Comparing Notes
It would, perhaps, be difficult to decide,--between Lord Chiltern and
Miss Effingham,--which had been most wrong, or which had been nearest
to the right, in the circumstances which had led to their separation.
The old lord, wishing to induce his son to undertake work of some
sort, and feeling that his own efforts in this direction were worse
than useless, had closeted himself with his intended daughter-in-law,
and had obtained from her a promise that she would use her influence
with her lover. “Of course I think it right that he should do
something,” Violet had said. “And he will if you bid him,” replied
the Earl. Violet expressed a great doubt as to this willingness of
obedience; but, nevertheless, she promised to do her best, and she
did her best. Lord Chiltern, when she spoke to him, knit his brows
with an apparent ferocity of anger which his countenance frequently
expressed without any intention of ferocity on his part. He was
annoyed, but was not savagely disposed to Violet. As he looked at
her, however, he seemed to be very savagely disposed. “What is it you
would have me do?” he said.
“I would have you choose some occupation, Oswald.”
“What occupation? What is it that you mean? Ought I to be a
shoemaker?”
“Not that by preference, I should say; but that if you please.” When
her lover had frowned at her, Violet had resolved,--had strongly
determined, with inward assertions of her own rights,--that she would
not be frightened by him.
“You are talking nonsense, Violet. You know that I cannot be a
shoemaker.”
“You may go into Parliament.”
“I neither can, nor would I if I could. I dislike the life.”
“You might farm.”
“I cannot afford it.”
“You might,--might do anything. You ought to do something. You know
that you ought. You know that your father is right in what he says.”
“That is easily asserted, Violet; but it would, I think, be better
that you should take my part than my father’s, if it be that you
intend to be my wife.”
“You know that I intend to be your wife; but would you wish that I
should respect my husband?”
“And will you not do so if you marry me?” he asked.
Then Violet looked into his face and saw that the frown was blacker
than ever. The great mark down his forehead was deeper and more
like an ugly wound than she had ever seen it; and his eyes sparkled
with anger; and his face was red as with fiery wrath. If it was so
with him when she was no more than engaged to him, how would it be
when they should be man and wife? At any rate, she would not fear
him,--not now at least. “No, Oswald,” she said. “If you resolve upon
being an idle man, I shall not respect you. It is better that I
should tell you the truth.”
“A great deal better,” he said.
“How can I respect one whose whole life will be,--will be--?”
“Will be what?” he demanded with a loud shout.
“Oswald, you are very rough with me.”
“What do you say that my life will be?”
Then she again resolved that she would not fear him. “It will be
discreditable,” she said.
“It shall not discredit you,” he replied. “I will not bring disgrace
on one I have loved so well. Violet, after what you have said, we had
better part.” She was still proud, still determined, and they did
part. Though it nearly broke her heart to see him leave her, she bid
him go. She hated herself afterwards for her severity to him; but,
nevertheless, she would not submit to recall the words which she
had spoken. She had thought him to be wrong, and, so thinking, had
conceived it to be her duty and her privilege to tell him what she
thought. But she had no wish to lose him;--no wish not to be his wife
even, though he should be as idle as the wind. She was so constituted
that she had never allowed him or any other man to be master of her
heart,--till she had with a full purpose given her heart away. The
day before she had resolved to give it to one man, she might, I
think, have resolved to give it to another. Love had not conquered
her, but had been taken into her service. Nevertheless, she could
not now rid herself of her servant, when she found that his services
would stand her no longer in good stead. She parted from Lord
Chiltern with an assent, with an assured brow, and with much dignity
in her gait; but as soon as she was alone she was a prey to remorse.
She had declared to the man who was to have been her husband that
his life was discreditable,--and, of course, no man would bear such
language. Had Lord Chiltern borne it, he would not have been worthy
of her love.
She herself told Lady Laura and Lord Brentford what had
occurred,--and had told Lady Baldock also. Lady Baldock had, of
course, triumphed,--and Violet sought her revenge by swearing that
she would regret for ever the loss of so inestimable a gentleman.
“Then why have you given him up, my dear?” demanded Lady Baldock.
“Because I found that he was too good for me,” said Violet. It may be
doubtful whether Lady Baldock was not justified, when she declared
that her niece was to her a care so harassing that no aunt known in
history had ever been so troubled before.
Lord Brentford had fussed and fumed, and had certainly made things
worse. He had quarrelled with his son, and then made it up, and then
quarrelled again,--swearing that the fault must all be attributed to
Chiltern’s stubbornness and Chiltern’s temper. Latterly, however, by
Lady Laura’s intervention, Lord Brentford and his son had again been
reconciled, and the Earl endeavoured manfully to keep his tongue from
disagreeable words, and his face from evil looks, when his son was
present. “They will make it up,” Lady Laura had said, “if you and I
do not attempt to make it up for them. If we do, they will never come
together.” The Earl was convinced, and did his best. But the task
was very difficult to him. How was he to keep his tongue off his son
while his son was daily saying things of which any father,--any such
father as Lord Brentford,--could not but disapprove? Lord Chiltern
professed to disbelieve even in the wisdom of the House of Lords, and
on one occasion asserted that it must be a great comfort to any Prime
Minister to have three or four old women in the Cabinet. The father,
when he heard this, tried to rebuke his son tenderly, strove even to
be jocose. It was the one wish of his heart that Violet Effingham
should be his daughter-in-law. But even with this wish he found it
very hard to keep his tongue off Lord Chiltern.
When Lady Laura discussed the matter with Violet, Violet would always
declare that there was no hope. “The truth is,” she said on the
morning of that day on which they both went to Mrs. Gresham’s, “that
though we like each other,--love each other, if you choose to say
so,--we are not fit to be man and wife.”
“And why not fit?”
“We are too much alike. Each is too violent, too headstrong, and too
masterful.”
“You, as the woman, ought to give way,” said Lady Laura.
“But we do not always do just what we ought.”
“I know how difficult it is for me to advise, seeing to what a pass I
have brought myself.”
“Do not say that, dear;--or rather do say it, for we have, both of
us, brought ourselves to what you call a pass,--to such a pass that
we are like to be able to live together and discuss it for the rest
of our lives. The difference is, I take it, that you have not to
accuse yourself, and that I have.”
“I cannot say that I have not to accuse myself,” said Lady Laura.
“I do not know that I have done much wrong to Mr. Kennedy since I
married him; but in marrying him I did him a grievous wrong.”
“And he has avenged himself.”
“We will not talk of vengeance. I believe he is wretched, and I know
that I am;--and that has come of the wrong that I have done.”
“I will make no man wretched,” said Violet.
“Do you mean that your mind is made up against Oswald?”
“I mean that, and I mean much more. I say that I will make no man
wretched. Your brother is not the only man who is so weak as to be
willing to run the hazard.”
“There is Lord Fawn.”
“Yes, there is Lord Fawn, certainly. Perhaps I should not do him much
harm; but then I should do him no good.”
“And poor Phineas Finn.”
“Yes;--there is Mr. Finn. I will tell you something, Laura. The only
man I ever saw in the world whom I have thought for a moment that
it was possible that I should like,--like enough to love as my
husband,--except your brother, was Mr. Finn.”
“And now?”
“Oh;--now; of course that is over,” said Violet.
“It is over?”
“Quite over. Is he not going to marry Madame Goesler? I suppose
all that is fixed by this time. I hope she will be good to him,
and gracious, and let him have his own way, and give him his tea
comfortably when he comes up tired from the House; for I confess that
my heart is a little tender towards Phineas still. I should not like
to think that he had fallen into the hands of a female Philistine.”
“I do not think he will marry Madame Goesler.”
“Why not?”
“I can hardly tell you;--but I do not think he will. And you loved
him once,--eh, Violet?”
“Not quite that, my dear. It has been difficult with me to love. The
difficulty with most girls, I fancy, is not to love. Mr. Finn, when I
came to measure him in my mind, was not small, but he was never quite
tall enough. One feels oneself to be a sort of recruiting sergeant,
going about with a standard of inches. Mr. Finn was just half an inch
too short. He lacks something in individuality. He is a little too
much a friend to everybody.”
“Shall I tell you a secret, Violet?”
“If you please, dear; though I fancy it is one I know already.”
“He is the only man whom I ever loved,” said Lady Laura.
“But it was too late when you learned to love him,” said Violet.
“It was too late, when I was so sure of it as to wish that I had
never seen Mr. Kennedy. I felt it coming on me, and I argued with
myself that such a marriage would be bad for us both. At that moment
there was trouble in the family, and I had not a shilling of my own.”
“You had paid it for Oswald.”
“At any rate, I had nothing;--and he had nothing. How could I have
dared to think even of such a marriage?”
“Did he think of it, Laura?”
“I suppose he did.”
“You know he did. Did you not tell me before?”
“Well;--yes. He thought of it. I had come to some foolish,
half-sentimental resolution as to friendship, believing that he and I
could be knit together by some adhesion of fraternal affection that
should be void of offence to my husband; and in furtherance of this
he was asked to Loughlinter when I went there, just after I had
accepted Robert. He came down, and I measured him too, as you have
done. I measured him, and I found that he wanted nothing to come up
to the height required by my standard. I think I knew him better than
you did.”
“Very possibly;--but why measure him at all, when such measurement
was useless?”
“Can one help such things? He came to me one day as I was sitting up
by the Linter. You remember the place, where it makes its first
leap.”
“I remember it very well.”
“So do I. Robert had shown it me as the fairest spot in all
Scotland.”
“And there this lover of ours sang his song to you?”
“I do not know what he told me then; but I know that I told him that
I was engaged; and I felt when I told him so that my engagement was a
sorrow to me. And it has been a sorrow from that day to this.”
“And the hero, Phineas,--he is still dear to you?”
“Dear to me?”
“Yes. You would have hated me, had he become my husband? And you will
hate Madame Goesler when she becomes his wife?”
“Not in the least. I am no dog in the manger. I have even gone so far
as almost to wish, at certain moments, that you should accept him.”
“And why?”
“Because he has wished it so heartily.”
“One can hardly forgive a man for such speedy changes,” said Violet.
“Was I not to forgive him;--I, who had turned myself away from him
with a fixed purpose the moment that I found that he had made a mark
upon my heart? I could not wipe off the mark, and yet I married. Was
he not to try to wipe off his mark?”
“It seems that he wiped it off very quickly;--and since that he has
wiped off another mark. One doesn’t know how many marks he has wiped
off. They are like the inn-keeper’s score which he makes in chalk. A
damp cloth brings them all away, and leaves nothing behind.”
“What would you have?”
“There should be a little notch on the stick,--to remember by,” said
Violet. “Not that I complain, you know. I cannot complain, as I was
not notched myself.”
“You are silly, Violet.”
“In not having allowed myself to be notched by this great champion?”
“A man like Mr. Finn has his life to deal with,--to make the most
of it, and to divide it between work, pleasure, duty, ambition, and
the rest of it as best he may. If he have any softness of heart, it
will be necessary to him that love should bear a part in all these
interests. But a man will be a fool who will allow love to be the
master of them all. He will be one whose mind is so ill-balanced
as to allow him to be the victim of a single wish. Even in a woman
passion such as that is evidence of weakness, and not of strength.”
“It seems, then, Laura, that you are weak.”
“And if I am, does that condemn him? He is a man, if I judge him
rightly, who will be constant as the sun, when constancy can be of
service.”
“You mean that the future Mrs. Finn will be secure?”
“That is what I mean;--and that you or I, had either of us chosen to
take his name, might have been quite secure. We have thought it right
to refuse to do so.”
“And how many more, I wonder?”
“You are unjust, and unkind, Violet. So unjust and unkind that it is
clear to me he has just gratified your vanity, and has never touched
your heart. What would you have had him do, when I told him that I
was engaged?”
“I suppose that Mr. Kennedy would not have gone to Blankenberg with
him.”
“Violet!”
“That seems to be the proper thing to do. But even that does not
adjust things finally;--does it?” Then some one came upon them, and
the conversation was brought to an end.