In reality, what the young man had been doing was thinking it over
beneath his ancestral oaks and beeches. His countenance showed
this,--showed it more than Miss Bernardstone could have liked. He looked
like a man who was crossed, not like a man who was happy, in love. I was
no more disposed than before to help him out with his plot, but at the
end of ten minutes we were articulately discussing it. When I say _we_
were, I mean he was; for I sat before him quite mute, at first, and
amazed at the clearness with which, before his conscience, he had
argued his case. He had persuaded himself that it was quite a simple
matter to throw over poor Joscelind and keep himself free for the
expiration of Lady Vandeleur’s term of mourning. The deliberations of
an impulsive man sometimes land him in strange countries. Ambrose Tester
confided his plan to me as a tremendous secret. He professed to wish
immensely to know how it appeared to me, and whether my woman’s
wit could n’t discover for him some loophole big enough round, some
honorable way of not keeping faith. Yet at the same time he seemed
not to foresee that I should, of necessity, be simply horrified.
Disconcerted and perplexed (a little), that he was prepared to find me;
but if I had refused, as yet, to come to his assistance, he appeared to
suppose it was only because of the real difficulty of suggesting to him
that perfect pretext of which he was in want. He evidently counted upon
me, however, for some illuminating proposal, and I think he would have
liked to say to me, “You have always pretended to be a great friend of
mine,”--I hadn’t; the pretension was all on his side,--“and now is
your chance to show it. Go to Joscelind and make her feel (women have
a hundred ways of doing that sort of thing), that through Vandeleur’s
death the change in my situation is complete. If she is the girl I take
her for, she will know what to do in the premises.”
I was not prepared to oblige him to this degree, and I lost no time
in telling him so, after my first surprise at seeing how definite his
purpose had become. His contention, after all, was very simple. He had
been in love with Lady Vandeleur for years, and was now more in love
with her than ever. There had been no appearance of her being, within a
calculable period, liberated by the death of her husband. This nobleman
was--he didn’t say what just then (it was too soon)--but he was only
forty years old, and in such health and preservation as to make such a
contingency infinitely remote. Under these circumstances, Ambrose had
been driven, for the most worldly reasons--he was ashamed of them,
pah!--into an engagement with a girl he did n’t love, and did n’t
pretend to love. Suddenly the unexpected occurred; the woman he did
love had become accessible to him, and all the relations of things were
altered.
Why should n’t he alter, too? Why should n’t Miss Bernardstone alter,
Lady Emily alter, and every one alter? It would be _wrong_ in him to
marry Joscelind in so changed a world;--a moment’s consideration would
certainly assure me of that. He could no longer carry out his part of
the bargain, and the transaction must stop before it went any further.
If Joscelind knew, she would be the first to recognize this, and the
thing for her now was to know.
“Go and tell her, then, if you are so sure of it,” I said. “I wonder you
have put it off so many days.”
He looked at me with a melancholy eye. “Of course I know it’s beastly
awkward.”
It was beastly awkward certainly; there I could quite agree with him,
and this was the only sympathy he extracted from me. It was impossible
to be less helpful, less merciful, to an embarrassed young man than
I was on that occasion. But other occasions followed very quickly, on
which Mr. Tester renewed his appeal with greater eloquence. He assured
me that it was torture to be with his intended, and every hour that he
did n’t break off committed him more deeply and more fatally. I repeated
only once my previous question,--asked him only once why then he did n’t
tell her he had changed his mind. The inquiry was idle, was even unkind,
for my young man was in a very tight place. He did n’t tell her, simply
because he could n’t, in spite of the anguish of feeling that his chance
to right himself was rapidly passing away. When I asked him if Joscelind
appeared to have guessed nothing, he broke out, “How in the world can
she guess, when I am so kind to her? I am so sorry for her, poor little
wretch, that I can’t help being nice to her. And from the moment I am
nice to her she thinks it’s all right.”
I could see perfectly what he meant by that, and I liked him more for
this little generosity than I disliked him for his nefarious scheme.
In fact, I did n’t dislike him at all when I saw what an influence my
judgment would have on him. I very soon gave him the full benefit of
it. I had thought over his case with all the advantages of his own
presentation of it, and it was impossible for me to see how he could
decently get rid of the girl. That, as I have said, had been my original
opinion, and quickened reflection only confirmed it. As I have also
said, I had n’t in the least recommended him to become engaged; but once
he had done so I recommended him to abide by it. It was all very well
being in love with Lady Vandeleur; he might be in love with her, but he
had n’t promised to marry her. It was all very well not being in love
with Miss Bernardstone; but, as it happened, he had promised to marry
her, and in my country a gentleman was supposed to keep such promises.
If it was a question of keeping them only so long as was convenient,
where would any of us be? I assure you I became very eloquent and
moral,--yes, moral, I maintain the word, in spite of your perhaps
thinking (as you are very capable of doing) that I ought to have advised
him in just the opposite sense. It was not a question of love, but
of marriage, for he had never promised to love poor Joscelind. It was
useless his saying it was dreadful to marry without love; he knew that
he thought it, and the people he lived with thought it, nothing of the
kind. Half his friends had married on those terms. “Yes, and a pretty
sight their private life presented!” That might be, but it was the first
time I had ever heard him say it. A fortnight before he had been quite
ready to do like the others. I knew what I thought, and I suppose I
expressed it with some clearness, for my arguments made him still more
uncomfortable, unable as he was either to accept them or to act in
contempt of them. Why he should have cared so much for my opinion is
a mystery I can’t elucidate; to understand my little story, you must
simply swallow it. That he did care is proved by the exasperation with
which he suddenly broke out, “Well, then, as I understand you, what you
recommend me is to marry Miss Bernardstone, and carry on an intrigue
with Lady Vandeleur!”
He knew perfectly that I recommended nothing of the sort, and he must
have been very angry to indulge in this _boutade_. He told me that other
people did n’t think as I did--that every one was of the opinion that
between a woman he did n’t love and a woman he had adored for years
it was a plain moral duty not to hesitate. “Don’t hesitate then!” I
exclaimed; but I did n’t get rid of him with this, for he returned to
the charge more than once (he came to me so often that I thought he must
neglect both his other alternatives), and let me know again that the
voice of society was quite against my view. You will doubtless be
surprised at such an intimation that he had taken “society” into his
confidence, and wonder whether he went about asking people whether they
thought he might back out. I can’t tell you exactly, but I know that
for some weeks his dilemma was a great deal talked about. His friends
perceived he was at the parting of the roads, and many of them had no
difficulty in saying which one _they_ would take. Some observers thought
he ought to do nothing, to leave things as they were. Others took very
high ground and discoursed upon the sanctity of love and the wickedness
of really deceiving the girl, as that would be what it would amount to
(if he should lead her to the altar). Some held that it was too late to
escape, others maintained that it is never too late. Some thought Miss
Bernardstone very much to be pitied; some reserved their compassion for
Ambrose Tester; others, still, lavished it upon Lady Vandeleur.
The prevailing opinion, I think, was that he ought to obey the
promptings of his heart--London cares so much for the heart! Or is it
that London is simply ferocious, and always prefers the spectacle that
is more entertaining? As it would prolong the drama for the young man to
throw over Miss Bernardstone, there was a considerable readiness to see
the poor girl sacrificed. She was like a Christian maiden in the Roman
arena. That is what Ambrose Tester meant by telling me that public
opinion was on his side. I don’t think he chattered about his quandary,
but people, knowing his situation, guessed what was going on in his
mind, and he on his side guessed what they said. London discussions
might as well go on in the whispering-gallery of St. Paul’s. I could of
course do only one thing,--I could but reaffirm my conviction that the
Roman attitude, as I may call it, was cruel, was falsely sentimental.
This naturally did n’t help him as he wished to be helped,--did n’t
remove the obstacle to his marrying in a year or two Lady Vandeleur. Yet
he continued to look to me for inspiration,--I must say it at the cost
of making him appear a very feeble-minded gentleman. There was a moment
when I thought him capable of an oblique movement, of temporizing with a
view to escape. If he succeeded in postponing his marriage long enough,
the Bernardstones would throw _him_ over, and I suspect that for a day
he entertained the idea of fixing this responsibility on them. But he
was too honest and too generous to do so for longer, and his destiny was
staring him in the face when an accident gave him a momentary relief.
General Bernardstone died, after an illness as sudden and short as that
which had carried off Lord Vandeleur; his wife and daughter were plunged
into mourning and immediately retired into the country. A week later
we heard that the girl’s marriage would be put off for several
months,--partly on account of her mourning, and partly because her
mother, whose only companion she had now become, could not bear to part
with her at the time originally fixed and actually so near. People of
course looked at each other,--said it was the beginning of the end,
a “dodge” of Ambrose Tester’s. I wonder they did n’t accuse him of
poisoning the poor old general. I know to a certainty that he had
nothing to do with the delay, that the proposal came from Lady Emily,
who, in her bereavement, wished, very naturally, to keep a few months
longer the child she was going to lose forever. It must be said, in
justice to her prospective son-in-law, that he was capable either of
resigning himself or of frankly (with however many blushes) telling
Joscelind he could n’t keep his agreement, but was not capable of trying
to wriggle out of his difficulty. The plan of simply telling Joscelind
he couldn’t,--this was the one he had fixed upon as the best, and this
was the one of which I remarked to him that it had a defect which should
be counted against its advantages. The defect was that it would kill
Joscelind on the spot.
I think he believed me, and his believing me made this unexpected
respite very welcome to him. There was no knowing what might happen in
the interval, and he passed a large part of it in looking for an issue.
And yet, at the same time, he kept up the usual forms with the girl whom
in his heart he had renounced. I was told more than once (for I had lost
sight of the pair during the summer and autumn) that these forms were at
times very casual, that he neglected Miss Bernardstone most flagrantly,
and had quite resumed his old intimacy with Lady Vandeleur. I don’t
exactly know what was meant by this, for she spent the first three
months of her widowhood in complete seclusion, in her own old house
in Norfolk, where he certainly was not staying with her. I believe he
stayed some time, for the partridge shooting, at a place a few miles
off. It came to my ears that if Miss Bernardstone did n’t take the hint
it was because she was determined to stick to him through thick and
thin. She never offered to let him off, and I was sure she never would;
but I was equally sure that, strange as it may appear, he had not ceased
to be nice to her. I have never exactly understood why he didn’t hate
her, and I am convinced that he was not a comedian in his conduct to
her,--he was only a good fellow. I have spoken of the satisfaction that
Sir Edmund took in his daughter-in-law that was to be; he delighted in
looking at her, longed for her when she was out of his sight, and
had her, with her mother, staying with him in the country for weeks
together. If Ambrose was not so constantly at her side as he might have
been, this deficiency was covered by his father’s devotion to her, by
her appearance of being already one of the family. Mr. Tester was away
as he might be away if they were already married.