Violet Effingham
It was now the middle of May, and a month had elapsed since the
terrible difficulty about the Queen’s Government had been solved. A
month had elapsed, and things had shaken themselves into their places
with more of ease and apparent fitness than men had given them credit
for possessing. Mr. Mildmay, Mr. Gresham, and Mr. Monk were the best
friends in the world, swearing by each other in their own house, and
supported in the other by as gallant a phalanx of Whig peers as ever
were got together to fight against the instincts of their own order
in compliance with the instincts of those below them. Lady Laura’s
father was in the Cabinet, to Lady Laura’s infinite delight. It
was her ambition to be brought as near to political action as was
possible for a woman without surrendering any of the privileges of
feminine inaction. That women should even wish to have votes at
parliamentary elections was to her abominable, and the cause of the
Rights of Women generally was odious to her; but, nevertheless, for
herself, she delighted in hoping that she too might be useful,--in
thinking that she too was perhaps, in some degree, politically
powerful; and she had received considerable increase to such hopes
when her father accepted the Privy Seal. The Earl himself was not an
ambitious man, and, but for his daughter, would have severed himself
altogether from political life before this time. He was an unhappy
man;--being an obstinate man, and having in his obstinacy quarrelled
with his only son. In his unhappiness he would have kept himself
alone, living in the country, brooding over his wretchedness, were
it not for his daughter. On her behalf, and in obedience to her
requirements, he came yearly up to London, and, perhaps in compliance
with her persuasion, had taken some part in the debates of the House
of Lords. It is easy for a peer to be a statesman, if the trouble of
the life be not too much for him. Lord Brentford was now a statesman,
if a seat in the Cabinet be proof of statesmanship.
At this time, in May, there was staying with Lady Laura in Portman
Square a very dear friend of hers, by name Violet Effingham. Violet
Effingham was an orphan, an heiress, and a beauty; with a terrible
aunt, one Lady Baldock, who was supposed to be the dragon who had
Violet, as a captive maiden, in charge. But as Miss Effingham was of
age, and was mistress of her own fortune, Lady Baldock was, in truth,
not omnipotent as a dragon should be. The dragon, at any rate, was
not now staying in Portman Square, and the captivity of the maiden
was therefore not severe at the present moment. Violet Effingham was
very pretty, but could hardly be said to be beautiful. She was small,
with light crispy hair, which seemed to be ever on the flutter round
her brows, and which yet was never a hair astray. She had sweet, soft
grey eyes, which never looked at you long, hardly for a moment,--but
which yet, in that half moment, nearly killed you by the power of
their sweetness. Her cheek was the softest thing in nature, and the
colour of it, when its colour was fixed enough to be told, was a
shade of pink so faint and creamy that you would hardly dare to call
it by its name. Her mouth was perfect, not small enough to give that
expression of silliness which is so common, but almost divine, with
the temptation of its full, rich, ruby lips. Her teeth, which she but
seldom showed, were very even and very white, and there rested on her
chin the dearest dimple that ever acted as a loadstar to mens’s eyes.
The fault of her face, if it had a fault, was in her nose,--which
was a little too sharp, and perhaps too small. A woman who wanted to
depreciate Violet Effingham had once called her a pug-nosed puppet;
but I, as her chronicler, deny that she was pug-nosed,--and all the
world who knew her soon came to understand that she was no puppet. In
figure she was small, but not so small as she looked to be. Her feet
and hands were delicately fine, and there was a softness about her
whole person, an apparent compressibility, which seemed to indicate
that she might go into very small compass. Into what compass and
how compressed, there were very many men who held very different
opinions. Violet Effingham was certainly no puppet. She was great
at dancing,--as perhaps might be a puppet,--but she was great also
at archery, great at skating,--and great, too, at hunting. With
reference to that last accomplishment, she and Lady Baldock had had
more than one terrible tussle, not always with advantage to the
dragon. “My dear aunt,” she had said once during the last winter,
“I am going to the meet with George,”--George was her cousin, Lord
Baldock, and was the dragon’s son,--“and there, let there be an end
of it.” “And you will promise me that you will not go further,” said
the dragon. “I will promise nothing to-day to any man or to any
woman,” said Violet. What was to be said to a young lady who spoke in
this way, and who had become of age only a fortnight since? She rode
that day the famous run from Bagnall’s Gorse to Foulsham Common, and
was in at the death.
Violet Effingham was now sitting in conference with her friend Lady
Laura, and they were discussing matters of high import,--of very high
import, indeed,--to the interests of both of them. “I do not ask you
to accept him,” said Lady Laura.
“That is lucky,” said the other, “as he has never asked me.”
“He has done much the same. You know that he loves you.”
“I know,--or fancy that I know,--that so many men love me! But, after
all, what sort of love is it? It is just as when you and I, when we
see something nice in a shop, call it a dear duck of a thing, and
tell somebody to go and buy it, let the price be ever so extravagant.
I know my own position, Laura. I’m a dear duck of a thing.”
“You are a very dear thing to Oswald.”
“But you, Laura, will some day inspire a grand passion,--or I daresay
have already, for you are a great deal too close to tell;--and then
there will be cutting of throats, and a mighty hubbub, and a real
tragedy. I shall never go beyond genteel comedy,--unless I run away
with somebody beneath me, or do something awfully improper.”
“Don’t do that, dear.”
“I should like to, because of my aunt. I should indeed. If it were
possible, without compromising myself, I should like her to be told
some morning that I had gone off with the curate.”
“How can you be so wicked, Violet!”
“It would serve her right, and her countenance would be so awfully
comic. Mind, if it is ever to come off, I must be there to see it. I
know what she would say as well as possible. She would turn to poor
Gussy. ‘Augusta,’ she would say, ‘I always expected it. I always
did.’ Then I should come out and curtsey to her, and say so prettily,
‘Dear aunt, it was only our little joke.’ That’s my line. But for
you,--you, if you planned it, would go off to-morrow with Lucifer
himself if you liked him.”
“But failing Lucifer, I shall probably be very humdrum.”
“You don’t mean that there is anything settled, Laura?”
“There is nothing settled,--or any beginning of anything that ever
can be settled, But I am not talking about myself. He has told me
that if you will accept him, he will do anything that you and I may
ask him.”
“Yes;--he will promise.”
“Did you ever know him to break his word?”
“I know nothing about him, my dear. How should I?”
“Do not pretend to be ignorant and meek, Violet. You do know
him,--much better than most girls know the men they marry. You have
known him, more or less intimately, all your life.”
“But am I bound to marry him because of that accident?”
“No; you are not bound to marry him,--unless you love him.”
“I do not love him,” said Violet, with slow, emphatic words, and a
little forward motion of her face, as though she were specially eager
to convince her friend that she was quite in earnest in what she
said.
“I fancy, Violet, that you are nearer to loving him than any other
man.”
“I am not at all near to loving any man. I doubt whether I ever shall
be. It does not seem to me to be possible to myself to be what girls
call in love. I can like a man. I do like, perhaps, half a dozen. I
like them so much that if I go to a house or to a party it is quite
a matter of importance to me whether this man or that will or will
not be there. And then I suppose I flirt with them. At least Augusta
tells me that my aunt says that I do. But as for caring about any one
of them in the way of loving him,--wanting to marry him, and have him
all to myself, and that sort of thing,--I don’t know what it means.”
“But you intend to be married some day,” said Lady Laura.
“Certainly I do. And I don’t intend to wait very much longer. I am
heartily tired of Lady Baldock, and though I can generally escape
among my friends, that is not sufficient. I am beginning to think
that it would be pleasant to have a house of my own. A girl becomes
such a Bohemian when she is always going about, and doesn’t quite
know where any of her things are.”
Then there was a silence between them for a few minutes. Violet
Effingham was doubled up in a corner of a sofa, with her feet tucked
under her, and her face reclining upon one of her shoulders. And as
she talked she was playing with a little toy which was constructed
to take various shapes as it was flung this way or that. A bystander
looking at her would have thought that the toy was much more to her
than the conversation. Lady Laura was sitting upright, in a common
chair, at a table not far from her companion, and was manifestly
devoting herself altogether to the subject that was being discussed
between them. She had taken no lounging, easy attitude, she had found
no employment for her fingers, and she looked steadily at Violet as
she talked,--whereas Violet was looking only at the little manikin
which she tossed. And now Laura got up and came to the sofa, and sat
close to her friend. Violet, though she somewhat moved one foot, so
as to seem to make room for the other, still went on with her play.
“If you do marry, Violet, you must choose some one man out of the
lot.”
“That’s quite true, my dear, I certainly can’t marry them all.”
“And how do you mean to make the choice?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I shall toss up.”
“I wish you would be in earnest with me.”
“Well;--I will be in earnest. I shall take the first that comes after
I have quite made up my mind. You’ll think it very horrible, but that
is really what I shall do. After all, a husband is very much like a
house or a horse. You don’t take your house because it’s the best
house in the world, but because just then you want a house. You go
and see a house, and if it’s very nasty you don’t take it. But if
you think it will suit pretty well, and if you are tired of looking
about for houses, you do take it. That’s the way one buys one’s
horses,--and one’s husbands.”
“And you have not made up your mind yet?”
“Not quite. Lady Baldock was a little more decent than usual just
before I left Baddingham. When I told her that I meant to have a pair
of ponies, she merely threw up her hands and grunted. She didn’t
gnash her teeth, and curse and swear, and declare to me that I was a
child of perdition.”
“What do you mean by cursing and swearing?”
“She told me once that if I bought a certain little dog, it would
lead to my being everlastingly--you know what. She isn’t so squeamish
as I am, and said it out.”
“What did you do?”
“I bought the little dog, and it bit my aunt’s heel. I was very sorry
then, and gave the creature to Mary Rivers. He was such a beauty! I
hope the perdition has gone with him, for I don’t like Mary Rivers
at all. I had to give the poor beasty to somebody, and Mary Rivers
happened to be there. I told her that Puck was connected with
Apollyon, but she didn’t mind that. Puck was worth twenty guineas,
and I daresay she has sold him.”
“Oswald may have an equal chance then among the other favourites?”
said Lady Laura, after another pause.
“There are no favourites, and I will not say that any man may have a
chance. Why do you press me about your brother in this way?”
“Because I am so anxious. Because it would save him. Because you are
the only woman for whom he has ever cared, and because he loves you
with all his heart; and because his father would be reconciled to him
to-morrow if he heard that you and he were engaged.”
“Laura, my dear--”
“Well.”
“You won’t be angry if I speak out?”
“Certainly not. After what I have said, you have a right to speak
out.”
“It seems to me that all your reasons are reasons why he should marry
me;--not reasons why I should marry him.”
“Is not his love for you a reason?”
“No,” said Violet, pausing,--and speaking the word in the lowest
possible whisper. “If he did not love me, that, if known to me,
should be a reason why I should not marry him. Ten men may love
me,--I don’t say that any man does--”
“He does.”
“But I can’t marry all the ten. And as for that business of saving
him--”
“You know what I mean!”
“I don’t know that I have any special mission for saving young men. I
sometimes think that I shall have quite enough to do to save myself.
It is strange what a propensity I feel for the wrong side of the
post.”
“I feel the strongest assurance that you will always keep on the
right side.”
“Thank you, my dear. I mean to try, but I’m quite sure that the
jockey who takes me in hand ought to be very steady himself. Now,
Lord Chiltern--”
“Well,--out with it. What have you to say?”
“He does not bear the best reputation in this world as a steady man.
Is he altogether the sort of man that mammas of the best kind are
seeking for their daughters? I like a roué myself;--and a prig who
sits all night in the House, and talks about nothing but church-rates
and suffrage, is to me intolerable. I prefer men who are improper,
and all that sort of thing. If I were a man myself I should go in for
everything I ought to leave alone. I know I should. But you see,--I’m
not a man, and I must take care of myself. The wrong side of a post
for a woman is so very much the wrong side. I like a fast man, but I
know that I must not dare to marry the sort of man that I like.”
“To be one of us, then,--the very first among us;--would that be the
wrong side?”
“You mean that to be Lady Chiltern in the present tense, and Lady
Brentford in the future, would be promotion for Violet Effingham in
the past?”
“How hard you are, Violet!”
“Fancy,--that it should come to this,--that you should call me hard,
Laura. I should like to be your sister. I should like well enough to
be your father’s daughter. I should like well enough to be Chiltern’s
friend. I am his friend. Nothing that any one has ever said of him
has estranged me from him. I have fought for him till I have been
black in the face. Yes, I have,--with my aunt. But I am afraid to be
his wife. The risk would be so great. Suppose that I did not save
him, but that he brought me to shipwreck instead?”
“That could not be!”
“Could it not? I think it might be so very well. When I was a child
they used to be always telling me to mind myself. It seems to me that
a child and a man need not mind themselves. Let them do what they
may, they can be set right again. Let them fall as they will, you can
put them on their feet. But a woman has to mind herself;--and very
hard work it is when she has a dragon of her own driving her ever the
wrong way.”
“I want to take you from the dragon.”
“Yes;--and to hand me over to a griffin.”
“The truth is, Violet, that you do not know Oswald. He is not a
griffin.”
“I did not mean to be uncomplimentary. Take any of the dangerous
wild beasts you please. I merely intend to point out that he is a
dangerous wild beast. I daresay he is noble-minded, and I will call
him a lion if you like it better. But even with a lion there is
risk.”
“Of course there will be risk. There is risk with every man,--unless
you will be contented with the prig you described. Of course there
would be risk with my brother. He has been a gambler.”
“They say he is one still.”
“He has given it up in part, and would entirely at your instance.”
“And they say other things of him, Laura.”
“It is true. He has had paroxysms of evil life which have well-nigh
ruined him.”
“And these paroxysms are so dangerous! Is he not in debt?”
“He is,--but not deeply. Every shilling that he owes would be
paid;--every shilling. Mind, I know all his circumstances, and I
give you my word that every shilling should be paid. He has never
lied,--and he has told me everything. His father could not leave an
acre away from him if he would, and would not if he could.”
“I did not ask as fearing that. I spoke only of a dangerous habit. A
paroxysm of spending money is apt to make one so uncomfortable. And
then--”
“Well.”
“I don’t know why I should make a catalogue of your brother’s
weaknesses.”
“You mean to say that he drinks too much?”
“I do not say so. People say so. The dragon says so. And as I always
find her sayings to be untrue, I suppose this is like the rest of
them.”
“It is untrue if it be said of him as a habit.”
“It is another paroxysm,--just now and then.”
“Do not laugh at me, Violet, when I am taking his part, or I shall be
offended.”
“But you see, if I am to be his wife, it is--rather important.”
“Still you need not ridicule me.”
“Dear Laura, you know I do not ridicule you. You know I love you for
what you are doing. Would not I do the same, and fight for him down
to my nails if I had a brother?”
“And therefore I want you to be Oswald’s wife;--because I know that
you would fight for him. It is not true that he is a--drunkard. Look
at his hand, which is as steady as yours. Look at his eye. Is there a
sign of it? He has been drunk, once or twice, perhaps,--and has done
fearful things.”
“It might be that he would do fearful things to me.”
“You never knew a man with a softer heart or with a finer spirit. I
believe as I sit here that if he were married to-morrow, his vices
would fall from him like old clothes.”
“You will admit, Laura, that there will be some risk for the wife.”
“Of course there will be a risk. Is there not always a risk?”
“The men in the city would call this double-dangerous, I think,” said
Violet. Then the door was opened, and the man of whom they were
speaking entered the room.