MRS. FURNIVAL AT HOME.
Lucius Mason on his road to Liverpool had passed through London,
and had found a moment to call in Harley Street. Since his return
from Germany he had met Miss Furnival both at home at his mother's
house--or rather his own--and at The Cleeve. Miss Furnival had been
in the neighbourhood, and had spent two days with the great people at
The Cleeve, and one day with the little people at Orley Farm. Lucius
Mason had found that she was a sensible girl, capable of discussing
great subjects with him; and had possibly found some other charms in
her. Therefore he had called in Harley Street.
On that occasion he could only call as he passed through London
without delay; but he received such encouragement as induced him to
spend a night in town on his return, in order that he might accept an
invitation to drink tea with the Furnivals. "We shall be very happy
to see you," Mrs. Furnival had said, backing the proposition which
had come from her daughter without any very great fervour; "but I
fear Mr. Furnival will not be at home. Mr. Furnival very seldom is at
home now." Young Mason did not much care for fervour on the part of
Sophia's mother, and therefore had accepted the invitation, though he
was obliged by so doing to curtail by some hours his sojourn among
the guano stores of Liverpool.
It was the time of year at which few people are at home in London,
being the middle of October; but Mrs. Furnival was a lady of whom at
such periods it was not very easy to dispose. She could have made
herself as happy as a queen even at Margate, if it could have suited
Furnival and Sophia to be happy at Margate with her. But this did not
suit Furnival or Sophia. As regards money, any or almost all other
autumnal resorts were open to her, but she could be contented at
none of them because Mr. Furnival always pleaded that business--law
business or political business--took him elsewhere. Now Mrs. Furnival
was a woman who did not like to be deserted, and who could not, in
the absence of those social joys which Providence had vouchsafed to
her as her own, make herself happy with the society of other women
such as herself. Furnival was her husband, and she wanted him to
carve for her, to sit opposite to her at the breakfast table, to tell
her the news of the day, and to walk to church with her on Sundays.
They had been made one flesh and one bone, for better and worse,
thirty years since; and now in her latter days she could not put up
with disseveration and dislocation.
She had gone down to Brighton in August, soon after the House broke
up, and there found that very handsome apartments had been taken for
her--rooms that would have made glad the heart of many a lawyer's
wife. She had, too, the command of a fly, done up to look like
a private brougham, a servant in livery, the run of the public
assembly-rooms, a sitting in the centre of the most fashionable
church in Brighton--all that the heart of woman could desire. All
but the one thing was there; but, that one thing being absent, she
came moodily back to town at the end of September. She would have
exchanged them all with a happy heart for very moderate accommodation
at Margate, could she have seen Mr. Furnival's blue nose on the other
side of the table every morning and evening as she sat over her
shrimps and tea.
Men who had risen in the world as Mr. Furnival had done do find it
sometimes difficult to dispose of their wives. It is not that the
ladies are in themselves more unfit for rising than their lords, or
that if occasion demanded they would not as readily adapt themselves
to new spheres. But they do not rise, and occasion does not demand
it. A man elevates his wife to his own rank, and when Mr. Brown,
on becoming solicitor-general, becomes Sir Jacob, Mrs. Brown also
becomes my lady. But the whole set among whom Brown must be more
or less thrown do not want her ladyship. On Brown's promotion she
did not become part of the bargain. Brown must henceforth have two
existences--a public and a private existence; and it will be well for
Lady Brown, and well also for Sir Jacob, if the latter be not allowed
to dwindle down to a minimum.
If Lady B. can raise herself also, if she can make her own
occasion--if she be handsome and can flirt, if she be impudent and
can force her way, if she have a daring mind and can commit great
expenditure, if she be clever and can make poetry, if she can in
any way create a separate glory for herself, then, indeed, Sir Jacob
with his blue nose may follow his own path, and all will be well.
Sir Jacob's blue nose seated opposite to her will not be her summum
bonum.
But worthy Mrs. Furnival--and she was worthy--had created for herself
no such separate glory, nor did she dream of creating it; and
therefore she had, as it were, no footing left to her. On this
occasion she had gone to Brighton, and had returned from it sulky
and wretched, bringing her daughter back to London at the period of
London's greatest desolation. Sophia had returned uncomplaining,
remembering that good things were in store for her. She had been
asked to spend her Christmas with the Staveleys at Noningsby--the
family of Judge Staveley, who lives near Alston, at a very pretty
country place so called. Mr. Furnival had been for many years
acquainted with Judge Staveley,--had known the judge when he was a
leading counsel; and now that Mr. Furnival was a rising man, and
now that he had a pretty daughter, it was natural that the young
Staveleys and Sophia Furnival should know each other. But poor Mrs.
Furnival was too ponderous for this mounting late in life, and she
had not been asked to Noningsby. She was much too good a mother to
repine at her daughter's promised gaiety. Sophia was welcome to go;
but by all the laws of God and man it would behove her lord and
husband to eat his mincepie at home.
"Mr. Furnival was to be back in town this evening," the lady said, as
though apologizing to young Mason for her husband's absence, when he
entered the drawing-room, "but he has not come, and I dare say will
not come now."
Mason did not care a straw for Mr. Furnival. "Oh! won't he?" said he.
"I suppose business keeps him."
"Papa is very busy about politics just at present," said Sophia,
wishing to make matters smooth in her mother's mind. "He was obliged
to be at Romford in the beginning of the week, and then he went down
to Birmingham. There is some congress going on there, is there not?"
"All that must take a great deal of time," said Lucius.
"Yes; and it is a terrible bore," said Sophia. "I know papa finds it
so."
"Your papa likes it, I believe," said Mrs. Furnival, who would not
hide even her grievances under a bushel.
"I don't think he likes being so much from home, mamma. Of course he
likes excitement, and success. All men do. Do they not, Mr. Mason?"
"They all ought to do so, and women also."
"Ah! but women have no sphere, Mr. Mason."
"They have minds equal to those of men," said Lucius, gallantly, "and
ought to be able to make for themselves careers as brilliant."
"Women ought not to have any spheres," said Mrs. Furnival.
"I don't know that I quite agree with you there, mamma."
"The world is becoming a great deal too fond of what you call
excitement and success. Of course it is a good thing for a man to
make money by his profession, and a very hard thing when he can't do
it," added Mrs. Furnival, thinking of the olden days. "But if success
in life means rampaging about, and never knowing what it is to sit
quiet over his own fireside, I for one would as soon manage to do
without it."
"But, mamma, I don't see why success should always be rampageous."
"Literary women who have achieved a name bear their honours quietly,"
said Lucius.
"I don't know," said Mrs. Furnival. "I am told that some of them are
as fond of gadding as the men. As regards the old maids, I don't care
so much about it; people who are not married may do what they like
with themselves, and nobody has anything to say to them. But it
is very different for married people. They have no business to be
enticed away from their homes by any success."
"Mamma is all for a Darby and Joan life," said Sophia, laughing.
"No I am not, my dear; and you should not say so. I don't advocate
anything that is absurd. But I do say that life should be lived at
home. That is the best part of it. What is the meaning of home if it
isn't that?"
Poor Mrs. Furnival! she had no idea that she was complaining to a
stranger of her husband. Had any one told her so she would have
declared that she was discussing world-wide topics; but Lucius Mason,
young as he was, knew that the marital shoe was pinching the lady's
domestic corn, and he made haste to change the subject.
"You know my mother, Mrs. Furnival?"
Mrs. Furnival said that she had the honour of acquaintance with Lady
Mason; but on this occasion also she exhibited but little fervour.
"I shall meet her up in town to-morrow," said Lucius. "She is coming
up for some shopping."
"Oh! indeed," said Mrs. Furnival.
"And then we go down home together. I am to meet her at the chymist's
at the top of Chancery Lane."
Now this was a very unnecessary communication on the part of young
Mason, and also an unfortunate one. "Oh! indeed," said Mrs. Furnival
again, throwing her head a little back. Poor woman! she could not
conceal what was in her mind, and her daughter knew all about it
immediately. The truth was this. Mr. Furnival had been for some days
on the move, at Birmingham and elsewhere, and had now sent up sudden
notice that he should probably be at home that very night. He should
probably be at home that night, but in such case would be compelled
to return to his friends at Birmingham on the following afternoon.
Now if it were an ascertained fact that he was coming to London
merely with the view of meeting Lady Mason, the wife of his bosom
would not think it necessary to provide for him the warmest welcome.
This of course was not an ascertained fact; but were there not
terrible grounds of suspicion? Mr. Furnival's law chambers were in
Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, close to Chancery Lane, and Lady Mason had
made her appointment with her son within five minutes' walk of that
locality. And was it not in itself a strange coincidence that Lady
Mason, who came to town so seldom, should now do so on the very day
of Mr. Furnival's sudden return? She felt sure that they were to meet
on the morrow, but yet she could not declare even to herself that it
was an ascertained fact.
"Oh! indeed," she said; and Sophia understood all about it, though
Lucius did not.
Then Mrs. Furnival sank into silence; and we need not follow, word
for word, the conversation between the young lady and the young
gentleman. Mr. Mason thought that Miss Furnival was a very nice girl,
and was not at all ill pleased to have an opportunity of passing
an evening in her company; and Miss Furnival thought--. What she
thought, or what young ladies may think generally about young
gentlemen, is not to be spoken openly; but it seemed as though she
also were employed to her own satisfaction, while her mother sat
moody in her own arm-chair. In the course of the evening the footman
in livery brought in tea, handing it round on a big silver salver,
which also added to Mrs. Furnival's unhappiness. She would have
liked to sit behind her tea-tray as she used to do in the good
old hard-working days, with a small pile of buttered toast on
the slop-bowl, kept warm by hot water below. In those dear old
hard-working days, buttered toast had been a much-loved delicacy
with Furnival; and she, kind woman, had never begrudged her eyes, as
she sat making it for him over the parlour fire. Nor would she have
begrudged them now, neither her eyes nor the work of her hands, nor
all the thoughts of her heart, if he would have consented to accept
of her handiwork; but in these days Mr. Furnival had learned a relish
for other delicacies.
She also had liked buttered toast, always, however, taking the pieces
with the upper crust, in order that the more luscious morsels might
be left for him; and she had liked to prepare her own tea leisurely,
putting in slowly the sugar and cream--skimmed milk it had used to
be, dropped for herself with a sparing hand, in order that his large
breakfast-cup might be whitened to his liking; but though the milk
had been skimmed and scanty, and though the tea itself had been put
in with a sparing hand, she had then been mistress of the occasion.
She had had her own way, and in stinting herself had found her own
reward. But now--the tea had no flavour now that it was made in the
kitchen and brought to her, cold and vapid, by a man in livery whom
she half feared to keep waiting while she ministered to her own
wants.
And so she sat moody in her arm-chair, cross and sulky, as her
daughter thought. But yet there was a vein of poetry in her heart, as
she sat there, little like a sibyl as she looked. Dear old days, in
which her cares and solicitude were valued; in which she could do
something for the joint benefit of the firm into which she had been
taken as a partner! How happy she had been in her struggles, how
piteously had her heart yearned towards him when she thought that he
was struggling too fiercely, how brave and constant he had been; and
how she had loved him as he sat steady as a rock at his grinding
work! Now had come the great success of which they had both dreamed
together, of which they had talked as arm in arm they were taking the
exercise that was so needful to him, walking quickly round Russell
Square, quickly round Bloomsbury Square and Bedford Square, and so
back to the grinding work in Keppel Street. It had come now--all of
which they had dreamed, and more than all they had dared to hope.
But of what good was it? Was he happy? No; he was fretful, bilious,
and worn with toil which was hard to him because he ate and drank
too much; he was ill at ease in public, only half understanding the
political life which he was obliged to assume in his new ambition;
and he was sick in his conscience--she was sure that must be so: he
could not thus neglect her, his loving, constant wife, without some
pangs of remorse. And was she happy? She might have revelled in silks
and satins, if silks and satins would have done her old heart good.
But they would do her no good. How she had joyed in a new dress when
it had been so hard to come by, so slow in coming, and when he would
go with her to the choosing of it! But her gowns now were hardly
of more interest to her than the joints of meat which the butcher
brought to the door with the utmost regularity. It behoved the
butcher to send good beef and the milliner to send good silk, and
there was an end of it.
Not but what she could have been ecstatic about a full skirt on a
smart body if he would have cared to look at it. In truth she was
still soft and young enough within, though stout, and solid, and
somewhat aged without. Though she looked cross and surly that night,
there was soft poetry within her heart. If Providence, who had
bountifully given, would now by chance mercifully take away those
gifts, would she not then forgive everything and toil for him again
with the same happiness as before? Ah! yes; she could forgive
everything, anything, if he would only return and be contented to
sit opposite to her once again. "O mortal Delius, dearest lord and
husband!" she exclaimed within her own breast, in language somewhat
differing from that of the Roman poet, "why hast thou not remembered
to maintain a mind equal in prosperity as it was always equal and
well poised in adversity? Oh my Delius, since prosperity has been too
much for thee, may the Lord bless thee once more with the adversity
which thou canst bear--which thou canst bear, and I with thee!" Thus
did she sing sadly within her own bosom,--sadly, but with true poetic
cadence; while Sophia and Lucius Mason, sitting by, when for a moment
they turned their eyes upon her, gave her credit only for the cross
solemnity supposed to be incidental to obese and declining years.
And then there came a ring at the bell and a knock at the door, and a
rush along the nether passages, and the lady knew that he of whom she
had been thinking had arrived. In olden days she had ever met him in
the narrow passage, and, indifferent to the maid, she had hung about
his neck and kissed him in the hall. But now she did not stir from
the chair. She could forgive him all and run again at the sound of
his footstep, but she must first know that such forgiveness and such
running would be welcome.
"That's papa," said Sophia.
"Don't forget that I have not met him since I have been home from
Germany," said Lucius. "You must introduce me."
In a minute or two Mr. Furnival opened the door and walked into the
room. Men when they arrive from their travels now-a-days have no
strippings of greatcoats, no deposits to make of thick shawls and
double gloves, no absolutely necessary changes of raiment. Such had
been the case when he had used to come back cold and weary from the
circuits; but now he had left Birmingham since dinner by the late
express, and enjoyed his nap in the train for two hours or so, and
walked into his own drawing-room as he might have done had he dined
in his own dining-room.
"How are you, Kitty?" he said to his wife, handing to her the
forefinger of his right hand by way of greeting. "Well, Sophy, my
love;" and he kissed his daughter. "Oh! Lucius Mason. I am very glad
to see you. I can't say I should have remembered you unless I had
been told. You are very welcome in Harley Street, and I hope you will
often be here."
[Illustration: Mr. Furnival's welcome home.]
"It's not very often he'd find you at home, Mr. Furnival," said the
aggrieved wife.
"Not so often as I could wish just at present; but things will be
more settled, I hope, before very long. How's your mother, Lucius?"
"She's pretty well, thank you, sir. I've to meet her in town
to-morrow, and go down home with her."
There was then silence in the room for a few seconds, during which
Mrs. Furnival looked very sharply at her husband. "Oh! she's to be in
town, is she?" said Mr. Furnival, after a moment's consideration. He
was angry with Lady Mason at the moment for having put him into this
position. Why had she told her son that she was to be up in London,
thus producing conversation and tittle-tattle which made deceit on
his part absolutely necessary? Lady Mason's business in London was
of a nature which would not bear much open talking. She herself, in
her earnest letter summoning Mr. Furnival up from Birmingham, had
besought him that her visit to his chambers might not be made matter
of discussion. New troubles might be coming on her, but also they
might not; and she was very anxious that no one should know that
she was seeking a lawyer's advice on the matter. To all this Mr.
Furnival had given in his adhesion; and yet she had put it into her
son's power to come to his drawing-room and chatter there of her
whereabouts. For a moment or two he doubted; but at the expiration of
those moments he saw that the deceit was necessary. "She's to be in
town, is she?" said he. The reader will of course observe that this
deceit was practised, not as between husband and wife with reference
to an assignation with a lady, but between the lawyer and the outer
world with reference to a private meeting with a client. But then it
is sometimes so difficult to make wives look at such matters in the
right light.
"She's coming up for some shopping," said Lucius.
"Oh! indeed," said Mrs. Furnival. She would not have spoken if she
could have helped it, but she could not help it; and then there
was silence in the room for a minute or two, which Lucius vainly
endeavoured to break by a few indifferent observations to Miss
Furnival. The words, however, which he uttered would not take the
guise of indifferent observations, but fell flatly on their ears, and
at the same time solemnly, as though spoken with the sole purpose of
creating sound.
"I hope you have been enjoying yourself at Birmingham," said Mrs.
Furnival.
"Enjoyed myself! I did not exactly go there for enjoyment."
"Or at Romford, where you were before?"
"Women seem to think that men have no purpose but amusement when they
go about their daily work," said Mr. Furnival; and then he threw
himself back in his arm-chair, and took up the last Quarterly.
Lucius Mason soon perceived that all the harmony of the evening had
in some way been marred by the return of the master of the house, and
that he might be in the way if he remained; he therefore took his
leave.
"I shall want breakfast punctually at half-past eight to-morrow
morning," said Mr. Furnival, as soon as the stranger had withdrawn.
"I must be in chambers before ten;" and then he took his candle and
withdrew to his own room.
Sophia rang the bell and gave the servant the order; but Mrs.
Furnival took no trouble in the matter whatever. In the olden days
she would have bustled down before she went to bed, and have seen
herself that everything was ready, so that the master of the house
might not be kept waiting. But all this was nothing to her now.