A CONFIDENCE
“I don’t know what you’ll think of it after all I’ve said, but I’m going
to marry your cousin, Violet Darkwell,” said Vane Trevor, after a little
pause, and with a kind of effort, and a rather deprecatory smile.
“Oh?” exclaimed William Maubray, cheerily, and with a smile. But the
smile was wan, and the voice sounded ever so far away.
“There’s no use, Maubray, in a fellow’s resisting his destiny; and
there’s an old saying, you know, about marriages being made in heaven.
By Jove! when it comes to a certain point with a fellow, it’s all over;
no good struggling, and he may as well accomplish his—his destiny—by
Jove, with a good grace. And—and I know, Maubray, you’ll be glad to
hear, and—and I really believe it’s the best, and wisest thing I could
have done—don’t you think so?”
“I’m sure of that,” said William, in the same tone, with the same smile.
“Everyone says it’s better to marry, when a fellow can afford it; but I
did not think you had a notion; that is for ever so long; and then some
great lady.”
“No more I had,” answered Trevor. “By Jove! a month ago you weren’t a
more unlikely man; but how can _I_ help it? You never were spooney on a
girl in all your life, and of course you can’t tell; but you’ve no idea
how impossible it is for a fellow, when once he comes to be really in—in
love—to—to make himself happy, and be content to lose her. _I_ can’t, I
know.”
“No, of course,” answered William, with the same smile and an
involuntary sigh.
“And then, you know, money and that sort of thing, it’s all very fine,
all very good in a wife; but by Jove! there’s more than you think in—in
fascination and beauty and manner, and that sort of thing. There’s Sir
John Sludgeleigh—old family, capital fellow—he chose to marry a woman
from some of those cotton mill places, with no end of money, and by
Jove, I think he has been ashamed to show ever since; you never saw such
a brute. He’s ashamed of her, and they say he’d give his right hand had
he never set eyes on her. I can quite understand, of course, a fellow
that has not a guinea left: but, by Jove, if you saw her, you could not
conceive such a thing. And there’s old Lord Ricketts, he married quite a
nobody. Sweetly pretty, to be sure, but out of a boarding school, and so
clever, you know, but no money, and no family, and he so awfully dipt;
and she set herself to work and looked after everything, awfully clever,
and at this moment the estate does not owe a guinea, and she found it
with a hundred and twenty thousand pounds mortgage over it; and when he
married her everyone said it was all up, and his ruin certain, and by
Jove it was that marriage that saved him.”
“Very curious!” said William, dismally.
“To be sure it is; there’s no subject, I tell you, there’s so much
nonsense talked about as marriage: if a woman brings you a fortune or
connexion, by Jove, she’ll make you pay for it. I could tell you half a
dozen who have been simply ruined by making what all the world thought
wonderfully good marriages.”
“I dare say,” said William, in a dream.
“And then about family and connexion, really the thing, when you examine
it, there’s wonderfully little in it; the good blood of England isn’t in
the peerage at all, it is really, as a rule, all in the landed gentry.
Now, look at us, for example; I give you leave to search the peerage
through, and you’ll not find _four_ houses—I don’t speak of titles, but
families—older than we. Except four, there is not one as old. And
really, if people are nice, and quite well bred, what more do you want?”
“Oh, nothing,” sighed William.
“And do you know, I’ve rather a prejudice against barristers, I mean as
being generally an awfully low, vulgar set; and I assure you, I know I
may say whatever I think to you; but I, when I was thinking about all
this thing, you know, I could not get the idea out of my head. I knew
her father was a barrister, and he was always turning up in my mind; you
know the sort of thing, as—as a sort of fellow one could not like.”
“But he’s a particularly gentlemanlike man,” broke in William, to whom
Sergeant Darkwell had always been very kind.
“Oh! you need not tell _me_, for I walked with him home to Gilroyd, last
Sunday, from church. I did not know who he was—stupid of me not to
guess—and you can’t think what an agreeable—really nice fellow.”
“I know him; he has been always very kind to me, and very encouraging
about the bar,” said Maubray.
“Yes,” interrupted Trevor, “and they say, certain to rise, and very
high, too. Chancery, you know, and that—and—and such a really
gentlemanlike fellow, might be anything, and so—and so clever, I’m
sure.”
“Come down to draw the settlements,” thought William, with a pang. But
he could not somehow say it. There are events to which you can submit,
but the details of which you shrink from. Here was for William, in some
sort, a _death_. A familiar face gone. The rest was the undertaker’s
business. The stretching and shrouding, and screwing down, he had rather
not hear of.
“You are going to tell the people here?” said William Maubray, not
knowing well what to say.
“Tell them here, at Kincton! Not if I know it. Why, I know pretty well,
for fifty reasons, how _they’ll_ receive it. Oh! no, I’ll just send them
the prettiest little bit of a note in a week or two, when everything is
quite settled, and I’ll not mind seeing them again for some time, I can
tell you. Here’s this little wretch coming again. Well, Howard, have you
got the revolver?”
Master Howard’s face was swollen with tears and fury.
“No, they wouldn’t give it me. You knew right well they would not,
without mamma told ’em. I wish mamma was hanged; I do; she’s always a
plaguing every one; her and that great brute, Clara.”
This explosion seemed to divert Mr. Trevor extremely; but William was,
of course, obliged to rebuke his pupil.
“If you say that again, Master Howard, I’ll tell your mamma.”
“I don’t care.”
“Very well, Sir.”
“I say, come with me,” said Trevor. “We’ll ask mamma about the pistol,
and I shall be here again in half an hour.”
“Very well, do so, and just remember, though I don’t much care,” said
Maubray, in an under tone, “they don’t know my name here.”
“All right,” said Trevor; “I shan’t forget,” and he and his interesting
companion took their departure, leaving William to his meditations.
“So! going to be married—little Vi—pretty little Vi—little Vi, that used
to climb up at the back of my chair. I’ll try and remember her always
the same little wayward, beautiful darling. I’ve seen my last of her, at
least for a long time, a very long time, and Gilroyd—I’ll never see it
again.”
And thoughts, vague and sad, came swelling up the stormy channels of his
heart, breaking wildly and mournfully one over the other, and poor
William Maubray, in his solitude, wept some bitter tears.
------------------------------------------------------------------------