A FAMILY DINNER.
While this wild love-fever of Frederick’s had run its course, Nelly’s
little drama had also enacted itself, and the interview between Mrs.
Eastwood and Mr. Molyneux, Q.C., had taken place, so that the moment had
been an exciting one in the family story. The young people were absorbed
in their different adventures, and it was only the mother who felt, even
though she did not know, all that was going on, on either hand. She did
not know what it was which had moved Frederick so much out of his usual
composure, which had made him “engaged” and inaccessible to all family
invitations or arrangements during one entire week. He had never
mentioned Miss Batty or her beauty again, but he had been engaged every
evening, going out early and staying late, and making no allusion to
where he had been. Indeed during that period he had scarcely seen any of
the family, except his mother herself, who had waited to pour out his
coffee for him at breakfast, and who saw by his hurried manner and
self-absorbed looks that something more than ordinary must be going on.
But he had offered no confidences, and Mrs. Eastwood had not gone so far
as to ask for any, partly from pride, and partly from a compassionate
unwillingness to disturb him any more than he was already disturbed. The
time when she could inquire into his troubles and set them right was
over. But she was uneasy about him, not knowing what to think, anxious
and unhappy; and she was still more distinctly disturbed about the
Molyneux business, and the engagements which she might be forced into,
against her will and her judgment, on Nelly’s account. The shadow which
thus had come upon her overshadowed the whole house, as I have already
said. It irritated Ernest Molyneux, and it made Nelly unhappy. Nelly,
poor child, had never known what it was to have any cross influences in
her life before. She had never been pulled two ways, never divided in
her affections or her allegiance. Few people appreciate the difference
this makes in a girl’s life. She is taken suddenly in the midst of an
existence which is all tender, filial duty, or that sweet counterfeit of
filial duty which animates the child’s mind who has a large part in
deciding the will of the parent who guides her, and is unconsciously the
inspiration of the very laws she obeys. This had been Nelly’s case. She
and her mother had been as one soul--the one ruling, the other obeying,
but neither able to discriminate from which came the original impulse;
and now she felt herself suddenly placed in a position, if not of
antagonism to her mother, yet at least of tenderest sympathy and union
with one who declared himself so far her mother’s antagonist. This
curious turn and twist of circumstances made the girl giddy,--it gave an
uncertainty to all things, it confused her old ideas, the ideas which
she had held as unchangeable till the day before yesterday, when they
were suddenly undermined, and all her old gods made to totter in their
shrines.
“Your mother does not like me,” Molyneux said to her one day, when Mrs.
Eastwood, disturbed and worried by a communication from his father, had
been cold and distant to him. “It is always the way. She was nice enough
as long as I was only a young fellow dangling about the house; but as
soon as everything is settled, and you are ready to have me, Nelly, she
turns off at a tangent. Clearly, your mother does not like me----”
“How can you say so?” cried Nelly. “Oh, Ernest, as if it were
possible----”
“Quite possible,--indeed, quite common,” he said, shaking his head. “You
don’t know the world, darling, and I don’t wish you to; but when people
have to make sacrifices to establish their children, they don’t like it.
Nobody likes to have a sacrifice to make. I suppose I thought your
mother different, because she was your mother; but human nature is the
same everywhere,--though you, Nelly, Heaven be praised, have no
knowledge of the world----”
“Is it mamma you mean by the world?” said Nelly, disengaging herself
almost unconsciously from her lover’s arm.
“Don’t be vexed dear. Mothers are just like other people. When our
interests come to be in opposition to those of our nearest and
dearest----”
“How can mamma’s interests be in opposition to ours?” said Nelly, with
open eyes.
“Well, I suppose our parents have got to provide for us,” said Molyneux.
“They have got to part with so much, on one side and the other, to set
us up--and they don’t like it--naturally. When it comes to be our turn
we shall not like it either. There is always a struggle going on, though
your dear, innocent eyes don’t see it; we trying to get as much as we
can, they to give us as little as they can;--that is what makes your
mother look so glum at me.”
“We trying to get as much as we can,--they to give us as little as they
can?” repeated Nelly, with a dreamy wonder in her tone. She dwelt on the
words as if she were counting them, like beads. She had withdrawn,
quite involuntarily and unawares, from his side.
“I don’t want to vex you about it,” he said, drawing closer to her. “It
can’t be helped, and after it is settled, things will come right again.
You don’t know anything about business, and I don’t want you to know
about it----”
“I know all about mamma’s business,” said Nelly. She withdrew again with
a little impatience from his close approach. She fell amusing and
thinking, and made some excuse, soon after, to get away from him. She
was startled beyond measure in the straight-forwardness of a soul
unacquainted with business. Very strange to her was this unexpected
distinction and separation. Was it really possible that her mother’s
interests were opposite to her own, for the first time in her life? “We
trying to get as much as we can,--they to give us as little as they
can,” she said to herself, in the solitude of her room, putting the
fingers of one hand against those of the other, as if to count the
words. Nelly was bewildered,--her head was dizzy through this strange
whirlabout of heaven and earth,--the firm ground seemed failing beneath
her feet.
It was about this time that another person appeared on the family scene,
a man about whom none of the Eastwoods felt any particular interest, or
rather, against whom they had all a decided prejudice. This was John
Vane, a distant cousin of Innocent’s father, a squire in the north
country, with considerable, but poor estates, who had lived a wandering
life for some years, and who was considered by all who knew him
“eccentric,” to say the least. His true name was Reginald or Roland, or
something of a sentimental and ornamental description represented by the
letter R; but Society, which has a way of identifying character by this
simple means, called him John. He was a man of three or four and thirty,
with a brown complexion tanned by much exposure to wind and weather, and
a golden brown beard, which was the chief feature about him to a
stranger. His hair had worn off his temples, and he had a threatening of
baldness, as if the forest on his chin had drawn all his locks
downwards. His forehead was clear and open and white, in contrast with
the tanned and much-lined surface of the more exposed parts of his face.
He was by no means the nearest or even a near relation of Innocent, but
he had lost no time in seeking her out. He arrived on the very day when
this first touch of doubt and pain came into Nelly’s belief in her
lover; and it was by no means a happy household in which the new comer
appeared one bright spring morning shortly after the events we have been
telling. His mission was to ask what had become of his cousin’s child,
to ascertain in the most delicate way possible what was her position in
her aunt’s house, and to offer her, should that prove necessary, a
refuge in his own. He made this offer with so much grace and natural
kindness that Mrs. Eastwood’s prejudices against him fled like the
morning dew. She was prejudiced against everything (except poor
Innocent) that bore the name of Vane, and against this John Vane in
particular, whose father had been a man of very unsettled opinions, and
who was understood to have been badly brought up. Innocent, too, poor
child, had been very badly brought up, and Mrs. Eastwood shuddered at
the idea of what might follow if the one uninstructed nature was put
into the hands of the other. But Mr. John Vane had that sure passport to
a woman’s favour--a frank and open countenance, and a pair of smiling
eyes which met your gaze frankly. He made so pleasant an impression that
Mrs. Eastwood ended by inviting him to a very solemn dinner party which
was to take place at her house that evening--a dinner at which “the
Molyneuxes” were to be present, though the negotiations between Ernest’s
side and Nelly’s side were yet far from being completed. Major Railton,
who had been one of the invited guests, had felt his courage fail him at
the last moment, and had sent an excuse on account of his health. “Mr.
Vane is a kind of a connexion,” Mrs. Eastwood said, doubtfully, when she
explained the change to her son. Frederick, who was full of other
thoughts, made no objection, and Mr. Vane, who was not less pleased with
his new acquaintances than they were with him, accepted frankly. This
dinner-party was a very great event in the family; and though
dinner-parties are not generally exciting occurrences, I may perhaps be
pardoned, for the sake of the issues, if I dwell upon it a little. The
chief guests were the Molyneuxes--Mr. and Mrs. and Miss, the latter of
whom we may drop out of the present history, having already enough
people on our hands. They were both of opinion that Mrs. Eastwood had
“kept her eye upon” Ernest for years, and that Nelly had made “a dead
set” at him; and they were accordingly dignified and a little
condescending in their cordiality. Mr. and Mrs. Brotherton also formed
part of the company, along with two other of Mrs. Eastwood’s
advisers--Mr. Parchemin and Mrs. Everard; and the party was made up to
the number of sixteen (which was all that could be comfortably
accommodated at the Elms dinner table) by the presence of Sir Alexis
Longueville and his sister. In opposition to the selection of this
guest, Nelly had put forth the moral objections to him which her lover
had on a certain evening pressed so warmly upon her, but had found, to
her great amazement, that Ernest laughed at the whole matter, and
declared Longueville one of the best fellows going; while Mrs. Eastwood
silenced her with some indignation, declaring that she had known him for
twenty years, and would not have any old scandals raked up. Poor Nelly,
who knew nothing about the old scandals, but who felt the whole
responsibility thrown upon her, withdrew, hot with angry blushes, from
the discussion, feeling as if she had shown a shameful knowledge of the
evil reports of the past, which the poor child was, in fact, as ignorant
of as a baby. “We must forgive and forget,” even Ernest said to her.
“Don’t be such a terrible moralist, Nelly.” This, too, wounded poor
Nelly, in the ignorance and innocence of her youth.
The dinner went off as such dinners do everywhere. There was a great
display of all the Eastwood plate, and the meal itself lasted two hours
and a half, and included everything that was out of season, and all that
was most costly in the way of eating and drinking. Mrs. Eastwood, at the
head of her own table, with Sir Alexis on one side of her and Mr.
Molyneux on the other, tried her very best to feel no sort of opposition
to the latter, and to look as if nothing but family love and union was
symbolized by their meeting. Frederick, at the other end, with his head
full of Amanda Batty, endeavoured to give his best attention to the
gorgeous Mrs. Barclay and the dignified Mrs. Molyneux. He had his
Charles the First look upon him, and he was not judged severely by these
ladies, who thought him superior to the rest of the family, and very
probably worried by his mother, whom Mrs. Molyneux considered a scheming
and worldly person. The other members of the party had, no doubt, their
own cares; but their cares do not concern us greatly, except in so far
as Nelly was concerned, whose poor little heart was wounded and her mind
confused, and who, in her position of _fiancée_, felt this sort of
formal reception of her by her lover’s parents to suggest all kinds of
strange doubts and miseries, and to throw uncertainty instead of
security upon the bond which had been tied so tightly, yet so happily,
in the cold, half-frozen garden but a little while before. No doubt that
she loved Ernest Molyneux, or that his love made her perfectly happy,
had crossed her mind then. She had been as full of gentle bliss as a
girl could be, when she had stolen in with him into the drawing-room in
the firelight, frightened lest any one should see how he held her hand,
and yet unable to conceive how anything or any one in the world could be
ignorant of the new great flood of light and joy which had flooded earth
and heaven. In that beatific moment, however, no idea of settlements or
negotiations, or the suggestion that Ernest might have done better, or
that it was his business and hers to try to get as much as they could,
had entered into her mind. There are well-seasoned and justly-regulated
minds, even of twenty, which understand all these accessories as well as
the oldest of us, and have no nonsense about them, and are robust enough
to enter into the whole question “as a matter of business.” But Nelly
was not one of these. She had a great deal of nonsense about her. She
was shocked, chilled, brought to a stand suddenly, in the first outset
of her independent career. Her love seemed to have ceased to be real,
now that it was being talked about and struggled over, and Ernest,
Ernest himself----. She would not say, even in the depths of her own
heart, any more than this; but her poor little heart gave an
inarticulate cry when he opened up his philosophy to her with so much
confidence, and congratulated himself that she knew nothing of
business. Nelly did not know whether, perhaps, among the strange
confusions of this world, he might not be right. She saw no way out of
the maze. She did not know how she herself, if left to herself, could
have bettered it; but her instinctive sense of what was noble and
ignoble, lovely and unlovely, was deeply wounded. She was put out of
harmony with herself and every one. If life was so--if such gulfs were
ready to open under your feet at your very first step in it, was it
worth living? Such was the painful question, not yet put into words,
that breathed through poor Nelly’s heart.
Mr. John Vane was on one side of her, and Ernest on the other; but Mrs.
Everard, who was a great conversationalist, had taken possession of
young Molyneux, and was putting him through a catechism. Nelly did not
feel herself capable of talk, but the kind looks of her next neighbour
were comforting, and he was touched by her downcast, yet bright, face.
“Miss Eastwood,” he said, “may I guess at something? I am a stranger,
but I am a connexion. You know your mother admitted my claims. This is a
solemn family assembly to celebrate something that is to make your
happiness. Have I guessed rightly; and will you forgive me, and let me
make my congratulations too?”
Nelly looked up, blushing and bright and sorry, and very much tempted to
cry. “Oh, Mr. Vane, I can’t bear it,” she said.
“What, not the happiness? I could bear a great deal of it if it ever
came my way.”
“Has it never come your way?” said Nelly, looking at him wistfully. “But
I did not mean--the happiness. I have always been very happy. It is the
family assembly, and the talk, and the congratulations. If you don’t
know, you can’t think how they hurt, how they----”
“Take the bloom off?”
“I suppose that is it,” said Nelly, with a soft little sigh.
Vane, who had a great deal more experience than she gave him credit for,
looked past her at her lover, and concluded, on perfectly insufficient
grounds, that Molyneux was not worthy of Nelly. The ladies of Ernest’s
family were not only convinced of the fact that Nelly was quite unworthy
of _him_, but that Frederick also was really misplaced in such a family.
Why such ideas should be so readily entertained by the different halves
of humanity, I cannot tell. It was something in Nelly’s tone and
something in the cut of Ernest’s nose which decided Mr. Vane.
“And would it be impertinent of a stranger, who is a connexion, to ask
if it is all settled,” he said, “and when it is to be?”
“Nothing is settled,” said Nelly, with a deeper blush than ever; and
after a pause she turned to him with a despairing simplicity, which he
did not quite understand. “Mr. Vane,” she said, “I should like to ask
you something. You say it has never come your way. Yet you look as if
one might ask you things. Do you think that people, relations, those who
have been each other’s dearest friends--or more than friends--I mean,”
said Nelly, “one’s father or mother even--do you think they change to
you, when your interests are in opposition to theirs?”
“One’s father or mother?” said Vane, trying to follow her thought; “but
that must be so rare a case, Miss Eastwood.”
“You think so too?” said Nelly brightly, recovering herself in a moment.
“That is my opinion; but they tell me I know nothing of the world. How
can one’s interests be in opposition to those of one’s own people? Since
ever I have known anything, I have been taught the contrary. I am so
glad you think as I do.”
“But stop a little,” said Vane, “perhaps we are going too far. Suppose
we were to take an instance. Regan and Goneril felt their interests to
be in opposition to their father’s, and it did make a great change in
them. If we were to ask more than we ought from our nearest relation, it
would wound his sense of justice and his trust in us; even love might be
impaired. I have known men who threw themselves upon their friends to
save them from ruin, real or supposed, and to whom there was no change
of feeling. And I have known others who made demands upon the same
friends for no greater sacrifice, to whom it was given with a sore heart
and a deep sense of injury. All the difference depends upon the
circumstances.”
Nelly grew wistful again; she was not satisfied. “Tell me this, then,”
she said in a low voice, which he had to stoop to hear. “Is it natural
that we should be always trying how much we can get, and they how little
they can give?”
“Any one who told you so,” said Vane indignantly, “must have the lowest
and meanest conception”--then he caught Nelly’s eye with a mingled look
of fright and entreaty in it, which at the moment he could make nothing
of, but which touched some instinct in his mind more capable of action
than reason, and compelled him to change his tone. “I mean,” he said,
with a forced laugh, “that this is the conventional way in which we
speak in society, which sounds terrible but means nothing. It is the
fashionable cynical view, which we all pretend to take to hide the real
feeling, which it is not English to show. How didactic you have made me,
Miss Eastwood, and what a serious strain we have drifted into! I am
afraid you will never sit next to me again.”
“Indeed, I will, and like it,” said honest Nelly, smiling at him with
her heart in her eyes. It seemed to Nelly that here was a sort of big
brother, kinder than Frederick, wiser than Dick, who had suddenly come
to her aid to disentangle for her that ravelled skein which had troubled
her mind so much. She turned round to Ernest forthwith, and whispered
something to him with a sweet compunction, to make up for the injustice
she had done him in her heart. Mr. Vane, I am sorry to say, was not
moved with like sentiments. He gave a short, audible breath of
impatience through his nostrils, which he ought not to have done, and
glanced at young Molyneux over Nelly’s head, and said to himself,
“Confound the fellow!” I have observed that, towards a young man in
Ernest’s position, this is a common sentiment--with men.
Innocent was on her cousin’s other side. Mrs. Eastwood had hesitated
much about this, feeling that at sixteen, and with no education, the
girl ought not perhaps to be allowed to assist at a dinner party. But
Mr. Vane’s presence and the family character of the whole ceremony
decided her. It was a very poor pleasure to Innocent. She was dressed in
a black tulle dress, like nothing she had ever worn before, and which
seemed to transmogrify her and turn her into some one else. Nelly had
made a valiant effort to put up her hair, and give her something of the
aspect of a young lady of the period, but this even Mrs. Eastwood had
resisted, saying wisely, that if Innocent appeared with her hair hanging
on her shoulders, as she always wore it, it would be presumed at once
that she was “still in the schoolroom” (poor Innocent, who had never
been in the schoolroom in her life!), a girl not yet “out.” She answered
only “Yes” or “No” to the questions Vane put to her, and would have
stolen away from the drawing-room afterwards altogether if she had not
been detained by something like force. The great Mrs. Molyneux took
condescending notice of her, and plied her with a great many questions,
all actuated by an idea of which no one in the family had the smallest
conception. “I don’t doubt they neglect her shamefully,” she said to her
daughter, after she had ascertained that Innocent neither played, nor
sang, nor drew; that she had never been to school, nor had a governess,
nor masters, and that, in short, she knew nothing.
I am quite unable to tell why this discovery should have given pleasure
to Ernest’s mother, but it did so, and was remembered and made use of
afterwards in most unthought-of ways. But Innocent interested more
people than Mrs. Molyneux. When Sir Alexis came into the drawing-room
after dinner, he requested to be presented to the young stranger. “I
think I knew her father,” he said, and he went and sat by her, and did
his best to call forth some response. “Since he cannot have the one, he
is going to try for the other,” said Mrs. Barclay in Mrs. Eastwood’s
ear. But whatever his intentions or desires might be, he did not make
much of Innocent, who was frozen back into her old stupefied dulness by
the many strange faces and fresh appeals made to her. “You remember your
father?” said Sir Alexis, meaning to move her. “Oh, yes,” said Innocent,
but took little further interest in hearing about him. Perhaps, had it
been Niccolo, he might have moved her more.
“Has she all her faculties?” he asked, hesitating, of Nelly.
“Oh, yes, I think so. She has never been taught anything. She has not
got over her strangeness yet, and she does not care for any of us,” said
Nelly, “except perhaps----”
Here she paused, not venturing to add the name that came to her lips.
Young Molyneux laughed, and took up the words.
“Except, perhaps--yourself, do you mean? You made a wonderful picture
once of the cousin whom you expected; how she was to be the most
beautiful, clever, learned, accomplished of women, to throw everybody
else into the shade; and how, in self-defence, you would have to be
cruel to her, to banish her to the schoolroom----”
“That has come true,” said Nelly, smiling, “but it is the only thing.
She is not Aurora Leigh.”
“She has a beautiful face,” said Sir Alexis. They all looked at the girl
when he said so, for her beauty was not of a kind which struck every
beholder at the first glance. She was sitting quite by herself, in the
corner which she preferred, with her hands crossed upon her lap, and her
head half turned, following Frederick with an undivided gaze. She was
not conscious of any observation. She had eyes but for him alone.