Mrs. Poyntz was on her favourite seat by the window, and for a wonder,
not knitting--that classic task seemed done; but she was smoothing and
folding the completed work with her white comely hand, and smiling
over it, as if in complacent approval, when I entered the room. At the
fire-side sat the he-colonel inspecting a newly-invented barometer;
at another window, in the farthest recess of the room, stood Miss Jane
Poyntz, with a young gentleman whom I had never before seen, but
who turned his eyes full upon me with a haughty look as the servant
announced my name. He was tall, well proportioned, decidedly handsome,
but with that expression of cold and concentred self-esteem in his
very attitude, as well as his countenance, which makes a man of merit
unpopular, a man without merit ridiculous.
The he-colonel, always punctiliously civil, rose from his seat, shook
hands with me cordially, and said, “Coldish weather to-day; but we
shall have rain to-morrow. Rainy seasons come in cycles. We are about to
commence a cycle of them with heavy showers.” He sighed, and returned to
his barometer.
Miss Jane bowed to me graciously enough, but was evidently a little
confused,--a circumstance which might well attract my notice, for I had
never before seen that high-bred young lady deviate a hairsbreadth from
the even tenor of a manner admirable for a cheerful and courteous ease,
which, one felt convinced, would be unaltered to those around her if an
earthquake swallowed one up an inch before her feet.
The young gentleman continued to eye me loftily, as the heir-apparent to
some celestial planet might eye an inferior creature from a half-formed
nebula suddenly dropped upon his sublime and perfected, star.
Mrs. Poyntz extended to me two fingers, and said frigidly, “Delighted to
see you again! How kind to attend so soon to my note!”
Motioning me to a seat beside her, she here turned to her husband, and
said, “Poyntz, since a cycle of rain begins tomorrow, better secure your
ride to-day. Take these young people with you. I want to talk with Dr.
Fenwick.”
The colonel carefully put away his barometer, and saying to his
daughter, “Come!” went forth. Jane followed her father; the young
gentleman followed Jane.
The reception I had met chilled and disappointed me. I felt that Mrs.
Poyntz was changed, and in her change the whole house seemed changed.
The very chairs looked civilly unfriendly, as if preparing to turn their
backs on me. However, I was not in the false position of an intruder; I
had been summoned; it was for Mrs. Poyntz to speak first, and I waited
quietly for her to do so.
She finished the careful folding of her work, and then laid it at rest
in the drawer of the table at which she sat. Having so done, she turned
to me, and said,--
“By the way, I ought to have introduced to you my young guest, Mr.
Ashleigh Sumner. You would like him. He has talents,--not showy, but
solid. He will succeed in public life.”
“So that young man is Mr. Ashleigh Sumner? I do not wonder that Miss
Ashleigh rejected him.”
I said this, for I was nettled, as well as surprised, at the coolness
with which a lady who had professed a friendship for me mentioned that
fortunate young gentleman, with so complete an oblivion of all the
antecedents that had once made his name painful to my ear.
In turn, my answer seemed to nettle Mrs. Poyntz.
“I am not so sure that she did reject; perhaps she rather misunderstood
him; gallant compliments are not always proposals of marriage. However
that be, his spirits were not much damped by Miss Ashleigh’s disdain,
nor his heart deeply smitten by her charms; for he is now very happy,
very much attached to another young lady, to whom he proposed three
days ago, at Lady Delafield’s, and not to make a mystery of what all our
little world will know before tomorrow, that young lady is my daughter
Jane.”
“Were I acquainted with Mr. Sumner, I should offer to him my sincere
congratulations.”
Mrs. Poyntz resumed, without heeding a reply more complimentary to Miss
Jane than to the object of her choice,--
“I told you that I meant Jane to marry a rich country gentleman, and
Ashleigh Sumner is the very country gentleman I had then in my thoughts.
He is cleverer and more ambitious than I could have hoped; he will be a
minister some day, in right of his talents, and a peer, if he wishes it,
in right of his lands. So that matter is settled.”
There was a pause, during which my mind passed rapidly through links
of reminiscence and reasoning, which led me to a mingled sentiment of
admiration for Mrs. Poyntz as a diplomatist and of distrust for Mrs.
Poyntz as a friend. It was now clear why Mrs. Poyntz, before so little
disposed to approve my love, had urged me at once to offer my hand to
Lilian, in order that she might depart affianced and engaged to the
house in which she would meet Mr. Ashleigh Sumner. Hence Mrs. Poyntz’s
anxiety to obtain all the information I could afford her of the sayings
and doings at Lady Haughton’s; hence, the publicity she had so suddenly
given to my engagement; hence, when Mr. Sumner had gone away a rejected
suitor, her own departure from L----; she had seized the very moment
when a vain and proud man, piqued by the mortification received from
one lady, falls the easier prey to the arts which allure his suit to
another. All was so far clear to me. And I--was my self-conceit less
egregious and less readily duped than that of yon glided popinjay’s!
How skilfully this woman had knitted me into her work with the noiseless
turn of her white hands! and yet, forsooth, I must vaunt the superior
scope of my intellect, and plumb all the fountains of Nature,--I, who
could not fathom the little pool of this female schemer’s mind!
But that was no time for resentment to her or rebuke to myself. She was
now the woman who could best protect and save from slander my innocent,
beloved Lilian. But how approach that perplexing subject?
Mrs. Poyntz approached it, and with her usual decision of purpose, which
bore so deceitful a likeness to candour of mind.
“But it was not to talk of my affairs that I asked you to call, Allen
Fenwick.” As she uttered my name, her voice softened, and her manner
took that maternal, caressing tenderness which had sometimes amused and
sometimes misled me. “No, I do not forget that you asked me to be your
friend, and I take without scruple the license of friendship. What are
these stories that I have heard already about Lilian Ashleigh, to whom
you were once engaged?”
“To whom I am still engaged.”
“Is it possible? Oh, then, of course the stories I have heard are all
false. Very likely; no fiction in scandal ever surprises me. Poor dear
Lilian, then, never ran away from her mother’s house?”
I smothered the angry pain which this mode of questioning caused me; I
knew how important it was to Lilian to secure to her the countenance
and support of this absolute autocrat; I spoke of Lilian’s long previous
distemper of mind; I accounted for it as any intelligent physician,
unacquainted with all that I could not reveal, would account. Heaven
forgive me for the venial falsehood, but I spoke of the terrible charge
against myself as enough to unhinge for a time the intellect of a girl
so acutely sensitive as Lilian; I sought to create that impression as to
the origin of all that might otherwise seem strange; and in this state
of cerebral excitement she had wandered from home--but alone. I had
tracked every step of her way; I had found and restored her to her home.
A critical delirium had followed, from which she now rose, cured in
health, unsuspicious that there could be a whisper against her name. And
then, with all the eloquence I could command, and in words as adapted as
I could frame them to soften the heart of a woman, herself a mother, I
implored Mrs. Poyntz’s aid to silence all the cruelties of calumny, and
extend her shield over the child of her own early friend.
When I came to an end, I had taken, with caressing force, Mrs. Poyntz’s
reluctant hands in mine. There were tears in my voice, tears in my eyes.
And the sound of her voice in reply gave me hope, for it was unusually
gentle. She was evidently moved. The hope was soon quelled.
“Allen Fenwick,” she said, “you have a noble heart; I grieve to see how
it abuses your reason. I cannot aid Lilian Ashleigh in the way you ask.
Do not start back so indignantly. Listen to me as patiently as I have
listened to you. That when you brought back the unfortunate young
woman to her poor mother, her mind was disordered, and became yet more
dangerously so, I can well believe; that she is now recovered, and
thinks with shame, or refuses to think at all, of her imprudent flight,
I can believe also; but I do not believe, the World cannot believe, that
she did not, knowingly and purposely, quit her mother’s roof, and in
quest of that young stranger so incautiously, so unfeelingly admitted
to her mother’s house during the very time you were detained on the
most awful of human accusations. Every one in the town knows that Mr.
Margrave visited daily at Mrs. Ashleigh’s during that painful period;
every one in the town knows in what strange out-of-the-way place this
young man had niched himself; and that a yacht was bought, and lying in
wait there. What for? It is said that the chaise in which you brought
Miss Ashleigh back to her home was hired in a village within an easy
reach of Mr. Margrave’s lodging--of Mr. Margrave’s yacht. I rejoice that
you saved the poor girl from ruin; but her good name is tarnished; and
if Anne Ashleigh, whom I sincerely pity, asks me my advice, I can but
give her this: ‘Leave L----, take your daughter abroad; and if she
is not to marry Mr. Margrave, marry her as quietly and as quickly as
possible to some foreigner.’”
“Madam! madam! this, then, is your friendship to her--to me! Oh, shame
on you to insult thus an affianced husband! Shame on me ever to have
thought you had a heart!”
“A heart, man!” she exclaimed, almost fiercely, springing up, and
startling me with the change in her countenance and voice. “And little
you would have valued, and pitilessly have crushed this heart, if I had
suffered myself to show it to you! What right have you to reproach me?
I felt a warm interest in your career, an unusual attraction in your
conversation and society. Do you blame me for that, or should I blame
myself? Condemned to live amongst brainless puppets, my dull occupation
to pull the strings that moved them, it was a new charm to my life
to establish friendship and intercourse with intellect and spirit
and courage. Ah! I understand that look, half incredulous, half
inquisitive.”
“Inquisitive, no; incredulous, yes! You desired my friendship, and how
does your harsh judgment of my betrothed wife prove either to me or to
her mother, whom you have known from your girlhood, the first duty of a
friend,--which is surely not that of leaving a friend’s side the moment
that he needs countenance in calumny, succour in trouble!”
“It is a better duty to prevent the calumny and avert the trouble. Leave
aside Anne Ashleigh, a cipher that I can add or abstract from my sum
of life as I please. What is my duty to yourself? It is plain. It is to
tell you that your honour commands you to abandon all thoughts of Lilian
Ashleigh as your wife. Ungrateful that you are! Do you suppose it was no
mortification to my pride of woman and friend, that you never approached
me in confidence except to ask my good offices in promoting your
courtship to another; no shock to the quiet plans I had formed as to
our familiar though harmless intimacy, to hear that you were bent on a
marriage in which my friend would be lost to me?”
“Not lost! not lost! On the contrary, the regard I must suppose you had
for Lilian would have been a new link between our homes.”
“Pooh! Between me and that dreamy girl there could have been no
sympathy, there could have grown up no regard. You would have been
chained to your fireside, and--and--but no matter. I stifled my
disappointment as soon as I felt it,--stifled it, as all my life I
have stifled that which either destiny or duty--duty to myself as to
others--forbids me to indulge. Ah, do not fancy me one of the weak
criminals who can suffer a worthy liking to grow into a debasing love! I
was not in love with you, Allen Fenwick.”
“Do you think I was ever so presumptuous a coxcomb as to fancy it?”
“No,” she said, more softly; “I was not so false to my household ties
and to my own nature. But there are some friendships which are as
jealous as love. I could have cheerfully aided you in any choice which
my sense could have approved for you as wise; I should have been pleased
to have found in such a wife my most intimate companion. But that silly
child!--absurd! Nevertheless, the freshness and enthusiasm of your love
touched me; you asked my aid, and I gave it. Perhaps I did believe
that when you saw more of Lilian Ashleigh you would be cured of a fancy
conceived by the eye--I should have known better what dupes the wisest
men can be to the witcheries of a fair face and eighteen! When I found
your illusion obstinate, I wrenched myself away from a vain regret,
turned to my own schemes and my own ambition, and smiled bitterly to
think that, in pressing you to propose so hastily to Lilian, I made your
blind passion an agent in my own plans. Enough of this. I speak thus
openly and boldly to you now, because now I have not a sentiment that
can interfere with the dispassionate soundness of my counsels. I repeat,
you cannot now marry Lilian Ashleigh; I cannot take my daughter to visit
her; I cannot destroy the social laws that I myself have set in my petty
kingdom.”
“Be it as you will. I have pleaded for her while she is still Lilian
Ashleigh. I plead for no one to whom I have once given my name. Before
the woman whom I have taken from the altar, I can place, as a shield
sufficient, my strong breast of man. Who has so deep an interest in
Lilian’s purity as I have? Who is so fitted to know the exact truth
of every whisper against her? Yet when I, whom you admit to have some
reputation for shrewd intelligence,--I, who tracked her way,--I, who
restored her to her home,--when I, Allen Fenwick, am so assured of her
inviolable innocence in thought as in deed, that I trust my honour to
her keeping,--surely, surely, I confute the scandal which you yourself
do not believe, though you refuse to reject and to annul it?”
“Do not deceive yourself, Allen Fenwick,” said she, still standing
beside me, her countenance now hard and stern. “Look where I stand, I am
the World! The World, not as satirists depreciate, or as optimists extol
its immutable properties, its all-persuasive authority. I am the World!
And my voice is the World’s voice when it thus warns you. Should you
make this marriage, your dignity of character and position would be
gone! If you look only to lucre and professional success, possibly they
may not ultimately suffer. You have skill, which men need; their need
may still draw patients to your door and pour guineas into your purse.
But you have the pride, as well as the birth of a gentleman, and the
wounds to that pride will be hourly chafed and never healed. Your strong
breast of man has no shelter to the frail name of woman. The World, in
its health, will look down on your wife, though its sick may look up
to you. This is not all. The World, in its gentlest mood of indulgence,
will say compassionately, ‘Poor man! how weak, and how deceived! What an
unfortunate marriage!’ But the World is not often indulgent,--it looks
most to the motives most seen on the surface. And the World will more
frequently say, ‘No; much too clever a man to be duped! Miss Ashleigh
had money. A good match to the man who liked gold better than honour.’”
I sprang to my feet, with difficulty suppressing my rage; and,
remembering it was a woman who spoke to me, “Farewell, madam,” said
I, through my grinded teeth. “Were you, indeed, the Personation of The
World, whose mean notions you mouth so calmly, I could not disdain
you more.” I turned to the door, and left her still standing erect and
menacing, the hard sneer on her resolute lip, the red glitter in her
remorseless eye.