SIR MARMADUKE AT HOME.
Nora Rowley had told her lover that there was to be no further
communication between them till her father and mother should be
in England; but in telling him so, had so frankly confessed her
own affection for him and had so sturdily promised to be true to
him, that no lover could have been reasonably aggrieved by such an
interdiction. Nora was quite conscious of this, and was aware that
Hugh Stanbury had received such encouragement as ought at any rate to
bring him to the new Rowley establishment, as soon as he should learn
where it had fixed itself. But when at the end of ten days he had
not shown himself, she began to feel doubts. Could it be that he had
changed his mind, that he was unwilling to encounter refusal from her
father, or that he had found, on looking into his own affairs more
closely, that it would be absurd for him to propose to take a wife to
himself while his means were so poor and so precarious? Sir Marmaduke
during this time had been so unhappy, so fretful, so indignant,
and so much worried, that Nora herself had become almost afraid of
him; and, without much reasoning on the matter, had taught herself
to believe that Hugh might be actuated by similar fears. She had
intended to tell her mother of what had occurred between her and
Stanbury the first moment that she and Lady Rowley were together; but
then there had fallen upon them that terrible incident of the loss
of the child, and the whole family had become at once so wrapped up
in the agony of the bereaved mother, and so full of rage against the
unreasonable father, that there seemed to Nora to be no possible
opportunity for the telling of her own love-story. Emily herself
appeared to have forgotten it in the midst of her own misery, and had
not mentioned Hugh Stanbury's name since they had been in Manchester
Street. We have all felt how on occasions our own hopes and fears,
nay, almost our own individuality, become absorbed in and obliterated
by the more pressing cares and louder voices of those around us. Nora
hardly dared to allude to herself while her sister's grief was still
so prominent, and while her father was daily complaining of his own
personal annoyances at the Colonial Office. It seemed to her that at
such a moment she could not introduce a new matter for dispute, and
perhaps a new subject of dismay.
Nevertheless, as the days passed by, and as she saw nothing of Hugh
Stanbury, her heart became sore and her spirit vexed. It seemed to
her that if she were now deserted by him, all the world would be
over for her. The Glascock episode in her life had passed by,--that
episode which might have been her history, which might have been a
history so prosperous, so magnificent, and probably so happy. As she
thought of herself and of circumstances as they had happened to her,
of the resolutions which she had made as to her own career when she
first came to London, and of the way in which she had thrown all
those resolutions away in spite of the wonderful success which had
come in her path, she could not refrain from thinking that she had
brought herself to shipwreck by her own indecision. It must not be
imagined that she regretted what she had done. She knew very well
that to have acted otherwise than she did when Mr. Glascock came
to her at Nuncombe Putney would have proved her to be heartless,
selfish, and unwomanly. Long before that time she had determined that
it was her duty to marry a rich man,--and, if possible, a man in
high position. Such a one had come to her,--one endowed with all the
good things of the world beyond her most sanguine expectation,--and
she had rejected him! She knew that she had been right because she
had allowed herself to love the other man. She did not repent what
she had done, the circumstances being as they were, but she almost
regretted that she had been so soft in heart, so susceptible of the
weakness of love, so little able to do as she pleased with herself.
Of what use to her was it that she loved this man with all her
strength of affection when he never came to her, although the time at
which he had been told that he might come was now ten days past?
She was sitting one afternoon in the drawing-room listlessly
reading, or pretending to read, a novel, when, on a sudden, Hugh
Stanbury was announced. The circumstances of the moment were most
unfortunate for such a visit. Sir Marmaduke, who had been down at
Whitehall in the morning, and from thence had made a journey to St.
Diddulph's-in-the-East and back, was exceedingly cross and out of
temper. They had told him at his office that they feared he would not
suffice to carry through the purpose for which he had been brought
home. And his brother-in-law, the parson, had expressed to him an
opinion that he was in great part responsible for the misfortune of
his daughter, by the encouragement which he had given to such a man
as Colonel Osborne. Sir Marmaduke had in consequence quarrelled both
with the chief clerk and with Mr. Outhouse, and had come home surly
and discontented. Lady Rowley and her eldest daughter were away,
closeted at the moment with Lady Milborough, with whom they were
endeavouring to arrange some plan by which the boy might at any
rate be given back. Poor Emily Trevelyan was humble enough now to
Lady Milborough,--was prepared to be humble to any one, and in any
circumstances, so that she should not be required to acknowledge that
she had entertained Colonel Osborne as her lover. The two younger
girls, Sophy and Lucy, were in the room when Stanbury was announced,
as was also Sir Marmaduke, who at that very moment was uttering angry
growls at the obstinacy and want of reason with which he had been
treated by Mr. Outhouse. Now Sir Marmaduke had not so much as heard
the name of Hugh Stanbury as yet; and Nora, though her listlessness
was all at an end, at once felt how impossible it would be to explain
any of the circumstances of her case in such an interview as this.
While, however, Hugh's dear steps were heard upon the stairs,
her feminine mind at once went to work to ascertain in what best
mode, with what most attractive reason for his presence, she might
introduce the young man to her father. Had not the girls been then
present, she thought that it might have been expedient to leave Hugh
to tell his own story to Sir Marmaduke. But she had no opportunity of
sending her sisters away; and, unless chance should remove them, this
could not be done.
"He is son of the lady we were with at Nuncombe Putney," she
whispered to her father as she got up to move across the room to
welcome her lover. Now Sir Marmaduke had expressed great disapproval
of that retreat to Dartmoor, and had only understood respecting it
that it had been arranged between Trevelyan and the family in whose
custody his two daughters had been sent away into banishment. He
was not therefore specially disposed to welcome Hugh Stanbury in
consequence of this mode of introduction.
Hugh, who had asked for Lady Rowley and Mrs. Trevelyan and had
learned that they were out before he had mentioned Miss Rowley's
name, was almost prepared to take his sweetheart into his arms. In
that half-minute he had taught himself to expect that he would meet
her alone, and had altogether forgotten Sir Marmaduke. Young men
when they call at four o'clock in the day never expect to find papas
at home. And of Sophia and Lucy he had either heard nothing or had
forgotten what he had heard. He repressed himself however in time,
and did not commit either Nora or himself by any very vehement
demonstration of affection. But he did hold her hand longer than he
should have done, and Sir Marmaduke saw that he did so.
"This is papa," said Nora. "Papa, this is our friend, Mr. Hugh
Stanbury." The introduction was made in a manner almost absurdly
formal, but poor Nora's difficulties lay heavy upon her. Sir
Marmaduke muttered something;--but it was little more than a grunt.
"Mamma and Emily are out," continued Nora. "I dare say they will be
in soon." Sir Marmaduke looked round sharply at the man. Why was he
to be encouraged to stay till Lady Rowley should return? Lady Rowley
did not want to see him. It seemed to Sir Marmaduke, in the midst of
his troubles, that this was no time to be making new acquaintances.
"These are my sisters, Mr. Stanbury," continued Nora. "This is
Sophia, and this is Lucy." Sophia and Lucy would have been thoroughly
willing to receive their sister's lover with genial kindness if they
had been properly instructed, and if the time had been opportune;
but, as it was, they had nothing to say. They, also, could only
mutter some little sound intended to be more courteous than their
father's grunt. Poor Nora!
"I hope you are comfortable here," said Hugh.
"The house is all very well," said Nora, "but we don't like the
neighbourhood."
Hugh also felt that conversation was difficult. He had soon come to
perceive,--before he had been in the room half a minute,--that the
atmosphere was not favourable to his mission. There was to be no
embracing or permission for embracing on the present occasion. Had he
been left alone with Sir Marmaduke he would probably have told his
business plainly, let Sir Marmaduke's manner to him have been what
it might; but it was impossible for him to do this with three young
ladies in the room with him. Seeing that Nora was embarrassed by
her difficulties, and that Nora's father was cross and silent, he
endeavoured to talk to the other girls, and asked them concerning
their journey and the ship in which they had come. But it was very
up-hill work. Lucy and Sophy could talk as glibly as any young
ladies home from any colony,--and no higher degree of fluency can
be expressed;--but now they were cowed. Their elder sister was
shamefully and most undeservedly disgraced, and this man had had
something,--they knew not what,--to do with it. "Is Priscilla quite
well?" Nora asked at last.
"Quite well. I heard from her yesterday. You know they have left the
Clock House."
"I had not heard it."
"Oh yes;--and they are living in a small cottage just outside the
village. And what else do you think has happened?"
"Nothing bad, I hope, Mr. Stanbury."
"My sister Dorothy has left her aunt, and is living with them again
at Nuncombe."
"Has there been a quarrel, Mr. Stanbury?"
"Well, yes;--after a fashion there has, I suppose. But it is a long
story and would not interest Sir Marmaduke. The wonder is that
Dorothy should have been able to stay so long with my aunt. I will
tell it you all some day." Sir Marmaduke could not understand why
a long story about this man's aunt and sister should be told to
his daughter. He forgot,--as men always do in such circumstances
forget,--that, while he was living in the Mandarins, his daughter,
living in England, would of course pick up new interest and become
intimate with new histories. But he did not forget that pressure
of the hand which he had seen, and he determined that his daughter
Nora could not have any worse lover than the friend of his elder
daughter's husband.
Stanbury had just determined that he must go, that there was no
possibility for him either to say or do anything to promote his cause
at the present moment, when the circumstances were all changed by the
return home of Lady Rowley and Mrs. Trevelyan. Lady Rowley knew, and
had for some days known, much more of Stanbury than had come to the
ears of Sir Marmaduke. She understood in the first place that the
Stanburys had been very good to her daughter, and she was aware that
Hugh Stanbury had thoroughly taken her daughter's part against his
old friend Trevelyan. She would therefore have been prepared to
receive him kindly had he not on this very morning been the subject
of special conversation between her and Emily. But, as it had
happened, Mrs. Trevelyan had this very day told Lady Rowley the
whole story of Nora's love. The elder sister had not intended to be
treacherous to the younger; but in the thorough confidence which
mutual grief and close conference had created between the mother
and daughter, everything had at last come out, and Lady Rowley had
learned the story, not only of Hugh Stanbury's courtship, but of
those rich offers which had been made by the heir to the barony of
Peterborough.
It must be acknowledged that Lady Rowley was greatly grieved and
thoroughly dismayed. It was not only that Mr. Glascock was the eldest
son of a peer, but that he was represented by the poor suffering wife
of the ill-tempered man to be a man blessed with a disposition sweet
as an angel's. "And she would have liked him," Emily had said, "if
it had not been for this unfortunate young man." Lady Rowley was not
worse than are other mothers, not more ambitious, or more heartless,
or more worldly. She was a good mother, loving her children, and
thoroughly anxious for their welfare. But she would have liked to
be the mother-in-law of Lord Peterborough, and she would have liked,
dearly, to see her second daughter removed from the danger of those
rocks against which her eldest child had been shipwrecked. And when
she asked after Hugh Stanbury, and his means of maintaining a wife,
the statement which Mrs. Trevelyan made was not comforting. "He
writes for a penny newspaper,--and, I believe, writes very well,"
Mrs. Trevelyan had said.
"For a penny newspaper! Is that respectable?"
"His aunt, Miss Stanbury, seemed to think not. But I suppose men of
education do write for such things now. He says himself that it is
very precarious as an employment."
"It must be precarious, Emily. And has he got nothing?"
"Not a penny of his own," said Mrs. Trevelyan.
Then Lady Rowley had thought again of Mr. Glascock, and of the family
title, and of Monkhams. And she thought of her present troubles, and
of the Mandarins, and the state of Sir Marmaduke's balance at the
bankers;--and of the other girls, and of all there was before her to
do. Here had been a very Apollo among suitors kneeling at her child's
feet, and the foolish girl had sent him away for the sake of a young
man who wrote for a penny newspaper! Was it worth the while of
any woman to bring up daughters with such results? Lady Rowley,
therefore, when she was first introduced to Hugh Stanbury, was not
prepared to receive him with open arms.
On this occasion the task of introducing him fell to Mrs. Trevelyan,
and was done with much graciousness. Emily knew that Hugh Stanbury
was her friend, and would sympathise with her respecting her child.
"You have heard what has happened to me?" she said. Stanbury,
however, had heard nothing of that kidnapping of the child. Though
to the Rowleys it seemed that such a deed of iniquity, done in the
middle of London, must have been known to all the world, he had not
as yet been told of it;--and now the story was given to him. Mrs.
Trevelyan herself told it, with many tears and an agony of fresh
grief; but still she told it as to one whom she regarded as a sure
friend, and from whom she knew that she would receive sympathy. Sir
Marmaduke sat by the while, still gloomy and out of humour. Why was
their family sorrow to be laid bare to this stranger?
"It is the cruellest thing I ever heard," said Hugh.
"A dastardly deed," said Lady Rowley.
"But we all feel that for the time he can hardly know what he does,"
said Nora.
"And where is the child?" Stanbury asked.
"We have not the slightest idea," said Lady Rowley. "I have seen him,
and he refuses to tell us. He did say that my daughter should see her
boy; but he now accompanies his offer with such conditions that it is
impossible to listen to him."
"And where is he?"
"We do not know where he lives. We can reach him only through a
certain man--"
"Ah, I know the man," said Stanbury; "one who was a policeman once.
His name is Bozzle."
"That is the man," said Sir Marmaduke. "I have seen him."
"And of course he will tell us nothing but what he is told to tell
us," continued Lady Rowley. "Can there be anything so horrible as
this,--that a wife should be bound to communicate with her own
husband respecting her own child through such a man as that?"
"One might possibly find out where he keeps the child," said Hugh.
"If you could manage that, Mr. Stanbury!" said Lady Rowley.
"I hardly see that it would do much good," said Hugh. "Indeed I do
not know why he should keep the place a secret. I suppose he has a
right to the boy until the mother shall have made good her claim
before the court." He promised, however, that he would do his best to
ascertain where the child was kept, and where Trevelyan resided, and
then,--having been nearly an hour at the house,--he was forced to
get up and take his leave. He had said not a word to any one of the
business that had brought him there. He had not even whispered an
assurance of his affection to Nora. Till the two elder ladies had
come in, and the subject of the taking of the boy had been mooted, he
had sat there as a perfect stranger. He thought that it was manifest
enough that Nora had told her secret to no one. It seemed to him
that Mrs. Trevelyan must have forgotten it;--that Nora herself must
have forgotten it, if such forgetting could be possible! He got up,
however, and took his leave, and was comforted in some slight degree
by seeing that there was a tear in Nora's eye.
"Who is he?" demanded Sir Marmaduke, as soon as the door was closed.
"He is a young man who was an intimate friend of Louis's," answered
Mrs. Trevelyan; "but he is so no longer, because he sees how
infatuated Louis has been."
"And why does he come here?"
[Illustration: "And why does he come here?"]
"We know him very well," continued Mrs. Trevelyan. "It was he
that arranged our journey down to Devonshire. He was very kind
about it, and so were his mother and sister. We have every reason
to be grateful to Mr. Stanbury." This was all very well, but
Nora nevertheless felt that the interview had been anything but
successful.
"Has he any profession?" asked Sir Marmaduke.
"He writes for the press," said Mrs. Trevelyan.
"What do you mean;--books?"
"No;--for a newspaper."
"For a penny newspaper," said Nora boldly--"for the Daily Record."
"Then I hope he won't come here any more," said Sir Marmaduke. Nora
paused a moment, striving to find words for some speech which might
be true to her love and yet not unseemly,--but finding no such words
ready, she got up from her seat and walked out of the room. "What is
the meaning of it all?" asked Sir Marmaduke. There was a silence for
a while, and then he repeated his question in another form. "Is there
any reason for his coming here,--about Nora?"
"I think he is attached to Nora," said Mrs. Trevelyan.
"My dear," said Lady Rowley, "perhaps we had better not speak about
it just now."
"I suppose he has not a penny in the world," said Sir Marmaduke.
"He has what he earns," said Mrs. Trevelyan.
"If Nora understands her duty she will never let me hear his name
again," said Sir Marmaduke. Then there was nothing more said, and as
soon as they could escape, both Lady Rowley and Mrs. Trevelyan left
the room.
"I should have told you everything," said Nora to her mother that
night. "I had no intention to keep anything a secret from you. But we
have all been so unhappy about Louey, that we have had no heart to
talk of anything else."
"I understand all that, my darling."
"And I had meant that you should tell papa, for I supposed that
he would come. And I meant that he should go to papa himself. He
intended that himself,--only, to-day,--as things turned out--"
"Just so, dearest;--but it does not seem that he has got any income.
It would be very rash,--wouldn't it?"
"People must be rash sometimes. Everybody can't have an income
without earning it. I suppose people in professions do marry without
having fortunes."
"When they have settled professions, Nora."
"And why is not his a settled profession? I believe he receives quite
as much at seven and twenty as Uncle Oliphant does at sixty."
"But your Uncle Oliphant's income is permanent."
"Lawyers don't have permanent incomes, or doctors,--or merchants."
"But those professions are regular and sure. They don't marry,
without fortunes, till they have made their incomes sure."
"Mr. Stanbury's income is sure. I don't know why it shouldn't be
sure. He goes on writing and writing every day, and it seems to me
that of all professions in the world it is the finest. I'd much
sooner write for a newspaper than be one of those old musty, fusty
lawyers, who'll say anything that they're paid to say."
"My dearest Nora, all that is nonsense. You know as well as I do that
you should not marry a man when there is a doubt whether he can keep
a house over your head;--that is his position."
"It is good enough for me, mamma."
"And what is his income from writing?"
"It is quite enough for me, mamma. The truth is I have promised, and
I cannot go back from it. Dear, dear mamma, you won't quarrel with
us, and oppose us, and make papa hard against us. You can do what you
like with papa. I know that. Look at poor Emily. Plenty of money has
not made her happy."
"If Mr. Glascock had only asked you a week sooner," said Lady Rowley,
with a handkerchief to her eyes.
"But you see he didn't, mamma."
"When I think of it I cannot but weep"--and the poor mother burst out
into a full flood of tears--"such a man, so good, so gentle, and so
truly devoted to you."
"Mamma, what's the good of that now?"
"Going down all the way to Devonshire after you!"
"So did Hugh, mamma."
"A position that any girl in England would have envied you. I cannot
but feel it. And Emily says she is sure he would come back if he got
the very slightest encouragement."
"That is quite impossible, mamma."
"Why should it be impossible? Emily declares that she never saw a man
so much in love in her life;--and she says also that she believes he
is abroad now simply because he is broken-hearted about it."
"Mr. Glascock, mamma, was very nice and good and all that; but indeed
he is not the man to suffer from a broken heart. And Emily is quite
mistaken. I told him the whole truth."
"What truth?"
"That there was somebody else that I did love. Then he said that of
course that put an end to it all, and he wished me good-bye ever so
calmly."
"How could you be so infatuated? Why should you have cut the ground
away from your feet in that way?"
"Because I chose that there should be an end to it. Now there has
been an end to it; and it is much better, mamma, that we should
not think about Mr. Glascock any more. He will never come again to
me,--and if he did, I could only say the same thing."
"You mustn't be surprised, Nora, if I'm unhappy; that is all. Of
course I must feel it. Such a connection as it would have been for
your sisters! Such a home for poor Emily in her trouble! And as for
this other man--"
"Mamma, don't speak ill of him."
"If I say anything of him, I must say the truth," said Lady Rowley.
"Don't say anything against him, mamma, because he is to be my
husband. Dear, dear mamma, you can't change me by anything you say.
Perhaps I have been foolish; but it is settled now. Don't make me
wretched by speaking against the man whom I mean to love all my life
better than all the world."
"Think of Louis Trevelyan."
"I will think of no one but Hugh Stanbury. I tried not to love him,
mamma. I tried to think that it was better to make believe that I
loved Mr. Glascock. But he got the better of me, and conquered me,
and I will never rebel against him. You may help me, mamma;--but you
can't change me."