The letter from Lady Janet, which the Duchess took from the desk and
placed in Graham's hand, was in strange coincidence with the subject that
for the last twenty-four hours had absorbed his thoughts and tortured his
heart. Speaking of him in terms of affectionate eulogy, the writer
proceeded to confide her earnest wish that be should not longer delay
that change in life which, concentrating so much that is vague in the
desires and aspirations of man, leaves his heart and his mind, made
serene by the contentment of home, free for the steadfast consolidation
of their warmth and their light upon the ennobling duties that unite the
individual to his race.
"There is no one," wrote Lady Janet, "whose character and career a
felicitous choice in marriage can have greater influence over than this
dear adopted son of mine. I do not fear that in any case he will be
liable to the errors of his brilliant father. His early reverse of
fortune here seems to me one of those blessings which Heaven conceals in
the form of affliction. For in youth, the genial freshness of his gay
animal spirits, a native generosity mingled with desire of display and
thirst for applause, made me somewhat alarmed for his future. But,
though he still retains these attributes of character, they are no longer
predominant; they are modified and chastened. He has learned prudence.
But what I now fear most for him is that which he does not show in the
world, which neither Leopold nor you seem to detect,--it is an exceeding
sensitiveness of pride. I know not how else to describe it. It is so
interwoven with the highest qualities, that I sometimes dread injury to
them could it be torn away from the faultier ones which it supports.
"It is interwoven with that lofty independence of spirit which has made
him refuse openings the most alluring to his ambition; it communicates a
touching grandeur to his self-denying thrift; it makes him so tenacious
of his word once given, so cautious before he gives it. Public life to
him is essential; without it he would be incomplete; and yet I sigh to
think that whatever success he may achieve in it will be attended with
proportionate pain. Calumny goes side by side with fame, and courting
fame as a man, he is as thin-skinned to calumny as a woman.
"The wife for Graham should have qualities, not taken individually,
uncommon in English wives, but in combination somewhat rare.
"She must have mind enough to appreciate his--not to clash with it.
She must be fitted with sympathies to be his dearest companion, his
confidante in the hopes and fears which the slightest want of sympathy
would make him keep ever afterwards pent within his breast. In herself
worthy of distinction, she must merge all distinction in his. You have
met in the world men who, marrying professed beauties, or professed
literary geniuses, are spoken of as the husband of the beautiful Mrs.
A------, or of the clever Mrs. B-------: can you fancy Graham Vane in the
reflected light of one of those husbands? I trembled last year when I
thought he was attracted by a face which the artists raved about, and
again by a tongue which dropped _bons mots_ that went the round of the
club. I was relieved, when, sounding him, he said, laughingly, 'No, dear
aunt, I should be one sore from head to foot if I married a wife that was
talked about for anything but goodness.'
"No,--Graham Vane will have pains sharp enough if he live to be talked
about himself. But that tenderest half of himself, the bearer of the
name he would make, and for the dignity of which he alone would be
responsible,--if that were the town talk, he would curse the hour he gave
any one the right to take on herself his man's burden of calumny and
fame. I know not which I should pity the most, Graham Vane or his wife.
"Do you understand me, dearest Eleanor? No doubt you do so far, that you
comprehend that the women whom men most admire are not the women we, as
women ourselves, would wish our sons or brothers to marry. But perhaps
you do not comprehend my cause of fear, which is this--for in such
matters men do not see as we women do--Graham abhors, in the girls of our
time, frivolity and insipidity. Very rightly, you will say. True, but
then he is too likely to be allured by contrasts. I have seen him
attracted by the very girls we recoil from more than we do from those
we allow to be frivolous and insipid. I accused him of admiration for a
certain young lady whom you call 'odious,' and whom the slang that has
come into vogue calls 'fast;' and I was not satisfied with his answer,
'Certainly I admire her; she is not a doll--she has ideas.' I would
rather of the two see Graham married to what men call a doll, than to a
girl with ideas which are distasteful to women."
Lady Janet then went on to question the Duchess about a Miss Asterisk,
with whom this tale will have nothing to do, but who, from the little
which Lady Janet had seen of her, might possess all the requisites that
fastidious correspondent would exact for the wife of her adopted son.
This Miss Asterisk had been introduced into the London world by the
Duchess. The Duchess had replied to Lady Janet, that if earth could be
ransacked, a more suitable wife for Graham Vane than Miss Asterisk could
not be found; she was well born--an heiress; the estates she inherited
were in the county of--(viz., the county in which the ancestors of
D'Altons and Vanes had for centuries established their whereabout). Miss
Asterisk was pretty enough to please any man's eye, but not with the
beauty of which artists rave; well informed enough to be companion to a
well-informed man, but certainly not witty enough to supply _bons mots_
to the clubs. Miss Asterisk was one of those women of whom a husband
might be proud, yet with whom a husband would feel safe from being talked
about.
And in submitting the letter we have read to Graham's eye, the Duchess
had the cause of Miss Asterisk pointedly in view. Miss Asterisk had
confided to her friend, that, of all men she had seen, Mr. Graham Vane
was the one she would feel the least inclined to refuse.
So when Graham Vane returned the letter to the Duchess, simply saying,
"How well my dear aunt divined what is weakest in me!" the Duchess
replied quickly, "Miss Asterisk dines here to-morrow; pray come; you
would like her if you knew more of her."
"To-morrow I am engaged--an American friend of mine dines with me; but
'tis no matter, for I shall never feel more for Miss Asterisk than I feel
for Mont Blanc."