THE ANTECEDENTS OF MILADY.
The Lady Millicent Vavasour, whose proceedings were thus so freely
commented upon by her inferiors, was the only child of the rich and
potent Earl of Gillingham. That nobleman, who survived the Countess, his
wife, but little more than a year, bequeathed at his decease, with
restrictions and a good deal _à contre cœur_, all that he possessed, in
land, mines, personalty, and otherwise, to his only child, the Lady
Millicent aforesaid and in the last chapter duly commented upon.
The income produced by the above-mentioned properties--of all of which
the heiress came into undisputed possession at the age of
twenty-three--amounted at a moderate computation to thirty thousand
pounds per annum. The Lady Millicent Vavasour therefore took her stand
on the platform of public estimation with the _prestige_ of being one of
the richest heiresses in England.
As might naturally be expected, the eyes of the world and eke the
monster’s tongue had from her earliest womanhood a good deal to look and
say on the subject of the Lady Millicent’s future disposition in
marriage. That she would--like the Maiden Queen of mighty memory, or the
banker’s heiress of nineteenth-century renown--be content to enjoy her
power _alone_, no one appeared for a single moment to imagine. There
exist, always have existed, and probably always will exist, a large
proportion of the bolder sex of whom it is averred, and safely too, that
they are not “marrying men;” but whoever in his or her experience--and I
say it without prejudice--has heard of a “non-marrying woman”? Such a
being, if it were discovered to exist, would be an anomaly, a _lusus
naturæ_, a freak, so to speak, of the mighty mother who has done all
things not only wondrously, but “decently and in order.”
But if there be a class of females likely to “go in,” as the saying is,
for celibacy, that class is the _genus_ heiress. There are causes too
numerous to mention that may account for this established fact: the
watchfulness alike of friends and foes; a natural as well as a
cultivated suspicion that “_men_ are not (always) what they seem;” the
difficulties attendant on an _embarras de choix_; and last, but by no
means least in importance, the fear of being reduced to a second-rate
power,--may all be cited as good and sufficient reasons for the delay
which so frequently occurs in the “going off” of an heiress. As regarded
the Lady Millicent Vavasour, the rich _partie par excellence_ of this
story, the last-mentioned cause was, far and away beyond the rest, the
one to which might be attributed the important fact that she had reached
the age of twenty-four while still a single woman.
There is much to be said in excuse for the almost proverbial arrogance
and love of power which marks the woman who is born to greatness. She is
so often taught--if not indeed by words, at least by the deference of
those around her, by the inevitable yielding to her will, and by the
_kotooing_ of dependents--that she is, in her way, a Queen, that it
would be rather surprising if any humbler ideas of her own position
should find entrance into her mind. A great deal has been advanced and
written on the importance of public schools as tending to the discovery
of that imaginary line known as a young gentleman’s “level;” but whether
this hoped-for good is ever attained, and if attained whether it be
worth the high price often paid for its possession, must remain an open
question; the distressing truth however cannot, I fear, be disputed,
that the “level” of a young lady possessed of forty thousand pounds per
annum is never likely to be found, save and except in rare cases of
matrimonial felicity--in those exceptional cases, I mean, where there is
no struggle for power, where the Salic law as exemplified in the
nineteenth-century wife is virtually set aside, and where (but this is a
_sine quâ non_) the husband is in every way worthy of this heroic act of
voluntary self-abnegation.
That the Lady Millicent Vavasour was very far from being the model woman
whose price is far above rubies will very speedily be seen. She was a
cold and unattractive child, and she grew up to be in many respects a
cold and unattractive woman; but that she was so must in a great measure
be attributed to the peculiarity of her “bringing up,” and, strange to
say, to the regretable fact that she was not born to be a man. The Earl
and Countess of Gillingham were both what I must be permitted to
describe as “family-mad.” That the Vavasours were the most ancient, the
noblest, and most exalted of all the races of men upon earth, this
elderly and highly respectable couple religiously believed. Previously
to her union with the last male of this ancient family, the Lady
Caroline M‘Intyre (the respected mother of Lord Gillingham’s heiress)
had entertained a foolish prepossession in favour of the old Scottish
blood which ran in her own blue veins; but the engrafting of her
northern race in the still nobler stock of the Vavasours of Gillingham
was sufficient to inoculate her with every prejudice entertained by
Richard, eleventh earl of that most princely house.
They were not--barring this one folly--either a particularly silly or an
especially objectionable pair. They were a little grand and distant to
those who _might_ be so daring as to claim equality with themselves, but
to their clearly-marked inferiors and to the actual _poor_ they were
kind, generous, and “pleasant.”
Perhaps the person who suffered the most from the “madness” which may be
said to be inherent in the Vavasour blood was their only child--the Lady
Millicent, whose career will form one of the subjects of these pages. To
her, without intending to be otherwise than affectionate and kind, the
behaviour of both father and mother was invariably cold and distant. She
was never forgiven for the “sin” of her birth--never pardoned, poor
unconscious child, for the guilt of being a girl! As the last male
descendant of the Vavasours, Lord Gillingham would willingly have given
ten years at least of his vast rent-roll, for a son in whose person the
grand old title might be perpetuated; and the Countess his wife fully
shared in what she deemed his very natural discontent. To bear without
murmuring this crumpled rose-leaf on their luxurious couch was not in
the nature of either; so instead of making the best of the only child
with which Providence had blessed them, they did precisely the contrary;
and the little Lady Millicent, deprived of the caresses and the
softening influence of a gentle mother’s love, grew up as I have
described her to be--cold, arrogant, and unamiable.
The young lady herself was fully capable of appreciating the wrong that
had been done, not only to her family but to society at large, by the
deplorable accident of her birth. As one of the richest heiresses in
England, and as the bearer of a name so noble and so honoured, she was
of course a “personage;” and as one of the uppermost (that could not be
denied) of the upper ten thousand she would take her place, and an
exalted place too, among the great ones of the land; but--there was the
rub!--_there_ “pinched the shoe,” and “galled the withers”--she was not
and would not be, in the course of nature, a peeress! Power--the power
that wealth would give--was hers, but precedence--that honour so dearly
valued by her sex--was sadly and, unless it were obtained by marriage,
for ever wanting.
When, after her parents’ decease, which occurred soon after she had
completed her twenty-third year, the orphaned heiress pondered
regretfully upon these things, the idea of purchasing with her valued
thousands one of the highest of England’s titles could scarcely fail to
occur to one whose love of rank--the well-imbibed prejudice of a dull
and unsympathised-with childhood--was only outdone by her passionate
attachment to power. Well did the Lady Millicent know--for her girlhood
had not all been spent in the seclusion of Gillingham, and at London
balls and routs and dinner-parties she had learned something of the
level of gold--well did the heiress know that, were she willing to
barter her rent-roll for rank, the negotiation would have been only too
easily effected. But, all things considered, this young woman was not so
willing. Any superiority enjoyed by a husband, any benefit conferred
upon her through him, would--so singularly was she constituted--have
been as gall and wormwood to her taste. She was overweeningly proud,
besides, even as her parents had been before her, of the name she bore;
and, singular as it may at first seem, it was to that very pride in, and
attachment to the name of Vavasour that the tardy marriage of this proud
and impracticable lady was owing.
Late in the summer of the year following on her accession to wealth and
power, the Lady Millicent set forth in great state on a continental
tour. As companions on the way she had chosen Lord and Lady Merioneth: a
good simple-minded pair, ready and able to be amused, and withal
tolerably slow to comprehend (from the circumstance of their own entire
want of foolish family pride) the besetting sin of their young
companion.
The delicate health of Lady Millicent Vavasour was, to the surprise of
the world in general, the alleged motive for her spending the winter
abroad. It had been suddenly discovered that the lungs of the heiress
were delicate; and although her breadth of chest and generally healthy
appearance tended to correct the assertion, public interest--no unusual
occurrence when the _malade imaginaire_, or otherwise, happens to be a
millionaire--was immediately enlisted in “poor dear” Lady Millicent’s
behalf. “So young!” “so gifted!” “so attractive!” It would, indeed, be
hard (and a “liberty” was _implied_, if not actually spoken) if Death
should venture to approach within hailing-distance the august person of
the Lady of Gillingham. Happily, however, as it soon became manifest,
there was no immediate danger that the wealth of the heiress would be
turned into some obscure and probably (to the public) uninteresting
channel. Long before the money-scattering English party had reached
Florence the Lady Millicent had thrown off every appearance of
invalidness, and was ready for any amusement suitable to her exalted
position which chance might throw in her way. And ready, too, for
something more than amusement--ready to be softened into as much love as
her nature was capable of feeling, by one worthy of the best affections
of a far worthier woman than was the Lady Millicent Vavasour. Cecil
Vavasour was a cousin, many times removed, of that autocratic lady--the
descendant of a junior branch of the noble family whose name he bore;
and, moreover, in _his_ branch of the family there existed the title of
baron--a title which there was every probability would eventually be
borne by this poor and comparatively obscure relation. Comparatively
obscure, for in a world of his own--a world that was not that of the
Lady Millicent Vavasour--the intellectual but retiring Cecil was known
and honoured. She for that reason, among others too insignificant to
mention, had never till on the occasion of this her first continental
trip chanced to fall in with her kinsman; and when at last she did make
his acquaintance, the effect of even a first meeting was marked and
decisive. Not that there was much in Cecil Vavasour’s outward man
calculated to touch a woman’s fancy or to win her heart. He was some
years past thirty, and in person neither handsome nor the reverse; but
there was a something undefinably attractive even in the reserve of
manner, that spoke of latent power, and of an intelligence above that of
ordinary and unreflecting mortals. He was tall, too, and of a stately
presence; one of those men, in short, to whom, both physically and
mentally, a woman, be she ever so highly placed in her own estimation,
would hardly have refused to pay the tribute of tacitly acknowledging to
her own self that he was her master. Cecil’s father, a practical though
not exactly a discerning man, had intended his only son for the Bar; but
circumstances, to say nothing of the young man’s own individual tastes,
decided against the realisation of the old gentleman’s plans. A short
sojourn in Italy, whither he had gone to protect and comfort an invalid
sister, whose days when she left the shores of England were already
well-nigh numbered, had completed the dislike to his profession which
before had been little more than a surmised distaste. Cecilia Vavasour
died a tranquil death in the soft climate of Tuscany; and her brother,
throwing law study to the winds, and leaving _Blackstone_ to grow dusty
on its shelves, remained to make the best of his three hundred a year in
the sunny land that he had learned so soon to love.
Cecil Vavasour had been three years in Italy--a busy idler, devoted,
almost to idolatry, to the Beautiful that has survived the touch of
Time; as well as to the memories, the associations, and the soft sadness
that cling around the decaying ruins of the past. He had roved from
place to place, mixing little in society, but yet not actually shunning
communion with his fellows, when Lady Millicent arrived at Florence. It
would have been impossible, even had he felt the wish (which he did not)
to avoid his cousin, for the quondam barrister not to become intimate
with the heiress of Gillingham. At first he was very shy--as shy as a
proud poor man was almost certain to be under the peculiar circumstances
in which he was placed. Compared to the cousin, who called him Cecil,
and treated him from the first with marked kindness and consideration,
he might well be termed an impecunious relation. Had Lady Millicent’s
conduct towards him been different--had she behaved to him with anything
approaching to her usual rigid arrogance--his poverty would have
troubled Cecil Vavasour but little. It was his young kinswoman’s
gentleness, her unwonted amiability, her actual deference towards
himself, that, while it rendered him ill at ease in her society, both
puzzled and touched him. He little guessed, while gradually falling
under the spell of a woman who in youth was not destitute of personal
attractions, and who could be agreeable when she chose, what was the
true mainspring of her conduct regarding him. He could form no idea of
the hidden demon of Pride lurking beneath that still exterior. To his
thinking, Lady Millicent Vavasour--young, courted, with tens of
thousands yearly at her command, with power to effect so vast an amount
of good to others, and (which we fear was almost equally enviable in Mr.
Vavasour’s sight) with wealth to indulge to the utmost every æsthetic
taste--was scarcely likely to ambition any extra or unpossessed
advantage. And then he was himself so utterly unassuming, so entirely
unaware that he in his own person owned, or was likely ever to own,
gifts that the rich heiress of Gillingham could covet, that, as I said
before, he was at the beginning almost more puzzled than gratified by
her notice.
That this state of things should have occasioned at first a something of
distance in the relations between the cousins is not surprising, nor
need it afford subject for wonder that that very _distance_ lent a
piquancy to their intercourse which was not, to the petted heiress at
least, without its charm. Lady Millicent had been so beset by
flatterers, and so cloyed by adulation, that the silence, the fits of
absence, and the almost _brusqueries_ of her cousin Cecil were greeted
by her as a very agreeable variety. She was sick to death of oversweet
confections, of butter and honey she had been positively surfeited, so
that the honest brown-bread diet, dry and husky though it was, which was
all that she appeared likely to obtain from Cecil Vavasour, tasted fresh
and wholesome to her fevered palate.
But there was, as I before said, another cause--_the_ cause, in
fact--for Lady Millicent’s obvious appreciation of her cousin, and that
motive power was her cousin’s future rank; for Mr. Vavasour, simple as
he stood before her, quiet, unpretending, noticeable for his
carelessness of outward advantages, his simple manners, and his
unfashionable dress, could nevertheless, failing some very abnormal
event, be the means of obtaining for her in a mitigated degree the
fulfilment of her long-cherished desire--the hope of her heart, the
insatiable craving, known only to herself, to wear, while retaining the
noble name of Vavasour, the coronet of a British peeress on her brow.
The courtship, if courtship it could be called, between Lady Millicent
and the future Baron de Vavasour was somewhat singular and out of rule;
and if any distinct offer of marriage were made between the parties--not
a common occurrence, by the way, in set and deliberate phrase, between
acknowledged lovers--that offer was believed by those best acquainted
with the contracting parties to have emanated from the lady. That Cecil
believed--free from personal vanity though he was--in her attachment to
himself there could be no doubt; nothing, therefore, remained for the
man whose own nature was too noble for him to fear for himself the
imputation of mercenary motives, but to put his pride, and his scruples,
if such he had, into his comparatively empty pockets, and to accept the
goods which his millionaire kinswoman had provided for him.
Perhaps, had the autocratic mistress of Gillingham and its dependencies
been better acquainted with the character of Cecil Vavasour, she might
have hesitated longer ere she selected him as the partner of her life.
With all her ambition, she yet required a husband who would understand
_her_ character and enter into her views; and of this Mr. Vavasour soon
showed himself to be incapable. Misled by the natural faith which we all
are apt to place in our own individual judgment, Lady Millicent had
discovered imaginary qualities in the man whom she had _honoured_ with
her choice. Deceived by the extreme composure of manner and the gentle
reserve which were among her kinsman’s outward characteristics, she had
given him credit for an indolence of disposition which she rather
approved of than regretted, and for an inborn pride of race calculated
to assimilate satisfactorily with her own. They were married, and the
Lady Millicent was not long in discovering to her _annoyance_--for hers
was not a character to take a disappointment to _heart_--that she had
made a fatal mistake. A better man, nor one possessed of a more
conscientious spirit than that which dwelt in Cecil Vavasour, never
walked the earth. That this was so, no one who boasted the slightest
knowledge of character would long doubt. It might be, though that fact
had yet to be decided, that the lawyer _manqué_ was not likely to be a
distinguished man; but the most casual observer would have decided at
once upon the impossibility of his being otherwise than an upright and a
straightforward one. But for all this, and though Mr. Vavasour proved to
be, in the broad and usual acceptation of the term, an excellent
husband, Lady Millicent was, and withal showed herself to be, bitterly
and hopelessly disappointed. It was terrible to find that, instead of
sympathising in her ambitious desires, Cecil was content to devote
himself to the cultivation of his understanding, the care of his wife’s
extensive property, the amelioration of the condition of the poor, and
later, as the--to him--exceeding blessing of children was granted to his
hopes, to the education and moral training of his sons and daughters.
_At_ every time and season, and _to_ all the occupations and interests
of her husband, Lady Millicent took marked exception. She had expected
to find him an amiable nonentity, and instead, there was ever at her
side an earnest and highly intelligent companion; one too who, although
he was no rival power ready to edge her off the throne she so dearly
prized, was nevertheless a man who, entertaining both stern and exalted
notions of the responsibilities of the rich, was not easily to be
diverted from the line of duty--often narrow and difficult--which he had
marked out for himself to follow. Under the vexatiousness of this tardy
discovery, Lady Millicent daily fumed and fretted--fumed and fretted
till her temper, never one of the best, grew peevish and easy of
irritation, and till the chafing of the crumpled rose-leaf against the
sensitive skin of the proud woman’s self-esteem grew to be a painful,
and in process of time a never-to-be-cicatrised sore.
Nor was Cecil Vavasour long behindhand in awaking from the one delusion
that had so effectually changed for him the cherished habits of a life.
The conviction that the love in which he had believed had been but a
passing fancy, and the certainty that he was solely valued by her as a
stepping-stone on which to rise to rank, were not subjects for
agreeable reflection. But though Vavasour was capable of feeling keenly
the wrong--for wrong it was--that had been done him, he was the last man
in the world either to complain of, or to grow silently morbid under,
its infliction; only by his deeds could it be surmised that he was an
unwilling sharer in the good things procurable by the Lady Millicent’s
gold; and as, previously to his marriage, he had steadfastly resisted
the making of any _settlement_ by which he could in his own person
benefit, so did he, after becoming convinced of his wife’s indifference,
keep with rigid economy his private expenses within the scope of his own
limited means to defray, while he abstained as much as lay in his power
from indulgence in luxuries which those means would, unassisted, have
been inadequate to procure for him.
Setting aside this glaring instance (which it clearly was) of
eccentricity, Cecil Vavasour, as was universally allowed, acted well up
to the obligations imposed upon the rich and powerful. There was no
lordly house throughout the length and breadth of the land in which the
rights of hospitality were exercised with a more liberal hand than at
the various residences owned and occupied by the Vavasour family. At
Gillingham Castle especially, where the establishment was on an almost
princely scale, the grand old house was twice a year brimming over with
guests, and far and wide spread the reputation for “good entertaining”
of the Lady Millicent and her consort. But for all that this was so, and
although Cecil Vavasour was loved and appreciated by the poor, whose
invaluable friend and adviser he ever proved himself to be, he was not
generally popular either with his equals or his superiors in social
position. To anyone accustomed to look inquiringly into human motives,
and to those who have gained knowledge of mankind by enlarged
association with their fellows, the fact that Cecil Vavasour, with all
his excellence, his gentleness and his hospitality, was not generally a
favourite, will excite but little surprise. As a rule, the silent and
apparently self-conceited man rarely meets with favour, for silence is
too often taken for a diagnostic of pride, and pride is of all human
qualities the one which both men and women find the most difficult to
pardon. But there was yet another quality, and it was the one to which
his taciturnity was mainly to be attributed, that interfered greatly
with the comfort of Cecil Vavasour’s existence--he was constitutionally,
and therefore incurably, _shy_. Now the shyness of a middle-aged
gentleman who has lived much in society, and whose intellect is above
the average, is one of those “facts” to believe in which it is necessary
that the individual called upon to exhibit this credulity should be
either a physiologist, or himself the victim of _mauvaise honte_. It is
probable that Mr. Vavasour met with few or none who were capable either
of understanding or making allowances for his infirmity; and thus it
chanced that, though no man living was more formed by nature to enjoy
the blessings of friendship, he passed through life without meeting (of
his own degree) a single congenial soul into whose breast he could pour
out his sorrows, or ask for sympathy with his joys.
What wonder is it if under these circumstances, and with his large warm
heart dependent solely upon _them_ for tenderness and love, he should
have fairly doated on his children? There were four of them. The eldest,
Arthur, a handsome dark-eyed lad, was destined by the provisions of his
grandfather’s will to enter into possession, at the age of twenty-five,
of by far the greater portion of the Gillingham property, provided that
on his--the said eldest son of Lady Millicent Vavasour--arriving at the
above-named age, his mother should not be in legal phrase a _femme
couverte_. This singular disposition of property occasioned at the time
of the Earl’s decease no little surprise, but owing probably to the
circumstance that there was at that period no “heir male of Lady
Millicent’s body” in existence, only a very limited amount of
discontent was mingled with the universal astonishment of all who
thought themselves qualified to give an opinion on the subject.
The child next in age to this fortune-favoured individual was also a
son; he was little more than a year his brother’s junior, and inherited
more of his father’s disposition than had been engrafted on his elder
brother. The two boys offered (both in person and character) marked
contrasts to each other. The heir was, as I before said, a handsome
fellow, tall, dark-eyed, and well formed. From his cradle he had been a
child of whose outward comeliness any parent might be proud, and Lady
Millicent _was_ proud of him accordingly--proud, but not fond; it was
not in her nature to attach herself to any living being, save and except
the heiress of Gillingham: and the effects of this monopoly of sentiment
very soon became apparent in the young family growing up around her.
Of Horace, her second son, the Lady Millicent was neither proud nor
fond. He was born delicate, and his infancy being a sickly and a
troublesome one, his lady mother took a disgust to the child who was
associated in her mind with doctors’ visits (this great personage, being
very robust herself, had no patience with illness), occasional visits to
a nursery smelling of drugs, and the irritating wailing of a suffering
infant. As little Horace advanced in years, everyone, with the
exception of his mamma, pronounced him to be, though a plain mite of a
child enough, a very engaging and intelligent specimen of humanity. He
was very sweet-tempered too, and docile, “getting” his baby lessons, as
the head nurse expressed herself, twice as quick as Master Vavasour. But
then it must be remembered that Arthur was an elder son; and when a
child is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, anything above the
average amount of brains is, as all the world will allow, a superfluous
possession. Two daughters, Rhoda and Katherine--of whom more
hereafter--completed the family, to the care and education of which
Cecil Vavasour, both from a high sense of duty and following the
dictates of his own heart, greatly devoted himself. Perfectly alive to
the injury done to the children by the absence on their mother’s part of
either the appearance or the reality of maternal tenderness, he did all
that lay in his power to remedy the evil; but with the best intentions,
a man cannot in such a case, to any effectual purpose, play a woman’s
part. A father’s caresses to his child lack ever the softness of a
woman’s touch; and moreover Cecil Vavasour’s nature was not, as we know,
a demonstrative one: his constitutional infirmity of shyness, even when
alone with the children in whose well-being his own happiness was bound
up, shackled and oppressed him, proving a sad hindrance to that perfect
confidence between parent and child which is so valuable an element in
education. But although in some respects Cecil Vavasour might fall short
in his exalted aims, though the young people at the Castle might and
probably did miss the invaluable advantage of which they were deprived
by Lady Millicent’s natural _hardness_ of character, they were
nevertheless, in one respect at least, highly favoured. On their
father’s unchangeable justice they could ever and always implicitly
rely, as well as on that entire absence of caprice which is one of the
most precious negative gifts with which those in power, whether great or
limited, can be endowed.
Perhaps the main error in Mr. Vavasour’s system of education--for he had
in his deep and absorbing conscientiousness formed a plan for the
bringing-up of his children, from which he never deviated--was, that
they were over-educated, and kept too strictly within the narrow bounds
of _standard_ and routine. He may have forgotten, and it is probable
that his lady wife had never known, that the natural fermentation of
human passions within the breast, if too closely confined therein, is
liable to become a dangerous element. Tie the vessel in which
inflammable matter is kept too tightly and too early down, and when the
_hot_ season of the year arrives, and the working goes on with furious
heat within, then bursts the ligature and out flies the cork, while
careful parents, terrified at the explosion, marvel how, after all their
precautions, and the mighty pains they took, there should be a crash so
fearful, and so melancholy a waste of good materials.
There are some men, and of these was Cecil Vavasour, into whose inner
life other, and apparently unauthorised, people entertain a morbid
desire to pry. The question of who really ruled at the Castle was often
mooted, not only in the village of Switcham itself, but throughout the
whole of the adjacent country. That Mr. Vavasour was a very “superior”
man, the world had been from the first quite ready to acknowledge. If
any confirmation of this received fact were wanting, it was to be found,
so said the initiated, in the great and manifest improvement in Lady
Millicent’s property since the epoch of her marriage. This improvement
had been brought about so quietly, and Mr. Vavasour took so little
apparent part in the management of the estates, that it was hard to say
at whose instigation, or by whose superior judgment, so many salutary
reforms had been carried out. There had been no sudden or startling
changes. There had not even been an unjust steward dismissed, or a
series of hitherto unsuspected frauds unearthed and punished. How and
when this silent, unboastful man worked so effectually for the good, not
only of his rich wife’s estates, but for the welfare of each individual
amongst the many whom he religiously believed were, in a manner,
intrusted to his charge, was a mystery to all. Nor was this the only
mystery talked over amongst the inquisitive--and they were
many--regarding Cecil Vavasour and his belongings. Was he, asked the
curious, a happy and a contented man? Had the acquisition of wealth
opened to him new sources of enjoyment? Had Lady Millicent’s husband,
during the years of his married life, suffered in mind from domestic
disappointment, from the coldness of his wife’s unsympathising nature,
or from her besetting sin--a mean jealousy of power? It is very probable
that he did so suffer, for those men frequently undergo the most whose
exterior is undemonstrative, and who are to all appearance insensible to
the touch of Sorrow’s wand; but whether Cecil Vavasour were or were not,
in these respects, a fitting object for sympathy, the public never was
quite able to make up its mind; for before such a desirable end could be
attained, death, to the regret of all who knew him, cut short the
earthly career of one who might truly have been called the “poor man’s
friend.”
Arthur Vavasour had just completed his fifteenth year--he being then in
the fifth form at Eton--when he received the direful intelligence of a
loss which, to him, was truly an irreparable one. The casualty which
rendered him an orphan had from the first been pronounced by the medical
men to be a serious case. It was occasioned by the accidental going-off
of a gun in the hand of a careless under-keeper, one bright May morning,
when Mr. Vavasour and his younger son, who was the private pupil of a
neighbouring clergyman, were rook-shooting in a distant part of
Gillingham Chace. For several days Cecil Vavasour continued to suffer
much and patiently; then on a sudden all pain left him, and he knew that
his doom was sealed. The report of Mr. Vavasour’s danger spread rapidly
through the country, and people flocked in crowds to the lodge-gates of
Gillingham to learn the truth, and to inquire, with hushed voices and
with saddened looks, whether there were any hope that the good man whose
days were numbered might yet be spared to them. For, if they had never
known the value of Cecil Vavasour before, they recognised it now. When
he was about to be removed from amongst them, there was scarcely one
amongst the poor, the sorrowful, and the troubled but remembered some
act of generosity, some sympathising word, some excellent advice
bestowed in time of need. It seemed difficult to realise the truth that
such a man--one too in the full vigour of his life and strength--was so
early destined to go the way of all flesh. To be sure he was but
enduring the lot appointed for everyone that is born of a woman, and
_why_ men should show longer faces, and talk with more whispering voices
of the accidents and losses of the great and wealthy than they are given
to do of the self-same misfortunes when they befall those who are formed
of more common clay, it may at first sight be difficult to understand;
but the fact that so it is remains the same. And thus it chanced that
the Lady Millicent, self-absorbed and phlegmatic though she was,
elicited in her threatened widowhood far more of general sympathy and
interest than would have been awarded to a hundred bereaved and
penniless women sobbing out their hearts’ grief in an atmosphere of
poverty and dirt, and surrounded by ragged orphans howling for the
bread-winner who would return to them no more for ever.
It was well for Cecil Vavasour that he had not left to “the last” the
duty of preparing for the end; for the time allowed him for such
preparation was short indeed. On his bed of death he found courage to
speak very frankly to the wife who stood shocked, miserably
disappointed, and perhaps at that supreme moment remorseful, by his
side. In few but solemn words he committed his children to her care.
They would, under God, who is the Father of the fatherless, be hers only
now, hers to guide, to counsel, and to instruct. On her and on her only
would rest, so the dying man in his feverish anxiety declared to her,
their well-being both in this transitory life and in that to which _he_
was hastening; and as she should do her duty by his treasures, so,
prayed the feeble voice with touching fervour, might He who judgeth all
men have mercy upon her in the world that is to come! They were his last
words. After a faintly-whispered farewell to the old servants, who were
weeping near the door, there remained but the silent pressure of the
death-cold hand, a quiver of the pale lips, as one by one his children
bent their young fresh faces to receive the parting kiss, and the spirit
of Cecil Vavasour entered into its rest.
There was a grand funeral, at which Lady Millicent, in the longest and
_crapiest_ of robes, and utterly devoid of crinoline, assisted, leading
her eldest son by the hand, and looking the bereaved and grieving widow
to perfection. There were many true mourners in the crowd that followed
Cecil Vavasour to the grave, and not a few of these were of opinion that
true sorrow shuns a multitude, and that the newly-made widow who _can_
follow her husband’s ashes to their last resting-place has not very
dearly loved him in his lifetime. Be this as it may--and it is after all
as hard to judge the feelings of others as it is to estimate their
powers of self-control--the Lady Millicent, surrounded by her children,
did conduct herself at her dead husband’s funeral with a very
praiseworthy amount of dignified self-command. Among those who had been
Cecil Vavasour’s friends and acquaintances there were grave faces and
regretful hearts; but the poor wept for him; and the time soon came,
after he had departed from among them, when folk of all degrees began to
see clearly what manner of man he had been of whom during his
unobtrusive life they had known so little.