The agitation in which Walkinshaw was at the moment when he encountered
Robina, prevented him from being surprised at meeting her, and also
from suspecting the cause which had taken her to that particular place
so late in the evening. The young lady was more cool and collected, as
we believe young ladies always are on such occasions, and she was the
first who spoke.
‘Where are you running so fast?’ said she. ‘I thought you would have
stayed tea. Will you not go back with me? My mother expects you.’
‘Your father does not,’ replied Walkinshaw tersely; ‘and I wish it had
been my fortune never to have set my foot within his door.’
‘Dear me!’ exclaimed Miss Robina, as artfully as if she had known
nothing, nor overheard every word which had passed. ‘What has happened?
I hope nothing has occurred to occasion any quarrel between you. Do
think, James, how prejudicial it must be to your interests to quarrel
with my father.’
‘Curse that eternal word “interests”!’ was the unceremonious answer.
‘Your father seems to think that human beings have nothing but
interests; that the heart keeps a ledger, and values everything in
pounds sterling. Our best affections, our dearest feelings, are with
him only as tare, that should pass for nothing in the weight of moral
obligations.’
‘But stop,’ said Robina, ‘don’t be in such a hurry; tell me what all
this means--what has affections and dear feelings to do with your
counting-house affairs?--I thought you and he never spoke of anything
but rum puncheons and sugar cargoes.’
‘He is incapable of knowing the value of anything less tangible and
vendible!’ exclaimed her cousin--‘but I have done with both him and
you.’
‘Me!’ cried Miss Robina, with an accent of the most innocent
admiration, that any sly and shrewd miss of eighteen could possibly
assume.--‘Me! what have I to do with your hopes and your affections,
and your tangible and vendible commodities?’
‘I beg your pardon, I meant no offence to you, Robina--I am overborne
by my feelings,’ said Walkinshaw; ‘and if you knew what has passed, you
would sympathize with me.’
‘But as I do not,’ replied the young lady coolly, ‘you must allow me to
say that your behaviour appears to me very extravagant--surely nothing
has passed between you and my father that I may not know?’
This was said in a manner that instantly recalled Walkinshaw to his
senses. The deep and cunning character of his cousin he had often
before remarked--with, we may say plainly, aversion--and he detected
at once in the hollow and sonorous affectation of sympathy with which
her voice was tuned, particularly in the latter clause of the sentence,
the insincerity and hypocrisy of her conduct.--He did not, however,
suspect that she had been playing the eavesdropper; and, therefore,
still tempered with moderation his expression of the sentiments she was
so ingeniously leading him on to declare.
‘No,’ said he, calmly, ‘nothing has passed between your father and me
that you may not know, but it will come more properly from him, for it
concerns you, and in a manner that I can never take interest or part
in.’
‘Concerns me! concerns me!’ exclaimed the actress; ‘it is impossible
that anything of mine could occasion a misunderstanding between you.’
‘But it has,’ said Walkinshaw; ‘and to deal with you, Robina, as
you ought to be dealt with, for affecting to be so ignorant of your
father’s long-evident wishes and intents--he has actually declared that
he is most anxious we should be married.’
‘I can see no harm in that,’ said she, adding dryly, ‘provided it is
not to one another.’
‘But it is to one another,’ said Walkinshaw, unguardedly, and in the
simplicity of earnestness, which Miss perceiving, instantly with the
adroitness of her sex turned to account--saying with well-feigned
diffidence,--
‘I do not see why that should be so distressing to you.’
‘No!’ replied he. ‘But the thing can never be, and it is of no use for
us to talk of it--so good night.’
‘Stay,’ cried Robina,--‘what you have told me deserves
consideration.--Surely I have given you no reason to suppose that in a
matter so important, I may not find it my interest to comply with my
father’s wishes.’
‘Heavens!’ exclaimed Walkinshaw, raising his clenched hands in a
transport to the skies.
‘Why are you so vehement?’ said Robina.
‘Because,’ replied he solemnly, ‘interest seems the everlasting
consideration of our family--interest disinherited my father--interest
made my uncle Walter consign my mother to poverty--interest proved the
poor repentant wretch insane--interest claims the extinction of all I
hold most precious in life--and interest would make me baser than the
most sordid of all our sordid race.’
‘Then I am to understand you dislike me so much, that you have refused
to accede to my father’s wishes for our mutual happiness?’
‘For our mutual misery, I have refused to accede,’ was the abrupt
reply--‘and if you had not some motive for appearing to feel
otherwise--which motive I neither can penetrate nor desire to know, you
would be as resolute in your objection to the bargain as I am--match
I cannot call it, for it proceeds in a total oblivion of all that can
endear or ennoble such a permanent connexion.’
Miss was conscious of the truth of this observation, and with all her
innate address, it threw her off her guard, and she said,--
‘Why do you suppose that I am so insensible? My father may intend what
he pleases, but my consent must be obtained before he can complete
his intentions.’ She had, however, scarcely said so much, when she
perceived she was losing the vantage-ground that she had so dexterously
occupied, and she turned briskly round and added, ‘But, James, why
should we fall out about this?--there is time enough before us to
consider the subject dispassionately--my father cannot mean that the
marriage should take place immediately.’
‘Robina, you are your father’s daughter, and the heiress of his nature
as well as of his estate--no such marriage ever can or shall take
place; nor do you wish it should--but I am going too far--it is enough
that I declare my affections irrevocably engaged, and that I will never
listen to a second proposition on that subject, which has to-night
driven me wild. I have quitted your father--I intend it for ever--I
will never return to his office. All that I built on my connexion with
him is now thrown down--perhaps with it my happiness is also lost--but
no matter, I cannot be a dealer in such bargaining as I have heard
to-night. I am thankful to Providence that gave me a heart to feel
better, and friends who taught me to think more nobly. However, I waste
my breath and spirits idly; my resolution is fixed, and when I say Good
night, I mean Farewell.’
With these words he hurried away, and, after walking a short time on
the lawn, Robina returned into the house; and going up to her mother’s
apartment, where her father was sitting, she appeared as unconcerned
and unconscious of the two preceding conversations, as if she had
neither been a listener to the one, nor an actress in the other.
On entering the room, she perceived that her father had been mentioning
to her mother something of what had passed between himself and her
cousin; but it was her interest, on account of the direction which
her affections had taken, to appear ignorant of many things, and
studiously to avoid any topic with her father that might lead him to
suspect her bent; for she had often observed, that few individuals
could be proposed to him as a match for her that he entertained so
strong a prejudice against; although really, in point of appearance,
relationship, and behaviour, it could hardly be said that the object
of her preference was much inferior to her romantic cousin. The
sources and motives of that prejudice she was, however, regardless
of discovering. She considered it in fact as an unreasonable and
unaccountable antipathy, and was only anxious for the removal of any
cause that might impede the consummation she devoutly wished. Glad,
therefore, to be so fully mistress of Walkinshaw’s sentiments as she
had that night made herself, she thought, by a judicious management
of her knowledge, she might overcome her father’s prejudice;--and the
address and dexterity with which she tried this we shall attempt to
describe in the following chapter.