‘Yes; – after a very sterling fashion. I will make his wishes my wishes, his ways my ways, his party my party, his home my home, his ambition my ambition, – his honour my honour.’ As she said this she stood up with her hands clenched and head erect, and her eyes flashing. ‘Do you not know me well enough to be sure that I should be loyal to him?’
‘Yes; – I think that you would be loyal.’
‘Whether I loved him or not, he should love me.’
‘And you think that Silverbridge would do?’
‘Yes, I think that Silverbridge would do. You, no doubt, will say that I am flying high?’
‘Not too high. Why should you not fly high? If I can justify myself, surely I cannot accuse you.’
‘It is hardly the same thing, Frank. Of course, there is not a girl in London to whom Lord Silverbridge would not be the best match that she could make. He has the choice of us all.’
‘Most girls would think twice before refusing him.’
‘Very few would think twice before accepting him. Perhaps he wishes to add to his wealth by marrying richly, – as his father did.’
‘No thought on that subject will ever trouble him. That will be all as it happens. As soon as he takes a sufficient fancy to a girl he will ask her straight off. I do not say that he might not change afterwards, but he would mean it at the time.’
‘If he had once said the word to me, he should not change. But then what right have I to expect it? What has he ever said about me?’
‘Very little. But had he said much I should not tell you.’
‘You are my friend, – but you are his too; and he, perhaps, is more to you than I am. As his friend it may be your duty to tell him all that I am saying. If so, I have been wrong.’
‘Do you think that I shall do that, Mabel?’
‘I do not know. Men are so strong in their friendships.’
‘Mine with you is the older, and the sweeter. Though we may not be more than friends, I will say that it is the more tender. In my heart of hearts I do not think that Silverbridge could do better.’
‘Thanks for that, Frank.’
‘I shall tell him nothing of you that can set him against you.’
‘And you would be glad to see me his wife?’ she said.
‘As you must be somebody's wife, and not mine.’
‘I cannot be yours, Frank; can I?’
‘And not mine,’ he repeated, ‘I will endeavour to be glad. Who can explain his feelings in such a matter? Though I most truly love the girl I hope to marry, yet my heart goes back to former things and opens itself to past regrets.’
‘I know it all,’ she whispered.
‘But you and I must be too wise to permit ourselves to be tormented by such foolish melancholy.’ As he said this he took her hand, half with the purpose of bidding her good-bye, but partly with the idea of giving some expression to the tenderness of his feelings. But as he did so, the door was opened, and the old Earl shambled into the room.
‘What the deuce are you doing here?’ he said.
‘I have been talking to Lady Mabel.’
‘For about an hour.’
‘Indeed I do not know for how long.’
‘Papa, he is going to be married.’ When she said this Frank Tregear turned round and looked at her almost in anger.
‘Going to be married, is he? Who is the fortunate woman?’
‘I don't think he will let me tell you.’
‘Not yet, I think,’ said Frank gloomily. ‘There is nothing settled.’
The old Earl looked puzzled, but Lady Mabel's craft had been successful. If this objectionable young second-cousin had come there to talk about his marriage with another young woman, the conversation must have been innocent. ‘Where is Miss Cassewary?’ asked the Earl.
‘I asked her not to come down with me because Frank wished to speak to me about his own affairs. You have no objection to his coming, papa?’
There had been objections raised to any intimacy with Frank Tregear; but all that was now nearly two years since. He had been assured over and over again by Miss Cassewary that he need not be afraid of Frank Tregear, and had in a sort of way assented to the young man's visits. ‘I think he might find something better to do with his time than hanging about here all day.’ Frank, shrugging his shoulders, and having shaken hands both with the daughter and father, took his hat and departed. ‘Who is the girl?’ asked the Earl.
‘You heard him say that I was not to tell.’
‘Has she got money?’
‘I believe she will have a great deal.’
‘Then she is a great fool for her pains,’ said the Earl, shambling off again.
Lady Mabel spent the greater part of the afternoon alone, endeavouring to recall to her mind all that she had said to Frank Tregear, and questioning herself as to the wisdom and truth of her own words. She had intended to tell the truth, – but hardly perhaps the whole truth. The life which was before her, – which it was necessary that she should lead, – seemed to her to be so difficult! She could not clearly see her way to be pure and good and feminine, and at the same time wise. She had been false now; – so far false that she had told her friend that she had never been in love. But she was in love; – in love with him, Frank Tregear. She knew it as thoroughly as it was possible for her to know anything; – and had acknowledged it to herself a score of times.
But she could not marry him. And it was expected, nay, almost necessary that she should marry someone. To that someone, how good she would be! How she would strive by duty and attention, and if possible by affection, to make up for that misfortune of her early love!
And so I hope that I have brought my cart in to its appointed place in the front, without showing too much of the horse.
CHAPTER 11
Cruel
For two or three days after the first scene between the Duke and his daughter, – that scene in which she was forbidden either to see or to write to her lover, – not a word was said at Matching about Mr Tregear, nor were any steps taken towards curtailing her liberty of action. She had said she would not write to him without telling her father, and the Duke was too proud of the honour of his family to believe it to be possible that she should deceive him. Nor was it possible. Not only would her own idea of duty prevent her from writing to her lover, although she had stipulated for the right to do so in some possible emergency, – but, carried far beyond that in her sense of what was right and wrong, she felt it now incumbent on her to have no secret from her father at all. The secret, as long as it had been a secret, had been a legacy from her mother, – and had been kept, at her lover's instance, during that period of mourning for her mother in which it would, she thought, have been indecorous that there should be any question of love or of giving in marriage. It had been a burden to her, though a necessary burden. She had been very clear that the revelation should be made to her father, when it was made, by her lover. That had been done, – and now it was open to her to live without any secrecy, – as was her nature. She meant to cling to her lover. She was quite sure of that. Nothing could divide her from him but his death or hers, – or falseness on his part. But as to marriage, that would not be possible till her father had assented. And as to seeing the man, – ah, yes if she could do so with her father's assent! She would not be ashamed to own her great desire to see him. She would tell her father that all her happiness depended upon seeing him. She would not be coy in speaking of her love. But she would obey her father.
She had a strong idea that she would ultimately prevail, – an idea also that that ‘ultimately’ should not be postponed to some undefined middle-aged period of her life. As she intended to belong to Frank Tregear, she thought it expedient that he should have the best of her days as well as what might be supposed to be the worst; and she therefore resolved that it would be her duty to make her father understand that though she would certainly obey him, she would look to be treated humanely by him, and not to be made miserable for an indefinite term of years.
‘I think I shall go up to town tomorrow,’ said the Duke to his daughter.
‘For long?’
‘I shall be gone only one night. It is on your behalf that I am going.’
‘On my behalf, papa?’
‘I have been writing to Lady Cantrip.’
‘Not about Mr Tregear?’
‘No; – not about Mr Tregear,’ said the father with a mixture of anger and solemnity in his tone. ‘It is my desire to regard Mr Tregear as though he did not exist.’
‘That is not possible, papa.’
‘I have alluded to the inconvenience of your position here.’
‘Why is it inconvenient?’
‘You are too young to be without a companion. It is not fit that you should be so much alone.’
‘I do not feel it.’
‘It is very melancholy for you, and cannot be good for you. They will go down to The Horns, so that you will not be absolutely in London, and you will find Lady Cantrip a very nice person.’
‘I don't care for new people just now, papa,’ she said. But to this he paid but little heed; nor was she prepared to say that she would not do as he directed. When therefore he left Matching, she understood that he was going to prepare a temporary home for her. Nothing further was said about Tregear. She was too proud to ask that no mention of his name should be made to Lady Cantrip. And he when he left the house did not think that he would find himself called upon to allude to the subject.
But when Lady Cantrip made some inquiry about the girl and her habits, – asking what were her ordinary occupations, how she was accustomed to pass her hours, to what she chiefly devoted herself, – then at last with much difficulty the Duke did bring himself to tell the story. ‘Perhaps it is better you should know it all,’ he said as he told it.
‘Poor girl! Yes, Duke; upon the whole it is better that I should know it all,’ said Lady Cantrip. ‘Of course he will not come here.’
‘Oh dear; I hope not.’
‘Nor to The Horns.’
‘I hope he will never see her again anywhere,’ said the Duke.
‘Poor girl!’
‘Have I not been right? Is it not best to put an end to such a thing at once?’
‘Certainly at once, if it has to be put an end to, – and can be put an end to.’
‘It must be put an end to,’ said the Duke, very decidedly. ‘Do you not see that it must be so? Who is Mr Tregear?’
‘I suppose they were allowed to be together.’
‘He was unfortunately intimate with Silverbridge, who took him over to Italy. He has nothing; not even a profession.’ Lady Cantrip could not but smile when she remembered the immense wealth of the man who was speaking to her; – and the Duke saw the smile and understood it. ‘You will understand what I mean, Lady Cantrip. If this young man were in other respects suitable, of course I could find an income for them. But he is nothing; just an idle seeker for pleasure without the means of obtaining it.’
‘That is very bad.’
‘As for rank,’ continued the Duke energetically, ‘I do not think that I am specially wedded to it. I have found myself as willing to associate with those who are without it as with those who have it. But for my child, I would wish her to mate with one of her own class.’
‘It would be best.’
‘When a young man comes to me who, though I believe him to be what is called a gentleman, has neither rank, nor means, nor profession, nor name, and asks for my daughter, surely I am right to say that such a marriage shall not be thought of. Was I not right?’ demanded the Duke persistently.
‘But it is a pity that it should be so. It is a pity that they should ever have come together.’
‘It is indeed, indeed to be lamented, – and I will own at once that the fault was not hers. Though I must be firm in this, you are not to suppose that I am angry with her. I have myself been to blame.’ This he said with a resolution that, - as he and his wife had been one flesh, - all faults committed by her should, now that she was dead, be accepted by him as his faults. ‘It had not occurred to me that as yet she would love any man.’
‘Has it gone deep with her, Duke?’
‘I fear that all things go deep with her.’
‘Poor girl!’
‘But they shall be kept apart! As long as your great kindness is continued to her they shall be kept apart!’
‘I do not think that I should be found good at watching a young lady.’
‘She will require no watching.’
‘Then of course they will not meet. She had better know that you have told me.’
‘She shall know it.’
‘And let her know also that anything I can do to make her happy shall be done. But, Duke, there is but one cure.’
‘Time you mean.’
‘Yes; time; but I did not mean time.’ Then she smiled as she went on. ‘You must not suppose that I am speaking against my own sex if I say that she will not forget Mr Tregear till someone else has made himself agreeable to her. We must wait till she can go out a little into society. Then she will find out that there are others in the world besides Mr Tregear. It so often is the case that a girl's love means her sympathy for him who has chanced to be nearest to her.’
The Duke as he went away thought very much of what Lady Cantrip had said to him; – particularly of those last words. ‘Till some one else has made himself agreeable to her.’ Was he to send his girl into the world in order that she might find a lover? There was something in the idea which was thoroughly distasteful to him. He had not given his mind much to the matter, but he had felt that a woman should be sought for, – sought for and extracted, cunningly, as it were, from some hiding-place, and not sent out into a market to be exposed as for sale. In his own personal history there had been a misfortune, – a misfortune, the sense of which he could never, at any moment, have expressed to any ears, the memory of which had been always buried deep in his own bosom, – but a misfortune in that no such cunning extraction on his part had won for him the woman to whose hands had been confided the strings of his heart. His wife had undergone that process of extraction before he had seen her, and his marriage with her had been a matter of sagacious bargaining. He was now told that his daughter must be sent out among young men in order that she might become sufficiently fond of some special one to be regardless of Tregear. There was a feeling that in doing so she must lose something of the freshness of the bloom of her innocence. How was this transfer of her love to be effected? Let her go here because she will meet the heir of this wealthy house who may probably be smitten by her charms; or there because that other young lordling would make a fit husband for her. Let us contrive to throw her into the arms of this man, or put her into the way of that man. Was his girl to be exposed to this? Surely that method of bargaining to which he had owed his own wife would be better than that. Let it be said, – only he himself most certainly could not be the person to say it, – let it be said to some man of rank and means and fairly good character; ‘Here is a wife for you with so many thousand pounds, with beauty, as you can see for yourself, with rank and belongings of the highest; very good in every respect; – only that as regards her heart she thinks she has given it to a young man named Tregear. No marriage there is possible; but perhaps the young lady might suit you?’ It was thus he
had been married. There was an absence in it of that romance which, though he had never experienced it in his own life, was always present to his imagination. His wife had often ridiculed him because he could only live among figures and official details; but to her had not been given the power of looking into a man's heart and feeling all that was there. Yes; – in such bargaining for a wife, in such bargaining for a husband, there could be nothing of the tremulous delicacy of feminine romance; but it would be better than standing at a stall in the market till the sufficient purchaser should come. It never occurred to him that the delicacy, the innocence, the romance, the bloom might all be preserved if he would give his girl to the man whom she said she loved. Could he have modelled her future course according to his own wishes, he would have had her live a gentle life for the next three years, with a pencil perhaps in her hand or a music-book before her; – and then come forth, cleaned as it were by such quarantine from the impurity to which she had been subjected.
When he was back at Matching he at once told his daughter what he had arranged for her, and then there took place a prolonged discussion both as to his view of her future life and as to her own. ‘You did tell her then about Mr Tregear?’ she asked.
‘As she is to have charge of you for a time I thought it best.’
‘Perhaps it is. Perhaps – you were afraid.’
‘No; I was not afraid,’ he said angrily.
‘You need not be afraid. I shall do nothing elsewhere that I would not do here, and nothing anywhere without telling you.’
‘I know I can trust you.’
‘But, papa, I shall always intend to marry Mr Tregear.’
‘No!’ he exclaimed.
‘Yes; – always. I want you to understand exactly how it is. Nothing you can do can separate me from him.’
‘Mary, that is very wicked.’
‘It cannot be wicked to tell the truth, papa. I mean to try to do all that you tell me. I shall not see him, or write to him, – unless there should be some very particular reason. And if I did see him or write to him I would tell you. And of course I should not think of – of marrying without your leave. But I shall expect you to let me marry him.’
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