A NEW COMPLICATION.
This evening was an eventful evening at The Elms. When Mrs. Frederick
had rested sufficiently and calmed down, she was carried off by her
husband with the very briefest and driest of leave-takings. Old Sir
Timothy and his wife had gone off before, as hurriedly as was consistent
with good-breeding, shaking their old heads over the family fray they
had witnessed, and forming suppositions as to the origin of Mrs.
Frederick which did her injustice, unexalted though her antecedents
were.
“I don’t know what Mrs. Eastwood could mean by asking me to meet such a
person,” cried Lady Doul in high dudgeon.
“Hush! my dear, hush! the poor woman was trying to make the best of it,”
said Sir Timothy; “and though she’s evidently a termagant, she’s
extraordinarily pretty, wonderfully pretty.”
“I have no patience with you men,” said Lady Doul. “Pretty! what has
pretty to do with it? Do you think a pretty face is like charity, and
covers a multitude of sins?”
“A great many, my dear,” said old Sir Timothy, with a chuckle. And so
the old pair jogged on to their lodgings, half sorry, half shocked, half
indignant. The party they left behind was more seriously excited. The
first thing Mrs. Eastwood did was to hurry off Innocent to bed,
accompanying her to her room with a fear for the effect of Amanda’s
ravings upon her feelings, which was really uncalled for; for Innocent’s
feelings were too little on the surface to be moved by any such assault.
It had given rise to vague thoughts in her mind, but no wound--thoughts
which, when her aunt, with many caresses, had left her, she expressed to
old Alice, with more freedom than probably she would have ventured upon
with any one else. Innocent’s habitation was now in the old schoolroom,
to which she had taken so great a fancy. And here Alice waited upon her
with a care which amazed the other servants, for Innocent had nothing to
give in return, not even thanks or caresses, and was considered “proud”
and “stuck-up” in her dreamy habitual silence.
“She said I might be a companion,” said Innocent. “And Sir Alexis said
something too--a companion! I am Nelly’s companion and my aunt’s, she
says--Frederick’s wife meant something different. Alice, you are old;
you know a great many things----”
“I know you’re but an innocent, my poor bonnie bairn,” said the old
woman with a sigh.
“Of course I am Innocent; but that is only my name. Companion is not a
name; it is a thing. She is Frederick’s companion. My aunt says he will
never be rid of her--never--so long as she lives. What a pity that she
cannot be made to stop living! She scolds--like--like--she grows red
like the women we once saw quarrelling in the street.”
“When you stoppit to tell them it was ugly,” said Alice; “and why should
they scold each other?”
“Yes,” said Innocent, “to scold children is natural, I suppose, at
least, everybody does it, even you, Alice; but Frederick’s wife--and he
cannot send her away. I wish she might die, and then Frederick would be
free.”
“Bairn, bairn, hold your tongue!” cried Alice. “Are you no aware that
it’s a sin, a great sin, to wish anybody dead? Never let me hear you say
such a thing again.”
“But I do think it,” said Innocent; “she makes herself ill; she suffers;
she makes everybody else unhappy. She scolds, it does not matter whom.
Why should people go on living when they do so much harm?”
“But you would not do her harm?” said Alice, curiously gazing at her;
“and why should Mr. Frederick be free? He has taken his own way, and he
must put up with it. He has made his bed, and he must lie on it. What is
he, that he should be delivered from what he has brought on himself?”
“I am fond of Frederick,” said Innocent dreamily. “If he is good or not
I do not know, but I am fond of him. Alice, do you know I have found out
something? When papa said women were hateful, he meant women like
Frederick’s wife.”
“My bonnie lamb,” said Alice, “think as little as you can either of Mr.
Frederick or Mr. Frederick’s wife. Such kind of thoughts are little
good. Say your prayers, and mind that you must wish harm to no person.
It’s against a’ Scripture; though, eh! human nature’s weak, and if it
was me I doubt if I could keep my hands off her,” she added to herself.
When Mrs. Eastwood left the room with Innocent, Mr. Vane asked
permission to stay. “May I wait till you come back?” he asked, “I have
something to say.” Perhaps it was injudicious on all sides, for, indeed,
Nelly, who was thus left alone with him in a state of high and indignant
resentment, was, perhaps, too much disposed to confide in the
sympathetic companion who was always ready to feel with her, always
willing to be interested. They were standing together over the little
fire, which on this mild October evening smouldered unnecessarily in the
grate. But when there is any trouble in a house the fire becomes at once
the centre; everybody goes to it mechanically. Nelly stood there,
clasping her hands together by way of restraining herself; her cheeks
were flushed, her eyes abashed. She was not only wounded and angry, but
ashamed to the bottom of her heart. She had been doing all she could to
conceal and cover over the “scene” which, like all Englishwomen, she
dreaded to have known. But she had not been successful, and now her mind
was so full of it, so running over with indignation and excitement, that
she knew she ought not to have trusted herself with any companion; and
yet absolute self-denial was so hard. She could not be so wise as to go
away and bury the tumult of feeling which was eager to be expressed.
“Oh, Mr. Vane, what must you think of us?” she burst forth at last.
“What must I think of you? I am afraid some things I dare not tell you,”
he said. “But what can any one think--that you have had to submit to a
very ordinary form of domestic misfortune, and that, by dint of doing
your very best to bear it, you have to suffer much that is disagreeable?
That is all that the most curious could think. Every one who is worthy
to be called your friend, Miss Eastwood, should be only too glad to
stand by you in such a trial.”
I don’t know what John Vane meant, or if he fully realized what he was
saying; but as for Nelly she turned crimson, and gave him a quick,
furtive look of inquiry. Had he looked as if he meant anything she would
have been offended; but he was sufficiently innocent or clever to
dismiss all meaning from his face.
“Oh, as for that,” said Nelly, “it would be foolish to speak as if we
wanted any one to stand by us. Mamma and I are able to support each
other--mamma, and I, and Innocent. We are quite a strong body; we want
no one else,” said Nelly. She looked up at him, smiling, to prove her
assertion, but somehow just at that moment a chance tear, which had
gathered on her eyelashes without her knowledge, seized the opportunity
to fall. “Why what is this? I wonder,” she said, with a little laugh,
wiping it from her hand with her handkerchief; “it seems I must have
been crying without knowing it. How silly! It is horrid that because one
happens to be a woman one should always make a fool of one’s self and
cry.”
“I wish we were all fools of your description,” said Vane.
“What, to cry? Oh no. It comes natural to a girl, but it is dreadful in
a man. And there is not much to cry about either,” said Nelly. “It is
not Mrs. Frederick that makes me unhappy, Mr. Vane; it is that poor
mamma must feel what I once said to you, that we are all trying to get
as much out of her as ever we can. Why should she have given up her own
comforts to let Frederick marry? If papa had been alive, no one would
have expected him to do it; but because mamma is a woman, Frederick and
everybody think she should give in continually. Do you think it is just
or right? Why should she give up all she has been used to, to give us
things we have no need of? First her carriage, and now her old servants;
and she talks even of letting the dear old house. Mr. Vane, perhaps I
ought not to talk like this to you--but do you think it is right? Should
not a man try when he marries to make something for himself?”
“If I were ever so happy,” said Vane, “that is what I should do. I
should like my wife to feel that I was working for her. _My_ wife! That
sort of thing is not for me.”
“Why shouldn’t it be for you?” said Nelly in a softened tone; but she
felt the ground was dangerous, and perhaps she felt that there was a
certain inference in all that was being said--a something which
implicated others as well as her brother; therefore she hasted to place
Frederick in the foreground as the sole subject of discourse.
“Perhaps I am too angry with Frederick,” she said; “it is because I feel
as if mamma might think we were all alike--all thinking of what she has,
not of her; all grasping and wanting something. Rather than she should
think that of me I would die.”
“She could not think that of you. It would be impossible,” said Vane.
“I don’t know,” said Nelly, the tears gathering once more on her
down-dropped eyelashes. “Oh, how true it is what mamma says--that nature
wrongs women more than law does! Sometimes we are compelled to look
different from what we are that people may not see or find out--other
things. Sometimes we have to put on false looks to make other people
seem true. You men, you don’t know half nor a quarter what poor girls
have to do!”
This curious and enigmatical outburst filled Vane with feelings which I
will not attempt to describe. He thought he understood it, and his whole
heart melted over the girl, whose case already, perhaps, he had thought
over too much. He put his hand for a moment on hers, not holding it, but
giving just one touch of a sympathy which went beyond words. As he did
so another tear, slowly brimming over, fell on his hand. Instantly,
before he knew, the water stood in his own eyes; Nelly startled, dashed
the tear off with her handkerchief, and crying hastily, “Oh, I beg your
pardon! I beg your pardon!” covered her hot eyes and flushed face with
her hand.
It was at this moment that Molyneux came in. I do not wonder for my part
that he was a little startled by the position of the two, and the
attitude of affairs generally; Nelly crying, and Vane beside her with an
agitated look about the eyes, which tells much that men would prefer to
conceal. “Hullo, what is wrong?” he said, striding up to her side. Nelly
recovered her composure instantaneously; and Vane, drawing back, felt
that the charm of the moment was over, and all its magic flown.
“What is the matter?” cried Molyneux, more angry than affectionate;
“crying? What are you crying for? Has Winks been taken bad, or have you
lost your canary bird, or what? I think you might have kept your tears
till I came.”
“They are not pleasant things to keep,” said Nelly, “and indeed I was
not crying. Mrs. Frederick put us all out of temper----”
“Oh, Mrs. Frederick! Dick told me there had been a shindy,” said the
young man. “I’m sorry I was not here to see the fun. Vane, you are
luckier than I am--you are always on the spot.”
A retort was on John Vane’s lips; but he considered all the
circumstances, and held his peace, offering no explanations. Nelly’s
betrothed looked from one to the other with, I do not deny, a certain
justification for his suspicions. “Well,” he said, “now that I am here
you don’t seem communicative. What was it all about?”
“Oh, the subject does not matter,” cried Nelly. “It was an attack upon
mamma. Don’t let us speak of it; it makes me wicked, it makes my heart
sick. Poor mamma, who has always been so good to us--is this how we are
to repay her at the end?”
“I can’t say, of course, if you don’t choose to tell me,” said Molyneux;
“but Mrs. Eastwood is not any worse off than other people of her age, so
far as I can see. We can’t all be romantic little gooses, Nelly, like
you.”
“Don’t!” said Nelly, with sharp pain and shame. Why was it that her
lover’s familiar tone went so near to disgust her at such a moment? She
drew away, not venturing to look up, ashamed, because the other was
present, she would have said. And this was true; but not entirely in the
simple sense of the words.
“I must speak to your mother about Innocent,” Vane said, apologetically,
feeling too that he was in the way, and they stood all there about the
fire in the most awkward of positions until Mrs. Eastwood, with her
clouded brow, came back. She gave Ernest a little nod of recognition--no
more. It was well that he had not been there, and yet it was ill that he
took no pains to stand by Nelly in any emergency. She seated herself in
her usual chair, taking little notice of any one. Her pulses were still
tingling, and her heart beating. She was a proud woman, though she made
but small external pretensions; and she had been insulted in her own
house.
“I want you to let Innocent go to my sister,” said Vane, approaching her
softly, “for a week or two perhaps. Don’t you think she should make
acquaintance with her father’s relations? She is grown up; she has
developed so much under your kind care. Could you not trust her, even
for a few weeks, out of your own hands?”
“Oh, Mr. Vane!” cried Mrs. Eastwood hastily, with tears coming to her
eyes; “this is because of what you have just been hearing--because of
what my daughter-in-law was so wicked and so cruel as to say.”
“What is the matter?” said Molyneux to Nelly. “What _did_ she say? and
what has he to do with it? and what does your mother mean by looking so
excited? It all seems a pretty muddle for a man to fall into.”
“What she said was about Innocent,” said Nelly, restraining herself with
an effort; “that we ought not to keep her here--that she should be sent
out as a governess--I don’t know how much more hard-hearted nonsense. I
can’t tell how she dared to speak so to mamma.”
“That woman would dare anything,” said Molyneux. “About Innocent? Well,
I don’t know that she was very wrong; that girl will turn into a
dreadful burden one day or other if she is not made to marry somebody. I
can’t think what your mother meant, when she had such a chance, by
letting Longueville slip through her fingers. So that’s why _he’s_ here,
I suppose? I hate that man, John Vane; always poking himself where he is
not wanted.”
“I suppose mamma must have wanted him or she would not have asked him,”
said Nelly. “We could not have an empty place at table.”
“Oh, that’s why you are cross, is it?” said Ernest, with a vain laugh;
“but, Nelly, you must not really expect that I can always be doing duty
at those family parties. A family party is the thing I most hate in the
world.”
“Fortunately for mamma, Mr. Vane is not of your opinion,” said Nelly. It
was the first time she had attempted anything like self-assertion. She
had never stood at bay before.