On the Monday, a plowboy from Vale Regis arrived at Monksmoor.
In respect of himself, he was a person beneath notice. In respect of
his errand, he was sufficiently important to cast a gloom over the
household. The faithless Mirabel had broken his engagement, and the
plowboy was the herald of misfortune who brought his apology. To his
great disappointment (he wrote) he was detained by the affairs of his
parish. He could only trust to Mr. Wyvil’s indulgence to excuse him, and
to communicate his sincere sense of regret (on scented note paper) to
the ladies.
Everybody believed in the affairs of the parish--with the exception of
Francine. “Mr. Mirabel has made the best excuse he could think of for
shortening his visit; and I don’t wonder at it,” she said, looking
significantly at Emily.
Emily was playing with one of the dogs; exercising him in the tricks
which he had learned. She balanced a morsel of sugar on his nose--and
had no attention to spare for Francine.
Cecilia, as the mistress of the house, felt it her duty to interfere.
“That is a strange remark to make,” she answered. “Do you mean to say
that we have driven Mr. Mirabel away from us?”
“I accuse nobody,” Francine began with spiteful candor.
“Now she’s going to accuse everybody!” Emily interposed, addressing
herself facetiously to the dog.
“But when girls are bent on fascinating men, whether they like it or
not,” Francine proceeded, “men have only one alternative--they must keep
out of the way.” She looked again at Emily, more pointedly than ever.
Even gentle Cecilia resented this. “Whom do you refer to?” she said
sharply.
“My dear!” Emily remonstrated, “need you ask?” She glanced at Francine
as she spoke, and then gave the dog his signal. He tossed up the sugar,
and caught it in his mouth. His audience applauded him--and so, for that
time, the skirmish ended.
Among the letters of the next morning’s delivery, arrived Alban’s reply.
Emily’s anticipations proved to be correct. The drawing-master’s duties
would not permit him to leave Netherwoods; and he, like Mirabel, sent
his apologies. His short letter to Emily contained no further allusion
to Miss Jethro; it began and ended on the first page.
Had he been disappointed by the tone of reserve in which Emily had
written to him, under Mr. Wyvil’s advice? Or (as Cecilia suggested) had
his detention at the school so bitterly disappointed him that he was too
disheartened to write at any length? Emily made no attempt to arrive at
a conclusion, either one way or the other. She seemed to be in depressed
spirits; and she spoke superstitiously, for the first time in Cecilia’s
experience of her.
“I don’t like this reappearance of Miss Jethro,” she said. “If the
mystery about that woman is ever cleared up, it will bring trouble
and sorrow to me--and I believe, in his own secret heart, Alban Morris
thinks so too.”
“Write, and ask him,” Cecilia suggested.
“He is so kind and so unwilling to distress me,” Emily answered, “that
he wouldn’t acknowledge it, even if I am right.”
In the middle of the week, the course of private life at Monksmoor
suffered an interruption--due to the parliamentary position of the
master of the house.
The insatiable appetite for making and hearing speeches, which
represents one of the marked peculiarities of the English race
(including their cousins in the United States), had seized on Mr.
Wyvil’s constituents. There was to be a political meeting at the market
hall, in the neighboring town; and the member was expected to make an
oration, passing in review contemporary events at home and abroad. “Pray
don’t think of accompanying me,” the good man said to his guests. “The
hall is badly ventilated, and the speeches, including my own, will not
be worth hearing.”
This humane warning was ungratefully disregarded. The gentlemen were all
interested in “the objects of the meeting”; and the ladies were firm in
the resolution not to be left at home by themselves. They dressed with a
view to the large assembly of spectators before whom they were about to
appear; and they outtalked the men on political subjects, all the way to
the town.
The most delightful of surprises was in store for them, when they
reached the market hall. Among the crowd of ordinary gentlemen, waiting
under the portico until the proceedings began, appeared one person of
distinction, whose title was “Reverend,” and whose name was Mirabel.
Francine was the first to discover him. She darted up the steps and held
out her hand.
“This _is_ a pleasure!” she cried. “Have you come here to see--” she
was about to say Me, but, observing the strangers round her, altered the
word to Us. “Please give me your arm,” she whispered, before her young
friends had arrived within hearing. “I am so frightened in a crowd!”
She held fast by Mirabel, and kept a jealous watch on him. Was it only
her fancy? or did she detect a new charm in his smile when he spoke to
Emily?
Before it was possible to decide, the time for the meeting had arrived.
Mr. Wyvil’s friends were of course accommodated with seats on the
platform. Francine, still insisting on her claim to Mirabel’s arm, got
a chair next to him. As she seated herself, she left him free for a
moment. In that moment, the infatuated man took an empty chair on the
other side of him, and placed it for Emily. He communicated to that
hated rival the information which he ought to have reserved for
Francine. “The committee insist,” he said, “on my proposing one of
the Resolutions. I promise not to bore you; mine shall be the shortest
speech delivered at the meeting.”
The proceedings began.
Among the earlier speakers not one was inspired by a feeling of mercy
for the audience. The chairman reveled in words. The mover and seconder
of the first Resolution (not having so much as the ghost of an idea to
trouble either of them), poured out language in flowing and overflowing
streams, like water from a perpetual spring. The heat exhaled by the
crowded audience was already becoming insufferable. Cries of “Sit
down!” assailed the orator of the moment. The chairman was obliged to
interfere. A man at the back of the hall roared out, “Ventilation!”
and broke a window with his stick. He was rewarded with three rounds of
cheers; and was ironically invited to mount the platform and take the
chair.
Under these embarrassing circumstances, Mirabel rose to speak.
He secured silence, at the outset, by a humorous allusion to the prolix
speaker who had preceded him. “Look at the clock, gentlemen,” he said;
“and limit my speech to an interval of ten minutes.” The applause which
followed was heard, through the broken window, in the street. The boys
among the mob outside intercepted the flow of air by climbing on each
other’s shoulders and looking in at the meeting, through the gaps left
by the shattered glass. Having proposed his Resolution with discreet
brevity of speech, Mirabel courted popularity on the plan adopted by the
late Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons--he told stories, and
made jokes, adapted to the intelligence of the dullest people who
were listening to him. The charm of his voice and manner completed his
success. Punctually at the tenth minute, he sat down amid cries of “Go
on.” Francine was the first to take his hand, and to express admiration
mutely by pressing it. He returned the pressure--but he looked at the
wrong lady--the lady on the other side.
Although she made no complaint, he instantly saw that Emily was overcome
by the heat. Her lips were white, and her eyes were closing. “Let me
take you out,” he said, “or you will faint.”
Francine started to her feet to follow them. The lower order of the
audience, eager for amusement, put their own humorous construction on
the young lady’s action. They roared with laughter. “Let the parson and
his sweetheart be,” they called out; “two’s company, miss, and three
isn’t.” Mr. Wyvil interposed his authority and rebuked them. A lady
seated behind Francine interfered to good purpose by giving her a chair,
which placed her out of sight of the audience. Order was restored--and
the proceedings were resumed.
On the conclusion of the meeting, Mirabel and Emily were found waiting
for their friends at the door. Mr. Wyvil innocently added fuel to the
fire that was burning in Francine. He insisted that Mirabel should
return to Monksmoor, and offered him a seat in the carriage at Emily’s
side.
Later in the evening, when they all met at dinner, there appeared a
change in Miss de Sor which surprised everybody but Mirabel. She was gay
and good-humored, and especially amiable and attentive to Emily--who sat
opposite to her at the table. “What did you and Mr. Mirabel talk about
while you were away from us?” she asked innocently. “Politics?”
Emily readily adopted Francine’s friendly tone. “Would you have talked
politics, in my place?” she asked gayly.
“In your place, I should have had the most delightful of companions,”
Francine rejoined; “I wish I had been overcome by the heat too!”
Mirabel--attentively observing her--acknowledged the compliment by a
bow, and left Emily to continue the conversation. In perfect good faith
she owned to having led Mirabel to talk of himself. She had heard from
Cecilia that his early life had been devoted to various occupations,
and she was interested in knowing how circumstances had led him into
devoting himself to the Church. Francine listened with the outward
appearance of implicit belief, and with the inward conviction that Emily
was deliberately deceiving her. When the little narrative was at an end,
she was more agreeable than ever. She admired Emily’s dress, and she
rivaled Cecilia in enjoyment of the good things on the table; she
entertained Mirabel with humorous anecdotes of the priests at St.
Domingo, and was so interested in the manufacture of violins, ancient
and modern, that Mr. Wyvil promised to show her his famous collection of
instruments, after dinner. Her overflowing amiability included even
poor Miss Darnaway and the absent brothers and sisters. She heard with
flattering sympathy, how they had been ill and had got well again; what
amusing tricks they played, what alarming accidents happened to them,
and how remarkably clever they were--“including, I do assure you, dear
Miss de Sor, the baby only ten months old.” When the ladies rose to
retire, Francine was, socially speaking, the heroine of the evening.
While the violins were in course of exhibition, Mirabel found an
opportunity of speaking to Emily, unobserved.
“Have you said, or done, anything to offend Miss de Sor?” he asked.
“Nothing whatever!” Emily declared, startled by the question. “What
makes you think I have offended her?”
“I have been trying to find a reason for the change in her,” Mirabel
answered--“especially the change toward yourself.”
“Well?”
“Well--she means mischief.”
“Mischief of what sort?”
“Of a sort which may expose her to discovery--unless she disarms
suspicion at the outset. That is (as I believe) exactly what she has
been doing this evening. I needn’t warn you to be on your guard.”
All the next day Emily was on the watch for events--and nothing
happened. Not the slightest appearance of jealousy betrayed itself in
Francine. She made no attempt to attract to herself the attentions of
Mirabel; and she showed no hostility to Emily, either by word, look, or
manner.
........
The day after, an event occurred at Netherwoods. Alban Morris received
an anonymous letter, addressed to him in these terms:
“A certain young lady, in whom you are supposed to be interested, is
forgetting you in your absence. If you are not mean enough to allow
yourself to be supplanted by another man, join the party at Monksmoor
before it is too late.”