“Oh! purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves.”
TENNYSON.--_Idylls._
Sir William Hamilton’s conduct was very easy of explanation. His love
for Violet had turned his thoughts towards marriage. His ill-success
had not, as is sometimes the case, robbed the prospect of its charms.
But he was too shy to submit again to a repulse, and lived too secluded
a life to have much freedom of choice. Almost as soon, therefore, as
his attention was caught by Amy’s looks, he settled his plans, and
prosecuted them accordingly.
The consequences of this engagement were also such as might have
been expected. He became so desperately in love with his pretty and
submissive young betrothed, that her will was his will; and as hers
was her mother’s will, Mrs. White reigned in all her glory. She gave
herself the airs of a princess, and far from seeming elated at her
daughter’s marriage, appeared to consider the alliance as a matter of
course. It was the very way to deal with Sir William; he wished it to
be considered a matter of course, and he treated Mrs. White with all
the deference she exacted.
In one respect she used her influence wrongly. The fortune of Ida’s
mother had been left in Sir William’s power, with the exception of
that now cancelled document, which, in the event of Ida’s marriage to
Lionel, settled all on _them_. Mrs. White insisted that half of it,
since Amy had no fortune, should be settled on the younger children of
the new family. Mr. Pope, who heard everything, heard of this fact,
and mentioned it to Mr. Osborne. Since Ida’s portion would still be
large for a young lady, the fact was more important, as showing whose
influence would be paramount, than in any other light. It was so at
least regarded by Violet.
Shortly afterwards there was an announcement that Mrs. White was to
take up her abode at Boscombe; and at this discovery Violet, who
had hitherto made the best of the matter to Ida, dwelling on Amy’s
gentleness, and beauty, and other merits, found herself silenced.
She had no consolation to offer. She offered therefore what she
felt--sympathy and commiseration of the most intense kind. She felt
that to her Mrs. White’s presence would poison every source of
happiness in life.
“I don’t think it will be to me what it would be to you, Violet,” Ida
said in reply. “I don’t think I mind things as you do. For one thing, I
don’t expect to be very happy. I have made up my mind to it; and when
one does not expect, a little more or less to bear is no great matter.”
Ida spoke quite cheerfully; more as if stating a fact than as if
expressing an opinion; but Violet was shocked.
“Oh! Ida, how can you speak as you do? And I, who am older, and ought
to expect less, feel that happiness is so much that thing for which
I was born, that, though I may submit, I never can be content to be
without it.”
“I don’t mean that I am unhappy,” Ida said apologetically. “I only mean
that I don’t know, and never did know what great happiness is, and I
don’t expect to know it. Even when I seemed the happiest, I was always
afraid that in some way or other, and I never could tell how, I did not
please Lionel; so that I am almost more _contented_ now than I have
ever been.”
Violet looked grave. Ida seldom mentioned Lionel; when she did the
name was always a stab to her heart; but before she spoke, Ida went on.
“And I think, Violet, it is much better as it is. I think if I was very
happy I should forget things I ought to remember; and now it pleases
me better to think of _those things_ than it does to dream about this
world. So don’t trouble about Mrs. White and me. I don’t think I can
ever like her, but I don’t think I much care whether she comes or not.”
It was seldom that Ida spoke of herself at all, and very seldom so
unreservedly. The insight she gave to Violet--offering in these few
words a glimpse into a young heart, which, in the midst of what is
called prosperity, owned to having never been happy--shocked and
saddened her. She could only hope that the same gentle and submissive
spirit which bore her through definite trials, would also bear her
through the undefined vexations which must assail her future lot;
vexations which Violet’s own quicker and more sensitive temper
pronounced unbearable.
Before the wonder excited by Sir William Hamilton’s marriage had wholly
died away, a new event startled the inhabitants of Holywell, and Mr.
Pope more than any. What with the cold winter, and the distress, and
the marriage of Sir William, and this new event, he began to think he
was rector of a parish that was but human after all.
“I think the world is really going mad!” exclaimed Mr. Osborne,
entering the cottage drawing-room in the dusk of an October evening.
“What do you think I have just heard from Pope? Now, only guess.”
But Violet refused to guess, and insisted on hearing the news at once.
It was this: that Lord Ashford was going to be married to a farmer’s
daughter.
“True! oh, yes,” when Violet said it could not be true. “Pope saw Lord
Ashford himself this morning, and he told him of it, and told him to
announce it right and left, if he pleased, which, by the way, he does
seem pleased to do. He said he was not the least ashamed of what he
was doing, that he had as good a right to select whom he chose as
Sir William; and when Pope said something with regard to his son, he
observed that his son might be hanged.”
The maid brought in the lamp at this moment, and Mr. Osborne, who was
when he came in as excited as Mr. Pope had been with his news, sat down
more composedly, and waited till the room was empty before he went on.
“It appears she is a respectable, well-conducted girl, handsome, but
of little education. She has had charge of a young setter, belonging
to Lord Ashford, of a peculiar breed, and in this way he has become
acquainted with her. It is a bad business; worse than Sir William’s,
for he never can make a lady of her, I fear.”
“Does Mr. Pope know her?” Violet enquired.
“Yes. Her father is a well-to-do farmer, but rough and ignorant. During
an illness he had two years ago Pope visited him and saw her. He says
there is no harm in her, but that she is coarse. She waited on her
father with kindness, but did not seem to know how to behave; talked
loud, and laughed loud, and burst in with questions about farm business
in the midst of his reading. In short, that she did not seem to be a
person with whom Lionel Vane or Miss Hamilton would easily associate.
He pointed this out to Lord Ashford, but he said that was Lionel’s own
business. He was growing old and wanted company, and if his son did not
choose to give it him, he must provide it for himself.”
Violet made no observations. Mr. Osborne was excited with the news, but
she could not be excited. It seemed as if there was to be no end to
the consequences of Lionel’s fancy for her.
Mrs. Osborne asked a few questions.
To one of them Mr. Osborne replied.
“Pope thinks it is rather serious as regards the property. It is
heavily mortgaged already, and, if fortunes are to be made for a new
family, Lionel Vane will not come in for much when he succeeds. But
I cannot have much pity for Lionel Vane. I am more sorry for Pope,
who seems to have taken it quite to heart. Now, darling, what have I
said to distress you?” he asked, suddenly observing Violet’s depressed
countenance.
“Nothing that you have said, papa, but only I am sorry for Mr. Vane.
I think he meant to do so much that was right, and he does only do
mischief and cause sorrow. Like me,” she added, and a tear flashed in
her eye.
“No, no,” Mr. Osborne said gravely, for both he and his wife were
annoyed at Violet’s self-tormenting spirit, “there is no likeness.
All people in this world make mistakes; and surely that can cause
us no surprise when we consider what human nature is. But Lionel
Vane’s mistakes are of another kind. Allowing whatever you please for
his feeling for his mother, yet certainly, even for her sake, the
well-being of his father ought to have been an object to him. He must
have seen enough during his last visit here to discover that Lord
Ashford required care and society--I mean that it was necessary for
his welfare; but no. Lionel Vane goes on his own wilful way and takes
no heed of the mischief he does or the misery he makes. Now, darling,
I won’t have you taking this to heart, as Pope does. After all, we
are all blind mortals, and perhaps in a year we shall say it is the
best thing that could have happened for Lord Ashford. The girl may be
a strong-minded, useful girl; and as she will sympathise in all his
out-of-door amusements, she may make a good wife after all.”
Violet’s feelings of dismay were shared by Ida. She had taken her
father’s marriage and all its accompaniments very calmly; but she was
excited at Lord Ashford’s in a degree that surprised and distressed
Violet. Distressed her because it revealed how very dear Lionel had
been, how dear he still was, and how entirely his affairs absorbed her
mind, to the exclusion of her own. She went almost immediately to see
Lord Ashford, not in any hope of altering his intention, but to make
one more effort to soothe his mind towards Lionel. She, like Mr. Pope,
was seized with terror that the new family would cut him out, and that
“poor Lionel, who would do so much good with his money, would have no
money to do good with.”
Ever since the breaking off of the engagement, Lord Ashford had
received her visits coldly. He felt himself injured and would not
forgive; not even her, who like him was a sufferer, because she
defended the culprit. But on this occasion he was in high good-humour,
pinched her cheek and called her “my precious;” and she, emboldened by
his kindness, made her request that he would write to Lionel himself,
and tell him all about it; and that he would remember and never forget
that Lionel was his own son, and must not be forgotten.
Lord Ashford was touched with the earnest manner of her petition, and
promised to do what she wished.
“But depend upon it, Ida,” he added, “whatever I do, Mr. Lionel will
make my conduct the ground of his absenting himself from us for years
to come. But I don’t care. He did not choose to think of my pleasure,
and now he may please himself, and I will not say a word against it.”
Lord Ashford was right. Lionel returned a cold answer, and remained
abroad. But his cold answer did him injustice. While he wrote it his
heart was throbbing with torture at the insult--for thus he considered
the marriage--to his mother’s memory. Perhaps Violet only was really
just in her estimate of Lionel’s character. For she only fully knew how
the exclusive love for one parent, and a morbid dwelling on her wrongs,
had almost warped his sense of right and wrong in other respects.
“_Be ye angry and sin not._” Lionel had obeyed the first part of the
precept, and been angry, and justly so, at his mother’s sorrows; but he
forgot the second, and made his anger a sin. And now his sin of anger
had found him out. He had neglected his father’s happiness and his
father’s good, and in return his father neglected him.
Sir William was to be married in London at the beginning of November.
Amid the vexation which this marriage caused to Violet, there shot
from it a spark of light which brightened her heart. Amy White asked
Leicester to be her trustee; and he, knowing few particulars of the
case, wrote to Violet, to ask her wishes, and her opinion on the
subject. The letter was concisely expressed, and was confined to its
one purpose; but it and its answer caused in Violet’s mind an emotion,
an excitement, which once again touched with light the cloud that had
fallen on her days.
Her reply was also concise. She took good care that no feeling should
be apparent. She said she was glad to hear of Amy’s application, and
begged him to have no hesitation in acceding to it. That, though she
regretted the marriage, Amy had done nothing deserving of blame, and
she had great hopes it might turn out well.
Little as there was in such a formal application for her opinion to
excite hope in her mind regarding feelings of another nature, yet
such was its effect. During two dreary winter months it cheered her
walks and animated her charity. It gave her spirits to endure, and to
smile at the condescension with which Mrs. White received her call
in the drawing-room at Boscombe, and power to smother a part of her
indignation at the sight of Ida reduced to the simple position of
a common daughter of the house. This was the work, not of Amy, but
of her mother. Amy behaved herself very properly, and, though her
mind was shallow, and her society could give little pleasure to her
step-daughter, yet she and Ida got on without difficulty, and even with
friendship. But Mrs. White was the Dowager Lady Hamilton, exercising
all the rights, and much more than the rights, which that imaginary
personage would have had; and the more Sir William submitted to her
will and whims, the more she exercised him in submission. If Ida’s
principles had not been stayed on a rock too high and firm for Mrs.
White to move, there would have been little peace in the house. Sir
William loved his daughter, and, had he known the trifling insolencies
to which she was subject, he might have resented them, and in resenting
them, have caused strife in his wife’s heart between her duty to her
mother and to him. But Ida took at once, and of herself, the position
that she thought befitting, and, armed with the invincible armour of
Christian love and dutiful submission, the shafts of petty tyranny were
too slight to wound her. Violet watched her with admiration, and sighed
to think how far beyond her powers such endurance would have been.