“The evil that men do lives after them.”
_Julius Cæsar._
Ida flew away. Violet addressed a few polite observations in French to
_ma bonne_, and received some English answers, and then Ida returned
with her father.
“I will let you out by a shorter way than you came,” he said, after a
stiff inclination of his head, “if you will be good enough to come with
me. Ida, wish Miss Osborne good-bye.”
She obeyed, and Violet followed Sir William. He fetched his hat, and
accompanied her through a glass door into the garden.
“I have to thank you for coming,” he then said, “and I hope it is a
visit that will be often repeated.”
“I will certainly come again, if Miss Hamilton likes it,” Violet said.
“She likes it of course; but I was thinking of higher things than
liking. My daughter has been much neglected. I have not perhaps thought
on the subject as I ought.”
“That is very plain,” Violet thought, but she made no remark.
“I can conceive no better thing for her, Miss Osborne, than your
society; such as I hear of you, such as I see you to be.”
He spoke stiffly and formally; but Violet loved praise, and her heart
beat with its accustomed pleasure at the sound.
“You know very little of _me_,” she said, however; “but I can fancy
that any society that was not bad would be good for Miss Hamilton in
the lonely life she leads.”
“We may differ on that point; but be it so. I request from you the
benefit of that society for her--at your leisure of course, and
convenience.”
“I will certainly come when I can.”
He thanked her; then cleared his throat and hesitatingly said:
“There is a subject on which I wish to say a few words. I believe you
have this day seen, been present, I mean, at an interview which may
have surprised you.”
“It certainly did,” Violet said frankly. “Miss Hamilton is young for
the discussion of such subjects.”
“True; but it was inevitable. May I beg of you to bear that in mind,
and to sanction the intercourse permitted and encouraged by me.”
“I am not going to be Miss Hamilton’s governess,” she said smiling.
“Pray do not speak of my sanction, or I shall be afraid to visit her.”
“Yet I repeat the word,” he gravely replied. “You are a person, Miss
Osborne, evidently accustomed to think and act for yourself. Supposing
you to disapprove of the course I am pursuing, I can imagine that your
disapprobation could not and would not be confined to your own mind.”
“I would try not to interfere with arrangements with which I have no
business,” she answered, becoming interested in the conversation. “But
perhaps you are right. I might show my feelings more than I intend. May
I ask one question? Is Miss Hamilton bound? Supposing her, supposing
Mr. Vane to dislike the engagement, at some future day, may they break
it?”
She spoke eagerly.
“I am, I trust, no tyrant, Miss Osborne. If such a desire is expressed,
it will then be time to consider the subject. At present we are all
bound, whether we will or no. Will you allow me to make known to you a
few circumstances connected with this scheme.”
By a shorter path through the pleasure-grounds they had now almost
reached the gates into the high road, but Sir William paused in his
walk and waited for a reply.
“I am in a hurry to get home,” Violet said, feeling some distaste to a
lengthened walk; but at the same time, curiosity prevailing, she said,
“still, if it would not take you long, I could wait for a few minutes.”
“I need not detain you long, and I may not have another opportunity. Be
so good as to return a few steps.”
They turned backwards, and in as few words as it was possible to make
himself understood, he related the following circumstances. His manner
was grave and cold during the chief part of the conversation, but on
one or two occasions a degree of feeling approaching to agitation might
be seen in his countenance and heard in his voice.
Lady Hamilton and Lady Ashford were sisters and co-heiresses; but
Lady Hamilton, the elder sister, had a double portion of fortune, and
of other gifts likewise; of mind, of body, and of manner. In early
days Lord Ashford, a young man with extravagant tastes, and fortune
small for his position in life, hearing the fame of her wealth, had
sought her out. He sought her for her wealth, but, when he found her,
loved her for herself, and for those charms of body and mind in which
she excelled. Though of an unsteady and careless disposition, he had
many good qualities, and considerable powers of pleasing, and after a
time he prevailed upon her to consent to be his wife. But though she
consented, her heart was not with him. In the previous year she had
met Sir William Hamilton, and to him her first love had been given.
Pique at his apparent indifference had made her resolve to conquer
her fancy, and with some hesitation to admit the attentions of a new
suitor. It happened that after her engagement to Lord Ashford, and
during the delay which the settlement of her large fortune produced,
she met Sir William Hamilton again, and discovered that shyness and
pride had been the secret of his apparent indifference, and that he
loved her. This discovery made her marriage abhorrent to her; and
though the day was approaching, she, being at this time of age, and
her own mistress, broke it off with impetuous haste, and, to avoid
persecution and lengthened observation, almost immediately afterwards,
with like haste, married Sir William.
Lord Ashford had really loved her, loved her passionately; and though
he did not act as if such was the case, his actions were in fact
prompted by the bitterness of his heart. Not many months after her
marriage, he married her sister. His necessities drove him to seek for
money, and he fancied that he, by this act, was revenged on her for her
faithlessness. And it was a revenge and a bitter punishment, for the
misery of her sister nearly broke her heart. This sister was a timid,
gentle, well-meaning, but weak girl. Her character and feelings were
not strong, but they were impressible. When Lord Ashford went to her to
be comforted, she gave him her pity and her heart; and when he further
asked for her hand, she could not withstand his entreaties. She was
warned that he did not love her, but she was not given to think much of
herself. She pitied him, married him, and he broke her heart.
His love for Lady Hamilton, and her superior qualities, would most
probably have steadied him; but Lady Ashford had no power to work
upon him, except gratitude, and that was shortlived. He neglected
her; she withdrew into herself, pined in secret, and finally turned
to Heaven for support and comfort. The strong religious principles
which thenceforward guided her might have been brought in time to bear
on him; but unfortunately she learnt her views in a narrow school,
and instead of exciting his admiration, he called her strait-laced,
and held her in contempt. They separated more and more, and though
occupants of the same house, she was sometimes for weeks together
uncheered by his presence.
Lady Ashford had a son a year or two after her marriage, but Lady
Hamilton was seven years without a child. After the birth of her
daughter, she fell into weak health; and in the brooding state of
mind--the effect of a weakened body and weakened nerves--which
followed, she allowed a remorse that, however just in itself, was
exaggerated in its degree, for her conduct to Lord Ashford, to fasten
on her imagination. She saw that it had exercised a fatal influence on
his character, that it had caused the unhappiness of her sister, and
with the warped and biassed views of an impulsive nature and awakened
conscience, she became desirous of purchasing forgiveness, and becoming
the healer of the blow she had inflicted. In one respect the plan
she adopted was a safe one. Her sister’s fortune, though large, had
been insufficient for the exigencies of Lord Ashford’s property and
the gratification of his expensive tastes. She knew that money was a
constant source of anxiety to him, and was therefore the point by which
his ill-regulated mind could be touched. Her desire, therefore, was to
restore that of which she had deprived him, through the union of her
daughter with his son. Having won Sir William’s consent (for he was
so fondly attached to her, that in her then state of health he could
deny her nothing), she made known her wishes to both Lord Ashford and
her sister, and met from both a ready acquiescence. From her sister
because she loved her and trusted in her wisdom and experience; from
Lord Ashford because he saw the advantages of the plan, and because
in an interview with Lady Hamilton, her words and manner soothed the
bitterness still rankling in his heart, and rendered him also unable
to resist her. A solemn engagement was entered into by all the parties
concerned, the minutest particulars of the arrangements were legally
drawn up and signed, and Lionel and Ida were brought up to consider
themselves bound.
“And now,” Sir William said, when he had concluded his narration,
“you will not blame me, I hope, for the circumstances in which I am
involved.”
“I have no right either to praise or to blame,” Violet said, very
decidedly; “and I am glad of it. It is not a case in which I should
like to have any responsibility.”
“But you will not, I hope, so far refuse your sanction as to decline to
visit my daughter. I thought it best to be open with you, but I should
regret my openness if it withdrew your society from her.”
Half gratified, half-provoked at his pertinacity, Violet replied that
she saw no reason to make any change. She had said she would be glad to
be of use to Miss Hamilton, and she adhered to what she had said.
He gravely thanked her, observing,
“Should it happen, therefore, that Lionel Vane visits my daughter
during such times and hours as your kindness may bestow upon her, you
will not express any disapprobation?”
“Oh! certainly not!”
He thanked her again, and then added:
“This engagement is known to few. I did not wish to subject either
party to scrutiny and observation. They are cousins, that suffices
for the explanation of their intimacy. May I therefore beg of you,
Miss Osborne, to consider what I have said as spoken in the strictest
confidence, and spoken to you alone.”
“You may depend upon it,” Violet said, quickly, for her discretion,
her freedom from girlish gossip, was one of the points in her character
of which she was slightly vain.
“Then I need detain you no longer. Thank you for hearing me.”
They were again near the gate, and bowing formally, he withdrew.
Violet hurried homewards, the tale she had heard occupying her mind.
Though far more concisely put than in the above pages, Sir William had
given force and vividness by choice of words, tone, and manner to his
narrative, and it had excited her interest in no small degree. Engaged
in ruminating on the circumstances, it was not till she came in sight
of home that it struck her she had been heedless in her promise of
secresy. It flashed across her that she was full young to be entrusted
with such secrets apart from her parents. The thought flashed, was
disagreeable, and was put by with the reflection that what is done
can’t be undone. She had been hasty, but unless she had an opportunity
of renewing the conversation, it was too late to retract. Naturally
open and communicative, she found herself several times in the course
of the evening perplexed how to answer her father’s questions, and
internally fretted at the bondage imposed upon her; but before she went
to bed a chance observation of Mr. Osborne’s reassured her mind, and
disposed her to think she had been wise.
He was speaking of a story he had been reading, in which a secret had
been kept for years in a remarkable manner.
“It would have been different if I had been there,” he said, in his
good-humoured, easy way; “when a secret is entrusted to me, unless I am
really put upon oath, I find myself alluding to it the next half hour.
People have such a habit of saying, ‘don’t mention this,’ that for the
life of me my puzzled head never knows what is to be published and what
is not.”
“The best way, papa,” observed Violet sagely, “is not to publish
anything.”
“But, my dear child, life would be unbearable under such circumstances.
I would rather be a convict in chains.”
“Then you can’t expect to hear my secrets,” she gaily said.
“Yours, darling? Your own, do you mean? I think I will promise to keep
yours; but tell me no others, not even Mr. Pope’s, if he entrusts them
to you. I shall be sure to allude to them at an improper moment.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said, kissing him, and wishing him good
night; “but I shall take warning by what you say;” and her conscience
went quietly to sleep.