Lord Millefleurs had given his family a great deal of trouble--not in
the old-fashioned way of youthful folly or dissipation, which is too
well known in every age, the beaten road upon which young men tread down
the hearts of their progenitors, and their own best hopes, in all the
wantonness of short-sighted self-indulgence. The heir of the house of
Lavender had gone wrong in an entirely new-fashioned and
nineteenth-century way. He was devoured by curiosity, not of the modes
of pleasure, but about those other ways of living which the sons of
dukes in general have no knowledge of. He got tired of being a duke's
son, and it seemed to him that life lay outside the range of those happy
valleys in which he was born. He had gone to America, that home of all
kinds of freedom, and there had disappeared from the ken of ducal
circles. He had not even written home, which was the inexcusable part of
it, but had sunk out of sight, coming to the surface, as it were, only
once or twice in a couple of years, when a sudden draft upon his banker
revealed him to his anxious family, whose efforts to trace him during
this time were manifold, but always unsuccessful. It was Beaufort who
had been the means at last of restoring the virtuous prodigal, who in
the meantime had been occupied, not by any vicious tastes or dangerous
_liaisons_, but by the most entirely innocent, if eccentric, experiments
in living. Beaufort found him, but not before the young man was willing
to be found--a fact which, however, the anxious relations did not take
into account, as detracting from the merit of the man whom they
described as Millefleurs's deliverer, his better genius, and by many
other flattering descriptions. In reality, Millefleurs had set out on
his way home, moved thereto by the energetic representations of a
strong-minded, middle-aged maiden in Connecticut or California (how can
a historian without data particularise?), who told him that a man was no
gentleman who kept the women of his family in ignorance of his
movements, and exposed them to all the tortures of anxiety. This puzzled
the scientific adventurer. He had found out that daily work (which
amused him very much) was not at all incompatible with the character of
a gentleman; but he felt himself pulled up in his career when this new
view of the subject was presented to him. After a little thought, he
decided that Miss Sallie F---- was right. And he took off his working
clothes, and put on the livery of civilisation, and found Beaufort, who
had attacked the continent bravely but vaguely in search of him, on his
way. Millefleurs was not proud. He let himself be brought home as if it
was all Beaufort's doing, and made his peace with everybody. The
consequence was, that the illustrious house of Lavender was ready to do
anything in the world for that excellent Mr Beaufort, who had fished
their heir out of troubles unknown; and, in respect to that heir
himself, were bending all their faculties to the task of getting him
married, and so put out of harm's way. It was a new sphere for the
mental vivacity and curiosity of Millefleurs. He devoted himself to a
study of the young ladies of the highest civilisation, just as he had
devoted himself to the life of the dockyards and the backwoods.
(Probably I should say to the mines and the cattle-ranches; but the
reader who knows the fashion will here supply the appropriate phrase.)
He found the study curious, and not at all unpleasant, and so went
about scattering wild hopes about him wherever he moved. Was anything
else possible? If the young ladies in our northern county had been
(inevitably) fluttered and excited when Pat Torrance fixed his big light
eyes upon them, knowing the value of him as, so to speak, an
appointment, a post for life which would remove all anxiety about their
future comfort from their own minds and those of their parents, how much
more when the Marquis of Millefleurs went hopping about the
drawing-rooms, carrying on his researches in a far more genial and
agreeable manner than Pat Torrance was capable of doing? And it was
quite certain that nobody would ever be unhappy with Millefleurs. He was
always cheerful, always considerate, ready to do anything for anybody.
He was more like a daughter than a son, the Duchess declared, with tears
in her eyes--foreseeing what she wanted, watching over her as nobody had
ever done before: although it was no doubt very wrong--oh, very
wrong!--to almost break her heart, leaving her two years without a
letter; but he would not do so to his wife. Thus the--we will not say
candidates, rather nominees--possible occupants of the delightful and
every way desirable post of Marchioness of Millefleurs had every sort of
inducement to "go in" for it, and scarcely any drawback at all.
The drawback was not worth speaking of--it was the most superficial of
objections. This enterprising, amusing, good-tempered, quick-witted,
accomplished, and lovable hero, was, as the girls said, the funniest
little man that had ever been seen. He was shorter than most of the
young ladies to whom he made himself so agreeable. He was plump and
round, a succession of curves and gently billowing outlines; his eyes
were like little black beads, though they were sparkling with life and
animation; he had a round face like a boy of ten, with nice little puffy
rosy cheeks, and a lisp which completed the infantile effect of his
appearance generally. A little air of the most agreeable
self-satisfaction hung about him--what the vulgar and detractors
generally call vanity and self-conceit, but which indeed was nothing of
the kind, being only that confidence of pleasing which his natural
temper gave him in the first place, and his position confirmed. For how
could he be ignorant that to be Marquis of Millefleurs was enough to
make any man charming? It was to escape this that he had fled from
society and been called Tommy by the American labourers, with whom he
was just as popular as in Mayfair. It had been intended to keep this
little gentleman in the background of this narrative as really a very
secondary person in it; but, with his usual determination to be in the
front of everything, he has pushed himself forward against the
historian's will.
Having thus yielded to his natural tendency to show himself, we may
proceed to say what we had intended without this preamble, that the
peculiarity of Millefleurs's appearance took all seriousness from the
fact of his rapidly increasing intimacy with them, in the foolish and
inexperienced eyes not only of Edith but of her mother. Lady Lindores,
though she had been alarmed and startled by the importance attached to
his first visit, and the penalty paid for it, could not bring herself to
regard him seriously. He seemed to her a boy, notwithstanding that the
peerage was produced to her and dates set before her eyes,--and she shut
her eyes altogether to any danger that might be involved in the
frequency of his visits. She was very glad to see him whenever he came.
Never was there a more delightful household retainer; his friendliness
and affectionateness and half-feminine interest in all their concerns
great and small, made him delightful to the women, who wanted no more of
him. He was like a boy at home from school in this friendly house, where
no incense was burned before him, and ran on their commissions, and took
an interest in their work, and gave his opinion about their dress, with
all the freedom of long acquaintance; and it naturally added in no small
degree to the brilliancy of their appearance out of doors, and to the
effect they produced, that such an attendant should be constantly in
their train. Lady Lindores was not insensible to this gratification;
and had Millefleurs looked more grown up and less like a friend's son
confided to her for the holidays, it is very likely that the chance of
seeing her child elevated to the highest level of the social ladder
would have been too much for her also, and turned her head a little. But
whenever the idea glanced across her mind, as it was bound to do
sometimes, if from nothing more than the discourses of Rintoul, she had
but to look at the rounded outlines of her little hero, and all these
visions dispersed in a laugh. To imagine him a bridegroom, not to say
Edith's bridegroom, affected her with a sense of the ludicrous which it
was beyond her power to restrain.
But this was extremely foolish, as everybody will perceive; and it was
with a very different eye that Lord Lindores contemplated the frequent
presence of this above-all-competitors-desirable young man. It was not
only that he was a duke's son, though that in itself was much, but he
was the son of a duke who was a Cabinet Minister, and eminently
qualified to help on the scheme of ambition which inspired the Scotch
Earl. His Grace knew the gain it would be to replace the Tory who had
sat for Dee-and-Donshire for years with an out-and-out partisan of the
existing Government; and there could be little doubt that he would
appreciate the expediency of increasing the importance of any family to
which his own should become allied. And then the prospects which would
open before Edith were such as to dazzle any beholder. If her father had
ever felt that he was to blame in respect to his elder daughter, here
was something which surely would make amends for all. Millefleurs was no
rustic bully, no compound of a navvy and a squire, but the quintessence
of English gentlemanhood, good-hearted, clever in his way, universally
popular, the sort of man whom, irrespective of all worldly advantages, a
father would be glad to trust his child's happiness to. The idea that
any reasonable objection could be grounded upon his appearance would
have irritated Lord Lindores beyond all self-control. His appearance! he
was not a hunchback, nor deaf, nor dumb, nor blind. Short of that, what
on earth did it matter how a man looked? And no doubt Lord Lindores was
in the right. But in reality, that which put all idea of him as a lover
out of the mind of Lady Lindores and Edith was not any objection to his
appearance, but the mere fact of his appearance, his boyish looks, his
contour, his aspect of almost childhood. As has been said, when the
suggestion was presented to her mind that Millefleurs might have
"intentions" in respect to Edith, Lady Lindores the next time she saw
him laughed. "What is the joke?" he had said to her half-a-dozen times;
and she had answered, "There is no joke, only a ludicrous suggestion."
"About me, perhaps," he said once, reducing her to great embarrassment.
But she managed to elude his observation; and to Edith, fortunately, the
idea never occurred at all. She declared herself to be very fond of him;
she said there was no one so nice; she brightened when he came in, and
listened to his chatter with unfailing pleasure. She said there was
nobody she would miss so much when she went home. When he complained
that he had never been in Scotland, she said, "You must come to
Lindores." It was she, indeed, who gave the invitation. The Earl, who
had not quite ventured upon this strong step, was present and heard her
say it, and opened his eyes wide in admiration. What did it mean? Was it
that these two had engaged themselves secretly without saying anything
to father or mother? or did it mean nothing at all--the mere foolishness
of a girl who did not care for, nay, did not even think for a moment,
what people would say?
For the brief little weeks of the season flitted quickly away, and the
date fixed for their departure drew near rapidly. By this time
Millefleurs had got to be exceedingly intimate with the family. He went
and came almost as he pleased, sometimes offering himself, sometimes
coming in to luncheon without that ceremony,--always with something to
do for them, or something to say to them, which linked one day to
another. This was much, but it was not all that was wanted. Rintoul,
looking on with eyes enlightened by that knowledge he had acquired of
what "the fellows would say," did not feel half satisfied. He was the
anxious member of the party. Even Lord Lindores, whose friends at the
clubs discussed such matters less perhaps than the young men, and whose
interests were more political, was not so alive to all the risks and all
the changes of opinion as was Rintoul. He was nervous above measure
about this business of Edith's. He even took his mother to task about it
during the last week of their stay in town. "Isn't that fellow coming to
the point?" he said.
"What fellow, and what point?" said Lady Lindores. It must be
acknowledged that if ever a young man anxious for the true interests of
his family was tried by the ignorance and stupidity--not to say
callousness--of his relations, Rintoul was that man.
"Look here, mother," he said, exasperated; "just think for a moment what
people will say, and ask yourself how you will like it. They will say
Millefleurs has been amusing himself all this time, and never meant
anything. I make no doubt that they say it already. He has been amusing
himself--exposing her to all sorts of remarks; and then the end will
come, and he will leave her _planté là_."
"Rintoul," said his mother, reddening with anger, "this one idea of
yours makes you absurd. Who is it that has it in his power to leave
Edith _planté là_? To think that I should be forced to use such words!
If you mean to make me uncomfortable about that boy----"
"He is no more a boy than I am, mother. I warned you of that. He knows
very well what he is about. He has had the pleasure of your society, and
he has enjoyed it all and amused himself very much. But he doesn't mean
to commit himself. Do you think I don't know what people say? I don't
mean that it is Edith's fault, or even your fault, mother; only, some
women know how to manage. It is a thing that never could happen with
some people. You will see, unless you exert yourself, that the last day
will come, and you will be just where you were. I don't know whether
staying a week or two longer would do any good," he added, ruefully. "If
there is the chance that it might bring him to the point, there is also
the chance that people would divine your motive, and say that was why
you were staying on. Don't you think you could put a little steam on,
when the result is so important, and bring him to the point?"
"Steam on! Do you mean to insult me, Rintoul?" his mother cried.
But this was too much for the young man, who felt himself to be the only
one of the family to whom the true position of affairs was apparent. "If
you cannot understand me, mother, I can't say anything more," he said,
feeling as if he could almost have cried over her callousness. Why was
it that nobody but he would see how serious the situation was?
All this time, however, while Millefleurs was frequenting the house
almost daily, Lady Lindores's perception had been partly confused by the
effort it cost her to avoid being drawn into what she felt must be an
unnecessary confidential disclosure to Beaufort of the history of the
family since they last met. Beaufort did not insist upon accompanying
his charge--for such, more or less, Millefleurs was, his family being
too much alarmed lest he should disappear again, to leave him without
this species of surveillance, which the good-natured young fellow
allowed to be perfectly natural, and neither resisted nor resented; but
he came sometimes, and he never relinquished his appeal to Lady
Lindores. He was not posing in any attitude of a heart-broken lover.
Even to her he expressed no despair. He took his life gravely, but not
without cheerfulness, and had, she felt almost with a little pique, got
over it, and been able to put Carry out of his life. But he wanted to
know: that seemed all that was left of the old romance. He wanted to be
told how it had happened--how his love had been lost to him. It did not
seem to be resentment or indignation that moved him, but a serious kind
of interest. And strangely enough, it seemed to Lady Lindores that he
did not want to avoid her, or keep out of hearing of the name of the
girl who had forsaken him. He seemed to like herself, Carry's mother, as
well as ever, and to regard Edith with the same elder-brotherly air
which had pleased her so much in the old days. Between the inquiring
countenance which seemed without ceasing to ask an explanation from her,
and the prattle of Millefleurs, which ran on in a pleasant stream, and
to which it seemed so ridiculous to attach any serious meaning, Lady
Lindores was kept in a perplexity and harassment of mind which took away
altogether her pleasure in society at the end of their stay in London.
After her impatient rejection of Rintoul's counsels, she began to
consider them, as was natural; and much as all the particulars of the
_chasse-aux-maris_ disgusted her, she came at length, against her will,
to recognise that there was something in what he said. "I have been
imprudent, as usual," she said to herself. Alas that all the natural
proceedings of life should be hampered by these rules of
prudence!--these perpetual previsions of what might happen, to which she
felt it was impossible she could ever bow her spirit. But the idea that
it would be said that a boy like Millefleurs had "amused himself" with
her daughter--that he had loved and ridden away--that Edith, her
high-spirited, pure-minded girl, had been left _planté là_--broke over
Lady Lindores like a wave of passionate feeling: the suggestion was
intolerable and odious. This happened when Millefleurs was in the room
with her, in full tide of talk, and entirely at his ease. The sudden
sensation disclosed itself in a flush of colour mounting in a moment to
her very hair. Intolerable! The thought was so odious that she started
to her feet and walked to the open window, as if the change of position
would throw it off--and also, suffocated as she felt by that sudden
fiery breath, to get fresh air, lest she should, as she said, make an
exhibition of herself.
"You are ill, Lady Lindores," cried Millefleurs. Those little beady eyes
of his saw everything. He ran forward to support her (he was just up to
her shoulder), putting forward a reclining-chair with one hand, picking
up a bottle of eau-de-Cologne with the other. He had all his wits about
him. "I am used to it. Sometimes my mother _se trouve mal_ in the same
way. It will pass over," he said encouragingly to Edith, who, unused to
anything of the kind, started up in alarm. "Dear Lady Lindores, put
yourself here."
"I am not ill," she said, almost angrily. "Pray do not make any--fuss.
How rude I am! but there is nothing the matter with me, I assure you.
The room is warm, that is all."
Millefleurs looked at her curiously. He put down the eau-de-Cologne, and
took his hand from the chair. For a moment he seemed about to speak, but
then stood aside more serious than his wont. In terror lest he should
have divined her thoughts, Lady Lindores returned to her seat, calming
herself down with an effort, and made the best attempt she could to
resume their easy conversation of the moment before. She was vexed
beyond measure when Edith, a short time after, left the room to go and
look for something which Millefleurs was anxious to see. He took instant
advantage of the opportunity thus afforded him. "Lady Lindores," he
said, with that serious air as of a candid child, going up to her, "you
are not ill, but you are vexed and angry, and it is something about me."
"About you, Lord Millefleurs! how could that be?--you have never given
me the least occasion to be angry."
"That is why," he said, gravely. "I see it all. You have nothing to
find fault with. I am quite innocent and harmless, yet I am in the way,
and you do not know how to tell me so. For my part, I have been so happy
here that I have forgotten all sorts of precautions. One does not think
of precautions when one is happy. Dear Lady Lindores, you shall tell me
exactly what I ought to do, and I will do it. I have all my life been
guided by women. I have such faith in a lady's instinct. I might be
confused, perhaps, in my own case, but you will hit upon the right
thing. Speak to me freely, I shall understand you at a word," the droll
little hero said. Now Lady Lindores was in a strait as serious as she
had ever experienced in her life; but when she glanced up at him, and
saw the gravity upon his baby face, his attitude of chubby attention,
such a desire to laugh seized her, that it was all she could do by main
force to keep her gravity. This insensibly relaxed the tension, and
restored her to her usual self-command. Still there was no denying that
the situation was a very peculiar one, and his request for guidance the
strangest possible. She answered hurriedly, in the confusion of her
mingled feelings--
"I don't know what there is to do, Lord Millefleurs, or how I can advise
you. A sudden want of breath--a consciousness all at once that it is a
very warm morning,--what can that have to do with you?"
"You will not tell me, then?" he said, with an air half disappointed,
half imploring.
"There is nothing to tell. Here is Edith. For heaven's sake, not another
word!" said Lady Lindores, in alarm. She did not perceive that she
betrayed herself in this very anxiety that her daughter should suspect
nothing. He looked at her very curiously once more, studying her face,
her expression, even the nervousness of the hand with which she swept
her dress out of her way. He was a young man full of experiences,
knowing all the ways of women. How far she was sincere--how far this
might be a little scheme, a device for his instruction, so that he might
see what was expected of him without any self-betrayal on the lady's
part--was what he wanted to know. Had it been so, he would at once have
understood his _rôle_. It is usual to say that simplicity and sincerity
are to the worldly-bred much more difficult to understand than art; but
there is something still more difficult than these. "Pure no-meaning
puzzles more than wit." Though Lady Lindores had far more meaning in her
than nine-tenths of her contemporaries, she was in this one case
absolutely incomprehensible from want of meaning. She had no more notion
than a child what to do, or even what she wished to be done. If this
little chubby fellow asked Edith to marry him, her mother believed that
the girl would laugh in his face. There could be no question of Edith
marrying him. But what then? Was Edith to be held up before the whole
world (according to Rintoul's version) as the plaything of this little
Marquis, as having failed to catch him, as being _planté là_. She was in
the most painful dilemma, not knowing any more than a child how to get
out of it. She gave him a look which was almost pathetic in its
incompetency. Lady Lindores was full of intellect--she was what is
called a very superior woman; but nobody would have been more stupid,
more absolutely without any power of invention in this crisis, which had
never come within the range of her calculations, which she had not been
able to foresee.
And that same afternoon Beaufort came by himself and was admitted, no
one else being in the drawing-room--no one to shield the poor lady, who
could not help remembering that this stranger was the man to whom she
had once given a mother's kiss, receiving him as a son. He did not
forget it either. He held her hand when she gave it him, and sat down by
her with an expression of satisfaction which she was very far from
sharing. "At last I find you alone," he said, with a sigh of content.
Poor Lady Lindores had already been so greatly tried this morning, that
she felt unable to keep up the strain. Why should she be forced to put
on so many semblances?
"Mr Beaufort," she cried, "I cannot pretend to be glad to see you alone.
Cannot you understand? You have been wronged,--we have treated you
badly,--they say it is the injured person who is always most ready to
forgive; but do not ask me to go into a matter which I have tried all
these years to forget."
"And yet," he said, gently, "I do not mean to reproach you, Lady
Lindores."
"That may be; I do not know that _you_ have much occasion to reproach
me. You were not yourself, perhaps, so much in earnest. No--I mean no
reproach either; but you are a man of your century too, according to the
usual slang. You don't force events, or do what is impossible. Men used
to do so in the old days."
He listened to her in silence, bowing his head two or three times. "I
accept your reproof," he said, a faint colour coming over his face. "I
am glad you have made it,--it helps me to understand. Lady Lindores,
there is something else I want to speak to you about. Lord Lindores has
invited me, with Millefleurs, in August----"
"With Millefleurs, in August? Has he asked Lord Millefleurs in August?"
Lady Lindores cried.
This was a great blow to Beaufort's self-opinion. He had thought,
naturally, that the embarrassment of his appearance as a visitor would
have overweighed everything else. He grew more red this time, with the
irritated shame which follows a slight.
"Certainly he has asked him. It is ridiculous that a young man so
entirely able to take care of himself should have any one in charge of
him; but as the Duke has implored me to keep his son company----Here is
my situation, Lady Lindores. God knows I would not thrust myself where I
might--where I should be--I mean, to cause the faintest embarrassment
to--any one."
"Mr Beaufort," cried Lady Lindores, "do not come, either of you!--oh,
never mind what I mean. What is the use of going over that old ground?
It would cause embarrassment--to me if to no one else. And Lord
Millefleurs--what does he want at Lindores? Let him stay away; persuade
him to stay away."
"But that is settled without any power of interference on my part. Of
course he thought you were aware. For myself, I am ready to give up my
own prospects, to sacrifice anything--rather than give you a moment's
anxiety."
Lady Lindores gazed at him for a moment with wide-open eyes, like a
creature at bay. Then she let her hands fall on her lap. "It is I that
need to be guided what to do," she said, with a sigh; "they are too many
for me. Oh, Edward! had we but remained poor and obscure, as we were
when you knew us----" She put out her hand instinctively, with a kind
of involuntary appeal. He took it, going upon his knees with that
movement, equally involuntary, which deep emotion suggests, and put it
to his lips. They were both overcome by a sudden flood of old sympathy,
old communion. "Has Carry forgotten me altogether--altogether? Is she
happy? God bless her!" he said.
It was in this attitude that Edith, coming in suddenly, surprised these
two imprudent people. She gave a cry of amazement, and, Lady Lindores
thought, reproach. "Mother! Edward!" The old name came to her lips, too,
in the shock.
"Edith," Lady Lindores cried, "your father has invited him with Lord
Millefleurs to Lindores."
"But I will do nothing save as you advise," said Beaufort, rising to his
feet.
Then the mother and the daughter consulted each other with their eyes.
"Of course he will--not----" Edith stopped and faltered. She had begun
almost with passion; but she was made to break off by the warning in her
mother's eyes. Lady Lindores, too, had gone through a shock and panic;
but now all the secondary elements came in--all those complications
which take truth out of life.