Perhaps few evil-doers are marked down as such with so little personal
eagerness and satisfaction as was Oliver Trent by Jack or Clive, who,
indeed, necessarily took only a passive part. There was nothing in
Jack's nature congenial to the task, and his only wish being to set
Clive on his legs again, as soon as there was a good prospect of this
labour being accomplished, he cared nothing at all for bringing down
punishment on Trent.
Clive's own feeling, when he heard the news, was rather shocked and
bewildered than in any way revengeful. His cousin having been a sort of
good genius in his eyes, the one successful man of the family, the
friend who had placed him where he was, and to whom he believed himself
indebted for all that had been done either to shield him or to push him
on, the revelation which Ibbetson brought was beyond his comprehension.
All the new hopes which had been excited in his mind really turned round
a central desire that Trent should recognise that he had spoken the
truth and not disgraced his family. And now that Trent himself should
be the one on whom disgrace and shame should fall! It was more than his
mind could grasp.
Neither, think as he would, was he helped by seeing any imaginable
motive for his conduct. If he could have found it he might possibly
have acquiesced in what had happened, as something for which Trent--the
adviser--had reasons, and believed that he would also soon have had
reasons for clearing it up. Clive's faith was shaken, but it was not
yet absolutely gone, from the very difficulties of understanding why on
earth Trent should have acted as he had apparently acted. Jack had
muttered something about having him in his power, but that seemed
ludicrous while Clive could trace no advantages to result. Jack
himself, indeed, was not half so clear about it as Phillis, whose
womanly intuition had leapt to a conclusion not far from the truth; and
when he found out something of the young fellow's perplexities as to his
cousin, he respected the feeling and abstained from much comment. He
supposed that it would be necessary to see Trent, perhaps in Clive's
presence, and that then certain home truths would require expression,
but for so long as they could be postponed, he was not at all unwilling
to postpone them. Meanwhile there was a real satisfaction in seeing how
Clive brightened under this lifting off of his troubles. He held
himself straighter, and altogether had a more open and hopeful
appearance. Ibbetson felt no anxiety in leaving him, and went down to
his father's for a few days. There a letter followed him from Mr
Thornton, very concise and formal, taking no notice of his remarks about
Clive, but alluding to his own regret at losing his good friend Mr
Trent, who, he grieved to say, had received letters the morning before
which induced him at once to start for Rome.
Jack crumpled the letter in his hand and shoved it into his pocket.
"Bad news?" asked his father. "Here's bad news for me at any rate.
What do you think, Arabella? Carter finds that horse he wrote about as
likely to suit me to a T, has just been picked up. It's uncommonly
annoying. Do you think your uncle has anything that would do for me,
Jack?"
"I don't know," said Jack, "I haven't seen his stables lately."
"You seem to me making a mull of matters with your uncle," said his
father, pouring out his coffee from a peculiar machine of his own. "I
have never interfered, for I think his manners are insufferable, but if
you don't object to them you might have done better, I should say."
"Well, I don't know," said Jack brightly. "I dare say I should think so
if I were you; but being myself, I don't exactly see what I could have
done."
"Couldn't you marry that girl?"
Jack flushed.
"She didn't care to marry me," he said stiffly. "Whew!" said his
father, lifting his eyebrows. "Not enough money, I suppose?"
"I doubt that influencing her," said Jack, in the same tone.
"Well, you'd better look out, for I hear there's a man of the name of
Trent a good deal at Hetherton, and your uncle swears by him. It's
quite certain we never get any luck in our family."
This was a statement which, with Lady Ibbetson sitting by, who might
have been supposed by outsiders to have brought her husband a good deal
of the sort of luck to which he alluded, could only be received in
silence. Jack finished his breakfast and took himself off to the
smoking-room. Trent seemed to haunt him, and he had an uneasy feeling
of not knowing how much or how little to say. Then he remembered Bice,
and began to wonder whether this sudden departure of Trent's was an
energetic effort on his part to forestall disclosures, or at any rate to
soften their force. If what he had said was true, and the two were
engaged, he might be able to enlist her feelings in his favour. Jack
had desired Clive to write, but was not very sure that he had yet done
so. Now he promptly made up his mind to write himself to Phillis.
The letter was not easy to him. When he had written before, they were
engaged to be man and wife, and he remembered, with a pang, the feeling
of dissatisfaction with which he had laid down her little missive from
Bologna. It had seemed to him as if nothing in it went below the
surface, unconscious as he chose to be that it was he who had kept her
there, he who had chilled and disappointed her. Well, he was punished
now, he thought gloomily, and the shy brown eyes seemed to be looking at
him with sad pity. He had lost Phillis, and he had lost Hetherton. He
knew his uncle, with all his foibles, was a just man, and fond of
Phillis, so that he had little doubt that after his solemn assurance
that he alone was to blame, he would provide liberally for Phillis,
though not to the extent of making her his heiress. The estate might
perhaps be reserved for Oliver Trent, if Jack kept silence. Jack was
not sufficiently superior to mortal weaknesses to find that reflection
pleasant. But it would have been easier to endure, or, at any rate, so
he thought at this moment, if he could have shifted the cause of its
doing on any shoulders but his own. He made a wry face as he
acknowledged his own absolute folly. He would thankfully now have
thrown away his old prospects of Hetherton for the hope of winning
Phillis, but it was far from soothing to remember that he had flung both
to the winds. First he had listened too easily, then repented too
hastily, then had found out too late what he might have known from the
very first. It seemed to him as if he could never reproach another man
with folly. And he had a distracting consciousness as he wrote--
stopping every now and then, jumping up to poke the fire or do something
which might by some good chance assist his expressions--that although it
was Phillis, and nobody but Phillis, who had sent him on his errand, she
would believe nothing but that Bice's deliverance had been the actual
spur. It made it, as has been said, difficult for him to write. He did
not like to paint Trent's conduct in too black colours, lest it might
seem it was his object to effect a break between him and Bice. Yet it
was quite clear to him that the break ought to be effected, if only it
could be done by other hands than his, and he grew vexed that he had not
assured himself that Clive would speak out and to the purpose. His
sentences read coldly, because he wished to treat all that part, which
was his only excuse for writing, in a business-like manner. Phillis,
thinking to shield him, and feeling sure it would be broken, had not
told him of the actual tie existing between Bice and Oliver Trent, and
he guarded his words about them both with an evident restraint. It was
a great relief to him when at last his letter was finished and placed in
the letter-bag, and then he half smiled to find that his thoughts had
wandered to a calculation of the number of days that must pass before he
would receive an answer.
His stepmother met him in the hall. She had an uneasy manner which Jack
hated and called mincing, but a good heart underneath, to which he
persistently blinded himself. When a kindly-natured person does get
hold of a prejudice, you may be sure he will take a firmer grasp than
one less amiable. Perhaps there is a secret satisfaction in finding
himself able to dislike someone heartily, or perhaps it is so unlike
himself that he is instinctively convinced that excellent reasons must
exist to justify him. Jack had never been able to forgive Lady Ibbetson
for marrying his father, although he knew quite well that she made his
home as happy as he would allow her to make it, which was a reservation
not likely to be removed. And this sense of his own injustice did not
render him more friendly towards her. With the best intentions in the
world, all she did seemed to rub him the wrong way. Naturally, she had
changed the old furniture at Elmsleigh, but unfortunately the change was
not justified by the results; for taste, being an artistic feeling, is
as subject to failure as other points in which our ideal is beyond our
powers of execution, and is by no means that simple intuition which
people like to imagine it. Conservative Jack had been much disgusted by
the shifting and embellishment of chairs and tables he found on his
arrival had taken place, and which she, poor misguided woman, had
pointed out to him with pleasure as improvements. He had the grace to
keep his opinions to himself, but for almost the first time in his life
it seemed as if his father's spirit of opposition had been roused in
him, and Lady Ibbetson sighed, after one wistful glance in his face.
She was almost timidly desirous to please him, and never showed at her
best in his presence, finding a not unnatural difficulty in
understanding him. Now she spoke with evident effort:
"Your father tells me you are going back to town to-morrow. Is that
really a necessity? It is so long since you have been here, and this
has been such a very short visit. I had hoped you would have stayed
over Tuesday, and that we might have had some people to meet you on that
day."
"Thank you," said Jack shortly, "I can't afford any longer time."
Mentally he was thinking, "Where on earth does the woman get her gowns?"
"You are working very hard, then?" she ventured to say.
"Well, it's necessary."