AN IRRITABLE MAN.
When we went downstairs, which I did at Mrs. Mordaunt’s request, after
looking in the glass to see that no traces of tears were visible, we
found Mr. Mordaunt in a towering passion--I mean _our_ Mr. Mordaunt, for
Mr. Henry had just driven off on his return to London.
This was a great relief to me, for although I was determined to face
him, yet I could not bear that he should perceive the effect his words
had produced, for I could not succeed in appearing like the happy being
I had been that very morning. It was also a relief to witness Mr.
Mordaunt’s extreme anger. He was a good, worthy man in the main, but
extremely passionate.
I had sometimes observed that his anger was a sort of safety-valve, or
rather a kind of excitement, that seemed almost necessary to wake up his
somewhat sluggish nature. I must do him the justice to say that his bad
temper was generally aroused on the side of right, in the cause of the
weak or oppressed, but it made him at times a disagreeable companion,
and had once or twice startled his poor wife into hysterics.
And now, instead of endeavouring to comfort me as poor Mrs. Mordaunt
had done, the sight of my pale face seemed to increase his rage. He
broke forth into a strain of invective against everyone concerned in
this extraordinary affair; and then took up the defence of each, and
showed that under these wonderful circumstances they could scarcely have
acted otherwise. Then he drew a vivid and, I afterwards thought, rather
exaggerated picture of my wrongs and utterly hopeless condition.
“Absolutely penniless! Yes, of course she is, for her mother can have
nothing. Those foreign marchesas and popish counts never have a
sixpence. And what is she to do, will you allow me to ask you? And what
are we to do? For of course the man, or boy, will want to come here,
and there is an end of our tenancy. And _we_ can give the girl
nothing.”
“Oh! Mr. Mordaunt, don’t say that!” said his wife, with tears in her
eyes. “I am sure she’s welcome----”
“Welcome to what? Yes, very well, very well. But you always forget we
have nothing beyond our lives. The greater part of our income is the
jointure you got from your first husband, which of course dies with you;
and all I have is strictly entailed on my nephew; and we have never
saved a sixpence. On the contrary, when I die, there will be debts--as
sure as I am alive there will.”
“Oh! dear, this is very sad, and----”
“Of course it is. Whichever way you look at it, it’s utterly hopeless.
Then a girl brought up in luxury, who of course can do nothing even for
herself, much less for her mother, thrown on the wide world, and obliged
to become a governess, perhaps, as so many poor ladies have in these
hard times; and probably not even fit for that.”
“Oh! but while we live, Mr. Mordaunt,” interposed his wife.
“While we live, indeed! And who can ensure our lives even till to-morrow
morning? And where is the girl to go then, allow me to ask?”
“Why, there’s Aunt Jane,” suggested Mrs. Mordaunt, with a face of horror
at the idea of her own and her husband’s certain death before the next
morning.
“Aunt Jane, indeed!--why, that’s still worse. She has only quite a small
annuity; and all she saves and contrives to pinch and screw out of it
by dressing like a common person, must go to her starving niece, the
fool who made the bad match with that Indian scoundrel--more fool she!
Then there’s the arrears, too. What’s to become of all the sums your
father has received for all these years?”
“Arrears! What are they?” I inquired, with sudden dread.
“Of course you know nothing of business. I was sure you could not. How
could a girl brought up in a Popish convent know anything of business?
Yes, miss, there’s the arrears ever since your father took possession of
the property on his father’s death. He would have been made answerable
for them had he lived, and now--and now we have not yet looked at the
worst feature of this--this d----d--this unfortunate case.”
He contrived, after a pause, to make a violent effort to find words to
substitute for the curses he had been formerly in the habit of using, I
was told, before his marriage.
“We have not yet looked at the worst,” he repeated, while his excited
countenance seemed to brighten up still more at the idea of an
additional grievance; for he certainly enjoyed his anger, and he perhaps
enjoyed it all the more from feeling that his wrath was not excited by
any one person in particular, but only against these most adverse
circumstances in general. “For, of course, people will blame your father
for not having discovered that his brother had married that cur--that
Canadian girl. Of course ill-natured people will even say that he knew
of it all along, and wished deliberately to defraud his eldest brother’s
son.”
“Oh! impossible!” I exclaimed, when the horror of my father being thus
blamed seemed worse than anything that could befall me, and I sank down
on the floor in an agony of grief, which seemed to dry up the sources of
my tears.
“There! see what you have done,” moaned poor Mrs. Mordaunt. “You will
kill her! Really, it is very unfeeling of you to talk to her in that
way.”
“I beg pardon,” said Mr. Mordaunt, who was really frightened at the
effect of his words. “I--I don’t mean, my dear young lady--pray don’t
imagine--I--besides, you are not to blame in any way.”
“But if my father is, or can be blamed, I shall never be happy again.
I--I don’t care what becomes of myself. I--could scrub the floors, or
anything, but I could not--I will not live a day, if my dear father
is----”
“Ah! well, now I am really sorry I said such a thing. There, don’t think
any more about it. I will put your case--your father’s case--into the
hands of the only honest lawyer there is--for they are such fools--and
we will see what can be done. Henry maintains that the best authorities
have been consulted, and I suppose he would not have declared the thing
unless it was beyond doubt. Still, I have a great opinion of Graspem and
Snareland, and I’ll write. Stay, I’ll go up to London the first thing
to-morrow morning--or, stay, I may not be alive then. Ring the bell,
Martha, and I’ll order the buggy directly, and I’ll drive to the
station, and I’ll see Graspem this very night, before I go to bed.
There--confound the bell!--the servants are so slow. I’ll go to the
stable and order it myself; and, Martha, you see to my carpet-bag.”
“But you will not go till after dinner?” said Mrs. Mordaunt. “Remember,
you never eat luncheon.”
“Confound--I mean, never mind the luncheon. I can get something at the
station. Where’s the ‘Bradshaw?’ Of course, not to be found! There, my
dear Miss Vivian, cheer up, and don’t despair till I come back from
London, and till you really know the worst. And mind,” he added, as he
saw my look of intense misery--“mind, no really sensible or good person
can ever blame your father.”
Somewhat consoled by Mr. Mordaunt’s kind zeal in my behalf, I sat down
to write an account of the whole case to Aunt Jane. I implored her to
come and see me, and advise what I was to do in this most perplexing
case. But the next morning’s post dashed my hopes of seeing her, for a
letter came to say she was just starting for Madeira, to attend upon her
niece, who they feared was dying.
The letter I had written to her the night before was not yet posted, and
now it might be weeks, perhaps months, before it reached her. This was a
most fearful addition to my sufferings, for I saw it was most important
for me at once to decide on some course of action, and find some means
to earn my bread. I must write to my mother and to Carlo; and oh! how I
shrank from telling him of my poverty! No, I would not write to him,
until I could see some means of gaining my own living. I would not be a
burden, or--tears blinded my eyes as I thought of this, and I felt quite
unequal to write even to my mother. As I sat at the writing-table in my
bed-room, utterly unable to do anything, I heard a carriage drive up to
the door.
It could not be Mr. Mordaunt, for no train came back from London so
early, but I ran to the window of the next room, which looked towards
the north entrance. It was an open barouche, and I saw two ladies get
out. I fancied the tallest looked like Mrs. Chandos, and the little
one--yes, that pretty fair face and light flowing curls, must be
Norah--the little sensible Norah that Aunt Jane was always talking
about.
I liked her air and her light buoyant step as she ascended the flight of
stone steps; and as she paused for a moment to look at the lovely view,
and then up at the window, she caught a sight of my face. The smile she
gave me was very pleasant, there was something so informal, so genuine
in its childlike expression--the kind of smile with which one young
playfellow might greet another, expressing the anticipation of sunny
hours and all kinds of innocent fun together. Mind, I did not think all
this at that moment. I was only wonderfully pleased at meeting with the
kind of unconventional greeting I had never seen before, and the
impression her whole appearance gave me resolved itself into the words,
“What a contrast to me!”
She was as fair as I was dark; her eyes were blue and laughing, while
mine were dark and passionate in their intensity; I was tall and fully
developed, she was short and slim. The only point we had in common--at
least before the unfortunate discovery I had made the day before--was a
look of genuine happiness.
“Then she is happy with her new mother after all,” I thought. I longed
to see more of her, but I felt, under the strange cloud that now hung
over me, it would be awkward to appear. So I went back to my room, and
tried to read, but could fix my attention to nothing. I had a sort of
vague hope that she must have felt I should be glad to see her, and I
half expected that she would ask Mrs. Mordaunt to send for me.
I found afterwards that she had, but Mrs. Mordaunt, thinking I should
not like to be seen or disturbed, had made some lame kind of excuse
about my having heard bad news, and was suffering from a headache.
When I heard the carriage drive up to the door again, I ran to the same
window; and this time I saw that she purposely looked up, in evident
hopes of seeing me. Another still more hopeful smile, a little graceful
nod of her pretty head and waving sunny ringlets, while her hand was
playfully raised, and her little fingers wafted a childlike, happy
greeting.
“What a little darling!” I thought, as she tripped down the steps; and
then, as the carriage drove off, she turned round and gave me another
greeting. I saw that Mrs. Chandos observed this, for she put out her
hand, and said something which I feared might be a reproof for the young
girl’s unusual demonstrativeness to a stranger.