This long speech, though uttered with very genuine good-humour, did not seem to satisfy the party in general, many of them being evidently of opinion that Miss Emily’s whims furnished no very satisfactory reason for their being kept sitting in the damp precincts of Knightly Abbey, instead of setting off for their respective homes.
Mrs. Mathews was the first to give utterance to the opinion, which was, however, no sooner expressed, than agreed to almost without a dissentient voice, that it must be useless and needless for the whole party to wait for the absentees, as Miss Steyton would have her papa’s carriage, and Mr. Cornington the horse which had brought him thither, to convey them home.
The gentle voice of Mr. William Price was the only one which uttered any objection to this proposal; but he, poor enamoured young man, ventured to hint that it would be very, very disagreeable for them to return home, absolutely without knowing whether Miss Steyton were dead or alive!
“Dead!” exclaimed Mrs. Mathews, in a tone that expressed more ridicule than alarm. “Why what in the world should have killed her, Mr. William Price?”
“You may depend upon it she is very safe,” observed Mr Mathews, gravely; “for my grandson is not the sort of person to let a lady be exposed to any kind of danger as long as he is with her. You may depend upon it, ladies and gentlemen, that Mr. Steyton is in the right, and that there is no accident at all in the case, but only a joke.”
“Nothing more, I daresay,” said Lady Otterborne; “but I am sorry to confess that I do not feel strong enough to wait the dénouement here, for I really am too much afraid of the night air to remain any longer. And, unfortunately,” she added, turning rather ceremoniously towards Mr. Steyton, “unfortunately, I cannot offer to leave my son to await Miss Emily’s return. For he drove us hither, and we cannot dispense with his coachmanship to drive us back. We have no servant with us but the groom who followed us on horseback, and I am much too great a coward to be driven by him.”
“Of course Herbert must drive your ladyship home,” said Sir Charles, in a voice of authority which was quite sufficient to settle the question in the opinion of all who heard him; for, notwithstanding his debts and his difficulties, Sir Charles was still the great man par excellence of the neighbourhood; “and you need not fear any great prolongation of your anxiety,” added the baronet, turning to his son, “for I’ll answer for it I will overtake you with tidings of the lost fair one before you have reached the Park Lodge.”
Herbert made no reply, save by a slight inclination of the head; but he immediately busied himself in finding the wraps of his mother, and of the two Weldon Grange ladies who had accompanied her in her carriage, and then, after having uttered rather a hasty “Good night” to the rest of the party, he gave his arm to Lady Otterborne, and, closely followed by Mrs. Mathews and Janet, lost no time in placing them in the carriage which was already in waiting.
He drove them home pretty nearly at the same pace as he had driven when bringing them there; but he was not destined to hear any further tidings of his affianced bride that night, for neither Sir Charles, nor any other individual of the party, overtook them; at what hour his father might have returned, he knew not, for when Herbert retired for the night, he had not yet reached home.
Nor did Mrs. Mathews and Janet hear the end of the adventure that night, for they had both retired to bed before Mr. Mathews and his grandson made their appearance.
At breakfast the next morning, however, they had the satisfaction of being assured that no accident had happened to anybody, and that the delay of Miss Steyton’s return to the oak-tree where she had left her companions, was owing to her having mistaken one forest path for another; that which she had followed when she supposed she was returning to them, having led her in exactly a contrary direction.
This statement, which appeared to be as satisfactory to Mrs. Mathews and Janet, as it had before proved to Mr. Mathews, was, of course, given by Stephen Cornington, who concluded his little narrative by remarking that it was not very wonderful he should have blundered when the young lady desired him to lead her back to the oak-tree, inasmuch as he had never been in the forest before in his life.
“Very true, my dear boy!” cried his grandfather. “Unless you had steered by a compass, as the sailors do, I don’t see how it was possible you should find your way through such a forest as that, being, as you are, a perfect stranger to it.”
“I should have thought Miss Emily might have known every path in that forest by this time,” observed Mrs. Mathews; “I am sure she has been there often enough; for when she was a child of ten years old, her father always insisted upon her being included in every pic-nic.”
“Is it possible?” returned Stephen, looking greatly surprised by the statement. “I told her fairly, when she said that she did not choose to stay away long from the others, I told her at once, that never having been there before, I was much more likely to go wrong than right; upon which she said, ‘Very well, then, Mr Stephen, I will lead you,’ and so she did, and my firm opinion is, that she went round and round for mere fun, and, so indeed, I almost thong-lit at the time, and then it was that I said I would find the -way for her myself. And by the greatest good luck I did turn right at last, and brought her back quite safe, though I believe she was both tired and frightened.”
“Frightened!” said Mrs. Mathews. “I should not think Miss Emily was at all likely to be frightened. She appears to me to be a young lady of great courage.”
“So much the better for her, my dear,” said Mr. Mathews; “I consider that the being over timid is a great misfortune either for a man or a woman. However, I can’t help thinking that our beautiful neighbour, Miss Emily, really was frightened when she came back to us last night; for she certainly looked a little what we call seared, you know.”
“Indeed! What could have seared her, I wonder? Did anything unpleasant happen to her, Mr. Stephen? I should have thought that any of us might have walked through that peaceful little wood at midnight, without running the least risk of being seared,” said Mrs. Mathews; “unless, indeed, the young lady should be afraid of ghosts,” she added.
“I cannot think what put it into your head, Sir, to say that Miss Steyton looked frightened,” said Stephen, expressing, for the first time since his arrival, an opinion which seemed at variance with that expressed by his grandfather. “Tired,” he added, “she might be, for really I was tired too, but as to her being frightened, I think that was quite a mistake.” And here the subject dropped.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
LADY OTTERBORNE, before she parted with Janet upon the night of the pic-nic, had obtained from her, and from Mrs. Mathews, a promise that she should pass the whole of the following day at the Manor-house, and this day was to begin immediately after breakfast, as the walk across the park was by no means a very shady one, and the weather too hot to make the mid-day sun agreeable.
Mrs. Mathews, therefore, was left alone in her old retreat at an early hour, and felt as she sat herself down at an open window to enjoy a gentle breeze from the west, that she had a long day before her, which might be given, if she so willed it, to meditation. And as it happened, this prospect pleased her well, for the good lady felt that she had a great deal to think about, and that this process could be carried on better in the absence of her Janet than in her presence.
When sober-minded, reasonable people have been informed, upon the best possible authority, that a gentleman is engaged to be married, and that his marriage-settlements have For several weeks been in the hands of the lawyers, the said sober-minded reasonable people are for the most part, disposed to consider the said gentleman’s prospects in life, at least in the matrimonial line, to be too far fixed and settled to leave room for much speculation concerning him.
But it was otherwise in the case of the sober-minded Mrs. Mathews and the engaged Mr. Herbert Otterborne. The narrative she had listened to from the unfortunate young man himself had pained her to the heart; and scarcely a day had passed since without b
ringing something to her eyes, or her ears, tending rather to increase than diminish her anxiety concerning him.
Much as Lady Otterborne and Mrs. Mathews appeared to like each other, they had never yet been on terms of sufficient intimacy to render the discussion of so very delicate a subject possible between them. In her own heart, Mrs. Mathews had not the shadow of a doubt but that the proposed connection must be in the highest degree distasteful to Lady Otterborne, and her lamentations for the unfortunate fate of the son, were rendered the more doleful by her profound pity for the mother.
But from the day on which Herbert had explained to her the whole of his most painful situation, he had never again referred to the subject; and had it not been for the very frequent allusion to the approaching marriage in which the well-pleased fathers of both parties indulged, she might have been tempted to hope that this threatened misery had been in some way or other averted.
But as it was, no such hope was left her. Neither had she the comfort of discussing this subject with as much perfect confidence with Janet, as she permitted herself on every other.
For she had more than once fancied that the complexion of Janet had varied upon the sudden mention of Herbert’s name; and more than once she had marked her with a book open in her hand while her eyes were fixed upon the carpet, or the turf at her feet.
Such observations would have made her most completely miserable, had not the youth of Janet reassured her. “No!” thought Mrs. Mathews, “it is not at seventeen that very deep impressions are received. At twenty-eight a love fit is a very different affair.”
But the adventure of yesterday had left a deep impression on her mind, and she was glad of an opportunity of sitting down alone, to think it out.
There had been a cold, stiff, stately indifference in the manner of Herbert when the question of waiting, or not waiting, for the young lady, had been discussed, previously to their leaving the ruin on the preceding evening, which puzzled her. Was it possible that such a man as Herbert Otterborne could be really indifferent to so gross a violation of propriety in the woman to whom he intended to give his name? Was it possible that he could permit such an occurrence to pass without observation or remonstrance? And how were observation and remonstrance likely to be received by such a young lady as Miss Emily? And what result might it not lead to, if ventured upon to her father?
Mrs. Mathews might have given herself a less satisfactory answer had she more thoroughly understood the state of mind to which the unfortunate Herbert had brought himself. She certainly did not give him either the credit or the discredit of feeling any great admiration for the beautiful Emily’s person, manners, or mind. But nevertheless she was far from being aware, that the only process by which he had been able to conquer the feeling, nearly approaching to antipathy, which she inspired in him, was the systematic hardening of himself to the endurance of the dreadful position in which he was placed, and not by the flattering belief that anything could make it better.
He had a sort of stern conviction, indeed, that nothing could make it worse, and that, such as it was, he was bound to bear it, both for the sake of his mother’s welfare, and for the honour of his own pledged word, pledged to his own father, and through him to the wealthy beauty herself, as well as to her parents.
In short, Herbert Otterborne had the miserable consciousness that all the most heroic strength of mind which he could call to his aid could avail him nothing, excepting as it gave him power to endure the evils which beset him; and that weakness of character, indifference to his mother, and contempt for his own pledged word, were the only resources to which he could look as a means of escaping from them.
Mrs. Mathews therefore was reasoning very perfectly in the dark, when her busy thoughts were urging her to the pleasant conclusion that it was quite impossible such a man could persevere in his intention of marrying such a woman; for such a man was the very last to consult his own wishes on the subject.
While she was still very earnestly engaged in meditating upon this theme, Sally Spicer brought her the always welcome intelligence that Mr. Cuthbridge had called, and begged to know if he might be permitted to come upstairs. This was a privilege which no man of any age or of any faith throughout the whole neighbourhood would have ventured to claim; excepting, perhaps, the young squire of the Manor-house, and even he generally waited till he was asked; for the stairs in this case decidedly meant the corkscrew stairs, and not even the husband of our dear Mrs. Mathews would have ventured to make such a request.
But Mr. Cuthbridge not only made it, but felt so certain of its success, that he followed the steps of the messenger so closely, as to be ready to enter the room as she left it. There were, in truth, few things that Mrs. Mathews liked better than a visit from the Catholic priest. Their friendship had been of long standing, and nothing had ever occurred to shake it; and they now sat down together, with the comfortable intention of having a long chat.
Was there ever a Catholic priest yet who was not a gossip? Probably not, if he was a true priest. But the gossip of a priest is generally a sort of one-sided gossip, hearing all things, but by no means telling all things. And if I had now to follow the priest and confessor of Proctor Castle into any other room in Hertfordshire, save and except the den of Mrs. Mathews I might have to record the same of him.
But the tenant of the den and the confessor of Proctor Castle were on very singular terms with each other, for they conversed in a manner more nearly approaching equality and mutual confidence than it is usual to find between persons so differently situated. This had been produced partly by time, partly by accident, and partly by the peculiar character of the parties. Mr. Cuthbridge had first taken a fancy to Mrs. Mathews because she was a very tolerably good botanist, and very passionately fond of flowers; and this fancy had been very strongly increased by the admission of Mr. Cuthbridge into the den, for the purpose of showing him some interesting plants which were undergoing the process of drying, by an invention of her own.
This had occurred when Mary King was about thirty years old; and then it was that he discovered in what sort of manner she passed the many solitary hours which her neighbours supposed she devoted to her scientific gardening. He saw her polyglot collection of books, he saw her worn-out grammars, and her much-thumbed dictionaries; and having forthwith proceeded to a pretty strict cross-examination, he became so strongly and so affectionately interested in her studies, that, for the future, no assistance in them which a profound and accomplished scholar could give, was wanting.
Had any such assistance been given to her in any pursuit less secret than that of her classical studies, the friendship between them, though it might have been equally lasting, would certainly not have been so intimate. Their intercourse from this time became perfectly confidential, for Mr. Cuthbridge was too acute a man not to perceive that Mary King’s wish to keep her studies secret, was genuine as the ardour with which she pursued them; and her steady, quiet perseverance, both in the pursuit and attendant secrecy, gave her a place in his estimation which no qualities of a more ordinary nature would have been able to excite. For the priest was himself an eccentric sort of person, and the unusual nature and manner of Mary King’s studies, made her an object of no common interest to him.
The gossip, therefore, which now ensued between them, must not be deemed unnatural, merely because it was in a tone of unreserve not usual between Catholic priests and Protestant ladies.
Where is your little girl?” were the first words pronounced by his reverence, after the door was closed upon them.
“My little girl is gone to pass the day at the Manor-house,” replied Mrs. Mathews.
“And where is your not very little boy?” was his next question.
“By which phrase you mean to designate my new grandson, I presume?” returned his friend.
The priest nodded affirmatively.
“I do not know where he may be,” said she. “We do not spend our mornings together very often. But I daresay I can learn where he i
s. Do you wish to see him?”
“No; I wish not to see him,” returned Mr. Cuthbridge. “I have seen him once to-day already, and that will suffice me. But I want to talk about him. How long do you think he is likely to stay here?”
“I should be exceedingly well pleased if I could tell you when he was likely to go,” replied Mrs. Mathews; “for, as I have told you already, my good friend, I do not like him. But though Mr. Mathews perpetually talks of finding a profession for him, I have no faith in his really wishing to part with him.”
“Nor I, either. Neither do I think that the young gentleman himself has any inclination to go,” replied the priest.
“Probably not,” returned his companion. “And now that we are on the subject of Mr. Stephen Cornington, I wish you would tell me for which of his good gifts it is, that you have conceived so great a liking to him?”
“Has he told you that I have conceived a great liking to him?” demanded the priest, with rather an expressive smile.
“Not explicitly, in so many words,” she replied; “but he has said much from which such an inference may be drawn.”
“And you have drawn it?” said he.
“I scarcely know whether I have or not,” was her answer. “It is, however, at least certain,” she added, “that you have no objection to his society; for I know you well enough, Mr. Priest, to be very certain that you would not permit such frequent visits from him if you did.”
“He tells you of his frequent visits, does he?” said Mr. Cuthbridge.
“Oh, yes!” she replied; “it is evident that he is very proud of their frequency.”
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 405