VANE TREVOR AT THE WINDOW
William Maubray liked the appointment which his kind friend, Doctor
Sprague, had virtually secured for him. It was not a great deal in
salary, but opening abundant opportunities for that kind of employment
which he most coveted, and for which, in fact, a very little training
would now suffice to accomplish him. Literary work, the ambition of so
many, not a wise one perhaps for those who have any other path before
them, but to which men will devote themselves, as to a perverse
marriage, contrary to other men’s warnings, and even to their own
legible experiences of life—in a dream.
For three years he would sojourn in Paris. He preferred that distant
exile to one at the gates of the early paradise from which he had been
excluded. From thence he would send to his good friend, Doctor Sprague,
those little intimations of his doings and his prosperings, which he,
according to his wisdom, might transmit, for inspection to the old lady
at Gilroyd, who might, if she pleased, re-open a distant correspondence
with the outcast.
Doctor Sprague, at William’s desire, had written to accept and arrange,
and would hear by the return of post, or nearly, and then William might
have to leave at a day’s notice. Three years! It was a long time, and
Aunt Dinah old! He might never see her or Gilroyd more, and a kind of
home sickness fell upon him.
At Gilroyd that morning, Aunt Dinah and Vi sat at breakfast
_tête-à-tête_. The spirits of the old lady were not altogether so
bright, the alacrity was gone, and though she smiled there was a sadness
and a subsidence. William was banished. The pang of that sharp decision
was over. Some little help he should have circuitously through Doctor
Sprague; but meet again on earth they never should. So that care was
over: and now her other tie, pretty Violet Darkwell, she, too, was
going: and although she sat beside her at the little breakfast-table,
prattling pleasantly, and telling her all the news of her friends, the
Mainwarings and their new neighbours, yet her voice sounded already
faint in distance, and the old lady’s cares were pretty well over. Our
business here is work of some sort, and not for ourselves; and when that
is ended it is time, as Fuller says, to put out the candle and go to
bed.
“I’m going to see old Mrs. Wagget to-day. I promised her the day before
I went to the Mainwarings,” said Vi, recalling this engagement.
“But, my dear, some one may call here. Your friends and mine will be
looking in,” said Aunt Dinah, who knew that Trevor would arrive at about
twelve o’clock.
“Well, I can return their visits all the same, and see them in their own
houses,” said Vi, “just as well.”
“And what need to go to Mrs. Wagget to-day—to-morrow I fancy would
answer,” said Miss Perfect.
“But I _promised_, you know, and she wrote to remind me.”
“_Promised_ to _leave_ your old granny alone again the day after your
return!” she exclaimed, a little huffed.
“Why, darling, it was you who made me promise, don’t you recollect?”
pleaded Miss Violet, “the day we paid them our last visit.”
“H’m—did I? Well, if there really was a promise, and I suppose you
remember, we must keep it, I suppose.” Aunt Dinah had made that kind of
scrupulousness an emphatic point in Violet’s simple education, and of
course it could not now be trifled with. And now she did recollect the
appointment, and something about walking to the school-house together at
twelve o’clock—could anything be more unlucky? Aunt Dinah looked up at
the sky; but no, it was _not_ threatening—clear blue, with a pleasant
white cloud or two, and a sea of sunshine.
“I’m so sorry, granny, we settled, it would have been so much pleasanter
to have staid with you to-day, and I’m afraid it’s very wicked; but that
school, except to _very_ good people, it is really insupportable,” said
Miss Vi, whose inflexible estimate of such appointments rather vexed
Aunt Dinah, and not the less that she could not deny that it was her own
work.
“It’s right in the main,” thought she. “But there are distinctions—there’s
danger, however, in casuistry, and so let it be.” There was an odd little
sense of relief too in the postponement of the crisis.
At about half-past eleven, Vane Trevor arrived. He came by the path, and
from the drawing-room window Miss Perfect, sitting there at her work,
saw him, and knocked and beckoned with her slender mittened hand.
“He looks pale, poor young man,” he was smiling as he approached, “and
haggard too,” she pronounced, notwithstanding. “He’s anxious, I dare
say,” and she pushed up the window as he approached. “What a sweet
morning,” she said, taking off her gold spectacles, and smiling with
that soft look of sympathy which in such cases makes even old women’s
faces so pretty again.
“Charming morning—really quite charming.”
She saw him peeping into the shadow of the room for a second figure.
Aunt Dinah’s hand was now within reach, and they exchanged a friendly
greeting.
“My little Violet has returned,” she said, still holding Trevor’s hand
kindly, “quite well—looking so well—and most unluckily I quite forgot;
but I had made an appointment for her this morning with Mrs. Wagget, and
I have always made the keeping of appointments so much a moral duty with
her, that unless I had opened the subject on which you talked with me,
and told her plainly that I expected your call, and that she must
wait—which would have been not a favourable way of proceeding; and in
fact I should have been obliged to say very badly what you would say,
probably, very well; and indeed it is a thing that makes me
nervous—always did. When my dear sister was proposed for, I refused to
take the message, in fact—I could not—and—he spoke for himself—poor
Charles Maubray—like a man—and—and a very happy”⸺Suddenly she stopped,
and Trevor saw that tears were trickling slowly down her cheeks; and her
lips were resolutely closed; and she fumbled for a minute or two among
her silks and worsteds; and the young man felt that he liked her better
than ever he did before; and he sat on the window-stone outside, and
they chatted kindly for a long time. Then they took a little walk
together among the flowers, and under the chestnuts, till it grew to be
near two o’clock, and Aunt Dinah began to look for Violet’s return; and
if the great Duke of Wellington on the field of Waterloo consulted his
watch half so often as Mr. Vane Trevor did his on the green sward of
Gilroyd that afternoon, I’m not surprised at it having excited all the
observation it did, and being noted in the history of that great day of
thunder and suspense.
Not the Iron Duke, however, but his Imperial rival on the field, when
lowering his glass, he muttered, “C’est les Prussien,” is the fitter
representative of our friend Vane Trevor, when, not Miss Violet
Darkwell, but old Mrs. Wagget’s page, a thick and stunted “buttons,” in
rifle green regimentals, moved down upon his flank, with a note in his
hand for Miss Perfect, who was entreated by the writer to allow Miss
Violet to stay dinner, with a promise that she should arrive safe at
Gilroyd in the brougham that evening at nine!
There was nothing for it but submission. It would not do, in presence of
that dwarfish page, who was eyeing Vane with the curiosity of a youthful
gossip, to order the young lady home, detain the young gentleman where
he stood, and thus by a feat of discipline compel a meeting.
So Miss Perfect despatched her reply, thanking—I hope it was
sincerely—Felicia Honoria Wagget, and accepting the arrangement with the
best grace she might.
“You must come in and take some luncheon,” said Aunt Dinah.
Gilroyd was somehow so charming a spot, its resources had grown so
inexhaustible, and old Miss Perfect so sensible and altogether
interesting that Trevor was glad to linger a little, and postpone the
evil hour of departure. It came at last, however, and Aunt Dinah called
old Winnie Dobbs, and went listlessly to her room to make her toilet for
her solitary dinner.
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