The Party at Custins Is Broken Up
The message was given to Lady Mary after so solemn a fashion that she
was sure some important communication was to be made to her. Her mind
at that moment had been filled with her new friend's story. She felt
that she required some time to meditate before she could determine
what she herself would wish; but when she was going to her own room,
in order that she might think it over, she was summoned to Lady
Cantrip. "My dear," said the Countess, "I wish you to do something to
oblige me."
"Of course I will."
"Lord Popplecourt wants to speak to you."
"Who?"
"Lord Popplecourt."
"What can Lord Popplecourt have to say to me?"
"Can you not guess? Lord Popplecourt is a young nobleman, standing
very high in the world, possessed of ample means, just in that
position in which it behoves such a man to look about for a wife."
Lady Mary pressed her lips together, and clenched her two hands. "Can
you not imagine what such a gentleman may have to say?" Then there
was a pause, but she made no immediate answer. "I am to tell you, my
dear, that your father would approve of it."
"Approve of what?"
"He approves of Lord Popplecourt as a suitor for your hand."
"How can he?"
"Why not, Mary? Of course he has made it his business to ascertain
all particulars as to Lord Popplecourt's character and property."
"Papa knows that I love somebody else."
"My dear Mary, that is all vanity."
"I don't think that papa can want to see me married to a man when he
knows that with all my heart and soul--"
"Oh Mary!"
"When he knows," continued Mary, who would not be put down, "that I
love another man with all my heart. What will Lord Popplecourt say if
I tell him that? If he says anything to me, I shall tell him. Lord
Popplecourt! He cares for nothing but his coal-mines. Of course, if
you bid me see him I will; but it can do no good. I despise him, and
if he troubles me I shall hate him. As for marrying him,--I would
sooner die this minute."
After this Lady Cantrip did not insist on the interview. She
expressed her regret that things should be as they were,--explained
in sweetly innocent phrases that in a certain rank of life young
ladies could not always marry the gentlemen to whom their fancies
might attach them, but must, not unfrequently, postpone their
youthful inclinations to the will of their elders,--or in less
delicate language, that though they might love in one direction they
must marry in another; and then expressed a hope that her dear Mary
would think over these things and try to please her father. "Why does
he not try to please me?" said Mary. Then Lady Cantrip was obliged to
see Lord Popplecourt, a necessity which was a great nuisance to her.
"Yes;--she understands what you mean. But she is not prepared for it
yet. You must wait awhile."
"I don't see why I am to wait."
"She is very young,--and so are you, indeed. There is plenty of
time."
"There is somebody else I suppose."
"I told you," said Lady Cantrip, in her softest voice, "that there
has been a dream across her path."
"It's that Tregear!"
"I am not prepared to mention names," said Lady Cantrip, astonished
that he should know so much. "But indeed you must wait."
"I don't see it, Lady Cantrip."
"What can I say more? If you think that such a girl as Lady Mary
Palliser, the daughter of the Duke of Omnium, possessed of fortune,
beauty, and every good gift, is to come like a bird to your call, you
will find yourself mistaken. All that her friends can do for you will
be done. The rest must remain with yourself." During that evening
Lord Popplecourt endeavoured to make himself pleasant to one of the
FitzHoward young ladies, and on the next morning he took his leave of
Custins.
"I will never interfere again in reference to anybody else's child as
long as I live," Lady Cantrip said to her husband that night.
Lady Mary was very much tempted to open her heart to Miss Boncassen.
It would be delightful to her to have a friend; but were she to
engage Miss Boncassen's sympathies on her behalf, she must of course
sympathise with Miss Boncassen in return. And what if, after all,
Silverbridge were not devoted to the American beauty! What if it
should turn out that he was going to marry Lady Mabel Grex! "I
wish you would call me Isabel," her friend said to her. "It is so
odd,--since I have left New York I have never heard my name from any
lips except father's and mother's."
"Has not Silverbridge ever called you by your Christian name?"
"I think not. I am sure he never has." But he had, though it had
passed by her at the moment without attention. "It all came from
him so suddenly. And yet I expected it. But it was too sudden for
Christian names and pretty talk. I do not even know what his name
is."
"Plantagenet;--but we always call him Silverbridge."
"Plantagenet is very much prettier. I shall always call him
Plantagenet. But I recall that. You will not remember that against
me?"
"I will remember nothing that you do not wish."
"I mean that if,--if all the grandeurs of all the Pallisers could
consent to put up with poor me, if heaven were opened to me with a
straight gate, so that I could walk out of our republic into your
aristocracy with my head erect, with the stars and stripes waving
proudly round me till I had been accepted into the shelter of the
Omnium griffins,--then I would call him--"
"There's one Palliser would welcome you."
"Would you, dear? Then I will love you so dearly. May I call you
Mary?"
"Of course you may."
"Mary is the prettiest name under the sun. But Plantagenet is so
grand! Which of the kings did you branch off from?"
"I know nothing about it. From none of them, I should think. There is
some story about a Sir Guy who was a king's friend. I never trouble
myself about it. I hate aristocracy."
"Do you, dear?"
"Yes," said Mary, full of her own grievances. "It is an abominable
bondage, and I do not see that it does any good at all."
"I think it is so glorious," said the American. "There is no such
mischievous nonsense in all the world as equality. That is what
father says. What men ought to want is liberty."
"It is terrible to be tied up in a small circle," said the Duke's
daughter.
"What do you mean, Lady Mary?"
"I thought you were to call me Mary. What I mean is this. Suppose
that Silverbridge loves you better than all the world."
"I hope he does. I think he does."
"And suppose he cannot marry you, because of his--aristocracy?"
"But he can."
"I thought you were saying yourself--"
"Saying what? That he could not marry me! No, indeed! But that under
certain circumstances I would not marry him. You don't suppose that
I think he would be disgraced? If so I would go away at once, and
he should never again see my face or hear my voice. I think myself
good enough for the best man God ever made. But if others think
differently, and those others are so closely concerned with him,
and would be so closely concerned with me, as to trouble our joint
lives,--then will I neither subject him to such sorrow nor will I
encounter it myself."
"It all comes from what you call aristocracy."
"No, dear;--but from the prejudices of an aristocracy. To tell the
truth, Mary, the more difficult a place is to get into, the more the
right of going in is valued. If everybody could be a Duchess and a
Palliser, I should not perhaps think so much about it."
"I thought it was because you loved him."
"So I do. I love him entirely. I have said not a word of that to
him;--but I do, if I know at all what love is. But if you love a
star, the pride you have in your star will enhance your love. Though
you know that you must die of your love, still you must love your
star."
And yet Mary could not tell her tale in return. She could not show
the reverse picture;--that she being a star was anxious to dispose of
herself after the fashion of poor human rushlights. It was not that
she was ashamed of her love, but that she could not bring herself to
yield altogether in reference to the great descent which Silverbridge
would have to make.
On the day after this,--the last day of the Duke's sojourn at
Custins, the last also of the Boncassens' visit,--it came to pass
that the Duke and Mr. Boncassen, with Lady Mary and Isabel, were all
walking in the woods together. And it so happened when they were at
a little distance from the house, each of the girls was walking with
the other girl's father. Isabel had calculated what she would say to
the Duke should a time for speaking come to her. She could not tell
him of his son's love. She could not ask his permission. She could
not explain to him all her feelings, or tell him what she thought of
her proper way of getting into heaven. That must come afterwards if
it should ever come at all. But there was something that she could
tell. "We are so different from you," she said, speaking of her own
country.
"And yet so like," said the Duke, smiling;--"your language, your
laws, your habits!"
"But still there is such a difference! I do not think there is a man
in the whole Union more respected than father."
"I dare say not."
"Many people think that if he would only allow himself to be put in
nomination, he might be the next president."
"The choice, I am sure, would do your country honour."
"And yet his father was a poor labourer who earned his bread among
the shipping at New York. That kind of thing would be impossible
here."
"My dear young lady, there you wrong us."
"Do I?"
"Certainly! A Prime Minister with us might as easily come from the
same class."
"Here you think so much of rank. You are--a Duke."
"But a Prime Minister can make a Duke; and if a man can raise himself
by his own intellect to that position, no one will think of his
father or his grandfather. The sons of merchants have with us been
Prime Ministers more than once, and no Englishmen ever were more
honoured among their countrymen. Our peerage is being continually
recruited from the ranks of the people, and hence it gets its
strength."
"Is it so?"
"There is no greater mistake than to suppose that inferiority of
birth is a barrier to success in this country."
She listened to this and to much more on the same subject with
attentive ears,--not shaken in her ideas as to the English
aristocracy in general, but thinking that she was perhaps learning
something of his own individual opinions. If he were more liberal
than others, on that liberality might perhaps be based her own
happiness and fortune.
He, in all this, was quite unconscious of the working of her mind.
Nor in discussing such matters generally did he ever mingle his own
private feelings, his own pride of race and name, his own ideas of
what was due to his ancient rank with the political creed by which
his conduct in public life was governed. The peer who sat next to him
in the House of Lords, whose grandmother had been a washerwoman and
whose father an innkeeper, was to him every whit as good a peer as
himself. And he would as soon sit in counsel with Mr. Monk, whose
father had risen from a mechanic to be a merchant, as with any
nobleman who could count ancestors against himself. But there was an
inner feeling in his bosom as to his own family, his own name, his
own children, and his own personal self, which was kept altogether
apart from his grand political theories. It was a subject on which
he never spoke; but the feeling had come to him as a part of his
birthright. And he conceived that it would pass through him to his
children after the same fashion. It was this which made the idea of
a marriage between his daughter and Tregear intolerable to him, and
which would operate as strongly in regard to any marriage which
his son might contemplate. Lord Grex was not a man with whom he
would wish to form any intimacy. He was, we may say, a wretched
unprincipled old man, bad all round; and such the Duke knew him to
be. But the blue blood and the rank were there; and as the girl was
good herself, he would have been quite contented that his son should
marry the daughter of Lord Grex. That one and the same man should
have been in one part of himself so unlike the other part,--that he
should have one set of opinions so contrary to another set,--poor
Isabel Boncassen did not understand.