Perhaps,
on the whole, it was more easy to get on when there were strangers
present. There was an awkward moment, however, when they went to
dinner. Mr. Tremenheere went across the room to Miss Campbell before the
procession started.
“Perhaps,” he said, in a slightly nervous tone, “it would be better if
Vera took the head of the table to-day?”
“It must be exactly as you please, Mr. Tremenheere,” she replied
stiffly, giving him no assistance. And then he had to give his wife his
arm, and hand her down-stairs.
“You are the greatest stranger, Ada,” he cried, with a nervous laugh,
and attempt at jauntiness. “The guest of the evening!”
She did not say anything, but put her hand within his arm, as if she had
been in a dream. But after that, the small party round the dinner-table
went on quite smoothly. Vera, her cheeks burning, sat at the head of the
table, feeling wretched, ashamed and proud. She could not bear to look
at her mother, who ought to have been occupying that place, and yet
could look at nothing else, not even at Eddy, who kept smiling at her,
shy but genial. She did not even notice, for five minutes at least, the
handsome countenance of Oswald Fane at her left hand, though it was one
which few girls of Vera’s age looked at with absolute indifference. He
had one of those picturesque dark faces which physiognomists suspect and
sentimentalists love; dark eyes, liquid and persuasive, capable of
looking unutterable things; dark hair, curling crisply round a
well-shaped head; a smile on the curved lips, just shaded with a soft
line of moustache which no unsuspecting person could resist. And he had
judgment to add to his personal attractions. He saw Vera’s agitation,
and neither spoke nor looked at her for these five minutes, but
chattered pleasantly to Elinor Meadows, shielding her from observation.
Then when Vera began to get used to her position, and to calm out of her
excitement, he threw over Elinor and struck in:
“You were very much interested in the match to-day, Miss Tremenheere.
Was it for the sake of cricket? Some ladies, I know, are great
connoisseurs----”
“Oh, no! I don’t know anything about cricket. My brother was playing.”
“I know; and I knew that was the reason, if you will let me say so.
Cricketing young ladies don’t look as you look.”
“I? How did I look? Not very odd, I hope?” said Vera; “Miss Campbell
says I am always showing my feelings.”
“I must not trust myself to description,” he said. “Your look raised
very violent emotions in my mind. Yes, I may as well confess. I turned
immediately to the men in the field, and I said to myself, ‘A set of
wretched schoolboys. What have they done, I wonder, with their stupid
game that any idiot could play, to deserve _that_?----’”
“Mr. Fane! I hope you don’t mean what you say!” cried Vera, indignantly,
raising her head, “because I am Edward’s sister. No one ought to speak
like that, knowing that my brother is Captain of the Eleven.”
“I told you, you had raised diabolical passions in my breast,” said Fane
unmoved. “Envy, hatred, and jealousy; because you see, I knew very well
that if I were to do the greatest feat that a man could do, no one would
look so at me.”
“Ah!” said Vera, mollified, drawing a breath of relief; “then you have
no sister,” she added softly, looking at him for the first time with
interest.
Here I think it was the duty of Elinor to have interfered; but she was
much amused; and she was, as she avowed boldly, half in love herself, in
an elderly fashion, with Oswald Fane.
“No,” he said, “I am all alone in the world. It does not matter to any
one what I do or what I don’t do; so, you must forgive me my grudge at
that happy fellow you were watching. I did not intend him any harm.”
“Eddy played very well to-day,” said the friend of the family, who sat
at Vera’s right hand. “Made a good score. Saved that last innings, he
did. I don’t like to see my old school beaten, though I’m an old fellow.
I give you leave to be proud of your brother, Vera. I never saw a neater
catch. It made a man feel young again.”
“I am very proud of him, thanks,” said Vera, beaming. She looked at Eddy
almost for the first time. His face was very serious, poor fellow. He
was sitting next to Miss Campbell, who addressed instructive
conversation to him, as she thought it was her duty to do with the
young. And, alas, I fear poor Eddy, though he was at home, with all the
members of his family round him, was thinking ruefully of the gay dinner
at which the others were drinking their toasts and making their
speeches. This certainly was not so lively. He did not see Vera look at
him, but he met his mother’s eye, and smiled, with a slight shrug of the
shoulders. Vera saw this pantomime, and was angry. Was he not glad to be
at home?
Thus the dinner was not the greatest of successes; and the ordeal of the
drawing-room was still more severe. Mr. Tremenheere walked up to his
wife when he came up-stairs, and sat down beside her.
“I could not say anything to you at dinner,” he said, “Ada; but I want
now just to say a word. Don’t press the scholarship business upon Ned.
You can afford to send him to Oxford, and he can afford to go; that is,
he is young enough not to be losing his time; but don’t worry him and
strain him to do something out of his line altogether. There, I don’t
want to interfere; but this you must let me say.”
“Thank you,” she said, a little stiffly; “I will think of it, Charles.
Of course your advice in respect to Eddy must always have the greatest
weight.”
“Well, yes, I think it ought,” said the father, “especially as there has
never been any quarrel, so to speak, between us. We have always been
quite good friends.”
“Perfectly good friends; if you will allow me in my turn to make a
remark, I think poor Vera’s natural vivacity is too much repressed. Miss
Campbell, I have no doubt, is a very good woman, but Vera will never be
really one of those meek girls whom you admire. She has a great deal of
energy and spirit in her. I think you should take care not to carry the
subduing process too far.”
“Ah!” he said, raising his eyebrows, “do you think so? I should not have
supposed that would have occurred to you. Miss Campbell’s process seems
to me to have answered admirably. However, I will keep my eye upon her,
since you think so. Curious! I expected you to compliment me, as
everybody does.”
“Yes, and so I do; she has grown up very sweet and fair,” she said, with
some emotion.
“But only you do not approve of the way in which she has been brought
up,” he said, with a laugh. “Well, well, we never did agree, and it is
evident we were never intended to agree, Ada; which does not, however,
prevent me from giving, as you say, the greatest weight to your advice,
and from our continuing the best of friends.”
With this he grasped her hand heartily, and rising from his chair beside
her, went off to talk to Edward, whom old Mr. Carnaby was
cross-questioning. Mrs. Tremenheere sat alone for a time. Near the open
window, with its long lace curtains swaying softly in the summer air,
sat Vera beside Miss Meadows, looking up into the dark, handsome face of
young Fane, who bent over her. I don’t think it occurred to the mother
to take any panic about young Fane. She had subjects enough to occupy
her mind without that. But whether by inadvertence or purpose, I cannot
tell which, Elinor Meadows rose up suddenly, and came and joined her,
leaving the two young people together--Miss Campbell, not being able to
put up with this overturn of all her habits, having left the room.
“Well,” said Elinor, eagerly, “have you settled anything? Indeed you
ought to have come to your senses, you two, at your age.”
“Perhaps we ought,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, “but nothing is changed that
I can see. Age makes little difference. For Vera’s sake I might risk it,
but he has no such idea; he is too triumphant in his own success.”
“Then nothing is to come of it; what was the good then--” cried Elinor,
with tears in her eyes. “Ada! Ada! I thought you would have done
anything for poor little Vera’s sake.”
“I suppose it is only justice,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, with a slight
faltering; “when he would have made it up, I wouldn’t; and now when
perhaps--I don’t know--I might----”
“Is that all you say? when of course you would that or anything else,
for Vera’s sake.”
“Well, put it as you please; but anyhow it would be a failure. We should
begin again to contradict each other the very next day. However, it is
needless to discuss the question, for he does not wish it; that is as
clear as daylight.”
A little while after the two halves of the divided family said goodbye
to each other, and the mother and son went back to their separate
lodgings with Elinor, like any other visitors.
“Well, Eddy, have you spent a happy evening?” said Miss Meadows, in the
darkness of the carriage, driving home.
“Oh, happy? Well enough,” said Edward. “Of course I was glad to see my
father and Vera; still it was a bore not to be at the dinner with the
other fellows, and this my last year.”
The next step after this strange family meeting was taken in all
innocence, with no thought of the complications it might lead to. Mr.
Tremenheere consented that Vera should pay a visit to her mother in the
country, under the charge of Elinor Meadows. It was to be for two days
only, too short a time to have much effect upon the girl, one way or
another,--Miss Meadows, however, did not tell any one that on her own
responsibility she had offered a seat in her carriage, and an
introduction into her friend’s house, to Oswald Fane.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE VILLA.
Mrs. Tremenheere rather prided herself on her society; though she had
given up so much she had never given up that; the people she knew were
not commonplace people, such as you meet everywhere, but persons of high
intelligence, of advanced opinions, people known in literature, in art,
and in science. Her parties were generally in summer, daylight parties,
a combination of outdoor pleasures, concluding with that good dinner
which mortal men, even when they are philosophers, love. When the little
party arrived from town they found preparations going on for one of
these gatherings. Mrs. Tremenheere took Vera through the garden and
shady grounds, which were skilfully planted to look double their size,
and showed her everything with tender anxiety. “You must help me to
receive my friends,” she said, smiling upon her little daughter.
“What would Miss Campbell say? she is not ‘out’ of course,” said Elinor.
“A girl does not require to be ‘out’ when she is by her mother’s side,”
said Mrs. Tremenheere, with a sigh, drawing Vera’s hand within her arm.
It was not for Vera she said this, but for the relief of her own mind;
but Vera heard it, and ventured to clasp her mother’s arm with a sudden
sense of security, such as she thought she had never experienced before.
By her mother’s side--very different from Miss Campbell’s; everything
was made natural, everything as it ought to be, by that one fact. She
turned round without knowing why, and met Fane’s dark eyes fixed upon
her; never before had innocent Vera met such looks; and a soft
suffusion, the first blush of tenderest youth, came over her white
throat and delicate cheeks. She clung a little closer to her mother’s
arm. Yes, even this, the confused sweet guiltiness, the innocent shame
where no shame was, all were without danger, without harm there--by her
mother’s side.
Then the strangers began to arrive, but first of all came Edward, fresh
from school, happy and radiant in the delight of “leave,” and the whole
day to himself, though not so happy about “the party.”
“To be sure we can have some croquet,” said Edward, “though that is not
much; but with such a terrible set of swells what else can one do?”
“There is a swell coming who will fascinate you, Eddy,” said his mother.
The lad shrugged his shoulders with a laugh.
“All right, if they please you, mamma,” he said, putting his arm round
her with a happy ease which made Vera wonder. Fancy any one doing that
to papa, she said to herself--or Miss Campbell! After a while Edward
dragged her off to see the croquet-ground, where the implements of that
diversion were all in order. “Between ourselves it is a bore, rather,”
he said; “a lot of bigwigs all talking as if to talk was the best thing
in the world; but, never mind, it pleases the mother. And then a day’s
leave is always a day’s leave,” he added, with good-humored philosophy.
It was Edward’s disposition to make the best of everything.
“And I have a day’s leave, too,” said Vera, with a little sigh; “but I
can’t have one whenever I please, Eddy, like you.”
“Whenever I please!” he looked at her with natural contempt for her
ignorance; but then what can a girl be expected to know? “Why can’t you
stay?” he said; “it would be much jollier if you were here. Why can’t we
all live together, as we used to do--as we ought to do?” the boy added,
suddenly.
This conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Fane, who was
never long absent from Vera’s elbow, and by the gradual arrival of the
visitors--among whom, as I have said, there was one celebrity of the
moment whom it was a very great honor to produce here so far out of
town. While the young people were in the garden Elinor Meadows came
rushing towards them, her black lace billowing around her, and the rings
of her gray hair blown about her forehead.
“Come!” she cried, breathless, “come, before there is a crowd, and be
introduced to him, both of you. You, too, Oswald, if you like,--only
make haste and come!”
“Who is it?” they all asked in a breath.
“It is the lion--and a real great roaring lion, shaking his mane--none
of your make-believes, that don’t know how to keep it up. It is Mr.
Buckram Bass, the great African traveller. He has been everywhere where
nobody ever was before. Come, you foolish boys and girls. You may never
have another such opportunity. Come, Vera; and Edward especially,--you
must come!”
“Presently. I shall see him soon enough,” said Edward.
He would not come in. He was busy out of doors, looking after the
croquet, showing the finer points of view to one wandering group after
another, pointing out the pinnacles of the great school in the distance,
telling the names of the distant places, and also the names of the
notabilities present to his mother’s guests.
“That is Dr. Jones, the great geologist, I believe--and that lady
yonder, in the corner with a lot of people round her, is the lady that
plays the fiddle--well, yes, violin, it’s all the same, isn’t it? I
daresay my mother will get her to play after dinner. And that is the
Bishop of St. James’s, who is an old friend of my mother’s.”
“Will he preach after dinner?” said some one, hoping to be witty.
“I hope not,” said Edward gravely. “I don’t think he is a fool, nor my
mother either. There is the editor of the ‘Northerly,’ whom you may have
heard of, and Miss Cloots, who writes novels. By the way, I believe
there is somebody here who is the very last novelty in the way of
travels. The great African man, that----”
“Hush!” said Elinor Meadows, by his side.
“Why should he hush? I wish he had described me as well as he described
the rest,” said Mr. Buckram Bass himself, stepping into the circle.
“This is Mrs. Tremenheere’s son, the hero of the cricket, and why has he
not been introduced to me? There spoke the true spirit of youth! not
feelings!--When his time comes, ladies, he will experience them; at
present he does not care to have any babbling about them. Bravo! those
are my sentiments exactly. Let us shake hands upon it. Yes, what is
worth is doing--not to talk, not to read, but to do. Schools! yes,
schools are excellent. I do not say a word against schools. I myself was
not created by any school, but what does that matter? When I was your
age I rebelled against books. I felt myself a slave. To tie me down,”
cried the lion, roaring loudly, and grasping his red beard--he was a
large man, handsome and even commanding in appearance, and when he
spoke, took a large handful of the vast beard which he had grown during
his travels--“to tie me down with all my energies fettered, to construe
Herodotus! when I knew there were things in the world more wonderful
than Herodotus--and true.”
Edward had looked at him, half contemptuously, half suspiciously when he
began. Gradually, however, his looks changed. His eyes began to laugh,
then to glow. The big man and his beard impressed him. “More wonderful
than Herodotus--and true!” He forgot his natural opposition to the lion.
After all, if this was a lion, he was so because of what he had done,
not of what he had said or written. He began to look eagerly at this new
kind of man.
“Do you know anything about Africa?” said the traveller. “No! The great
continent of the future!--the real new world, teeming with wealth, full
of wonder, from which there is everything to expect. Take a walk with me
through your mother’s pretty grounds. ‘That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me.’”
With this the adventurer thrust his great arm through Edward’s and led
him away, half pleased, half reluctant. The others who stood round heard
his big voice discoursing as he promenaded through the shrubbery.
Nothing more was seen of Eddy that day, except at dinner, during which
he was very absent and _distrait_, straining his attention to make out
what Mr. Buckram Bass was saying at the other end of the table. He
reappeared in the evening, but only in the train of the traveller, who
was delighted by the boy’s enthusiasm. Few people noticed even then that
it was to Edward he was talking, for the talk was addressed to the whole
gathering, as well as to that one particular boy who stood close by him,
his eyes gleaming, his whole aspect changed.
“Yes, yes, you are right, and I respect you for it,” said the traveller.
“This is not a time for music, for the fine arts, for poetry and
feeling. What men want is to be doing. You know where I am going
to--what I call the Continent of the future, that great mysterious
Africa, to one corner of which the roots of our religion itself still
cling. Is it not a work worthy of Christianity to carry freedom and
civilization back to the warm, rich, teeming countries where so much
wealth and capability lie dormant? Yes, sir, take the question at its
lowest, nothing could be more admirable for trade. In that view alone it
is worth doing--opening up, not a single nation, like France or Germany,
but a crowd of nations, a whole continent to British enterprise. But I
don’t profess myself to take that point of view. My mind is burdened
with the thought of so many fine, interesting races, so many tribes and
peoples, as varied as Europeans, not stupid negroes only, who are living
in mud-cabins, under savage laws, decimated by fever and by each other,
whom we might help with a little trouble into civilization and humanity.
My expedition starts in October. It is not all filled up. How thankful I
should be to have volunteers, sportsmen, adventurers, whatever you
please to call them. Every new traveller is so much gain.”
“For heaven’s sake, Ada, do something to stop that man,” cried Elinor
Meadows, in Mrs. Tremenheere’s ear. “Ask somebody to play; let us do
something.”
“Why? I find him very interesting,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, smiling
calmly in her friend’s face, “and he always does this, you know,
wherever he goes. It is tacitly understood.”
“Look at Edward’s face.”
“Yes, he is interested, poor boy. I am so glad that he should have had
his mind roused by some new subject.”
Edward stood by his new apostle, his eyes fixed upon him, swallowing
every word with eager interest. Already he saw himself in imagination
with a wild retinue of Arabs and negroes trampling through the jungle,
pressing over the sands, passing from one savage court to another. He
had read all the books upon the subject eagerly, but here was a man who
was a living book, who had seen and heard and done, and was about to do
again, all these wonders. Edward’s mind, newly aroused within him,
expanded and grew. He seemed to feel himself grow strong and daring and
patient as he listened. Yes, that was the life--not a sham life at
college, making good friends, as his father said, or laboring vainly
after scholarship, as his mother wished.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IX.
THE VILLA (_continued_).
Meanwhile the day had passed for Vera like a strange sweet dream, too
rapid, too full of feeling to be understood. The novelty and the
strangeness and the complication of emotions so suddenly introduced into
her young life, which had been carefully trained to know no emotions at
all, involved her in a secret bewilderment, so that she did not seem to
know what she was saying, or on what she was treading, whether enchanted
ground, or air, or clouds. When she was about to follow the rest
indoors, Fane, who was with her, begged so hard that she would stay,
that Vera, not unwilling, though a little doubtful as to whether she
ought, softly sat down again on the rustic seat under the lime trees,
which were so sweet in the dimness of the night. Fane said nothing for a
few minutes; he let the silence and charm of the night steal into the
girl’s soul.
“I wanted to drive on for ever this morning,” at last he said softly;
“what a mistake it was! But now, if this night would only last for ever!
I don’t know what more one could wish for. Do you remember ‘The Last
Ride?’”
“What is ‘The Last Ride?’” said Vera, wondering if it was very very
ignorant of her not to know.
“It is a poem of Mr. Browning’s.”
“I don’t think I like poetry,” said Vera, shyly. “It seems dreadful to
say so, but one ought to be honest. It is so stiff and so formal, not
like anything natural.”
“What have you read? I think I could show you some you would like.”
“I have read some of Pope, and Miss Campbell is very fond of Young’s
‘Night Thoughts’ and Kirke White--and a little Cowper. I like Cowper
best, but----”
“Ah!” he said. “Shall I tell you about the ‘Last Ride?’ It is very
different from Pope. It is a poor lover whom his lady has refused. He
loves her, but she does not love him; yet, though she does not love him,
she is sweet and gracious, and will not refuse the last thing he asks of
her,--one last ride with him. And so they set out; and as they go along
he keeps comforting himself all the way, knowing every step is nearer
the end--‘Perhaps the world may end to-night.’”
“And what happens?” asked Vera, eagerly.
“Nothing happens; the ride may be going on still, for all one knows.”
Vera was silent. She was too young to understand how this ending of the
world might have helped the hapless lover. She sat quite still, in shy
wonder, feeling sad for him; wishing that the lady had relented, which
would have been better than the world ending; her thoughts entirely
carried away even from the present enchantment. Then her companion spoke
again; his voice was very soft and naturally melodious, and there was a
certain pleading in the tone:
“I wonder,” he said, “if I am to be sent away to-night.”
“To be sent away?”
“Miss Meadows brought me. She is not going till to-morrow. She is as
good as gold, but she is apt to forget details.”
“Oh, shall I run in and ask?” cried Vera. “How disagreeable for you to
be kept here. I will run and tell her.”
“No, indeed, you shall not run anywhere to serve me. It is I who will
run--wherever you please--to do anything you please. But don’t be
satirical or hard upon me. The dreadful thing will be to be sent away. I
prefer to keep out of the way till it is too late.”
Again Vera did not quite understand, and was silent, thinking it best
not to commit herself. But she began to be a little uneasy about sitting
here quite alone while everybody else had gone in. It was strangely
pleasant--so warm, yet so cool, so fresh and dewy, the house so near
with all its lights, yet the stillness so perfect. Would it be right,
though, if not so pleasant, to go back to the house?
“Can you see, beyond the garden, the lights scattered about in the
houses,” he said, “and up in the sky the stars? I don’t know which I
like best.”
“Oh, Mr. Fane, the stars!”
“Do you think so?--but see, every one of these little lights, twinkling
away far down at the foot of the hill, means something. There are people
there talking, living--with a story of one kind or another--and love.
Is it not pleasant,” he said, as she made no answer, “to sit here and
watch it all--all the other people going on with their living, and we
looking on?”
“But we are living, too,” said Vera, startled.
“Beginning to live----”
He did not say any more. And how still it was--every little rustle in
the leaves audible, though there was so much life and sound close at
hand! Vera began to feel a little frightened. All these strangenesses
seemed coming to a climax. She gave a little start when some watchful
bird made a stir among the branches and got up. “I think mamma may want
me. I think we should go in,” she said.
More than half the people were gone, however, when they went in, and the
last train was gone, and there was nothing for it but to offer Mr. Fane,
whom Elinor Meadows confessed she had forgotten, a bed. Vera, coming in
shy and dazzled by the lights, did not quite listen to all that was
said; but to know that he was going to stay was pleasant. He sat down by
her again, while her mother was occupied with the last of the departing
groups. Somehow she seemed to know him better than any one--better even
than her mother, to whom she was so much a stranger; and here indoors,
with so many people about, it was easier to talk. She confessed to him
with a little blush that she had never been here before.
“Is it not strange?” she said, “it is home, as much as the Square, and
yet I don’t know it. People are not often like that. I suppose you used
to live with your mother when you were young, as young as I am--most
people do.”
“Most people do, but I did not, for my mother was dead. I was very
lonely--my brother a great deal older than myself, and no one else
belonging to me.”
“Ah! my brother is only two years older than I. But then if one never
sees them it comes to just the same thing. I was very lonely, too. Never
anybody to play with,” said Vera, tears coming into her eyes out of pity
for the forlorn little self whom she had conjured up. “Nobody to talk
to--except Miss Campbell. I remember,” she went on, changing
involuntarily into a soft laugh; “I got the poor servants into sad
trouble because I told papa they had a party and I danced. Oh! how nice
that party was! I was only eight. It couldn’t have done me much harm,
could it?”
“Evidently it has not done you any harm,” said Fane. “Nothing could do
you any harm. I ran wild as I liked, and no one was shocked.”
“Ah!” cried Vera again, with a sigh, “you boys are so much better off
than girls. Nobody says you ought to be still, never to talk, never to
be remarked. It is hard always to be obliged to remember that one is a
girl. Miss Campbell always says, ‘You forget yourself,’ when that is
just what I would like to do. Forget all about me! Why should one always
be obliged to think about one’s self?”
“When there are so many other people that would be too glad to do it for
you!” said Fane--a speech which, like many others, was lost upon Vera.
But the fountain of her confidences was opened, and she went on almost
without a pause.
“It is now so many years since Miss Campbell came, and I have been
obliged to be so good. I don’t think I was good before. And when I go
back again I shall have to begin once more, and try not to forget
myself, and to speak low, and to keep in the background, and not ‘to be
remarked.’ Why should any one remark me?” cried Vera. “It is very hard
upon us poor girls, you must allow, Mr. Fane.”
“And when do you go back?”
“To-morrow!” she said, with a long-drawn breath, a sigh so pathetic,
that it was all he could do, notwithstanding his profound sympathy, not
to laugh.
“I wonder if I might call,” he said. “I should like to bring you some
books. I should like to try to amuse--Miss Campbell a little. Do you
think I might come?”
“Miss Campbell!” said Vera, somewhat disappointed; then she recollected
that it would still be better than nothing to be amused even at second
hand. “Papa never said nobody was to call. People do call, not very
amusing people, and if it is Miss Campbell you want to see----”
“Yes, of course it is Miss Campbell,” he said, laughing.
Upon which Vera understood, and laughed and blushed, and between the
two this seemed the very best of jokes. They kept laughing at it at
intervals as they went on talking.
“I am the victim of a romantic but hopeless passion,” said Fane. “If
Miss Campbell will not smile upon me, what will become of me?” and it
seemed to Vera that the humor was exquisite. All at once Miss Campbell
and the Square seemed to be suffused with the same rosy light which made
the villa such a world of enchantment. Elinor Meadows looked back at
them, somewhat uneasily, wondering if it was quite right, if Oswald was
quite to be trusted, if he knew where he was leading that innocent
child. She became frightened at her own handiwork. Mrs. Tremenheere, on
the other side, heard the laugh, and looked gratefully at the young
stranger who called forth so merry a laugh from Vera. Thus tolerated and
protected, the two young creatures felt secure in their corner, and
talked and smiled, and poured out their hearts to each other, they could
not tell why, and were more happy than they could say.
Next day was quieter, but still more sweet. They went out, the whole
little party, and strayed about the lanes, and visited the school where
Edward, still very absent, showed them everything, and saw the boys
playing cricket as on that wonderful day which had made a new beginning
to Vera’s life.
It was late in the evening when they returned to town, their party
increased by the addition of one of Mrs. Tremenheere’s neighbors. It was
not at all the same as the drive down. That had been merry, brilliant, a
little company of three all united in one. This was different. You
cannot lean across a carriage to talk in the dimness of the night,
though two who are seated next each other may say much. The lady who sat
by Miss Meadows had a great deal of conversation, and occupied her so,
that at the end of the journey she half apologized to Vera.
“I have never been able to say a word to you,” said Elinor. “That
tiresome woman! You must forgive me, my dear.”
Vera forgave her very freely. She leant back upon the soft cushions,
quite indifferent to the fact that she had her back to the horses. She
could not see him very well in the dusk, but she could see how he
looked at her, which is different. Why should he look so, as nobody else
ever looked? It was strange, but it was pleasant; and he spoke so low,
not to disturb the others, that she had to lean her head towards him to
hear. And once by accident (he begged her pardon for it) their fingers
just touched; and she heard him say to himself softly,
“Perhaps the world may end to-night.”
Vera would not have acknowledged for the world that she had heard it,
but she began to understand now what these words which had seemed so
strangely unsatisfactory and unintelligible meant. Alas! When they came
to Hyde Park Square, and the steps were let down, and the door opened,
and old Jervis appeared on the threshold waiting for her, had not the
world indeed suddenly come to an end? When the door shut upon that fairy
chariot, and she was left standing in the half-lighted, dull, drab,
too-familiar hall, the very heart seemed to die out of Vera’s bosom. She
shivered all over, feeling cold, and would have liked to cry.
“Is anything wrong, Miss?” said Jervis, sympathetically.
“Oh, no, no, nothing!” cried Vera, with a sob in her throat; and stole
softly up-stairs, a forlorn little white ghost. Alas! the world had
ended--but not in the poet’s way.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER X.
EDWARD.
Edward went back to his school-work next day, with the excitement of the
last night buzzing through his head. He was a schoolboy according to
English custom, and yet he was a man. He went back to his construing,
over which at the best he always hesitated, and his composition, in
which he gained much less applause, though he worked at it twice as
laboriously as the little fellow next to him, who carried off all the
honors; and as he worked he said to himself, fatalest of all questions
for learner or worker, “What is the good of it?” When a man could be
carrying civilization to a continent--when he could be opening paths for
knowledge, for education, for trade, for human advancement, when he
could be changing savages into Christians, teaching them those things
which make all the difference between man and brute,--in short, when he
could be doing what Mr. Bass had done, what he was going once more to
do, shooting huge game, encountering lions, exterminating serpents in
the jungle, besides all other more elevated occupations; the thought of
this sent a thrill through the lad’s veins. Oxford! What should he do at
Oxford? Stumble through one examination after another, each less
successful than the first, take a pass degree, disappoint his mother’s
hopes, and, for the very best he could do, make friends according to his
father’s directions. Make friends! not for the sake of friendship and
mutual help and brotherhood, which was a thing Eddy’s honest soul
comprehended thoroughly, but to help him on in life. That was all he
could do. Was it worth going to Oxford on the strength of that?
The visit of his sister and the others partially freed his mind from
this haunting vision, but it came on stronger than ever next day when
they were gone; and in the evening he went to see his mother, whom he
found somewhat despondent after the excitement of the two days past. She
was sitting by herself in the evening, looking wearily over her
beautiful view. It was very delightful so long as there was some one
there to point it out to, to see the sudden lights and shadows; but when
one is all alone, a fine landscape is more trial than pleasure. Close
the curtains, light the lamp, turn indoors to your books and to your
pictures, lonely one. Do not look abroad upon that quiet serene nature
which was made for the happy. The wistful lights, the gathering dimness,
the falling dew, the home-going of all things--birds to the nest,
laborers to the cottage--are a sight too exquisite for you.
Edward found his mother looking out on that evening scene, and commanded
her peremptorily, in those terms which mothers are so easily moved to
obey, to get her hat and come out with him. “I believe you have been
crying all by yourself,” he said indignantly.
“I shan’t cry now, Eddy--when my boy is here,” she said with a smile.
What a blow that gave him, though she did not know it! But then he
recollected that to be absent at Oxford was as bad as to be absent in
Africa, and this gave him courage to begin.
“I have something very particular to say to you mother. Come out,
please. I can always talk to you better out of doors.”
“What is the matter, Eddy? Are the small boys unruly? Have you got into
trouble about your composition----”
“No, no. Come, mother; I have a great deal to say to you. I have not
said anything to you for a long time about myself.”
“You never do say very much about yourself, dear.”
“Yes, I do; quite as much as other fellows--and I think a deal. Mother,
what is the good of sending me to the University? I was talking to
Somerville about it to-day.”
“And what does the great Somerville, who knows everything, say?” asked
Mrs. Tremenheere with a smile.
“You don’t do him justice, mamma. If I talk too much about him, that is
my fault, not his. He wants me to go, of course. He says there are other
things besides scholarship, but he allows that it is not much use so
far as scholarship goes. Don’t be disappointed, mother. You know I
always said so.”
“And do you think I am going to take Somerville’s word for it, Eddy?
Your tutor says you will do very well.”
“So I should hope,” said Edward, with a flush on his face; “I should not
be a rowdy or make a beast of myself; that’s what he means, I suppose;
it would be a joke, if I couldn’t do well in that sense. And I might get
into the ‘Varsity Eleven like enough, which isn’t bad--but for anything
else---- If you were to be satisfied with that I shouldn’t mind, but
even at Lord’s--why you know you did not care a bit about it, mamma.”
“I beg your pardon, my dear,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, humbly, “I care for
everything you take an interest in; but I don’t deny I would rather have
seen my son come out first in an examination than be the Captain of the
Eleven.”
“Yes, that is your way of thinking,” said the boy, “I know; you don’t
care much for what I can do, and I cannot do what you really care for.
But if scholarship is out of the question, you don’t care for the
‘Varsity Eleven, do you, or for the ‘making friends’ dodge? I can’t bear
that ‘making friends.’”
“My dear boy, you make friends everywhere.”
“Ah, that’s different; friends at school that one makes because one
likes them--but friends to help you on in the world! Don’t send me to
Oxford, mamma; of course I shall go if you wish it--if you insist upon
it.”
“Eddy, I wish you would tell me honestly what you are thinking of; there
is something behind all this,” said Mrs. Tremenheere; but still she
smiled, and was not afraid.
“I will tell you what I am thinking of,” he said, rather tremulously;
“reading and that sort of thing will never be much in my way; it may be
a pity, but it can’t be helped. But, mamma, there are more things in the
world than reading. I am a strong fellow; I could do heaps of things; I
might be of real use all the same.”
“I hope so, Eddy, but how, my dear? Out with it! You don’t require to go
and work for your living. Tell me what you want to do.”
“Mamma,” he said, his breath coming short, “I fear you will not like
it; I hope you will not be angry. It came to me all at once when Mr.
Bass was speaking; I could not help telling him that of all things in
the world I should like to join his expedition----”
“You are raving, Eddy,” said his mother suddenly; and then she laughed:
“you foolish boy, you gave me a fright for a moment. You might as well
talk of going to the moon.”
“I was afraid you would take it so; but I am not raving, I am quite
entirely in earnest; it is the sort of thing I could do. You can’t call
a man like that useless can you, mother? He is not one of the fine
gentlemen, good for nothing, whom you dislike so; he knows what he can
do, and is doing it. That is what I have set my heart on. I want to go
with him to Africa.”
She looked at him, stunned with the shock; stopped short in the middle
of the road as if he had shot her, and looked at him.
“Eddy! you are out of your senses,” she said.
The boy made no answer; he expected this, and more than this, knowing
well that if it was done at all it could not be done without trouble.
He did not say anything, but let the first force of the shock wear
itself out.
“Oh!” she cried, “was it for this I brought him to my house? Eddy! you
cannot be thinking what you are saying. You shall read all the books
about this wretched Africa. It is mere nonsense, what he says about the
new world, the Continent of the future. You should read what other
travellers say. The most debased, miserable country--the people absolute
savages. What am I saying? I am taking it too seriously. I know you will
hear reason. This is just a boy’s foolish fancy--the first wild idea
that has come into your head.”
“I don’t think so, mother.”
“But I know it. I know what ideas come into such a young brain as yours,
my dear boy. No more about it to-night, Eddy. I ought to have foreseen
that he would have an effect upon you, for he is eloquent after a sort.
The days are getting quite short already, and before we know, summer
will be over. We have not settled where we are going for the holidays,”
she added, suddenly changing the subject with simple artifice. “Shall
we go to Switzerland? This year I should not object if you climbed to
your heart’s content. You are old enough and strong enough to risk it
now.”
This would have made Edward’s eyes sparkle a week before, but it had
little effect upon him now.
“If you like, mother,” he said, indifferently. “But I begin to think I
have had enough play in my life.”
“Your life--it is such a long one--eighteen!”
“Long enough for amusement,” said Eddy, solemnly. “Now I want work.”
Mrs. Tremenheere parted with her boy that evening with some dismay in
her heart.
“I suppose it is just a fancy like any other,” she said to herself; but
it was an appalling fancy for an only son, a boy of so much importance
in her life. She went back to the pretty house which had looked so
cheerful and delightful to Vera, and felt it very dreary. Mrs.
Tremenheere closed the shutters with her own hands to-night in a kind of
suppressed passion, as if the country was her enemy. She could not
endure its quiet and tranquillity. When the lamp was brought in the poor
woman went and sat by it for company, and gazed into the light as if
that could counsel her. A panic took possession of her soul. “Only a
fancy, like another,” she repeated aloud, trying to take off the edge of
her own thoughts.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XI.
THE DAY AFTER.
Next day! It was a lovely summer day, but very hot and stifling in Hyde
Park Square. Miss Campbell did not permit her pupil so much as that
wistful gaze from the window across the brown park and dusty trees,
which is the favorite consolation of such prisoners. She allowed no
indulgence on account of an unsettled mind, but rather the reverse. And
what a day it was! nothing but sunshine, heat, blazing pavements
outside, airless rooms, all hot and heavy with the warm carpets and
curtains of English use and wont. Vera read Rollin’s Ancient History all
the afternoon, not even trying, as she often did, to interest herself in
Xerxes, but thinking all the time of yesterday, and of all that
happened. “Perhaps the world may end to-night.” What did he mean? Would
he have liked it to go on, and on, that progress through the darkness,
without seeing anything, without saying much, but now and then
half-a-dozen words quite low, under cover of the lively chatter of the
two people opposite? Was it possible that _he_ would have liked that? As
for Vera, she did not ask herself if she liked it. It had changed the
world to her; it had given her a new world of her own into which she
could retire safely, almost glad of the Rollin, and think it all over
again,--the few words that meant so much, the consciousness of nearness
and companionship, the dreamy sweep of movement through the soft night.
“Are you sleepy, my dear?” said Miss Campbell, somewhat sharply rousing
her.
“N--no,” said Vera.
“I thought you must be sleepy, you mumble your words so, and shut your
eyes. I suppose you were kept up very late at the villa,” the old
governess said. She disliked the villa with an intensity of dislike such
as mingled jealousy and fear alone could produce. She was afraid that
any day Mrs. Tremenheere might come back and turn her out of a
comfortable home; and she was jealous of the mother’s influence with
Vera, of whom in her way this hard-featured, hard-principled woman was
fond, though she could not express her fondness in any ingratiating way.
“Go on, my dear, and rouse yourself up,” she said--and Vera went on; but
when she shut her eyes she could see that scene, and feel it, as vividly
as if it were still existing, and still within the possibilities that it
might go on for ever; and then her voice would drop, and there would be
a pause in the reading of which she was scarcely conscious; for dreaming
even of that description in a hot July afternoon is akin to sleep.
“This will never do, Vera,” said Miss Campbell; “I suppose your mother
did not have a ball last night? Go and put on your hat; we may have our
walk now, and perhaps that will rouse you up.”
They went out for their walk when the afternoon was beginning to cool a
little, and went to Kensington Gardens, which was the usual scene of
their daily promenade. A demure little girl in a white frock, not even
made quite “long” as yet, with a very precise, elderly lady by her,
straight as a piece of iron, and as unbending--this sort of thing is to
be seen in Kensington Gardens every day. They walked down the broad
walk and up again, going quickly, but not too quickly, not to attract
attention, Miss Campbell keeping a steady look-out around her, on her
guard against any possible danger, Vera very silent, scarcely raising
her eyes.
“Miss Campbell!” suddenly said a voice beside her, which made Vera’s
heart beat. She gave such a sudden start of surprise, and grew so red
with wonder and joy that Miss Campbell vaguely perceived with a corner
of her eye that something was the matter. “This is a most unlooked-for
pleasure. I have been waiting here wondering if I should see anybody I
knew now that all the world is pouring out of town. You are still in
London? Ah!” said Oswald, coldly turning round and bowing, “I beg your
pardon, Miss Tremenheere.”
Vera, who was not used to such transparent deceits, was wounded to her
innocent heart. “So he does not care about seeing _me_! I am only an
accident. He saw nobody but Miss Campbell!” the foolish little girl said
to herself. And she did not trust herself to look at him lest he should
see the hot tear which this mortification had forced into her eyes, and
consequently never received the glance he sent to make up for his meagre
salutation. Fane had as little doubt that she understood him perfectly,
and was laughing secretly at his enthusiasm for Miss Campbell, as he had
of his own existence.
“You have the advantage of me,” said Miss Campbell. “I beg your pardon.
One meets so many people in society----”
“Oswald Fane,” he said. “I had the pleasure of dining the other day in
Hyde Park Square----”
Miss Campbell gave him a keen glance. “I recollect,” she said. “A
friend, I think, of Mrs. Tremenheere’s?”
What was he to say? Offend Vera by disclaiming any particular friendship
with her mother, or ruin his hopes of Miss Campbell’s help by claiming
this? “I have known Mr. and Mrs. Tremenheere about the same time,” he
said, “and I have had the pleasure of visiting both. But I think I have
known some relations of yours in Scotland longer than either--the
Campbells of Stormaway? I am sure I have heard them talk of you.”
“Really!” said Miss Campbell, gratified, “that was very kind. I know
the family you speak of--a very good family, but I cannot claim them as
near relations. There is some far cousinship, no doubt. It is gratifying
to my feelings that they should know--I mean remember me; and have you
seen them lately Mr.--Mr. Vane?”
“Fane. I met them in Scotland last year; indeed, I was at their house
for a few days. What a pleasant place to visit is a Highland country
house! Of course you remember your cousin’s delightful place?”
“Yes--yes--that is, I have been there very seldom, Mr. Fane; very
seldom, not since a child, I may say; and no doubt there are additions
and alterations----”
“They said it was a long time since they had seen you, and I promised to
let them know if I happened to meet you anywhere. A fortunate chance,
was it not? The daughters have grown up charming girls, and as for
Hector and Colin----”
“Yes--yes,” said Miss Campbell. She was for the moment quite bamboozled;
was he trying to deceive her, or was it really true that the Highland
magnates, whose names alone she was acquainted with, had found out and
recognised her as their kinswoman? After the first flush of
gratification she became uncertain, and did not know what to think. He
had turned, and was walking along with them. But he walked by Miss
Campbell’s side, taking no notice of Vera, who for her part went along
with downcast eyes, offended and never looking at him.
“By the way,” he said, “Miss Meadows, who is out of town for a few days,
gave me some books for Miss Tremenheere. May I bring them? I am going
away myself shortly. One day this week may I bring them, and discharge
my conscience of my commission before I go?”
“Oh, pray do not take the trouble. I will send a servant,” said Miss
Campbell, who had seen a sudden lifting of Vera’s eyes. “This is our
way, I think. Do not take the trouble. I must bid you good morning, Mr.
Fane.”
And he took his leave of them quite calmly, though he was going away.
Vera was so startled, so wounded, so suddenly thrown down out of all
those sweet vague dreams in which she had been indulging, that she could
not raise her eyes. Tears come so easily at sixteen. If he had really
gone and she had seen no more of him, Vera, after that first sharp shock
of mortification and disappointment, which made her poor little lip
quiver and her eyes fill, would no doubt have forgotten all about Oswald
Fane. But in the meantime the blow of his supposed indifference and the
sudden cruel end put all at once to the romance which was just
beginning, crushed her for the moment, depressed as she was by other
influences. She walked home by Miss Campbell’s side with a piteous
little face, not saying a word. Only once a little cry of impatience
burst from her. “I do not believe that gentleman knew much about my
cousins of Stormaway,” Miss Campbell said. “I think it was very strange
that he should have accosted me as he did, currying favor. If he is a
friend of Miss Meadows I must request her not to send her messages by
him. I am sure she has plenty of servants. I must tell her I do not
approve of calls from gentlemen.”
“Oh, you need not give yourself the trouble,” said Vera; “he is not
coming. He said it was to clear his conscience of his commission. He
never wanted to come.”
“So much the better,” said Miss Campbell dryly, and she talked about the
Aquarium in the Zoological Gardens, which was a safe subject. Vera no
longer trod on air; her dreams were gone and ended, her beautiful new
world broken like a bubble. She went into her own room and cried, tears
innocent and bitter, such as one sheds at sixteen, when every grief
seems eternal. It was all over, then. Not only should she never see him
more, but she had lost that sweet refuge into which she could retire as
she had done this morning when the day was dull, when Miss Campbell was
hard upon her.
Next morning, however, she had to go back to her lessons as usual. When
these came to a pause before luncheon, she wandered into the
drawing-room, intending to breathe forth some of her melancholy upon the
grand piano. Some one rose as she went in. The girl grew red all over
with a flush which was partly anger, and partly shame, and partly
delight.
“Oh!” she said impetuously, not knowing what she said, “I thought you
were gone.”
“Did you really think so?” said Fane. “No, impossible. I came this
morning that she might not have time to warn the servants not to admit
me.”
“But, Mr. Fane, of whom are you speaking? You seemed to know Miss
Campbell so well--to like her--and her relations.”
Fane laughed. Vera could not have explained what her feelings were at
that moment. Her heart bounded, and yet she did not like it. Why should
he deceive even Miss Campbell? She looked at him doubtfully--and yet how
happy she was!
“You think I should not tell a fib? Quite true. But then how was I to
see you? That was the first thing I had to think of; and there was no
harm done. It was a very innocent fib. I could not give up tamely all
hope of seeing you again.”
Vera’s cheeks glowed and her heart beat. She did not say anything to
check him--to demur to this statement. Was it not natural that he should
want to see her? Had not she wanted too, though she would not say it, to
see him?
“But you _are_ going away?” she said softly, with a very little subdued
sigh.
“Not I--not so long as there is any chance.--Here is the book I spoke
to you about, and another. Take them, please, before the dragon comes; I
fear, I fear, she will be here directly. Ah, Miss Tremenheere, you
cannot think how I have thought about those two days at the villa, and
lived them over and over! Shall not you go there again, or to Miss
Meadows? She knows me. She would not shut me out; and now that I have
seen you it does not seem possible to live just as one lived before.
Life is different. It is so much sweeter--better; since that day at
Lord’s, that first wonderful day. I had never seen you till then.”
Vera stood silent, with the books in her hands, her eyes cast down, her
cheeks glowing, her heart beating high, yet soft--not wildly in her
ears, as it had done a little while before, but with a satisfied and
quiet beating. How true it all was! Life was different, quite different,
and yet it did not seem right for him to say so. But to listen to him?
Civility demanded that she should listen to any one who talked to her,
especially when he was a visitor, and she at home.
“You are very--kind, Mr. Fane,” she said at last, faltering. That was
not at all what she meant, but what could she say?
“Kind! It is you who are kind, listening to me. Elinor Meadows would
stand my friend if you were with her, and how good Mrs. Tremenheere was!
But what must I do with this dragon? If I tell lies to her to please
her, you will disapprove of me, and that I cannot bear; but still less
can I bear not to see you. What can I do?”
“Mr. Fane: oh! please, don’t speak so--and you said you were going
away.”
“I am going away when you go,” he said, “for I shall find out where you
go, and follow you--don’t be angry, I can’t help it,--if it is only to
see the light in your window. You wouldn’t like me to fall back, and be
just the poor creature I was before I knew you? Yes, of course, you are
angry with me for telling lies, Vera--you who are truth itself; but the
more I see you the truer I shall be. Don’t give me up, because I can’t
give you up. You are too sweet and too good to break my heart.”
All this no doubt would have seemed over-bold and over-sudden to a girl
of twenty; but how could Vera discriminate, she upon whom the same
spell had fallen? Did not she, too, feel how different life was, how
transformed from the pale gray routine, the stagnant repression of the
days before? The strangeness and excitement of it made her breathless.
“Oh! don’t talk so, please don’t talk so,” she cried.
“It is the only way I can talk,” said Fane. “The moment I saw you I knew
what had happened to me. ‘That is she,’ I said to myself, ‘that is
she--there is none in all the world like her.’ And--ah!--Good morning,
Miss Campbell. I made bold to call to discharge my commission. Miss
Tremenheere has got the books----”
“Good morning,” said Miss Campbell. “What books? I never permit Miss
Tremenheere to read anything that I have not first looked at myself.”
“I have no doubt it is a very wise rule,” he said carelessly. “The books
belong to Miss Meadows--it is she who sent me with them, and, of course,
she is answerable.--I shall say I put them into your own hands, Miss
Tremenheere. Any commands for Scotland, Miss Campbell? May I take
tidings of you to your cousins? It would be a great pleasure to
them--and I may say, to me.”
Miss Campbell looked at him seriously.
“Mr. Fane,” she said, “I don’t pretend to know what you mean by talking
of my cousins, who, after all, are but distant relations upon whom I
have no claim.”
“What I mean is to please you, of course,” said Fane with a laugh. “What
else? If they were my people I should like friends to talk of them to
me.”
“If that was all! but I do not forget my position; and--when a gentleman
sets himself to flatter a lady in my position----” said the governess.
“Flatter! Do you think it flattering to remind you of your relations? It
might be so to them,” said Fane with a bow and a smile. “Never mind, I
shall hold my tongue another time if you don’t like the Stormaway
people. In the meantime I must really say goodbye. Goodbye, Miss
Tremenheere. I will tell Miss Meadows I saw you. And Miss Campbell, you
will surely shake hands with me, and wish me luck among the grouse.”
“Now, if one could only tell what that young man meant!” said Miss
Campbell, when he was gone. “He seems well-bred and agreeable, but he
may have a motive of his own. Vera, it is the hour for Rollin. Get your
book, my dear.”
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XII.
ROMANCE.
After this there followed a very exciting interval to Vera. Fane came
again with another mission (nominally) from Miss Meadows, and was
tolerably received. Emboldening by this, he came a third time and a
fourth, addressing most of his conversation to Miss Campbell, and
describing, in elaborate detail, the long series of accidents which
delayed him from the grouse. The Tremenheeres themselves generally left
town in the beginning of August, but this year were later than usual.
Miss Campbell found it agreeable on the whole to receive so unusual a
visitor, and to hear so much about the Campbells of Stormaway, whom she
really began at last to believe in as her cousins. He had always some
trait to relate of one or other of them, when the conversation flagged,
or she began to look suspicious. Vera did not know whether she was
happy or not during these visits. He gave her now and then a look, now
and then a whispered word, in the intervals of his talk with Miss
Campbell, and left her in no doubt as to his motives for cultivating
with such extreme assiduity that lady’s friendship; but after all, at
sixteen, it is but an indifferent pleasure to see your proper slave
devoting himself to another person, even if it be for your sake. Vera
sat silent, and now and then felt somewhat sad. But her whole life
became absorbed in these visits. She thought of them all day long. She
expected him till he came, mused upon him after he was gone. Except
Rollin and the lessons it was all that Vera had. Her mother wrote to her
less frequently than usual, and more briefly. Mrs. Tremenheere, for her
part, was involved in great anxiety and trouble. “I am rather unhappy
about an idea Eddy has got into his head,” she wrote, as an excuse for
her short letters, “but I trust it will not come to anything.” Vera
scarcely asked herself what this could be. She was lost in her own
excitement.
One afternoon Mr. Tremenheere came in a little earlier than usual, and
met Fane, who was leaving after a prolonged call. They stood talking
together for a few minutes at the door, and Mr. Tremenheere was heard to
laugh, which took a burden off the minds of both the ladies in the
drawing-room; for it suddenly occurred to Miss Campbell that before she
knew Mr. Fane, and was aware how well he was acquainted with the
Campbells of Stormaway, she, too, had been a little suspicious of him,
and thought him an undesirable visitor. However, nothing could be more
friendly than Mr. Tremenheere’s tone. When he came in, however, he did
not look quite so genial. He gave a half-angry glance at the governess,
and a doubtful one at Vera.
“Since when has young Fane become a visitor in the house?” he asked, and
there was something uncomfortable in his voice.
“Since when? I think Mr. Fane dined here first on the evening of the
match.”
“I beg you pardon, that was not what I was asking. Since when has he
been in the habit of calling here? He is not an acquaintance of mine.
Elinor Meadows, who always has a _cortège_ of young fellows about her,
brought him; she takes him everywhere. How often have you seen him,
Vera? I don’t want him here.”
“How often?” Vera’s foolish face began to flush as usual, though she
would, she thought, have given everything she had in the world to
prevent it. This made her father very angry, who liked a prompt and
plain reply.
“Yes. How often? What are you frightened about? I shan’t eat you; give
me a straightforward answer. How often have you seen him here?”
“I--I met him--at mamma’s,” said Vera, under her breath.
“Ah! at your mother’s? So she has taken him up, too.”
“I ought to say it is my fault, not Vera’s,” said Miss Campbell. “He
knows some cousins of mine in Argyleshire, the Campbells of Stormaway.
He has come to talk to me about them. Vera has seen very little of him,”
the governess added, with a little complacency, for indeed it had
pleased her to feel that the visitor’s conversation had been so much
addressed to herself.
“Oh! that is it, is it?” he said, rather carelessly, “then perhaps you
will not mind giving him a hint that I don’t care for his visits. There
is not much in him; and his relationship to Lord Fanebury scarcely worth
counting. Perhaps you might hint to him, that if he calls again you are
not likely to be at home.”
“Surely, if you wish it,” said Miss Campbell, though she was not
pleased. As for Vera, a great blackness of darkness came over her. She
had not always liked it when he came; but to lose him, to have no longer
that piquant centre to her days, that something to dream of, to think
of--what could she do? Vera felt that it was intolerable. At dinner she
was too unhappy to preserve her usual composure. She was irritable in
her suffering; so irritable as to move her father to the idea that she
must be ill, and must go to the seaside, for which he issued his orders
on the spot. She had never, since the days of her childhood, been so
courageous before.
“I don’t want change of air,” she said. “It is all very well, papa, for
you. You go to your friends. You do what pleases you. You enjoy
yourself; but as for me I am sent off to a dreadful seaside, where I
know nobody, where we live in horrible lodgings, and practice, and
read, and walk, and do exactly as we do at home.”
“Vera!” cried Miss Campbell, “I am shocked, I am astonished; you forget
yourself.”
“I just wish I could,” cried Vera. “I am so sick, so sick of myself! Let
me go to Aunt Elinor, or to the villa; or let me stay at home.”
Mr. Tremenheere watched her with some astonishment. “I did not give your
mother credit for so much discrimination,” he said. “She warned me you
had a temper. The seaside is far the best for you. When you are a few
years older, you can visit your friends, too, and enjoy yourself.”
Vera said nothing. She sat still, with flushed cheeks, excited and
miserable, not trusting herself to look at any one. It seemed to her
that she must strike a blow for her own deliverance, or die. For the
first time in her life she waited after Miss Campbell had left the room,
and going up to her father, put her hand timidly on his arm. “Papa,” she
said, imploringly, “when you go away don’t leave me alone with Miss
Campbell. Let me go to--to the villa; or to Aunt Elinor----”
“Why will you give Miss Meadows that absurd name? She is not your aunt.”
“I beg you pardon, papa, I will not do it again. I should be so much
happier if I were not alone. The--villa? Mamma will not mind having me,
and Eddy and I could be together, if only for a little while. I should
be so good--so good and obedient----”
“And why should you not go to the seaside with Miss Campbell this year,
as well as every other year? Go away! go away! and don’t let me hear any
more of this.”
Vera went away, as he told her, without another word, without a look.
She passed Miss Campbell, who was waiting and wondering on the
staircase, and hurried to her room. She could not cry this time, her
eyes were too hot and dry. Oh, why was she so different from other
girls! Why had she not a mother to care for her, some one who would see
what was happening, who would judge for her if she was wrong, who would
not have left her to make Oswald Fane the centre of the world! He was
the centre of the world, she felt it now!--the pivot upon which all that
was worth having in life turned. If he was sent away, forbidden the
house, what was to become of her? Either she would kill herself, or God
would be kind and do it for her--one way or other, she must die.
Her heart beat so wildly that it made her sick and faint. But all at
once, as she sat down, it gave one big jump, and then was still. Why was
this? Before her lay a letter carefully placed upon her little
prayer-book, where she could not miss seeing it. Vera knew at once what
it was. Not from her mother, Eddy, any ordinary correspondent; from
_him_. She did not know his handwriting. Why should it be from him?
Perhaps it was some childish invitation, somebody’s letter whom she did
not care for. Saying this over to herself with trembling lips, and
knowing it was not true, she opened the note, and with another big jump
of her heart read as follows:--
“I met your father to-day as I left the house. He was not rude to
me, but I read my doom in his eye. I am not to be allowed to come
any more. I shall come--I shall leave no chance untried; I will try
to see him, and plead my cause with him; but I know how it will
end, unless you, you alone, you who are my better life, will stand
by me. Is it too much? Ah, I know it is too much. I have no right
to disturb your young life, to bring painful questions into it; but
I am in despair: and you, you too--sweet Vera, you, for whom I
would give my life, you are not happy either. But for this I would
go away; I would trust to time and Providence to bring me back to
your feet, where alone I can be happy. But to know that you are
lonely and in trouble, too--that is what I cannot bear. Vera,
darling, forgive me, write me one word, only one word, and do not
let them separate us. Have pity upon me! Since the first day I saw
you, that white day, I have had no thought but you.
O. F.”
Vera read this with feelings I cannot describe. There had never been a
word of love-making between them, so to speak; nothing but those vague
suggestions which make the early paths of love so exquisite; but after
this letter there could be no further disguise. She read it over and
over again with a mixture of heartrending pain and delight, one as
delicious and as heartrending as the other. Stand by him? what else
could she do?--for he was her life if she was his; but write to him! How
could she do that? How she trembled, how sore her heart was, how happy!
Out of the despair and blank hopelessness with which she had left the
dining-room, what a change to this sea of emotion, so sweet, so
terrible, so alarming, yet consolatory! Neither father nor mother had
any sympathy for Vera, any feeling for her feelings; but he felt for
her, with her, everything she felt--yet but for her would be as much
alone as she was; they were two against the world. But write to him! The
thought trembled all through her, made her hand shake, and her heart
beat. Could she do it? How could she do it? When she heard a sound at
her door she thrust the letter away, not into her bosom, which would
have been romantic, but into her pocket, which was natural; and,
conscious in every look and breath and movement turned round to see who
it was; fortunately it was only Mary, the daughter of her old nurse, who
had lately been promoted to be Vera’s maid. Mary was over twenty, an
experienced young person, who had “kept company” for many years with a
tall Guardsman to whom she was faithful through many flirtations on both
sides. She knew what it was to have had parents and a troublesome cook
to interfere with the course of her true love; but even cook was not so
bad as Miss Campbell. And to have Miss Vera’s little heart broken and
her young man driven to despair was not a thing which could be allowed
to be, if sympathetic Mary could prevent it. She came into the room,
smiling with a consciousness equal to Vera’s own, but with more
comfortable sensations.
Mary was cautious, however, in her advances. She said nothing until she
was well into her pretty work of brushing Vera’s long beautiful hair,
standing behind her, unseen and unseeing, a position which gave both
maid and mistress ease. When this period had arrived, Mary said softly,
“Miss Vera, I hope you had your letter?”
“Yes, Mary,” said Vera with a start, and seized a book on the table
under pretence of reading. But Mary was not so dull as not to see the
warm color that came flushing over the girl’s neck, or the tremulous
instinct of self-defence which made her seize upon the book which she
did not read. Mary had the matter in her own hands. She resumed----
“How long your hair do grow, to be sure, Miss Vera. Mother was always
proud of your hair; and now here’s somebody come as thinks more of it
than coined gold. You’ll write him just a little word, won’t you, Miss
Vera, dear, to keep up his heart, poor gentleman? just a little
word----”
“Mary, you ought not to speak to me so. What have you to do with
gentlemen, or me either? How did you get it? Was it you that put it
there? Oh Mary, you shouldn’t have done it--you must never, never do it
again.”
“Miss Vera, you don’t know nothing about it,” said Mary. “Me--I’ve kept
company with my young man since I was just your age, and nobody shan’t
come between him and me. We’ve got to wait, but I don’t mind waiting,
and I’ve told mother so, when she’s been at me about it. But look you
here, Miss Vera, your papa is the only one you’ve got to look to, and if
you hold out he’ll give in. They always does. I never see a young
gentleman more deep in love, and to give him up would be a burning
shame.”
“Oh, Mary, how can you, how dare you talk so?” said poor Vera, with her
face burning. “What would become of us both if papa or Miss Campbell
knew?”
“They couldn’t do much harm to me, Miss,” said Mary. “A servant as knows
her work is always sure of a good place. Don’t you be afraid for me. And
they can’t harm you neither, not if you holds out. Whoever holds out
wins; them as gives in is the only one as is beaten. Miss Vera, you’ve
got a spirit of your own, for all they think they have broken it. If I
were you, I’d write him a word just to keep up his heart, poor
gentleman; and I’d up and tell my papa that he might be a bluebeard or a
raging Turk, as much as he likes--it wouldn’t make no effect upon me.”
“Oh, Mary, Mary, hush! You don’t know what you are saying!”
“Don’t I just? It’s you as don’t understand, Miss, not me. I know all
about it, and a deal more than you do, and this I’ll say, that no father
nor tyrant would ever make me false to my young man. I wouldn’t do it,
not for the world; and Miss Vera, I can’t believe as you’re a traitor in
your heart.”
This was such a totally new view of the question that it took away
Vera’s breath. A traitor! She had never once thought of treachery in the
question. How long Mary’s arguments went on I need not say. She came
back, stealing into Vera’s room in the dark after Miss Campbell had been
there and declared the girl to be feverish, and had given her some white
homœopathic globules, to calm her down again. “It is the hot weather,”
Miss Campbell said to herself, never suspecting Mary. And the maid stole
back in the dark, and the little mistress cried and let her talk, happy
yet ashamed of the company and the confidences, and the familiarity and
sympathy. Mary pleaded so well that Vera was persuaded to write half a
dozen words, in great trouble and agitation, to the effect that Mr. Fane
must not be unhappy, that he must not think of her; but that she should
always think of him, and pray for him, and hoped he would be very happy
all the same. Was it wrong? was it very wrong? Should not a girl answer
a letter from a gentleman as well as from another girl? Vera knew,
alas, that this was not at all the question. But she read over Fane’s
letter again, and put it under her pillow when she went to sleep. He was
the only one who felt for her. They two stood against the world!
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIII.
AN ANXIOUS MOTHER.
Mrs. Tremenheere had spent a very uneasy month no less than her
daughter, but in a way which had no gildings of romance and happiness
like Vera’s trouble. The holidays had come, but had brought no pleasant
wanderings, no genial ease to her. She had not gone to Switzerland, as
she had proposed. Edward, disturbed and excited as he was, had declared
himself quite indifferent to Switzerland. “If there is to be nothing but
play in my life, I may as well play here as anywhere else,” he had said,
with a gloomy ill-temper quite unusual to him; and he spent the sunny
weeks of August in trudging about from one cricket match to another, an
occupation which his mother sighed over, without enjoying that kind of
honor and glory which consists in the report of “scores” in the
“_Field_.” These, it is to be supposed, gave some consolation to him,
but they did not cheer her, especially as they were diversified by long
and painful debates with her son on the subject which he had never put
aside or relinquished for a moment. Edward had changed his nature
altogether. From a docile amiable lad, ready to accept her guidance and
to be kind to everybody around him, without standing upon his own will,
he had changed into a dogged monomaniac, a being of one idea, thinking
of nothing but the project which had taken possession of his generally
dull imagination, and set it all aflame. When a slow and tranquil mind
gets roused into fanaticism the result is much more serious than with an
inflammable nature; the fire takes deeper hold, and burns with a more
concentrated and obstinate force. Edward could think of nothing but this
idea of his. He too began a correspondence essentially as clandestine as
Vera’s, though his letters came openly by the post. The boy was free
from surveillance, and therefore had no temptation towards
communications absolutely secret; but Edward wrote letters to his new
friend, the traveller, which he would not for worlds have shown to his
mother, and which were full of plans and engagements which she neither
knew nor sanctioned. The expedition was to set out in October, and the
mind of Mr. Buckram Bass was not disturbed by the fact that his young
convert, his eager disciple, was forming plans and pledging himself to
acts of which his friends disapproved. Men look leniently upon such
kinds of family treachery. Poor Mrs. Tremenheere felt that the world
would be against her when she set herself in opposition to an enterprise
which would leave her desolate, and throw away as she thought her son’s
better life. “Did she expect to keep him always at her apron strings?”
she already heard people say, and Edward himself, all the more that he
was not very bright, took up with fervor that common notion. “You know,
mamma,” he said, “if I were a girl it would be quite different; but I
can’t stay by you always, can I? You would not like to see me stick fast
at home, a poor creature like Tom Crabbe, always thinking of the danger
of wet feet!”
“You know I do not wish for anything of the sort,” said Mrs.
Tremenheere.
“No, you are not foolish like that; but is it not something of the same
kind in a more sensible way? You don’t mind my cricket, and that sort
of thing. You would let me go up Mont Blanc--all for my amusement. You
wouldn’t have me laughed at for your anxieties. I know, mother dear, you
are a great deal too wise and good for that. But when I want to throw
myself into real work, into something that will be of use in the world,
then you turn round upon me--you who have always been so good, and
refuse, because it is so far away, because it is such hard work----”
“Eddy,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, “it is always a bad thing to attribute
low motives to other people--even people much less near to you than I
am. Can you not conceive it possible that I have some better reason than
even regret to lose you and anxiety about the hardships involved? I
don’t say all the same that these would not be reason enough----”
“What reason?” said Edward. “I don’t know what other objection there
could be.”
“To me it would seem like throwing away all your chances,” said his
mother. “I don’t mean only of success in the world; that is important
enough, Eddy, though you shake your head. If any misfortune was to
happen, if our investments were to go wrong, for instance, like so many
people’s, you might have the strongest of inducements to think of
success in the world. Money never comes amiss, as everybody will tell
you--nor friends.”
“You, too, mamma!” cried Eddy, “is self-interest then the only
rule?--make friends to help one on in life, as my father said.”
“Your father knows more of the world than either you or me--yes, to help
you on, and to be helped on in turn--all true assistance is mutual; but
I did not think of that,” said Mrs. Tremenheere. “What I was thinking
was this--that you will throw yourself out of all the reasonable chances
of life if you go on with this mad notion, and separate yourself from
all your friends, and give up everything--prospects, occupations,
suitable companions--all for what? for what, Eddy?”
The lad’s face flushed. “For the good of mankind,” he cried. “Oh yes, I
know what you will say, mother! you will say that is too vague, too
general, and means nothing. I can’t help that, I can’t bring it down to
details. Africa is swarming with millions of poor creatures who know
nothing; it is to bring civilization to them, and education and trade,
to raise them above the possibility of slavery; why are they slaves
except because they are too ignorant and debased to know better? Think,
mother--is not that of greater use than anything a fellow like me could
do at home? I am not clever, you know I am not clever--but that will not
matter in Africa; so long as one is strong and honest and honorable.”
“Oh, Eddy, Eddy!” cried his mother in despair, “what am I to say to you
to dispel this illusion, my generous, good boy!”
“I will tell you what you can do, mother dear,” he said, coming up to
her, putting his arms round her, “let me go! My heart is set on it; why
should you not let me go, mamma? you never refused me anything before. I
know very well I have often disappointed you; you would have liked me to
be clever, to take a high place in school, to gain prizes and
things--but you have never blamed me when I failed, never! You have
given in to me in many a thing you did not care for, because you saw I
cared for it. Oh, don’t think I haven’t seen it! I knew it well enough.
You have never reproached me, nor refused me anything. Mother, don’t
turn round for the first time in my life, and refuse me now; don’t fail
me now, the first time when it has been really important, when I have
wanted it most!”
“You ought to see the difference,” said poor Mrs. Tremenheere; “I have
been ready to give in to you even when I did not approve, when it was of
no great importance; but now, when it is of the last importance, when
all your more serious interests are involved, how can I go against my
own judgment for the mere sake of pleasing your fancy, Eddy? You ought
not to ask me, and I--I ought not to listen.”
“I cannot see that,” he cried. “I don’t see why you should depart from
the way you have always treated me. As for me, don’t suppose this is a
mere fancy,” he added, growing red; “it is a fancy I will never depart
from; you may oblige me to put it off, but I will give it up never.”
Some one fortunately came in then, and stopped the further discussion;
but such conversations took place daily between the mother and son, and
the reader may judge how painful they were, and confusing to the mind
of Mrs. Tremenheere, who had gone all these years on the principle that
to yield all legitimate gratification to her son was the best mode of
education, and to place in him unlimited confidence. It had answered
very well up to this moment. Edward, who knew that he would not be
opposed in any innocent and natural wish, had been less, not more,
exacting, than many others more strictly governed; but now, what was she
to do now? to preserve the tradition of her theory without its spirit,
to yield to him for his own destruction, as she had yielded to him for
his innocent pleasures. To refuse and cross him--how hard it was! but to
consent to what she thought his ruin, that was harder still.
It was while Mrs. Tremenheere was involved in this painful controversy,
not knowing what was to be the end of it, that she received suddenly a
letter from Elinor Meadows, telling her about the love of Oswald Fane
for Vera. The letter was long and full of details, recounting the
efforts which the young man had made to see Mr. Tremenheere, and gain
his consent; and how, failing in this, he had appealed to her to
intercede for him with Vera’s father, and how this, too, had failed;
proceedings which had been taking place in the meanwhile. I scarcely
know by what rule it is that a youthful love-story bulks so much more
largely in the eyes of an unmarried woman, who may be supposed to have
had no such experiences of her own, than in those of a married woman,
who must of necessity, one would imagine, have herself passed through
some such passages; but so it is generally, and Mrs. Tremenheere was no
exception to the rule. Her own trouble seemed to her much more serious
than any folly about love, which no doubt Elinor had put into the
children’s heads. But though she was impatient she wrote to Vera,
telling her she was too young, much too young, to think of any such
thing, and that her first duty was to please her father, and give up
anything that he thought improper for her. When, however, Mrs.
Tremenheere had written this letter, it occurred to her, with a kind of
whimsical vexation, that it was exactly the kind of letter which her
husband would probably write to Eddy when he knew of the controversy in
which they were engaged, and this idea made her think again,
pre-occupied as she was, of her poor little woman-child, left to Miss
Campbell’s sole society, in all the tremors and distresses of that
fanciful moment, when Love and all involved in it had been first
suggested to her mind. Poor Vera! Would her father be gentle, as he
ought? Would not she now feel deeply and doubly what it was to be
without a mother? Mrs. Tremenheere’s mind, withdrawn from Vera by the
immediate vexations which were more near to her, awoke to this all at
once with that sudden, painful sense how much she was herself to blame
for depriving Vera of a mother, which gives double force to every pang.
After a day or two, during which, amid all her own troubles, this
painful question kept returning perpetually to her mind, she decided at
last to write to her husband. She must not interfere, but yet perhaps he
would be glad to have his wife’s assistance at such a moment, as she
would be glad to have his. Accordingly, in the beginning of September,
when all her own anxieties were growing greater, day by day, she took
the final resolution, and wrote to him as follows, wording her letter as
carefully as if she had been writing to the Queen:----
“DEAR CHARLES,--I don’t know whether you begin to find out, as I
do, how very much more difficult it is to manage children when they
are grown up, and begin to have fancies and opinions of their own,
than when they are small and can be commanded without explanation.
I am sorry to say I have made this discovery in a disagreeable way,
Eddy, all at once, without rhyme or reason, has fallen in love with
a life of adventure, and gives me no peace, trying to wring from me
a consent to let him go off to Africa with Mr. Buckram Bass’s
expedition. Perhaps a few words from you would help to make him
more reasonable, if you would take the trouble to write to him. He
is so good a boy in every other respect that it is very painful for
me to be obliged to cross him; and yet I am sure you will agree
with me that on this point it would be weakness and almost
wickedness to yield to his wishes.
“Elinor Meadows has written me some rigmarole about Vera and a
lover. A lover at her age! I hope it is only one of Elinor’s many
delusions in respect to this favorite subject, and that our dear
little girl’s mind has not yet been disturbed by any such ideas I
know this is the time you appropriate to relaxation, and it has
occurred to me that if Vera has known of this proposal, and has
been at all upset by it, you may dislike leaving her in the sole
companionship of Miss Campbell, who, though I don’t doubt a most
admirable person, does not look very sympathetic. If this should be
the case would you trust her to me? I should, I need not say, take
the greatest care of her, and preserve her from every suggestion of
premature love-making; her company would be very good for Eddy, who
is in an extremely unsettled state of mind, and it would be very
sweet and delightful for me. I hope, too, you might find it a
relief to your anxiety to dispose of Vera comfortably with me while
you are absent. Pray give me your advice on the other subject. With
love to Vera,
“I am, ever affectionately yours,
“ADA TREMENHEERE.”
Mr. Tremenheere received this letter just as he was arranging his plans
to send his daughter to the seaside. It was an unfortunate moment. More
difficult to manage! No, he would not acknowledge anything of the kind.
For a girl at least it was always the best way to command without
explanation. He thought but little of what his wife said about Eddy,
which no doubt was so much dust thrown in his eyes to blind him to the
real meaning of the proposed interference--as if he was to be taken in
so easily! He answered this letter by return of post. He was angry with
Elinor Meadows for her interference, and angry that his wife should know
anything about it. They should all find that he was quite able to manage
Vera and Vera’s lover without any help from them. The answer he returned
was as follows. It was not by any means so carefully written as the
epistle to which it was a reply:--
“MY DEAR ADA,--I am very sorry that you find any difficulty with
Eddy after all the indulgence you have shown him. Of course I shall
be quite ready to write and point out his duty to him if you think
there is really any necessity for such a step; but I should hope he
has not been spoiled to such an extent that he has not sense to see
what a fatal piece of absurdity this would be. It is really too
ridiculous and too entirely out of the question, I feel sure, to
warrant any serious alarm.
“As for Vera, I am very much obliged to you for volunteering to
take her off my hands, but up to the present moment I have seen
nothing in her to make such a transference necessary. I have no
doubt the system upon which she has been trained will continue to
answer perfectly, as it has done hitherto, and neither Vera nor I
have found anything wanting in Miss Campbell as a companion, though
I am aware you don’t like her. That perhaps was to be expected.
Vera is quite well, and goes to Worthing with her admirable friend
and governess the day after to-morrow. Thanking you all the same
for your kind offer, and with love to Eddy, who I trust by this
time has come to his senses, I am, my dear Ada,
“Affectionately yours,
“C. TREMENHEERE.”
This letter was very irritating to Mrs. Tremenheere. Her services were
not only rejected, but rejected with something like contumely, and the
suggestion that it was to be expected she should dislike Miss Campbell
made her furious. Why should she dislike Miss Campbell? It was all she
could do to refrain from falling upon Elinor Meadows, who had come to
her the night before it arrived, while she was still entertaining the
hope of being permitted to have her child with her. “She is not coming,
she is going to Worthing with Miss Campbell,” she said; and
magnanimously swallowed the other words which were fain to come.
“Ah!” cried Miss Meadows, with a start of interest. She was on Oswald’s
side, and delighted to feel that she should be able at once to give him
news as to where his little lady had been taken; for to be sure she was
ignorant of Mary, and all that went on through Mary’s means.
And thus poor Vera’s affairs drew to a climax. Oswald Fane, I need not
say, followed Miss Campbell and her charge to Worthing, where twice
over, by Mary’s help, he saw Vera in the early morning before Miss
Campbell was out of bed, when the girl went out for a walk--as it was so
natural she should do--with her maid. But on the last of these two
interviews Fane had lost all idea of prudence or patience. It was not
only that he was hotly in love, and kept from all legitimate intercourse
with the object of his impetuous young affection; but Mary, with whom he
was now in constant communication, and whose head was turned by the
delight and excitement of the whole transaction, drew such a touching
picture to him of Vera’s solitude and semi-imprisonment, that Fane’s
blood boiled, and it seemed the first of duties to deliver her.
“She ain’t found out as Miss Vera is up early of a morning, not yet,”
said Mary, “which it is my young lady’s only breath of freedom; but
you’ll see she will afore long, for there’s spies all about. Mercifully
she’s fond of her bed in the morning, is Miss Campbell; but as soon as
she finds it out, don’t you think for to see Miss Vera any more--not to
say as it’s as much as my place is worth now.”
“Never mind about your place,” said the lover. “You shall have your
place all right, don’t you fear.”
“Well, sir,” said Mary, curtseying, “I’ve done my best for you; but if
you’ll take my advice you won’t let that poor dear linger on here, a
prisoner, and nothing better. Daren’t take up her own letters she
daren’t, her letters from her poor mamma, nor lift her head from her
book, nor go a step without the old one after her. But for me, I know
she’d die,” Mary added emphatically. And indeed it was true that among
them they had brought poor Vera into a state of excitement in which the
child’s mind could find no rest. Her temper and her spirit rose against
the tyranny exercised over her. Miss Campbell, and only Miss Campbell,
all day; her intercourse with the external world, except through Miss
Campbell, stopped short; no one near to give the poor child any
counsel--and Mary’s insidious whispering in her ears, and the daily love
letters, with all their wonderful flattery and worship. What wonder that
poor Vera by and by found herself ready for anything? A panic seized her
indeed when Fane unfolded his plan, and showed her exactly how
everything was to be done, and how they were to be married in a church
in London, where already, without consulting her, he had put up the
banns. Married! the words froze Vera’s blood in her veins, and then sent
it tingling and burning all over her in fright and wonder and shame.
Married!
“Well, Miss, it’s a thing that happens to most folks,” said Mary, “and
all the young ladies as I’ve ever known is pleased to be asked young.
I’ve known a many as has been married at sixteen. It’s early, but still
when a lady has set her heart on a gentleman as ain’t allowed to come
and see her nor keep her company, what is to be expected? It ain’t your
blame, Miss, but them that drove you to it----”
Vera, in her confused and frightened ponderings, felt that there was
some truth in this. They were driving her to it. Shut up here, never
free to do anything, seeing nobody except by stealth--and lo, if she
liked to-morrow she might be free to go where she pleased, to see whom
she pleased, to be perpetually by his side who had made the world such a
different place to her. To be sure the idea of being married was very
appalling; but she only trembled and shrank back at the word; she no
longer made any serious opposition now.
The arrangements were all concluded while Mr. Tremenheere was in
Scotland, among a circle of friends, very much satisfied with himself;
and while Mrs. Tremenheere, worried and unhappy, was arguing with
Edward, forgetting for the moment all about Vera; and while Miss
Campbell was listening to Rollin with that routine attention which the
unfortunate educators of humanity somehow attain by long practice. Not
without excitement, not without a passing doubt, did Fane arrange all
the details. It was a risk, for he was not rich, and what might happen
to them was very uncertain. But it was only by moments that this cold
shadow came over him--to deliver Vera and make her life ever after a
dream of happiness, to be happy himself, beyond words in having her,
these were the motives that were uppermost in his mind, and he waited
with impatience, for the decisive moment. The last step was precipitated
by the discovery on Miss Campbell’s part of one of the morning walks
which the girl had taken, and which a slip on Vera’s part had betrayed
to her.
“Do you mean to say you go out in the morning before I am up?” said Miss
Campbell. Mary, who was present, made signs of every possible kind to
her mistress, and even stole behind her, suggesting a fib.
“Yes,” said Vera, whose moral failure had not gone so far. She trembled,
but she told the truth. “I have been out twice in the morning when it
was very fine--but Mary was with me,” she added, falteringly.
Miss Campbell sent a suspicious glance at Mary, but could do no more, as
there was no evidence against her. “I think perhaps, on the whole, Vera,
it will be better for you to have your bed brought into my room,” she
said. This roused all Vera’s spirit.
“Into your room, Miss Campbell? Why?” she said, with a quivering lip. “I
have always had a room of my own.”
“Yes, but then there were no reasons against it. I wish you to be in my
room now. Don’t say anything. I know what I am doing, and I am
responsible to your papa. Mary, give the orders to-morrow. It is too
late, I suppose to-night?”
“Yes, Miss Campbell, they’ve all gone to bed, or going,” said Mary.
“I’ll see to it first thing to-morrow.”
Vera went to her little room, stunned by this last blow. No more privacy
to think, no more possibility of getting her letters, and feeding her
heart upon them, of talking about him to her attendant. Mary followed
her up-stairs, a little frightened in her turn, feeling that the crisis
had come, which was too exciting to be comfortable. As long as things
could go on without coming to a crisis it was better fun. But even Mary
felt a certain trembling now.
“What am I to do? I will not bear it. I cannot bear it,” said Vera. “It
has all come to an end now.”
“Oh! Miss Vera,” said the maid, dead frightened. It was Vera now, after
being tempted and led on so long, who took the lead. She settled
everything in a few quiet words. “Stay here and sleep on the sofa,” she
said--which was a wise precaution; for otherwise, Mary, struck with a
sudden panic, was capable in pure fright of betraying everything to Miss
Campbell, already excited and full of alarm.
That morning, when it was scarcely daylight, Vera, with her maid after
her, stole out of the house, while still Miss Campbell and everybody
else in the big lodging-house was fast asleep.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIV.
THE BOY’S APPEAL.
“Mother, now you must come to a decision. You cannot keep me longer in
suspense. Mr. Bass writes to me that there is only one vacant place in
the expedition, and that he cannot leave it longer unfilled up. It must
be Yes or No.”
“I have said No, Eddy, a hundred times.”
“But without due consideration,” he cried eagerly. “Think mother! How
often have you said that it was easier for every one when a fellow had a
bent one way or another, when he knew what he wanted to be. I never did
till now; one thing was the same to me as another; I was ready to do
whatever you said, and then you regretted that I had no bent! But now
that I have a wish, a strong desire, you deny me, you will not give me a
plain answer. The responsibility will be on you,” cried Edward, with
excitement, “if you baulk me. I feel I can do this, and I don’t know
what else I can do, and I don’t care for anything else in life.”
He was hot and flushed with eagerness. She was pale, and her face drawn
with anxiety and distress. The boy assailed with all the eagerness of
his young strength and self-will, the mother, torn by conflicting
emotions, resisted. All was unity in his mind, all contention and
complication in hers. She would have done anything in the world to
please him. She would have made any sacrifice to secure him his
wish--except the sacrifice he demanded, the sacrifice of his own
prospects, and comfort, and use in life. Even, feeling this deeply, and
feeling that it was her duty to resist him, the effort of doing so wrung
her heart.
“I know I have the responsibility,” she said gravely. “You are too young
to judge for yourself, and if you were older you are excited, Eddy, and
your mind is warped. I cannot consent to it. If I must speak decisively
let me do it at once. I cannot give you up to this vagabondism, this
mere wild course of adventure. All that man says is but words--fine
words, brave words, but nothing, nothing more, Eddy. I know what I am
speaking of. I cannot consent.”
“Then, mother--” he sprang up furiously to his feet, his whole aspect
changed. He looked as if about to pour upon her some violent outburst of
rage or reproach. Then he stopped suddenly. “If it is to be so,” he said
with a sombre countenance, “if you refuse me this only thing I have ever
cared for, then all is over with me. I don’t care what becomes of me. Do
what you like, it doesn’t matter any more.”
“This is folly--it is madness, Edward!”
“You may call it what you please,” said the lad, with a sullen shrug of
the shoulders. “One word or another, what does it matter? It is all one.
Mamma, I know you mean well, you think it is for the best; but you have
crushed all the life out of me, and I don’t care now what I do.”
“You will feel differently, Eddy, when you have considered--when you
have thought of it more.”
“Considered! Thought! As if I had done anything else for weeks,” he
said, with something like scorn; and there ensued a heavy pause, a pause
which neither broke--until at last after awhile he rose dully, and went
away, thrusting his hands down to the depths of his pockets. Poor Mrs.
Tremenheere was left victorious, but miserable. She had broken her
boy’s heart--for his good. She knew it was for his good, but still, as
he said, she had crushed him, she who would rather have been crushed
herself a hundred times. She had all the feebleness of a mother, though
she thought herself a strong-minded woman; the moment she had refused
him absolutely she began to think, would it have been possible to let
him go? Perhaps--if he had been allowed to try it, to go a certain
distance, to make the discovery for himself what it really
was--_perhaps_ that might have cured him; whereas, now it would be his
dream and ideal all his life. I can scarcely tell how she managed to
live through the afternoon without conceding to Eddy’s downcast looks
what her better judgment had refused to his entreaties, but she did hold
out for the next day, and the next again. She saw him wandering about
listlessly, not caring to go out, not caring for his cricket, not even
waking up when the _Field_ came with all its news. When a boy like
Edward Tremenheere can resist the _Field_, he must be bad indeed. Poor
Eddy looked entirely broken down. He thrust his shoulders up to his ears
and his hands down into his pockets. He left off whistling, he left off
smiling, and if indeed his mother had broken his heart, as he said, he
paid her back in her own coin, and broke hers. Never had there been a
more melancholy house than the villa for these two days. At last Mrs.
Tremenheere could bear it no longer.
“Edward,” she said, the third morning, throwing aside the diminutive,
half consciously in the solemnity of the circumstances, “this is more
than I can bear. You look as if you had lost all your friends, all you
care for----”
“So I have,” he said sullenly; and then with a look that wrung her heart
he added, “Have patience a little, mother. I have lost a great deal more
than you think--the first thing I ever really cared for. I daresay I
shall be better after a while, but I can’t look cheerful all at once.
Leave me alone till I come to myself--if I ever do.”
“You break my heart,” she said, “Oh, Eddy, if I could give in to you I
would--but how can I, feeling as I do? And you would be the first to
blame me when you are older, and see things in their true light.”
“I shall never do that,” said Edward doggedly. “The true light is what I
have been seeing so long. Now I have fallen back into no light at all,
and that is what I must put up with for the rest of my life.”
Then there was another interval of gloom and silence--another day with
still the same heavy languor upon him. Mrs. Tremenheere was altogether
overwhelmed. In the afternoon she went up-stairs, and put on her bonnet,
tying the strings resolutely before the glass, and looking almost
fiercely at her own pale face.
“I am going to town,” she said, meeting Edward on her way to the door.
“I cannot bear the responsibility you have thrown on me. I am going to
consult your father. If he thinks anything can be done to satisfy you I
will put aside my own feelings. I will not put myself in your way.”
A sudden light of joy flushed over Edward’s face.
“How good you are, mother, how good you are to me!” he cried; but then
he paused and shook his head. There was not much faith to be put in his
father. Still, a glimmering of hope sprang up in him the moment he found
that the question was not entirely concluded. He walked to the railway
station with her, his face already lightened, his head more erect, his
shoulders in their usual place. He was more tender to her than ever he
had been, compunctious, sorry for having troubled her, now that he saw a
revival of possibility that he might yet have his own way.
It was a desperate resolution which Mrs. Tremenheere had taken; all her
pride, both as wife and woman, would have to be sacrificed. She would be
obliged as good as to confess, she who in her heart thought her
experiment so much more successful than her husband’s, that she had
failed, that the mother was not enough, that she required his aid to
influence and guide her boy. Only a few weeks before her husband had
rejected her proffered aid with scorn; and now she had to go humbly to
seek his, to lay her problem before him. She walked to the little
station with a sense of humiliation and downfall in her mind which her
very anxiety could scarcely keep in balance. Never, after thus giving
in, could she hold up her head as of old before either father or son. If
she had done wrong she felt that she was punished. She could scarcely
respond to Edward’s rising cheerfulness as she went along that dreary
bit of way. What an end it was to all her pride, to all her theories! A
train had just arrived from town as she approached the platform of the
country station to wait for her train going up to town. The people
streaming out kept her back till she began to fear she would be too
late. Going on in advance, anxiously, leaving Edward behind her, she
almost ran against a gentleman who was coming with equal haste and
eagerness in the other direction, but whom in her pre-occupation she did
not notice except to get out of his way. Then she stopped short
suddenly, stopped by the cry he gave at seeing her--“Ada!” She raised
her head quickly, thunderstruck. It was Mr. Tremenheere.
“You are coming to me?” he said, holding out his hand, and stranger
still, drawing hers within his arm, and leading her with him as if they
had been the most confidential of friends. His manner was anxious and
excited. “You were coming to me, Ada. I can see it in your face.--She is
here!”
“She?” said Mrs. Tremenheere, excited too. “I don’t understand you.
Yes, I was coming to you, Charles.”
“God bless you, my dear!” he cried earnestly, “if she is safe with you
all is well.”
“Of whom are you speaking?” she said. “There is nobody with me but
Eddy;” then with a cry, “Vera! Something has happened to my child!”
Mr. Tremenheere was quite tremulous and shaken, his eyes bloodshot, his
countenance haggard, like an old man.
“Hush!” he said, “don’t let us publish it to everybody. She is not here,
then? God help us! I thought she must certainly have gone to you.”
She grasped his arm with both hands:
“Charles,” she said, “tell me what has happened? Tell me everything. It
is right I should know.”
“Yes, yes! it is right you should know. I came to you at once; it was
the first thought in my mind. We are both to blame, both to blame, if
anything beyond remedy has happened to her. Ada, she went away two days
ago, where we cannot tell. I have come down from Scotland, travelling
all night in answer to that woman’s telegram. Then I came on to you. I
thought, God help me! she was sure to be here; and when I saw you----
But pride must be at an end and everything else. I have failed with
Vera. I have driven her to despair; and where are we to find her, and
how?”
“I was coming to you with the same confession in my mouth,” said Mrs.
Tremenheere, with tears in her eyes. “I have failed as well. I was
coming to ask your help.”
“Has he gone away, too?”
“No; but something else,” she said. “Oh! forgive me, Charles, that is
not so urgent. Tell me about Vera, and we must plan what is best to be
done without delay.”
She forgot Edward and everything else. She turned down a quiet byway,
holding her husband’s arm, clinging to it. He told her his story, and
she listened, their two heads close together, their minds in absolute
union, in one interest, in one feeling. He told her how it had been
found out that Fane had followed Vera to Worthing, and how it was proved
at last that Mary, her maid, the daughter of her old nurse, was in
Fane’s pay, and working for him with all her might. He confessed that
Miss Campbell had been hard upon the girl, keeping her in a kind of
imprisonment.
“Carrying out my orders,” said the penitent father, “to the letter,
without thinking of the spirit; for, of course, that was never what I
intended. What I intended was by means of society and occupation to wean
her from any foolish fancy that might have crept into her mind; and,
indeed, I did not even know that she cared for the young fellow. I only
knew that he supposed himself to be fond of her.”
“She is such a child. It was not to be expected that you could think of
any strong sentiment on her part,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, soothingly,
“but tell me more--Was he with her? Was any one with her? and how, if
she was so watched, did she get away?”
“She went away in the morning, before any one was up, by the early train
to town. Mary was with her; no one else, so far as we can find out. It
appears,” said Mr. Tremenheere, with a look of shame, “that Miss
Campbell, hearing of some early walks she had taken, had threatened to
take her into her own room henceforward, to sleep there.”
“Vera would not put up with that. You never knew how impetuous she was;
but if Mary was with her, and Mary only---- Charles, had you reason to
think badly of this Mr. Fane?”
“Badly? No,” he said, with some impatience. “No. He is a mere nobody,
that is all. Younger brother of a commonplace squire in one of the
Midland counties--_quite_ distantly related to Lord Fanebury, with next
to nothing, and no prospects that I know of; a sort of half-artist, as
has been the fashion lately with idle young men--a man who could give
her nothing, neither money nor position, nor----”
“But that meant no harm--could not mean any harm? Oh! Charles, they are
both so young! and if you say she was harshly treated, my poor darling!
He had a good face----”
“Ada, you are always ridiculous,” he cried, giving her arm in sheer
impatience a hasty pressure with his. “What has the goodness of his face
to do with it? He was well-looking enough--the question is, What is to
be done? How are we to find her? I have set a detective on his track, of
course. Why do you cry out? Such things are done every day, and the
world need not be any the wiser. But tell me, if you have any
suggestion to make.”
“I am thinking,” she said. “But, in the first place you must come home
and rest, and take some food; you are worn out. Eddy and I, who are
fresh and untired, must work now.”
“Ah!” he said, drawing a long breath. “Yes, I am very tired; but I did
not expect you would think of me when Vera was in danger.”
“Oh! hush! hush!” she said, “are we not all one family, though we have
been fools and divided ourselves? We shall find Vera. She is a good
child, though she is hasty and young. She will not do anything there is
shame in. God bless her!” cried the mother, with tears in her eyes,
“wherever she is! She may be foolish and unhappy, but she will not go
wrong. Charles, come home and take some rest, or you will be ill. Leave
it for the moment to Eddy and me.”
It would be useless to say what Mr. Tremenheere’s feelings were when he
found himself in his wife’s house, which she called “home”--the villa he
had heard so often spoken of, but had never seen. His anxiety and
fatigue blunted the sharpness of his personal feelings. He took the food
that was served to him without even feeling it strange that she should
fill his glass with wine, and sit by him while he ate; and went to lie
down after his long vigil while she went to London with Edward, now
fully roused up, and for the moment delivered from all thought of
Africa. Mr. Tremenheere was no longer a young man, and he was very
tired; and somehow putting the whole troublesome business into other
hands seemed to relieve him, and gave him a degree of immediate ease
which a few hours ago would scarcely have seemed possible. No doubt her
mother would find her. A woman would know what another woman was likely
to do in such an emergency; and she was fresh, as she said, and untired,
whereas his head was aching with weariness. He had not slept for two
nights, and scarcely had taken any food. After his wife and his son had
left him, he wandered over the house in a curious languor of fatigue
which blunted even his anxieties. The pretty house, all still and
vacant, the broad rich landscape beneath, the sunny air and warmth and
sweetness worked upon him like a spell. How strange it was that he
should be here reposing himself, putting his burden upon other
shoulders! Yes, “we are all one family, though we have been fools and
divided ourselves.” How true that was! Mr. Tremenheere thought he had
said it himself, and in the strength of that virtuous and reasonable
sentiment went and lay down and slept. This new comer, who went to bed
in broad daylight, and who was thus left alone in possession of the
house, was a great wonder and excitement to the servants at the villa.
He was “Missis’s husband,” but he was not “Master.” “Something was up,”
everybody felt, from Jane, who was Mrs. Tremenheere’s feminine butler,
to Sam, the boy in the garden. Had he come and taken possession, and
ousted her altogether? The popular mind has great ideas as to what a
husband can do. They thought Mrs. Tremenheere’s independence must have
come to an end, and that the stranger had turned her out.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XV.
THE GIRL’S ESCAPE.
“Miss Vera, oh, where will you wait till I run and let him know? Stop a
moment, oh Miss Vera, please. Let me run and let him know! However is he
to come, Miss, if you won’t let me tell him! Oh Miss Vera, please!”
“Come along, come along! the train is going,” said Vera. She had taken
the lead at last. She did not know what she was going to do, and had no
thought of separating herself from her lover, whose suggestion had put
this flight into her mind, and whose presence seemed a necessary part of
it. But for the moment she was desperate, and to her excited mind it
seemed that Fane must know of it by instinct. She kept hold of her maid,
holding her fast. She had never gone anywhere by herself, nor been left
alone in any public place. Mary was taller than she,--older,--used to
moving about the world. Vera held her with a clutch on her arm,--holding
her by moral force rather than physical. “I shall die if you leave me,”
she said. “Come,--come; the chief thing is to get away.”
“But, Miss Vera, Mr. Fane!”
Vera made no answer, but clutched her closer, drawing her into a
carriage. It was a train chiefly used by workmen and people given to
very early hours. Vera thought nothing of the tickets, but Mary did;
whose code of respectability was dreadfully wounded by this unauthorized
intrusion into a public conveyance. And they had no luggage,
either,--nothing except a small black bag, into which the maid had
thrust her young mistress’s little trinkets,--many of them the useless
and valueless ornaments of a child.
It was the quaintest half-comic version of the flight of the traditional
princess, with her devoted attendant and her jewels. The beads and the
little lockets in Mary’s bag were as unlike the casket of diamonds which
the heroine of old romance was bound to take with her, as little
sixteen-year-old Vera was unlike that impassioned and poetical
personage. When they were fairly off, and beyond the reach of any
immediate stoppage, in the carriage by themselves, it was Mary’s brain
that worked the most anxiously. As for Vera, she dropped back in her
corner with a sensation of rest and relief for the moment. She had
escaped. Nobody more alarming than a railway guard could climb the step
and look in at the window--no Miss Campbell could come and dictate to
her with suspicion in her eyes,--no lover, too urgent, too impassioned,
could frighten her youth with terrific suggestions of marriage.
Marriage! The idea frightened her almost as much as Miss Campbell did.
But for the moment both of these terrors were at a distance. No one
could say “Vera, it is time for Rollin;” or “Vera, in three days we
shall be married.” She was safe; and for two hours she leaned back and
rested, for it was a slow train.
Mary, however, had her hands full. An elopement which did not end in a
marriage was a horror to think of; and the fact that Vera’s flight was
premature, that the marriage could not be for two days yet, and that
Fane knew nothing of their sudden start,--this was a complication of
difficulties which it required all her skill to meet. When she had
extricated herself from the first of her troubles by paying the fare to
the guard,--and indeed it almost emptied both their purses to do
this,--she set herself to the consideration of her after-proceedings.
And in her thoughts there arose a very neat little plan. She had at
first intended taking her little mistress to the house of her mother,
who lived near Hampstead, and who, as I have already said, had been
Vera’s nurse. This had been settled when she had arranged the flight
with Fane for the eve of the intended marriage day. But as two days must
elapse, and there would, no doubt, be immediate pursuit, Mary evolved a
more astute arrangement out of her busy brain. She resolved to take
Vera,--not to her own mother, whom the pursuers would immediately think
of--but to the sister of her young man,--the gallant Guardsman with whom
Mary “kept company”--of whom nobody at Hyde Park Square knew anything.
When she had settled this to her perfect satisfaction, Mary had leisure
to rest, and indeed to dose,--a refreshment which, what with anxiety and
what with early rising, she required much. She woke up only as the train
arrived in London, and get her young mistress instantly into a cab.
“I’ve settled all where we’re going, Miss Vera; leave it all to me,”
said Mary. Upon which Vera put back her veil, and faced her conductor
with the appalling statement, “I am going to Hyde Park Square.”
“Oh, goodness gracious me! she has gone out of her senses!” cried the
maid. “Oh, Miss Vera! stop a moment! think a moment! For all we know
there is a telegraph after us, describing us like two thieves! Yes,
Miss, William street, Stanhope street, Pentonville,--that is the
address----”
“I am going,” said Vera, drawing herself up, “home to Hyde Park Square.
Be quiet, if you please,--I shall do what I think right, not what you
tell me,” and with that she put her head out of the window--“as if she
had been a hundred,” Mary said afterwards--and gave the address to the
coachman. Here was a business! Mary wept, and scolded, and remonstrated;
she tried every argument she could think of; she poured out reproaches
and adjurations. But Vera sat in the corner with her mouth shut tight,
her face pale, her small hands clasped together. She made no answer,
but she did not yield one iota, whatever her attendant might say.
“What is to become of Mr. Fane?” said Mary; “he can’t come to you there,
Miss, after he’s been forbid the house. Jervis ’d do a deal for me, or
for you either, Miss Vera; but to do that is as much as his place is
worth; and what’s to become of the poor young gentleman as thinks you
the light of his eyes? And what’s to become of me, Miss Vera?” she
continued with an outburst of tears. “I’m ruined for ever and ever if
that’s what you’re agoing to do. Your papa will turn me off without a
character; and I can’t blame him either, for all as I’ve been doing it’s
been for you. I’ve been a-thinking of your happiness, and master will
say as it’s ’is orders I ought to ’a been thinking of. And oh, goodness
gracious! what am I to do?”
“Do not be frightened, Mary,” said Vera, like a little princess. “I
shall write to papa--he is not at home, and there will be time to
explain everything, and to show him that it was Miss Campbell who did it
all. I have done wrong too,” said Vera, faltering; “but I will tell him
everything, and I hope he will forgive us all. We must try and do right
now.”
“That is all very well, Miss, after you’re married,--they always does,
after they’re married, go down on their knees, and say as they’re sorry.
But how are you ever to be married, Miss Vera, going like this, as bold
as brass, and quite open, to the Square?”
“I don’t want to be married, Mary,” said Vera, growing very red, and
speaking very low.
Upon which Mary uttered a scream of disgust and horror. “Oh, how could
you go deceiving him--how could you take him in like this!--to break his
heart, poor young gentleman!” she said. “If he goes to the bad after,
you mark my words, Miss Vera, it’ll be all along of you!”
This blanched Vera’s cheeks once more, though it did not change her
resolution. She did not wish to break Fane’s heart,--very, very far from
that. What she would have liked would have been to see him every
evening,--to get those letters,--to be always the one woman in the
world,--his princess,--his better life. None of these privileges was she
willing to part with; and perhaps after a long time it might be
possible to reconcile herself to the appalling idea of being married,
only not at present;--but indeed the very last thing in the world that
would have occurred to her was to break his heart.
She had her way, however; and went in spite of all opposition, to Hyde
Park Square, where her appearance startled very much the small
household, consisting of Jervis and a charwoman, who were left in
charge. Mary, however, making the best of a bad business, explained very
glibly that she had come with her young mistress on a variety of
businesses; deputed by Miss Campbell to take her place,--to go to the
dentist’s, to go to the dressmaker’s, and various other missions beside;
and Jervis was willing to be deceived, while the charwoman was strong in
the happy conviction that it was none of her business. Fane, whom the
clever young woman contrived to summon by telegram just as Miss Campbell
summoned Mr. Tremenheere, arrived that afternoon, and had an interview
with Vera in the deserted shades of Kensington Gardens. He was in a
great fright to find that she had gone home; but afterwards was brought
to approve by the plea brought forth by Mary--that it was the last
place in which they were likely to look for the fugitives.
When she got home after this interview, during which, in terror of her
lover’s remonstrances, the poor child had dissembled, and said nothing
about her newly-formed resolution, Vera wrote to her father a long
account of how it all was,--how she could not bear Miss Campbell any
longer; how Oswald Fane wished her to marry him, but she would rather
wait if papa would only come at once and stand by her. To this, however,
she added an energetic postscript, announcing her intention not to give
up Oswald Fane. And then she wrote to that personage himself, begging
him to pardon her,--calling him for the first time her “dear Oswald,”
assuring him that she should always love him,--always think of him; and
perhaps, some time after, when she was older--if he still wished it--But
how could she--how could she be married now?--Mary carried this last
letter to him and comforted him in his terror, declaring that all girls
felt just like that at the last moment, but that there was nothing
really to be apprehended.
“It can’t be said but what she’s dreadful young, if you come to think
of it,” said Mary--“six years younger than me.”
“But girls are often married at sixteen,” said Fane,--he had not his
wits sufficiently about him to pay Mary a compliment, as she expected.
He too felt it to be very serious. Poor little tender darling! Was his
love cruel to her? Ought he to have waited without being bidden? Ought
he to have taken advantage of her helplessness and loneliness? This
thought made Oswald’s pillow very uneasy that night. He was a better man
than he himself knew. Though it was hard, it seemed to him almost as if
he could sacrifice himself for Vera’s good. But then, who would take
care of her as he would? To give her back into the hands of her father
and Miss Campbell would be barbarous. He could not do so,--certainly, he
said to himself, that could not be for Vera’s good.
Thus Tuesday passed; Mr. Tremenheere, posting through London on the
Wednesday morning, had not time to go to his deserted house, nor did he
think it necessary; and again the long day crept on while he went to the
villa, and her mother resumed the search in London, hurrying from one
place to another,--to the house of Miss Meadows, to Fane’s
lodgings--who was denied to her, although he watched her with great
trepidation from an upper window--and to the house of the nurse at
Hampstead. Vera passed the day in the gloomy house at Hyde Park Square,
scarcely venturing to look out,--wondering what was going to happen to
her,--if her father would arrive in time, or if she should have to be
married, or what was to be done. Jervis, too, had many thoughts in his
mind. There was “something up,” he felt sure, as the servants did at the
villa; and Jervis, an old family servant, began to consider whether he
ought not to take some active part in it. He would have made up his
mind, probably, and written to somebody--he could not tell whom--after
all the mischief was done.
Mrs. Tremenheere and her son drove about the town all the afternoon.
Miss Meadows was gone, and Vera had not been heard of there. Asking
after Fane at his club, they were told he was in Scotland--and at his
lodgings--that he was not at home. Then they went to the detective who
had traced him, and had seen him in close conversation with two young
women in Kensington Gardens, but being directed to look after the
gentleman, had paid little attention to the women, and had let them
steal away, he could not tell where. “That must have been Vera and her
maid,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, and immediately drove to Hampstead, where,
after some trouble, she found Mary’s mother, who declared she knew
nothing; but did it with so guilty an air that the pursuers went back to
get another detective, and sent him to keep up a vain watch on the old
woman’s house. In reality, she was as innocent and ignorant as either of
them; but she had received an intimation from her daughter that it was
possible Vera might come to her house, and therefore looked guilty when
the question was put to her. By the time this was done, it was growing
late, and the more unsuccessful Mrs. Tremenheere was, the more anxious
she grew. “Another night! and my child somewhere about, with no one to
take care of her!” she said, wringing her hands. “I cannot leave London
to-night, Eddy; she must be here!”
“But my father,--how anxious he will be! You cannot do anything during
the night.”
“I can be on the spot,” she said, with an unconscious emphasis, poor
soul. “Go down to him, my dear boy, and comfort him, and tell him I will
stay. You can come back with him to-morrow, for she is evidently in
London. No, better not do anything till I telegraph; he looked
dreadfully worn and shaken. He is not so young as he used to be. Be kind
to him, Eddy, and let him know I don’t blame him,--at least not at this
moment. I daresay he never thought what harm he might do.”
“I shall say nothing about harm or blame either,” said Edward; “he
looked very miserable. If you don’t telegraph, I shall bring him up to
town by the eleven o’clock train. And, mother, where shall you go?”
Then Mrs. Tremenheere repeated that strange return to common sense of
which Vera had been the originator. She looked at her son, and said
gently, “I am going to Hyde Park Square.”
“Mother!”
“Yes, it is the fittest place,--I never ought to have left it. If your
father pleases, I will go back again for good. We have done harm enough
by our divisions. My pride shall not stand in the way any longer. If
only my poor Vera, my innocent little darling, may be found!”
Edward went away confounded, home to his father, in the house which was
not his father’s. The boy did not know how he should like it. He felt
half ashamed, and wholly startled and taken aback,--something as a boy
might feel whose mother had told him she was about to marry again.
And Mrs. Tremenheere, with a heavy heart, drove to Hyde Park Square. It
was the fittest place for her to go,--the fittest place to take her lost
child to, should she find her. She smiled sadly at Jervis’s astonished
face when he saw her.
“Yes, Jervis, you may be surprised; it is trouble that has brought me,
but I hope not trouble that will last. Mr. Tremenheere knows that I have
come, and I dare say you can manage to give me a bed. What is that I
hear up-stairs? Jervis! Has the man gone crazy! Are you having visitors
in the house while the family is away?”
She stood in the hall, looking up the big dingy London staircase,
wondering at the sound of voices,--crying and exclamations, and a kind
of struggle. Then a light young step came rushing down the stairs,--a
little white figure, like a ghost, with floods of hair about its
shoulders, flashed round the windings,--appeared,--disappeared,--threw
itself with a shriek of joy into Mrs. Tremenheere’s arms.
“Vera!” she said, with a great cry. Where, but at home, and by her
mother, should the child have been found?
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XVI.
CONCLUSION--THE FATHER’S SHARE.
“You have heard nothing, I suppose?” said Mr. Tremenheere, huskily. He
grasped his son’s arm with a hand that trembled as they met in the
middle of the road.
“Nothing, sir, but my mother has stayed behind to be on the spot. She
seems to be full of hope,” said Eddy; and then he entered into the
details of all they had done. “I should have stayed too, but mamma likes
to do things herself;” said the lad. “I dare say she is quite right, for
she does them best; and she sent me down to make your mind easy.”
“Uneasy, you mean,” said his father with a forced smile; “till she is
found, there is no peace of mind for me.”
“At least you know that she is on the spot,” said Edward, unconsciously
copying his mother’s emphasis; and then they walked down the dark road
together,--scarcely seeing each other, still less knowing each other.
Mr. Tremenheere kept hold of his son’s arm.
“I did not think I had any nerves left,” he said; “I never could have
supposed twenty hours’ journey and two days’ anxiety would have taken so
much out of me. I got Miss Campbell’s telegram at ten o’clock on Monday,
and since then--but I have had a sleep this afternoon,--I must not count
this afternoon. Your mother has a great deal of energy, Ned; she is a
very clever woman. What a pity we did not get on! It would have been
better for us all,--better for Vera, poor child, and even for
you,--though nothing has happened to you,--if we had all been, as we
ought to have been, in our own home.”
Edward’s heart trembled at this address. His mother might have been got
to yield about Africa; but this father, this man of the world,--would he
yield? The young fellow had a moment of sharp conflict with himself; and
then he resolved to make a plunge into it, and know his fate.
“My mother was just going to consult you about me, when you came, sir.
There is a thing I have set my heart upon which she does not approve
of. My mother is very kind. Though she does not approve of it she could
not bear to see me cast down; and as a last chance for me she said she
would consult you. I wonder if you will be on my side! Oh, sir!” said
Edward throwing all the expression which the darkness denied to his
countenance into his voice, “you can’t think of what importance it is to
me. I told you before I should never be a great scholar. I am an
out-of-door fellow,--good at walking, and that sort of thing, not at
book-work. I never knew what I could do with myself that would be any
good till I heard of this!”
“Well, what is it? Let me hear,” said his father, “I am very much afraid
it must be something nonsensical, as you are so much in earnest about
it; and my advice is of little good just now,--my mind is all taken up
about the other affair. Nevertheless, let me hear what you have got to
say.”
There was a pause. It was strange how much more difficult Edward felt it
to state his case to his father than to his mother. Immediately, all
that might appear absurd in his fanaticism,--his own ignorance of the
subject, and his very faith in the traveller,--appeared to him as Mr.
Tremenheere might see them. He had been angry when his mother took this
view of the case; but the moment he saw it with his father’s eyes,
everything seemed to change. The meaning stole out of his own wishes,
the force out of his reasons. He faltered and hesitated, in spite of
himself.
“Well, sir,” he said, with a dogged determination to have it out, “Mr.
Bass was down here one day talking about his African Mission. Nobody
ever had such an effect upon me. I made up my mind at once that to go
with him was the thing I could do best; and I had a letter from him the
other day, saying there was one place still open for me. A woman, though
the best mother in the world, sees these things in a different light,”
said poor Eddy, encouraged by his father’s silence. “She thinks of the
distance, and the hardships; and my last chance is that perhaps you
might see it as I see it.” Here Eddy came to a breathless pause, and
waited for his answer, with a beating heart.
Had Mr. Tremenheere been in better spirits he would have laughed; but,
fortunately for Eddy, he was not in good spirits. He was worn out and
depressed, and amiable as perhaps he had never been before in his life.
“My dear Ned,” he said gently, in the darkness, rousing all the lad’s
hopes by the softness of his tone, “whether I might have agreed or
disagreed with your mother, scarcely matters in this instance. I am
afraid it will be a disappointment to you if you have so set your heart
upon it; but the fact is, there is to be no expedition to Africa under
the charge of Mr. Buckram Bass. That very clever man is supposed by some
people to be too clever. The Geographical Society will not give him a
groat, neither will Government; and his expedition has melted into thin
air. No one will go with him to Africa for many a day.”
“But I heard from him on Monday, about the vacancy,” cried Edward with a
gasp.
“Then he must have had some plan in his head for equipment, by which he
could make something,” said Mr. Tremenheere. “I cannot be mistaken, you
know, in my position; and so you may make it up with your mother, and
relieve her mind as soon as you choose.” Then moved by an amiable
impulse,--for the boy pleased him--he added, “I am very sorry for your
disappointment, Ned.”
“Oh, it does not matter,” cried the lad, with a great gulp of
self-control. Dark waters of bitterness surged up into Edward’s eyes,
but fortunately the darkness concealed them. And acting on an English
boy’s savage code of honor, he made a brave effort at once to talk of
other things, and covered the stab he had got. No word should any one
hear more on the subject from his lips with his will. The pain stung him
like that Spartan fox; but, like the boy whom it devoured, he would
rather die than complain.
And here Mr. Tremenheere was of more use to his son than the boy’s
mother would have been. She would have felt the sting for Edward as
sharply as he felt it for himself. She would have lavished a thousand
sympathetic tendernesses upon him to make up for his suffering. His
father did nothing of the sort. For one thing he did not truly realize
how great the blow was; but he was sorry for the disappointment--said so
once, and was done with it; and talked about other things, forcing Eddy
to answer him, and helping him to keep down the pain. But, poor fellow,
he had a bad night of it when it was too late to sit up any longer. It
obliterated Vera from his mind, and all his anxiety about her. Vera was
but a stranger to him after all; and this was so close a misery, and so
near!
The father and son made but a miserable breakfast next morning. “I must
get off to town, I cannot delay longer,” said Mr. Tremenheere. “When you
consider where that unhappy child may be--what may be happening to
her,--perhaps at that fellow’s mercy, confound him! No, no, I can’t
stay,--don’t ask me. Your mother must have no news, or she would have
telegraphed before now.”
“I am quite ready, sir,” said Edward. They were both of them pale and
miserable; and Mr. Tremenheere, forgetting already Edward’s own share of
trouble, was touched by this supposed sympathy. “You don’t know much of
your sister,” he said. “I will not forget, my boy, how you’ve thrown
yourself into it. Please God, when we find her we’ll be a more united
family. Ned, she and you will have to help me with your mother. She is a
proud woman, but for my part I am not proud; and I don’t mind making a
sacrifice if only--God help us!--we could find the child.”
“We shall find her!” cried Edward, this time with a rush of real
sympathy which came to his eyes, and made them shine; and though Mr.
Tremenheere knew that Edward’s confidence was without foundation, it
cheered him as the foolishest consolation sometimes does. He grasped his
son’s hand with a tremulous yet strenuous grasp.
“Come along,” he said; “I know it is too early for the train, but
somehow it is easier to endure one’s self when one is in motion. It
feels like doing something. Your mother has the best of it staying in
town. What a pretty place she has made of this! What a fool I was--good
heavens! what an ass! when she asked it, not to let her have the child
here!”
“Don’t think of that now, sir,” said Eddy, with feeling. “Come out into
the garden in the meantime,--the air will do you good.” He was very
sorry for his father. He led him through the little space which had been
planted so cleverly, and showed him the points of view, upon which they
both looked with pre-occupied eyes. It wanted half an hour yet to the
time for the train, and the station was not ten minutes’ walk. Then Mr.
Tremenheere remembered a note he had to write, and they went back into
the house that he might do it. He sat down at his wife’s writing-table,
and used the paper with her monogram. How strange that the recollection
should dart on him then of another time when he had done this,--when he
had taken a pretty sheet with “Ada” emblazoned on it, to write to his
sister of the engagement between Ada Langdale and himself! Curious
moment for such a reminiscence; but the man was weakened with much
unusual feeling, and he stopped to recollect it. “I think it must be a
good sign,” he said half to himself; “once I took her paper before----”
He was interrupted by a touch on his shoulder, and jumped up, nearly
upsetting the paraphernalia of the writing-table. “Charles,” said his
wife, taking him by both hands, “I went to our house last night, where
you took me when we were married; and there, at home, where she ought to
be, and where I ought to have been all the time taking care of her--I
found the child!”
“God bless you, Ada!” he cried, with a sudden great sob, forced from
him by the surprise and the joy. And then he made a blind clutch at her,
his eyes being full, and got her into his arms. “You have found
her,--and I have found you!”
And it was thus that these foolish people ended their matrimonial
quarrel. They had had ten years of it, which was certainly enough, and
it had not answered. But the reader must not imagine that all the
consequences dispersed into thin air when the principals took each
other’s hands, as Mr. Bass’s African Expedition had done. Edward’s heart
mended after a while, though it was very sore; but it would not have
mended so easily had Government and the Geographical Society encouraged
instead of making an end of the expedition of Mr. Buckram Bass. And
Providence, though it interfered on one side in this way, did not
interfere on the other to make an end of Oswald Fane. He stood in solid
flesh and blood in the path of the united family, refusing to let all be
as it ought to have been. Poor Oswald! it was wholesome punishment for
him to find his bird flown on the very day when he intended to fly with
her,--carrying her beyond pursuit or power of any one to touch her. But
a thing which has been carried so far can rarely stop there. As soon as
she was parted from him, and the terrible spectre of marriage removed
out of her way, Vera began to pine for her lover; and her lover began to
besiege the heart, soft with penitence and reconciliation, of Mrs.
Tremenheere. Between the two they worked so effectually that Mr.
Tremenheere, no longer absolute sovereign in Hyde Park Square, but
reduced to the safer limits of a constitutional monarchy and a joint
throne, had to give in at last; and much less alarmed by the word than
she had been a year before, Vera Tremenheere, at seventeen, with all the
pomp befitting a lawful ceremonial, permitted by all the authorities,
married Oswald Fane. I wish it was permitted me to kill the
uninteresting elder brother and his little son, and make the young pair
master and mistress of the paternal halls at Weathernook; but, partly by
her father’s influence, partly by that of Lord Fanebury, who came to the
marriage and good-humoredly declared the bridegroom to be his very
cousin, Oswald got a valuable appointment, and the young pair went to
Italy after all; and coming home, settled down very comfortably, and
were much happier than the improper and reprehensible beginning of
their story deserved; which is a bad moral, but to change it is beyond
my power.
Edward Tremenheere went into his father’s office, and became private
secretary to his father’s chief--an admirable appointment. In the
meantime, however, he was left free for a great deal of travel, and took
to climbing mountains, by special grace of Providence, and became a
member of the Alpine Club, atoning to himself in his holidays for the
responsibility and regularity of his everyday life. Miss Campbell, I am
glad to say, had saved enough money to retire upon an annuity, and
tortures young girls no more; but she still thinks Mr. Tremenheere’s
family monsters of ingratitude for not requiting her exertions in saving
their child. Mary was dismissed, as she deserved; but I fear
surreptitious means were used whereby she was enabled to marry her
Guardsman. Everybody had done wrong all round, and which was the one
that was to throw a stone? The only person who had a right to do so was
Elinor Meadows, who made a speech to the re-united family on the evening
of the day on which Oswald was first received among them, and Vera’s
happiness sanctioned by her parents. Miss Meadows pushed back the
vigorous rings of gray hair from her broad forehead and held out her
oratorical right hand. “You two old fools,” she said, “and you two young
ones, I don’t know which of you have made yourselves the most
ridiculous. I protest against this absurd happiness, which you have no
right to. All of you, in your turn, have come to me in the depths of
despair, and employed me to intercede for you. I never did the least
good by my attempts. How dare you, without either rhyme or reason, and
every law of justice against it, be so happy now?”
THE END.
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