KATHARINE GUYON.
So, three men, all good fellows in their way, and two possessed of
qualities not common, and destined to be influenced throughout all
their lives by the seeming chance that had made them acquainted with
her, were thinking of Katharine Guyon, rather than of any or all their
more immediate and important concerns. She had dawned, a new luminary,
on their horizon; and two were conscious worshippers of the bright
visible presence, the other had not yet turned his eyes that way. He
will do so before long, and then----?
As for Katharine Guyon herself, she had thoughts at present for but
one person, and speculations only on one subject. Her warm, impulsive,
wholly undisciplined heart had accepted Gordon Frere as its tenant
and ruler, after a sudden fashion, which was not to be defended or
excused if judged by the standard of conventionality, or indeed of
common-sense. When the latter quality shall be in any one instance
admitted into a case of love-at-first-sight, it may advance a claim to
invariable acknowledgment; certainly not otherwise. As for
conventionality, Katharine in no way bowed to its authority; and it
was fortunate indeed that her good taste and innate good-breeding
preserved her from any boldness or vulgarity of demeanour; for those
were her only safeguards. Legitimate rule over her there was none, and
she would not for a moment have brooked usurped authority. Her
position was peculiar, and, though there was a good deal of the
glitter of fashion and the reality of enjoyment about it, to
clear-sighted eyes, looking below the surface, pitiable.
Katharine's mother had brought her husband no advantages in their
short, not remarkably happy, marriage, except those attached to an
extensive and distinguished family connection. She had no fortune, no
possessions of any kind, except some handsome jewels, which were
secured to her, to descend to her children. She lived only a short
time; but it is probable she thought the period sufficiently
prolonged; for she died, when Katharine was born, with no further
expression of regret than that she wished she could have taken the
child with her; but was consoled by learning that the physicians
thought the feeble infant very unlikely to live. Isabella
Stanbourne--for such was the name of Katharine's mother--was a
handsome woman, of fine mind and high principles. These qualities had
not availed to prevent her making the tremendous though not unusual
mistake of a wholly uncongenial marriage; but they did her the
questionable service of opening her eyes to the blunder she had
committed before she had been Edward Guyon's wife many weeks. Once
opened, Mrs. Guyon's eyes were not the sort of optics ever to be even
partially closed again; and they perceived and scrutinised every
particular of her husband's character and conduct with merciless
clearness and vigilance. That gentleman furnished them with ample
material for their scrutiny; and from the close of the honeymoon to
the termination of her life Mrs. Guyon held the partner of her
existence, whom she knew to be a liar and a profligate, and suspected
to be a swindler, in quiet, undemonstrative, but supreme contempt. She
was a woman in whom the existence of any kind of regard or even
compassion was incompatible with the least feeling of scorn; and so
she never tried to persuade herself that she entertained either
towards her husband, from the day she found out that the man she had
married was a being of a totally different order to the idol which her
fancy had set up and worshipped. She did not leave him, even when she
made further and more serious discoveries: in the first place, because
she disliked the scandal of a separation; in the second, because she
was conscious of great delicacy of health, and had a strong
presentiment that she should not survive the birth of her child. She
determined to give herself the chance, if, contrary to her conviction,
she lived; she could then decide upon her future. The chance
befriended her, and Mrs. Guyon died. Her last days were undisturbed by
her husband's presence. He had gone to Doncaster when the event which
made him a father and a widower took place; and having made rather a
good thing of the expedition, he returned to town in very tolerable
spirits, and felt that he should now be more interesting and
irresistible than ever as a young widower, and could easily get over
the inconsolable stage by a trip on the Continent. His dead wife's
sister-in-law, the Hon. Mrs. Philip Stanbourne, undertook very gladly
to look after the little motherless infant, at whom the elegant Ned
barely glanced, during her days of babyhood; and she redeemed her
promise well.
It is unnecessary to inquire into the career of Mr. Guyon between the
period of Katharine's birth and that of her _début_ in society. It was
evident that, however well-founded his anticipations of success, it
had not been in the matrimonial direction; and indeed some rather
amusing anecdotes were current in society concerning "Ned's" audacious
attempts and egregious failures. His wife's relatives had never
particularly admired Mr. Guyon; but they were kindly, unaffected
people; and Mrs. Guyon had been strictly and uniformly silent on all
her domestic concerns; so that, though they surmised that the brief
marriage had not been the altogether ecstatic union Isabella had
imagined it would prove, they had nothing but surmise in their minds
respecting it; and they never thought of withholding from the
motherless girl any of the advantages derivable from their social
position and influence. These were far more important to Katharine's
father than her guileless uncles, aunts, and cousins imagined--to whom
a life of shifts, scheming, and pretence was an utterly unknown and
unsuspected possibility--and much more important too to Katharine
herself, as regulating her father's conduct towards her, than the girl
ever knew or dreamed of. She would probably have been placed
economically out of sight, at a foreign boarding-school, and left
there to attain the age of womanhood, unnoticed by her father, had not
the kind relatives under whose care her early childhood had been
happily passed given her consequence in Mr. Guyon's eyes, causing him
to regard her as a valuable possession, a court-card in fact. So,
instead of a cheap foreign school being selected as an _oubliette_ for
the child,--in virtue of whom Mr. Guyon had a seat at the tables of
many who were more great than wise,--an expensive establishment for
young ladies in the Regent's Park was honoured by Mrs. Stanbourne's
choice; and there Katharine was brilliantly, if not solidly educated,
the larger portion of the _pension_ and her personal expenses being
paid by her uncle. In Katharine's early girlhood the Hon. Philip
Stanbourne died; and she sustained by this calamity a double loss:
not only that of her kind relative and friend, but of her aunt's
counsel, training, and protection in the perilous time which lay
before her,--the time of early womanhood, and her entrance into
society. The widow went abroad with her daughter, who was some years
older than Katharine; and though she was in London when the events
just related took place, she was not likely to be again a settled
resident in England, as her daughter had married an Austrian nobleman,
high in the diplomatic world, and desired to have as much of her
mother's society as possible.
The fashionable "establishment" had turned out few girls so well
calculated to do it credit and extend its fame as Katharine Guyon,
when, at a little more than seventeen, she appeared in a circle of
society where, though her father, with all his cleverness and _savoir
faire_, received little more than toleration, she at once made a
favourable impression. In her appearance she combined the personal
attractions of both her parents: she had her mother's high-bred look,
her father's vivacity and his fine features; she had the elegant
carriage, the delicate hands and feet, the refined voice of Isabella
Stanbourne, and the airy easy manner which in Mr. Guyon had a
_soupçon_ of impudence. In disposition she resembled her mother
exclusively; but there were strong points of difference between
them,--difference deepened no doubt by the circumstances of
Katharine's girlhood, by the fact that she had never been the object,
as her mother had been of exclusive and conscientious female care
since she had ceased to be a child. She had not the clear, direct,
keen perception of her mother; but she was her equal in resolution,
and more than her equal in implacability. She was high-spirited now,
and impatient of contradiction to a degree that indicated some
violence of temper; her feelings were keen and impulsive, and her
affections strong and passionate, though undeveloped; for indeed who
had the girl to love? She had gone through the ordinary schoolgirl
friendships, and also through the customary flirtations since the
former had come to a natural end; but she did not really love any body
in the world, except perhaps Mrs. Stanbourne, and of her she had seen
but little for some time.
Her feelings towards her father were of a mixed, and, on the whole, of
an unsatisfactory character; such as any one watching the girl with
anxiety and experience must have recognised with regret. She was fond
of him after a fashion, and there was a good deal of _camaraderie_
between them; but she had an intuitive distrust of him, and she knew
instinctively that all his indulgence, all his flattery, all his
yielding to her wishes and furnishing her pleasures, were superficial
compliances. He liked the kind of life she liked; she knew him well
enough, without formally reasoning upon her knowledge, to feel
convinced that if their tastes or wishes clashed in any way, hers and
not his would be expected, if not obliged, to yield. She admired her
father's pleasant manners and social talents; she had but rarely any
opportunity of contrasting his fulfilment of the paternal relation
with that of other men; and she was full of youth, health, spirits,
and capacity for the enjoyment of every kind of pleasure that offered;
so she went her way carelessly and joyously, and reasoned little upon
the present or the future. Katharine and her father were not real
friends, but they were always technically "good friends;" a result to
which the underlying violence of the girl's nature no doubt
unconsciously conduced. Mr. Guyon hated trouble and detested scenes;
and he had a tolerably correct occult sense that he might find himself
"in for" both if he interfered much with Katharine: consequently he
did not interfere; and as she was totally in the dark respecting his
pecuniary circumstances, and never asked any troublesome questions,
they got on very well together. Real companionship they had none, but
they did not miss it; and while her father's chief anxiety about
Katharine was that she should make a good match before she "went off"
in looks--a good match implying a rich son-in-law, conveniently
indifferent about settlements, and ready to "do" bills to any
reasonable or unreasonable amount--Katharine's chief anxiety about him
was, that he should dye his hair and whiskers with greater success,
and drink less wine on evenings when he went to parties with her. She
knew he was proud of her beauty, and thought her "doosid good
company;" but she did not for a moment imagine he had any sentimental
love for her; indeed she fancied he had not much feeling, for he had
never mentioned her mother to her in his life. Their relation, in
fact, was pleasant, hollow, and heathen; and when Katharine abandoned
herself to her newborn love for Gordon Frere, she never thought of
her father's feelings or wishes in the matter, or had a more dutiful
notion in her mind than that it "made it pleasant that papa liked his
coming about the house." You see she was no exceptional being, no
angel alighted for a little on a sphere unworthy of her footsteps and
her wings; but an interesting, captivating, self-willed woman,--such
as circumstances had made her; a woman whose weaknesses were as
visible as her charms, whose strength was latent and unsuspected.
It was not to be supposed that a girl like Katharine--handsome,
clever, dashing, and independent in her ideas and manners, of
a not precisely-to-be-defined position in society, and with a
not-exactly-to-be-commended father--should escape sharp and not kind
or altogether candid criticism. She was very much admired; she
commanded admiration indeed, however reluctantly accorded; and men
liked her very much, even men who were not in love with her, and with
whom she did not take the trouble to flirt. Women did not like her;
and yet the girl gave them no fair excuse for their prejudice. She was
not a determined coquette, conquering and monopolising; she was not
rudely inattentive to women, as "beauties" and "blues" usually are:
she was smiling and agreeable, and perfectly indifferent to them all;
and, with a host of acquaintances, had but one female friend, her aunt
Mrs. Stanbourne. With Lady Henmarsh, who was a distant relative on her
father's side, Katharine lived on terms of great intimacy,--the lady
was indeed her constant, her official _chaperone_,--but it was an
intimacy of the kind which more frequently precludes than includes
friendship.
Lady Henmarsh was a woman of the world, in every possible meaning and
extent of the term. She was the exact opposite of Mrs. Stanbourne, in
manners, mind, tastes, opinions, and principles; and she disliked Mrs.
Stanbourne so cordially, that she might have endeavoured to influence
Katharine in a contrary direction to that of her wishes, simply to
annoy that lady; but she was saved from any thing so unphilosophical
by the fact that it suited her in every way to appoint herself
high-priestess of Miss Guyon's world-worship. As no one ever saw, and
many had never heard of Lady Henmarsh's husband, it was a pardonable
mistake, frequently made by strangers, to suppose that she was a
widow. This, however, was not the case. A miserable invalid--whose
migrations, if not quite confined to Goldsmith's _itinéraire_, were
only from his dull house in Hampshire to his dull house in Cavendish
Square; a cross, palsied, querulous old man, called Sir Timothy
Henmarsh, who had long since lapsed out of the sight and the memory of
society--still existed, not altogether to the displeasure of his lady,
who would be seriously impoverished by his death; existed in a
condition of illness and suffering which rendered it indispensable
that his wife should, in deference to what society calls common
decency, provide herself with some further excuse for her neglect of
him, and her constant presence at gay and festive scenes of every
description, than the real, but unproduceable one, that she liked
dissipation and disliked him. Lady Henmarsh and Mr. Guyon had been
very good friends indeed in former days, when he was a young widower,
thoroughly consoled, and Hetty Lorimer was a pretty portionless girl,
who knew that she had nothing to look to but marriage, and that if she
desired to secure the enjoyment of such things as her soul loved, she
must take care that it was a "good" one. A marriage with her handsome
cousin would have been any thing but one of the required description;
and indeed neither of them ever contemplated such a possibility. They
were persons of a discreet and practical turn, and Mr. Guyon went to
Hetty Lorimer's wedding (a solemnity at which Sir Timothy Henmarsh's
son, a gentleman some years the bride's senior, sternly declined to be
present) with perfect alacrity and good humour. They had been
excellent friends ever since; and when, the time having arrived at
which Mr. Guyon found it convenient to transfer his daughter from the
"establishment" to Queen Anne Street, Lady Henmarsh gave him her
advice, and offered him her services with enthusiastic friendship,
what more proper and satisfactory arrangement could possibly have been
entered into than that Lady Henmarsh should "do the maternal" by
Katharine?
"I've no doubt you'll do it to perfection, Hetty," said Mr. Guyon, as
he rose and terminated the interview; "only you won't look the part
within a dozen years." And the good-looking deceiver went down the
stairs with a smile, which expanded into a grin when he reached the
street; for Miss Hester Lorimer and Miss Isabella Stanbourne had been
girls together, and the former was a little older than the lady who
had married the irresistible Ned Guyon.
This unexceptionable arrangement had now lasted a considerable time,
and no likelihood of its coming to a conclusion by the marriage of
Katharine had yet presented itself. Lady Henmarsh was better pleased
than Mr. Guyon that it should be so, and less surprised. She
understood Katharine better than her father understood her; she knew
how entirely unscathed she had been amid the lightning flashes of real
admiration and simulated sentiment which had played around her girlish
head; she knew that in Katharine's perfectly impartial brightness, her
frank acceptance of the incense offered before her, her smiling
pleasure and indifference, consisted the barrier to Mr. Guyon's
wishes. For her part, she was in no hurry about the matter; indeed,
the longer Miss Guyon should require some one (meaning herself) to go
about with her, the better pleased she would be. But though Lady
Henmarsh did not disquiet herself because Mr. Guyon's wishes remained
unfulfilled, she would very seriously and earnestly have disapproved
of their being traversed and thwarted. She did not particularly care
that Katharine should marry soon, but she fervently desired that she
should marry well; and it was with a new and very unpleasant sense of
misgiving that she observed the eager and vivacious pleasure which
Katharine evinced in the society of Mr. Gordon Frere, and watched the
faces and the manner of the two from the alcove, whence she beheld the
dancers at Mrs. Pendarvis's ball. Lady Henmarsh knew very little of
Gordon Frere; indeed, only one fact, beyond the good looks and the
good manners patent to all observers. But in that one fact lay the
only important item of knowledge, in the estimation of Lady Henmarsh.
Gordon Frere was a poor man, with no income to speak of, and only very
desultory, undefined, and contingent expectations. Clearly this would
not meet either Mr. Guyon's views or her own. She hoped, she trusted,
nay she believed, that Katharine would not be so infatuated as to
think of marrying Frere; she trusted Frere was too much a man of the
world to think of marrying Katharine. It was only a flirtation,--it
must be only a flirtation; but even that, if she carried it to such an
extent as she had done at the ball, Katharine must be induced to give
up. It would be remarked, it would keep off other men: of course it
was quite foolish to be afraid of any thing serious; so Lady Henmarsh
hoped, and trusted, and believed, and yet she doubted and feared. She
did not altogether like to acknowledge to herself, perhaps, how little
confidence she felt in her own power of "inducing" Katharine to do any
thing which did not accord with her own inclination and humour. The
tie between them was formed of mutual complaisance, not of influence
and respect. Lady Henmarsh did not understand either the strength of
Katharine's feelings or the determination of her temper; she had
never seen either roused into action, and she regarded her as rather
shrewder and more worldly-minded than most girls, as well as cleverer
and better-looking. So, though she knew her to be self-willed, she
calculated on her sense and shrewdness overcoming her obstinacy in a
matter in which her worldliness would teach her that obstinacy was
injurious and misplaced.
Lady Henmarsh pondered these things one fine summer's day, while
Katharine rambled about the Botanical Gardens with Gordon Frere and
others; while every glance caught from his blue eyes, and every
sentence intoned especially for her ear by his earnest musical voice,
bound the girl's heart more closely to him, and rendered the task
which Lady Henmarsh proposed to herself more difficult of fulfilment,
more infructuous in result.
"At all events, it shall not go on like this beyond to-night," said
her ladyship to herself: "if she looks at and dances with him as she
did at Mrs. Pendarvis's, I shall tell Ned Guyon about it, and find out
what he thinks; but my decided opinion is that it is full time _some_
steps were taken." And then she went to visit Sir Timothy.
Mrs. Streightley and her daughter had returned to the Brixton villa,
had been affectionately received by Robert, and had heard from him the
history of all his doings in their absence. Of course Ellen had,
allowed the briefest possible space of time to elapse between her
return and the despatch of an eager summons entreating Hester Gould to
come to her with the least possible delay. Hester arrived about two
hours before the ordinary dinner-hour; and the young ladies passed
that space of time in the interchange of delightful confidences;
complete and heartfelt on the part of Ellen Streightley, and as meagre
as might be on that of Hester Gould. All the particulars of Ellen's
engagement, which she had already detailed by letter, were again
confided to Hester; all the particulars of the visit from which they
had just returned, and which had been made to certain relatives of
Mrs. Streightley's, of the agricultural persuasion, were once more
related in full.
"I used to think Thorswold rather a stupid place, dearest Hester,"
said Ellen, and a fine blush overspread her pretty honest face:
"little did I ever think I should meet my fate there. I do so long for
you to see Decimus. You will think him so delightful."
"I shall be very much pleased to see him, Ellen," returned Hester;
"and I rejoice, as I am sure you know, in your happiness. But tell me
about your brother,--what does he say to it all?"
"Well, indeed, Hester," said Ellen, hesitating and laughing, "that is
what I hardly can tell you, he has said so little. He kissed me, and
pulled my ear, and called me a little goose, in his own kind way, you
know; but he is so taken up with some new friends he has made, I
cannot make him out. He looks quite different, I am sure; and is so
particular about his dress! A lot of new clothes have just come home
from his tailor's, and a whole boxful of lavender-kid gloves. Isn't it
funny, Hester? Dear old Robert, he talks a great deal about _Mr_.
Guyon; but I suspect he thinks more of _Miss_. Though indeed I only
found out there was a Miss Guyon quite by accident."
Hester Gould's face flushed with sudden anger, and into her calm
calculating heart there came a pang of unaccustomed doubt and fear.
But it was quite in her ordinary tone she said:
"So your brother's friend is Mr. Guyon, is he? Does he live in Queen
Anne Street?"
"Yes, yes; I am sure that is the street I have heard him mention.
Stay, there's an invitation stuck in the chimney-glass--here it is.
'Mr. and Miss Guyon request'--and so--yes, '110 Queen Anne Street' Do
you know them, Hester?"
"No, not personally; but I have seen Miss Guyon frequently. I used to
teach singing to the Miss Morrisons in the next house, No. 109--it is
vacant now, and shut up since Sir Christopher died--and I often saw
her going out to ride. She used to go just about at my hour."
"And is she nice, Hester,--is she pretty? Robert never has told me any
thing particular about her. Men never can describe any one."
"She is very handsome, very elegant, and very fashionable," replied
Hester; and then she departed from her usual cautious reticence so far
as to say, "and I heard the Morrisons say Mr. Guyon was very 'fast,'
and lived beyond his means."
"Indeed," said Ellen in a very grave tone, for to her the accusation
of living beyond one's means sounded very portentous; "I am sure
Robert would not approve of that."
Hester Gould watched Robert Streightley quietly and closely the whole
of that evening. She saw him different to any thing he had ever been;
preoccupied, absent, but not unhappy. A smile played frequently over
his features; and though he sunk into frequent fits of abstraction,
they were evidently not painful. He was as kind and affectionate as
usual to his mother and sisters, as attentive to herself; but a change
had passed upon him which she fully understood. In her cold repressed
way, she was bitterly angry.
She went home rather early. As Robert Streightley saw her to the cab,
and bade her good-night, she said to herself:
"Daniel Thacker knows this Mr. Guyon,--his sisters may know something
about the girl. I'll go to Hampstead to-morrow; they don't mind Sunday
visitors; and I may have a chance of seeing their brother. Really that
girl Ellen grows sillier every day."