by Ellen Wood
“Eight hundred, clear and sure, for Philip Danesbury’s widow, is more, in proportion, than we enjoy. She is one, and we are seven.”
“Oh, mamma! you ought not to look at it in that light.”
“If you presume to tell me what I ought, or ‘ought not’ to do,” she retorted, “I will send you to your room, Miss Danesbury.”
Isabel’s heart beat high: she leaned out of the open window to still it. Her step-mother’s fits of passion and injustice sometimes told heavily upon her.
“She is the bane of the family, is Mrs. Philip Danesbury.”
Isabel thought that the family had a greater bane, so far as its peace was concerned; but she did not say so. She leaned farther from the window, and watched for her father.
Mr. Danesbury was being detained by more things than one. He had been waited upon by a tenant of his, with a complaint against his younger sons. Just as the man was being dismissed, there arrived a messenger to say that Glisson was dying. She had been ill a few days with an affection of the chest, and Mr. Danesbury had been to see her; Arthur had been that very morning; but no immediate danger was apprehended. In the afternoon, a change had taken place.
Mr. Danesbury hastened to the cottage. There lay Glisson in bed, her eyes anxiously cast toward the door, looking for him. She was almost past speaking; almost past breathing; she feebly put out her hand as he approached, and took his. Her lips moved, and he bent his ear down to catch the sound:
“Master! bless you ! — and forgive!”
It was all she said. Whether the effort had been too much for her, or whether the minute for death had come, Glisson gasped twice and died.
“I thought you were not coming in to-day,” was Mrs. Danesbury’s fractious salutation when her husband entered. “Where’s Arthur!”
“He is gone to Mrs. Philip Danesbury’s,” was the reply; “and I have been detained. Glisson is dead.”
“Dead!” interrupted Isabel. “Is it not sudden, papa?”
“My dear, I thought yesterday that she would not get over it. She is gone, poor thing.”
“Poor thing!” sarcastically echoed Mrs. Danesbury, “I am sure it is a happy release for herself and for other people. The death of a drunkard always is.’’
“She was not that at last, mamma,” said Isabel: ‘‘not since she came back to Eastborough.”
“She took care to have her beer at meals, and your papa’s money going out to pay for it.”
“Be more charitable, Eliza,” spoke up Mr. Danesbury. “Animosity may surely cease, now she is dead.”
“Are you going to defend what she did here?” demanded Mrs. Danesbury, who was in one of her most contentious humours.
“Oh no. Glisson’s fate should prove a warning to all who may be acquiring a love for intoxicating liquors. For the sake of a little self-indulgence, she forfeited her good home here, lost her self-respect and her fair name, and died in obscurity, an object of charity.”
‘‘Isabel says that brother of Mrs. Phillip Danesbury’s is dead. Of course all his children are unprovided for.”
“The two daughters entirely so: but the sons are in a way to get their own living, or soon will be. The eldest is keeping his last term at Oxford, and will be in orders immediately. I saw Mrs. Philip Danesbury this afternoon. She is going to invite her nieces to live with her. It is fortunate that she is able and willing to receive them.”
“And to tax your purse for it, I conclude,” broke forth Mrs. Danesbury. “It is lucky for her family that she married a Danesbury.”
The colour mounted to Mr. Danesbury’s temples, as it had previously mounted to Isabel’s. “No,” he replied, after a pause of self-control, “Mrs. Philip Danesbury’s means are quite equal to her receiving this addition to her household, without her requiring me to provide for it.”
“Have you seen the boys?” again began Mrs. Danesbury.
“No. But I am sorry to say that I have heard of them. Fox has been to me to complain. They have been over there this afternoon, damaging his hedge, spoiling some linen spread there to dry, and giving him insolence and abuse.”
“I am sure they did not,” fired Mrs. Danesbury. “Abuse and insolence, indeed! Who is Fox, that he should dare to come to you with such a complaint?”
“He made a worse complaint than that,” returned Mr. Danesbury. “He says Robert was not sober.”
“Absurd!” retorted Mrs. Danesbury. “I dare say Fox was not sober himself.”
“I should like to know. where they are lingering: they are aware of the tea hour. They shall no longer be in idleness; it is the root of all mischief. They seem to have set themselves against coming into the Works: and you uphold them, Eliza.”
“Yes,” answered Mrs. Danesbury. “I wish them to choose professions: not business. Robert has decided upon his: he wants a commission purchased for him.”
Mr. Danesbury looked up, not only surprised, but mortified. “A commission!” he uttered; “what ever put that in his head? I can not sanction it. I very much disapprove of it.”
“He says he will be nothing else,” said Mrs. Danesbury, carelessly. “Why should you object to it?”
“I wish all my children to choose a peaceful employment. I am not reflecting on the brave defenders of our country,” he hastened to add, “but I prefer that my sons should not fix on the army as their profession. They must turn their thoughts to something useful; in which their time and their talents can be honourably employed; something that will give them an opportunity of saying, when they come to their death-bed, ‘I have led a useful life; I have improved the time and powers which it pleased God to intrust to me.’”
“And you believe this can not be, if they enter the army?”
“We are at peace,” said Mr. Danesbury, “as we have been for many years, and as we seem likely to continue for many years more. An officer, of the present day, passes his time in idleness: my sons must not so pass theirs.”
As Mr. Danesbury spoke, Robert and Lionel entered. Good-looking youths both, but as yet less noble in form and feature than their brothers, Arthur and William. Mr. Danesbury informed them of the complaint of Fox, the nurseryman. “He says you, in particular, behaved shamefully, Robert.”
“The vile old sinner! It’s a lie. Papa—”
“Sir!” reproved Mr. Danesbury: “you forget yourself. No ill language before me. Tell me what really happened.
The truth, mind; for I shall investigate this. In the first place, what had you been taking?”
‘‘Taking!” echoed Robert, who had inherited his mother’s crabbed temper.
“To drink. Fox says you were not sober.”
“I’ll wring Fox’s neck, if he comes to you again with tales about us. If any body was not sober, it was himself” hastily added Robert, for Mr. Danesbury had raised his hand in displeasure. “Fox was in such a passion he could neither see nor hear.”
“As I said,” interposed Mrs. Danesbury.
“You took beer with your dinner, and your glass of wine after it.” Mr. Danesbury might have said two glasses.
“What else did you take?”
“Only a drop of cider.”
“Where did you get that?”
Robert was silent. He would have preferred, not to say where. But he knew there might be no trifling when thus brought face to face with his father.
“I was dreadfully thirsty; I suppose it was the fish at dinner; and I got a drop.”
“Where did you get it?” repeated Mr. Danesbury.
“In a beer-shop.”
“Beer, wine, and cider! no wonder Fox had the complaint to make,” said Mr. Danesbury, in a severe tone, while Isabel had looked up, startled. “I will speak to you about this when we are alone, Robert. Go on to what you did at Fox’s.”
“We did nothing. I just got over his hedge, and there was a big table-cloth or something spread out there like a sail, and it got torn. Fox said we should pay for it; and I said I should not, for his insolence.”
�
��But what brought you getting over his hedge at all?”
“It was our way,” haughtily answered Robert “and we were in a hurry.”
“What is that you are saying?” interrupted Mr. Danesbury. “Whatever may be your hurry, you have no right to go, broadcast, over other people’s land and hedges.”
“The land is ours, papa.”
“No, sir, it is his. So long as he hires it from me, and pays me rent for it, it is his. I have always found Fox a civil, respectable man, and I know you must have provoked him most unjustifiably to induce him to be otherwise. The fact is, as I have been telling your mamma, you must be idle no longer. Now that it is decided you do not go to school again, you must choose what you will be. I should prefer your both coming to the Works; there is room for all of you: yes,” added Mr. Danesbury, with emphasis, “room for all four of my sons, and an ample and increasing income.”
Robert Danesbury turned up his nose. The two boys had been to a noted aristocratic private school, where they had learned thoroughly to despise “business.” Robert had told his mamma that he should never “soil his hands with it,” and she upheld him.
“I intend to go into the army, papa.”
“And I want to be a doctor,” cried Lionel, who was a good-natured, pleasant, nice lad.
“Any thing but that, Robert,” said Mr. Danesbury. “Choose any thing but that”
The question was not settled that evening; no, nor for several evenings after it. Robert Danesbury was thoroughly obstinate over it; he laughed contemptuously in his sleeve at his father’s ailments about leading a useful life; he was bent on obtaining his own will, and at last he said — ay, and told Mr. Danesbury — that if he could not have a commission bought he would enlist, for go into the army he would.
Mrs. Danesbury’s system of training had begun to tell. It was working already in Robert Danesbury’s undutifully refusing to yield his wishes to his father’s; in his persistency in embracing the one only calling that was especially distasteful to Mr. Danesbury. Why was Robert Danesbury so eager to enter the army? That he might serve his country? Not at all: but he had acquired a passion for a red coat, and for a life of pleasure and idleness.
One day he ran up to his eldest brother. “Arthur, I wish you would persuade papa about my commission. He will listen to you. Mamma says she has teased him till she is tired. He consented readily to Lionel’s being a physician, and just because I want my commission, he won’t give it me. Will you persuade him?”
“No, I can not, Robert. I do not like the army for you, any more than he does. Choose something else. Would you like to be a barrister, as Tom Serle is going to be?”
“I will not be any thing but an officer,” returned Robert, sullenly; “my mind is made up, and nothing shall turn it. You are as unkind as you can be, Arthur.”
Arthur laughed, and looked full in his face, and the cloud passed away from Robert’s as he met the kindly gaze. He knew there were not many brothers in the world so good and affectionate as Arthur had ever been.
“Won’t you persuade papa?”
“No, my boy. I could only do so against my conscience and my judgment: for I do not believe a commission would conduce to your happiness or welfare.”
But Robert Danesbury, helped by his mother, carried his point, and Mr. Danesbury, under sore protest, at length consented to apply to the Horse Guards for the purchase of a commission. Lionel was placed with Mr. Pratt, the surgeon at Eastborough, to go through the necessary steps and grades toward becoming eventually a physician. It was arranged that he should pass his evenings and nights at home. Mr. Danesbury and Mr. Pratt were close friends, and the latter was pleased to receive Lionel. He was a man of sorrow, though he maintained outward cheerfulness. It arose from the conduct of his son: he had but one, who was turning out as badly as he could well do. He was never now seen at Eastborough, but was sometimes heard of in London.
Mrs. Philip Danesbury’s nieces arrived, Mary and Anna Heber, the one grown up, the other several years younger. They were refined, gentle, good girls: Mrs. Philip Danesbury had said “admirable,” and she had not said too much. Their beauty was the least part of them, though that was rare, and their calm, open, expressive countenances were an index to the well-disciplined mind within. They were the well-trained daughters of a sincere minister of religion. Danesbury House fell in love with them at first sight, with the exception of its mistress.
CHAPTER IX.
VISCOUNT TEMPLE.
Gay doings were expected in Bedford Row, in the house of Mr. Serle, for his eldest daughter, Charlotte, was about to be married to Walter St. George. The latter was now a partner, the firm being Serle and St. George. There were several years’ difference between his age and Charlotte’s, but the attachment had begun in her childhood. Miss Danesbury was there on a visit: she was to be one of the bride’s-maids.
It was the evening of a grand dinner-party. The young ladies were up stairs dressing, and Mrs. Serle was about to go up for the same purpose. She was a bustling manager, liked looking into things herself, had been very busy, and put off dressing till the last minute. She had a lot of silver forks in her hands, which she was about to take to the servants in the dining-parlour, but had stepped into the drawing-room first, for something she wanted there. Mr. Serle came running up from the office, all in a hurry.
“Harriet, can you make room for another at dinner?”
“What an unreasonable question!” ejaculated Mrs. Serle, after a pause of surprise. “Of course I can not.’’
“It must be done, somehow,” returned her husband.
“It can’t be done. I never heard of such a thing. We are just a dozen. Who wants to come?”
“One of our best clients — Lord Temple.”
Mrs. Serle was considerably mollified. Lords were not common articles on her visiting list.
“He has been getting into a scrape,’’ proceeded Mr. Serle. “He is always getting into scrapes; like his father before him. And he has come to me to get him out of it.”
“But is that any reason why you should ask him to dinner to-day? The table will only hold twelve comfortably.”
“There are writs out against him,” said Mr. Serle, dropping his voice to a whisper, “and he dare not show his face in the street. The house is being watched now for him, and if he stirs out, he’ll be arrested. Here he is safely housed, and here he must stop till the thing is settled. I have told him we will give him a bed: and to-morrow he must remain quietly up stairs with you and the girls, and not come in view of the office. It will be utter ruin to him if he gets taken, and not much less so if these Jews scent his hiding-place.”
“It is very awkward about the table,’’ remonstrated Mrs. Serle, returning to the practical part of the affair; “ otherwise
I should be proud to have him. The sets of glass are only for twelve, and the dessert knives and forks—”
“Who looks at the pattern of a glass?” interrupted the lawyer: “and I’m sure you need not put me a dessert knife and fork, for I never use them.”
“The table will be so crowded, and — oh! we should be thirteen! It is the unlucky number.”
“Unlucky fiddlestick!” retorted Mr. Serle, who was growing provoked. “Just tell me what I am to do, will you? There’s Lord Temple down stairs, shut up in my private room, and in the house he must remain. Would you keep him there while we dine, and send him a mutton chop upon a tray? Is that how you would treat a British nobleman?”
“Well, then, he must dine with us,” concluded Mrs. Serle, balancing her exultation at showing off a real live lord to her guests against the inconveniences it would cause, and her dread of the popular superstition. “Is he old or young?”
“Young. What has that to do with it?”
“I wonder whether I could coax Louisa not to come in till dessert,” continued Mrs. Serle.
“Of course you can,” returned he. “That will do. Wait a minute.”
“She is not so easily coaxed, though, and s
he has been wild over this dinner-party. Oh, Matthew!”
“ What now?” asked he, turning back.
“I declare we have but twelve finger-glasses!”
“The dickens takes the finger-glasses,” cried the vexed lawyer; “put me a slop-basin. Wait there, I say.”
“Slop-basin indeed! that’s just said to aggravate me. And what am I to wait here for? I shall have the people arrive before I am ready. If I don’t believe he is bringing the lord up now, and I this figure! Well, of all the idiots—”
Mrs. Serle stopped, for the footsteps were close, and she strove to thrust the forks into her pocket, but they got entangled with her dress, and would not go in. She was fain to make the best of it, and held them out before her, very consciously wishing Mr. Serle at York.
“Mrs. Serle; Lord Temple.”
A tall, slender young man of distinguished bearing entered; a very aristocrat. His face was pale, and his features were almost delicately beautiful, his hair was dark and his eyes were gray.
“What apology must I make for intruding upon you in this unceremonious manner?” he said, in a voice as pleasing as his air was frank. “Mr. Serle has been so kind as to say he will give me a bed to-night.”
“I am most happy to see your lordship. I hope you will be able to make yourself at home with us; we are only plain people,” was Mrs. Serle’s confused reply, as she escaped from the room with the refractory forks.
Mr. Serle, apologizing, also left it, and the viscount remained alone. He sat, tilting his chair, and stretching and yawning: the scrape he was in gave him some little concern, and he was sure this incarceration in the lawyer’s house would prove “deuced slow.” He had given his seat an extra tilt, and was in imminent danger of pitching over backward, when the door opened, and a most beautiful girl appeared, quite as distinguished-looking as himself, her pink dress of rich and flowing material, and her necklace and bracelets of pearl.
Up rose Lord Temple, the finished gentleman. The young lady hesitated. He was a stranger, and she had believed the drawing-room to be empty.