MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY.
On his return home, two hours later, and after gleaning all the slender
information in his power regarding the proceedings of his enemy,
Arthur--his pocket full of certain ugly-looking letters which he had
found to his address at the Travellers’--was in anything but a
quietly-domestic frame of mind. With the exception of Honor--whose
lovely eyes, as he had last seen them, tearful and full of piteous
pleading--the idea of contact with no single human creature with whom he
was connected afforded him the slightest pleasure. On the contrary, the
thought of his young wife, ready, longing even to throw her weak white
arms round his neck, was positively distasteful to him; the prospect of
listening to old Dub’s paternal twaddle he turned from with disgust;
whilst the feeble cry of his one-day old heir-apparent was likely to
awaken no responsive feelings in his agitated breast. On the whole, the
state of feeling in which Arthur Vavasour found himself on that bright
May afternoon may be described as a reckless one. He was soured,
discontented, almost despairing. Lines of care were deepening on his
brow, and it needed not the fresh blow that awaited him in
Hyde-park-terrace to convince Arthur Vavasour that he was doomed to
misfortune, and marked out for a large share of the miseries to which
flesh is heir.
“A letter that looks like business,” Mr. Duberly said, as his son-in-law
opened a missive of large dimensions, sealed with a big seal, and
altogether portentous of aspect. “From the lawyers,” continued the old
man, “ain’t it?”
Mr. Duberly took a great and very natural interest in the law-suit which
was in progress between Lady Millicent Vavasour and her next heir. He
did not like, or, rather, he did positively dislike the haughty woman
who had never treated _him_ with the simple civility due from one
educated individual to another, and who now, in old Dub’s opinion, was
conducting herself not only with a very blamable absence of natural
motherly feeling, but with what the good man considered in the light of
something very like dishonesty. According to his old-fashioned ideas,
the will of a dead man was a sacred thing, a document not to be lightly
set aside, and, above all, not to be set aside for reasons of cupidity,
self-interest, or love of power on the part of the pleader. In his
opinion there were stringent and reciprocal duties, binding alike the
parent and the child; and that foolish, prejudiced old Dub could as
little understand Lady Millicent’s conduct towards her offspring, as he
could excuse her disrespectful and aggressive acts as regarded the dead
earl her father.
Without being possessed of any inordinate fondness for wealth, Andrew
Duberly was nevertheless keenly desirous that Lady Millicent should not
succeed in the difficult and arduous task that she had undertaken. He
was entirely ignorant of the points of law which might or might not be
brought to bear favourably on her case, and was well aware that, in the
event of her obtaining judgment in her favour, Arthur’s mother would
certainly not be inclined to treat her eldest son with any marked
liberality. But it was not for that cause--or, rather, to be entirely
honest--it was not for that cause only, that Andrew Duberly hoped and
trusted that Earl Gillingham’s will should remain _in statu quo_, and
that milady should, to use his own expression, be pulled down a peg from
the high horse she was so fond of mounting. The real reason for the
fervour of zeal into which he had worked himself might be sought for,
however, as is so often the case, in personal motives. Lady Millicent
had wounded and mortified both himself and the child he loved; which
being the case, it was only natural that the old millionaire, excellent
Christian though he was, should have viewed with complacency the
possible chances of her discomfiture.
“Well?” said Mr. Duberly interrogatively, for the terms on which he
lived with his son-in-law warranted the reality as well as the
appearance of curiosity,--“well, what says the enemy? We’re never going
to say die, eh? I’ll tell you what, Arthur; rather than that, I’d pay
five thousand pounds for you to the lawyers--five thousand! I’d pay ten
to help keep your rights. It isn’t the money, but the principle that I
think so much of. But, I say, what _does_ the old quill-driver write to
you about? Let’s see the letter; or if you’d rather not, I--”
“O no, sir; take it. It isn’t that, but it’s all such a beastly bore.
You see he says that Houndsford’s opinion is against my chance; and if
it is, what’s the use of not giving in? I don’t like the scandal of the
thing, fighting a case against one’s own mother; and--”
“Stuff and nonsense, boy; it’s milady’s doing, and not yours. It’s _her_
that’s setting it all a-going; and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll not
give in till you’re obliged to. However, there’s time enough to talk of
that by and by. Sophy’s been asking for you more than once, poor girl,
whilst you was away; and as for the boy, he’s been holloring like a good
’un. _His_ lungs are sound enough, at any rate, bless him!” And
“grandpapa,” after fixing his gold spectacles once more upon his nose,
returned to the perusal of the newspaper, in which his soul delighted.
Perhaps among the minor difficulties of social life there are none which
are more often or more painfully felt than that almost insurmountable
one of concealing from the watchful eyes of affection the heavy cares
and inward anxieties from which we may be suffering. By the weaker sex,
who are trained from infancy to the art of hiding their feelings under
the cloak of reticence and decorum, the task is comparatively an easy
one. Almost unconsciously, and as an affair of habit, they daily
practise it, till practice makes perfect, and art becomes to them a
second, and sometimes a more winning and graceful nature. But with men
it is widely different. Even the best performers among them are apt to
forget, to stumble over, or to overact their parts; and though they may
sometimes succeed in deceiving one of their own sex, it rarely happens
that the least observant of the other does not possess the moderate
clear-sightedness requisite to lay a finger on the truth at once.
Conscious as he was of this masculine imperfection, and well aware that
he could not keep up before his wife the appearance of a contentment
which he was far from feeling, it was a relief to Arthur that the
autocratic guardian of his wife’s health--the stout, somniferous lady,
who looked the higher order of monthly nurse all over--objected strongly
to any conversation taking place between her patient and the
inexperienced young husband, who was “so attentive, bless you,” as she
said afterwards to the Mrs. Harris of her elevated sphere, and who was
“one of the best of ’usbands to the nicest young lady she had ever
nussed.”
Nor did Sophy, in her “mother’s prime of bliss,” desire and crave for
more than the privilege of looking at her well-loved Arthur’s handsome
face, of pressing very softly and tenderly the dear hand that held her
own, and of murmuring into his bent-down ear that she was very, very
happy.
“Isn’t he a darling?” she whispered, alluding to the precious object of
her new-found hopes; “I am sure--quite sure, though nurse said he
didn’t--that he looked at me just now. You can see his dear little face.
There!” And that Arthur might enjoy this privilege, the happy young
creature turned away a few inches of the bedcovering, gazing down the
while with touching fondness on her sleeping treasure.
And Arthur--who really was goodnatured, and who, but for the anxieties
and annoyances which were oppressing him, would probably have been
almost as contented and joyous as herself--did his best to seem
interested in the small atom of humanity which he could hardly bring
himself to believe he had the right to call his son; but smile and
flatter tenderly as he might, Sophy, with the intuitive perception that
love alone can give, heard a something in his voice which told her that
all was not as it should be with the father of her child.
“Now, Atty,” she said, pressing his hand to her soft lips, “you have
been teased and worried again, I know you have, by something or
somebody. It isn’t poor papa, is it, dear? I daresay he is tiresome,
poor old man, just now; but you musn’t mind. It is all so new to him,
you know, and he thinks baby such a wonderful thing.”
“Well, and so he is,” Arthur said with a smile, which quite reassured
the young mother, who was so willing to see everything _en rose_, “and
your father is a brick, and doesn’t bore me the least in life. What made
you fancy such nonsense, you foolish child? O, I’m to go, am I? I wish
we had you downstairs again, dear. The governor and I miss you
dreadfully at dinner. By Jove, there’s the bell, and I haven’t even
washed my hands--all your fault, Fee,” and he left her with the memory
of another kiss to brighten her hours of silence.
Poor, gentle, unsuspicious Sophy! She little guessed the troubled heart,
the wearisomeness of spirit, on which the door of that spacious chamber
closed when Arthur Vavasour went out from her presence. She loved the
man who only liked, respected, _cared_ for her, with a passion almost
equal to _his_ for the beautiful woman of whose very existence the
trusting wife had ceased to think; loved him with a love which was
rapidly superseding, crushing, nay well-nigh annihilating with its rapid
and luxuriant growth the lowlier flowerets of a daughter’s
tenderness--flowerets that had grown with her growth and strengthened
with her strength till such time as the stronger seed was sown, the
produce of which was destined, according to the law of nature, to
suppress, if not indeed actually to destroy, the weaker herbage amongst
which it had chanced to take root and flourish. Already was this girl,
the child of a doting father, apologising for and more than
half-regretting the presence of that father in the home which the old
man’s excessive fondness for herself might render less agreeable to her
husband; already she was giving to Arthur proofs, open and
unrestrained, that he, and he alone, reigned paramount in her
affections; and could the loving old man, to whom she was all in all,
have looked into the young heart he thought he knew so well, the father
would have learned there some very bitter truths. For the ignorance that
was bliss to him, Andrew Duberly paid afterwards a heavy price. The wish
to believe in what rendered him a happy man was father to the joyful
thought that in his daughter’s affections her young and handsome husband
held but a secondary place, and in that belief old Dub continued to his
dying hour. But a day of reckoning--a day which, in the full flush, in
the almost fever of his prime of bliss, the millionaire was far as are
the poles asunder from anticipating--was, alas, very near at hand! The
day of retribution for time misspent and wasted, for wealth abused, for
golden opportunities neglected, for benefits unthankfully enjoyed,
for--to sum up all--the myriad sins which render it no easy thing for a
rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Yes, the day of
retribution for the minor and unnoticed sins of this “just man” was near
at hand; but in the mean time not a care oppressed him, nor did a single
foreboding of evil to come mar his keen enjoyment of the present.
The game at picquet with Arthur, who, poor fellow, was all the while
wishing his father-in-law, if not exactly in his grave, at least a
hundred miles away, was played by this light-hearted grandpapa with a
zest and spirit which set Arthur (who was at that time taking rather a
gloomy view of human life) wondering how any man in his senses could
have lived to the age of three-score years and ten without having
arrived at the conclusion that all things (including a dull game with
painted pasteboard) here below are, with no single exception, only
vanity and vexation of spirit.