| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: The Duke's Daughter (aka Lady Jane) and The Fugitives; vol. 1/3
Author: Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Duke's Daughter (aka Lady Jane) and The Fugitives; vol. 1/3" ***
This book is indexed by ISYS Web Indexing system to allow the reader find any word or number within the document.
JANE) AND THE FUGITIVES; VOL. 1/3 ***
THE DUKE’S DAUGHTER
AND
THE FUGITIVES
“Lady, you come hither to be married to this count?”
“I do.”
--_Much Ado about Nothing._
THE DUKE’S DAUGHTER
AND
THE FUGITIVES
BY
MRS OLIPHANT
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCXC
TO
A. W. KINGLAKE, ESQ.,
THE GRACIOUS, KIND, AND
GENTLE READER,
WHOM IT IS THE PRIDE OF A HUMBLE NOVELIST
TO PLEASE,
This Little Book
IS INSCRIBED.
NOTE.
It is perhaps necessary to explain that the following story was
published in serial form under the title of ‘Lady Jane,’ but the
subsequent use of a similar title for another work has suggested the
expediency of a change of name.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
THE DUKE’S DAUGHTER--
CHAP. PAGE
I. HER PARENTS, 3
II. HERSELF, 23
III. HER LOVER, 45
IV. A DISAPPOINTMENT, 74
V. THE ANTICIPATIONS OF LADY JANE, 101
VI. THE ART OF STRATEGY, 128
VII. SUSPENSE, 155
VIII. THE DECISIVE MOMENT, 178
IX. ACTING FOR HERSELF, 218
X. A MOMENTOUS INTERVIEW, 234
THE DUKE’S DAUGHTER.
CHAPTER I.
HER PARENTS.
The Duchess was a very sensible woman.
This was her character, universally acknowledged. She might not perhaps
be so splendid a person as a duchess ought to be. She had never been
beautiful, nor was she clever in the ordinary sense of the word; but she
was in the full sense of the word a sensible woman. She had, there is no
doubt, abundant need for this faculty in her progress through the
world. Hers had not been a holiday existence, notwithstanding her high
position at the head of one of the proudest houses and noblest families
in England. It is a sort of compensation to us for the grandeur of the
great to believe that, after all, their wealth and their high position
do them very little good.
“The village maidens of the plain
Salute me lowly as they go,
Envious they mark my silken train,
Nor think a countess can have woe.
The simple nymphs! they little know
How far more happy’s their estate,
To smile for joy than sigh for woe,
To be content than to be great.”
So we all like to believe. But after all, it is highly doubtful whether
there is more content, as the moralists of the eighteenth century
imagined, in a cottage than in a palace; and the palace has the best of
it in so many other ways. The Duchess had met with many vexations in her
life, but no more than we all meet with, nor of a severer kind; and she
had her coronet, and her finery, and her beautiful ducal houses, and the
devotion of all that surrounded her, to the good. So while we have no
occasion to be envious, we have none, on the other hand, to plume
ourselves upon the advantages of humble position. Duchess or no duchess,
however, this lady had sense, a precious gift. And she had need to have
it, as the following narrative will show.
For the Duke, on his side, did not possess that most valuable quality.
He was far more proud than a duke has any occasion to be. On that
pinnacle of rank, if on any height imaginable, a man may permit himself
to think simply of his position, and to form no over-estimate of his own
grandeur. But the Duke of Billingsgate was very proud, and believed
devoutly that he himself and his family tree, and the strawberry-leaves
which grew on the top of it, overshadowed the world. He thought it made
an appreciable difference to the very sunshine; and as for the county
under his shadow, he felt towards it as the old gods might have felt
towards the special lands of which they were the patrons tutelary. He
expected incense upon all the altars, and a sort of perpetual adoration.
It would have pleased him to have men swear by him and dedicate churches
in his honour, had such things been in accordance with modern manners:
he would have felt it to be only natural. He liked people to come into
his presence with diffidence and awe; and though he was frank of accost,
and of elaborate affability, as an English gentleman is obliged to be in
these days, talking to the commonalty almost as if he forgot they were
his inferiors, he never did forget the fact, and it offended him deeply
if they appeared to forget it in word or deed. He was very gracious to
the little county ladies who would come to dine at the Castle when he
was in the country, but he half wondered how they could have the courage
to place a little trembling hand upon his ducal arm, and he liked those
all the better who did tremble and were overcome by the honour. He had
spent enormously in his youth, keeping up the state and splendour which
he thought were necessary to his rank, and which he still thought
necessary though his means were now straitened. And it cannot be denied
that he was angry with the world because his means were straitened, and
felt it a disgrace to the country that one of its earliest dukedoms
should be humiliated to the necessity of discharging superfluous footmen
and lessening the number of horses in the stables. He thought this came,
like so many other evils, of the radicalism of the times. Dukes did not
need to retrench when things were as they ought to be, and a strong
paramount Government held the reins of State. The Duke, however,
retrenched as little as was possible. He did it always under protest.
When strong representations on the part of his agents and lawyers
induced him against his will to cut off one source of expense, he had a
great tendency to burst out into another on an unforeseen occasion and a
different side--a tendency which made him very difficult to manage and a
great trouble to all connected with him.
This was indeed the chief cross in the life of the Duchess; but even
that she took with great sense, not dwelling upon it more than she could
help, and comforting herself with the thought that Hungerford, who was
her eldest son, had great capabilities in the opposite direction, and
was exactly the sort of man to rebuild the substantial fortunes of the
family. He had already done a great deal in that way by resolutely
marrying a great heiress in spite of his father’s absurd opposition. The
Duke had thought his heir good enough for a princess, and had something
as near hysterics as it would be becoming for a duke to indulge in when
he ascertained that obstinate young man’s determination to marry a lady
whose money had been made in the City; but Hungerford was thirty, and
his father had no control over him. There was, however, something left
which he had entirely in his own hands, his daughter--Lady Jane. She had
all the qualities which the Duke most esteemed in his race. She
resembled in features that famous duchess who had the good fortune to
please Charles II., but with a proud, and reserved, and stately air,
which had not distinguished that famous beauty. The repose of her
manners was such as can be seen only on the highest levels of society.
Her face would wear an unchanged expression for days together, and for
almost as long a period the echoes around her would be undisturbed by
anything like the vulgarity of speech. She was a child after her
father’s own heart. Though it is a derogation to a family to descend
through the female line, his Grace could almost have put up with this,
had it been possible to transfer the succession from Hungerford and his
plebeian wife to that still, and fair, and stately maiden. Jane, Duchess
of Billingsgate (in her own right). He liked the thought. He felt that
there would be a certain propriety even in permitting the race to die
out in such a last crowning flower of dignity and honour. But no
day-dream, as he knew, could have been more futile; for the City lady
had brought three boys already to perpetuate the race, and there was no
telling how many more were coming. Hungerford declared loudly that he
meant to put them into trade when they grew up, and that his
grandfather’s business was to be Bobby’s inheritance. Bobby! He had been
called after that grandfather. Such a name had never been heard before
among the Altamonts. The Duke took very little notice of any of the
children, and none whatever of that City brat. But, alas! what could he
do? There was no shutting them out from a single honour. Bobby would be
Lord Robert in spite of him, even at the head of his City grandfather’s
firm.
But the marriage of Lady Jane was a matter still to be concluded, and in
that her father was determined to have his own way. There had not been
the violent competition for her beautiful hand which might have been
expected. Dukes are scant at all times, and there did not happen at
that time to be one marriageable duke with a hand to offer; and smaller
people were alarmed by the grandeur of her surroundings, by the
character of her papa, and by her own stateliness of manner. There were
a few who moved about the outskirts of the magnificent circle in which
alone Lady Jane was permitted to appear, and cast wistful glances at
her, but did not venture further. The Marquis of Wodensville made her a
proposal, but he was sixty, and the Duke did not think the inducement
sufficient to interpose his parental authority; and Mr Roundel, of
Bishop’s Roundel, made serious overtures. If family alone could have
carried the day, the claim of this gentleman would have been supreme,
and his Grace did not lightly reject that great commoner, a man who
would not have accepted a title had the Queen herself gone on her knees
to him. But he showed signs of a desire to play this big fish, to
procrastinate and keep him in suspense, and that was a treatment which a
Roundel was not likely to submit to. Other proposals of less importance
never even reached Lady Jane’s ears; and the subject gave him no
concern. It is true that once or twice Lady Hungerford had made a
laughing remark on the subject of Jane’s marriage, which was like her
underbred impertinence. But the Duke never did more than turn his large
light-grey eyes solemnly upon her when she was guilty of any such
assault upon the superior race. He never condescended to reply. He did
very much the same thing when the Duchess with a sigh once made a
similar observation. He turned his head and fixed his eyes upon her; but
the Duchess was used to him and was not overawed. “I cannot conceive
what you can mean,” he said.
“It is not hard to understand. I don’t expect to be immortal, and I
confess I should like to see Jane settled.”
“Settled!” his Grace said--the very word was derogatory to his daughter.
“Well, the term does not matter. She is very affectionate and clinging,
though people do not think so. I should like to make sure that she has
some one to take care of her when I die.”
“You may be assured,” said the Duke, “that Jane will want no one to take
care of her as you say. I object to hear such a word as clinging applied
to my daughter. I am quite capable, I hope, of taking care of her.”
“But, dear Gus, you are no more immortal than I am,” said his wife. He
disliked to be called by his Christian name in any circumstances, but
Gus had always driven him frantic, as, indeed, it is to be feared the
Duchess was aware. She was annoyed too, or she would not have addressed
him so.
The Duke looked at her once more, but made no reply. He could not say
anything against this assertion: had there been anything better than
immortality he would have put in a claim for that, but as it is
certainly an article of belief that all men are mortal, he was wise
enough to say nothing. Such incidents as these, however, disturbed him
slightly. The sole effect of his wife’s interference was to make him
look at Lady Jane with more critical eyes. The first time he did so
there seemed to him no cause whatever for concern. She had come in from
a walk, and was recounting to her mother what she had seen and heard.
She had a soft flush on her cheek, and was if anything too animated and
youthful in her appearance. She had met the great Lady Germaine, who had
brought a party to see the Dell in the neighbourhood of Billings Castle.
The Duke did not care for intruders upon his property, but it had been
impossible to refuse permission to such a leader of fashion as Lady
Germaine. “There were all the Germaines, of course, and May Plantagenet,
and--Mr Winton,” said Lady Jane. She made a scarcely perceptible pause
before the last name. The Duke took no notice of this, nor did he even
remark what she said. “No longer young!” he said to himself, “she is too
young,” and dismissed Lady Hungerford’s gibes and the Duchess’s sigh
with indignation. He did not even think of it again until next season,
when Jane came to breakfast late one morning after a great ball, and
made a languid remark in answer to her mother’s question. “There was
scarcely any one there,” she said with something between a yawn and a
sigh: half London had been there; but still it was not what his daughter
said that attracted his attention. He saw as he looked at her a slight,
the very slightest, indentation in the delicate oval of Lady Jane’s
cheek. The perfection of the curve was just broken. It might only have
been a dimple, but she was not in the mood which reveals dimples. There
went a little chill to the Duke’s heart at the sight. _Passée?_
Impossible; years and years must go before that word could be applied to
his daughter; but still he felt sure Lady Hungerford must have remarked
it: no, it was not a hollow; but no doubt with her vulgar long sight she
must have remarked it, and would say everywhere that dear Jane was
certainly going off. The Duke never took any notice apparently of these
sallies of his daughter-in-law, but in reality there was nothing of
which he stood in so much dread.
The Duchess on her side was well acquainted with that hollow. It _was_ a
hollow, very slight, sometimes disappearing altogether; but there it
was. She had awakened to a consciousness of its existence one day
suddenly, though it had evidently taken some time to come to that point.
And since then it had seldom been out of the Duchess’s mind. She had no
doubt that other people had discovered it before now, and made malicious
remarks upon it: for if she observed it who was so anxious to make the
best of her child, what would they do whose object was the reverse? But
what did it matter what any one said? There it was, which was the great
thing. It spoke with a voice which nobody could silence, of Jane’s
youth passing away, of her freshness wearing out, of her bloom fading.
Was she to sit there and grow old while her father wove his fictions
about her? It had given the Duchess many a thought. She knew very well
what all this princely expenditure would lead to. Hungerford would not
be much the worse; he had his wife’s fortune to fall back upon, and
perhaps he would not feel himself called upon to take on himself the
burden of his father’s debts after he was gone. But for the Duke
himself, if he lived, and his family, the Duchess, looking calmly on
ahead, knew what must happen. Things would come to a crash sooner or
later, and everything that could be sacrificed would have to be
sacrificed. Rank would not save them. It might put off bankruptcy to the
last possible moment, but it would not avert it altogether; and the
moment would come when everything must change, and a sort of noble
exile, or at least seclusion in the country, if nothing worse, would be
their fate. And Jane? If she were to be left to her father’s disposal,
what would be the end of Jane? She would have to descend from her
pedestal, and learn what it was to be poor--that is, as dukes’ daughters
can be poor. The grandeur and largeness of her life would fall away from
her, and no new chapter in existence would come in to modify the old,
and make its changes an advantage rather than a drawback. The Duchess
said to herself that to go against her husband was a thing she never had
done; but there was a limit to a wife’s duty. She could not let Jane be
sacrificed while she stood aside and looked on. This was the question
which the Duchess had to solve. She was brought to it gradually, her
eyes being opened by degrees to other things not quite so evident as
that change in the oval of Jane’s perfect cheek. She found out why it
was that her daughter had yawned or sighed, and said, “There was nobody
there,” of the ball to which half London struggled to get admittance. On
the very next evening Lady Jane paid a humdrum visit to an old lady who
was nobody in particular, and came home with a pretty glow, and no
hollow visible, declaring that there had been a delightful little party,
and that she had never enjoyed herself so much. The Duchess felt that
here was a mystery. It was partly the ‘Morning Post’ that helped her to
find it out, and partly the unconscious revelations of Jane herself in
her exhilaration. The ‘Morning Post’ made it evident that a certain name
was not in the list of the fine people who had figured at my Lady
Germaine’s ball, and Lady Jane betrayed by a hundred unconscious little
references that the bearer of that name had been present at the other
little reunion. The Duchess put this and that together. She, too, no
doubt would have liked to see her daughter a duchess like herself; but,
failing that, she preferred that Jane should be happy in her own way.
But the question was, had Jane courage enough to take her own way? She
had been supposed to have everything she wanted all her life, and had
been surrounded by every observance; but, as a matter of fact, Jane had
got chiefly what other people wanted, and had been secretly satisfied
that it should be so. Would she once in her life, against her father and
the world, be moved to stand up for herself? But this was what the
Duchess did not know.
CHAPTER II.
HERSELF.
A princess royal is always an interesting personage. The very title is
charming--there is about it a supreme heiress-ship, if not of practical
dominion, at least of the more delicate part of the inheritance. She has
the feminine rule, the kingdom of hearts, the homage of sentiment and
imagination. Even when she grows old the title retains a sweet and
penetrating influence, and in youth it is the very crown of visionary
greatness, an elevation without any vulgar elements. Lady Jane was the
Princess Royal of her father’s house. There had been just so much
poetry in his pride as to make him feel this beautifying characteristic
of feminine rank to be an addition (if any addition were possible) to
his dukedom. And she had been brought up in the belief that she was not
as other girls were, nor even as the little Lady Marys and Lady Augustas
who in the eyes of the world stood upon a similar eminence. She stood
alone--the blood of the Altamonts had reached its cream of sweetness,
its fine quintessence in her veins. Hungerford was very well in his way.
He would be Duke when his time came. The property, and lands, and titles
would be vested in him; but he had no such visionary altitude as his
sister. He himself was quite aware of the fact: he laughed, and was very
well content to be rid of this visionary representativeship, but he
fully recognised that Jane was not to be considered as an ordinary
mortal, that she was the flower and crown of so many generations, the
last perfection to which the race could attain. And with infinite
modesty and humility of mind Lady Jane too perceived her mission. She
became aware of it very early, when other girls were still busy with
their skipping-ropes. It was a great honour to fall upon so young a
head. When she walked about the noble woods at Billings and dreamed as
girls do of the world before her, this sense of rank was never absent
from her mind: impossible to foresee what were the scenes through which
it might lead her. She heard a great deal of the evil state of public
affairs--the decadence of England, the advance of democracy, the
approaching ruin in which everything that was great and noble must soon
be engulfed; and Lady Jane took it all seriously, and felt it very
possible that her fate might be that of a virgin martyr to the cruel
forces of revolution. For one time of her life her favourite literature
was the memoirs of those great and noble ladies, full of charity and
romance, who cast a pathetic glory upon the end of the old _régime_ in
France, and died for crimes of which they were no way guilty, paying the
long arrears of oppression which they had done all they could to modify.
Jane took, as was natural, the political jeremiads of her father and his
friends with the matter-of-fact faith of youth, and she did not think
that even the guillotine was impossible. If it came to her lot--as,
according to all she heard, seemed likely--to maintain the cause of
nobility to the last, she was ready to walk to the scaffold like Marie
Antoinette, holding her head high, and smiling upon her assassins; or if
it were possible to save the country by another kind of self-devotion,
she was prepared, though with trembling, to inspire a nation or lead an
army. These were the kind of dreams she entertained at fifteen, which is
the time when a girl is most alive to the claims of patriotism, and can
feel it possible that she too may be a heroine. Older, she began to be
less certain. Facts came in and confused fancy. She saw no indications
such as those which her books said had been seen in France; everything
was very peaceable, everybody very respectful wherever she went. The
common people looked at her admiringly when by chance she drove with her
mamma through the crowded streets. They seemed all quite willing to
acknowledge her position. She was greeted with smiles instead of groans,
and heroism seemed unnecessary.
Then there came a time when Lady Jane felt that it would probably be
her mission to be, if not a martyr, a benefactress to the world. It
would be right for her to move half royally, half angelically, through
all the haunts of wretchedness, and leave comfort and abundance behind.
She imagined to herself scenes like the great plague, times of famine
and fever, in which her sudden appearance, with succour of every kind
about her, would bring an immediate change of affairs and turn darkness
into light. She did not know--how should she?--what squalor and
wretchedness were like, and this great and successful mission never in
her thoughts so much as soiled her dress, and had nothing disgusting or
repulsive in it. But by-and-by, gradually there came a change also upon
this phase of mind. A princess royal has always the confidence that in
her own ministrations there must be a secret charm; but still she could
not shut her eyes to the fact that in her mother’s charities all was
not plain sailing. And it became apparent to her also, with a
considerable shock, that there were many things which the Duchess wished
but had not means to do; which had a painful effect upon Lady Jane’s
dreams, and cut them short, confusing her whole horizon, and arresting
her imagination. She then paused, with considerable bewilderment, not
quite perceiving where the mission of her rank would lead her. It must
give her distinct duties, and a sphere above the common quiescence of
life--but what? Lady Jane was perplexed, and no longer saw her way.
Vulgar contact with the world was impossible to her; she shrank from the
public organisation of charity. Something else surely, something of a
more magnanimous kind, was to be hers to do. But in the meantime she did
not know what, and stood as it were upon the battlements of the castle
wall looking out, somewhat confused, but full of noble sentiment and
desire to perform the finest functions for the advantage of the world.
This was the aspect which pride of birth took in the pure and high-toned
spirit of the Duke’s daughter. She accepted undoubtingly the creed of
her race, and never questioned the fact that she was something entirely
removed from the crowd, elevated above the ordinary level of humanity.
The Duchess had little of this inborn conviction, but yet a duchess is a
duchess, and unless she is of a quite remarkable order of intelligence,
it is very unlikely that she should be able to separate herself from the
prejudices of her rank. As a matter of fact, the members of a duke’s
household are not ordinary mortals. Limits which are natural to us have
nothing to do with them. It must require a distinct independence and
great force of mind to realise that they are just of the same flesh and
blood as the scullery-maid and the shoe-boy; nay--for these are
extravagant instances out of their range of vision--even as the groom of
the chambers and the housekeeper, who are entirely devoted to their
service. To doubt this, accordingly, never entered the mind of Lady
Jane; but anything resembling personal pride had no existence in her.
She did not know what it meant. There is no such beautiful scope for
pure humility of spirit as in the mind of a creature thus fancifully
elevated. It never occurred to her that it was her own excellence which
gave her this place. She was unfeignedly modest in every estimate of
herself, docile, ready to be guided, deferring to everybody. Never had
there been so obedient a child to nurses and governesses, nor one who
accepted reproof more sweetly, nor sought with more anxious grace to
gain approbation. It was difficult to rouse her to the exercise of her
own judgment at all. “Do you think so?” she would say to the humblest
person about her, with a sincere desire to please that person by
accepting his or her view rather than her own. Some people thought she
had no opinion of her own at all, but that was a mistake--though the
pain it gave her to cross, or vex, or contradict (in fact: in words she
never was guilty of such a breach of charity) any one, made her act upon
her own opinion only in the very direst necessity. But when her gentle
foot struck against the limits of the sphere which she thought
boundless, Lady Jane remained for a long time perplexed, confused, not
knowing what the object might be which was to fill her life. It was
during this period that her cheek, though still so young, began to own
the slightest possible departure from the oval. It might have been only
the touch of a finger--but there it was. A slight line over Lady Jane’s
eyes appeared about the same time. She had become anxious, almost
wistful, wondering and perplexed. What was she to do with her life?
England (though, as they all said, going to destruction) showed no signs
of immediate ruin. In all likelihood the guillotine would not be set up
in Lady Jane’s time, and there would be no occasion for any sacrifice on
her part. She looked abroad into the world, and saw no need of her. She
shrank, indeed, from any actual step, notwithstanding her dreams and her
conviction that something great ought to come of her; and if she had
attempted to take any step whatever, she knew that the Duke and the
Duchess, and Hungerford and Susan, and all the connections and
retainers to the hundredth degree, would have rushed with dismay to
prevent her. Was it possible that by sitting calmly upon her elevated
seat, and smiling sweetly or frowning (as best she could) as the
occasion required, she was doing all she was called upon to do? In that
case Lady Jane acknowledged to herself with a sigh, that it was scarcely
worth while being a princess royal at all.
The reader will think it strange that all this time no idea of marriage,
or of the great preliminary of marriage, had entered her head. Perhaps
it would be rash to say that this was the case. But she had known from
an early period that there were very few people in the world who could
pretend to Lady Jane Altamont’s hand. She laughed when it was proposed
to her to marry the Marquis of Wodensville. “Oh no, papa, thank you,”
she said.
“We have made alliances with his family before now. He has some of the
best blood in England in his veins,” said the Duke.
“Oh no, papa, thank you,” said Lady Jane. She did not ask any one’s
advice on this point. When there was that negotiation with Mr Roundel,
of Bishop’s Roundel, she was more interested, but not enough to disturb
her equilibrium when it was found he had gone off in disgust, and
married his sister’s governess. “I thought he could not be pure blood,”
the Duke said. Lady Jane smiled, and, it is to be feared, thought so
too. The worst of high rank is that it destroys perspective. She could
not see the gradations below her in the least. She knew the difference
between her father’s rank and that of a prince of the blood; and she
knew exactly how countesses and marchionesses ought to go in to dinner;
but of the difference between governesses and housekeepers and other
attendants she knew little. The one and the other were entirely out of
her sphere. Her own old governess, whose name was Strangford, she had
always called Stranghy and been extremely fond of--but then she was fond
of all her old attendants, and thought of them much in the same way.
Then Lord Rushbrook, who was a Cabinet Minister, had presented himself
to her. She did not wish to marry him, but she felt that here was
something which was not rank (for he was only a baron), and yet was
equal to rank. It was almost the first gleam of such enlightenment that
came into her mind.
About this time, however, it certainly began to enter into Lady Jane’s
head that it is a general thing to marry, and that this is the way in
which most women solve the problem of their life. Perhaps because of
the “offers” she had received: perhaps because she had met at Lady
Germaine’s, quite promiscuously, on one of the many occasions on which
she went there, a--gentleman. She had met a great many gentlemen there
and elsewhere before; but on the particular occasion in question, she
had gone by accident, without design, and with no expectation of meeting
any one. Fate thus lies in wait for us, round a corner, when we think of
it least. The gentleman was nobody in particular. He had never been
meant to meet the Duke’s daughter. Indeed, had Lady Germaine had but the
slightest prevision of what was coming, she would have locked him into a
closet, or tripped him over into the river, rather than permitted such a
thing to happen in her house. But she did not know any more than other
mortals, and the train was laid by the Fates without any sort of
connivance on the part of any human creature. They all fell blindly,
stupidly, accidentally into the net.
It was perhaps then, we say, when Lady Jane declined, either by her own
will or her father’s, her other matrimonial prospects, or perhaps when
she met the aforesaid gentleman, that it first really occurred to this
high and visionary maiden to take into consideration that which is the
leading incident in the lives of most women, the event which decides the
question whether their lives shall be lonely and in great measure
objectless, or busy and full of interest and occupation. Generally it is
at a very early age that girls first approach this question. But Lady
Jane had been a stately little person even in her cradle. She had not
chosen to be kissed and caressed as most children are. She had been
gently proud and reticent through all her girlhood. She had no youthful
intimates to breathe into her mind this suggestion--no girl-friend about
to be married to initiate her into the joyous fuss, the importance, the
applauses and presents, the general commotion which every wedding
produces. She had, indeed, been present at a marriage, but never at one
which touched her at all in her immediate circle. So that Lady Jane was
nearly eight-and-twenty when it occurred to her as possible that she too
might marry and carry out in her own person the universal lot. At first
she had been shocked at herself, and had driven the thought out of her
mind with a delicacy which cannot but be called false, though she was
not conscious of its fictitious character. But the idea came back: it
caught her at unawares, it came over her sometimes with soft, delicious
suggestions. When she met a young mother with her children, a sigh that
was as soft as the west wind in spring would come out of Lady Jane’s
heart. How happy was that woman! how delightful all the cares that beset
her, the calls from this one and that, the constant demand upon her!
_She_ had no time to ask what her life was worth, no leisure to
speculate how she could best fulfil its duties: all that and many
another question was solved for her. Lady Jane watched the happy mother
with an interest which was almost envy. And there were other thoughts
which crossed her fancy too, and awakened much that was dormant in her.
Once when she was sitting by her mother it suddenly came into her mind
to contrast the Duchess’s life with her own. She looked at her Grace’s
fair and genial presence, and watched her going over her accounts, and
settling the affairs of her great house. There were many lines on the
Duchess’s brow. She was an excellent economist on a great scale, as
became her rank, but she had the disadvantage of being thwarted on every
side by the prodigalities of her husband. It was not a happy moment at
which to regard her; yet Lady Jane, looking at her mother, was suddenly
moved to ask herself whether the Duchess would have been better,
balancing all her outcomings and incomings serenely without any one to
disturb her, had she never married. The question seemed a ludicrous one,
but Lady Jane was prone to imaginations. She conjured up before herself
a picture of this lady in a house where no one thwarted her; where there
was no family to provide for, no Susan to keep a watchful eye upon what
she was doing, no Jane to reflect upon her as an example of fate. She
laughed to herself softly at the impossibility of this imagination.
“What are you laughing at?” the Duchess asked, pausing with her pen in
her hand and a look which was indicative of anything but an easy mind.
“I was thinking--what if you had never married, mamma?”
The Duchess turned round upon her, opening her eyes wide with wonder.
“What if I had never married? Are you taking leave of your senses?” she
said. And indeed the idea was entirely ludicrous, for if she had never
married where would Jane herself have been? Jane laughed again very
softly, and a sudden wave of colour came over her face. She thought,
though her mother was not very happy, that it was better to be less
happy so, than more happy alone. It seemed to her that the absence of
care would have made her Grace much less interesting. Her comely figure
seemed to shrink and fall away as Jane thought, looking at it--and then
her mind slid imperceptibly from that fancy to a sudden realisation of
herself. After all, she had been thinking of herself all her life, what
she should do, how she should occupy herself, which theory of life was
the best. But the young woman whom she had met among her children had
got that problem solved for her; she had no time to think of herself at
all: there were so many claims upon her, soft little arms, voices like
the birds, as well as bigger appeals, more articulate; the chances were
that from morning to night she had no leisure in which to speculate on
what was best for herself. The Duchess, though a great lady, was in the
same position. Even the least self-regarding whose hands are free, think
more about themselves than the selfish, whose time and thoughts are
taken up with other matters, can be able to do. This thought made a
great impression upon Lady Jane. Perhaps even these ideas would have
moved her little had it not been for that encounter at Lady
Germaine’s--but it was long before she brought herself so far as to
acknowledge that. She considered the question in the abstract form long
before she approached it in the concrete. And thus she came candidly to
conclude and acknowledge that the woman who is married has a career
before her which the unmarried woman can scarcely command. It was a new
idea to Lady Jane, but her mind was very candid, and she received this
as she received every other conclusion justified by reason. It would be
good that she should marry; and then she had met at Lady Germaine’s--a
gentleman. But who this gentleman was must be left for another chapter.
CHAPTER III.
HER LOVER.
It has never been fully explained how it was that a person so thoroughly
experienced in the world as Lady Germaine should have permitted an
acquaintance between Lady Jane and Mr Winton to ripen under her roof.
That she should have introduced them to each other was nothing, of
course; for in society every gentleman is supposed the equal of every
other gentleman, though he has not a penny and his next neighbour may be
a millionaire; and Lady Jane was gracious in her high-minded, maidenly
way, as a princess should be, to everybody, to the clergyman, and even
to the clergyman’s sons, dangerous and detrimental young persons who
have to be asked to country houses, a perpetual alarm to anxious parents
who have daughters. No _hauteur_, no exclusiveness was in Lady Jane. She
was as much withdrawn above the young squire as the young curate, and
there was no reason why Mr Winton, who was very personable, very well
thought of, and in no sense of the word detrimental, should not pay his
homage to the Duke’s daughter. But there it should have stopped. When
she saw that there was even the remotest chance that it might go
further, Lady Germaine’s duty was plain. She should have said firmly,
“Not in my house.” It was not to be supposed, indeed, that she could
stop the course of mutual inclination, prevent Mr Winton from making
love to Lady Jane, or Lady Jane from listening. But what she could, and
indeed ought to, have done, was to say plainly, “Meet where they will,
it must not be in my house.” Her duty to the Duke demanded this course
of action. But it must be confessed that Lady Germaine was very
independent--too independent for a woman--and that what she would not
recognise was, that she had any duty at all to the Duke. He might be the
head of society in the county, but what did Lady Germaine care? She
laughed openly at the county society, and declared that she would as
soon throw in her lot among the farmers of the district as among the
squires, and that the Duke was an old--the pen of the historian almost
refuses to record the language this daring lady used--an old humbug. She
ventured to say this and lived. The Duke never knew how far she went,
but he disapproved of her, and considered her an irreverent person. He
would have checked his daughter’s intimacy with her had he been able.
But the Duchess did not see any harm in it. Her Grace’s opinion was that
a little enlivenment was what Jane wanted, and that even a slight
exaggeration of gaiety would do her no harm. Lady Germaine’s set was
unimpeachable though it loved diversion, and diversion was above
everything the thing necessary for Lady Jane. And there was this to be
said for Lady Germaine, that the Duchess herself had the opportunity of
stopping the Winton affair had she chosen. She must have seen what was
going on. Poor Mr Winton could not conceal the state of mind in which he
was; and as for Lady Jane, there was a certain tremor in her retired and
gentle demeanour, a little outburst of happiness now and then, a liquid
expression about the eyes, a softening of manner and countenance, which
no mother’s eyes could have overlooked. It was she who ought to have
interfered. She could have controlled her own child no doubt, or she
could have made it apparent to Mr Winton that his assiduities were
disagreeable; but she did nothing of the sort. She had every appearance
of liking the man herself. She talked to him apparently with pleasure,
asked him his opinion, declared that he had excellent taste. After this
why should Lady Germaine have been blamed? All she did was to form her
society of the best materials she could collect. She was fond of nice
people, and loved conversation. If men could talk pleasantly, and add to
the entertainment of her household, when the time came for encountering
the tedium of the country, she asked nothing about their grandfathers,
nor even demanded whether they had a rent-roll, or money in the funds,
or how they lived. Lively young barristers, literary men, artists,
people who it was to be feared lived on their wits, not to speak of
those younger sons who are the plague of society, came and went about
her house; which made it a house alarming to mothers, it must be
allowed, but extremely lively, cheerful, and full of “go,” which was
what Lady Germaine liked. And as she openly professed that this was the
principle upon which she went, the risks were at least patent and
above-board which princesses royal were likely to meet with at her
house.
It is now time to speak of the lover himself, who has hitherto been but
hinted at. We must say, in the first place, that there was nothing
objectionable about Mr Winton. He was not poor, nor was he _roturier_.
He was a well-bred English gentleman, of perfectly good though not
exalted family. On the Continent he would have been said to belong to
the _petite noblesse_. But after all it only wants an accession of
fortune to make _la petite_ into _la grande noblesse_. He was as far
descended as any prince (which, indeed, may be said for the most of us),
and had ancestors reaching up into the darkness of the ages. At least he
had the portraits of these ancestors hanging up in the hall at Winton
House; and unless they had existed, how could they have had their
portraits taken? which is an unanswerable argument. Winton House itself
was but a small place, it is true; but when his Indian uncle died and
left him all that money, it was immediately placed in Mr Winton’s power
to make his house into a great one had he chosen; and for so rich a man
to keep the old place intact was loyalty, or family pride, or at the
worst eccentricity, and did by no means imply any shabbiness either of
mind or means. To make up for this he had a very handsome house in town,
and there was no doubt at all on the question that he was a rich man,
and able to indulge his fancy as he pleased. He would have been a
perfectly good match for Lady Germaine’s own daughter had she been old
enough, or for Earl Binny’s young ladies, or for almost any girl in the
county, excepting always Lady Jane. She was the one who was out of his
sphere. It was perfectly well known that the Duke would not hear of any
son-in-law whose rank, or at least whose family, was not equal to his
own, and it had long been a foregone conclusion with society that it was
very unlikely Lady Jane would ever marry at all. Perhaps had Mr Winton
fully foreseen the position, he would have retired too, before, as
people say, his feelings were too much interested. But it is to be
feared that the idea did not occur to him until, unfortunately, it was
too late.
Reginald Winton had been brought up in the most approved way at a public
school, and at Oxford, and shaped into what was considered the best
fashion of his time. It had been intended, as the old estate was
insufficient to support two people, and his mother was then living, that
he should go to the bar. But before he attained this end, the uncle’s
fortune, of which he had not the least expectation, fell down upon him
suddenly, as from the skies. Then, of course, it was not thought
necessary that he should continue his studies. He was not only rich, but
very rich, and at the same time had all the advantages of once having
been poor. He had no expensive habits. He did not bet, nor race, nor
gamble; nor did he on the other hand buy pictures or curiosities, or
sumptuous furniture (at least no more than reason). He was full of
intelligence, but he was not literary, nor over-learned, nor too clever.
He was five feet ten, and quite sufficiently good-looking for a man of
his fortune. He would have been favourably received in most families of
gentry, nay, even of nobility, in England; but only not in the house of
the Altamonts. Here was the perversity of fate. But he did not do it on
purpose, nor fly at such high game solely because it was forbidden, as
some people might have done. It is certain that he did not know who Lady
Jane was when his heart was caught unawares. He took Lady Germaine aside
and begged to be introduced to the young lady in white, without a
suspicion of her greatness. It was at a moment when ladies wore a great
deal of colour: when they had wreaths of flowers scrambling over their
dresses and their heads, like a hedgerow in summer. Lady Jane’s dress
was white silk, soft and even dull in tone. She had not a bow or a
flower, but some pearls twisted in her smooth brown hair, which was not
frizzy as nowadays, but shining like satin. She was seated a little
apart with the children of the house, and to a man incapable of
perceiving that this simple garment was of much superior value to many
of the gayer fabrics round, she had the air of being economically as
well as gracefully clothed. “How much better taste is that simple dress
than all those furbelows!” he said. His opinion was, that she would turn
out to be the rector’s daughter. Lady Germaine gazed at him for a moment
with the contempt which a woman naturally entertains for a man’s mistake
in this kind. “I like your simplicity,” she said with fine satire which
he did not understand;--and presented him on the spot to Lady Jane
Altamont.
How Winton opened his eyes! But there was no reason why he should
withdraw, and acknowledge the Duke’s daughter to be out of his sphere.
On the contrary, he did his best to make himself agreeable. And from
that time to this, when everybody could see things were coming to a
crisis, he had never ceased in the effort. It was the first time--except
by Lord Rushbrook, who had done it politically--that this noble maiden
had been personally wooed. The sense that she was as other women, had
come into her heart with a soft transport of sweetness, emancipating her
all at once from those golden bonds of high sacrifice and duty in which
she had believed herself to be bound. She had not rebelled against them;
but when it appeared now that life might be happiness as well as duty,
and that all its delights and hopes were possible to her as to others,
the melting of all those icicles that had been formed around her,
flooded her gentle soul with tenderness. She was not easily wooed; for
nothing could be less like the freedom of manners which makes it natural
nowadays for a girl to advance a little on her side, and help on her
lover, than the almost timid though always sweet stateliness with which
Lady Jane received his devotion. It was a wonder to her, as it cannot be
to young ladies who flirt from their cradles. Love! She regarded it with
awe, mingled with a touched and surprised gratitude. She was older than
a girl usually is when that revelation is first made to her, a fact
which deepened every sentiment. Winton did not, could not, divine what
was passing in that delicate spirit. But he felt the novelty, the
exquisite, modest grace of his reception. He had not been without
experience in his own person, and had known what it was to be
“encouraged.” But here he was not encouraged. It was romance put into
action for the first time, a love-making that was as new, and fresh, and
miraculous, and incomprehensible, as if no one had ever made love
before. And thus the flood of their own emotions carried the pair on;
and if Winton had never paused to think how the Duke would receive his
addresses, it may with still greater certainty be assumed that Lady Jane
had never considered that momentous question. They went on, unawakened
to anything outside their own elysium, which, like most other elysiums
of the kind, was a fool’s paradise.
It was Lady Germaine at last, as she had been the means of setting the
whole affair in motion, who brought it to a climax. He had not confided
in her in so many words--for, indeed, he was too much elevated and
carried away by this growing passion to bring it to the common eye; but
he had so far betrayed himself on a certain occasion when reference had
been made to Lady Jane, that his hostess and friend burst through all
pretences and herself dashed into the subject. “Reginald Winton,” she
said almost solemnly, “do you know what is before you? How are you going
to ask the Duke of Billingsgate, that high and mighty personage, to give
you his daughter? I wonder you are not ready to sink into the earth with
terror.”
“The Duke of Billingsgate?” cried the young man, with a gasp of dismay.
“To be sure; but I suppose you never thought of that,” she said.
He grew paler and paler as he looked at her. “Do you know,” he said, “it
never occurred to me till this moment. But what do I care for the Duke
of Billingsgate? I think of nothing, since you will have it, but _her_,
Lady Germaine.”
“Innocent! do you think I have not known that for the last two months?
When you want to hide anything, you should not put flags up at all your
windows.”
“Have I put flags up?” He looked at her with colours flying and an
illumination in his eyes. He was pleased to think that he had exposed
himself and proclaimed his lady’s charms in this way, like a
knight-errant. “I hope I have not done anything to annoy her,” he added,
in a panic. “Lady Germaine, you will keep my secret till I know my
fate.”
“Oh, as for keeping your secret--but from whom are you to know your
fate, if I may ask?” Lady Germaine said.
Reginald blushed like a girl all over his face--or rather he reddened
like a man, duskily, half angrily, while his eyes grew more like
illuminations than ever. He drew a long breath, making a distinct
pause, as a devout Catholic would do to cross himself, before he
replied, “From whom? from _her_; who else?” with a glow of excitement
and hope.
Lady Germaine shook her head. “Oh, you innocent!” she cried; “oh, you
baby! If there is any other word that expresses utter simplicity and
foolishness, let me call you that. _Her!_ that is all very well, that is
easy enough. But what are you to say to her father?--oh, you
simpleton!--her father,--that is the question.”
“I presume, Lady Germaine,” said the lover, assuming an air of superior
knowledge and lofty sentiment--“I presume that if I am so fortunate as
to persuade _her_ to listen to me--which, heaven knows, I am doubtful
enough of!--that in that case her father----”
“Would be easy to manage, you think?” she said, with scornful toleration
of his folly.
The young man looked at her with that ineffable air of imbecility and
vanity which no man can escape at such a crisis, and made her a little
bow of acquiescence. Her tone, her air, made him aware that she had no
doubt of his success in the first instance, and this gave him a sudden
intoxication. A father! What was a father? If she once gave him
authority to speak to her father, would not all be said?
“Oh, you goose!” said Lady Germaine again; “oh, you ignoramus! You are
so silly that I am obliged to call you names. Do you know who the Duke
of Billingsgate is? Simply the proudest man in England. He thinks there
is nobody under the blood royal that is good enough for his child.”
“And he is quite right! I am of the same opinion,” said Winton; then he
paused and gave her a look in which, notwithstanding his gravity and
enthusiasm, there was something comic. “But then,” he added, “the blood
royal, that is not always the symbol of perfection, and then----”
“And then----? You think, of course, that you have something to offer
which a royal duke might not possess?”
“Perhaps,” said Winton, looking at her again with a sort of friendly
defiance; and then his eyes softened with that in which he felt himself
superior to any royal duke or potentate; the something which was worthy
of Lady Jane, let all the noble fathers in the world do their worst
against him. He was not alarmed by all that Lady Germaine had said. Most
likely he did not realise it. His mind went away even while she was
speaking. She had heart enough to approve of this, and to perceive that
Winton felt as a true lover ought to feel, but she was half provoked all
the same, and anxious how it was all to turn out.
“Do be a little practical,” she said; “try for a moment to leave her out
of the question. What are you going to say to the Duke? That is what I
want to know.”
“How can I tell you?” said Winton; “how can I speak at all on such a
subject? If I am to be so happy as to have anything at all to say to the
Duke:--why, then--the occasion will inspire me,” he added, after a
pause. “I cannot even think now what in such circumstances I should
say.”
Lady Germaine gave up with a sigh all attempt to guide him. “Then I must
just wash my hands of you,” she said, with a sort of despair; “indeed,
in any case I don’t know what I could have done for you. I shall be
blamed, of course. The Duke will turn upon me, I know; but, thank
heaven, I have nothing to fear from the Duke, and I don’t see what I can
be said to have to do with the business. You met only in the ordinary
way at my house. I never planned meetings for you, nor schemed to bring
you together. Indeed I never thought of such a thing at all. Lady Jane,
who has refused the first matches in the kingdom, what could have led me
to suppose that she would turn her eyes upon _you_?”
Now, though Winton said truly that he thought the Duke quite right in
expecting the very best and highest of all things for his child, yet it
was not in the nature of man not to be somewhat piqued when he heard
himself spoken of in this tone of slight, and almost contempt. True, he
would have desired for her sake to have more and finer gifts to lay at
her feet, but still such as he was, was not, after all, so contemptible
as Lady Germaine seemed to imply. He could not help a little movement of
self-vindication.
“I am not aware on what ground you can be blamed,” he said, coldly,
“since you are good enough to admit me to your society at all. Perhaps
that was a mistake; and yet I don’t know that I have done anything to
shut the doors of my friends against me.”
“This is admirable,” said Lady Germaine; “you first, and the Duke
afterwards. Never mind; you will probably come to yourself in half an
hour or so, and beg my pardon. I give it you beforehand. But at the same
time, let me advise you for your own good, to think a little what you
are going to say to the Duke when you ask him for his daughter. It will
not be so easy a matter as you seem to think. Oh yes, of course you are
sorry for being rude to me--I was aware of that. Yes, yes, I forgive
you. But pay attention to what I say.”
Winton thought over this conversation several times in the course of the
next twenty-four hours, but his mind was very much occupied with
another and much more important matter. He thought so much of Lady Jane
that he had little time to spare for any consideration of her father.
True, he himself was only a commoner of an undistinguished family; but
he had the sustaining consciousness of being very well off--and dukes’
daughters had been known to marry commoners before now without any
special commotion on the subject. He was a great deal more occupied with
the first steps in the matter than with any subsequent ones. He had to
find out where Lady Jane was going, and to contrive to get invitations
to the same places, for it was the height of the season, and they were
all in London. The Duchess did not throw herself into the vortex. She
went only to the best houses; she gave only stately entertainments,
which the Duke made a point of; therefore it was more difficult to go
where Lady Jane was going than is usually the case with the ordinary
Lady Janes of society. It took her lover most of his time to arrange
these opportunities of seeing her, and at each successive one he made up
his mind to determine his fate. But it is astonishing how many accidents
intervene when such a decision has been come to. Sometimes it was an
impertinent spectator who would obtrude himself or herself upon them.
Sometimes it was the impossibility of finding a nook where any such
serious conversation could be carried on. Sometimes the frivolity of the
surrounding circumstances kept him silent; for who would, if he could
help it, associate that wonderful moment of his existence with nothing
better than the chatter of the ball-room? And once when every
circumstance favoured him, his heart failed and he did not dare to put
his fortune to the touch. How could he think of the father while in all
the agitation of uncertainty as to how his suit would be looked upon by
the daughter? During this moment of hesitation the Duchess herself once
asked him to dinner, and when he found himself set down in the centre of
the table, far from the magnates who glittered at either end, and far
from Lady Jane who was the star of the whole entertainment, Winton felt
his humility and insignificance as he had never felt them before, and
was conscious of such a chill of doubt and alarm as made his heart sink
within him. But the Duchess was markedly kind, and a glance from Lady
Jane’s soft eyes, suffused with a sort of liquid light, sent him up
again into a heaven of hope. Next morning they met by chance in the
Park, very early, before the world of fashion was out of doors. She was
taking a walk attended by her maid, and explained, with a great deal of
unnecessary embarrassment, that she missed her country exercise and had
longed for a little fresh air. The consequence was, that the maid was
sent away to do some small commissions, and, with a good deal of alarm
but some guilty happiness, Lady Jane found herself alone with her lover.
It did not require a very long time or many words to make matters clear
between them. Did she not know already all that he had wanted so long to
say? One word made them both aware of what they had been communicating
to each other for months past. But though this explanation was so soon
arrived at, the details took a long time to disentangle--and there was a
terrible amount of repetition and comparison of feelings and
circumstances. It was nearly the hour for luncheon when he accompanied
her home, with a heart so full of exultation and delight and pride, that
it had still no room for any thought of the Duke or fear of what he
might say. Even after he had parted from his love, Winton could not
withdraw his mind from its much more agreeable occupation to think of
the Duke. Jane had begged that she might tell her mother first, and that
he should wait to hear from them before taking any further step. But he
was to meet them that evening at one of the parties to which he had
schemed to be invited on her account. And with every vein thrilling with
his morning’s happy work, and the anticipation of seeing her who was now
his, in the evening, how could any young lover be expected to turn from
his happiness to the thought of anything less blessed? The day passed
like a dream; everything in it tended towards the moment in which he
should see her again. It would be like a new world to see her again.
When they met in the morning she was almost terrible to him, a queen
who could send him into everlasting banishment. When he met her now, he
would see in her his wife, wonderful thought, his own! The place of
meeting was in one of the crowds of London society, where all the world
is; but Winton saw nothing except those soft eyes which were looking for
him. How their hands met, in what seemed only the ordinary greeting to
other people, clasping each other as if they never could part again!
They did not say much, and she did not even venture, except by momentary
glance now and then, to meet his eye. There was scarcely even
opportunity for a whisper on his part to ask what he was to do; for as
he stooped for this purpose to Lady Jane’s ear, the Duchess, who was
looking very serious, but who had not refused to shake hands with him,
laid a finger upon his arm.
“Mr Winton,” she said, “I should like to see you to-morrow about
twelve. I have something to say to you.” She had looked very grave, but
at the end brightened into a smile, yet shook her head. “I don’t know
what to say to you,” she added hurriedly; “there will be dreadful
difficulties in the way.”
To-morrow at twelve! He seemed to tread upon difficulties and crush them
under his feet as he went home that evening; but with the morning a
little thrill of apprehension came.
CHAPTER IV.
A DISAPPOINTMENT.
That morning, Winton went with his heart beating to Grosvenor Square. He
was not overawed by the stately stillness of the place, the imposing dim
vacancy of the suite of rooms through which he was led to the Duchess’s
boudoir. He had a fine house himself, and everything handsome about him,
and he did not feel that Lady Jane would make any marked descent either
in comfort or luxury should she abandon these gilded halls for his. To
tell the truth, he thought the gilding was overdone, not to say a little
tarnished and in questionable taste; but that was the fault of the time
in which it was executed. He was so little alarmed that he could notice
all this. He had seen those rooms before only in the evening, when they
were full of company, and looked very different from now, when they lay,
in the freshness of the morning, all empty and silent, the windows open,
and the sun-blinds down, and nobody visible. Naturally the lover looked,
as he passed through the apartment in which his lady lived, for some
trace of her habitual occupation. Was that hers, that little chair by
the window, the table with work on it, and some books, and a single rose
in a glass? He would have taken the rose on the chance, if that solemn
personage in front of him had not kept within arm’s length. There was a
portrait of her on the wall; but it did not, of course, do her justice,
indeed was an unworthy daub, as anybody could see. Thus he stepped
through one room after another, treading on air, his heart beating, not
with apprehension, but with soft excitement and happiness. She should
have a better lodging than this, rooms decorated expressly for her,
pictures of a very different kind; her home should be worthy of her, if
any mortal habitation could ever be worthy of such a beautiful soul. In
his progress across the ante-room and the two great drawing-rooms, all
this went through his mind. Thoughts go so quickly. He even arranged the
pictures, selected with lightning-speed what would suit her best,
decided that a Raphael--it must be a Raphael--should hang upon the walls
of the shrine in which his saint was to be specially set: while he
walked on, glancing with a half-smile of contempt at the Duke of
Billingsgate, K.G., in his peer’s robes, on one side, and a
Duchess-Dowager in a turban, on the other. Good heavens! to think of
such hideous daubs surrounding Jane! But in the new home all should be
altered. His heart had palpitated with anxiety yesterday before he knew
how she would receive his suit--but to-day! To-day he had no anxiety at
all, only an eager desire to get the preliminaries over, and to see her,
and make her decide when It was to be. There was no reason why they
should wait. He was not a young barrister (as he might have been but for
that uncle--bless him!--whose goodness he had never duly appreciated
till now) waiting for an income. He was rich, and ready to sign the
settlements to-morrow. At the end of the season, just long enough to be
clear of St George’s, and make sure of a pretty quiet country church to
be married in, time enough by turning half the best workmen in London
into it, and devoting himself to _bric-a-brac_ with all his energies, to
turn his little house at Winton into a lady’s bower. What more was
wanted? He had everything arranged in his mind before the groom of the
chambers, entering on noiseless feet, and with a voice like velvet,
informed her Grace that “Mr Winton” was about to enter. The Duchess
received him with benignity just terminated with stateliness. She had
never, he thought, been so beautiful as Jane. Perhaps in the majority of
cases it is difficult to believe that a woman of fifty has been as
beautiful as her daughter of twenty-eight. And it was true enough in
this case. But nobody could deny that she had a face full of fine sense
and feeling. It looked somewhat troubled as well as very serious to-day.
Winton, however, was ready to allow that his gain would be this lady’s
loss, and that perhaps the Duchess was not so anxious to get rid of her
only daughter as parents generally are understood to be.
“Sit down, Mr Winton,” she said. She had not risen from her own chair,
but sat behind her writing-table, which was laden with papers, and
across this barrier held out her hand to him, and gave him a benign but
somewhat distant smile. “I ought to apologise,” she added after a
moment, “for giving you the trouble of coming to me.”
“The trouble! but it is my business. I should have asked to see the Duke
if you had not so kindly given me this opportunity--first. I hope I may
speak to the Duke afterwards if I have the happiness to satisfy you. You
may be sure I can think of nothing else till this is all settled.”
“All settled?” she said, with a little shake of her head. “You are young
and confident, Mr Winton; you think things settle themselves so easily
as this. But I fear the preliminaries will be more lengthened than you
suppose. Do you know, I wish very much you had consulted me before
speaking to Jane.”
“Why?” he asked, fixing his eyes upon her with an astonished gaze. Then
he added, “I know Lady Jane is a great lady, a princess royal. She is
like that. I am a little democratic myself, but I acknowledge in her
everything that is beautiful in rank. She should be approached like a
crowned head.”
“Not quite that perhaps,” said the Duchess, smiling.
“With every observance, every ceremony; but then,” he added, “that is
not the English fashion, you know, to ask others first. One thinks of
her, herself as the only judge.”
The Duchess continued to shake her head. “That is all very well with
ordinary girls, but Jane’s position is so exceptional. Mr Winton, I hope
you will not be disappointed or annoyed by what I tell you. Had you
asked me, I should have said to you, No.”
“No!” he repeated vaguely, looking into her face. He could not even
realise what her meaning was.
“I should have said, Don’t do it, Mr Winton, for your own sake.”
Winton rose up in the excitement of the moment and stood before her like
a man petrified. “Don’t do it! Do you mean---- Pardon me if I am slow of
understanding.”
“I mean, seeing it had unfortunately come about that, without being able
to help it, you had fallen in love with Jane----”
“Unfortunately!”
“You do nothing but repeat my words,” the Duchess cried in a plaintive
tone. “It _is_ unfortunately--but hear me out first. If you had spoken
to me I should have said, Try and get over it, Mr Winton; don’t disturb
her, poor girl, by telling her. Try if a little trip to America, or
tiger-shooting, or to be a ‘Times’ correspondent, or some other of those
exciting things which you young men do nowadays, will not cure you. I
should have said, You have not known her very long, it cannot have gone
very deep. I tell you this to show you what my advice would have been
had you asked me before speaking to Jane.”
“But it is of no use speculating upon what we should have done in an
imaginary case,” said Winton. He had awoke from his first bewilderment,
and began to understand vaguely that everything was not going to be easy
for him as he had once thought. “You see I _have_ spoken to her,” he
said. “You frighten me horribly; but then it is of no use considering
what you would have done in a totally different case.”
The Duchess sighed and shook her head. “That is what I should have
thought it my duty to say, in view of all the pain and confusion that
are sure to follow. Do you know, Mr Winton, that her father will never
listen to you--never!” she said, with a sudden change of tone.
Winton dropped upon his chair again and stared at her with an anxious
countenance. “I knew--I was told--that the Duke would not be easy to
please. And quite right! I agree with his Grace. I am not half good
enough for her; but then,” he added after a pause, “nobody is. If there
is one man in the world as worthy as she is, neither the Duke nor any
one knows where to find him; and then,” he continued, in tones more
insinuating still, “it would not matter now. If that hero were found
to-morrow, she would not have him, for--she has chosen me! I allow that
it is the most wonderful thing in the world!” said the lover, in a
rapture which became him; “but you will find it is true. She has chosen
me!”
“It may be very true,” said the Duchess, shaking her head more and more,
“but the Duke will not pay much attention to that. I am afraid it is not
moral excellence he is thinking of. It would be hard, I allow, to find
anybody as good as Jane. Probably if we did, he would turn out to be
some poor old missionary or quite impossible person. I am afraid that is
not at all what her father is thinking of.”
“Then tell me what it is. I am not Prince Charming--but the Wintons have
been settled at Winton since the Conquest, and I am very well off. The
settlements should be--whatever you wish.”
“Don’t promise too much,” said the Duchess, with a smile, “for no doubt
you have got a family lawyer who will be of a very different opinion;
indeed I hope you have, if that is your way of doing business. But,
alas! the Duke will not be satisfied, I fear, even with that.”
“Then what, in the name of heaven!--I beg you a thousand pardons,
Duchess. I don’t know what I am saying. I have no title, to be sure. Is
it a title that is necessary?”
“I can’t tell you what is necessary,” said the Duchess, with a tone of
impatience. “The Duke is--well, the Duke is her father; that is all that
is to be said. He will never listen to your proposal--never! That is why
I should have said to you, Don’t make it. Leave her in her tranquillity,
poor girl.”
“But----” Winton cried. He did not know what more to say--a protest of
all his being, that was the only thing of which he was capable.
“But----” the Duchess repeated. “Yes, Mr Winton, there is always a but.
To tell the truth, I am not so very sorry that you did not ask me after
all. I should have been obliged to tell you what I have now told you.
But since you have taken it into your own hands, I am rather glad. If
her father had his way, Jane would never be married at all. Oh, don’t be
so enthusiastic; don’t thank me so warmly! I have done nothing for you,
and I don’t know what I can do for you.”
“Everything!” said Winton. “With you to back us, it is impossible that
anything can prevail against us. The Duke’s heart will melt; he will
hear reason.”
A faintly satirical smile came upon the mouth of the Duke’s wife, who
knew better than anybody how much was practicable in the way of making
him hear reason. But she did not say anything. She let the lover talk.
He went on with the conviction natural to his generation--that all these
medieval prejudices were fictitious, and paternal tyranny a thing of the
past.
“Cruel fathers,” said Winton, “are things of the middle ages. I am not
afraid of them any more than I am of the Castle Spectre. The Duke will
rightly think that I am a poor sort of a fellow to ask his daughter from
him. I ought to have been something very different--better, handsomer,
cleverer.”
“You are not at all amiss, Mr Winton,” said the Duchess, with a gracious
smile.
He made her a bow of acknowledgment, and his gratification was
great--for who does not like to be told that he is considered a fine
fellow? But he went on. “All this I feel quite as much as his Grace can
do. The thing in my favour is that Jane----” the colour flew over his
face as he called her so, and her mother, though she started slightly,
acknowledged his rights by a little bow of assent, somewhat solemnly
made,--“that Jane----” he went on repeating the sweet monosyllable,
“does not mind my inferiority--is satisfied, the darling----” Here his
happiness got into his voice as if it had been tears, and choked him.
The Duchess bent her head again,
“To me that is everything,” she said.
“How could it be otherwise?” cried the young man; “it _is_ everything. I
have no standing-ground, of course, of my own; but Jane--loves me! It is
far too good to be true, and yet it is true. The Duke will not like it,
let us allow; but when he sees that, and that she will not give up, but
be faithful--faithful to the end of our lives---- Dear Duchess, I have
the greatest veneration for your Grace’s judgment, but in this point
one must go by reason. Life is not a melodrama. So long as the daughter
is firm the father must yield.”
He gave forth this dogma with a little excitement, almost with a
peremptory tone, smiling a little in spite of himself at the tradition
in which even this most sensible of duchesses believed. Perhaps a great
lady of that elevated description is more liable than others to believe
that the current of events and the progress of opinion have little or no
effect upon the race, and that dukes and fathers are still what they
were in the fifteenth century. He, this fine production of the
nineteenth, was so certain of his opinion, that he could not feel
anything but a smiling indulgence for hers. On the other side, the
Duchess was more tolerant even than Winton. His certainty gave her a
faint amusement--his gentle disdain of her a lively sense of ridicule;
but this was softened by her sympathy for him, and profound and tender
interest in the man whom Jane loved. She was a little astonished,
indeed--as what parent is not?--that Jane should have loved this man
precisely, and no other; but as the event called forth all her affection
for her woman-child, it threw also a beautifying reflection upon Jane’s
lover. On the whole, she was satisfied with his demeanour personally. It
is not every man who will show his sentiments in a way which satisfies
an anxious mother. The Duchess, however, was pleased with Winton. His
look and tone when he spoke of her daughter satisfied her. He was fond
enough, adoring enough, reverential enough to content her; and how much
this was to say!
“Well,” she said, “we will hope you may be right, Mr Winton. You know
men and human nature, no doubt, better than I do, who am only about
twice your age,” she added, with a soft little laugh. “Anyhow, I wish
with my whole heart that you may prove to be right. The only thing is,
that it will be prudent not to speak to the Duke now. Don’t cry out--I
know I am right in this. In town he is never quite happy; there are many
things that rub him the wrong way. He sees men advanced whom he thinks
unworthy of it, and others left out. And he thinks society is out of
joint, and cannot quite divest himself of the idea that he, or rather
we, were born to set it right.” All this the Duchess said with a little
half-sigh between the sentences, and yet a faint sense of humour, which
gave a light to her countenance. “But in the country things go better.
If he is ever to be moved, as you say, by love and faithfulness, and
such beautiful things, it will be in his own kingdom, where nobody
thwarts him and he has everything his own way.”
Winton’s countenance fell at every word. What! he who had come hither
with the intention of persuading Jane to decide when it should be, was
he to go away without a word--to be hung up indefinitely, to be no
farther advanced than yesterday? His whole heart cried out against it,
and his pride and all that was in him. He grew faint, he grew sick with
anger, and disappointment, and dismay. “That means,” he said, “complete
postponement; that means endless suspense. I think you want me to give
up altogether; you want to crush the life out of us altogether!”
“Of course you will be unjust,” said the Duchess--“I was prepared for
that; and ungrateful. I am advising what is best for you. The Duke, I
believe, is in the library. He is the pink of politeness; he will see
you at once, I feel sure, if you ask for an interview; but in that case
you will never darken these doors again. You will be shut out from all
intercourse with Jane. The whole matter will be ended as abruptly and
conclusively as possible. I know my husband; you will not have time to
say a word for yourself. You can take what course you think best, Mr
Winton. What I say to you is for your good; and in the meantime, if you
do as I wish, everything that I can do for you I will do.”
The young man sat and listened to these words in mingled exasperation
and dismay. As she spoke of the Duke in his library, Winton’s heart
jumped up and began to thump against his side. Oh yes, it might be
decided fast enough. Evidently he could have an answer without fail or
suspense on the spot. He sat and gazed at her blankly in such a dilemma
as he had never known before. What would Jane think of him if he
submitted? What would she say if he insisted, and got only failure and
prohibition for his pains? The Duchess, it was evident, was not speaking
lightly. She knew what she was talking about. She wished him well--too
well to let him go on to his destruction. But, on the other hand, there
was the postponement of all his hopes, a sickening pause and
uncertainty, a blank quenching of expectation. He could do nothing but
stare at the Duchess while she spoke, and for some time after. What was
he to answer her? How calmly these old people sit on their height of
experience, and look down half smiling upon the frets and agitation of
the young ones! What was it to her that he--even that Jane, who
naturally was of far more importance--should suffer all these pangs of
suspense? Probably she would smile, and say that life was long, and what
did it matter for a month or two? A month or two! It would be like a
century or two to them. Sometimes Winton resolved that he would not be
silenced; that he would go and have it out with the Duke, who, after
all, was Jane’s father, and could not wish his child to be unhappy. And
then again, as she went on laying the alternative before him, his heart
would fail him. He changed his mind a hundred times while she was
speaking, and after she had ended, still gazed on her, with his heart in
his mouth.
“I don’t wish,” he said at last, “to do anything rash. I will submit to
anything rather than run any risks. But how are we to bear the delay?
How am I to bear it? and it will be deception as well! I don’t see how I
am to do it. Do you mean me to give her up all the time--go
tiger-shooting, as you were good enough to suggest?”
“Well--there would be no harm in that,” said the Duchess, with a smile;
“but I did not suggest it in the present circumstances. I said, if you
had spoken to me first--I ask you to wait a month--perhaps two” (this
addition, made as it seemed in _gaieté de cœur_, with rather a pleasant
sense of the exasperation it would produce in him, called forth a
muttered exclamation, a groan from the victim)--“or perhaps two at the
most,” the Duchess repeated; “whereas tiger-shooting would take six at
least. But, Mr Winton, I repeat, I force you to nothing. There is the
bell, and the Duke is in the library. Ring it if you will, and ask him
to see you; he will not refuse.”
Winton rose slowly and went towards the bell. But he had not the courage
to take this extreme step. “I suppose I may see her sometimes?” he said;
“but it will be a kind of treachery.”
“Her mother does not object; the case is an extreme one,” said the
Duchess, though she blushed a little at her own sophistry. “What he does
not know will not do him any harm.”
“It will be deception,” said Winton, shaking his head, and he made
another step towards the bell. Then he turned back again. “How often may
I see her? If we take your way, you will not be hard upon us?” he said.
“But it will be deception,” said the Duchess, solemnly.
“I know that; that is what revolts me. Still, as you say, what he does
not know will not do him any harm.”
The Duchess laughed, and then she grew grave suddenly. “Mr Winton, I
feel as if I were betraying my husband; but at the present moment my
child has the first claim upon me. It is her happiness that is at
stake. I will not prevent you from meeting--you are both old enough to
know your own minds. I will do nothing to put off Jane from a woman’s
natural career. It is doing evil, perhaps, that good may come; but we
must risk it. Come here, but not too often: I will take the
responsibility; and when we go to Billings, Lady Germaine will invite
you, and you can try your fortune then. I will prepare the way as much
as I can. I don’t give you great hopes when all is done,” she said,
shaking her head.
“And after?” said Winton, turning once more with a kind of desperation
towards the bell.
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” said the Duchess,
piously.
But oh, the difference when he walked out crestfallen through all the
big drawing-rooms! Not a word about when It was to be. No sort of
arrangement, consultation, possible. Everything had seemed so near when
he came--so near that he could almost touch it. Now everything had been
pushed far off into the vague. He had seen Jane indeed, but in her
mother’s presence, which made her happy enough, but him only partly
happy. Was this how it was to be? The Duchess indeed was writing at her
table, taking no notice of them. But still it was very different from
what he had hoped. He did not perceive the bad pictures or the
over-gilding as he went away. The place looked like a prison to him, and
was dark and stifling. Lady Jane indeed accompanied him through the
rooms. She gave him the rose which he had thought of stealing as he
came, and told him all their engagements for a week in advance. “You
will be sure to go wherever we are going,” she said, and called him
Reginald with a blush and a tone of sweetness that went straight to his
heart. But nevertheless his disappointment, he thought, was almost more
than he could bear.
CHAPTER V.
THE ANTICIPATIONS OF LADY JANE.
Lady Jane, it will easily be understood, did not look upon the matter at
all from the same point of view. A girl, however much she may be in
love, is seldom anxious for a peremptory marriage such as--when there is
no great sacrifice involved--suits the bolder sex. She loves to play
with her happiness, to prolong the sweet time when, without any violent
breach of other habits, even any change of name, she can enjoy the added
glory of this crown of life. She accompanied Winton through the great
silent rooms, with a sense of perfect, quiet happiness which was
exactly in accordance with the summer morning--the fresh soft air in
which there was no sunshine, but a flood of subdued light, and in which
every sound had a tone of enchantment, though not music. It suited her
gentle nature to dwell in such an atmosphere of delicate delight, which
had no fact to vulgarise it, but only an ecstasy of feeling. She was
disappointed to find that he was less satisfied, less happy. And he
would have been angry to see that she was so happy. Such are the
differences between those most near to each other. He kissed the rosebud
and her hands as, with a sense of daring beyond words, she put it into
his coat; but he wanted something more. Yes, he could have been angry
with her; he felt a desire to say something brutal. “How can you be
satisfied to deceive your father?” he asked. “It will be
clandestine----” He had the cruelty to say this, though next moment he
was horrified, and begged her pardon, metaphorically on his knees.
“Clandestine!” she said, with a little surprise--she made allowance for
a man’s rough way of speaking--“oh no; my father has never entered into
all the circumstances. So long as my mother approves----”
“But,” Winton cried, in his ferocity, “suppose he refuses his consent at
last, as the Duchess thinks, will you venture to oppose him then, or
will you send me away?”
“Ah, never that!” said Lady Jane, looking at him with her soft eyes.
They were not brilliant eyes, but when she looked at him there came over
them a certain liquid light, a melting radiance such as no words could
describe. The light was love, and may be seen glorifying many an
unremarkable orb. It made hers so exquisite that they dazzled the
beholder, especially the happy beholder who knew this was for him. But
he was not satisfied even with that.
“Suppose,” he went on, “that the Duke were to open that door and walk in
now--as he has a good right to do, into his own drawing-room--what would
come of it? Would you take your hand out of mine, and bid me good-bye
like a stranger?”
Her hand indeed slid out of his at the suggestion, and a little tremor
ran through her frame; but the next moment she raised her head and put
her hand lightly within his arm. “If you think I am without courage!”
she said--then added with a smile, “when it is necessary; but at present
it is not necessary.”
“Then you will not, whatever happens, give me up?--not even if the
foundations of the earth are shaken, not even if the Duke says ‘No’?”
he cried, partly furious, partly satirical, catching at the hand which
was on his arm.
His violence gave her a little shock, and the savage satire of the tone
in which he named her father distressed Lady Jane. “You must not speak
so,” she said, with her soft dignity: “the Duke is my father. But you do
not know me if you think that anything will change me.” Then indeed
Winton felt a little ashamed of himself, and began to realise that he
did not yet know all of this gentle creature who was going to be his
wife. She parted with him at the door of the ante-room, and went back
through her mother’s boudoir to her own retirement. Next to being with
the _objet aimé_, being alone is the purest happiness at this stage. She
kissed her mother, who was busy at her writing-table, in passing. The
Duchess was deep in calculation, not how she should make her ends meet,
which was impossible, but how near she could draw them together, so that
the gap might be small. It is a sad and harassing business. She paused
only a moment to pat her child on her soft cheek, and reflect within
herself how beautifying was this love which in youth is full of
enchantment and illusion, and then returned to her figures. When the
ends will meet, what pleasure there is even in the pain of drawing them
together! but when no miracle will do this, when there must always
remain a horrible chasm between! Fifty remained thus at work in the
finance department, while Twenty-eight went lightly away to think over
her happiness. It must be allowed that Lady Jane was not quite young
enough--she ought to have been but twenty, by rights; but her maturity
only added to the exceeding fulness of her enjoyment. There is
something sweet in being awakened late; it prolongs the morning, it
keeps the “vision splendid” a little longer in one’s eyes. The
unfulfilled even has a glory of its own, which people who are bigoted in
belief of the ordinary canons of romance are slow to perceive. This
preserved to Lady Jane, at an age when girlhood is over, its most
perfect fragrance and charm.
Presently, however, the sweet vagueness of her anticipations began to
open into other thoughts. She had been so preserved by her stately
upbringing and the traditions which she had felt to centre in her, from
knowledge of fact and the world, that she knew little at all about
money, or the power it has to bridge over social differences. When she
allowed her heart to go out to Reginald Winton, she did so with the most
absolute conviction that it involved a great descent in rank and
abandonment of luxury. She would have to put off the coronet from her
head, she believed, the princess royal’s myrtle crown. She would have to
learn a great many things, both to do and to do without. She had heard
of Winton House, which was a small place; and probably she had heard of
the house in town. But the latter had altogether dropped out of her
mind, and she knew very well that a squire’s little manor would be very
different from Billings, and would require from its mistress an
existence of a kind unknown to all her previous experiences. She would
have to superintend her own household; if not to make her maids spin,
according to the usage of old times, at least to direct the housemaids,
and know how things ought to be done. Though her father was in reality
much less rich than the man whom she had chosen for her husband, she
was entirely in the dark on this point, and her mind awoke to a sense of
a hundred requirements of which she knew nothing. She had been like a
star, and dwelt apart (if it is not profane to apply such words to a
young lady of the nineteenth century) as much as any poet. But now love
and duty bade her come down from these heights, and learn how people
walk along the common ways. She addressed herself to this task without a
grudge, with glad alacrity and readiness; but she was a little puzzled,
it must be admitted, to know how to begin. The first person to whom she
addressed herself (for naturally Lady Jane was shy of betraying her
motive, or letting it be known that the inquiries she made were for her
own benefit) was her maid, who was as superior a young person and as
much like a waiting gentlewoman as it was possible to find. Lady Jane
was aware, of course, that Arabella’s family (for this was the
distinguished name she bore) were not in the same position as Mr Winton.
But in that sad deficiency of perspective which we have already noted as
one of the drawbacks of rank, she felt it possible that Arabella’s
knowledge of how life was conducted at her end of the social circle
would be more useful than her own to Reginald Winton’s wife. She opened
the subject in, it must be avowed, a very uncompromising and artless way
one evening, while Arabella stood behind her, partially visible in the
large mirror before which she sat, brushing out her long and abundant
hair. It was very fine and silky, and made very little appearance when
smoothly wound round the back of her head; but when it was being brushed
out it was like a veil, soft and dreamy and illimitable, spreading out
almost as far as the operator chose in a cloud of soft darkness--“like
twilight, too, her dusky hair.” A lady’s-maid is very much wanting in
the spirit of her profession if she is indifferent to the fact that her
mistress has fine hair. Generally it is the thing of which she is most
proud. And Arabella held this sentiment in the warmest way. Her scorn of
chignons and of frizzing was indescribable. “You should just see my
lady’s hair when it is down,” she would say, almost crying over the fact
which she could not ignore, that the hair of many other ladies, when it
was up, greatly exceeded in appearance and volume the soft locks of Lady
Jane. It was while Arabella was employed in this way that her mistress,
looking at her in the glass, said suddenly, “If you were going to be
married, Arabella, what should you do to prepare for it? I want very
much to know.”
“My lady!” cried the girl, with a violent start. She let the brush fall
from her hand with the fright it gave her, and then without any warning
she began to cry. “Indeed, indeed, I never could make up my mind to
leave your ladyship--not in a hurry like he wants me to--never! never!
at least till you were suited,” Arabella said.
“Oh!” cried Lady Jane, turning round, “then you really were thinking! I
did not know of that, I assure you; I never thought of it. Are you
really going to be married, Arabella?”
“It is none of my doing,” the girl said; “indeed I told him I couldn’t
make up my mind to leave; but he says--you know, my lady, men find
always a deal to say----”
“Do they?” said Lady Jane, with a soft laugh of sympathy. Yes, it was
true--they had a deal to say: and then sometimes when they were silent,
that said still more. She paused upon this recollection, with a soft
wave of pleasure going over her; and then--perhaps not so anxious to
understand Arabella as to follow out her own thoughts--“Tell me,” she
said, “when you go away from me, Arabella--out of Billings and out of
Grosvenor Square--into a little small house, how does it feel to you? Do
you dislike it very much? Is it very wretched? I should like to know how
you feel about it. One day here in these large rooms--and the next in a
tiny little place, without servants, without any conveniences. It is
only lately that I have thought about this, but I want to know. Nobody
can tell me so well as you.”
“Oh, my lady,” cried Arabella, “don’t you know without telling? Why,
it’s home! That makes all the difference; though it’s a little place,
yet it’s your own.”
Lady Jane’s eyes still remained unsatisfied, though she said “To be
sure” vaguely. “To be sure,” she repeated; “but then here you have
everything done for you, and everything is nice. You cannot have the
same at home.”
“No, my lady; but it’s so nice and fresh there: no carpets or things to
catch the dust--except in the parlour, but that is only for Sundays. The
floors all so white and fresh; the plates and the dishes shining; the
fire so cheerful. I can’t deny,” said Arabella, her tone of delight
sinking to one of candid avowal, “that the parlour is--well, my lady, it
is a dreadful little place; and poor mother is so proud of it!--it is
not so nice as the room the under-housemaids have their tea in. I feel
just as if I were one of the inferior servants when I sit there. But the
kitchen: if your ladyship took a fancy to playing at being poor--like
the French queen did, you know, my lady--it would be quite nice enough
even for you.”
“You should not say ‘like the French queen did’; that is bad grammar,”
said Lady Jane, softly. “I shan’t play at being poor, Arabella, but
perhaps some day---- All this you have been saying is about your home,
but that was not what I asked. If you were going to be married, what
would you do? You could not keep any servants; you would have to do all
sorts of things yourself. Do you think it will be a dreadful sacrifice
to make?”
Arabella gave her lady’s hair a few tugs, perhaps unconsciously to hide
a little emotion, perhaps with a little gentle indignation at her
mistress’s humble estimate of her prospects. “It is not so low as you
think, my lady,” she said. “He is a careful young man that has saved a
little, and can give me a nice home and keep me a servant. I’ll have no
dirty work to do nor need to soil my fingers. He thinks, like your
ladyship, that it will be a great sacrifice; but what can a girl have
better, mother says, than a good steady husband and a nice home? and I
think so too.”
Lady Jane smiled with gentle sympathy. “And so do I, Arabella. Still
that is not the question I was asking. It will be a small house, I
suppose, and one little maid? And I suppose you will have many things to
do, and to live with----” Here she paused, blushing for her own want of
perception. “You are accustomed to things very much the same as mine,”
she continued softly, “and it must be different. How will you put up
with it--or shall you not mind? Only a few little rooms, perhaps, to
live in.”
“Oh, my lady,” said Arabella, “a few! We shall have a little parlour,
where I can sit in the afternoons. What could any one wish for more?
Your ladyship yourself, or even the Duchess, though you have all the
castle to choose from, you can’t sit in more than one room at a time.
And it has often surprised me, my lady, to see how, with all those
beautiful drawing-rooms and all their grand furniture, your ladyship and
the Duchess will prefer quite a little bit of a place to sit in. Look at
the morning-room at the castle!--and her Grace’s boudoir here is quite
small in comparison. I can’t see that it will make much difference to
me.”
“That is a very just observation, Arabella,” said Lady Jane; “I wonder I
never thought of it before. Nobody can sit in more than one room at a
time, it is quite true; that is all one really needs. I am very much
obliged to you for putting it so clearly.”
“Yes, my lady,” said Arabella, with a little curtsey of acknowledgment.
She was pleased, but not so much surprised as might have been expected.
She was fond of her mistress, and had a great reverence for her in her
way, but she was aware that in practical matters she herself was far
more likely to be right than Lady Jane. And then she proceeded on her
own account to give many particulars which were very satisfactory to
herself, and inspired her mistress with great interest, but threw no
further light upon the point which occupied her mind. She smiled to
herself afterwards, with a mixture of sympathy and amusement, to think
that Arabella was going to be married _too_. But in the meantime this
new view as to the number of rooms which were indispensable, did her a
great deal of good, and threw much light upon the chief subject of her
thoughts.
Her next inquiries were addressed to a very different kind of
counsellor. It was well for Lady Jane that she was not on womanly
confidential terms with her sister-in-law, or it would have been very
difficult to keep the secret of her love from that acute observer; as it
was, the curiosity of Susan was much awakened by some of her questions.
She asked her, “What do girls in the other classes do when they are
preparing for their marriage?” Lady Jane would not say the lower
classes, partly lest she might offend Lady Hungerford, partly because of
a delicate sense she had that deficiency of any kind should not be made
a mark for those who suffered under it. Lady Jane’s politeness was such
that among blind people she would have thought it right to assume that
blindness was the common rule of life, and to suppress in her talk any
invidious distinction of herself as a person who saw.
“What do they do when they are preparing for their marriage? Why, dear,
they generally spend most of their time, and far too much of their
thoughts, in buying their wedding clothes.”
“That is so in all classes,” said Lady Jane; “but still that cannot be
everything. Some must be bent upon doing their best in their new life.
Those, for instance, who have not much money.”
“I am afraid I cannot tell you,” said Susan, “for I never was in that
predicament. My people, you know, were vulgar, and it was a great rise
in the world for me, of course, to marry Hungerford.”
“I do not think you have ever thought it that,” said Lady Jane.
“Haven’t I? I ought to have, then. It _was_ a great rise; but my people
were never poor. A good girl who is going to marry a clerk, or that sort
of thing, buys a cookery-book, I believe, and has her husband’s
slippers warmed for him when he comes home. She finds out all the cheap
shops, and puts down her expenses every day in a book. That is all I
know.”
“I was not thinking of a clerk’s wife. I was thinking rather of a
gentleman--in the country, for instance--not great people, but perfectly
_nice_, and as--as good as ourselves, you know. If a girl wanted very
much to do her duty, I wonder what she would do?”
“It would depend very much upon her husband’s requirements, I should
say. If he was a fox-hunter, she would probably ride a great deal, and
find out all about horses and dogs; if he was studious, she would pay a
little attention to books. All that wears off after a little time,” said
Lady Hungerford. “But at the beginning, when a girl is not used to it,
and is making experiments, she takes up all her husband’s fads, and
attempts to humour him. By-and-by, of course, everything finds its
level, and she lets him alone and follows her own way.”
“You think, then, that it does not make much difference what one does,”
said Lady Jane.
“What one does! You do not mean yourself, I suppose? Crown princesses
are above all that sort of thing; they are too magnificent for human
nature’s daily food. You will be married by proxy, no doubt, when the
time comes, in Westminster Abbey.”
“Which means I shall never be married at all,” said Lady Jane, with
subdued pleasure and a delightful sense of her own superior knowledge.
She smiled with such a tender softness that her lively sister-in-law,
who, if not formed in a very delicate mould, was yet capable of kind
impulse, and clever enough to understand the superiority of the spotless
creature beside her, had a moment of shame and self-reproach.
“If you are not, it will be all the worse for somebody,” she said. “When
I was married I used to watch Hungerford to find out what he wanted me
to do; but I soon tired of that, for he never wanted me to do anything.
Most men like you to strike out your own line, and never mind them. That
is why I say everything finds its level. The most dreadful thing in the
world is a woman who is always studying to do her duty, and watching her
husband to anticipate his wishes. They don’t like to have their wishes
anticipated. They like to state them honestly, and have the satisfaction
of getting what they want. They are strange creatures, men. The best
thing is to strike out your own line, and never interfere with theirs.
It is always most satisfactory in the end.”
Lady Jane made no answer to this, except by a little sigh, in which Lady
Hungerford, to her great astonishment, noticed an impatient sound. “What
is it you want to know?” she said. “Why are you asking me such
questions?” But Lady Jane made no reply. She had got a little
enlightenment from Arabella, but none from this woman of the world. How
to manage her husband was not a question which disturbed her. The
clerk’s wife studying the cookery-book pleased her more than the lady
who first tried to humour her husband’s fads, and then struck out her
own line. In such a person the sweet and true but not too lively
intelligence of Lady Jane had little interest. She dwelt on the other
with a tender sympathy. After all, it was not entirely in the light of
the husband that she regarded this new life. She wanted to put herself
in tone with it, to understand its requirements for herself as well as
for him. She retired into her own chamber and thought it out in the
quiet which, even in London, is possible in a great house. It would not
be possible, perhaps, to have every room cushioned and every noise
stopped before it reached her, as here. Lady Jane imagined herself
stepping down into a world of noise and bustle, and duties quite unknown
to her. It would be her business to bring harmony out of that; not to
confront the guillotine, as she once thought, but perhaps to do
something even harder, to overcome the petty and small, even the sordid
perhaps, and show what her order was capable of, and what a thing it was
to be a woman. A soft enthusiasm filled her for those unknown, humble
duties. As for giving up, what was there to give up? Arabella’s
philosophy gave her a shield against every suggestion of loss. You can’t
sit in more than one room at a time, if you have a hundred to choose
from. To think that a girl like that should find the true solution of
the parable without knowing anything about it, which the wisest shook
their heads over! Lady Jane, with that enlightenment, did not feel the
least fear. Next time she was out without supervision, she drove to a
bookseller’s and bought all the books she could find upon household
economy. ‘How to Live on Three Hundred a-Year’ was one of these volumes.
With this she did not quite sympathise, feeling it too fine and
elaborate. Her instinct told her that domestic economy, to be beautiful,
must be more spontaneous and not so laboured, and that some things were
tawdry, and some sordid, in the arrangements laid down. She thought
over the problems in these books with great conscientiousness. She
thought a French cook would be much the best to start with, for they
were so economical. She thought plate would be the cheapest thing to
use, since it never breaks. But with a few mistakes of this kind, which
were inevitable, and which experience would set right in three months,
Lady Jane made herself out a beautiful programme for her behaviour as a
poor man’s wife. It gave her a sense of elation to feel that at the
least she could do something, and qualify herself for fulfilling a
heroic destiny. She was quite unconscious of either downfall or
humiliation.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ART OF STRATEGY.
But the Duchess’s thoughts were of a more serious kind, and it was she
who through all had the most difficult part to play.
Perhaps five or six years before, when Lady Jane was in the first bloom
of womanhood, her mother would have thought but little of Reginald
Winton as a husband for her child. She would have preferred, need it be
said, another set of strawberry-leaves; or even an earl with a good
estate would have seemed to her a more suitable match. But as the years
went on, and it became apparent to her that what with Lady Jane’s own
visionary stateliness, and the known folly of her father, it was quite
possible that there might be no match for her daughter at all, her ideas
were sensibly modified. It did not seem to her at all desirable that
Lady Jane should remain Lady Jane for ever. The Duchess had experienced
no absolute blessedness in life. Her husband had given her infinite
trouble, her son had by no means realised her ideal, and her daughter
had gone beyond it, and sometimes vexed her as much by very excellence
as Hungerford did by his commonplace nature. But still she thought it
better to be thwarted and disappointed at the head of a family, than to
sicken of solitude and pine out of it. She thought the same for her
daughter; though indeed Lady Jane’s character would have lent itself
much better to the maiden state than that of her more practical and
active-minded mother. She had, too, a still more stringent reason, not
of an abstract character at all. She knew that some time or other a
crash must come. The Duke had never denied himself in his life, and he
was not likely, of his own free will, to begin now. But as everything
has to be paid for sooner or later, one way or another, she knew very
well the time was coming when their fictitious fortunes would collapse,
and it would be known to all the world that their income was not enough
to support them, and that they were burdened with debts which they could
not pay. And indeed it often seemed to her that she would be glad when
the crash came--except for Jane. Notwithstanding her desire that it
should come and be done with, she was ready to fight with all her
strength to keep it off till Jane should be out of its reach. And
Winton, she felt, had stepped in in the very nick of time. She was under
no delusion such as filled the mind of her daughter about Winton’s
poverty. She knew exactly what his standing was, and that though he was
not a brilliant match, he was good enough for any girl, however exalted,
who had no fortune to speak of, of her own. He was more satisfactory in
appearance, and manners, and character, than three-fourths of the
eligible men in England, and in fact he was himself eminently eligible,
a man whom no parent (in full possession of his senses) could possibly
despise. The Duke was not in full possession of his senses on this
point, but his wife could not see the justice of allowing her daughter’s
future to be spoiled by this partial insanity on the part of her
husband. It is a fine thing for a wife to obey her husband, but the
Duchess was perhaps a little impatient of the yoke. She had never gone
against him, save for his good. She had submitted sorrowfully to the
consequences of his follies when she found herself powerless to restrain
them. But she said to herself almost sternly that she would not allow
Jane to be ruined. Let him say what he would, this excellent husband,
this good, nice, well-off man should not be repulsed. If she could
persuade the Duke to hear reason, so much the better; but if not---- But
she did not like domestic dissension and a breach of the decorums of
life more than another, and the thought that she might be compelled to
place herself in active opposition to her husband distressed her beyond
measure.
The Duchess laid her plans with great and anxious care. She invited
Winton to the few stately gatherings which were still to be held in
Grosvenor Square, and she threw him in the Duke’s way, prompting him
beforehand with subjects such as would please that arbiter of fate. It
was no small trial of endurance for both Winton and Lady Jane, but the
success of the attempt so far seemed great. The Duke noticed the genial
commoner who was so ready to interest himself in his Grace’s favourite
subjects. He even asked, “Who is this Mr Winton?” with an interest which
made the Duchess’s heart beat. She gave a sketch of her _protégé_
offhand, laying great stress upon the antiquity of his lineage. “Ah,
oh,” the Duke said indifferently. He was not impressed, nor did it make
any difference to him that this gentleman, whose family had been settled
for so many hundred years in their manor, had recently had a great
accession of wealth. He asked no further questions about him, and yawned
when the Duchess said that she had thought of inviting him to form one
of the usual autumn party at Billings. “Oh no, I have no objections,”
his Grace said; “there must always, I suppose, be a few nobodies to fill
up the corners.” This, after his transitory show of interest, was like a
cold douche to the Duchess. But she did not allow herself to be
dismayed. She managed, as a great lady can always manage, to get Winton
a great number of invitations to her own magnificent circle, and threw
him perpetually in her husband’s way. Some of her friends and
contemporaries more than suspected the Duchess’s game. But she kept a
brave and cheerful front to them all, and never allowed herself to be
found out; and not only had she to contrive all this and baffle all
beholders, but she had likewise a struggle to maintain even with the man
whose cause she was upholding. He wanted, forsooth, to make quicker
progress. He wanted to see more of his betrothed. He wanted to have it
announced to all the world. He was more impracticable, more unreasonable
than ever man was, although she was wearing herself out in efforts to
help him. Lady Jane did not say a word, but she looked at her mother’s
proceedings with a gentle surprise, and high, silent wonder, keeping
herself aloof from all the plottings, avoiding the subject altogether.
It was all done for Jane, but Jane disapproved, and blamed her mother in
her heart. This was the unkindest cut of all. Notwithstanding, the
Duchess held by her point; there was no other way to do it. When she
gave Winton her invitation to Billings, he received it in the most
uncomfortable way. He coloured high; he rose up and paced about the
room. “If I am to come as an impostor, I would rather not come at all,”
he said; “if I may come as Jane’s affianced----”
“How can that be, Mr Winton, unless her father gives his consent?”
To this Winton made no reply, except a peevish, “I cannot go on false
pretences any more.”
“You have met the Duke six times, without rushing at him with a request
for his daughter! Is that what you call false pretences? Jacob served
for Rachel seven years.”
“Ah! and so would I; but he had it out with her father first. He did not
hang about and profess to be there only for Laban’s agreeable
conversation; that makes all the difference.”
“I think he could have stood that; he had a robust conscience,” said the
Duchess, with a smile. And then she added, “I am trying to do what I
can for you. If you will not agree, I cannot help it.”
“I suppose I must agree. There does not seem anything else for me to
do,” he said; which was the most ungracious reply she ever had to that
invitation, which was rarely extended to any one of so little
importance. At Billings, Lady Germaine’s principle of asking people who
would amuse her was never resorted to. The people who were asked were
very noble and splendid people, but they were not amusing as a rule. It
was such a compliment to Winton as the uninitiated could not understand.
But there were, of course, a great many people who knew better than the
Duchess herself did the intention with which this invitation was given.
Lady Hungerford, for instance, sitting quietly with her husband after
dinner, having heard of it that morning, suddenly astonished him by
bursting out into a great fit of laughter. As nothing had been said to
account for this, and Lord Hungerford’s company of itself was not
calculated to produce hilarity, he was much surprised, and at once
requested to know what she was laughing about.
“Oh, it is nothing,” she said. “Your mother is asking young Winton--the
man, you know, who has that pretty house in Kensington--to go to
Billings, for the shooting.”
“Is that so very funny?” said Lord Hungerford.
“Don’t you see, you thickhead?” said his wife, who was not, perhaps, so
exquisite in her language as became her present rank; “she has taken it
into her head that he will do for Jane, and she thinks by taking him
down to Billings that she will get your father to consent.”
“For Jane!” said Hungerford in dismay.
“That is your mother’s little plan. But what amuses me is to see that
she thinks she will get your father to consent.”
But it did not appear that Hungerford found the same amusement in the
thought. He was slow of intelligence, and took some time to master it.
“For Jane!” he said at least half-a-dozen times over during the course
of the evening: and when he next met his mother he proceeded at once to
investigate the matter.
“What is this I hear about Regy Winton?” he said. “Susan tells me you
are thinking of him for Jane.”
“Susan is so well informed----” said the Duchess, with a little redness
of indignation. “But I think you know Jane well enough to be aware that
thinking of any one for her would not do much good.”
“That is what I thought,” Hungerford said, falling readily into the
snare. “But it wouldn’t be at all a bad thing,” he added, “if it could
be brought about. He has plenty of money, and nothing against him; and
Jane isn’t quite so young as she was, don’t you know?”
This was true enough; but that such a question should be discussed
between her son and his wife made the Duchess’s blood boil. “I am not so
clever as Susan and you, Hungerford,” she said, with fine satire. “You
will manage your daughter’s marriage, I don’t doubt, a thousand times
better than I shall ever manage mine.”
“What has that to do with it?” Hungerford said, surprised, for he was
not quick in his intellects. But he added, as he went away, “I should
think Regy Winton would be a very good man for Jane.”
The Duchess was very angry, and declined altogether to take her son into
her confidence. But yet she was sustained in her mind by this
volunteered opinion, and went on with more boldness. They were all very
glad to get out of London, as soon as the Duke thought it right to
withdraw that support which he felt himself bound to give to the empire
and the constitution by going to town every year. His countenance
expanded as they left that limited world in which a duke is almost as a
common man, and has to submit to see a simple commoner considered much
more important than himself. He preferred the country, if for nothing
else, on that score. There was space to move about in, and the whole
district bowed down before him. He smoothed out even during the journey,
though it was by railway, which is a levelling and impertinent way of
travelling. The Duke’s carriage had large labels of “engaged” plastered
upon it. But still such a thing had been as that a lawless traveller, a
being without veneration or feeling, had seized upon the door-handle and
attempted to make an entrance. Nevertheless, even with these drawbacks,
the Duke already began to show the genial influence of going out of
town. And to think that the wife of his bosom should have taken
advantage of this in the disingenuous way she did! It was not absolutely
on the journey, but on that first evening at home, when the noble pair
took, as had been their habit since before any one could remember, a
little stroll together after dinner in the cool of the evening under the
ancestral shades; and just when his Grace had looked round him with a
sigh of satisfaction, and announced that woods were better than bricks
and mortar, which was a remark he made habitually in about the same
spot, on about the same day of every year--
“That is very true,” the Duchess said (as she always said on similar
occasions), “and there are no trees like our own trees. I hope her
native air,” added the crafty woman, “will do something for Jane.”
“For Jane! Is there anything the matter with Jane?” said her august
papa.
“I felt sure you must have observed it; you are always so keen-sighted
where Jane is concerned. I have thought she looked pale; and she has a
little air of--what shall I call it?--preoccupation.”
“I do not see,” said the Duke, half indignantly, “what she can have to
be preoccupied about.”
“She has always been so tenderly cared for, that is true. But we must
remember that she is no longer a girl, and there are thoughts which come
into one’s mind which it is difficult to avoid.”
“What thoughts? A young lady in Jane’s position need have no thoughts
that can give her any trouble. I hope that even in these revolutionary
times, when everything is going to pieces, the house of Billings is
still sufficiently secure for that.”
“Yes, yes; there is no doubt on that question. Jane has no doubt,” the
Duchess said, correcting herself. “But there are problems, you know,
which occupy the mind. It is a revolutionary age, as you say, and even
young women are not exempt. Besides, if you will let me say so, by the
time a girl has come to be eight-and-twenty, she often begins to feel,
you know--that to be only her father’s daughter is not quite enough for
her--that she wants some sort of standing of her own.”
“Do you mean to tell me that such thoughts as these have ever entered
the mind of Jane?” said the Duke, severely. “My love, I put great faith
in you in matters quite within your sphere---- But Jane, my
daughter!----”
“I hope you will allow that she is my daughter as well,” the Duchess
said, with the half laugh, half rage natural to a woman long accustomed
to deal with an impracticable man. She was obliged to laugh at his
serious contempt of her, lest she should do worse.
The Duke waved his hand. “Yes, yes,” he said, in the tone of a man
yielding to an unreasonable child. “To be sure, in a way, we do not
dispute that. But I am certain,” he added, “that you know better than to
resist the claims of race. Jane is not so much your daughter, or even
mine, as she is the daughter of the race of Altamonts; and in that
capacity you may allow, my love, great as are your claims to respect as
her mother, that I may be supposed to understand her best.”
The exasperation with which the Duchess listened to this speech may be
understood; but it was not the first by a great many, and she made no
revelation of her feelings. On the contrary, she made use of his solemn
vanity with a craft which the exigencies of her position had developed
in her.
“You must give me the benefit of your superior insight,” she said quite
calmly, without any indication of satire in her tone. “Now that you have
leisure to give your consideration to family matters, as you could not
be expected to do in town:--tell me what you think. My impression is,
that she has begun to think of the future. I was her mother when I was
her age. She has been very much admired and sought after.”
“Naturally,” the Duke said, with a wave of his hand.
“And I have a feeling that there is a--preference, if I may call it
so--an inclination, perhaps--dawning in her mind. To lose her would be a
terrible deprivation: still,” the Duchess said, “I do not suppose it is
in your mind to prevent her from marrying.”
“To prevent her from---- You surely have the most curious way of putting
things. There is nothing I desire more truly--when a suitable match can
be found.”
“But don’t you think,” cried the Duchess, “that we are, perhaps, letting
the time slip a little? Of course, I would naturally keep my child by me
as long as possible, but in her own interests---- Women on the whole are
happier to marry, I think,” she said doubtfully.
“Marry! of course they are happier to marry. Can there be any doubt upon
that subject? A woman unmarried cannot be said to have any life at
all!”
“Yes, I should say there was a doubt,” said his wife, with again that
half laugh; “and as I am one of them, I may be allowed an opinion on the
subject. But still, in respect to Jane, I could wish my daughter to
marry. In her position, to remain unmarried would really be to remain
apart from life.”
“It is not to be thought of for a moment; an old maid!” the Duke said,
with a quaver of pain in his voice; and he thought of that slight
indentation--not a hollow, scarcely more than a dimple, which, however,
was not a dimple, on Jane’s cheek. “The truth is,” he said, “that in
respect to one’s children one deceives one’s self. I have no feeling
that I am myself any older than I was twenty years ago, and therefore I
do not notice the difference in her.”
“Hungerford is very old,” said the Duchess. “He is older in many things
than either you or I.”
“Ah, Hungerford; what can you expect with that wife?” the Duke said,
with a little shudder; and then he added, with inward alarm but outward
jauntiness (so far as dukes can be jaunty), as if her opinion was an
excellent joke, “By the way, I suppose that she will have something to
say on the subject. She generally has something to say.”
“Susan does not conceal her opinion that Jane’s chances are all over,”
said the Duchess. “She thinks her _passée_. She believes, I understand,
that a clergyman--to whom we could give the living of Billings--would be
the likely thing for Jane now.”
“A clergyman!” said the Duke, with rage and horror. His wife laughed a
little, but there was anger below her laugh. How it was that Susan’s
impertinent speeches always came to the ears of her parents-in-law it
was difficult to know, but they did so, and they generally had the
effect of warming most wholesomely the Duke’s too noble blood.
“It is very well known how difficult you are,” said the Duchess. “I
don’t think myself that the clergyman is likely to present himself; but
if Jane had a preference, as I suppose, I should, for my part, be very
unwilling to thwart her.”
“Jane will have no preference that is not justified by the merit of the
object,” cried Jane’s father. “She is too much my child for that. She
will never permit her mind to stray out of her own rank. Indeed, it is
with difficulty I realise,” he added, with dignity, “the possibility
that she can have conceived what you call a preference at all. To me she
has always been so completely superior, so serene, so----”
“But not cold,” the Duchess said.
“I don’t know what you mean by cold; yes, cold, certainly, in my sense
of the word, as every woman ought to be. I believe that unless I put it
before her--or you as my representative--she is far too pure-minded and
elevated ever to think of marriage at all.”
“If she were shut up in a tower,” said the Duchess; “but unfortunately
there are so many things in this world to force the idea upon her, and
if you really wish her to marry----”
“Of course I wish her to marry,” said the Duke, almost angrily; and then
he added, “in her own rank in life.”
The Duchess asked herself afterwards whether this had been a wise way of
directing her husband’s attention to the subject. She had meant it to be
very wise, but conversation is one of those strange things that will
manage itself. However closely we may have laid down the lines of what
we shall say, it is pretty certain to balk us and direct us in other
ways. This had been the case on the present occasion. Instead of
directing the Duke’s mind to the possibility of receiving a suitor who
should be indispensable to Jane’s happiness, though not of her rank, she
had only elicited from him a repetition of his determination that nobody
out of her own rank should marry Lady Jane. She thought with a shiver of
Winton coming down full of hope with the intention of unfolding his
rent-roll, and his statement of the settlements he was able to make, for
the Duke’s satisfaction. The Duke was one of the few men remaining in
the nineteenth century who was invulnerable to money. Susan Hungerford
was enough to give any one a disgust at that manner of filling the
household coffers. Perhaps it would have been better to say nothing, to
let Winton work upon the Duke by that respectful admiration for his
opinions which he had already shown. She walked back to the castle with
a sense of failure in her mind. For her part, she would not have been at
all disinclined towards a clergyman (had he been _nice_) who would have
established her child in the beautiful rectory not a quarter of a mile
from the lodge-gates, and kept her constantly, as it were, at home. But
there was no clergyman available, and no question of that. Lady Jane
gave her a half-timid glance when she went into the drawing-room with
the fresh air of the evening about her. She would not inquire whether
there had been any talk of herself between her parents; but she could
not keep that question out of her eyes. All the Duchess’s reply was to
give her a kiss, and ask whether she had not been out this delicious
evening. “This is better than town,” her Grace said. Was it better than
town? For the first time, with a soft sigh Lady Jane remained silent and
did not echo the sentiment. The country is sweet, and the woods, and
fields, and one’s native air, and the silence of nature--but there are
other things which perhaps even in smoky London, among the bricks and
mortar which his Grace made so little of, were still more sweet. Of all
people in the world, Lady Jane was the last to prefer a ball-room, or
the jaded and heated crowds at the end of the season. But for the first
time in her life she thought of these assemblies with a sigh.
CHAPTER VII.
SUSPENSE.
Winton stayed in London until September, with a certain sense of
satisfaction in this self-martyrdom. It was totally unnecessary and
could advantage nobody--but the thought of going into the country and
pretending to enjoy himself while everything was so doubtful as to his
future prospects, was disagreeable to him. He neglected his friends, he
declined his invitations, he took pleasure in making himself miserable,
and in pouring out his loneliness and wretchedness on sheet after sheet
of note-paper, and addressing the budget to Billings Court; from
whence, very soon indeed after this practice began, the Duchess,
alarmed, sent him an energetic protestation. “Such a hot correspondence
will soon awaken suspicions,” she wrote; “for Jane’s sake I implore you
to be a little more patient.” “Patient! much she knows about it!” Winton
said, when, pouncing upon this letter with the hope of finding,
perhaps--who could tell?--the Duke’s consent in it and final sanction,
he encountered this disappointing check. What could she know about it
indeed, with Jane by her side, and all that she cared for? Perhaps in
other circumstances the young man might have had a glimmering perception
that the Duchess was well acquainted with the exercise of patience, even
though Jane was her daughter; but at present his own affairs entirely
occupied his mind. He spent a good deal of his time in Wardour Street
and other cognate regions, and attended a great many sales, in which
there was some degree of soothing to be obtained; for to “pick up”
something which might hereafter grace her sitting-room, gave a glory to
_bric-a-brac_, and thus he seemed to be doing something for her, even
when most entirely separated from her. Jane herself wrote to him the
most soothing of letters. “So long as we know each other as we do, and
trust each other, what does a little delay matter?” she said. Poor
Winton cried out, “Much she knows about it!” again, as he kissed yet
almost tore, in loving fury, her tender little epistle. This was very
unreasonable, for of course she knew quite as much about it as he did.
When a pair of lovers are parted, it is not the lady that is supposed to
feel it the least.
And yet he was more or less justified in that despairing exclamation,
for Jane’s perfect faith was such as is rarely possible to a man who has
been in the world. He did not feel at all sure that she might not be
capable out of pure sweetness and self-sacrifice--that pernicious
doctrine in which, he said to himself angrily, women are nourished--of
giving him up. Even the Duchess sometimes thought so, deceived by the
serene aspect of her child, who did not pine or sigh, but pursued her
gentle career with a more than ordinary sweetness and pleasure in it.
Lady Jane had the advantage over both these doubting souls. Doubt was
not in her; and she was aware, as they were not, of the persistency of
her own steadfast nature, which, in the absence of all experience to the
contrary, she held to be a universal characteristic. It did not occur to
her as possible that having made up his mind on an important
subject--far less given his heart, to use the sentimental language
which she blushed yet was pleased in the depths of her seclusion to
employ--any man--or woman either--could be persuaded or forced to change
it. Many things were possible--but not that. She had no excitement on
the subject, because it was outside of all her consciousness, a thing
impossible. Change! give up! The only result of such a suggestion upon
Lady Jane was a faintly humorous and perfectly serene smile. But Winton
had not this admirable serenity. Perhaps he was not himself so
absolutely true as the stainless creature whom he loved. He worked
himself up into little fits of passion sometimes, asking himself how
could he tell what agencies might be brought to bear upon her, what
necessities might be urged upon her? It was very well known that the
Duke was poor; and if it so happened that in the depths of his
embarrassment somebody stepped forward with one of those fabulous
fortunes which are occasionally to be met with, ready to free the father
at the cost of the daughter, as occurs sometimes even out of novels,
would Jane be able to resist all the inducements that would be brought
to bear upon her? Winton sprang from his feet more than once with a wild
intention of rushing to his lawyers and instructing them to stop his
Grace’s mouth with a bundle of bank-notes, lest he might lend an ear to
that imaginary millionaire. And on coming to his senses, it must be said
that the Duke’s overweening pride, which was working his own harm, was
the point of consolation to which the lover clung, and not any
conviction of the firmness of Lady Jane in such circumstances. It _was_
a comfort that his Grace was far too haughty in his dukedom to suffer
the approach of mere millionaires.
In September, Lady Germaine returning from that six weeks at Homburg
with which it was the fashion in those days for worn-out fine ladies to
recruit themselves after the labours of the season, and pausing in
London two days in a furious _accès_ of shopping before she went to the
country, saw Winton pass the door at which her carriage was standing,
and pounced upon him with all the eagerness of an explorer in a savage
country. “You here!” she said; “for goodness’ sake come and help me with
my shopping. I have not spoken two words together for a week--not even
on the journey! There was nobody: I can’t think where the people have
gone to: one used to be sure of picking up some one on the way, but
there was nobody. Well! and how are things going?” she added, making a
distinct pause after her first little personal outburst was over.
“Very badly,” Winton said, with a sigh.
“Papa will not pay any attention?” said Lady Germaine. “I warned you of
that: don’t say you were taken unawares. I told you he was the most
impracticable of men, and you, in your holy innocence----”
“Don’t,” said Winton. “I remember all you said; you called me names: you
confessed that you felt guilty----”
“Be just. I did not say I felt guilty, but only that his Grace would
think me so, which are very different things. And so he will not have
you? poor boy! but I knew that from the beginning. There is one fine
thing in him, that he has no eye to his own advantage. Most people would
think you a very good match for Jane.”
“Don’t speak blasphemy,” said Winton. “I agree with the Duke, he is as
right as a man can be. There is nobody good enough for her----”
“Except----”
“Except no one that I am acquainted with. I don’t deserve that she
should let me tie her shoes. Oh, don’t suppose I have changed my opinion
about that.”
“I am glad to find you are in such a proper frame of mind--then there
will be no trouble at all, none of the expedients adopted in such cases?
Poor Lady Jane! but since that is the case, there is nothing more to be
said. And what, may I ask, you good humble-minded young man, are you
doing in town in September? You ought to be shooting somewhere, or
making yourself agreeable.”
“I am knocking about at all the sales,” said Winton, “trying to pick up
a little thing here and there for her rooms at Winton. What are the
expedients you were thinking of, dear Lady Germaine? It is always good
to know.”
Lady Germaine laughed. “Then you have not given in?” she said. “I did
not suppose you were the sort of person to give in. What did he say? was
it final? did he show you to the door? You will think it hard-hearted of
me to laugh, but I should like to have been in hiding somewhere to have
seen his Grace’s face when you ventured to tell him.”
“He has not received that shock yet,” said Winton, not very well
pleased.
“He has not----! Do you mean you have never asked the Duke? Are things
just as they were, then, and no advance made?” said Lady Germaine, in a
tone of wonder that was not quite free of contempt.
“They will not let me speak,” said Winton, in a voice from which he
could not keep a certain querulous accent. “It is not my way of managing
affairs; but what can I do? Her mother says----”
“Then you have got the Duchess on your side?”
“I suppose so,” said the young man. “I sometimes doubt whether it is for
good or evil. She will not let me speak. She says she will let me know
the right moment. In the meantime life is insupportable, you know. I
shall take my courage _à deux mains_, and when I go down there----”
“You are going down there--to Billings?” cried Lady Germaine with a gasp
of astonishment.
“On the 10th,” said Winton with a sigh, “but whether anything will come
of it or not----”
“When the Duchess is taking the business into her own hands! Reginald
Winton, I have told you before you were a goose,” said Lady Germaine,
solemnly. “And what is the use of mooning about here and asking me what
are the expedients? Of course she has thought of all the expedients.
Whatever _he_ may be, the Duchess is a woman of sense. Are you
furnishing Winton? Have you all your arrangements made? I should have
everything ready--down to the footstools and door-mats--and servants
engaged, and your carriages seen to. You can’t marry a duke’s daughter
without taking a little trouble about the place you are going to put her
in.”
“Trouble--there shall be no sparing of trouble!” he cried; but then
shook his head. “We are a long way off that,” he added, in a dolorous
tone.
“This is the confident lover,” said Lady Germaine, “who scoffed at
dukes and thought himself good enough for anybody’s daughter. Don’t you
see that if it comes to nothing, something must come of it directly?
Things of this sort can’t hang on--they go quicker than the legitimate
drama. If I were you, I would have the steeds saddled in their stalls,
and the knights in their armour, like Walter Scott, you know.”
“Do you think so?” said Winton, his eyes lighting up. “If I could
imagine that anything so good as this was on the cards----”
“On the cards! Oh, the obtuseness of man! Do you think the Duchess will
let herself be beaten? Oh yes, her husband has been too many for her
again and again. I know she has had to give in and let him take his own
way: but now that Jane is concerned, and she has pledged herself to
you----”
“She has been very kind. I had not the least right to expect such
kindness as she has shown me: but she has given no pledge,” said Winton
with a recurrence of his despondency.
Lady Germaine, who had stopped herself in the full career of her
shopping to hold this conversation with him in a luxurious corner of the
great shop, where all was still at this dead moment of the year, and
only velvet-footed assistants passed now and then noiselessly--gave him
at this moment a look of disdain, and rose up from her chair. “I did not
think you had been such a noodle,” she said, and, before he could answer
a word, went forward to the nearest counter, where an elegant youth had
been waiting all the time with bales of silks and stuffs half unfolded
for her ladyship’s inspection--and plunged into business. That elegant
youth had not in any way betrayed his weariness. He had stood by his
wares as if it were the most natural thing in the world to wait for half
an hour, so to speak, between the cup and the lip: but he had not been
without his thoughts, and these thoughts were not very favourable to
Lady Germaine. Most likely this was the origin of a paragraph which
crept into one of the Society papers in the deadness of the season and
puzzled all the tantalised circles in country houses, and even
bewildered the clubs. Who could the “Lady G.” be who had awakened the
echoes of the back shop at Allen and Lewisby’s? Here is the advantage of
an immaculate reputation. Neither the clubs nor the country houses ever
associated Lady Germaine with such a possibility; but this, of course
was what that elegant young person did not know.
“Why am I a noodle?” said Winton, going after her, and too much
absorbed in the subject to think of the attendant at all.
“If you can think of a stronger word put that instead,” said Lady
Germaine. “I can’t call names here, don’t you see, though I should _so_
like to. No pledge! Oh, you---- What should you like in that way?
Something on parchment, with seals hanging to it like a Pope’s bull? as
if every word she said and every suggestion she made was not a pledge,
and the strongest of pledges? Go away, and let me choose the children’s
new frocks in peace. It is easier to do that than to make people
understand.”
But Winton did not go away. He leaned over her chair, making certainty
more certain to the spectator behind the counter. “Look here,” he said;
“do you really mean what you say--that I ought to have everything
ready?”
“Don’t you think these two shades go nicely together?” said Lady
Germaine, putting the silk and the merino side by side with skilful
hands, and with an air of the profoundest deliberation. “The girls have
not a thing to wear. I should have the steeds in the stables and the
knights in the hall, if I were you, and William of Deloraine ready to
ride by night or by day.”
Perhaps this advice was not the clearest in the world, but, such as it
was, it was all the lady would give; and it sent Winton along the
half-lighted half-empty streets, in the twilight of the soft September
evening, with an alert pace and a heart beating as it had not beat since
London had suddenly become empty to him by the departure of one family
from it. He went over every room of his house that evening, calculating
and considering. It was a charming house, and he had regarded it with
no small satisfaction when, only a year or two before, its decorations
had been completed. But now, with the idea in his mind that at any
moment (was not that what she said?) he might have to be ready for the
princess, the wife--that his happiness might come upon him suddenly, and
his life be transformed, and his house turned into _her_ house--in this
view it was astonishing how many things he found that were incomplete.
Nay, everything was incomplete. It was dingy--it was small; it was
commonplace. The drawing-rooms had become old-fashioned, though
yesterday he had been under the impression that there was an antique
grace about them--a flavour of the old world which gave them character.
The dining-room was heavy and elaborate; the library too dark; the
morning-room--good heavens! there was no morning-room in which a lady
could establish herself, but only a half-furnished place uninhabited,
cold, with no character at all. It brought a cold dew all over him when
he opened the door of that empty chamber. He could scarcely sleep for
thinking of it. What if she might be ready before her house was! The
idea was intolerable: and everything was petty, mean, without beauty,
unworthy of her. He had not thought so when he walked through those
over-gilded drawing-rooms in Grosvenor Square, and said to himself that
not amid such tawdry fineries as these should his wife be housed.
Everything had changed since that brief moment of confidence. He was
dissatisfied with everything. Next morning he had no sooner awoke from a
sleep troubled by dreams of chaotic upholstery, than he went to work.
Perhaps, after all, things were not so bad. With the aid of a few
experts, and a great deal of money, much, if not everything, can be done
in a very short space of time. He ran down into the country as soon as
he had set things going in Kensington, and arrived at his old
manor-house without warning, to the great consternation of the
housekeeper. Winton had still more need of the experts and the
_bric-a-brac_. It wanted many things besides, which were not to be had
in a moment, and his life for the next week was as laborious as that of
the busiest workman. The excitement among the servants and hangers-on at
both places was indescribable. He said nothing of his approaching
marriage, and yet nothing but an approaching marriage could account for
it; or else that he was going clean out of his senses, which was another
hypothesis produced.
This fit of active and hopeful exertion got over these remaining days
with the speed of a dream. The hours galloped along with him as lightly
at least, if not as merrily, as though they were indeed carrying him to
his wedding-day. But when all was done that he could do, and the moment
approached for his visit to Billings, a cold shade fell over him. Lady
Germaine’s clever little speeches began to look like nonsense as he
thought them over; “quicker than the legitimate drama;” what did she
mean by that? Could he imagine for a moment to himself that Jane, the
princess of her own race as well as of his affections, the serene and
perfect lady of his thoughts, would be the heroine of any vulgar
romance? That he could have entertained such a thought for a moment
horrified him when he paused in his feverish exertion and began to think
what it all meant. But this was only on the way to Billings, when every
pulse in his body began to throb high with the thought of being once
more in her presence, under the same roof with her, and about to put his
fortune to the test to gain everything or--no, not to lose her. He said
to himself with a sudden passion that he would not lose Jane. Such a
calamity was not possible. Father and mother and all the powers might do
what they would or could, but she was his, and give her up he would not.
Thus the anxious lover went round the compass and came back to the point
from which he started. He found Lady Germaine as wise and clever as he
had always thought her, when he came thus far. There were
expedients--and the Duchess was pledged to the employment of them as
certainly as if he had her word for it engrossed on parchments sealed
and signed and delivered. One way or another, his visit to Billings
would be decisive. He went like a soldier to the field of battle, with
a thrill of excitement over him, as well as with all the softening
enthusiasm of a lover. Happen how it might, he could not leave that
unknown fortress, that Castle Dangerous, as he came.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DECISIVE MOMENT.
It was not, however, at all like a conquering hero that Winton made his
appearance at Billings. A number of other people arrived by the same
train, and were conveyed in various carriages both before and after him
to the great house. It was a long drive, and he had time to think about
it and to go over the approaching meeting, rehearsing it again and
again. Winton knew as well as any one what it is to arrive at a country
house,--the confusion of the arrival, the little pause when no one knows
what to do, the hesitation of the people who have never been there
before, the well-bred attempts of the people who have, not to seem too
much at home, the anxiety of the hosts to distribute their attentions
equally and leave no one out--were all familiar to him. But somehow his
special position now gave him much of the feeling of surprise and
disappointment and involuntary half-offence which a new-comer, unused to
society, and expecting perhaps to be received with all the warm
individual welcome of more intimate hospitality, feels when he finds
himself only one of the least considerable of a large party. All the
other members of the group were of greater consequence than Winton, and
almost all were _habitués_ of the place, accustomed to come year after
year--persons whom the Duke could receive as sufficiently near his own
level to be worthy the honour of his friendship. Such a party is always
diversified by some one or two people who are altogether nobodies, and
afford either a sort of background like supernumeraries in a play, or
are elevated to the most important position by dint of dexterity and
adulation. Winton felt himself to belong to the background as he stood
about in the hall when all the greetings were going on, waiting for his.
It had been like a sudden downfall from heaven to earth to perceive, as
he cast his first rapid glance round on entering, that Jane was not
there. Afterwards he said to himself that he could not have endured her
to be there, but for the moment her absence struck him like a blow. And
what could the Duchess do more than shake hands with him as she did with
all her other guests? He thought she gave him a glance of warning, a
little smile--but no doubt every man there supposed that for himself
individually her Grace had a kind regard. He stood talking for a short
time after the ladies had been swept away to their rooms. He knew
several of the more important of the guests, and he knew one of the
nobodies who was a very prominent figure. But it was with an indignant
sense that his reception ought to have been a very different one that he
found himself following a servant up the grand staircase into those
distant regions allotted to bachelors, where his non-importance was to
be still more forcibly brought home to him. He who ought to have been
received as the son of the house--he to whom its brightest member had
linked her fate--that he should come in on the same footing as Mr
Rosencrantz the German librarian, or that stale hanger-on of the clubs
who made a sort of trade of country houses, was very bitter to Winton.
He was not accustomed to be a _super_, and he did not like the post. To
tell the truth, in the first half-hour in Billings Castle Winton felt
his own hopes and dreams come back upon him with a bitterness and sense
of ridicule which drove him almost out of himself. Had he not been a
fool to entertain any hopes at all? Was not Lady Germaine ludicrously
mistaken when she talked of the Duchess’s pledge? The Duchess, was she
not far too great a lady to care what happened to a simple gentleman? He
began to think he had been a fool to come, a fool ever to permit himself
to shipwreck his heart and life in this way, and doubly a fool, a
ridiculous idiot, to go drivelling into decorations and pieces of
furniture, as if his little manor-house could ever vie with--All these
thoughts were put to flight in a moment by the sudden opening of a
closed door which flooded a dark passage to his right with the glory of
the sunset sweeping through it. Some one came out and stood for a moment
in the midst of that glory: then Winton heard himself called. The
servant disappeared by magic, and he suddenly found himself in a small
sitting-room with a broad window flooded by the evening light. The
Duchess held out both her hands to him, but he scarcely saw them, for
behind her, coming in through another door, a little flush upon her soft
cheeks, and that liquid golden illumination in her eyes---- it was as if
some one had said to him out of the glowing west, “O thou of little
faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?”
This meeting, however, was of the briefest--for the house was very full
and the dinner-hour approaching. “You must go away directly,” the
Duchess said; “but I could not trust you to meet for the first time
down-stairs before so many eyes.”
“So it was policy?” Winton cried.
“Entirely policy--is not every step I take more or less of that
description?--but Jane could not have borne it,” she said, “and neither
could you, I think. I did not bring you here to ruin you. We must all be
on our p’s and q’s.”
“P’s and q’s!” cried Winton, “become insupportable. Dear Duchess, you
will not be too hard upon me. Now at least I must have it out, and know
my fate. How can I bear to hang on--to have everything pushed off in
indefinite space?”
Lady Jane touched his arm lightly with her hand, stroking it, with a
pretty movement of mingled soothing and sympathy. “_Pazienza!_” she said
softly; but she liked the impatience. It pleased her delicate sense of
what was best.
“Would you prefer, Mr Winton, to know the worst?--would you rather have
a definite No than an indefinite suspense?”
“Don’t call him Mr Winton,” said Lady Jane in her under tone.
Winton looked from one lady to another keenly, with an inquiry which the
Duchess met without flinching, and Lady Jane without being at all aware
what it meant. Her Grace gave him an almost imperceptible nod, always
looking him full in the face. Her eyes seemed to promise everything. “In
that case,” he said--“in that case--better the refusal: then we shall
see what there remains to do.”
The Duchess sighed. “I believe it is the wisest way,” she said, “after
all: but you cannot suppose it is very pleasant to me. Now, go; you
must go, and leave us to dress. You may come here to-morrow after
breakfast, or when we come in, in the afternoon--but you must not be
always coming. And in the meantime prudence, prudence! you cannot be too
prudent. If you betray yourself I cannot answer for the consequences.
You must remember that for Jane’s sake.”
Then they put him out of the room, out of the shining of the sunset in
which he thought she stood transfigured, the soft glory caressing her,
the level golden radiance getting into her eyes and flooding them--and
closed the door upon him, leaving him in the darkness of the passage,
which looked all black to his dazzled eyes. Fortunately his guide
appeared a moment afterwards and he was led up to his chamber, in the
wilds so to speak of the great house, where he came back to himself as
well as he could. Winton was only a man like the rest of his kind. He
wondered if the women enjoyed, with a native feminine malice such as
everybody has commented upon from the beginning of time, the position in
which they had placed him. Ah, not _they_; not Jane, who was a world
above all jesting--but perhaps the Duchess, who, he could imagine, did
not mind making him pay a little in his dignity, in his self-regard, for
the promotion he had got through her daughter’s love. She would do
anything for him because Jane loved him, but perhaps she had a
mischievous satisfaction in the little drama which she was arranging
round him--the external slights, the sudden bliss, the dismissal back
again to humility and the second floor. Was this so? He concluded it
was, with a half-amused irritation, a sense of being played with. She
was kind: but was it in mortal to suffer without a pang, without an
attempt at reprisals, the loss of Jane? And then, perhaps the Duchess
too had a little feeling that he was not one of her own caste, her
daughter’s equal--not enough to make her resist that daughter’s choice,
but yet enough to prompt in passing a little prick as with a needle at
the too fortunate. As a matter of fact, had Winton been cool enough to
notice it, the Duchess had meant him no prick at all. He had been
received in the usual way, lodged according to the general rule. She had
thought it wisest not to do anything to distinguish him beyond his
neighbours, but that was all.
The evening was full of tantalised and suppressed expectation, yet of a
moment’s pleasure now and then. Except the German librarian and the man
from the clubs, and a young author who had been the fashion and was the
_protégé_ of one of the great families visiting at Billings, the company
was all much more splendid than Winton. Names that were known to history
buzzed about him as he sat down to dinner, with Lady Adela Grandmaison
beside him, who was exceedingly relieved to fall to his lot and not to
one of the elderly noblemen who illustrated the table. Lady Adela wore a
_sacque_ like a dainty lady of the eighteenth century, but was apt to
throw herself into attitudes which were suggestive of the fourteenth.
She did not feel at all disposed to be disdainful of Winton. Instead of
this she took him into her confidence. “Did you ever see such a party of
swells?” she said, notwithstanding her medieval attitudes. “Don’t they
frighten you to death, Mr Winton? I am so glad to have somebody I dare
talk to. The Duke is too funny for anything, don’t you think so? like
an old monarch in the pantomime. It is all exactly like the theatre. He
says ‘My lord’--listen! exactly as they do on the stage.”
“I suppose they did that sort of thing when his Grace was young,” said
Winton, looking up the great table to where that majestic presence
showed beyond the ranks of his guests. A little tremor ran over him when
he realised the splendour of the personage to whom he was going so soon
to carry his suit. “Perhaps we are a little too free-and-easy nowadays,”
he said.
“Don’t desert your generation,” cried Lady Adela; and then she added
significantly, “there is Jane looking our way. Jane is so sweet--don’t
you think so, Mr Winton?”
Winton met the soft eyes of his love and the keen ones of this young
observer at the same moment; and this, though he was a man of the
world, brought a sudden flush to his face. All the fine company, and the
gorgeous table, heavy with plate and brilliant with flowers, grew like a
mist to him, and nothing seemed real except that softly tinted,
tender-shining countenance, turning upon him the light of her eyes. They
were so placed that though they never spoke they could see each other
across the table, through a little thicket of feathery ferns and
flowers. Lady Jane was too courteous, too self-forgetting to neglect her
special companion or to abandon the duty of entertaining her parent’s
guests. But now and then she would lift her eyes and empty out her heart
in one look across the table through that flowery veil. He was not
nearly so entertaining in consequence as Lady Adela had hoped.
Next morning there were some moments that were full of excitement and
happiness in the midst of a day which was just like other days. Lady
Jane agreed fully with Winton, that to be there under her father’s roof
without informing him of the object of his visit was a thing unworthy of
her lover; and she was, like him, entirely convinced that, whatever
might come of it, the explanation must be made. The Duchess did not
contest this high decision of principle--but she shook her head. “I have
nothing to say against you. I suppose you are right. It must be done
sooner or later,” she said. “There is only one thing--put it off till
the last day of your visit; for this I am sure of, that you will not be
able to spend another night at Billings.”
“Mamma!” Lady Jane cried, with a fervour which brought the tears to her
eyes, “my father will say nothing that one gentleman may not say to
another.”
The Duchess once more shook her head. “When one gentleman asks another
for his daughter and is refused--though the one should be the most
courteous in the world, and the other the most patient, yet it is
generally considered most convenient that they should not continue in
the same house.”
“I will take your mother’s advice, my dearest,” said Winton; but it was
hardly possible for mortal man to have it put before him so plainly
without a little feeling of offence. It had been settled that he was to
stay a week, and notwithstanding the happiness which the Duchess had
secured to him by giving him the entry to this sacred little
sitting-room into which no stranger ever intruded, and by affording him
as many opportunities as were possible of seeing Lady Jane, he spent the
rest of the time with a certain feeling of hostility in his mind
towards her, which was thoroughly unreasonable. He began to doubt
whether she wished him to succeed, whether she was indeed so truly his
friend as she represented herself to be. A man must be magnanimous
indeed who can entirely free his mind from the prevalent notions about
the love of women for “managing,” and their inclination towards intrigue
and mystery. A conviction that his own manly statement of his case would
tell more effectually with the Duke, who was a gentleman though he might
be pompous and haughty, than any semi-deceitful feminine process, began
to grow in his mind. And this conviction, in which there was a partially
indignant revulsion of feeling--rank ingratitude and unkindness, but of
that he was not conscious--from his allegiance to the Duchess, gave him
a natural inclination to propitiate the head of the house and see him in
his best light, which was not without a certain influence even on the
Duke himself, who more and more felt this modest young commoner, though
he was nobody in particular, to be a person of discrimination, and one
who was capable of appreciating himself and understanding his views.
Thus with new hopefulness on one side, and mistrust on the other, Winton
counted the days as they went by towards the moment which was to decide
his fate. He impressed his own hopefulness upon Lady Jane, who was
indeed very willing to believe that nothing but what was noble and
honourable could come from her father. They discussed the subject
anxiously, yet with less and less alarm. To her it seemed, as she heard
all the wise and modest speeches her lover intended to make as to his
own lesser importance, but great love--it seemed to her that no heart
could hold out against him. That tenderest humility, which was the
natural characteristic of her mind underneath the instincts of rank
which were so strong in her, and the sense of lofty position which was
part of her religion--was touched with the most exquisite wonder and
happiness at the thought that all this noble and pure passion was hers,
and hers only. “It is impossible,” she said, “if you speak to him as you
do to me, Reginald--oh, it is impossible that he can resist.” “It is
impossible, my darling,” said the young man, “when he hears that you
love me.” Thus they encouraged each other, and on the eve of the great
day wrought themselves to an enthusiasm of faith and certainty. The
Duchess’s limitation of his visits had of course come to very little
purpose, and every moment that Winton could manage to escape from the
bonds of society below stairs he spent with Lady Jane above,
discoursing upon their hopes, and the manner in which best to get them
wrought into fulfilment. They talked of everything, in those stolen
hours of sweetness: of what was to happen in the future, of all they
were to be to each other, coming back again and again to the moment
which was to decide all, always with a stronger and stronger sense that
the Duke’s consent must come, and that to be balked by this initial
difficulty was impossible. But it cannot be denied that Winton had
certain difficulties even about that future in his communings with his
bride. He could not get her to understand that very little
self-sacrifice would be necessary on her part, and that the house to
which he proposed to transplant her was little less luxurious than her
own. Lady Jane smiled upon him when he said this with one of those
little heavenly stupidities which belong to such women. She did not
wish it be so, and so far as this went put no faith in him. It was a
settled question in her own mind. Arabella’s famous elucidation had
fortified her on that point beyond all assault. It pleased her to look
forward to the little manor-house, and the changed world which would
surround the Squire’s wife. If he had carried her direct to a palace
more splendid than Billings, she would have felt a visionary but active
disappointment. She drew him gently to other subjects when he entered
upon this, especially to the one unfailing subject, the Duke, and what
he might say. They both grew very confident as they talked it over: and
yet when Winton came to tell her, on the evening preceding that
momentous day, that he had asked for an interview and it had been
granted to him, Lady Jane lost her pretty colour, which was always so
evanescent, and her breath, and almost her self-possession. “No,” she
said, “oh, not afraid! if you say _that_ to him, Reginald, he cannot
resist--but only a little nervous; one is always nervous when there is
any doubt. And then to think that this is the last evening!”
“If things go right it will not be the last evening,” he cried. “The
Duchess said a man could not stay who had been refused; but even she
would allow that a man who has _not_ been refused may remain and be
happy. Ah, Jane! imagine the happiness of being allowed to belong to
each other! no more secret meetings, no further alarms or discovery.”
She gave a sigh of happiness and relief, yet blushed almost painfully.
The idea of doing anything which she did not wish to be found out hurt
her still, notwithstanding that in the stress of the crisis she had
yielded to do it. Winton’s conscience was not so delicate, and his
excitement made him wildly confident. It is a woman’s part to fear in
such a case as it is her part to encourage in the midst of doubt.
“Provided,” she said, with a little sigh of suspense, “provided it all
goes as we wish.”
He took her hands in his and held them fast and stood bending over her
looking into her eyes. “Supposing,” he said slowly, “supposing,”--he was
so excited and sure of what was going to happen that he could afford to
be theatrical,--“supposing all should not go as we wish, Jane--what
then?”
Lady Jane did not make any reply. She returned his look, with her hands
clasping his, standing steadfast without a shadow of wavering. She felt
as she had done in her youth when she had imagined herself facing the
guillotine. She was ready to suffer whatever might be inflicted upon
her, but to yield, she would not. It would have been easier by far to
die.
All this time the Duchess let them have their way. They were ungrateful,
they were even unkind, but she endured it with a patience and toleration
to which long experience had trained her. If it was with a little pang
that she kissed her daughter, wondering at that universal law which
makes a woman, still more than a man, forsake father and mother, and
cleave to her husband, she said nothing about it: she left them to
themselves and their hopes. She said to herself that they would find out
too soon what a broken reed they were trusting to, and her heart ached
for the failure of those anticipations which gave Lady Jane so beautiful
a colour, and an air of such serene happiness. Better that she should
have a happy evening, that she should sleep softly and wake hopefully
once more.
The morning of the great day dawned in a weeping mist, the heavens
leaden, the earth sodden, and streams of blinding rain falling by
intervals. Lady Jane, as she opened her eyes upon the misty daylight,
and thought, as soon as her faculties were awake, of what was going to
be done, clasped her soft hands, and said a prayer for _him_, and for
herself, and still more warmly for her father, who was, so to speak, on
his trial. He had never been less than a noble father in Lady Jane’s
eyes. She had not found him out, being scarcely of her generation in
this respect, and accepting unaffectedly what was presented to her as
the real state of things; but she could not help feeling that the Duke
was on his trial. He might deny her lover’s suit and break her own
heart, and yet keep his child’s respect. But a vague fear lest he
should not do this had got into her soul she did not know how. She
waited with a tremor which she could not subdue for the moment. How
fortunate it was that it rained, and that it was impossible to go out!
For once in her life Lady Jane failed in her duty. She escaped from
little Lady Adela, who was so anxious to be taken into her confidence,
and from the other guests, who, seeing the hopelessness of the weather,
were yawning together in the great bow-window of the morning-room,
gazing out upon the sodden grass and dreary avenue, dripping from every
tree, and wondering how they were to kill the time till luncheon. Lady
Jane, instead of helping to solve that problem, as she ought to have
done, fled from them and escaped to the seclusion of her mother’s
drawing-room, where she sat with the door ajar, listening for every
footstep. The Duchess, though she had felt her desertion, and knew that
the foolish pair of lovers were in a sort of secession from her,
following their own way, yet was very magnanimous to their
wrong-headedness. She said no word and looked no look of reproach, but
gave up her writing and her business, and went down herself among the
unoccupied ladies, and did her best to amuse them. This was perhaps of
all the sacrifices she made for them the one that cost her most.
It was about eleven o’clock when Winton presented himself at the door of
the Duke’s room; which was a handsome room, full of books, with a large
window looking out upon the park, and some of the finest of the family
pictures upon the walls. Over the mantelpiece hung a full-length
portrait, looking gigantic, of the Duchess, with Lady Jane, a little
girl of eight or nine, holding her hand. It seemed to Winton, as his
eye caught this on entering, that there was a reproachful look in the
eyes, and that Jane’s little face, serene and sweet as it had always
been, had a startled air of curiosity, and watched him from behind her
mother. The large window was full of blank and colourless daylight, and
an atmosphere of damp and rain. The Duke rose as he came in with much
graciousness, and pointed to a chair. He came from his writing-table,
which was at some distance, and placed himself in front of the
fireplace, as an Englishman loves to do, even when there is no fire. “I
hope,” the Duke said, “that you are going to tell me of something in
which I can serve you, Mr Winton.” There arose in Winton’s mind a
momentary thrill of indignation and derision. Serve him! as if he were
not better off and more fit to serve himself than half-a-dozen bankrupt
dukes! But Winton remembered that this was Jane’s father, and
restrained himself: and indeed the excitement and suspense in his breast
left him at no leisure for more than a momentary rebellion. He
replied--“It is true, I do appear before your Grace as a suitor----” but
here his voice failed him and his courage.
“You must not hesitate to speak plainly,” said the Duke, always more and
more graciously. “Alas! I am in opposition, and my influence does not
tell for much. Still, if there is any way in which I can be of use to
you--there is no one for whom I should more willingly stretch a point.”
“You are very kind,” said Winton. “It is not in that way that I should
trouble you. I am not in want of patronage--in that way. I may say that
I am rich--not,” he hastened to add, “as you are, but, for my position
in life, very well off--almost more than well off.”
“I am delighted to hear it, Mr Winton; but that is all the more reason
why you should serve your country. We want men who are indifferent to
pecuniary advantage. I shall be most happy to mention your name to Lord
Coningsby or to----”
“If you will permit me,” said Winton, “it is your Grace only whose
favour I desire to gain.”
Here the Duke began to laugh in a somewhat imbecile way, shaking his
head with an air of complacency which would have been too ludicrous for
mortal powers of gravity, had not Winton’s mind been so much otherwise
occupied. “Ah,” he said, “I see! you are thinking of that old story
about the Foreign Office. You must know that was mere talk. I do not
expect that anything could come of it. But if,” his Grace added with
another little run of laughter, “when we return to power--be assured,
Mr Winton, that nothing could give me greater pleasure----”
What was he to say? Winton knew very well that he himself was as likely,
if not more so--for he was a young man, with the world before him--to be
Foreign Minister than the Duke: and what with the confusion of the
mistake and the ludicrous character of the patronage offered, he was
more embarrassed than tongue could tell. “You are very kind,” he
faltered, scarcely knowing what he said; then, taking his courage with
both hands, “Duke,” he said, boldly, “it was on a much more presumptuous
errand I ventured to intrude upon you. What you will say to me I dare
not venture to think. I come not to ask for patronage or place, but for
something a great deal more precious. I come----” Here he paused, so
bewildered by the dignified unconsciousness and serene superiority of
the potentate in whose presence he stood that words failed him, and he
stood and gazed at that immovable countenance with a sort of appalled
wonder to think that anything should be so great yet so small, so
capable of making himself ridiculous, and yet with power to spoil two
lives at his pleasure. The Duke shifted his position a little, put his
right hand within his waistcoat in an attitude in which he had once
stood for his portrait, and regarded his suppliant with benignity. “Go
on,” he said, waving his other hand, “go on.”
Ah, how right the Duchess was! Oh, what a miserable mistake the lover
had made! But there was no drawing back now. “I am not worthy, no one is
worthy of her,” he said with agitation. “I am only a commoner, which I
know is a disadvantage in your eyes. The only thing, and that is
nothing, is, that at least I could make ample provision and secure
every comfort for my wife.”
“Your wife!” said the Duke, with a surprise which was ineffable. If any
gleam of suspicion came over him he quenched it in the sublime patronage
of a superior. “This is very interesting,” he said, “and shows a great
faith in my friendship to take me into your confidence on such a
delicate subject. I am happy to hear you are in such favourable
circumstances; but really,” he added with a laugh, “when you think how
very unlikely it is that I can have any knowledge of the future Mrs
Winton----”
The young man grew red and hot with a mixture of embarrassment and
resentful excitement, stung by the look and the tone. “It is your
daughter,” he said, “who has given me permission to come to you. It is
of Lady Jane I want to speak. You cannot think me less worthy of her
than I think myself.”
“Lady Jane!” The Duke grew pale; he took his hand out of his waistcoat,
and stared at the audacious suitor with dismay. Then he recovered
himself with an effort, and snatched at a smile as if it had been
something that hung on the wall, and put it on tremulously. “Ah! ah! I
see,” he added. “You think she might render you assistance. Speak a good
word for you?--eh?” The attempt to be jocular, which was entirely out of
his habits, convulsed his countenance. “Yes, yes, I see! that is what
you mean,” he said.
There was a pause, and the two men looked each other in the face. A
monarch confronted by the whole embodied force of revolution--scorning
it, hating it--yet with an insidious suggestion of alarm underneath
all--on one hand; and on the other the revolution embodied--pale with
lofty anger and a sense of its own rights, yet not without a regret, a
sympathetic pang for the old king about to be discrowned. The mutual
contemplation lasted not more than a few moments, though it seemed so
long. Then the Duke turned on his heel with a grimace which in his
agitation he intended for a laugh. “I prefer,” he said, “on the whole,
that Lady Jane should not be appealed to. My disposition to serve you
was personal. The ladies of my family are not less amicably inclined, I
am sure; but I do not wish them to be mixed up--in short you will
understand that, wishing you well in every way, I must advise you to
trust to your own attractions in a matrimonial point of view. I cannot
permit my daughter to interfere.”
He had moved about while he was speaking, but at the end returned to
his place and fixed Winton with the commanding look, straight in the
eyes, of a man determined to intimidate an applicant. It was the least
successful way in which he could have attempted to influence the present
suitor. Winton’s excitement rose to such a pitch that he recovered his
calm and self-possession as if by magic.
“I feel that I have explained myself badly,” he said, “and this is not a
matter on which there can be any misunderstanding between us. I must ask
you to listen to me calmly for a moment.”
“Calmly, my good sir! your matrimonial affairs, however important to
you, can scarcely be expected to excite me,” cried his Grace sharply,
with irritation in every tone.
“There can be nothing in the world so exciting--to both of us,” said
Winton. “My Lord Duke, I come from your daughter, from Jane.”
“Sir!” cried the Duke. But no capitals are capable of expressing the
force, the fury, of this outburst, which struck Winton like a
projectile, full in the face so to speak. He made a step backward in
momentary dismay.
“I must finish,” he said, somewhat wildly. “Jane sends me to your Grace.
I love her and she me. She has promised to be my wife. It is no
intercession, it is herself I ask. Jane--Duke! on her account I have a
right to be heard--a right--to have an answer at least.”
The Duke was beyond the power of speech. He was purple with rage and
astonishment, and at the same time moved by a kind of furious panic. He
caught at his shirt-collar like a man stifled. He had no voice to reply,
but waved his hand imperiously towards the door. And Winton, too, was
in a degree panic-struck. He had never seen such a blind and helpless
fit of passion before. Such things had been heard of as that a man
should die of rage. That indeed would be a separation from Jane beyond
any power to amend. He drew back a little with an anxiety he could not
conceal.
“I have taken you by surprise,” he said. “I ask your pardon. Whatever I
can do to soften the shock--to meet your wishes--I will do.”
“Go, sir!--go, sir!” the Duke stormed in his fury. “That is all you can
do--go! there is the door.” He waved his hand towards it with a
threatening gesture. He was transported out of himself. He followed
Winton step by step with a sort of moral compulsion, forcing him to
retire. The young man’s blood, it is needless to say, was in an uproar;
his heart thumping against his breast, every pulse going like a hammer.
But he made a stand again midway to that door which seemed the only
reply he was to have. “You will remember,” he said, “that I have no
answer--you give me no answer; I will leave the room and the house as
your Grace bids, but that is not a reply----”
“Go, sir!” the Duke cried. He stamped his foot like an enraged fishwife.
He had the sense to hold himself in, not to allow the torrent of abuse
which was on his lips to pour forth; but how long he would have been
able to endure, to keep in this vigorous and fiery tide, could not have
been predicted. He flung open the door with a force which made the walls
quiver, and the action seemed more or less to bring him to himself. He
recovered his voice at last. “I ought,” he panted, with a snarl, “to
thank you for the honour you have done my poor house;” and thus with an
explosion of labouring breath drove the astonished suitor out, as if by
a blast of wind. Winton found himself in the corridor, while the crash
of the great door swung behind him echoed through the house, with an
amazement which words cannot describe. It had all passed like a scene in
a dream. He paused a moment to recover himself. He, too, was breathless,
his whole physical being agitated, his head hot and throbbing, his heart
choking him. He could not speak to the Duchess, whom he met a moment
after coming along the corridor with a packet of papers in her hand. “It
is all over,” he said incoherently, waving his hand as he passed her.
The only idea in his mind for the moment was of indignity and wrong.
CHAPTER IX.
ACTING FOR HERSELF.
The Duchess’s little sitting-room had not for years enclosed so
melancholy a group. She herself, in old days when she first began to
realise all the circumstances of the life which she had come into, had
wept many an unnoticed tear in it; but in after-years she had acquired
the philosophy of maturity, and had too much to do holding her own amid
all the adverse circumstances about her, to be able to indulge in
personal lamentations. But Lady Jane had never known any of those
burdens which had made her mother’s career so full of care. When Winton
rushed in, in all the excitement of the scene which he had just gone
through in the Duke’s library, too much disturbed even to tell her what
had passed, it was almost her first experience of the darker side of
existence. For the first moment he had not been able to keep some
resentment and sense of the indignity to which he had been exposed from
getting to light. He told her with a pale smile and fiery eyes that he
had scarcely time to speak to her, that he must go instantly, that her
father had turned him out. But as Winton came to himself, and began to
perceive the pain which he was inflicting upon her, he did his best to
smooth away the first unguarded outburst. Lady Jane’s pallor, the tears
which she could not restrain, the serenity of her countenance turned
into anguish, all made apparent to him the fact which he had forgotten,
that there were to her two sides to the question. He tried to draw in
his words, to smooth away what he had said in the first outburst of his
resentment. “After all, we must remember it was a great shock to him. I
am nobody, only a simple gentleman, not fit to place myself on a level
with the Duke’s daughter,” he said, though still with that smile of
wounded pride and bitterness about his lips. Lady Jane was too
heart-broken to say much; she listened like a martyr at the stake,
standing silent while spears and arrows were thrust into her. Her
father! he had been tried and he had not borne the trial. What she
understood by rank was the highest courtesy, the noblest humbleness. A
man who would turn another to the door, who would suffer his guest to
perceive, under any circumstances, that he was not as a prince in his
host’s eyes--Lady Jane did not understand such a being. It hurt her so
deeply that she did not even at first realise the fact that it was her
lover who was turned away. She tried to ask a few faltering questions,
to make out the circumstances to be less terrible; but failing in this,
fell into silence, into such shame and consternation and deep humiliated
pain as even Winton scarcely comprehended. No other hand, no other
proceeding could have struck such a blow at all the traditions of her
life. She sat with her hand indeed in her lover’s, but in a kind of
miserable separation even from him, feeling her life fall away from her,
unable to think or realise what was to happen now; until Winton,
recovering from his excitement only to fall into a deeper panic, took
renewed fright from her silence. “Jane,” he said, “Jane! you don’t mean
to give me up because your father has turned me away?” Lady Jane turned
her head towards him, gave him a miserable smile, and pressed his hand
faintly, then fell, as perhaps had never happened in her life before,
into a passion of tears. He drew her into his arms, as was natural, and
she wept on his shoulder, as one refusing to be comforted. It was but
vaguely that Winton could even guess the entire upheaval of all her
foundations, the ruin into which her earth had fallen. He thought it was
the tragedy of his own love that was the cause, and that with this
heart-breaking convulsion she was making up her mind to see it come to
an end.
This was the attitude in which the Duchess found them. She, too, was
pale, her eyes bright, her nostrils dilated, as if she had been in the
wars. She found her daughter in this speechless passion of weeping, with
Winton’s pale countenance very despairing and tragical, yet touched
with a livelier alarm, a frightened incomprehension, bending over her.
He gave her a look of appeal as she came in; was it true that all was
over, as he had said? The Duchess went to her child’s side and took the
hand that lay on her lap and caressed it. “My darling,” she said, “this
is not a moment to give in: and you are not one to fail in a great
crisis, Jane. We have only a very little time to decide what we are to
do before Reginald goes away.”
She had not called him Reginald before, and there was a faint smile in
her eyes as they met his--a smile of forgiveness and motherly kindness,
though he had asked no pardon. The sound of her mother’s voice broke the
spell of Lady Jane’s self-abandonment, and it went to Winton’s heart
with a forlorn sense of happiness in the midst of all the misery, that
even her mother exercised a constraint upon her which when alone with
him she did not feel. Was it not that she was herself, and that with him
nature had free course unabashed? But the scene grew brighter and more
hopeful when the Duchess came into it. She was not surprised nor
overthrown by what had happened. She put back the soft hair from her
child’s forehead, and gave her a kiss of consolation. “My dearest,” she
said, “the crisis has come which I knew would come. Reginald must go as
soon as it is possible for him to go. It is for you now to say what is
to be done. You are of age; you have a right to judge for yourself. When
you told me first, I warned you what was before you. You have never
taken the burden of your life upon you hitherto. Now the moment has
come. I will not interfere. I will say nothing; neither will Reginald,
if I understand him rightly. You must judge for yourself what you will
do.”
Winton obeyed her Grace’s lead, though with reluctance and a troubled
mind. He only partially comprehended what she meant. He would have liked
for his own part, to hold his love fast--to cry out to her once more,
“You will not give me up because your father sends me away?” But he
yielded to the Duchess’s look, though with a grudge, feeling that this
was moral compulsion almost as absolute as that with which her husband
had turned him out. He rose from the sofa on which he had been sitting
with Jane, and stood before her, feeling in his hand still the mould of
hers which had lain there so long, and which left his, he thought, with
reluctance. This proceeding brought her altogether to herself. She
looked around her with an almost pitiful surprise. “Am I to be left
alone,” she said, with a quiver in her lip, “when I need support most?”
and then there was a pause. To Jane and to Winton it seemed as if the
very wheels of existence were arrested and the world stood still. No one
spoke. He was not capable of it; the Duchess would not. Lady Jane
between, with wet eyelashes, and cheeks still pale with tears, and mouth
quivering, her hands clasped in her lap as if clinging to each other
since there was nothing else to hold by, sat perfectly still for a
moment which seemed an hour. When she spoke at last there was a catch in
her voice, and the words came with difficulty, and with little pauses
between.
“What is it I am to decide?” she said. “All was decided--when we found
out--in town---- We cannot separate, he and I---- That--can never come
into question now. Is it not so?---- I may read it wrong---- It
appears--I have already read something wrong----” And then a spasm came
over her face once more: but she got it under control. “What you mean
is--about details?” said Lady Jane.
Winton, who had been in so extreme a state of excitement and suspense
that he could bear no more, dropped down upon his knees at the side of
the sofa on which she sat, and, clasping them, put down his face upon
her hands. Lady Jane freed one to put it lightly upon his bowed head,
with something of that soft maternal smile of indulgence of which love
has the privilege. “Did he think I was a child?” she said to her mother,
with a gentle wonder in her eyes. “Or not honest?” She herself was calm
again; steadfast, while the others still trembled, seeing the
complications so much less clearly than the fair and open way. She was
a little surprised by Winton’s broken ecstasies, by her mother’s
tremulous kiss of approval. “Is there anything left for me to decide?”
she said.
Nobody knew very well what was said or done in the agitated half-hour
that remained. It was agreed between them that “the details,” of which
Lady Jane had spoken with a blush, should be arranged afterwards, when
all were more cool and masters of themselves--a state to which no one of
the little group attained until Winton was hurrying along the country
roads towards the station, and Lady Jane and her mother were seated in
forlorn quiet alone in that little room which for the last week had been
the scene of so many excitements. The Duchess rose with a start when the
little French clock on the mantelpiece chimed one. “My dearest,” she
said, “we have many things to do which look like falsehood, we women.
You and I must appear at luncheon as if nothing had happened. There must
be no red eyes, my love, no abstraction. It will be all over the world
in no time, if we do not take care. For myself, alas! I am used to it;
but you, Jane----”
Lady Jane did not immediately reply. She said, “There is one thing,
mamma, to which I have made up my mind----”
The Duchess was examining herself in the glass to see if she was pale or
red, or anything different from her ordinary aspect. She turned round to
hear what this new determination was.
“I will speak to my father myself,” Lady Jane said.
If a cannon had been discharged into the peaceful little boudoir the
effect could scarcely have been greater. “You will speak to your
father, Jane? There are some things I know better than you. It will
wound you, my darling--for no good.”
“But I think it is right. There should be no means neglected to make him
give his consent. With his consent all would be better. I think I ought
to do it. It will be no shock to him now--he knows. To think of him like
_that_ is the thing that gave me most pain.”
“But if you should see him like _that_”--the Duchess said; then added
hastily, “I know you are right. But you must set your face like a flint;
you must not allow yourself to be made unhappy. Jane, your father does
not think as I think in many ways. I have tried to keep you from all
opposition; but he is old and you are young; you judge differently. You
must not think because his point of view is different that he is wrong,
even in this case--altogether.”
Lady Jane lifted her mild eyes, which were almost stern in their
unwavering sense of right. “I sometimes feel that you think nothing is
wrong--altogether,” she said.
“Perhaps not,” the Duchess replied, with a smile and a sigh.
“It seems noble to me that you should think so, but I cannot. My father
will not be like _that_ to me,” she added, with a little sadness. “Do
not be afraid, and I will take a little time--not to-day, unless he
speaks to me.”
“He will not speak to you,” said the Duchess, eagerly. She thought that
she had at least secured that.
And then they went to luncheon. A little look of exhaustion about Lady
Jane’s face, a clear shining in her eyes like the sky after rain,
betrayed to some keen-sighted spectators that there had been agitation
in the atmosphere. But for a novice unaccustomed to trouble, she bore
herself very well. And as for the Duchess, she was perfect. Her
unruffled mind, her easy grace of greatness, were visible in every
movement. What could so great a lady have to trouble her? She was
gracious to everybody, and full of suggestions as to what should be
done, as the afternoon promised to clear up, proposing expeditions to
one place and another. “Mr Winton would have been an addition to your
riding-party, but unfortunately he left us this morning,” she said in a
voice of the most perfect composure. “So that there was nothing in it,
after all,” little Lady Adela whispered to her mother. But Lady
Grandmaison, who was a woman of experience, shook her head.
And next morning Lady Jane, pale, but courageous, with a heart that
fluttered, but a purpose as steadfast as her nature, went softly
down-stairs in her turn and knocked at the Duke’s door.
CHAPTER X.
A MOMENTOUS INTERVIEW.
The Duke, like his wife, was too highbred to allow any sign of
disturbance to be seen in him; but nevertheless he was very greatly
disturbed. Such a thing had never happened to him in all his life
before. He had come in contact indeed with many men of lower social
pretensions than Winton. But a person who is absolutely nobody is always
easier to deal with than one who, without reaching at all to the level
on which you can regard him as an equal, is still, by the unfortunate
and levelling privileges of English society, supposed to be as good
even as a duke; whereas nobody but a duke can be, in reality, as good as
a duke, though a peer of old creation may approach him near enough for
most social purposes. But a Mr Winton! His was precisely the kind of
position which is most perplexing and disagreeable to the great man who
is nevertheless obliged to allow, in deference to the folly of society,
that there can be nothing higher than an English gentleman, and that
princes themselves must consider their right to that title as their
highest qualification. There are commoners, indeed, with whom even a
duke might make an alliance and find himself no loser. We have already
pointed out that Mr Roundell, of Bishop’s Roundell, had been seriously
thought of as a suitor for Lady Jane. But a little squire with a little
manor-house somewhere in the Midland counties--a man whom only a chance
inheritance had raised above the necessity of working for his living,
whose ancestors had been no better than little squires before him, who
was nobody, of a race unheard of out of their parish, that he should
take it upon him to walk quietly up to the Duke on his own hearth and
ask from him the hand of Lady Jane! He did not venture to permit himself
to dwell upon the thought. When it came back to his mind it set his
blood boiling as at first--his head grew hot, his veins too full, his
respiration difficult. To allow himself to be driven into a fit by such
_canaille_ would be unworthy of him; and therefore the Duke put force
upon himself, and when the recollection came back took the wise step of
flying from it. He would not risk himself on such an ignoble occasion.
To allow a Mr Winton to bring on an illness would be almost as bad as
accepting him for Lady Jane. Therefore he sent for his steward, or had
an interview with his head groom, or seized upon some other external aid
to save himself from the thought. He was unusually stately during the
evening and snubbed the man of the clubs, who had gained some favour
before by his adroitness and the interest he took in the house of
Billings. The Duke turned his back upon this candidate for favour in the
midst of an account he was giving of some discoveries he had
made--discoveries for which the entire race of the Altamonts ought, he
believed, to have been his debtors--as if the House of Altamont could
have been advantaged by any discovery made by a man who was nobody, or
indeed wanted any new glorification. The Duke turned round in the very
midst of the tale, turned his shoulder to the discoverer and began to
talk to the next of his noble visitors. This snub direct made everybody
stare, and quenched the victim for the evening. It gave his Grace a
little satisfaction to mortify somebody; but after all it did not do
much for his own wounds. And after a disturbed night, when malicious
recollection presented him with the souvenir of Winton almost before he
was free of his disturbed dreams, it may be supposed that the Duke’s
uprising was not a pleasant one. Heaven and earth! a little squire! a
nobody! He got up precipitately--if the Duke could be supposed to do
anything precipitately--and hurried his dressing, and plunged himself
into business. To allow himself to be drawn even into a bilious attack
by an assailant so contemptible would have been beneath him. His Grace
was very busy checking the steward’s accounts, and just had started what
he thought was an error in the balance-sheet, and was about with much
enjoyment to hunt it back to its origin--for he loved to think that he
was cheated, and to find out the managers of the estate in an inaccurate
sixpence was a great gratification to him--when there suddenly came a
low and somewhat tremulous knock at his door. He knew in a moment that
it was some new annoyance and connected with the Winton affair, though
it did not occur to him who the applicant could be who made this gentle
demand for admittance. His first thought was so little wise that it
prompted him to make as though he had not heard. But he heard very well,
and through every fibre of him. Then as he waited, keeping very quiet,
with perhaps a hope that the interruption might thus be diverted, the
knock was repeated a little louder. The Duke rose in great impatience.
He knew as well as if he had been in all their counsels what it was,
but he did not know who it was. When it was repeated for the third time
he made a stride across the room, and with his own hand flung the door
open. “WELL!” he said in a voice of thunder, then fell back appalled.
For there, in her white morning dress, and whiter than her dress, save
when she was crimson, her soft countenance inspired with something which
her father had never seen there before, her eyes meeting his
steadfastly, a slight tremor in her, which rather added to than
detracted from her firmness--stood Lady Jane.
The Duke was so much excited that for one moment he failed in politeness
towards the princess royal. “YOU!” he cried, with something of that
intonation of supreme surprise and horror, with which he had said SIR to
her lover. But he paused, and a better inspiration returned to him. A
spasmodic sort of smile came over his face. “Ah, Jane!” he said, and
put out his hand. “You want to speak to me? This is an unusual
visit--and perhaps it is rather an unfortunate moment, if you have much
to say.”
“Not very much, papa,” Jane answered, with an agitated smile. She took
his hand, though he had not meant this, and held it, as she closed the
door behind her. He would not have allowed her to do as much as this
herself, had he noted what she meant, but he was agitated too in spite
of himself. He recovered, however, and shut the door, then led his
daughter to a chair and placed her in it. It was--but he noticed that
only after it was beyond mending--the very chair in which her
presumptuous suitor had placed himself yesterday. The Duke stood up
before her in front of the fireplace exactly as he had done with
Winton. The coincidence alarmed him, but now he could not help it.
“Well, my love?” he said. He put on an air which was jaunty and
light-hearted, the false gaiety with which a frightened man faces
unknown danger. “Well, my love! I have just found Whitaker out in some
serious miscalculations. I am robbed on all hands by my servants. It is
one of the penalties of our position. But I warn you I have my head full
of this and will be a poor listener. Whitaker, you see----”
“What I have to say will not take much time, papa. But it is very
important to me.”
“Ah, ah!” said the Duke, with a laugh. “_Chiffons_, eh? Money wanted?
You must talk that over with your mother. I am not rich, but whatever my
Jane may require, were it to the half of my kingdom----”
He made her a bow full of that deference and almost reverential respect
with which it was one of the Duke’s best points to have surrounded his
only daughter--with a smile in which there was more tenderness than his
Grace was capable of showing to any other creature. He loved his
daughter, and he venerated her as a sort of flower of humanity and of
the Altamonts, who were the best that humanity could produce.
“I will not ask so much as that,” said Lady Jane, tremulous, yet firm;
“and yet I have come to ask you for something, father. I am older than
girls are usually when they--marry.”
“Older, nonsense! Who has told you that?” cried the Duke, his veins
beginning to swell, and his heart to thump with rising excitement. “You
are in the bloom of your youth. I have never seen a girl look sweeter,
or fairer, or younger, for that matter, than my child has been looking.
Who has put such folly into your head?”
“It is not folly, it is true; and no matter--that is nothing; but only
to show you that I am serious. I am no longer a girl, papa. Ah! do not
interrupt; I shall always be a girl to you. I am a woman. I have had a
great many thoughts before I came to speak--for myself. That is the last
thing one wishes to do. To have others do it is so much the easier. But
one must at last. I have come to speak to you for myself.”
“Jane, you had better pause and think,” said the Duke, with threatening
looks.
“What can you have to say about yourself? Don’t bring down my respect
for my daughter. We are driven out of our respect for women in most
cases early in our career; but most men have a prejudice in favour of
their daughters. Don’t force me to think that you are just like all the
rest.”
She looked at him wondering, but with eyes that did not falter. “My
mother, I am sure, can have forfeited no one’s respect,” she said
softly; “neither shall I, I hope; but perhaps more than she. I must
speak to you, father, about my own life. Oh!” she cried, clasping her
hands, with a vivid colour coming to her pale cheeks, “speak you for me!
do not let me have to do it. There are things that can only be said when
the case is desperate, and surely--surely it cannot be desperate between
you and me. Speak for me, father, to your own heart.”
“So far as I can see, this is melodrama,” said the Duke, with a feeble
smile of agitation that looked like a sneer, for his lips were dry.
“What am I to say? Come, must we be brutal? That Lady Jane Altamont,
like any poor milliner, is beginning to be afraid----”
Her eyes opened a little wider with a scared look, but she said nothing,
only gazed more fixedly on her father, her whole soul bent on what he
was next to say.
“Afraid,” he said, with a little forced giggle of a laugh, “because she
is twenty-eight, and her cheek is hollow--afraid that she is growing an
old maid, and will never get a husband? There is nothing more natural
than that,” he cried, bursting out into a mocking laugh.
Lady Jane rose from her chair. She coloured high, then became white as a
ghost. Astonishment, consternation, pain--pain indescribable, a kind of
horror and dismay were in her eyes. She opened her lips, but only to
give forth a gasp of sound which was inarticulate. She did not take her
eyes from him; but gradually there grew in them, besides the pitiful
suffering of a creature outraged and insulted, a gleam of indignation, a
flash of contempt. When a man, even a duke, has taken that fatal step
between resentment and fury, between what is permissible and what is
unpermissible, the other steps are easy enough. Her father forgot that
she was Lady Jane, and the first of womankind. He let his passion go.
The more he had loved and elevated her, the more did he trample all her
superiority under his feet.
“Ah! you thought I should say something prettier, something more
pleasant,” he cried. “Poetical! but I am not poetical, and that is the
short and long of it. Afraid to lose your chance altogether, and
determined to have a husband, that is the meaning of it! I know now why
the man was brought here. I never could make out what we wanted with him
at Billings. A last chance for Jane! Ah, I see it all now!”
Lady Jane stood and received all this as if the words had been stones.
She put her hands upon her breast to ward them off. She shrank backwards
now and then with a faint moan, as one after another was discharged at
her. Her eyes grew larger, and more and more pitiful, wet, appealing as
if to earth and heaven; but she never withdrew them from her father’s
face. And now that he had let himself loose, he raved on, expending upon
her all his wrath, putting himself more and more fatally in the wrong
with every word, showing, alas! that nothing, not a coal-heaver, could
be more vulgar than a duke when he is put to it. Lady Jane stood still
before him and never said a word. This was worse than the guillotine.
She had dreamt of facing the insults of the mob, but never the insults
of her father. As she stood there, to all appearance so full and
painfully occupied in sustaining the storm of words thus poured upon
her, a hundred reflections were passing through her mind. She almost
smiled to herself to think how small had been the terrible scenes
presented to her by her imagination, in face of the reality. The
Constitution might have gone to pieces, the guillotine might have been
raised without shaking her confidence in her class, or disturbing her
lofty unconscious superiority to all the rabble could do,--but her
father--this was what she had not thought of. Ah! it is not any rabble
that can shake the foundations of the earth: but when your father, when
those who are most dear to you, lay hands upon the pillars of the
house--she stood so still, and looked at him with such a steadfast gaze,
that the Duke was driven out of himself. He said--who can doubt?--a
thousand things he never meant to say. He turned himself outside in
before her, displaying weaknesses which even his wife did not know. But
at last his wrath exhausted itself. He began to stammer and hesitate,
then stopped short suddenly, with all the consciousness of his
self-betrayal on him. There was a moment’s silence, during which they
looked at each other without a word said--and then he made a step
forward closer to her, and asked, “What have you got to say?”
“Nothing,” said Lady Jane. Her eyes were wet, and shining all the more
for the moisture in them, but she had not cried nor felt any impulse to
cry. “Oh, nothing--nothing now.”
“You are convinced then?” he said hurriedly, trying to assume his usual
aspect. “Come, come, that is well. And perhaps I have been hasty. But
you know what is the point upon which I feel most strongly. There must
be no descent out of your rank. I have trained you in the sentiment of
your rank, above all things. What have we else?” cried the Duke,
“everything fails us--the masses pour in everywhere--they have ruined
the kingdom, they are ruining the Church: but,” he said slowly, “they
shall never ruin the House of Altamont: that shall be kept sacred
whatever goes. Pardon me, my love, if I have failed in respect to the
last daughter of the house. I know my Jane will not fail.”
But still Lady Jane did not make any reply. She stood as if she had been
struck dumb, regarding him with a kind of serious wonder which confused
him more than he could say. The desire to explain herself, to ask him
for his consent, to get his sympathy, seemed to have died in her. Was
she stunned only, or convinced, or what was it he had done? The Duke
grew alarmed at last. He waited a moment longer, and then he added, “I
have been hasty. After all, my dear, whatever it is, it would be better
that you should say what you meant to say.”
She shook her head, still looking at him. “No--no--there would be no
advantage in it now.”
“What do you mean by _now_?--perhaps I might have been mistaken. Come,
let me hear what it was,” the Duke cried, with an air of sudden
amiability, ignoring all that had gone before.
“Father,” said Lady Jane with a certain solemnity, “there was a great
deal to say--but not now. Certain things were uppermost in my mind. I
thought my father would listen, and perhaps feel for me, though he might
not approve. But I do not wish it now. There is nothing--it is
over----”
She put her hand upon her heart, pressing it as if to keep down a sigh.
Her eyes so wet, but not weeping, were strangely pathetic, with a
resignation in them which it was not wonderful perhaps that he should
interpret in his own way. He put out his hand and laid it caressingly
upon her arm.
“My good child! if that is so, you may be sure it is for the best. I
knew there was that in my Jane that would respond to what I said. And I
thank you, my love, not only for myself, but in the name of the race.”
She looked at him again with a penetrating gaze. “The race is everything
to you then,” she said.
“Everything, my love! everything. I have no other thought.”
“To keep it honourable and true--above all unworthy thoughts, above
dishonesty and untruth,” she said slowly, telling over the words like
beads.
“That is what I desire,” said the Duke. Then he added his gloss. “To
retain our old nobility unbroken, to sully the name with no
_mésalliances_. Your brother has disregarded my wishes; but though I
would never have sanctioned it, he has secured another kind of
advantage, and perhaps I have no right to complain. But you, my Jane,
nothing must touch you: you must remain the pride of your family. And,”
he added soothingly, “do not lose heart, my love. Lady Jane Altamont
will not want for opportunities. Do not think from what I said that you
are considered _passée_ by any one, or that a good marriage is less
likely than before. We are not come the length of putting up with an
inferior, trust me, my dear.”
Lady Jane’s pallor changed into an overwhelming blush. She turned away
from him, almost shaking his hand from her shoulder. “In that case,” she
said, with a muffled voice full of some emotion which he did not quite
understand, nor yet feel comfortable about--“in that case there is
certainly no more to say.”
And without any little civility, such as, though not indispensable, it
is pretty to keep up between the nearest relations, no little bow or
smile, or glance of pleasant understanding, she turned from him and went
out of the room, suddenly and noiselessly. The Duke did not like it: he
felt there was something in it which he had not fathomed. He stood in
the place where she had left him, his hand still stretched out where she
had shaken it off, his mouth and his eyes open, a bewildered alarm in
his mind. What did she mean? Was there more meaning than one in those
simple-seeming words? Was this real submission as he hoped, or a
something else? He could not tell. But a cold chill got into his veins;
he did not know what to make of it. After a while, however, he reasoned
with himself, and recovered his comfort. Jane, who had always been so
docile, so ready to accept his views, why should she turn against him
and all his traditions now?
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Duke's Daughter (aka Lady Jane) and The Fugitives; vol. 1/3" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.