MRS. FREDERICK.
The evening of the day on which the above incidents occurred was that of
a periodical banquet, feared and staved off as long as possible by all
the Eastwoods. Since the time of Frederick’s marriage it had been
considered necessary that he and his wife should be invited to dinner
formally from time to time, in order that it might be visible to the
world and “Mrs. Frederick’s family” that full honour was done to her.
Nelly and Mrs. Eastwood had made a great effort to adopt Amanda, if not
into their hearts, at least into their society, after the terrible event
was actually accomplished which made her their daughter and sister. But
I need not say that this was a very hopeless attempt, and that as
familiar companionship gradually failed between people who resembled
each other so little, the periodical dinner gradually gained importance
as the only practicable way of keeping up “a proper intercourse.” Mrs.
Frederick had come to London with very great ideas. She had hoped for
nothing less than an entry into the fashionable world, and all the glory
of associating with lords and ladies. The visits she received from the
ladies of Mrs. Eastwood’s circle disgusted and disappointed her. What!
Marry and come to London for no better purpose than to be visited by
ladies from the suburbs, who lived there always--ladies with no better
title than Mrs.; some of them, like Mrs. Eastwood herself, paying their
visits in flys, or in the plainest of little broughams, no better than a
fly. Visions of splendid vehicles, with embroidered hammercloths and
celestial flunkeys, had entranced Amanda’s imagination. The Eastwoods
were county people at Sterborne--they were a baronet’s family--magnates
in the neighbourhood; and the beauty had no means of realizing that a
country baronet is no great personage in London, much less a country
baronet’s cousin. The disappointment was bitter, and she was not the
woman to conceal it. Gradually, however, she fell into a kind of
society, or to use her own words, formed a circle, which pleased her
well enough. This consisted chiefly of the men who had been her father’s
visitors in former days, several of whom had handles to their names.
They were not as a general rule much credit to know, but they suited
Amanda better than the Mrs. Everards, and other humdrum persons, who had
welcomed her first to her new position. When she had yawned through one
or two dinner parties, painfully got up for Mrs. Eastwood’s sake, to
make the best of a bad business, by the society which frequented The
Elms, Amanda had declared her determination to have nothing more to do
with “Frederick’s old-fashioned set.” They were not much in sympathy
with her, to tell the truth; and dinners at Richmond, with Lord
Hunterston and his kind in attendance, were a great deal more to her
liking. Amanda held, in fact, the opinion which poor little Innocent had
expressed innocently as a reflection of the sentiments of her father.
She disliked women. They were all jealous of her beauty, she believed;
they were her critics or her rivals--never her friends; spite was their
chief characteristic; envy their main sentiment. The men of Amanda’s set
were of her opinion--so are a great many clever persons, it must be
allowed--at least, in books. Therefore it is not to be supposed that
Amanda looked forward with more distinct gratification than that felt by
the ladies at The Elms to her periodical dinner. She put on her
handsomest dresses and her finest talk to dazzle them, and she made it a
subject for her peculiar wit for some time before and after.
“I am going to dine with my old mother-in-law,” she would say to the
young men, few in number at this season of the year, who filled her
little drawing-room in the afternoon. “Such a set of old guys she has
about her, to be sure. Why she should insist upon having me, I can’t
imagine, for she hates me, of course. But duty before everything. I
shall have to go.”
“Why should you have to go?” said one. “And by Jove, I’ll come to-morrow
to hear all about it!” said another. The lively sympathy of this chorus
did Mrs. Frederick good.
“Oh, you shall hear the whole account,” she said. “It’s like Noah’s
Ark. There is the regular clergyman, and some old fogies of lawyers, and
a horrible man called John Vane----”
“Oh, come, Mrs. Eastwood, John Vane’s no end of a good fellow. I know
him as well as I know myself,” said one of the interlocutors.
“That may be--but he ain’t a good fellow at The Elms. The Elms! only
fancy. Doesn’t it sound like Hampstead Heath? He is related to the mad
girl I told you of--and he’s after my prim little puss of a
sister-in-law, in a quiet way; for she is engaged, if you please, and
oh! does give herself such airs on the strength of it. But the women!
You should see the women! In old silks and satins that belonged to their
grandmothers, with turbans and I don’t know what--all looking as if they
could eat me.”
“That, of course,” said one of Amanda’s court, with a laugh.
“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Frederick, giggling slightly in response; “and
to hear them lay down the law! what one should do, and what one should
not do. And, then, mamma-in-law herself! But there are some things too
dreadful to be talked about. Mothers-in-law are one of these things.
Tell me about Hurlingham, or something pleasant. If I go on thinking of
what’s before me, I shall die.”
Thus it will be seen the dispositions of Mrs. Frederick were little
likely to promote harmony. On the other hand, Mrs. Eastwood and Nelly
had their private conference, which was not much more hopeful.
“Try to avoid unpleasant subjects,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “Talk of
Brighton, and that sort of thing, Nelly. Or stay, as they have been
abroad for their holiday, get her to talk about Switzerland. That must
be a safe subject. She will think it is fine to talk about Switzerland,
as she was never there before; and keep her off her grievances, if
possible. Frederick looks so black when she begins; poor Frederick, how
he is changed!”
Nelly made no response on this point, for she was not so deeply
convinced as was her mother that Frederick had been a great deal “nicer”
before he was married. This is, I am sorry to say, a very common opinion
among a man’s female relations. But Nelly had not been so much deluded
about the “niceness” of her brother in his previous state as many
sisters happily are. She maintained a prudent silence so far as
Frederick was concerned.
“If I try to keep her off her grievances, you must try to keep her off
Innocent, mamma,” said Nelly; and this was the bargain with which they
concluded. I am not sure that Mrs. Eastwood was quite right in her
selection of guests to meet Mrs. Frederick. Had she invited Sir Alexis,
that imposing person might have kept her in order; but what did Amanda
care for Sir Timothy Doul, who had been Governor of Barbadoes, or for
Mr. Parchemin, though he was a great lawyer?--any more than she would
have done for great poets and such people, in distinction to the really
great, the dukes and countesses for whom her soul longed. Sir Timothy
and Lady Doul were the only strangers present on this occasion, for, as
the reader is aware, Mr. Parchemin was one of Mrs. Eastwood’s
councillors. Ernest Molyneux had failed at the last moment, and had been
hurriedly replaced by Mr. Vane, who was always ready to do a kind
action, and who of late had been a great deal about The Elms. Molyneux
objected much to meet Mrs. Frederick. Vane objected to nothing. Perhaps
the difference lay in the fact that one of the men had attained all he
wanted, and was no longer anxious about Nelly’s favour, but considered
it her duty to please him; whereas the other, foreseeing the possibility
of a catastrophe, felt himself (though despairingly) on his promotion,
and deemed it wise to be on the spot, in order that if anything offered
he might have full advantage of the chance. This, I fear, was Mr. Vane’s
reason for keeping so much in the foreground. It is impossible to
describe the use he was at The Elms. He was never out of temper, and
Ernest was very often out of temper. He was satisfied with all the
arrangements made by the ladies, and Ernest found fault continually.
Nelly, with a guilty sense of treachery in her mind, had felt herself
turn to the man who was “a connexion” for rest and sympathy, when she
could not turn to her lover. This was a very terrible state of affairs,
but no one was quite conscious how far it had gone.
Mrs. Frederick made her appearance in a dress of pink silk, with a train
almost a yard long. Her beautiful shoulders were bare, and her arms. Her
hair was dressed in the most elaborate way which an excited hairdresser
could devise; a soft little curling fringe of it half covered her low
but white forehead, and great golden billows rose above, increasing at
once her height and the size of her head. All the glow of colour, all
the roundness of outline, all the flush of physical beauty which had
maddened Frederick, remained undimmed and undiminished; but Frederick
stalked in behind her like a black shadow, gloomy, disappointed, dismal,
more like Charles I. than ever. Wherever he went, all the ladies were
sorry for Frederick. Poor fellow, he had made a mistake in his marriage,
and how he felt it! He writhed when his Amanda began to talk fine, and
to display her knowledge of great people. He looked at her morosely
whenever she opened her lips, and followed her into the room with a
gloom upon his countenance which here he did not think it necessary to
conceal. His mother at least had forgiven all the faults that Frederick
had ever committed against her, in consideration of his present
sufferings. The fact that he was discontented with the toy for which he
had paid so dear (and for which, alas! Mrs. Eastwood, too, was paying
dear), seemed to cover all his previous sins. Had he put a better face
upon it, and endured cheerfully the doom which he had brought upon
himself, his mother, and womankind in general, would have thought less
well of him; they would have concluded that he was happy, and would have
despised him; but they were sorry for him now, and elevated him to the
rank of a martyr, in consideration of his gloom and disgust. Nelly was
almost the only rebel against this universal tenderness.
“He married to please himself,” said Nelly; “he ought to make the best
of it now, and not the worst. It is mean of him to pose in this gloomy
way. I should like to shake him,” cried the impetuous girl.
“Nelly, don’t be so hard-hearted,” her mother would say, with piteous
looks.
Thus Frederick was generally successful in his gloom--at least among the
feminine half of society. He came in behind Amanda’s train, which he
looked at with disgust, as it curled about his foot. Nevertheless he was
pleased to see that his gorgeous wife made an impression on the old
fogies who sat by his mother’s side--Sir Timothy and Lady Doul.
“I am pretty well, thank you,” said Amanda, “as well as it is possible
to be in London at this time of the year; when all one’s friends are
gone, and when the place is full of outlandish country-looking people,
or strange fishes from abroad, it is such a bore to stay in London. You
don’t feel it out here in the suburbs--you have your little society of
your own, which pays no attention to the season. I am sure I wish I was
as well off.”
“Dear me!” said old Lady Doul, with the admiration and wonder of
ignorance. “I think London is always so exciting. I could not bear too
much of it. Sir Timothy and I were just saying what a racket it was. To
be sure we are living in Half-Moon Street, in the centre of everything,”
the old lady added with simple pride. Her cap had been made in
Barbadoes, and so had her gown; she had not been “in town” for more than
twenty years.
Amanda gave her a stare in passing. She was never civil to women.
“I should think you would find the desert lively if you think Half-Moon
Street exciting,” she said. “Give me a nice country house choke full of
people, with luncheons at the cover-side, and dances in the evening, and
all sorts of fun going on. But when one marries a poor clerk in a public
office, one has to put up with many things,” she went on, turning to old
Sir Timothy, who, startled and embarrassed, did not know what to reply.
“Oh, ah, oh, of course,” said the old man; “very good--very good.
Everybody suffers from a penurious government. I assure you, my dear
young lady, the fine young fellows one meets out in the
world--_attachés_, and such like--wasting their time, as I always tell
them, upon twopence-halfpenny a year. Why, I had a secretary once, a
young man of excellent family----”
“But I hope you did not allow him to marry,” said Amanda. “It is always
upon the wives that the hardship falls. If you saw the little hole of a
place we have to live in--and back to London in October--only fancy! I
wonder what we are supposed to be made of. The men are much better off
with their clubs, and that sort of thing. They know at least all that is
going on; they hear the gossip, and see every stray creature there is to
see; but as for us, poor ladies----”
“Tell me how far you went in Switzerland, Amanda,” said Nelly. “You must
have enjoyed that. We have only been once among the mountains; but what
a pleasure it was!--did you go to----? But I remember Frederick wrote
you had changed your minds----”
Nelly spoke with the artificiality of a made-up digression, and Sir
Timothy thought her but a poor little shadowy thing by the side of her
beautiful sister-in-law.
“Oh, I never go into raptures I don’t feel,” said Amanda. “I don’t care
twopence for Switzerland; I hate mountains; I would rather go to Margate
any day--that is, if nothing better were to be had,” she added,
remembering that Margate was hardly consistent with the splendour of her
pretensions--“Don’t ask me about places as if I was a guide book. I like
people, and talk, and to see new faces, and the play, and all that’s
going on.”
“Very pleasant,” said Sir Timothy, “and very good taste, and I quite
agree with you. I have promised Lady Doul and myself the pleasure of the
play to-morrow.”
“The play--to-morrow!” cried Amanda, putting out her hand with an air of
horror--“The play! At this time of the year? You must be out of your
senses----”
Here Brownlow made his appearance at the door, and the party went in to
dinner.
“You did not tell us that Mrs. Frederick was a beauty,” said Sir Timothy
in Mrs. Eastwood’s ear, “and so completely one of the _beau monde_. You
said _Mrs._ Frederick surely? Not a title? Ah, now you set my mind at
rest. I was rather afraid to hazard a name. Allow me to congratulate you
on such a charming daughter-in-law.”
“Yes--she is very handsome,” said poor Mrs. Eastwood.
“Handsome! a divinity, my dear madam, quite a divinity!” cried the old
man. For half the dinner through Mrs. Eastwood was silent, wondering
whether her old acquaintance had become imbecile in the climate of
Barbadoes; or if he was venturing to joke at Mrs. Frederick’s expense.
It was difficult to solve this question, for old Sir Timothy set up a
lively flirtation with the beauty, who was placed at her mother-in-law’s
other hand. All through the course of dinner, during which banquet Mrs.
Eastwood lost much of her accustomed good-humoured ease, the old man
went on. Was he drawing out Amanda’s folly? or was he dazzled by her
beauty with the usual incomprehensible weakness of men? Mr. Vane, who
sat between Mrs. Eastwood and Amanda, added this to his many
attractions, that he was not dazzled by her; and he, too, was somewhat
silent, finding little to say in the crossfire which the others kept up.
As for Frederick, he sat gloomy and grand at the foot of the table
between Lady Doul and his sister, and was not conversational. Lady Doul
had a pleasant little chattering tongue, and told him she remembered him
as a baby, and congratulated him on his beautiful wife.
“Mrs. Frederick seems to have been a great deal in society,” the old
lady said, with a keen glance at him, which belied the simplicity of her
question. And Frederick, with the consciousness of Nelly’s eye upon him,
did not know how to respond.
“Oh, ah,” he said, giving a tacit assent, and wondering all the time
what she was really thinking, and why that muff, Molyneux, was not
there. If it was a mere quarrel between Nelly and her lover, or even if
Molyneux had declared off, Frederick would not have disturbed himself
much on the subject; but he could not but recollect that Molyneux had
been absent the last time he and his wife had dined at The Elms. If he
were to behave badly to Nelly it would be bad, no doubt; but to give
himself airs with Frederick was a still more dreadful offence. “Confound
his impudence,” he muttered between his teeth.
As for the other members of the party, Innocent was very passive, and
Mr. Parchemin, with his spectacles pushed back upon his forehead, ate
his dinner with serious devotion, and troubled himself about nothing
which might be going on.
After dinner, the ladies, being so few in number, made a little group in
the drawing-room round Mrs. Eastwood’s chair. It was then that Innocent
attracted Amanda’s attention.
“What a great girl she is growing--almost grown up,” she said. “What do
you intend to do with her?”
Innocent was leaning against the back of Mrs. Eastwood’s chair. Her
attention was directed quite otherwise, or rather, she was attending to
nothing, gazing across the room vacantly with her eyes fixed on the
door. Whether this was mere chance, or whether it was the lingering
remains of the old adoration for Frederick, Nelly, who was watching her
very closely, could not tell. The girl was not attending--but she woke
up and stirred slightly at this allusion to herself.
“What am I going to do with her?” asked Mrs. Eastwood in dismay.
“Yes--I mean, do you intend to send her out as a governess, or anything
of that sort?” said Amanda, plucking a flower to pieces which she had
taken from the dinner table. It was bad enough to abstract the flower
from a bouquet which Nelly had arranged very carefully; but, having
abstracted it, to pull it to pieces, throwing the petals on the floor,
was almost more than human patience, personified in Nelly Eastwood,
could bear.
“Now she has grown up,” continued the beauty, “I suppose you mean her to
be of some use. You can’t keep her always in idleness to the injury of
your own children----”
“We must not talk about the questions you don’t fully understand,”
cried Mrs. Eastwood, with flushed cheeks. “Innocent, my love, go and
fetch a cushion for Lady Doul. And perhaps Mrs. Frederick will give us a
little music, Nelly, if you have anything new to tempt her.”
“Oh, I never play till the gentlemen come in,” said Amanda; “but I don’t
see why you should take me up so sharp about Innocent. Now you’ve given
her her education she ought to be made to do something. I’ll look out
for a companion’s place, if you like, among my friends. Why shouldn’t I
understand? it’s easy enough; and I am sure all your children have a
right to interfere. Why should a girl that is only your half-niece take
the bread out of their mouths? Ask any one if I am not right. Every
penny you spend on her will be so much less for your own.”
“We need not trouble Lady Doul with our family concerns,” said Mrs.
Eastwood, with a tremendous effort to keep her temper; and she addressed
a question to the old lady, upon which Amanda again broke in.
“Oh, I assure you Frederick and I often talk it over; he thinks as I do.
If she couldn’t be a governess she might be a companion. It would be
quite easy; I, myself----”
“Come and look at something I have got here,” cried Nelly, at the table,
sending meaning looks at her mother.
“Leave me alone, Nelly, I think it’s my duty to speak. As the wife of
the eldest son I have a right to interfere; the Eastwoods are not so
rich that the little they have should be spent on strangers.”
“My dear Mrs. Frederick,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a forced smile, while
old Lady Doul hurried to the other end of the room to speak to Nelly; “I
have been used to manage my own affairs without reference either to my
sons or my son’s wife.”
“And so much the worse for you,” cried Amanda, with flushed cheeks.
“What can you know about business?--women never do--you ought to take
sensible advice; you ought to consider your own children, and not a lot
of hangers-on; you ought not just to take your own way, without ever
thinking of us, starving our children for a pack of poor relations. Oh,
I know what I am saying, and I ain’t to be put down by looks. I’m one of
the family; and a poor enough thing for me, too, with my looks and my
expectations; but to see a great beggar girl eating all up with her
useless ways--what ought to come to us and our children. I cannot put up
with it. I _will_ say what I’ve got to say.”
“What is the matter, Amanda?” said Frederick, behind her. He had heard
the raised tone of his wife’s voice, and had rushed in, in dismay. He
found his mother risen from her chair, indignant, and burning with
suppressed anger, and his wife standing before her, aiding her words by
gestures, her white arm raised, her cheeks deeply flushed, her breath
coming quick, and her eyes flashing red fire. He put his hand on her
arm. “Come and sit down here on the sofa; the other men are just coming
in. For heaven’s sake, Amanda, compose yourself! Do you want to be ill
again? do you want to make a scene?”
“I don’t care twopence for making a scene. I want to have it out now
it’s been started,” cried Amanda. “I say that great girl oughtn’t to be
kept up in idleness and luxury. She ought to be sent out into the world
to make her living. Ain’t we the natural heirs, and haven’t we a right
to speak? Oh, what do I care for the men coming in? let ’em come in.
It’s only right and justice; since you haven’t the heart to speak up, I
must. Innocent, indeed! a nice sort of Innocent, to eat up what ought to
be for us. There isn’t so much of it; and a pack of younger brothers
already, and that sort. Oh, I have no patience; let me have it out.”
“For God’s sake, Amanda----”
She made an ineffectual attempt to go on, but breath failed her, and she
allowed herself to be drawn to the sofa, and laid herself back upon the
pillows panting, her white shoulders and forehead stained with patches
of vivid pink. “It’s all very well to say ‘don’t excite yourself,’” she
said. “How can I help it, when people are so self-willed and stupid!”
The unhappy Frederick sat down by her and endeavoured to soothe her.
Surely a little recompense for his many offences was doled out to him
that evening; he talked to her in a low tone, expostulating, entreating.
“Think of your health,” was the burden of his argument. He fanned her,
he held her hand, he wiped her hot forehead with her laced handkerchief.
Poor Frederick! He had pleased himself, and he was paying the penalty.
Nelly and Lady Doul had rushed with a common impulse towards the door to
meet the other gentlemen, and stood there involuntarily pointing out old
pictures to their admiration, and plunging into depths of conversation
which bewildered the new-comers. Mrs. Eastwood, too angry to think for
the moment of keeping up appearances, had pushed back her chair as far
as it would go, and after sitting down in it a minute, had risen again
to look for Innocent, who stood with one hand upon the table, gazing
with wide-open eyes at Frederick and his wife. No sort of offence was
upon Innocent’s dreamy face. Awakened attention, a slight startled
wonder, but nothing painful was in her expression, and perhaps that
wonder was more roused by the sight of Amanda’s excitement and
exhaustion than by anything she had said. Mrs. Eastwood hastened to her,
took the girl into her arms, and held her close. “My poor child, my dear
child. You must not mind her, Innocent,” she said.
“Is she ill?” asked Innocent, wondering.
“I am sure I wish she was!” cried Mrs. Eastwood, “she deserves to be,
venturing to dictate to me, the little vulgar intruder, a girl not fit
to be in the same room with Nelly and you!”
“Little!” said Innocent, with an amused smile. “She is not little. She
is the biggest of all. Are you very angry? Did she scold you?”
“I am very angry; but don’t you mind, my dear. Never think again of what
she said, Innocent. She is a passionate, selfish fool; don’t pay any
attention to what she said.”
“No,” said docile Innocent; “but I should like to be of use--it would be
pleasant to be of use,” she added, after a pause. “Let me do something.
What is a companion? How strange that she should be so red and so
breathless? Is it all about me?”
“It is because she is a fool,” said Mrs. Eastwood, though, indeed, she
herself was flushed and excited too.
“But what is a companion?” asked Innocent.
“You are my companion and Nelly’s,” said Mrs. Eastwood; “my dear, don’t
think of it any more.”
“And she is Frederick’s,” said Innocent, contemplating with a strange
abstract spectatorship the group on the sofa. There was no enmity, only
a wondering contemplation in her eyes. “Can he never be without her?
Will she stay with him for ever and ever?”
“As long as she lives,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a profound sigh.