SUSAN IS EQUAL TO THE EMERGENCY.
Mrs Naylor was late of coming down-stairs next morning, but she took
no special notice of Margaret's not having come to inquire for her,
further than to prepare herself with a taunt at undutiful children
against the moment when they should meet. Her empty chair at dinner,
however, told that something was amiss; and Lucy could give no
information, further than that Margaret had not slept at Clam Beach
the previous night.
"Not slept? What do you mean? Have you been keeping this from me all
these hours? Why did you not tell me at once?"
"Because you make such a fuss, mamma. It was as much as my peace for
all day was worth to disturb you."
"You take it coolly. You must know where she is?"
"No indeed, mamma. She was under your own wing when I saw her last.
You sat on one side of her, and Mr Petty on the other. If she has
broken away at last from such close _surveillance_, it is not very
surprising."
"Has your sister run away, my dear?" asked Mrs Wilkie across the table
of Lucy. Then, turning her eyes defiantly on the mother, with whom,
since their last set-to, she could scarcely be said to be on speaking
terms, she added, "I gave you warning, ma'am, about certain on-goings;
and ye were scarcely ceevil to me on the head of it. Who's right now?
I'd like to know."
"Whist, mother!" said her son, pulling at her gown under the table.
"Let people settle their own hash."
"They would have mixed my son up in their hash, and done for him, if
they could. I'll show them I see through them and their pretensions,
now when they're fand out, and know what a little-worth crew they
are."
Joseph Naylor overheard, and could not restrain a smile, which excited
the indignation of his sister-in-law almost beyond control.
"I remember your polite expressions, ma'am," she said; "but there are
distinctions which make a difference. The gentleman you then chose to
speak of disrespectfully, coupling his name with Miss Naylor's in a
most unwarrantable manner, is fifth son of a deputy-lieutenant and
Custos Rotulorum in Memicombshire, England. You have not been used to
meet gentlemen of his station, and had better not refer to them.
Ignorance becomes ridiculous when it forces itself into notice."
"The fifth son of a tirlie-wirlie, is he, ma'am? I think little of
that. I'd have ye know that my son has a tirlie-wirlie of his own, if
it's a cairidge ye mean. The fifth son of people with a cairidge isn't
much. He'd have to ride outside on the dickie beside the driver, I'm
thinking."
Mrs Naylor was dumb. It is useless to retort on people who do not, or
who will not, understand.
At that moment a telegram was brought to Joseph. He tore it open, read
it, and handed it to his sister-in-law.
"This is from Margaret," he whispered. "Control yourself, and do not
give the people room to snigger at your expense."
The telegram was dated Gorham, New Hampshire. It ran: "Married at
eleven this morning. Margaret Blount."
Mrs Naylor read, and but for the sudden flushing of her features,
controlled herself from any outward betrayal of displeasure. It is the
one unmixed good which comes of living in public, that people are
compelled to suppress their manifestations of feeling; and, driven by
stress of circumstances to seem calm, the more speedily become so
really. Reason, unimpeded by emotion, which is nourished on its own
manifestations, comes sooner to the rescue, and shows how few
miscarriages are worth the distress we are apt to give ourselves over
them. In pretending before observers to make light of a
disappointment, we involuntarily give heed to our own words, and come
to think less of it than otherwise we should have done. Mrs Naylor's
mind, instead of dwelling on her provocation, was forced to conceal
the wound from the impertinently curious, and thereby dividing itself
upon two views of the subject--the grievance and its concealment--was
less disturbed by either.
The first idea which came distinct to the surface, through her mental
perturbation, was an appreciation of her own good sense; and her good
fortune, in having boasted, immediately before having received this
news, of her son-in-law's high connections. Now that the young man was
indissolubly knotted to her family, and she must make the most of him,
the Custos Rotulorum, with his ancestral hall in Memicombshire, was
the sheet-anchor of his claim to consequence. If it was an ideal
claim, instead of the grossly real one she had desired for her
daughter's husband, it was infinitely finer in kind; and she prepared
to take it up, and brandish it vigorously, to cow and overpower
impressible minds, and suppress colonial pretension.
She began to feel quite imperial, after a little trying, and when
dinner was over, had come to feel that a Custos Rotulorum made an
infinitely finer father-in-law for her girl than all the judges in the
Dominion rolled into one could have done. When the ladies gathered
up-stairs, therefore, she played her best card, under the
circumstances, with quite a good heart; she showed them her telegram,
and claimed their congratulations. She talked effusively of "an old
attachment"--"two romantic children, who could not bring themselves to
profane the interchange of their holy vows, with the garish
vulgarities of orange-blossoms and Brussels lace, bride's-maids,
breakfast, and speechifying, but had resolved to go away by themselves
and be married in peace." "She had been persuaded to keep their secret
and say nothing." "They were away on their wedding tour, now; but she
was still under promise to reveal no more." "They might have gone to
California or to visit the Custos Rotulorum," she would not say which,
but she let it be inferred that it was England and the ancestral hall,
to which their happy steps were bent.
The ladies thus unexpectedly called on for congratulations paid them
at once--they could not help themselves; but they paid them perhaps a
little grudgingly, feeling injured at having been balked of the
preliminary tattle. Had it been sympathy and condolence which Mrs
Naylor claimed, they could have opened their hearts much more freely.
They could have mingled a tear or two quite comfortably with hers, and
felt deeply interested in the new sensation; but that two young people
should go away and get married, without telling anybody, and then that
it should turn out a right, proper, and desirable union, was treating
them very badly, in the dearth just then of pleasurable excitement.
Joseph Naylor was the only person who fully enjoyed the scene, as he
walked upon the gallery with Rose, and looked in through the open
windows. What a remarkable woman was this sister-in-law of his, to be
sure! and how little he had been aware of those reserves of strength
and quickness which she was now displaying to such good purpose!
Accustomed in the family circle to have her way, and to overbear
opposition with petulance, peevishness, indignation, or convenient ill
health, as best suited, it had not occurred to him that for once she
could act like a sensible woman and bravely accept the inevitable. He
had dreaded an explosion, a scene, perhaps a fainting-fit and general
commotion, when in helpless trepidation he had handed her that
telegram; and here she was, with a smiling face, claiming felicitation
on the overthrow of her plans and wishes, and actually taking credit
for a result which had worked itself out in defiance of her
opposition.
"There is not an acrobat in Barnum's circus," he said, "who could have
turned a somersault as neatly. I could not have believed our Susan
capable of so sudden a change of front. A woman of her talent and
resource is hid away and completely lost in a small place like Jones's
Landing."
Rose agreed with him, and was vastly interested in the whole affair.
She dwelt on it, recurred to the different points and stages,
discussed, analysed, and combed out every detail separately to its
greatest length. It gratified Joseph that she should concern herself
so warmly in his family affairs, but he would have been glad if her
interest had been sooner satisfied. She contrived that the
conversation should not progress, as it naturally would have done,
from Margaret's love-passages to their own. Even the night on
Fessenden's Island was not able, as Joseph had felt confident that it
would be, to withdraw her thoughts from the runaways to their own
tender affairs. When he endeavoured to transfer the interest, she
returned with renewed curiosity to ask where Margaret and Blount first
met, and from that digressed still further, to demand full particulars
of his circumstances, birth, and parentage. She was as charmingly
companionable as she always had been; Joseph loved and adored as he
always did; but he could not draw her on to the closer and more
personal topic on which he yearned to hold converse.
That topic--their engagement--was one to which this afternoon she had
an insuperable, and, as she told herself, an unreasonable repugnance
to reopen at the present moment. Come it must, eventually, and she
would welcome it; but not to-day. A shadow was upon her, the shadow of
Bertie Roe, an influence to which she was resolved that she would not
yield, but which yet had power to cast an unattractiveness and dimness
over all beside. She had broken with that man for ever, had she not?
but she had spoken with him, in dismissing him, and the converse of
all the world beside had lost its relish. She felt, but would not own
it. Had she not announced openly her new engagement? and was she, like
some poor-spirited slave, to break it off and go back, because her old
tyrant had chosen to lift his finger? What would her friends, the
world, the free-thinking and strong-minded who had applauded her
spirit, say to see her go back to bondage and resume her chains? She
chafed to think of it, and tried to lash herself into new anger
against her husband. And she had felt so strong in her resolve, all
through the bygone week! To think that a few words, and a little
pleading, should have weakened her like this! She was growing unworthy
of her former self. How dim and indistinct her wrongs had grown since
yesterday, when that sweet insidious voice had taken on itself to
explain them away! Why had she listened?... And until yesterday, the
sight of the woman he was always walking with had made her strong; but
that crouching figure under the tree, seen yesterday, who could fear
that? How feel jealous of aught so forlorn? There was a little triumph
in it, that Bertie should have been brought so low; but she missed the
tonic and strengthening influence which had been thus dispelled. She
was resolved to resist, to have done with Bertie Roe; but there was a
strange diffidence of the strength within her, which she would not
acknowledge to herself, but still was aware of, foreboding general
collapse.
Trying to keep up this waning strength, she worked hard at being
interested in Joseph and his family, especially in the family; that
was the easier subject of the two, and it avoided comparisons,
dangerous at this moment--comparison of years, of stature and physical
endowment, which told against him.
And so Joseph and Rose worked out this day in ostensible amity and
intimacy, but with an inward doubt burrowing and working like hidden
currents in spring beneath the ice, eating it away, and honeycombing
the solid mass, which still looks huge and immovable as ever; and will
continue so to seem, till comes the end, and with a crash the massive
structure crumbles and melts and disappears.