HUMBLE LOVE.
When blustering March was over, and the dead season of the year had been
for rich, as well as poor, got through, the widow of the lamented Cecil
Vavasour commenced--for the first time since his death--making
preparations for a three-months’ sojourn in London, or, as the
newspapers expressed it, “Lady Millicent Vavasour, her family and suite,
were about, during the ensuing season, to occupy the mansion in
Bolton-square, to her ladyship belonging.”
In the course of the six years that Lady Millicent had passed in a
seclusion which she had not attempted to render otherwise than irksome
to her daughters, the above-named mansion had been let--as each
revolving season came round--to the highest bidder. It was not a very
dignified proceeding, and her children (her sons especially) had chafed
both inwardly and outwardly against what _they_ considered their
mother’s “dirty economy,” in thus making money out of the family bricks
and mortar. The tide of public opinion in London, as well as in the
country, set strongly against the wealthy, parsimonious widow, whose
accumulated riches benefited so few of the persons whom common sense, as
well as the laws of nature and of precedent, pointed out as amongst
those destined to reap advantage from the seed scattered by Lady
Millicent’s hand; while, as regarded her ladyship’s sons, it was a
melancholy fact, that for lack of a home, humanly speaking, those young
gentlemen had in their nonage gone a good deal, as the saying is, “to
the bad.”
During the two years following on Cecil Vavasour’s death, and while the
_achievement_ commemorative of that melancholy event still hung
suspended between the second-floor front windows of the a “noble town
mansion,” it was only right and proper that in the widow’s house there
should be no “receptions”--no sounds of merriment, no glancings of merry
twinkling feet, within the silent, solid walls of Lady Millicent’s
deserted house. But when the years of mourning were at an end, and the
“time for setting on of meat” had come--there arose by degrees a spirit
of discontent against the widowed millionaire. On account of her
children--this was the way that they, the aggrieved ones, put it--it was
wrong, unmotherly on Lady Millicent’s part to hide the light of her
countenance from the world. There were certain duties incumbent--as
nobody would venture to deny--upon the rich, and the chief and foremost
of those duties was the exercise of a genial hospitality. The good of
trade too, both as regarded the expenditure of Lady Millicent’s family,
in London and in the country, was not a matter to be lightly regarded.
The West-end shop-keepers had a right, honest tradesmen that they were,
to expect that a sixth part at least of Lady Millicent’s income--an
income of say 60,000_l._ per annum--should find its way to their
pockets. To say nothing of example--so spoke the public voice--why, what
a sin and a shame it was for a lady possessed of such countless
thousands, and that didn’t know how either to use or abuse them, to be
set in high places, only to bring disgrace upon her order, and to
encourage others, who might be of similar mind, in the degrading vice of
avarice.
There is one reason which, in my humble opinion, is far too seldom
pleaded in excuse for the glaring faults (glaring because of the high
places of the delinquents) of the great and powerful ones of the earth;
and that reason is, that the said great and powerful ones find so few
who are willing to speak to them of their faults, and reason with them
on their shortcomings. If it be hard--and hard we are told it is--for
the rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, surely one reason for
that difficulty may be found in the comparative isolation of those who
are clothed in purple and fine linen, and who fare sumptuously every
day. The “divinity that doth hedge a king” is not only not without its
thorns, but is very instrumental in shutting majesty off from the
wholesome sympathies of life; and not alone from sympathy, but from
counsel, from reproof, and in some measure from the inestimable benefits
of example. That same “hedge,” too, is a dangerous deadener of _sound_.
It is seldom that those possessed of rank and riches hear either the
truths or falsehoods that are reported and spread abroad concerning
themselves. As Kate once pertly remarked to her brother Horace, “Who
_could_ venture to lecture Lady Millicent upon her faults?” Poor little
ill-used, thoughtless, quick-witted Kate! there were the makings of a
good and useful woman in her busy brain and ardent temperament; but,
under her mother’s injudicious training the little head became filled
with foolish fancies, the impulses of the warm young heart seemed likely
to lead its owner into something very nearly approaching to scrapes;
and, in short, from the rich raw material of poor Katie’s mind there
sprung the plentiful growth of weeds which half civilisation invariably
draws up from the soil.
Entirely absorbed by her own immediate plans--plans which had occupied
her busy mind from the day when the contents of Lord Gillingham’s will
startled her into the consciousness that she must do something for
herself, or a decent and obscure dowagerhood would be her only
portion--absorbed, I repeat, with her own cares, to the extent of
troubling herself but little with the well-being even of her children,
Lady Millicent, till the day when her plans were ripe for commencement,
and the hour had struck when law-proceedings, with the object of setting
aside her father’s will, could be entered upon, had never deemed it
incumbent on her to allow her daughters more than a passing glimpse at
London and its pleasures. For this seeming neglect she had her answer
ready, when Lady Guernsey, or old Sir Richard Pemberton, two of the few
amongst her acquaintances who ever ventured to put in a word for the
young people at the Castle, suggested that a little change was good for
everyone, and that both Rhoda and Kate would be probably advantaged by a
moderate amount of amusement, as well as by better masters than were
procurable either at Leigh or Gawthorpe.
“Young ladies in these days,” Lady Millicent would say, “learn quite
soon enough, without their parents putting themselves out of the way to
teach them the lesson, that the country is a bore, and that without
perpetual excitement life hangs terribly heavy on their hands. For _my_
part--people may think me selfish if they like, but I honestly confess
that the coming out of my girls is a ceremony which, for their sakes as
well as my own, I shall be glad to put off to the latest possible
period.”
“But in the mean time,” said their outspoken champion, “how are you
preparing them, my dear Lady Millicent, for the part they are to play? I
am afraid that poor dear Rhoda--(I may talk without scruple of _her_,
because, as you know, I admire her so much, and have such a real
affection for her)--I am sadly afraid that Rhoda, with all her beauty,
will be what my boys call _nowhere_. She has not an idea, poor child,
no, not the very slightest, _de se faire valoir_. Girls with less than
half her good looks would make their way twice as well from the mere
fact that Rhoda is simply good and shy and unaffected, and knows no more
than my toy-terrier does how to make the most of herself.”
That there was much truth at the bottom of Lady Guernsey’s remarks, no
one knew better than the mother of the gentle girl who, both by nature
and education, was so ill-qualified to fight, through the arduous
campaign of a London season, the fierce battle of life. If Lady
Millicent could be said to feel interest in, and affection for, any
human being save herself, that human being was her unselfish, yielding,
and not over-brilliant elder daughter. It would have been hard indeed
for anyone living habitually with Rhoda Vavasour not to appreciate the
gentleness of her disposition, and not to admire the unassuming
rectitude of purpose which was one of her most striking characteristics;
and yet, partly perhaps (at least so said that far-seeing Horace)
because she seemed so good, no one, not even--with the exception of Lady
Millicent--those of her own household, took so kindly to steady, quiet
Rhoda, as they did to giddy-pated Kate--Kate, whom her brothers
pronounced to be unfortunately plain, but who was one of the “jolliest”
girls that you could ever hope to meet with, and who was withal as
wilful, and as little inclined to do right on principle, as the less
popular Rhoda was known to be the reverse.
“I wonder, and I always shall, what has made mamma make up her mighty
mind to spend the season in London,” Kate remarked one morning early in
March to her elder sister, as the two were taking the daily
constitutional, of which they were both in different degrees and
fashions wearied, through the shrubberies of Gillingham;
“everyone--Horace among the number--made so sure that this year would
pass like all the rest, and that we should stick for ever at horrid old
Gillingham.”
“Don’t call it horrid, Kate; I am sure that I shall never like any place
one half so well; and when we have to leave it--”
“I for one should be ready to jump out of my very skin for joy,” cried
Kate, dancing forward with a kind of sidelong motion, not remarkable for
gracefulness, but very suggestive of the state of mind to be expected
from this young lady on the occasion of the final bidding adieu to the
beautiful home of her childhood. “To think,” Kate said, sobering down
after her momentary ebullition of feeling, “to think that
_never_--never, I mean, as a matter of rule--should we be walking here,
in this same walk, between those stupid, odious trees again! O, Rhoda
dear, how _can_ you take everything so quietly? I do believe that if you
were to be told that our going to London was over, and that we were to
stay here for the rest of our lives, you would be quite contented. So
long as the school went on, and you could listen to Mr. Wallingford’s
stupid sermons, you would never break your heart about anything.”
Rhoda made no reply to this thoughtless speech. Constitutionally shy
(the only one of her family who had inherited her father’s life-long
infirmity), this elder daughter of a wealthy house was little given to
the outpouring of her inner feelings. Confidantes she had none, and so
entirely undemonstrative was she of what was passing within her heart,
that even her own sister had never surmised what was the _one_ chief
cause of Rhoda Vavasour’s chronic state of contentment at dull and
uneventful Gillingham.
Kate--the restless and the ambitious “Kitty,” whom her brothers plagued
and petted, and who was looked on as a kind of reckless “free lance” by
her unsympathising mamma--had from her earliest girlhood entertained
very exalted ideas of her elder sister’s beauty. There was not a tinge
of womanly jealousy, not a fractional atom of the alloy of envy in Kate
Vavasour’s nature. She knew herself to be almost what the world calls
plain; but she had good eyes, a fine _élancé_ figure, and the something
about her which--who can say why or wherefore?--often attracts more than
beauty, be that beauty ever so exalted and refined. Of _that_ class of
female attractiveness was the το καλον--the delicate charm which one man
at least who knew her discovered in the fair face of Rhoda Vavasour.
George Wallingford, the incumbent of the small and not very remunerative
living of Switcham, was a scholar and a gentleman; a man possessed of no
exalted intellect, no world-known name either for erudition or for race.
Not even amongst the untitled wealthy--the millionocracy of this busy
universe of ours--was the obscure rector of Switcham acknowledged as a
unit, since it was from being one of the hardest of hardworking curates
in the dirtiest and wickedest of manufacturing cities, that George
Wallingford had been translated to what in his eyes was comparatively
heaven--namely, to the spiritual superintendence of an orderly rural
population.
As a matter of course, Lady Millicent “took notice” of the clergyman of
the parish. Three times a year, or thereabouts, Mr. Wallingford was
invited to dine at the Castle, in addition to which act of
condescension, the young rector--whom Lady Millicent pronounced to be
“very well behaved,” “really quite a respectable person”--was graciously
permitted to pay his _devoirs_ from time to time at the great house, on
which occasions “milady” would lay down the law in parish matters after
a fashion which--although he bore the trial with outward patience--could
scarcely fail to rouse what was left in George Wallingford of the old,
and unregenerate man, into a somewhat unholy state of irritation.
The fact that Lady Millicent Vavasour, “civil” though she invariably
was, considered him in the light of an inferior many times removed, was
patent as the light of Gospel truth to the Rector of Switcham. That he
did not love the lady patroness of the living he held the better for the
discovery is simply adducing a proof, if proof were needed, that he was
human. _L’amour ne se commande pas_, says the proverb; and the best of
men--this excellent clerical gentleman included--can do no more than
refrain from hating the individual who wounds their _self_-love by
treating them with hauteur and condescension.
As will readily be believed, the female inhabitants of Switcham and its
neighbourhood very soon after Mr. Wallingford’s installation commenced
their sex’s normal practice, namely, that of finding a wife for a
bachelor incumbent. Though the rectory of Switcham was very far removed
from being one of the plums of church patronage, yet there were
contingent advantages attached to it, to say nothing of the living being
held, as in the present instance, by a tolerably good-looking young man
a year or two under thirty, which caused more than one _demoiselle à
marier_ to gaze with eyes of interest on the mild-looking clergyman in
his single-breasted waistcoat and neatly-trimmed whiskers, the while the
said damsel pictured to herself the lonely man eating his solitary
steak; or (climax of melancholy conjuration!) brewing--in the pretty
drawing-room of the parsonage--his bachelor tea!
Some years elapsed (for, as the poet hath it, “hope springs responsive
in the _female_ breast”) before the spinsterhood of Mr. Wallingford’s
flock came to the unpleasing conclusion that the young rector was the
_rara avis_ among birds of his feather, a non-marrying clergyman. Even
after the good man’s heart had spoken, for speak it did, when its owner
had been some five years at Switcham, and when Rhoda Vavasour,
emancipated from governess control, was of an age to be introduced to
the guests who, few and far between, were invited to partake of Lady
Millicent’s grudgingly dispensed hospitality--even, as I was about to
say, after George Wallingford’s seemingly obdurate heart had melted
under the influence of Miss Vavasour’s shy smile and pale delicate
prettiness,--the little world in which he lived knew nothing of his
heart’s weakness. As how indeed should it? To no one--no not even to the
friend that had ever stuck closer to him than a brother, to the school
and college fellow whom hitherto he had trusted with every secret of his
life, not even to the congenial spirit dwelling like himself in a pure
bachelor’s body, not to the silent, caustic, woman-despising James
Truscott, fellow of his college, and the most ungainly in appearance of
created men, did George Wallingford confess the wondrous truth that he
was in love with that bright particular star, Miss Rhoda Vavasour.
He might just as well--and it needed no stern Mentor to remind him of
the fact--have set his affections upon an empress. Never even by a
glance (at least not to his own knowledge) had he hinted to the object
of his senseless passion, that with a dreary and a hopeless, and yet
with an all-engrossing love he watched and dreamed of, sighed and prayed
for her. It was intensely foolish and unmanly, the more foolish and
unmanly inasmuch as the great lady of Gillingham never allowed the
comparatively lowly born rector to forget his place. If kindly-natured,
charitable George Wallingford did in his heart believe the well-sounding
axiom that “’tis only noble to be good,” the flattering unction was not
laid so soothingly to his soul as to enable him to act, as regarded
pretty Rhoda Vavasour, on the cheering conviction. It may be in the
abstract perfectly true that
“Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood;”
but judging of things (the only really reliable test) on their
marketable value, we shall, I greatly fear, be obliged to own that,
individually considered, the coronets, and the blue blood have in this
wicked world the best of it.
But carefully under lock and key as the reverend George kept his secret,
there was one who discovered its existence, and who, having so
discovered it, was ever, with true feminine inquisitiveness, peering
behind the veil of the good man’s heart for further and more
satisfactory information. Rhoda Vavasour’s first sensation, when the
fact (in some subtle and inexplainable manner) of Mr. Wallingford’s
hopeless passion became apparent to her, was one of actual fear. In an
instant there rose up before her a vision of Lady Millicent’s stern and
astonished face, a face in which none of her children had ever traced a
sign of tenderness, or the faintest line of sympathy or pity. It was to
that very hardness, to the repellant influence felt by timid shrinking
Rhoda whenever her thoughts turned to or her eyes rested on her mother’s
unloving countenance, that might mainly be attributed the
encouragement--for she did in her silent, gentle way encourage the young
clergyman to hope--which Rhoda gave to the Rector of Switcham. But there
was yet another, and perhaps an equally powerful, reason for the
“underhand deceit,” the “grovelling tastes,” as Lady Millicent would
have, and indeed did in later days describe them, that were displayed at
that period of her life by her daughter. Nature had endowed poor Rhoda
with a susceptible heart, and a strong propensity to cling. In default
of any other object on which to fix her affections, and of some more
suitable prop round which to twine, it was only in the common order of
things that to the sole stay within her reach, the tendrils
(heartstrings is perhaps the most appropriate word) of Rhoda’s inner
woman should have wound themselves round the engaging young parson, to
whose exhortations, delivered in a voice singularly pleasing, she meekly
listened, and who enjoyed in Lady Millicent’s pet schoolroom, and
sometimes by the bedside of the sick, golden opportunities of _looking_,
at least, unutterable things. There could scarcely be a stronger proof
of _retenue_, both on the part of the rector and that of the young lady,
than the actuality that Kate, who was usually so ready at discovering
love-affairs, never once suspected the truth as regarded her sister. Not
even the grand phenomenon, the mighty puzzle of Rhoda’s contentment at
Gillingham, had sufficed to warn the rather precocious maiden that
quiet, pretty Rhoda--Rhoda, who looked, as the old saying goes, “as if
butter would not melt in her mouth”--was in love with, and meekly
ambitious to marry the obscure young man at whom Lady Millicent, while
she deigned to patronise him, decidedly turned up her aristocratic nose.
The reason for Rhoda’s silence when Kate alluded to the rector--a
silence which, had Miss Kitty been in an investigating mood, that
quick-witted damsel would speedily have speculated on the cause--must be
now fully apparent to the reader. For a moment the shy girl thought and
feared that her secret was discovered, and that, in shrinking
mortification, she would be compelled to endure the wondering,
kindly-meant questionings of her younger sister. The next words,
however, spoken by the loquacious Kitty dissipated her alarm; and
feeling intensely grateful for the reprieve, Rhoda listened with
sympathising ears to the chattering girl’s remarks and surmises.
“I am afraid that what Horace says is right,” continued Kate, “and that
it is this odious law-business which we have heard hinted at so long
that takes mamma to London. One good thing is, that she cannot mean to
keep us quite as much out of fun and amusement as she does here. Haven’t
you noticed how she has gradually been giving up the righteous dodge?
For ages--as we all know--balls were desperately wicked, and operas a
positive abomination. It was only in the country that, according to
mamma, there was any chance of being saved; whereas I heard Horace say
only the other day, that people could inflame themselves quite as much
with idols under green trees as in the excitements of a London season. I
heard him say, too--”
“O Katie,” Rhoda broke out, “don’t, pray don’t, repeat the things--I
mean that kind of thing--that Horace says! I cannot bear the remarks he
makes about mamma; and I think that if you were not to encourage him, he
would leave them off. And besides, I don’t know how it is, but I always
feel guilty when I see mamma after we have been abusing her.”
She spoke very seriously, for little as Lady Millicent had either
deserved the filial love or encouraged the confidence of her children,
it nevertheless jarred against the girl’s sense of what was right and
fitting when she heard the others talk, as they were wont to do, _à cœur
ouvert_, of her mother’s small hypocrisies and underground plans.
Kate laughed merrily. “_We_ abusing her! I like that! Fancy _you_ saying
what you think about milady! No, no; the time for that isn’t come yet.
But wait till you’re tried, that’s all. It takes longer to provoke you
than it does to irritate either of us. And then, if mamma is fond of
anyone in the world, she is of you; I suppose because you are so very
meek, always ready to let her think she is in the right, let her do what
she will. But about this muslin, Rhoda. Hammond says there certainly is
not enough for both; so I suppose, as it will not do for Miss Vavasour
to look skimping before the eyes of London, you had better take the
whole. Ah me!” stretching herself rather wearily as she stood before the
cheval glass, and then letting her arms fall with a sigh too deep-drawn
to have emanated from so young a breast; “ah me! how I wish I had a
mother--a mother, I mean, like Lady Guernsey or Lady Pemberton, or
even--don’t be shocked, you aristocratic thing!--even like Mrs. Clay. I
want a motherly mother--one who would love and pet, and bore people
about me--one that I could tell things to, and that would listen, and
not look as if she thought one a fool. And besides--though that sounds
horrid, I daresay--I should be glad of a mother who would care whether I
looked nice, and who would give you, now that you are ‘coming out,’
enough of an allowance for you to dress as well as other girls. Sixty
pounds a-year! Why, Lina de Lacy had that when she was fifteen, and
mamma is twice as rich as Lady Guernsey. I wonder how you _will_ manage!
Run in debt, I suppose, like Arthur. Poor Atty! But it will be worse
for you than for him, if you are forced by money difficulties to marry
someone that you don’t love, and--”
“I shall never do that,” Rhoda said, but in a voice so low that Kate
could scarcely catch the words.
“So you think now; but, as I said before, wait till you are tried. And
there is another thing, darling--you will have to marry for my sake.
Only think, Rho dear, how happy we should be together! You with a nice
home of your own, with no one to object to your ordering the carriage
when you pleased, with no cross looks if you were a minute too late for
prayers, with--”
Rhoda interrupted her by a laugh. “You might exchange bad for worse,”
she said sapiently. “All husbands are not like Lord Guernsey, and I
suspect that very few homes are so happy as Sophy’s was. I daresay, if
we could look into the insides of many people’s houses, we should see
plenty of girls a good deal more to be pitied than we are. And, Katie
dear, whether that be so or not, one thing is certain, namely, that it
is wrong--wicked even, I think--to be discontented, and to abuse mamma.
Whatever she does or says, _we_ have no right to sit in judgment on, or
to find fault with. Don’t be put out with me for preaching, dear Katie.
I know I am not half so clever as you are; but--”
“But you are fifty times as good!” cried Kate; “and I believe in my
heart that because you are so good and so patient, mamma does love you a
little bit; while as for the rest of us--but what is the use of thinking
about it?”--dashing a tear impetuously from her eyes as she asked
herself the painful question. “Thinking over it won’t give one affection
or kindness or sympathy; so I for one shall try to do without what
would--at least so I fancy--make one contented anywhere and everywhere.”
The simple philosophy of the girl of seventeen, though in some respects
rational enough, was, however, based upon very erroneous principles. The
example of her more highly-valued sister might have demonstrated to her
that “patience does its perfect work,” and that the most selfish of
mortals, and those least to be affected by the claims of kindred and the
universal prejudices of consanguinity, can yet be influenced, both as
regards their conduct and their sensibilities, by the deference which
real goodness never fails to obtain for those who, knowing what is
right, do, as the poet adds, “always practise what they know.”