THE VISIT.
Bella Chevenix took an early opportunity of questioning her father,
though apparently in a casual way, as to the nature of the interview
that had taken place between him and Jerry Wilmot--the interview to
which the latter had referred so mysteriously and in broken accents.
Mr. Chevenix told her all about it, adding, when he saw how she
changed colour, and seemed deeply moved by his information:
'Why do you ask, Bella?'
'Because--I never have secrets from you, papa--he referred to his
interview in a very remarkable manner in the conservatory.'
'Did he propose to you?'
'No, papa,' said Bella, colouring painfully now; 'but he nearly--very
nearly did so.'
'A nice move towards paying off the mortgages truly!' said Mr.
Chevenix, with a rather contemptuous laugh.
'He _condescended_ to express his love for me,' thought Bella, 'and a
proposal would, of course, have followed; he would seek to marry me
that thereby the encumbrances might be cleared from his estate!'
Her thoughts were very bitter indeed, for now most anxious doubts of
the purity and honesty of Jerry's intentions were implanted in her
mind; and yet she loved Jerry on one hand quite as much as
she--honest girl--derided and despised the inborn and constitutional
selfishness of his haughty mother, and all such 'aristocratic snobs,'
as she called them in the angry bitterness of her heart. But she
resolved to show Jerry her indifference, and treat him as she thought
he deserved to be.
'His selfishness apart, it is the old story,' she muttered, 'the old
story of the earthen pot that sought to swim with those of brass. In
his mind, I suppose, I am the earthenware.'
At other times, when her real regard for Jerry prevailed, she would
think--
'Oh, that papa would throw these horrid mortgages in the fire, that I
might be poor, and so test the truth of Jerry's love for me. How
strange that my money and his lands should keep us apart; but for
this involvement, would he ever have loved me for myself alone?'
If Jerry actually meant all he said, he was certainly not influenced
by his mother, whose frigid hauteur to Bella was never concealed;
and, if he did mean it, she, Bella Chevenix, might be mistress of
Wilmothurst, and send Lady Wilmot to vegetate at the dower house of
Langley Park; but to accept him would be at the price of lowering
herself to the level on which he received her.
'No, no,' thought Bella, bitterly, as she recalled what she deemed
Jerry's most galling speech; 'the derision and contempt of the world
you live in shall never be excited by hearing my name coupled with
yours, Captain Wilmot.'
Hitherto Jerry had paid her great, very great and marked attention,
but until the night of the ball, and with it that ill-omened
_tête-à-tête_ in the conservatory, he had gone no farther.
Should she pay a ceremonious call with her father now, or simply send
her card to Lady Wilmot?
Bella was sorely perplexed--pride struggled with love--so she went
for an afternoon call after the recent festivity, but resolved to be
guarded; and, while giving Jerry no opportunity of recurring to the
past, show him how utterly she was indifferent to him.
On riding over to Wilmothurst, she and her father were received by
Lady Wilmot and 'Cousin Emily' in the drawing-room, from whence
Jerry--greatly to her relief--drew her father and Bevil Goring away
to his own particular sanctum, and she was left with the two ladies,
whose conversation after the prospects of the weather and events of
the ball were discussed, speedily took a turn that poor Bella knew
was meant for her edification.
'You made quite a conquest of Lord Twesildown, Miss Chevenix,' said
Lady Wilmot, with one of her company smiles.
'And of Jerry too,' added Miss Wilmot.
'We are old friends,' said Bella, faintly smiling.
'But Jerry is such a flirt!' exclaimed Lady Wilmot, remembering the
visit to the conservatory. 'He has been a worry to me ever since he
left Eton, and then I was only too glad to get him off to his
regiment.'
'Why?'
'The silly boy fell quite in love with a little waiting-maid I had.
He regards all women as puppets, and is never in earnest about any of
them; seven years of him, I fear, wouldn't prove that Jerry had a
heart.'
'Jerry always burns much incense at some shrine or other,' added
Cousin Emily (at whose shrine he had never burned any); 'his goddess
generally changes with the season or the locality; and we all know
how in country quarters the most silly things are developed.'
'To make love to the lips that are near has always been poor silly
Jerry's way. He is such an incorrigible flirt!'
Bella knew quite enough of the world to know what prompted these
remarks, and many more that followed, together with the memory of a
subtle, soft, and sympathetic manner towards herself that galled her
by its implication.
With all her apparent sweetness of manner, Cousin Emily was a good
hater; so she hated Bella Chevenix, and felt that if she could
traverse Jerry's too probable love affair with, or penchant for, that
young lady she would do so; she was too well-bred, or too careful, to
show her hand, and yet she showed a dexterity almost devilish in
implanting in Bella's mind serious thoughts of poor Jerry, and of
adding to, or confirming, those which existed there already.
There was a slight, yet decided contraction of Bella's forehead as
she listened to these speeches; a slight twitching, too, of the
lovely lips; but a proud disdain of the speakers was chiefly what she
felt.
Lady Wilmot could detect that much of Bella's natural verve and
vivacity were gone; yet she was compelled, mentally, to admit that
Bella was a splendid-looking girl--bright, beautiful, and graceful to
a degree--as she sat there in her well-fitted riding habit, than
which few costumes are more becoming to a pretty woman.
During a country-house visit of nearly half an hour she thought she
had heard enough, and more than enough, of Jerry's fickleness and
flirtations, and rose to withdraw; but a storm of snow rendered
departure impossible just then; her own and her father's horse had
been taken round to the stable-yard; she had now the dread of being
perhaps some hours in the society of Jerry, and deeply deplored her
weakness in coming, feeling that she would require some art to show
the indifference she had resolved to exhibit; thus, when the
gentlemen joined them again, she spoke almost exclusively to Bevil
Goring and Lord Twesildown, or remained silent, for she was intensely
anxious to be gone.
If the usually gay Bella said little generally in Lady Wilmot's
presence, she observed keenly, and her somewhat shy and haughty
manner to her hostess was to a certain extent assumed, as the result
of her secret resentment of the mode in which that dame was disposed
to view and treat her.
'Cousin Emily' had been more than once painfully conscious that when
'the agent's daughter' was present she was relegated completely to
the background, and that even Jerry cared not to flirt or make fun
with her, so much was he absorbed in Bella Chevenix; and, though in
some respects rather a nice girl, she began to conceive, as we have
said, an animosity against her, and to consider how she could bring
about a rupture between them before Jerry's leave of absence expired.
'We do not,' says a writer, 'resort to such clumsy expedients as
daggers and poisoned bowls in the nineteenth century; but vindictive
people deal out as cruel reprisals, even now-a-days, in good society,
though it is etiquette to receive the fatal thrust with an easy
smile, and wrestle with your anguish in the silence of your chamber.'
But to Emily's great surprise she found that Jerry and Miss Chevenix
scarcely addressed each other; that there was a complete change in
their bearing; that the latter chatted gaily with Goring and others,
and seemed at times utterly oblivious of Jerry's presence.
She was much exercised in her mind by this discovery. What did it
import?
Jerry seemed reserved and _distrait_, while at times Miss Chevenix
seemed gayer than ever, and when she was in the billiard-room with
him, Goring, and Twesildown, and ever so many more men, she actually
acted somewhat like a romp, while showing how many times she could
hit running off the red ball--'a nice accomplishment for a young
lady!' as Lady Wilmot remarked when she was told of it after.
But all the gentlemen were enchanted with Bella, and were full of
admiration at the grace and contour of her figure as she handled her
cue with hands of matchless form and whiteness; and when she did take
her departure it was Twesildown that assisted her to mount, and
adjusted her skirt and reins, but Jerry remained behind in the
_porte-cochère_, and simply lifted his hat, while a heavy load lay on
his heart. Her reception of his love-making on the one hand, her
wounded pride on the other, and the knowledge that she was under the
keen and cynical eyes of Lady Wilmot and his cousin, had combined to
make the protracted visit a most painful one to both. So two of the
actors in our little drama separated, sore with each other and bitter
in heart--no longer _en rapport_.
'I am glad that girl is gone at last,' remarked his mother. 'She is
not fit for polished society, or to associate with Emily.'
'I have heard,' said that young lady, 'that when at Brighton she
tried to become a professional beauty, by having her photo in every
shop-window.'
'How wonderfully well you well-bred women can make those you hate or
envy feel that you look down upon them,' said Jerry, angrily.
'I have no doubt she feels amply compensated for all that by the
flattery and attention of the gentlemen; she is quite a kind of
garrison beauty,' retorted Emily.
'Why are all your remarks on that girl so dashed with
vinegar--decided Chili?' asked Jerry.
'She gives herself airs far above her station in life.'
'Tush; we are all descended from Adam and Eve--a gardener and his
wife.'
'You will never convince me that there is not good and bad blood in
this world,' exclaimed Lady Wilmot.
'Bravo, mater--cast the scheme of creation anew! What are the odds
so long as we are happy. But I think the time has now come when you
should know the influence this young lady's father may have in our
affairs.'
Jerry now put before his horrified mother--horrified to hear of their
necessity--the matter of the mortgages, and the full extent of these,
and urged that she should show Bella some more marked attention, and
less hauteur or supercilious indifference, and have her more often at
the mansion house, to the guests at which she--a handsome girl, full
of natural gaiety, and with a decided turn for charades,
_tableaux-vivants_, private theatricals, lawn tennis, and games of
all kinds--would prove invaluable.
But Lady Wilmot heard him in silence, with a knit of her pencilled
eyebrows and a droop in the corners of her handsome mouth. She could
only think of these horrible mortgages, and the awful humiliation of
half the estate being in the hands of Mr. Chevenix.
'The estate seems to be quite slipping from me,' said Jerry, after a
gloomy pause.
'Slipping?'
'Yes, it is guineas to gooseberries that the rest will follow Langley
Park and so forth.'
'Terrible to think--not to be thought of at all! Why, the estate has
been the home of the Wilmots for four hundred years!'
'We can never recover what has been lost.'
'Unless you make a wealthy marriage, Jerry dear--such as you have
every right to look forward to.'
Jerry shrugged his shoulders, and pulled dreamily at his cigar after
flicking the white ash off it.
'Let the mortgaged land go!' he exclaimed. 'I do not mean to
dedicate my life by clearing that for others, which others did not
clear for me.'
'Jerry!'
'Remember, mater dear, I have had only a little, and not all, to do
in bringing matters to this pass with Wilmothurst, and I decline to
act the part of a family martyr.'
'What will society say?'
'Society be hanged! I have read in a book, and I know it to be
truth, that "Society at its best will entertain you if you amuse it,
and will drop you, as a rule, upon the first suspicion of your
wanting a twenty-pound note. Society saps your energy, snaps your
finances, and half-a-dozen good attorneys are fifty times more
valuable acquaintances than half the peerage would be at present."
'Where on earth do you pick up such detestable opinions, Jerry
Wilmot?' exclaimed his mother, holding up her white hands in dismay,
while she began seriously to consider where a suitable bride with a
long purse could be found and urged upon his attention.
He meanwhile was chiefly engaged in remembering how, at the ball,
Miss Chevenix had--after that rather sensational interview in the
conservatory--gone off at once into an incipient flirtation with
'that utter oaf,' young Twesildown; but where is the woman who,
believing herself to be treated as Bella thought she had been, would
have thrown away a chance of retaliation and revenge, when a handsome
young man of rank seemed disposed to devote himself to her?