“Who am I, Duke, that I should answer such a question?”
After that there was another pause, and then the conference was ended by a request from the Duke that Mrs. Finn would stay at Matching for yet two days longer. At dinner they all met, — the father, the three children, and Mrs. Finn. How far the young people among themselves had been able to throw off something of the gloom of death need not here be asked; but in the presence of their father they were sad and sombre, almost as he was. On the next day, early in the morning, the younger lad returned to his college, and Lord Silverbridge went up to London, where he was supposed to have his home.
“Perhaps you would not mind reading these letters,” the Duke said to Mrs. Finn, when she again went to him, in compliance with a message from him asking for her presence. Then she sat down and read two letters, one from Lady Cantrip, and the other from a Mrs. Jeffrey Palliser, each of which contained an invitation for his daughter, and expressed a hope that Lady Mary would not be unwilling to spend some time with the writer. Lady Cantrip’s letter was long, and went minutely into circumstances. If Lady Mary would come to her, she would abstain from having other company in the house till her young friend’s spirits should have somewhat recovered themselves. Nothing could be more kind, or proposed in a sweeter fashion. There had, however, been present to the Duke’s mind as he read it a feeling that a proposition to a bereaved husband to relieve him of the society of an only daughter, was not one which would usually be made to a father. In such a position a child’s company would probably be his best solace. But he knew, — at this moment he painfully remembered, — that he was not as are other men. He acknowledged the truth of this, but he was not the less grieved and irritated by the reminder. The letter from Mrs. Jeffrey Palliser was to the same effect, but was much shorter. If it would suit Mary to come to them for a month or six weeks at their place in Gloucestershire, they would both be delighted.
“I should not choose her to go there,” said the Duke, as Mrs. Finn refolded the latter letter. “My cousin’s wife is a very good woman, but Mary would not be happy with her.”
“Lady Cantrip is an excellent friend for her.”
“Excellent. I know no one whom I esteem more than Lady Cantrip.”
“Would you wish her to go there, Duke?”
There came a wistful piteous look over the father’s face. Why should he be treated as no other father would be treated? Why should it be supposed that he would desire to send his girl away from him? But yet he felt that it would be better that she should go. It was his present purpose to remain at Matching through a portion of the summer. What could he do to make a girl happy? What comfort would there be in his companionship?
“I suppose she ought to go somewhere,” he said.
“I had not thought of it,” said Mrs. Finn.
“I understood you to say,” replied the Duke, almost angrily, “that she ought to go to someone who would take care of her.”
“I was thinking of some friend coming to her.”
“Who would come? Who is there that I could possibly ask? You will not stay.”
“I certainly would stay, if it were for her good. I was thinking, Duke, that perhaps you might ask the Greys to come to you.”
“They would not come,” he said, after a pause.
“When she was told that it was for her sake, she would come, I think.”
Then there was another pause. “I could not ask them,” he said; “for his sake I could not have it put to her in that way. Perhaps Mary had better go to Lady Cantrip. Perhaps I had better be alone here for a time. I do not think that I am fit to have any human being here with me in my sorrow.”
CHAPTER II
Lady Mary Palliser
It may as well be said at once that Mrs. Finn knew something of Lady Mary which was not known to the father, and which she was not yet prepared to make known to him. The last winter abroad had been passed at Rome, and there Lady Mary Palliser had become acquainted with a certain Mr. Tregear, — Francis Oliphant Tregear. The Duchess, who had been in constant correspondence with her friend, had asked questions by letter as to Mr. Tregear, of whom she had only known that he was the younger son of a Cornish gentleman, who had become Lord Silverbridge’s friend at Oxford. In this there had certainly been but little to recommend him to the intimacy of such a girl as Lady Mary Palliser. Nor had the Duchess, when writing, ever spoken of him as a probable suitor for her daughter’s hand. She had never connected the two names together. But Mrs. Finn had been clever enough to perceive that the Duchess had become fond of Mr. Tregear, and would willingly have heard something to his advantage. And she did hear something to his advantage, — something also to his disadvantage. At his mother’s death this young man would inherit a property amounting to about fifteen hundred a year. “And I am told,” said Mrs. Finn, “that he is quite likely to spend his money before it comes to him.” There had been nothing more written specially about Mr. Tregear; but Mrs. Finn had feared not only that the young man loved the girl, but that the young man’s love had in some imprudent way been fostered by the mother.
Then there had been some fitful confidence during those few days of acute illness. Why should not the girl have the man if he were lovable? And the Duchess referred to her own early days when she had loved, and to the great ruin which had come upon her heart when she had been severed from the man she had loved. “Not but that it has been all for the best,” she had said. “Not but that Plantagenet has been to me all that a husband should be. Only if she can be spared what I suffered, let her be spared.” Even when these things had been said to her, Mrs. Finn had found herself unable to ask questions. She could not bring herself to inquire whether the girl had in truth given her heart to this young Tregear. The one was nineteen and the other as yet but two-and-twenty! But though she asked no questions she almost knew that it must be so. And she knew also that the father, as yet, was quite in the dark on the matter. How was it possible that in such circumstances she should assume the part of the girl’s confidential friend and monitress? Were she to do so she must immediately tell the father everything. In such a position no one could be a better friend than Lady Cantrip, and Mrs. Finn had already almost made up her mind that, should Lady Cantrip occupy the place, she would tell her ladyship all that had passed between herself and the Duchess on the subject.
Of what hopes she might have, or what fears, about her girl, the Duchess had said no word to her husband. But when she had believed that the things of the world were fading away from her, and when he was sitting by her bedside, — dumb, because at such a moment he knew not how to express the tenderness of his heart, — holding her hand, and trying so to listen to her words, that he might collect and remember every wish, she had murmured something about the ultimate division of the great wealth with which she herself had been endowed. “She had never,” she said, “even tried to remember what arrangements had been made by lawyers, but she hoped that Mary might be so circumstanced, that if her happiness depended on marrying a poor man, want of money need not prevent it.” The Duke suspecting nothing, believing this to be a not unnatural expression of maternal interest, had assured her that Mary’s fortune would be ample.
Mrs. Finn made the proposition to Lady Mary in respect to Lady Cantrip’s invitation. Lady Mary was very like her mother, especially in having exactly her mother’s tone of voice, her quick manner of speech, and her sharp intelligence. She had also her mother’s eyes, large and round, and almost blue, full of life and full of courage, eyes which never seemed to quail, and her mother’s dark brown hair, never long but very copious in its thickness. She was, however, taller than her mother, and very much more graceful in her movement. And she could already assume a personal dignity of manner which had never been within her mother’s reach. She had become aware of a certain brusqueness of speech in her mother, a certain aptitude to say sharp things without thinking whether the sharpness was becoming to the position which she held, and, taking advantage of the example, the girl
had already learned that she might gain more than she would lose by controlling her words.
“Papa wants me to go to Lady Cantrip,” she said.
“I think he would like it, — just for the present, Lady Mary.”
Though there had been the closest possible intimacy between the Duchess and Mrs. Finn, this had hardly been so as to the intercourse between Mrs. Finn and the children. Of Mrs. Finn it must be acknowledged that she was, perhaps fastidiously, afraid of appearing to take advantage of her friendship with the Duke’s family. She would tell herself that though circumstances had compelled her to be the closest and nearest friend of a Duchess, still her natural place was not among dukes and their children, and therefore in her intercourse with the girl she did not at first assume the manner and bearing which her position in the house would have seemed to warrant. Hence the “Lady Mary.”
“Why does he want to send me away, Mrs. Finn?”
“It is not that he wants to send you away, but that he thinks it will be better for you to be with some friend. Here you must be so much alone.”
“Why don’t you stay? But I suppose Mr. Finn wants you to be back in London.”
“It is not that only, or, to speak the truth, not that at all. Mr. Finn could come here if it were suitable. Or for a week or two he might do very well without me. But there are other reasons. There is no one whom your mother respected more highly than Lady Cantrip.”
“I never heard her speak a word of Lady Cantrip.”
“Both he and she are your father’s intimate friends.”
“Does papa want to be — alone here?”
“It is you, not himself, of whom he is thinking.”
“Therefore I must think of him, Mrs. Finn. I do not wish him to be alone. I am sure it would be better that I should stay with him.”
“He feels that it would not be well that you should live without the companionship of some lady.”
“Then let him find some lady. You would be the best, because he knows you so well. I, however, am not afraid of being alone. I am sure he ought not to be here quite by himself. If he bids me go, I must go, and then of course I shall go where he sends me; but I won’t say that I think it best that I should go, and certainly I do not want to go to Lady Cantrip.” This she said with great decision, as though the matter was one on which she had altogether made up her mind. Then she added, in a lower voice: “Why doesn’t papa speak to me about it?”
“He is thinking only of what may be best for you.”
“It would be best for me to stay near him. Whom else has he got?”
All this Mrs. Finn repeated to the Duke as closely as she could, and then of course the father was obliged to speak to his daughter.
“Don’t send me away, papa,” she said at once.
“Your life here, Mary, will be inexpressibly sad.”
“It must be sad anywhere. I cannot go to college, like Gerald, or live anywhere just as I please, like Silverbridge.”
“Do you envy them that?”
“Sometimes, papa. Only I shall think more of poor mamma by being alone, and I should like to be thinking of her always.” He shook his head mournfully. “I do not mean that I shall always be unhappy, as I am now.”
“No, my dear; you are too young for that. It is only the old who suffer in that way.”
“You will suffer less if I am with you; won’t you, papa? I do not want to go to Lady Cantrip. I hardly remember her at all.”
“She is very good.”
“Oh yes. That is what they used to say to mamma about Lady Midlothian. Papa, pray do not send me to Lady Cantrip.”
Of course it was decided that she should not go to Lady Cantrip at once, or to Mrs. Jeffrey Palliser, and, after a short interval of doubt, it was decided also that Mrs. Finn should remain at Matching for at least a fortnight. The Duke declared that he would be glad to see Mr. Finn, but she knew that in his present mood the society of any one man to whom he would feel himself called upon to devote his time, would be a burden to him, and she plainly said that Mr. Finn had better not come to Matching at present. “There are old associations,” she said, “which will enable you to bear with me as you will with your butler or your groom, but you are not as yet quite able to make yourself happy with company.” This he bore with perfect equanimity, and then, as it were, handed over his daughter to Mrs. Finn’s care.
Very quickly there came to be close intimacy between Mrs. Finn and Lady Mary. For a day or two the elder woman, though the place she filled was one of absolute confidence, rather resisted than encouraged the intimacy. She always remembered that the girl was the daughter of a great duke, and that her position in the house had sprung from circumstances which would not, perhaps, in the eyes of the world at large, have recommended her for such friendship. She knew — the reader may possibly know — that nothing had ever been purer, nothing more disinterested than her friendship. But she knew also, — no one knew better, — that the judgment of men and women does not always run parallel with facts. She entertained, too, a conviction in regard to herself, that hard words and hard judgments were to be expected from the world, — were to be accepted by her without any strong feeling of injustice, — because she had been elevated by chance to the possession of more good things than she had merited. She weighed all this with a very fine balance, and even after the encouragement she had received from the Duke, was intent on confining herself to some position about the girl inferior to that which such a friend as Lady Cantrip might have occupied. But the girl’s manner, and the girl’s speech about her own mother, overcame her. It was the unintentional revelation of the Duchess’s constant reference to her, — the way in which Lady Mary would assert that “Mamma used always to say this of you; mamma always knew that you would think so and so; mamma used to say that you had told her.” It was the feeling thus conveyed, that the mother who was now dead had in her daily dealings with her own child spoken of her as her nearest friend, which mainly served to conquer the deference of manner which she had assumed.
Then gradually there came confidences, — and at last absolute confidence. The whole story about Mr. Tregear was told. Yes; she loved Mr. Tregear. She had given him her heart, and had told him so.
“Then, my dear, your father ought to know it,” said Mrs. Finn.
“No; not yet. Mamma knew it.”
“Did she know all that you have told me?”
“Yes; all. And Mr. Tregear spoke to her, and she said that papa ought not to be told quite yet.”
Mrs. Finn could not but remember that the friend she had lost was not, among women, the one best able to give a girl good counsel in such a crisis.
“Why not yet, dear?”
“Well, because — . It is very hard to explain. In the first place, because Mr. Tregear himself does not wish it.”
“That is a very bad reason; the worst in the world.”
“Of course you will say so. Of course everybody would say so. But when there is one person whom one loves better than all the rest, for whom one would be ready to die, to whom one is determined that everything shall be devoted, surely the wishes of a person so dear as that ought to have weight.”
“Not in persuading you to do that which is acknowledged to be wrong.”
“What wrong? I am going to do nothing wrong.”
“The very concealment of your love is wrong, after that love has been not only given but declared. A girl’s position in such matters is so delicate, especially that of such a girl as you!”
“I know all about that,” said Lady Mary, with something almost approaching to scorn in her tone. “Of course I have to be — delicate. I don’t quite know what the word means. I am not a bit ashamed of being in love with Mr. Tregear. He is a gentleman, highly educated, very clever, of an old family, — older, I believe, than papa’s. And he is manly and handsome; just what a young man ought to be. Only he is not rich.”
“If he be all that you say, ought you not to trust your papa? If he approve of it, he could giv
e you money.”
“Of course he must be told; but not now. He is nearly broken-hearted about dear mamma. He could not bring himself to care about anything of that kind at present. And then it is Mr. Tregear that should speak to him first.”
“Not now, Mary.”
“How do you mean not now?”
“If you had a mother you would talk to her about it.”
“Mamma knew.”
“If she were still living she would tell your father.”
“But she didn’t tell him though she did know. She didn’t mean to tell him quite yet. She wanted to see Mr. Tregear here in England first. Of course I shall do nothing till papa does know.”
“You will not see him?”
“How can I see him here? He will not come here, if you mean that.”
“You do not correspond with him?” Here for the first time the girl blushed. “Oh, Mary, if you are writing to him your father ought to know it.”
“I have not written to him; but when he heard how ill poor mamma was, then he wrote to me — twice. You may see his letters. It is all about her. No one worshipped mamma as he did.”
Gradually the whole story was told. These two young persons considered themselves to be engaged, but had agreed that their engagement should not be made known to the Duke till something had occurred, or some time had arrived, as to which Mr. Tregear was to be the judge. In Mrs. Finn’s opinion nothing could be more unwise, and she said much to induce the girl to confess everything to her father at once. But in all her arguments she was opposed by the girl’s reference to her mother. “Mamma knew it.” And it did certainly seem to Mrs. Finn as though the mother had assented to this imprudent concealment. When she endeavoured, in her own mind, to make excuse for her friend, she felt almost sure that the Duchess, with all her courage, had been afraid to propose to her husband that their daughter should marry a commoner without an income. But in thinking of all that, there could now be nothing gained. What ought she to do — at once? The girl, in telling her, had exacted no promise of secrecy, nor would she have given any such promise; but yet she did not like the idea of telling the tale behind the girl’s back. It was evident that Lady Mary had considered herself to be safe in confiding her story to her mother’s old friend. Lady Mary no doubt had had her confidences with her mother, — confidences from which it had been intended by both that the father should be excluded; and now she seemed naturally to expect that this new ally should look at this great question as her mother had looked at it. The father had been regarded as a great outside power, which could hardly be overcome, but which might be evaded, or made inoperative by stratagem. It was not that the daughter did not love him. She loved him and venerated him highly, — the veneration perhaps being stronger than the love. The Duchess, too, had loved him dearly, — more dearly in late years than in her early life. But her husband to her had always been an outside power which had in many cases to be evaded. Lady Mary, though she did not express all this, evidently thought that in this new friend she had found a woman whose wishes and aspirations for her would be those which her mother had entertained.
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