_Thekla_. I should love thee.
Whate'er thou hadst chosen, thou wouldst still have acted
Nobly and worthy of thee; but repentance
Shall ne'er disturb thy soul's fair peace.
_Max_. Then I must leave thee; must part from thee!
_Thekla_. Being faithful
To thine own self, thou art faithful too to me.--_Wallenstein_
Phoebe and Maria went alone to the Park to receive the bridal pair, for
poor Bertha was so nervous and unhinged as not even to wish to leave the
fireside. It was plain that she must not be deprived of an elder
sister's care, and that it would be unlikely that she would ever have
nerve enough to undertake the charge of Maria, even if Phoebe could think
of shifting the responsibility, or if a feeble intellect could be
expected to yield the same deference to a younger sister as came
naturally to an elder one.
Thus Phoebe's heart was somewhat heavy as she braced herself for her
communication to Mervyn, doubtful as to the extent of his probable
displeasure, but for that very cause resolved on dealing openly from the
first, while satisfied that, at her age, his right was rather to
deference than to surrender of judgment. Maria roamed through the house,
exclaiming at the alterations, and Phoebe sat still in the concentrated,
resolute stillness that was her form of suspense.
They came! The peals of the Hiltonbury bells rung merrily in the cold
air, the snow sparkled bridally, the icicles glittered in the sunset
light, the workpeople stood round the house to cheer the arrival, and the
sisters hurried out.
It was no more the pale, patient face! The cheeks were rounded, the
brown eyes smiled, the haggard air, that even as a bride Cecily had worn,
was entirely gone, and Mervyn watched exultingly Phoebe's surprise at
what he had made of the wan, worn girl they had met at Hyeres. The only
disappointment was Bertha's absence, and there was much regret that the
new-comers had not heard of her cold so as to have seen her at the
Underwood on their way. They had spent the previous day in town in going
over the distillery, by Cecily's particular wish, and had afterwards
assisted at a grand impromptu entertainment of all the workpeople, at
their own expense and Robert's trouble. Mervyn did certainly seem
carried out of his own knowledge of himself, and his wife had
transgressed every precedent left by his mother, who had never beheld
Whittingtonia in her life!
Phoebe found their eager talk so mazy and indistinct to her perception
that she became resolved to speak and clear her mind at the first
opportunity; so she tarried behind, when Cecily went up, under Maria's
delighted guidance, to take off her bonnet, and accosted Mervyn with the
ominous words, 'I want to speak to you.'
'Make haste, then; there is Cecily left to Maria.'
'I wanted to tell you that I am engaged.'
'The deuce you are!'
'To Mr. Randolf, Miss Charlecote's Canadian cousin.'
Mervyn, who had expected no less than John Raymond, whirled round in
indignant surprise, and looked incredulously at her, but was confronted
by her two open, unabashed eyes, as she stood firm on both her feet, and
continued: 'I have been thrown a good deal with him, so as to learn his
goodness and superiority. I know you will think it a very bad match, for
he has nothing but his hands and head; but we mean to wait till he can
offer what are considered as equal terms. We thought it right you should
know.'
'Upon my word, that's a clever fellow!'
Phoebe knew very well that this was ironical, but would not so reply.
'He has abilities,' she said, 'and we are ready to wait till he has made
proof of them.'
'Well, what now?' he cried in despair. 'I _did_ think you the sensible
one of the lot.'
'When you know him,' she said, with her fearless smile, 'you will own
that I _was_ sensible there.'
'Really, the child looks so complacent that she would outface me that
this mad notion was a fine thing! I declare it is worse than Bertha's
business; and you so much older! At least Hastings was a man of family,
and this is a Yankee adventurer picked out of the back of a ditch by that
young dog, Sandbrook. Only a Yankee could have had the impudence! I
declare you are laughing all the time. What have you to say for
yourself?'
'His father was major in the ---th dragoons, and was one of the Randolfs
of ---shire. His mother was a Charlecote. His birth is as good as our
own, and you saw that he is a gentleman. His character and talents have
gained his present situation, and it is a profession that gives every
opening for ability; nor does he ask for me till his fortune is made.'
'But hinders you from doing better! Pray, what would Augusta say to
you?' he added, jocosely, for even while lashing himself up, his tone had
been placable.
'He shall satisfy her.'
'How long has this been going on?'
'We only spoke of it yesterday. Bertha found it out; but I wish no one
else to know it except Robert.'
'Somehow she looks so cool, and she is so entirely the last girl I
expected to go crazy, that I can't laugh at the thing as I ought! I say,
what's this about Miss Charlecote; will she do anything for him?'
'I believe not.'
'And pray who vouches for his antecedents, such as they are.'
'Mr. Currie and Owen Sandbrook both know the whole.'
'Is Sandbrook at the Holt?'
'Yes,' answered Phoebe, suppressing her strong distaste against bringing
him into the affair.
'Well, I shall make inquiries, and--and--it is a horrid unlucky business,
and the old girl should be scarified for putting you in his way. The end
will be that you'll marry on your own means, and be pinched for life.
Now, look here, you are no fool at the bottom; you will give it up if I
find that he is no go.'
'If it be proved that I ought,' said Phoebe. 'And if you find him what I
have told you, you will make no opposition. Thank you, Mervyn.'
'Stay,' said he, laughing, and letting her kiss him, 'I have made no
promises, mind!'
The confidence that Phoebe had earned had stood her in good stead.
Mervyn had great trust in her judgment, and was too happy besides for
severity on other people's love. Nor were her perfect openness, and
fearless though modest independence, without effect. She was not one who
invited tyranny, but truly 'queen o'er herself,' she ruled herself too
well to leave the reins loose for others to seize.
The result of the interview had surpassed her hopes, and she had nothing
to regret but her brother's implied purpose of consulting Owen Sandbrook.
Friend of Humfrey though he were, she could not feel secure of his
generosity, and wished the engineer had been the nearer referee; but she
did not say so, as much for shame at her own uncharitableness, as for
fear of rousing Mervyn's distrust; and she was afraid that her
injunctions to secrecy would be disregarded. Fully aware that all would
be in common between the husband and wife, she was still taken by
surprise when Cecily, coming early next day to the Underwood to see
Bertha, took her aside to say, 'Dearest, I hope this is all right, and
for your happiness.'
'You will soon know that it is,' said Phoebe, brightly.
'Only, my dear, it must not be a long engagement. Ah! you think that
nothing now, but I could not bear to think that _you_ were to go through
a long attachment.'
Was this forgiving Cecily really fancying that her sorrows had been
nothing worse than those incidental to a long attachment?
'Ah!' thought Phoebe, 'if she could ever have felt the full reliance on
which I can venture, she need never have drooped! What is time to
trust?'
Mervyn kept his word, and waiving ceremony, took his wife at once to the
Holt, and leaving her with Miss Charlecote, made a visit to Owen in the
study, wishing, in the first place, to satisfy himself of the young man's
competence to reply to his questions. On this he had no doubt; Owen had
made steady progress ever since he had been in England, and especially
during the quiet time that had succeeded his sister's marriage. His
mental powers had fully regained their keenness and balance, and though
still incapable of sustained exertion of his faculties, he could talk as
well as ever, and the first ten minutes convinced Mervyn that he was
conversing with a shrewd sensible observer, who had seen a good deal of
life, and of the world. He then led to the question about young Randolf,
endeavouring so to frame it as not to betray the occasion of it.
The reply fully confirmed all that Phoebe had averred. The single
efforts of a mere youth, not eighteen at the time of his father's
failure, without capital, and set down in a wild uncleared part of the
bush, had of course been inadequate to retrieve the ruined fortunes of
the family; but he had shown wonderful spirit, patience, and
perseverance, and the duteous temper in which he had borne the sacrifice
of his prospects by his father's foolish speculations and unsuitable
marriage, his affectionate treatment of the wife and children when left
on his hands, and his cheerful endurance of the severest and most
hopeless drudgery for the bare support of life, had all been such as to
inspire the utmost confidence in his character. Of his future prospects,
Owen spoke with a sigh almost of envy. His talent and industry had
already made him a valuable assistant to Mr. Currie, and an able engineer
had an almost certain career of prosperity open to him. Lastly Mervyn
asked what was the connection with Miss Charlecote, and what
possibilities it held out. Owen winced for a moment, then explained the
second cousinship, adding, however, that there was no entail, that the
disposal of Miss Charlecote's property was entirely in her own power, and
that she had manifested no intention of treating the young man with more
than ordinary civility, in fact that she had rather shrunk from
acknowledging his likeness to the family. His father's English relatives
had, in like manner, owned him as a kinsman; but had shown no alacrity in
making friends with him. The only way to be noticed, as the two
gentlemen agreed, when glad to close their conference in a laugh, is to
need no notice.
'Uncommon hard on a fellow,' soliloquized Owen, when left alone. 'Is it
not enough to have one's throat cut, but must one do it with one's own
hands? It is a fine thing to be magnanimous when one thinks one is going
off the stage, but quite another thing when one is to remain there. I'm
no twelfth century saint, only a nineteenth century beggar, with an
unlucky child on my hands! Am I to give away girl, land, and all to the
fellow I raked out of his swamps? Better have let him grill and saved my
limbs! And pray what more am I to do? I've introduced him, made no
secret of his parentage, puffed him off, and brought him here, and pretty
good care he takes of himself! Am I to pester poor Honey if she does
prefer the child she bred up to a stranger? No, no, I've done my part:
let him look out for himself!'
Mervyn allowed to Phoebe that Randolf was no impostor, but warned her
against assuming his consent. She suspected that Owen at least guessed
the cause of these inquiries, and it kept her aloof from the Holt. When
Miss Charlecote spoke of poor Owen's want of spirits, discretion told her
that she was not the person to enliven him; and the consciousness of her
secret made her less desirous of confidences with her kind old friend, so
that her good offices chiefly consisted in having little Owen to the
Underwood to play with Maria, who delighted in his society, and
unconsciously did much for his improvement.
Honor herself perceived that Phoebe's visits only saddened her
convalescent, and that in his present state he was happiest with no one
but her, who was more than ever a mother to him. They were perfectly at
ease together, as she amused him with the familiar books, which did not
strain his powers like new ones, the quiet household talk, the little
playful exchanges of tender wit, and the fresh arrangement of all her
museum on the natural system, he having all the entertainment, and she
all the trouble, till her conversion astonished Bertha. The old
religious habits of the Holt likewise seemed to soothe and give him
pleasure; but whether by force of old association, or from their hold on
his heart, was as yet unknown to Honora, and perhaps to himself. It was
as if he were deferring all demonstration till he should be able again to
examine the subject with concentrated attention. Or it might be that,
while he shrank from exerting himself upon Randolf's behalf, he was not
ready for repentance, and therefore distrusted, and hung back from, the
impulses that would otherwise have drawn him to renew all that he had
once cast aside. He was never left alone without becoming deeply
melancholy, yet no companionship save Honor's seemed to suit him for many
minutes together. His brain was fast recovering the injury, but it was a
trying convalescence; and with returning health, his perfect helplessness
fretted him under all the difficulties of so tall and heavy a man being
carried from bed to sofa, from sofa to carriage.
'Poor Owen!' said Phoebe to herself, one day when she had not been able
to avoid witnessing this pitiable spectacle of infirmity; 'I can't think
why I am always fancying he is doing Humfrey and me some injustice, and
that he knows it. He, who brought Humfrey home, and has praised him to
Mervyn! It is very uncharitable of me, but why will he look at me as if
he were asking my pardon? Well, we shall see the result of Mervyn's
inspection!'
Mervyn and his wife were going for two nights to the rooms at the office,
in the first lull of the bridal invitations, which were infinitely more
awful to Cecily than to Phoebe. After twenty-nine years of quiet
clerical life, Cecily neither understood nor liked the gaieties even of
the county, had very little to say, and, unless her aunt were present,
made Phoebe into a protector, and retired behind her, till Phoebe
sometimes feared that Mervyn would be quite provoked, and remember his
old dread lest Cecily should be too homely and bashful for her position.
Poor dear Cecily! She was as good and kind as possible; but in the
present close intercourse it sometimes would suggest to Phoebe, 'was she
quite as wise as she was good?'
And Miss Fennimore, with still clearer eyes, inwardly decided that,
though religion should above all form the morals, yet the morality of
common sense and judgment should be cultivated with an equal growth.
Cecily returned from London radiant with sisterly congratulation, in a
flutter of delight with Mr. Randolf, and intimating a glorious project in
the background, devised between herself and Mervyn, then guarding against
possible disappointment by declaring it might be all her own fancy.
The meaning of these prognostics appeared the next morning. Mervyn had
been much impressed by Humfrey Randolf's keen business-like appearance
and sensible conversation, as well as by Mr. Currie's opinion of him;
and, always detesting the trouble of his own distillery, it had occurred
to him that to secure an active working partner, and throw his sister's
fortune into the business, would be a most convenient, generous, and
brotherly means of smoothing the course of true love; and Cecily had been
so enchanted at the happiness he would thus confer, that he came to the
Underwood quite elevated with his own kindness.
Phoebe heard his offer with warm thankfulness, but could not answer for
Humfrey.
'He has too much sense not to take a good offer,' said Mervyn,
'otherwise, it is all humbug his pretending to care for you. As to
Robert's folly, have not I given up all that any rational being could
stick at? I tell you, it is the giving up those houses that makes me in
want of capital, so you are bound to make it up to me.'
Mervyn and Phoebe wrote by the same post. 'I will be satisfied with
whatever you decide upon as right,' were Phoebe's words; but she
refrained from expressing any wish. What was the use of a wise man, if
he were not to be let alone to make up his mind? She would trust to him
to divine what it would be to her to be thus one with her own family, and
to gain him without losing her sisters. The balance must not be weighted
by a woman's hand, when ready enough to incline to her side; and why
should she add to his pain, if he must refuse?
How ardently she wished, however, can be imagined. She could not hide
from herself pictures of herself and Humfrey, sometimes in London,
sometimes at the Underwood, working with Robert, and carrying out the
projects which Mervyn but half acted on, and a quarter understood.
The letter came, and the first line was decisive. In spite of earnest
wishes and great regrets, Humfrey could not reconcile the trade to his
sense of right. He knew that as Mervyn conducted it, it was as
unobjectionable as was possible, and that the works were admirably
regulated; but it was in going over the distillery as a curiosity he had
seen enough to perceive that it was a line in which enterprise and
exertion could only find scope by extending the demoralizing sale of
spirits, and he trusted to Phoebe's agreeing with him, that when he
already had a profession fairly free from temptation, it was his duty not
to put himself into one that might prove more full of danger to him than
to one who had been always used to it. He had not consulted Robert,
feeling clear in his own mind, and thinking that he had probably rather
not interfere.
Kind Humfrey! That bit of consideration filled Phoebe's heart with
grateful relief. It gave her spirits to be comforted by the tender and
cheering words with which the edge of the disappointment was softened,
and herself thanked for her abstinence from persuasion. 'Oh, better to
wait seven years, with such a Humfrey as this in reserve, than to let him
warp aside one inch of his sense of duty! As high-minded as dear Robert,
without his ruggedness and harshness,' she thought as she read the manly,
warm-hearted letter to Mervyn, which he had enclosed, and which she could
not help showing to Bertha.
It was lost on Bertha. She thought it dull and poor-spirited not to
accept, and manage the distillery just as he pleased. Any one could
manage Mervyn, she said, not estimating the difference between a petted
sister and a junior partner, and it was a new light to her that the
trade--involving so much chemistry and mechanic ingenuity--was not good
enough for anybody, unless they were peacocks too stupid to appreciate
the dignity of labour! For the first time Phoebe wished her secret known
to Miss Charlecote, for the sake of her appreciation of his triumph of
principle.
'This is Robert's doing!' was Mervyn's first exclamation, when Phoebe
gave him the letter. 'If there be an intolerable plague in the world, it
is the having a fanatical fellow like that in the family. Nice requital
for all I have thrown away for the sake of his maggots! I declare I'll
resume every house I've let him have for his tomfooleries, and have a gin
bottle blown as big as an ox as a sign for each of them.'
Phoebe had a certain lurking satisfaction in observing, when his
malediction had run itself down, 'He never consulted Robert.'
'Don't tell me that! As if Robert had not run about with his mouth open,
reviling his father's trade, and pluming himself on keeping out of it.'
'Mervyn, you know better! Robert had said no word against you! It is
the facts that speak for themselves.'
'The facts? You little simpleton, do you imagine that we distil the
juices of little babies?'
Phoebe laughed, and he added kindly, 'Come, little one, I know this is no
doing of yours. You have stuck by this wicked distiller of vile liquids
through thick and thin. Don't let the parson lead you nor Randolf by the
nose; he is far too fine a fellow for that; but come up to town with me
and Cecily, as soon as Lady Caroline's bear fight is over, and make him
hear reason.'
'I should be very glad to go and see him, but I cannot persuade him.'
'Why not?'
'When a man has made up his mind, it would be wrong to try to
over-persuade him, even if I believed that I could.'
'You know the alternative?'
'What?'
'Just breaking with him a little.'
She smiled.
'We shall see what Crabbe, and Augusta, and Acton will say to your taking
up with a dumpy leveller. We shall have another row. And you'll be
broken up again!'
That was by far the most alarming of his threats; but she did not greatly
believe that he would bring it to pass, or that an engagement, however
imprudent, conducted as hers had been, could be made a plea for accusing
Miss Fennimore or depriving her of her sisters. She tried to express her
thankfulness for the kindness that had prompted the original proposal,
and her sympathy with his natural vexation at finding that a traffic
which he had really ameliorated at considerable loss of profit, was still
considered objectionable; but he silenced this at once as palaver, and
went off to fetch his wife to try her arguments.
This was worse than Phoebe had expected! Cecily was too thorough a wife
not to have adopted all her husband's interests, and had totally
forgotten all the objections current in her own family against the
manufacture of spirits. She knew that great opportunities of gain had
been yielded up, and such improvements made as had converted the
distillery into a model of its kind; she was very proud of it, wished
every one to be happy, and Mervyn to be saved trouble, and thought the
scruples injurious and overstrained. Phoebe would not contest them with
her. What the daughter had learnt by degrees, might not be forced on the
wife; and Phoebe would only protest against trying to shake a fixed
purpose, instead of maintaining its grounds. So Cecily continued
affectionately hurt, and unnecessarily compassionate, showing that a
woman can hardly marry a person of tone inferior to her own without some
deterioration of judgment, beneficial and elevating as her influence may
be in the main.
Poor Cecily! she did the very thing that those acquainted with the ins
and outs of the family had most deprecated! She dragged Robert into the
affair, writing a letter, very pretty in wifely and sisterly goodwill, to
entreat him to take Mr. Randolf in hand, and persuade him of the
desirableness of the spirit manufacture in general, and that of the
Fulmort house in particular.
The letter she received in return was intended to be very kind, but was
severely grave, in simply observing that what he had not thought fit to
do himself, he could not persuade another to do.
Those words somehow acted upon Mervyn as bitter and ungrateful irony; and
working himself up by an account, in his own colouring, of Robert's
behaviour at the time of the foundation of St. Matthew's, he went
thundering off to assure Phoebe that he _must_ take an active partner, at
all events; and that if she and Robert did not look out, he should find a
moneyed man who knew what he was about, would clear off Robert's waste,
and restore the place to what it had once been.
'What is your letter, Phoebe?' he asked, seeing an envelope in Robert's
handwriting on her table.
Phoebe coloured a little. 'He has not said one word to Humfrey,' she
said.
'And what has he said to you? The traitor, insulting me to my wife!'
Phoebe thought for one second, then resolved to take the risk of reading
all aloud, considering that whatever might be the effect, it could not be
worse than that of his surmises.
'Cecily has written to me, greatly to my surprise, begging for my
influence with Randolf to induce him to become partner in the house. I
understand by this that he has already refused, and that you are aware of
his determination; therefore I have no scruple in writing to tell you
that he is perfectly right. It is true that the trade, as Mervyn
conducts it, is free from the most flagrant evils that deterred me from
taking a share in it; and I am most thankful for the changes he has
made.'
'You show it, don't you?' interjected Mervyn.
'I had rather see it in his hands than those of any other person, and
there is nothing blameworthy in his continuance in it. But it is of
questionable expedience, and there are still hereditary practices carried
on, the harm of which he has not hitherto perceived, but which would
assuredly shock a new-comer such as Randolf. You can guess what would be
the difficulty of obtaining alteration, and acquiescence would be even
more fatal. I do not tell you this as complaining of Mervyn, who has
done and is doing infinite good, but to warn you against the least
endeavour to influence Randolf. Depend upon it, even the accelerating
your marriage would not secure your happiness if you saw your husband and
brother at continual variance in the details of the business, and
opposition might at any moment lead Mervyn to undo all the good he has
effected.'
'Right enough there;' and Mervyn, who had looked furious at several
sentences, laughed at last. 'I must get another partner, then, who can
and will manage; and when all the gin-palaces are more splendiferous than
ever, what will you and the parson say?'
'That to do a little wrong in hopes of hindering another from doing
worse, never yet succeeded!' said Phoebe, bravely.
She saw that the worst was over when he had come to that laugh, and that
the danger of a quarrel between the brothers was averted. She did not
know from how much terror and self-reproach poor Cecily was suffering,
nor her multitudinous resolutions against kindly interferences upon
_terra incognita_.
That fit of wrath subsided, and Mervyn neither looked out for his moneyed
partner, nor fulfilled his threat of bringing the united forces of the
family displeasure upon his sister. Still there was a cloud
overshadowing the enjoyment, though not lessening the outward harmony of
those early bridal days. The long, dark drives to the county gaieties,
shut up with Mervyn and Cecily, were formidable by the mere existence of
a topic, never mentioned, but always secretly dwelt on. And in spite of
three letters a week, Phoebe was beginning to learn that trust does not
fully make up to the heart for absence, by the distance of London to
estimate that of Canada, and by the weariness of one month, the tedium of
seven years!
'Yet,' said Bertha to Cecily, 'Phoebe is so stupidly like herself now she
is engaged, that it is no fun at all. Nobody would guess her to be in
love! If they cared for each other one rush, would not they have floated
to bliss even on streams of gin?'
Cecily would not dispute their mutual love, but she was not one of those
who could fully understand the double force of that love which is second
to love of principle. Obedience, not judgment, had been her safeguard,
and, like most women, she was carried along, not by the abstract idea,
but by its upholder.
Intuition, rather than what had actually passed before her, showed Phoebe
more than once that Cecily was sorely perplexed by the difference between
the standard of Sutton and that of Beauchamp. Strict, scrupulous, and
deeply devout, the clergyman's daughter suffered at every deviation from
the practices of the parsonage, made her stand in the wrong places, and
while conscientiously and painfully fretting Mervyn about petty details,
would be unknowingly carried over far greater stumbling-blocks. In her
ignorance she would be distressed at habits which were comparatively
innocent, and then fear to put forth her influence at the right moment.
There was hearty affection on either side, and Mervyn was exceedingly
improved, but more than once Phoebe saw in poor Cecily's harassed,
puzzled, wistful face, and heard in her faltering remonstrances, what it
was to have loved and married without perfect esteem and trust.