Harry’s Turn.
It would be vain to tell all that was said, and all that was done, and
all the calculations that were gone through in the house in Berkeley
Square, where Edgar’s visit had produced so much emotion. The interviews
carried on in all the different rooms would furnish forth a volume. The
girls, who had peered over the staircase to see him go away, and whose
state of suspense was indescribable, made a dozen applications at
Gussy’s door before the audience of Ada, who had the best right to hear,
was over. Then Mary insisted upon getting admission in her right of
bride, as one able to enter into Gussy’s feelings, and sympathise with
her; and poor little Beatrice, left out in the cold, had to content
herself with half a dozen words, whispered in the twilight, when they
all went to dress for dinner. Beatrice cried with wounded feeling, to
think that because she, by the decrees of Providence, was neither the
elder sister, nor engaged to be married, she was therefore to be shut
out from all participation in Gussy’s secrets.
“Could I be more interested if I was twice as old as Ada, and engaged to
six Lord Grantons!” cried the poor child. And Gussy’s prospects were in
that charming state of uncertainty that they would stand discussing for
hours together; whereas, by the time Lord Granton had been pronounced a
darling, and the dresses all decided upon, even down to the colour of
the bridesmaids’ parasols, there remained absolutely nothing new to be
gone over with Mary, but just the same thing again and again.
“When do you think you shall be married?” said Beatrice, tremulously.
“I don’t know, and I don’t very much care, so long as it is all right,”
said Gussy, half laughing, half crying.
“But what if papa will not consent?” said Mary, with a face of awe.
“Papa is too sensible to fight when he knows he should not win the
battle,” said the deliciously, incomprehensibly courageous Gussy.
There was some gratification to be got out of a betrothed sister of this
fashion. Beatrice even began to look down upon Mary’s unexciting loves.
“As for your affair, it is so dreadfully tame,” she said, contemptuously
lifting her little nose in the air. “Everybody rushing to give their
consent, and presents raining down upon you, and you all so
self-satisfied and confident.”
Mary was quite taken down from her pedestal of universal observation.
She became the commonest of young women about to be married, by Gussy’s
romantic side.
Alas! the Thornleighs were by no means done with sensation in this
_genre_. Two days after these events, before Edgar had come back, Harry
came early to the house one morning and asked to see his mother alone.
Lady Augusta was still immersed in patterns, and she had that morning
received a letter from her husband, which had brought several lines upon
her forehead. Mr. Thornleigh had the reputation, out of doors, of being
a moderate, sensible sort of man, not apt to commit himself, though
perhaps not brilliant, nor very much to be relied upon in point of
intellect. He deserved, indeed, to a considerable extent this character;
but what the world did not know, was that his temper was good and
moderate, by reason of the domestic safety-valve which he had always by
him. When anything troublesome occurred he had it out with his wife,
giving her full credit for originating the whole business.
“You ought to have done this, or you ought to have done that,” he would
say, “and then, of course, nothing of the kind could have happened.”
After, he would go upstairs, and brush his hair, and appear as the most
sensible and good-tempered of men before the world. Mr. Thornleigh had
got Mr. Tottenham’s letter informing him of the renewed intercourse
between Edgar and Gussy; and the Squire had, on the spot, indited a
letter to his wife, breathing fire and flame. This was the preface of a
well-conditioned, gentlemanly letter to Mr. Tottenham, in which the
father expressed a natural regret that Gussy should show so little
consideration of external advantages, but fully acknowledged Edgar’s
excellent qualities, and asked what his prospects were, and what he
thought of doing.
“I will never be tyrannical to any of my children,” Mr. Thornleigh
said; “but, on the other hand, before I can give my sanction, however
unwillingly, to any engagement, I must fully understand his position,
and what he expects to be able to do.”
But Lady Augusta’s letter was not couched in these calm and friendly
terms; and knowing as she did the exertions she had made to keep Edgar
at arm’s length, poor Lady Augusta felt that she did not deserve the
assault made upon her, and consequently took longer to calm down than
she generally did. It was while her brow was still puckered, and her
cheek flushed with this unwelcome communication, that Harry came in.
When he said, “I want to speak to you, mother,” her anxious mind already
jumped at some brewing harm. She took him into the deserted library,
feeling that this was the most appropriate place in which to hear any
confession her son might have to make to her. The drawing-room, where
invasion was always to be feared, and the morning-room, which was
strewed with patterns and girls, might do very well for the confession
of feminine peccadilloes, but a son’s ill-doing was to be treated with a
graver care. She led Harry accordingly into the library, and put herself
into his father’s chair, and said, “What is it, my dear boy?” with a
deeper gravity than usual. Not that Harry was to be taken in by such
pretences at severity. He knew his mother too well for that.
“Mother,” he said, sitting down near her, but turning his head partially
away from her gaze, “you have often said that my father wanted me--to
marry.”
“To marry!--why, Harry? Yes, dear, and so he does,” said Lady Augusta;
“and I too,” she added, less decidedly. “I wish it, too--if it is some
one very nice.”
“Well,” said Harry, looking at her with a certain shamefaced ostentation
of boldness, “I have seen some one whom I could marry at last.”
“At last! You are not so dreadfully old,” said the mother, with a smile.
“You, too! Well, dear, tell me who it is. Some one you have met at your
Aunt Mary’s”? Oh! Harry, my dear boy, I trust most earnestly it is some
one very nice!”
“It is some one much better than nice--the most lovely creature, mother,
you ever saw in your life. I never even dreamt of anything like her,”
said Harry, with a sigh.
“I hope she is something more than a lovely creature,” said Lady
Augusta. “Oh! Harry, your father is so put out about Gussy’s business; I
do hope, dear, that this is something which will put him in good-humour
again. I can take her loveliness for granted. Tell me--do tell me who
she is?”
“You don’t mean to say that you are going to let that fellow marry
Gussy’?” said Harry, coming to a sudden pause.
“Harry, if this is such a connection as I hope, it will smooth
everything,” said Lady Augusta. “My dearest boy, tell me who she is.”
“She is the only woman I will ever marry,” said Harry, doggedly.
And then his poor mother divined, without further words, that the match
was not an advantageous one, and that she had another disappointment on
her hands.
“Harry, you keep me very anxious. Is she one of Mary’s neighbours? Tell
me her name.”
“Yes, she is one of Aunt Mary’s neighbours and chief favourites,” said
Harry. “Aunt Mary is by way of patronizing her.” And here he laughed;
but the laugh was forced, and had not the frank amusement in it which he
intended it to convey.
Lady Augusta’s brow cleared for a moment, then clouded again.
“You do not mean Myra Witherington?” she said, faintly. “Oh! not one of
that family, I hope!”
“Myra Witherington!” he cried. “Mother, what do you take me for? It is
clear you know nothing about my beautiful Margaret. In her presence, you
would no more notice Myra Witherington than a farthing candle in the
sun!”
Poor Lady Augusta took courage again. The very name gave her a little
courage. It is the commonest of all names where Margaret came from; but
not in England, where its rarity gives it a certain distinction.
“My dear boy,” she said tremulously, “don’t trifle with me--tell me her
name.”
A strange smile came upon Harry’s lips. In his very soul he, too, was
ashamed of the name by which some impish trick of fortune had shadowed
his Margaret. An impulse came upon him to get it over at once; he felt
that he was mocking both himself and his mother, and her, the most of
all, who bore that terrible appellation. He burst into a harsh, coarse
laugh, a bravado of which next moment he was heartily ashamed.
“Her name,” he said, with another outburst, “is--Mrs. Smith!”
“Good heavens, Harry!” cried Lady Augusta, with a violent start. Then
she tried to take a little comfort from his laughter, and said, with a
faint smile, though still trembling, “You are laughing at me, you unkind
boy!”
“I am not laughing at all!” cried Harry, “except, indeed, at the
misfortune which gave her such a name. It is one of Aunt Mary’s
favourite jokes.” Then he changed his tone, and took his mother’s hand
and put it up caressingly to his cheek to hide the hot flush that
covered it. “Mother, you don’t know how I love her. She is the only
woman I will ever marry, though I should live a hundred years.”
“Oh! my poor boy--my poor boy!” cried Lady Augusta. “This is all I
wanted to make an end of me. I think my heart will break!”
“Why should your heart break?” said Harry, putting down her hand and
looking half cynically at her. “What good will that do? Look here,
mother. Something much more to the purpose will be to write to my
father, and break the news quietly to him--gently, so as not to bother
him, as I have done to you; you know how.”
“Break the news to him!” she said. “I have not yet realised it myself.
Harry, wait a little. Why, she is not even----. Mrs. Smith! You mean
that she is a widow, I suppose?”
“You did not think I could want to marry a wife, did you?” he growled.
“What is the use of asking such useless questions? Of course she is a
widow--with one little girl. There, now you know the worst!”
“A widow, with one little girl!”
Lady Augusta looked at him aghast. What could make up for these
disadvantages? The blood went back upon her heart, then rallied slightly
as she remembered her brother-in-law’s shopkeeping origin, and that the
widow might be some friend of his.
“Is she--very rich?” she stammered.
To do her justice, she was thinking then of her husband, not herself;
she was thinking how she could write to him, saying, “These are terrible
drawbacks, but nevertheless----”
But nevertheless--Harry burst into another loud, coarse laugh. Poor
fellow! nobody could feel less like laughing; he did it to conceal his
confusion a little, and the terrible sense he began to have that, so far
as his father and mother were concerned, he had made a dreadful mistake.
“I don’t know how rich she is, nor how poor. That is not what I ever
thought of,” he cried, with lofty scorn.
This somehow appeased the gathering terror of Lady Augusta.
“I don’t suppose you did think of it,” she said; “but it is a thing your
father will think of. Harry, tell me in confidence--I shall never think
you mercenary--what is her family? Are they rich people? Are they
friends of your uncle Tottenham? Dear Harry, why should you make a
mystery of this with me?”
“Listen, then,” he said, setting his teeth, “and when you know
everything you will not be able to ask any more questions. She is a
cousin of your Edgar’s that you are so fond of. Her brother is the new
doctor at Harbour Green, and she lives with him. There, now you know as
much as I know myself.”
Words would fail me to tell the wide-eyed consternation with which Lady
Augusta listened. It seemed to her that everything that was obnoxious
had been collected into this description. Poor, nobody, the sister of a
country doctor; a widow with a child; and finally, to wind up
everything, and make the combination still more and more terrible,
Edgar’s cousin! Heaven help her! It was hard enough to think of this for
herself; but to let his father know!--this was more than any woman could
venture to do. She grew sick and faint in a horrible sense of the
desperation of the circumstances; the girls might be obstinate, but they
would not take the bit in their teeth and go off, determined to have
their way, like the boy, who was the heir, and knew his own importance;
and what could any exhortation of hers do for Harry, who knew as well as
she did the frightful consequences, and had always flattered himself on
being a man of the world? She was so stupefied that she scarcely
understood all the protestations that he poured into her ear after this.
What was it to her that Margaret was the loveliest creature in the
world? Faugh! Lady Augusta turned sickening from the words. Lovely
creatures who rend peaceful families asunder; who lead young men astray,
and ruin all their hopes and prospects; who heighten all existing
difficulties, and make everything that was bad before worse a thousand
times--is it likely that a middle-aged mother should be moved by their
charms?
“It is ruin and destruction!--ruin and destruction!” she repeated to
herself.
And soon the whole house had received the same shock, and trembled under
it to its foundations. Harry went off in high dudgeon, not finding the
sympathy he (strangely enough, being a man of the world) had looked
forward to as his natural right. The house, as I have said, quivered
with the shock; a sense of sudden depression came over them all. Little
Mary cried, thinking what a very poor-looking lot of relations she would
carry with her into the noble house she was about to enter. Gussy, with
a more real sense of the fatal effect of this last complication, felt,
half despairing, that her momentary gleam of hope was dying away in the
darkness, and began to think the absence of Edgar at this critical
moment almost a wrong to her. He had been absent for years, and she had
kept steadily faithful to him, hopeful in him; but his absence of to-day
filled her with a hopeless, nervous irritability and pain. As for Lady
Augusta, she lost heart altogether.
“Your father will never listen to it,” she said--“never, never; he will
think they are in a conspiracy. You will be the sufferer, Gussy, you and
poor Edgar, for Harry will not be restrained; he will take his own way.”
What could Gussy reply? She was older than Harry; she was sick of
coercion--why should not she, too, have her own way? But she did not say
this, being grieved for the unfortunate mother, whom this last shock had
utterly discomposed. Ada could do nothing but be the grieved spectator
and sympathizer of all; as for the young Beatrice, her mind was divided
between great excitement over the situation generally, and sorrow for
poor Gussy, and an illegitimate, anxious longing to see the “lovely
creature” of whom Harry had spoken in such raptures. Why should not
people love and marry, without all these frightful complications?
Beatrice was not so melancholy as the rest. She got a certain amount of
pleasure out of the imbroglio; she even hoped that for herself there
might be preparing something else even more romantic than Gussy’s--more
desperate than Harry’s. Fate, which had long forgotten the Thornleigh
household, and permitted them to trudge on in perfect quiet, had now
roused out of sleep, and seemed to intend to give them their turn of
excitement again.
Edgar made his appearance next day, looking so worn and fatigued that
Lady Augusta had not the heart to warn him, as she had intended to do,
that for the present she could not receive his visits--and that Gussy
had not the heart to be cross. He told them he had been to Arden on
business concerning Clare, and that Arthur Arden had come to town with
him, and that peace and a certain friendship reigned, at least for the
moment, between them. He did not confide even to Gussy what the cause of
this singular amity was; but after he had been a little while in her
company, his forehead began to smoothe, his smile to come back, the
colour to appear once more in his face. He took her aside to the window,
where the girls had been arranging fresh Spring flowers in a
_jardinière_. He drew her arm into his, bending over the hyacinths and
cyclamens. Now, for the first time, he could ask the question which had
been thrust out of his mind by all that had happened within the last few
days. A soft air of Spring, of happiness, of all the sweetness of life,
which had been so long plucked from him, seemed to blow in Edgar’s face
from the flowers.
“How should we like a Consulship?” he said, bending down to whisper in
her ear.
“A what?” cried Gussy, astonished. She thought for the moment that he
was speaking of some new flower.
Then Edgar took Lord Newmarch’s letter from his pocket, and held out the
postscript to her, holding her arm fast in his, and his head close to
hers.
“How should you like a Consulship?” he said.
Then the light and the life in his face communicated itself to her.
“A Consulship! Oh! Edgar, what does it mean?”
“To me it means you,” he said--“it means life; it means poverty too,
perhaps, and humility, which are not what I would choose for my Gussy;
but to me it means life, independence, happiness. Gussy, what am I to
say?”
“Say!” she cried--“yes, of course--yes. What else? Italy, perhaps, and
freedom--freedom once in our lives--and our own way; but, ah! what is
the use of speaking of it?” said Gussy, dropping away from his arm, and
stamping her foot on the ground, and falling into sudden tears, “when we
are always to be prevented by other people’s folly, always stopped by
something we have nothing to do with? Ask mamma, Edgar, what has
happened since you went away.”
Then Lady Augusta drew near, having been a wondering and somewhat
anxious spectator all the time of this whispered conversation, and told
him with tears of her interview with Harry.
“What can I do?” she cried. “I do not want to say a word against your
cousin. She may be nice, as nice as though she were a duke’s daughter;
but Harry is our eldest son, and all my children have done so badly in
this way except little Mary. Oh! my dears, I beg your pardon!” cried
poor Lady Augusta, drying her eyes, “but what can I say? Edgar, I have
always felt that I could ask you to do anything, if things should ever
be settled between Gussy and you. Oh! save my boy! She cannot be very
fond of him, she has known him so little; and his father will be
furious, and will never consent--never! And until Mr. Thornleigh dies,
they would have next to nothing, Oh! Edgar, if she is sensible, and
would listen to reason, I would go to her myself--or Gussy could go.”
“Not I,” said Gussy, stealing a deprecating look at Edgar, who stood
stupefied by this new complication--“how could I? It is terrible. How
can I, who am pleasing myself, say anything to Harry because he wants to
please himself?--or to _her_, who has nothing to do with our miserable
and mercenary ways? Oh! yes, they are miserable and mercenary!” cried
Gussy, crying in her turn; “though I can’t help feeling as you do,
though my mind revolts against this poor girl, whom I don’t know, and I
want to save Harry, too, as you say. But how dare I make Harry unhappy,
in order to be happy myself? Oh! mamma, seek some other messenger--not
me!--not me!”
“My darling,” said Lady Augusta, “it is for Harry’s good.”
“And it was for my good a little while ago!” cried Gussy. “You meant it,
and so did they all. If you could have persuaded me to marry some one I
cared nothing for, with my heart always longing for another, you would
have thought it for my good; and now must I try to buy my happiness by
ruining Harry’s?” cried the girl; “though I, too, am so dreadful, that I
think it would be for Harry’s good. Oh! no, no, let it be some one
else!”
“Edgar,” said Lady Augusta, “speak to her, show her the difference.
Harry never saw this--this young woman till about a fortnight since.
What can he know of her, what can she know of him, to be ready to marry
him in a fortnight? Oh! Edgar, try to save my boy! Even if you were to
represent to him that it would be kind to let your business be settled
first,” she went on, after a pause. “A little time might do everything.
I hope it is not wrong to scheme a little for one’s own children and
their happiness. You might persuade him to wait, for Gussy’s sake--not
to make his father furious with two at a time.”
Thus the consultation went on, if that could be called a consultation
where the advice was all on one side. Edgar was fairly stupefied by this
new twist in his affairs. He saw the fatal effect as clearly as even
Lady Augusta could see it, but he could not see his own way to interfere
in it, as she saw. To persuade Harry Thornleigh to give up or postpone
his own will, in order that he, Edgar Earnshaw, might get his--an object
in which Harry, first of all, had not the slightest sympathy--was about
as hopeless an attempt as could well be thought of; and what right had
he to influence Margaret, whom he did not know, to give up the brother,
in order that he himself might secure the sister? Edgar left the house
in as sore a dilemma as ever man was in. To give up Gussy now was a
simple impossibility, but to win her by persuading her brother to the
sacrifice of his love and happiness, was surely more impossible still.