VANE TREVOR IS DISCUSSED AND APPEARS.
It was in this mysterious turbulent frame of mind that old Winnie Dobbs,
bearing the Bible and book of family prayers, surprised Miss Violet
Darkwell, and recalled Aunt Dinah from the sound and fury of forty years
ago, now signifying no more than the discoloured paper on which they
were recorded.
“Dear me! can it be a quarter to ten already?” exclaimed Miss Perfect,
plucking her watch from her side and inspecting it. “So it is; come in.”
And fat Mrs. Podgers, the cook, and Tom, with his grimmest countenance,
and the little girl with a cap on, looking mild and frightened.
So, according to the ancient usage of Gilroyd Hall, to William’s lot
fell the reading of the Bible, and to Aunt Dinah’s that of the prayers,
and then the little congregation broke up, and away went Vi to her
bed-room, with old Winnie.
William was not worse, nor, I dare say, much better than other young
Cambridge men of his day and college; but he liked these little
“services” in which he officiated, and they entered into his serene and
pleasant recollections of that sequestered habitation.
“Well, William dear, I thank God I am spared to be with you a little
longer.”
“Amen,” he said, “you dear aunt, dear, dear old Aunt Dinah.”
And they kissed very lovingly, and there was a silence, which Aunt Dinah
in a few minutes broke by mentioning the very subject at that moment in
his mind.
“You saw Violet a good deal grown—very pretty figure—in fact, I think
her lovely; but we must not tell her so, you know. She has been very
much admired, and a good, affectionate, amiable little soul she is.
There’s young Mr. Trevor. I can tell you people are beginning to talk
about it. What do _you_ think?”
William set down his bed-room candle on the tea-table, rubbed the apex
of its extinguisher with the tip of his finger, and returned an answer
answerless.
“He’s very good-looking; isn’t he? But he thinks a lot of himself; and
don’t you think it would be an awful pity little Vi should be married so
soon?”
“Then you think he means to ask her?” said Miss Perfect, her silver
pencil-case to her chin, her head a little aside, and looking very
curiously into her nephew’s eyes.
“I don’t know; I haven’t a notion. He said yesterday he thought her very
pretty; but Trevor always talks like no end of a swell, and I really
think he fancies a princess, or something of the sort, would hardly be
good enough for him.”
“It would, of course, be a very good match for Vi,” said Miss Perfect,
dropping her eyes, perhaps a little disappointed, and running her
pencil-case back and forward slowly on the edge of William’s plated
candlestick, from which they both seemed to look for inspiration; “but a
girl so pretty as she may look higher than Mr. Trevor without
presumption.”
“Yes, indeed, and there’s no hurry, Heaven knows. I don’t think Trevor
half good enough for her,” said William.
“Oh, I don’t say that, but—but more unlikely things have happened.”
“Does he—does he make _love_ to her?” said William, who drew altogether
upon the circulating library for his wisdom in those matters.
“He certainly admires her very much; he has been very attentive. I’m
sure he likes her, and I can’t hear that he is anything but a
straightforward, honourable young man.”
“I suppose he is,” said William; “I’m sure he’s that. And what does
Violet—Miss Darkwell—say?”
“Say! Why, of course I can’t ask her to say anything till he speaks. I
dare say she likes him, as why should she not? But that’s only
conjecture, you know; and you are not to hint it to him, mind, if he
should question or poke you on the subject.”
“Oh, no, certainly,” answered William, and there came a long pause. “But
indeed, aunt, I don’t think Vane Trevor half good enough for her.”
“Oh! that’s for _them_, my dear, to settle. There’s nothing in point of
prudence, against it.”
“No—oh, no. Everything _very_ well. Lucky fellow to be able to marry
when he likes.”
“And—but I forgot you don’t mind. You think there’s nothing in it. Still
I may tell you I have had—old Winnie and I—some answers.”
“Table-rapping?” said William.
“A little _séance_. We sit down together, Winnie and I; and some
responses, in my mind, can hardly refer to anything else, and most sweet
and comforting they have been.”
Once on this subject, my aunt was soon deep in it, and told her story of
the toad which turned into a hand; whereupon William related his dream,
and the evidences afforded by his waking senses of the reality of the
visitation. My aunt was at once awe-struck and delighted.
“_Now_, William, you’ll read, I’ve no doubt, the wonderful experiences
of others, having had such remarkable ones of your own. Since my hand
was held in that spirit-hand—no doubt the same which seized yours—I have
become accessible to impressions from the invisible world, such as I had
no idea of before. You need not be uncomfortable or nervous. It is all
benevolent—or, at worst, just. I’ve never seen or felt that hand but
once; the relation is established for ever by a single pressure. I have
satisfied Dr. Drake—a very intelligent man, and reasonable—convinced
him, he admits. And now, dear William, there is another link between us;
and if in the mysterious ways of Providence, you should after all be
taken first, I shall have the happiness of communion with you.
Good-night, dear, and God bless you, and be careful to put out your
candle.”
So William departed, and notwithstanding Miss Perfect’s grisly
conversation, he slept soundly, and did not dream of the shadowy giant,
nor even of Trevor and Violet.
Pleasant, listless Gilroyd Hall! thought William, as, after breakfast,
he loitered up and down before the rich red-brick front of the old
gabled house, with its profusion of small windows, with such thick,
white sashes, and casings of white stone; and the pointed gables, with
stone cornice and glittering weather-vane on the summit. That house,
somehow, bore a rude resemblance to the old world dandyism which reigned
in its younger days, and reminded William of the crimson coats, the bars
of lace and quaint, gable-like cocked hats, which had, no doubt, for
many a year passed in and out at its deep-porched door; where I could
fancy lovers loitering in a charmed murmur, in summer shade, for an
enchanted hour, till old Sir Harry’s voice and whistle, and the pound of
his crutch-handled cane, and the scamper and yelp of the dogs, were
heard in the oak hall approaching.
Under the old chestnuts, clustered with ivy, Violet joined him.
“Well, how are we to-day? I think we were a little cross last night,
weren’t we?” said William, with his old trick of lecturing little Vi.
“We! One of us may have been, but it was not I,” she answered.
“I think my watch is wrong. Did you happen to look at the clock as you
passed?”
“Half-past eleven.”
“Ah! so I thought. How many hours long, Miss—” (Vi he was going to
say)—“Darkwell, are contained in half an hour’s waiting? The spirit of
Mariana has come upon me:
‘She only said, “My life is dreary,”
“He cometh not,” she said;
She said, “I am a-weary, a-weary,
I would that I were dead!”’
Can’t you a little understand it, too?—not, of course, quite like me,
but a little?”
Vi was not going to answer, but suddenly she changed her mind and said—
“I don’t know, but I think you were a great deal more agreeable when you
were a schoolboy. I assure you, I’m serious. I think you’ve grown so
tiresome and conceited. I suppose all young men in the universities are.
‘A little learning is a dangerous thing,’ you used to tell me, and I
think I can now agree with you—at least it seems to make people vain and
disagreeable.”
Maubray answered looking on her gently, but speaking as if in a pensive
soliloquy, and wondering as he went along whether he had really turned
into a coxcomb; for he was one of those sensitive, because diffident
souls on whom the lightest reproof tells, and induces self-examination.
“I don’t know,” he said, “that I’ve even got the little learning that
qualifies for danger. I don’t think I am vain—that is, not a bit vainer
than I used to be; but I’m sure I’m more disagreeable—that is, to you.
My babble and dull jokes are very well for a child, but the child has
grown up, and left childish things behind: and a young lady in her teens
is more fastidious, and—and, in fact, is a sort of an angel whom I am
not formed to talk to with a chance of being anything but a bore. Very
unlearned, and yet a book-worm; very young and yet not very merry; not a
bad fellow, I think, and yet, with hardly a friend on earth, and—by
Jove! here comes Trevor at last.”
And Trevor entered the gate, and approached them.
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