BY RAIL TO LONDON.
ABOUT an hour later, Tom Sedley, in solitude, meditated thus--
"I wonder whether the Etherages"--(meaning pretty Miss Agnes)--"would
think it a bore if I went up to see them. It's too late for tea. I'm
afraid they mightn't like it. No one, of course, like Cleve now. They'd
find me very dull, I dare say. I don't care, I'll walk up, and if I see
the lights in the drawing-room windows, I'll try."
He did walk up; he did see the lights in the drawing-room windows; and
he did try, with the result of finding himself upon the drawing-room
carpet a minute after, standing at the side of Agnes, and chatting to
Miss Charity.
"How is your father?" asked Tom, seeing the study untenanted.
"Not at _all_ well, _I_ think; he had an accident to-day. Didn't you
hear?"
"_Accident!_ No, I didn't."
"Oh! yes. Somehow, when Lord Verney and the other people were coming up
here to-day, he was going to meet them, and among them they overturned
his bath-chair, and I don't know really who's to blame. Captain
Shrapnell says he saved his life; but, however it happened, he was upset
and very much shaken. I see you laughing, Thomas Sedley! What on earth
_can_ you see in it to laugh at? It's so exactly like Agnes--she
_laughed_! you did, _indeed_, Agnes, and if I had not _seen_ it, with my
_own eyes_, I _could_ not have _believed_ it!"
"I knew papa was not hurt, and I could not help laughing, if you put me
to death for it, and they say he drove over Lord Verney's foot."
"That would not break my heart," said Sedley. "Did you hear the
particulars from Cleve?"
"No, I did not see Mr. Verney to speak to, since the accident," said
Miss Charity. "By-the-by, who was the tall, good-looking girl, in the
seal-skin coat, he was talking to all the way to the jetty? I think she
was Lady Wimbledon's daughter."
"So she was; has she rather large blue eyes?"
"Yes."
"Oh! it must be she; that's Miss Caroline Oldys. She's such a joke;
she's elder than Cleve."
"Oh! that's impossible; she's decidedly younger than Mr. Cleve Verney,
and, I think, extremely pretty."
"Well, perhaps she _is_ younger, and I _do_ believe she's pretty; but
she's a fool, and she has been awfully in love with him for I don't know
how many years--every one was laughing at it, two or three seasons ago;
she _is_ such a muff!"
"What _do_ you mean by a muff?" demanded Charity.
"Well, a goose, then. Lord Verney's her guardian or trustee, or
something; and they say, that he and Lady Wimbledon had agreed to
promote the affair. Just like them. She is such a scheming old woman;
and Lord Verney is such a--I was going to say, such a _muff_,--but he is
such a _spoon_. Cleve's wide awake, though, and I don't think he'll do
_that_ for them."
I believe there may have been, at one time, some little foundation in
fact for the theory which supposed the higher powers favourable to such
a consummation. But time tests the value of such schemes, and it would
seem that Lady Wimbledon had come to the conclusion that the speculation
was a barren one: for, this night, in her dressing-gown, with her wig
off, and a silken swathing about her bald head, she paid a very
exciting visit to her daughter's room, and blew her up in her own awful
way, looking like an angry Turk. "She wondered how any person with
Caroline's _experience_ could be such an _idiot_ as to let that young
man go on making a fool of her. He had no other idea but the one of
making a _fool_ of her before the world. She, Lady Wimbledon, would have
no more of any such insensate folly--her prospects should not be ruined,
if she could prevent it, and prevent it she _could_ and _would_--there
should be an end of that odious nonsense; and if she chose to make
herself the laughing-stock of the world, she, Lady Wimbledon, would do
her duty and take her down to Slominton, where they would be quiet
enough at all events; and Cleve Verney, she ventured to say, with a
laugh, would not follow her."
The young lady was in tears, and blubbered in her romantic indignation
till her eyes and nose were inflamed, and her mamma requested her to
look in the glass, and see what a figure she had made of herself, and
made her bathe her face for an hour, before she went to bed.
There was no other young lady at Ware, and Cleve smiled in his own face,
in his looking-glass, as he dressed for dinner.
"My uncle will lose no time--I did not intend this; but I see very well
what he means, and he'll be disappointed and grow suspicious, if I draw
back; and she has really nothing to recommend her, poor Caroline, and
he'll find that out time enough, and meanwhile I shall get over some
months quietly."
There was no great difficulty in seeing, indeed, that the noble host
distinguished Lady Wimbledon and her daughter. And Lord Verney, leaning
on Cleve's arm, asked him lightly what he thought of Miss Caroline
Oldys; and Cleve, who had the gift of presence of mind, rather praised
the young lady.
"My uncle would prefer Ethel, when he sees a hope in that direction, I
shan't hear much more of Caroline, and so on--and we shall be growing
older--and the chapter of accidents--and all that."
For a day or two Lord Verney was very encouraging, and quite took an
interest in the young lady, and showed her the house and the place, and
unfolded all the plans which were about to grow into realities, and got
Cleve to pull her across the lake, and walked round to meet them, and
amused the young man by contriving that little opportunity. But Lady
Wimbledon revealed something to Lord Verney, that evening, over their
game of _ecarte_, which affected his views.
Cleve was talking to the young lady, but he saw Lord Verney look once or
twice, in the midst of a very serious conversation with Lady Wimbledon,
at Caroline Oldys and himself, and now without smiling.
It was Lady Wimbledon's deal, but she did not deal, and her opponent
seemed also to have forgotten the cards, and their heads inclined one
toward the other as the talk proceeded.
It was about the hour when ladies light their bed-room candles, and
ascend. And Lady Wimbledon and Caroline Oldys had vanished in a few
minutes more, and Cleve thought, "She has told him something that has
given him a new idea." His uncle was rather silent and dry for the rest
of that evening, but next morning seemed pretty much as usual, only Lord
Verney took an opportunity of saying to him--
"I have been considering, and I have heard things, and, with reference
to the subject of my conversation with you, in town, I think you ought
to direct your thoughts to _Ethel_, about it--you ought to have
money--don't you see? It's very important--money--very well to be _le
fils de ses oeuvres_, and that kind of thing; but a little money does
no harm; on the contrary, it is very desirable. Other people keep that
point in view; I don't see why we should not. I ask myself this
question:--How is it that people get on in the world? And I answer--in
great measure by amassing money; and arguing from _that_, I think it
desirable you should have some money to begin with, and I've endeavoured
to put it logically, about it, that you may see the drift of what I
say." And he made an excuse and sent Cleve up to town next day before
him.
I have been led into an episode by Miss Charity's question about Miss
Caroline Oldys; and returning to Hazelden, I find Tom Sedley taking his
leave of the young ladies for the night, and setting out for the Verney
Arms with a cigar between his lips.
Next morning he walked down to Malory again, and saw old Rebecca, who
seemed, in her odd way, comforted on seeing him, but spoke
little--almost nothing; and he charged her to tell neither Dingwell, of
whom he had heard nothing but evil, nor Jos. Larkin, of whom he had
intuitively a profound suspicion,--anything about her own history, or
the fate of her child, but to observe the most cautious reserve in any
communications they might seek to open with her. And having delivered
this injunction in a great variety of language, he took his leave, and
got home very early to his breakfast, and ran up to London, oddly
enough, in the same carriage with Cleve Verney.
Tom Sedley was angry with Cleve, I am afraid not upon any very high
principle. If Cleve had trifled with the affections of Miss Caroline
Oldys, I fear he would have borne the spectacle of her woes with
considerable patience. But if the truth must be told, honest Tom Sedley
was leaving Cardyllian in a pet. Anger, grief, jealousy, were seething
in his good-natured heart. Agnes Etherage--_his_ little Agnes--she had
belonged to him as long as he could remember; she was gone, and he never
knew how much he had liked her until he had lost her.
_Gone?_ No; in his wanton cruelty this handsome outlaw had _slain_ his
deer--had _shot_ his sweet bird dead, and there she lay in the sylvan
solitude she had so beautified--_dead_; and he--heartless archer--went
on his way smiling, having darkened the world for harmless Tom Sedley.
Could he like him ever again?
Well, the world brooks no heroics now; there are reserves. Men cultivate
a thick skin--nature's buff-coat--in which, with little pain and small
loss of blood, the modern man-at-arms rides cheerily through life's
battle. When point or edge happen to go a little through, as I have
said, there are reserves. There is no good in roaring, grinning, or
cursing. The scathless only laugh at you; therefore wipe away the blood
quietly and seem all you can like the rest. Better not to let them see
even _that_. Is there not sometimes more of curiosity than of sympathy
in the scrutiny? Don't you even see, at times, just the suspicion of a
smile on your friend's pitying face, as he prescribes wet brown paper or
basilicon, or a cob-web, according to his skill?
So Tom and Cleve talked a little--an acquaintance would have said, just
as usual--and exchanged newspapers, and even laughed a little now and
then; but when at Shillingsworth the last interloper got out, and Tom
and Cleve were left to themselves, the ruling idea asserted itself, and
Sedley looked hurriedly out of the window, and grew silent for a time,
and pretended not to hear Cleve when he asked him whether he had seen
the report of Lord Verney's visit to Cardyllian, as displayed in the
county paper of that day, which served to amuse him extremely.
"I don't think," said Tom Sedley, at last, abruptly, "that nice, pretty
little creature, Agnes Etherage--the nicest little thing, by Jove, I
think I ever saw--I say she is not looking well."
"Is not she really?" said Cleve, very coolly cutting open a leaf in his
magazine.
"Didn't you observe?" exclaimed Tom, rather fiercely.
"Well, no, I can't say I did; but you know them so much better than I,"
answered Cleve; "it can't be very much; I dare say she's well by this
time."
"How _can_ you speak that way, Verney, knowing all you do?"
"Why, _what_ do I know?" exclaimed Cleve, looking up in unaffected
wonder.
"You know all about it--_why_ she's out of spirits, _why_ she's looking
so delicate, _why_ she's not like herself," said Tom, impatiently.
"Upon my soul I do _not_," said Cleve Verney, with animation.
"That's odd, considering you've half broken her heart," urged Tom.
"I broken her heart?" repeated Cleve. "Now, really, Sedley, do pray
think what you're saying."
"I say I think you've broken her heart, and her sister thinks so too;
and it's an awful shame," insisted Tom, very grimly.
"I really do think the people want to set me mad," said Cleve, testily.
"If anyone says that I have ever done anything that could have made any
of that family, who are in their senses, fancy that I was in love with
Miss Agnes Etherage, and that I wished her to suppose so, it is simply
an _untruth_. I never did, and I don't intend; and I can't see, for the
life of me, Tom Sedley, what business it is of yours. But thus much I do
say, upon my honour, it is a lie. Miss Charity Etherage, an old maid,
with no more sense than a snipe, living in that barbarous desert, where
if a man appears at all, during eight months out of the twelve, he's a
prodigy, and if he walks up the street with a Cardyllian lady, he's
pronounced to be over head and ears in love, and of course meditating
marriage--I say she's not the most reliable critic in the world in an
affair of that sort; and all I say is, that I've given _no_ grounds for
any such idea, and I mean it, upon my honour; and I've seldom been so
astonished in my life before."
There was an air of frank and indignant repudiation in Cleve's manner
and countenance, which more even than his words convinced Tom Sedley,
who certainly was aware how little the Cardyllian people knew of the
world, and what an eminently simple maiden in all such matters the
homely Miss Charity was. So Tom extended his hand and said--
"Well, Cleve, I'm so glad, and I beg your pardon, and I know you say
truth, and pray shake hands; but though you are not to blame--I'm now
quite _sure_ you're not--the poor girl is very unhappy, and her sister
very angry."
"I can't help _that_. How on earth can _I_ help it? I'm very sorry,
though I'm not sure that I ought to care a farthing about other
people's nonsense, and huffs, and romances. I could tell you things
about myself, lots of things you'd hardly believe--_real dreadful_
annoyances. I tell you Tom, I hate the life I'm leading. You only see
the upper surface, and hardly that. I'm worried to death, and only that
I owe so much money, and can't get away, I can tell you--I don't care
two pins whether you believe it or not--I should have been feeding sheep
in Australia a year ago."
"Better where you are, Cleve."
"How the devil do _you_ know? Don't be offended with me, Tom, only make
allowances, and if I sometimes talk a bit like a Bedlamite don't repeat
my ravings; that's all. Look at that windmill; isn't it pretty?"