Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

  Conversation such as this, or something very like it, had been often repeated in the hearing of Minny, and it now occurred to her that if she could herself see Herbert, she might give him such a hint respecting the danger which threatened the peace of the Manor-house as might induce him to claim the promised hand of Emily in a manner that would make her marrying another much more difficult than it appeared at present.

  Scarcely had this bold thought suggested itself than it was acted upon, and she instantly turned her steps towards the Manor-house. Had she been less agitated and less excited, she might have shrunk from such an interview as she was now determined to seek. But her object was too immensely important to herself, and every nerve was too tightly strung, to permit any minor considerations to check this last desperate attempt to save herself from destruction.

  She was too well known by every servant at the Manor-house for her difficulties to be increased by any obstacles in the way of her immediately seeing Mr. Otterborne. There might, perhaps, have been a few jokes respecting the nature of her errand, and as to whether she had brought a letter or only a message from her young lady; but as no one doubted that she was an authorised messenger between the lovers, her entrée to the library, where Herbert was sitting, was rendered perfectly easy.

  “I beg your pardon, Sir,” were her first words; but she looked so pale and so much agitated as she uttered them, that the young man immediately felt assured that she had some painful tidings to communicate, and he exclaimed, with some impatience, —

  “What is the matter, Jemima? I beg you will tell me immediately.”

  This was a great assistance to her, for she no longer felt any difficulty as to the manner in which she should communicate what she wanted to tell.

  “I will, I will, Sir,” she replied; “I will tell you everything, and I must trust to your goodness that you will not blame me for what I cannot help. I have just come from father’s, Mr. Herbert; and he told me what it almost broke my heart to hear, both for your sake and my young lady’s.”

  And here Minny put her pocket-handkerchief to her eyes.

  “Pray tell me what you have got to say!” said Herbert; “there is no danger that I should blame you, Minny.”

  “Then may I tell you outright,” said Minny, “just everything that passed, without your thinking that I make too free?”

  “You may, indeed, and very safely. I only beg you not to delay, for I am busy,” he replied.

  “Then this is it, Sir,” returned the girl. “I went down to father’s this morning, as soon as my young lady was dressed, to see after mother, who had been poorly, and, as it happened, I found father all alone, for mother and Dick was gone out. Father was very busy with his accounts; and at first he seemed as if he had no mind to talk to me, because he was too busy; but then he changed his mind, and told me to sit down, ‘cause he had got a question to ask me, and the question was, Mr. Herbert, whether I thought as you really meaned to marry my young lady.”

  Herbert Otterborne started on hearing these words, and coloured violently.

  “I have no intention of speaking severely to you, Minny, said he; “but I must say that I think it would be as well if your father spared himself the trouble of attending to my concerns and minded his own.”

  “Oh, Sir! he do mind his own,” said the girl; “and that only too well, Mr. Herbert; and that’s what it is as brings me to you here now.”

  “Go on,” said Herbert.

  “I answered, Sir, as I thought in duty bound, that, in course you was going to be married to Miss Emily; and then I said to him, ‘And what is it as makes you think about that, father?’ And now, Mr Herbert, you must please to forgive me when I tell you his answer — which was too rude for him to speak, or for me to tell — only I know it’s my duty: ‘Because,’ said he, ‘if your young lady don’t marry the son, I’ll put the father in prison for my bill.’”

  And here she stopped, and clasping her hands beseechingly together, looked in his face as if imploring him to avert so dreadful a calamity.

  For a moment Herbert was profoundly silent, and appeared as much dismayed at her intelligence as she could either have hoped or wished.

  At length he said:

  “It is impossible for me to doubt, Minny, that you have meant well in giving me this information. Of your father’s conduct I will say nothing.”

  “I am as angry at father as you can be, Mr. Herbert,” said she, interrupting him; “but yet it is but truth to say, that his patience, poor man, has been sore tried. He has been a hardworking man, Mr. Herbert; and a deal of the money that is owing to him by Sir Charles was what he had earned by his labour years ago, and put into the savings-bank, and then took it out again to pay for the timber that was wanted for Sir Charles’s work: so he is a good deal to be pitied, Mr. Herbert, though he is now behaving so bad.”

  “And I am behaving worse in being angry with him” said poor Herbert, looking completely subdued; and then after struggling with himself for a moment, as if hating to’ enter upon such a theme, he added: “But, of course, Minny, when your father asked this question you answered in the affirmative?”

  “Answered what, Mr. Herbert?” said Minny, doubtingly.

  “I mean, that of course you answered, ‘Yes,’” returned Herbert.

  These words fell upon the heart of Minny like oil upon troubled water. She did not, however, betray any of the delight they gave her; but replied, in rather a piteous tone: “Why, yes, Mr. Herbert, I did say so; but, indeed, Sir, I doubt if my poor dear young lady would have had the courage to say the same, if the question had been asked at her.”

  And here Minny again applied her pocket-handkerchief to her eyes.

  Herbert Otterborne coloured like a crimson peony; but, nevertheless, he replied in a voice of very tolerable composure: “Why so, Minny? Why should not your young lady answer as you did?”

  “It is very hard to be obliged to speak out so very plain, Mr. Herbert, when it would never be my wish to say anything but what was civil; but my duty won’t let me hide the truth — and the truth is, Mr. Herbert, that my poor dear young lady thinks that you seem inclined to neglect her.”

  Again the face of poor Herbert tingled; but his resolution was immediately taken. “Your young lady wrongs me,” said he; “but I am now going to the ‘Lodge,’ and I hope I shall succeed in making her understand me better.”

  The eyes of the successful Minny sparkled with revived hope and happiness; and Herbert, as he saw the effect his words had produced, not only gave her credit for a vastly more disinterested feeling than any of which her nature was capable, but drew a second inference as fallacious as the first: “This poor foolish Emily, then, really loves me,” thought he, “and the only return I make is ingratitude and negligence! This must not, and shall not be!”

  Minny made an humble courtesy and departed; but there was little of humility at her heart, for she felt that never had a difficult task been more ably executed.

  CHAPTER XXXVII.

  NEVER had Herbert, from the hour when he first determined upon his own self-sacrifice, sought the presence of the lady who had so unexpectedly bestowed her affections upon him with feelings so nearly approaching gratitude as he did now.

  He was, as usual, shown into the full-dressed drawing-room, where all visitors were received, and, as usual, he found it empty. Whether he would have thought most of his mother, or most of Janet, had he known at that moment how very nearly Miss Emily had decided upon sending down word by the servant who announced him, that she did not want to see him, and that he need not trouble himself to call again — how he might have felt, had he known this, may be doubtful. But he did not know it; and, therefore, stood looking out of the window upon the flower beds with very tolerable composure, while the fair mistress of his destiny was standing before her glass, debating the question — To see or not to see him?

  She was not only standing before her glass, but she was looking into it, and this circumstance probably decided the questi
on in favour of her granting the interview that had been asked for. For Emily was most decidedly looking beautiful; and so very great was her delight upon all occasions in showing off this radiant beauty, that she could not resist the pleasure of doing it now.

  “The wretch!” she muttered, as she smiled at herself for the gratification of seeing her own beautiful teeth; “it would serve him right to make him more in love with me than he has ever been yet, just on purpose to make him the more miserable when he finds that he has lost me for ever!” And in this frame of mind she went down-stairs and presented herself to him, “looking beautiful with all her might.”

  Poor Herbert had the full consciousness of deserving the rebuke which had so indirectly reached him, and this consciousness gave to his manner a little of the earnestness and the softness which had assuredly often been wanting in his style of addressing her; and had he, in the Stephen-Cornington vein, thrown his arms audaciously round her, and declared that he was come to seal his pardon on her lips, the chances would have been very greatly in favour of her committing a new infidelity, and swearing to him that the only man she loved in the world was himself.

  But although Mr. Otterborne did not put the reality of her passion for Stephen to this dangerous test, he produced an effect that ought to have completely satisfied Minny, for it was precisely that which it had been her special purpose to achieve.

  All that Minny believed to be necessary for the success of her own hopes, was time; and the process by which she felt sure of gaining it, was exactly that which was going on now between her young lady and her still affianced lover.

  “If,” thought she, “I can but make her afraid, and ashamed to throw him off, she won’t be in such a red-hot hurry to do it.”

  It was thus that the waiting-maid had reasoned; and that her conclusion was correct, was now fully proved by the impossibility which Emily felt of giving the graceful, dignified, and confiding Herbert Otterborne any immediate reason to suspect that she intended to jilt him.

  Nor did he suspect it the least in the world; and after a visit of very nearly three quarters of an hour long, he left her with a parting shake of the hand considerably more affectionate than usual, and returned home with the satisfactory conviction that if there had been anything wrong, he had succeeded in making it right again, and that there was no longer any danger of arrest from the carpenter, if the certainty of his marriage with the heiress could prevent it.

  Emily Steyton was a young lady who very rarely felt any doubts or any fears about anything. Her own will, her own wishes, and her own whims, were the only laws that she acknowledged, and on most points she was as resolute as she was wilful. But there had been something in the look and manner of Herbert during this visit which had excited both her admiration and respect, and if the thoughts which occupied her immediately after his departure had been expressed in words, her soliloquy might have run thus, —

  “At any rate, he is the grandest looking fellow I ever saw. He looks as if he were born to be a king. About beauty, I hardly know which is the handsomest. They are both lovely! But that is not the worst part of the business, for I suppose if I saw them together for a few more times, I should be able to find out, for good and all, which of the two I really did like best, so that’s not the great difficulty. The great difficulty is, that, at this very identical moment, I am positively engaged to both of them. There is nobody that knows this, however, but my own self, that is one good thing, — except Minny, indeed. But I don’t mind her. Of course she counts for nobody.”

  These thoughts were followed by others, some of which were certainly rather embarrassing. The riot her father would make; the storm her mother would blow up; the wrath of all the Otterborne family; and the gossip of the whole neighbourhood; in case she really did decide upon jilting Herbert, — all passed before her in very alarming review.

  And when she turned her thoughts upon the great risk which she should certainly run of not being married at all, for Heaven knows how long, if she did not make up her mind at once, she clasped her hands together in an agony which appeared very greatly to resemble despair, and exclaimed, in heart-rending soliloquy:

  “I shall go mad! I am quite sure I shall, if I can’t settle it in one way or the other at once!”

  And then, after the silent meditation of a few more minutes, she added; “Well, then! I do think at this moment that of the two I would rather marry Herbert Otterborne. Besides, what a horrid deal of trouble it would save! Everything is getting ready for that, and nothing is getting ready for the other. I may not be married for these six months to come, for anything I know. And Louisa Price’s bonnet ordered and everything.”

  After this passionate outbreak the beautiful Emily fell into a silent reverie — her elbows resting on the table, and her fair head supported by her fair hands — and so we must leave her for the present; for the position into which she had brought herself was certainly rather a difficult one, and it might be tedious to follow her through all the meanderings which her fancy suggested for escaping from it.

  * * * * * * *

  Mrs. Mathews, after her conversation with Mr. Cuthbridge, felt her dislike to her husband’s grandson very considerably increased. She might have found it difficult, perhaps, to have assigned any very satisfactory reason for this, but so it was. The confirmation, too, of her suspicion that the young man, notwithstanding his eager declarations that he wished for employment, had no such wish at all, caused her to turn her thoughts painfully to the probability that this somewhat mysterious, and, to her feelings at least, extremely unprepossessing young man, was likely to be the companion of herself and her Janet, for an indefinite, and probably a long period. She confessed to herself that he was extremely well-looking, and possessed of many showy, if not positively brilliant, accomplishments; and this, together with his youth, and the fact that she had never seen him otherwise than civil to everybody, gave her a disagreeable sort of consciousness that she was harsh and unjust towards him.

  “Is it,” thought she, “because I am so jealous of my Janet’s dignity, that I dislike the idea of this long domestic companionship for her, so very greatly? Or is it that I feel there is a mystery about him and his past life which prevents my feeling anything like trust in him?”

  And then she not unfrequently thought of her own settlement, which, at her own earnest request, had been so arranged as to give every farthing of her father’s long-descended property to this ill-descended youth; and in the lofty solitude of her own den, she might now and then have been heard to groan as she thought of it.

  True it was, and she certainly found great consolation in remembering it — true it was that this arrangement, lamentable as it was for the future, gave her a great deal of very consolatory power for the present.

  Notwithstanding all her wisdom, there was certainly a good deal of folly in the ceaseless care she took to hide from every human being the painful fact of Janet’s penniless condition. She carried this so far as even to delude the poor girl herself by telling her that she had received very satisfactory information respecting the probable result of the mercantile transaction which had involved her father in difficulty; but that it was a subject which ought not to be discussed, even between themselves, till the final result was absolutely ascertained, and that, in the meantime, she (Mrs. Mathews) was authorised to make such pecuniary advances to Janet as she thought proper.

  Had no such personage as Stephen Cornington ever been brought upon the scene, Mrs. Mathews would never have told so many fibs; and had Janet Anderson been a few years older, not even Mrs. Mathews herself would have persuaded her to accept advances which she might never be able to repay.

  Nor was poor Mrs. Mathews perfectly satisfied herself with the part she was acting; but a feeling, stronger than herself, seemed to render her absolutely incapable of enduring the seeing the illegitimate offspring of her husband strutting in the assured independence that her own inheritance would give him, while the child of John Anderson was held up to the
pity of the whole neighbourhood as an object of charity.

  But the spirit of Mrs. Mathews was not one easily to be cast down; and as she looked in the sweet face of her adopted daughter, she consoled herself very pleasantly with the belief that she should live long enough to see her Janet married, as well as long enough to save her a fortune from her private five hundred per annum.

  But neither the presence of Stephen Cornington, nor the poverty of Janet Anderson, weighed heavily enough upon her vigorous mind to greatly occupy her thoughts or depress her spirits. There was another subject which, though it might be supposed to touch her less nearly, seemed to occupy her more. This was the approaching marriage of Herbert Otterborne and Emily Steyton.

  It was not that she had detected the young lady’s volatile inconstancy, or that she suspected her of being in any way worse than silly and unladylike; but that Herbert should be sold to save his father from being arrested — which was an idea pretty widely circulated — was dreadful!

  In her secret heart she wondered, greatly wondered, that he had escaped the additional misery of falling in love with her Janet, but she was grateful for it; for had it been otherwise, and even if there had been no rich Emily Steyton in the case, how terrible an addition to his wretched mother’s sorrows it would have been, had she seen his noble heart torn by a hopeless attachment to a penniless girl. Yes, Mrs. Mathews wondered at his insensibility, but she was thankful that it was so.

  That she did not deceive herself on this point was made evident to her by the conduct of Lady Otterborne; for it was perfectly certain that such a woman, and such a mother, would have been tremblingly alive to the danger of exposing Herbert to attractions which there were so many reasons for thinking would be very full of peril to him. For how was it possible to avoid seeing that Janet was as exactly the sort of creature he was likely to love, as that Emily was exactly the sort of creature he was likely not to love? Yet Lady Otterborne persisted most perseveringly in coaxing Janet to come to her, and in coaxing Mrs. Mathews to permit it.