A DISAPPOINTMENT.
That morning, Winton went with his heart beating to Grosvenor Square. He
was not overawed by the stately stillness of the place, the imposing dim
vacancy of the suite of rooms through which he was led to the Duchess’s
boudoir. He had a fine house himself, and everything handsome about him,
and he did not feel that Lady Jane would make any marked descent either
in comfort or luxury should she abandon these gilded halls for his. To
tell the truth, he thought the gilding was overdone, not to say a little
tarnished and in questionable taste; but that was the fault of the time
in which it was executed. He was so little alarmed that he could notice
all this. He had seen those rooms before only in the evening, when they
were full of company, and looked very different from now, when they lay,
in the freshness of the morning, all empty and silent, the windows open,
and the sun-blinds down, and nobody visible. Naturally the lover looked,
as he passed through the apartment in which his lady lived, for some
trace of her habitual occupation. Was that hers, that little chair by
the window, the table with work on it, and some books, and a single rose
in a glass? He would have taken the rose on the chance, if that solemn
personage in front of him had not kept within arm’s length. There was a
portrait of her on the wall; but it did not, of course, do her justice,
indeed was an unworthy daub, as anybody could see. Thus he stepped
through one room after another, treading on air, his heart beating, not
with apprehension, but with soft excitement and happiness. She should
have a better lodging than this, rooms decorated expressly for her,
pictures of a very different kind; her home should be worthy of her, if
any mortal habitation could ever be worthy of such a beautiful soul. In
his progress across the ante-room and the two great drawing-rooms, all
this went through his mind. Thoughts go so quickly. He even arranged the
pictures, selected with lightning-speed what would suit her best,
decided that a Raphael--it must be a Raphael--should hang upon the walls
of the shrine in which his saint was to be specially set: while he
walked on, glancing with a half-smile of contempt at the Duke of
Billingsgate, K.G., in his peer’s robes, on one side, and a
Duchess-Dowager in a turban, on the other. Good heavens! to think of
such hideous daubs surrounding Jane! But in the new home all should be
altered. His heart had palpitated with anxiety yesterday before he knew
how she would receive his suit--but to-day! To-day he had no anxiety at
all, only an eager desire to get the preliminaries over, and to see her,
and make her decide when It was to be. There was no reason why they
should wait. He was not a young barrister (as he might have been but for
that uncle--bless him!--whose goodness he had never duly appreciated
till now) waiting for an income. He was rich, and ready to sign the
settlements to-morrow. At the end of the season, just long enough to be
clear of St George’s, and make sure of a pretty quiet country church to
be married in, time enough by turning half the best workmen in London
into it, and devoting himself to _bric-a-brac_ with all his energies, to
turn his little house at Winton into a lady’s bower. What more was
wanted? He had everything arranged in his mind before the groom of the
chambers, entering on noiseless feet, and with a voice like velvet,
informed her Grace that “Mr Winton” was about to enter. The Duchess
received him with benignity just terminated with stateliness. She had
never, he thought, been so beautiful as Jane. Perhaps in the majority of
cases it is difficult to believe that a woman of fifty has been as
beautiful as her daughter of twenty-eight. And it was true enough in
this case. But nobody could deny that she had a face full of fine sense
and feeling. It looked somewhat troubled as well as very serious to-day.
Winton, however, was ready to allow that his gain would be this lady’s
loss, and that perhaps the Duchess was not so anxious to get rid of her
only daughter as parents generally are understood to be.
“Sit down, Mr Winton,” she said. She had not risen from her own chair,
but sat behind her writing-table, which was laden with papers, and
across this barrier held out her hand to him, and gave him a benign but
somewhat distant smile. “I ought to apologise,” she added after a
moment, “for giving you the trouble of coming to me.”
“The trouble! but it is my business. I should have asked to see the Duke
if you had not so kindly given me this opportunity--first. I hope I may
speak to the Duke afterwards if I have the happiness to satisfy you. You
may be sure I can think of nothing else till this is all settled.”
“All settled?” she said, with a little shake of her head. “You are young
and confident, Mr Winton; you think things settle themselves so easily
as this. But I fear the preliminaries will be more lengthened than you
suppose. Do you know, I wish very much you had consulted me before
speaking to Jane.”
“Why?” he asked, fixing his eyes upon her with an astonished gaze. Then
he added, “I know Lady Jane is a great lady, a princess royal. She is
like that. I am a little democratic myself, but I acknowledge in her
everything that is beautiful in rank. She should be approached like a
crowned head.”
“Not quite that perhaps,” said the Duchess, smiling.
“With every observance, every ceremony; but then,” he added, “that is
not the English fashion, you know, to ask others first. One thinks of
her, herself as the only judge.”
The Duchess continued to shake her head. “That is all very well with
ordinary girls, but Jane’s position is so exceptional. Mr Winton, I hope
you will not be disappointed or annoyed by what I tell you. Had you
asked me, I should have said to you, No.”
“No!” he repeated vaguely, looking into her face. He could not even
realise what her meaning was.
“I should have said, Don’t do it, Mr Winton, for your own sake.”
Winton rose up in the excitement of the moment and stood before her like
a man petrified. “Don’t do it! Do you mean---- Pardon me if I am slow of
understanding.”
“I mean, seeing it had unfortunately come about that, without being able
to help it, you had fallen in love with Jane----”
“Unfortunately!”
“You do nothing but repeat my words,” the Duchess cried in a plaintive
tone. “It _is_ unfortunately--but hear me out first. If you had spoken
to me I should have said, Try and get over it, Mr Winton; don’t disturb
her, poor girl, by telling her. Try if a little trip to America, or
tiger-shooting, or to be a ‘Times’ correspondent, or some other of those
exciting things which you young men do nowadays, will not cure you. I
should have said, You have not known her very long, it cannot have gone
very deep. I tell you this to show you what my advice would have been
had you asked me before speaking to Jane.”
“But it is of no use speculating upon what we should have done in an
imaginary case,” said Winton. He had awoke from his first bewilderment,
and began to understand vaguely that everything was not going to be easy
for him as he had once thought. “You see I _have_ spoken to her,” he
said. “You frighten me horribly; but then it is of no use considering
what you would have done in a totally different case.”
The Duchess sighed and shook her head. “That is what I should have
thought it my duty to say, in view of all the pain and confusion that
are sure to follow. Do you know, Mr Winton, that her father will never
listen to you--never!” she said, with a sudden change of tone.
Winton dropped upon his chair again and stared at her with an anxious
countenance. “I knew--I was told--that the Duke would not be easy to
please. And quite right! I agree with his Grace. I am not half good
enough for her; but then,” he added after a pause, “nobody is. If there
is one man in the world as worthy as she is, neither the Duke nor any
one knows where to find him; and then,” he continued, in tones more
insinuating still, “it would not matter now. If that hero were found
to-morrow, she would not have him, for--she has chosen me! I allow that
it is the most wonderful thing in the world!” said the lover, in a
rapture which became him; “but you will find it is true. She has chosen
me!”
“It may be very true,” said the Duchess, shaking her head more and more,
“but the Duke will not pay much attention to that. I am afraid it is not
moral excellence he is thinking of. It would be hard, I allow, to find
anybody as good as Jane. Probably if we did, he would turn out to be
some poor old missionary or quite impossible person. I am afraid that is
not at all what her father is thinking of.”
“Then tell me what it is. I am not Prince Charming--but the Wintons have
been settled at Winton since the Conquest, and I am very well off. The
settlements should be--whatever you wish.”
“Don’t promise too much,” said the Duchess, with a smile, “for no doubt
you have got a family lawyer who will be of a very different opinion;
indeed I hope you have, if that is your way of doing business. But,
alas! the Duke will not be satisfied, I fear, even with that.”
“Then what, in the name of heaven!--I beg you a thousand pardons,
Duchess. I don’t know what I am saying. I have no title, to be sure. Is
it a title that is necessary?”
“I can’t tell you what is necessary,” said the Duchess, with a tone of
impatience. “The Duke is--well, the Duke is her father; that is all that
is to be said. He will never listen to your proposal--never! That is why
I should have said to you, Don’t make it. Leave her in her tranquillity,
poor girl.”
“But----” Winton cried. He did not know what more to say--a protest of
all his being, that was the only thing of which he was capable.
“But----” the Duchess repeated. “Yes, Mr Winton, there is always a but.
To tell the truth, I am not so very sorry that you did not ask me after
all. I should have been obliged to tell you what I have now told you.
But since you have taken it into your own hands, I am rather glad. If
her father had his way, Jane would never be married at all. Oh, don’t be
so enthusiastic; don’t thank me so warmly! I have done nothing for you,
and I don’t know what I can do for you.”
“Everything!” said Winton. “With you to back us, it is impossible that
anything can prevail against us. The Duke’s heart will melt; he will
hear reason.”
A faintly satirical smile came upon the mouth of the Duke’s wife, who
knew better than anybody how much was practicable in the way of making
him hear reason. But she did not say anything. She let the lover talk.
He went on with the conviction natural to his generation--that all these
medieval prejudices were fictitious, and paternal tyranny a thing of the
past.
“Cruel fathers,” said Winton, “are things of the middle ages. I am not
afraid of them any more than I am of the Castle Spectre. The Duke will
rightly think that I am a poor sort of a fellow to ask his daughter from
him. I ought to have been something very different--better, handsomer,
cleverer.”
“You are not at all amiss, Mr Winton,” said the Duchess, with a gracious
smile.
He made her a bow of acknowledgment, and his gratification was
great--for who does not like to be told that he is considered a fine
fellow? But he went on. “All this I feel quite as much as his Grace can
do. The thing in my favour is that Jane----” the colour flew over his
face as he called her so, and her mother, though she started slightly,
acknowledged his rights by a little bow of assent, somewhat solemnly
made,--“that Jane----” he went on repeating the sweet monosyllable,
“does not mind my inferiority--is satisfied, the darling----” Here his
happiness got into his voice as if it had been tears, and choked him.
The Duchess bent her head again,
“To me that is everything,” she said.
“How could it be otherwise?” cried the young man; “it _is_ everything. I
have no standing-ground, of course, of my own; but Jane--loves me! It is
far too good to be true, and yet it is true. The Duke will not like it,
let us allow; but when he sees that, and that she will not give up, but
be faithful--faithful to the end of our lives---- Dear Duchess, I have
the greatest veneration for your Grace’s judgment, but in this point
one must go by reason. Life is not a melodrama. So long as the daughter
is firm the father must yield.”
He gave forth this dogma with a little excitement, almost with a
peremptory tone, smiling a little in spite of himself at the tradition
in which even this most sensible of duchesses believed. Perhaps a great
lady of that elevated description is more liable than others to believe
that the current of events and the progress of opinion have little or no
effect upon the race, and that dukes and fathers are still what they
were in the fifteenth century. He, this fine production of the
nineteenth, was so certain of his opinion, that he could not feel
anything but a smiling indulgence for hers. On the other side, the
Duchess was more tolerant even than Winton. His certainty gave her a
faint amusement--his gentle disdain of her a lively sense of ridicule;
but this was softened by her sympathy for him, and profound and tender
interest in the man whom Jane loved. She was a little astonished,
indeed--as what parent is not?--that Jane should have loved this man
precisely, and no other; but as the event called forth all her affection
for her woman-child, it threw also a beautifying reflection upon Jane’s
lover. On the whole, she was satisfied with his demeanour personally. It
is not every man who will show his sentiments in a way which satisfies
an anxious mother. The Duchess, however, was pleased with Winton. His
look and tone when he spoke of her daughter satisfied her. He was fond
enough, adoring enough, reverential enough to content her; and how much
this was to say!
“Well,” she said, “we will hope you may be right, Mr Winton. You know
men and human nature, no doubt, better than I do, who am only about
twice your age,” she added, with a soft little laugh. “Anyhow, I wish
with my whole heart that you may prove to be right. The only thing is,
that it will be prudent not to speak to the Duke now. Don’t cry out--I
know I am right in this. In town he is never quite happy; there are many
things that rub him the wrong way. He sees men advanced whom he thinks
unworthy of it, and others left out. And he thinks society is out of
joint, and cannot quite divest himself of the idea that he, or rather
we, were born to set it right.” All this the Duchess said with a little
half-sigh between the sentences, and yet a faint sense of humour, which
gave a light to her countenance. “But in the country things go better.
If he is ever to be moved, as you say, by love and faithfulness, and
such beautiful things, it will be in his own kingdom, where nobody
thwarts him and he has everything his own way.”
Winton’s countenance fell at every word. What! he who had come hither
with the intention of persuading Jane to decide when it should be, was
he to go away without a word--to be hung up indefinitely, to be no
farther advanced than yesterday? His whole heart cried out against it,
and his pride and all that was in him. He grew faint, he grew sick with
anger, and disappointment, and dismay. “That means,” he said, “complete
postponement; that means endless suspense. I think you want me to give
up altogether; you want to crush the life out of us altogether!”
“Of course you will be unjust,” said the Duchess--“I was prepared for
that; and ungrateful. I am advising what is best for you. The Duke, I
believe, is in the library. He is the pink of politeness; he will see
you at once, I feel sure, if you ask for an interview; but in that case
you will never darken these doors again. You will be shut out from all
intercourse with Jane. The whole matter will be ended as abruptly and
conclusively as possible. I know my husband; you will not have time to
say a word for yourself. You can take what course you think best, Mr
Winton. What I say to you is for your good; and in the meantime, if you
do as I wish, everything that I can do for you I will do.”
The young man sat and listened to these words in mingled exasperation
and dismay. As she spoke of the Duke in his library, Winton’s heart
jumped up and began to thump against his side. Oh yes, it might be
decided fast enough. Evidently he could have an answer without fail or
suspense on the spot. He sat and gazed at her blankly in such a dilemma
as he had never known before. What would Jane think of him if he
submitted? What would she say if he insisted, and got only failure and
prohibition for his pains? The Duchess, it was evident, was not speaking
lightly. She knew what she was talking about. She wished him well--too
well to let him go on to his destruction. But, on the other hand, there
was the postponement of all his hopes, a sickening pause and
uncertainty, a blank quenching of expectation. He could do nothing but
stare at the Duchess while she spoke, and for some time after. What was
he to answer her? How calmly these old people sit on their height of
experience, and look down half smiling upon the frets and agitation of
the young ones! What was it to her that he--even that Jane, who
naturally was of far more importance--should suffer all these pangs of
suspense? Probably she would smile, and say that life was long, and what
did it matter for a month or two? A month or two! It would be like a
century or two to them. Sometimes Winton resolved that he would not be
silenced; that he would go and have it out with the Duke, who, after
all, was Jane’s father, and could not wish his child to be unhappy. And
then again, as she went on laying the alternative before him, his heart
would fail him. He changed his mind a hundred times while she was
speaking, and after she had ended, still gazed on her, with his heart in
his mouth.
“I don’t wish,” he said at last, “to do anything rash. I will submit to
anything rather than run any risks. But how are we to bear the delay?
How am I to bear it? and it will be deception as well! I don’t see how I
am to do it. Do you mean me to give her up all the time--go
tiger-shooting, as you were good enough to suggest?”
“Well--there would be no harm in that,” said the Duchess, with a smile;
“but I did not suggest it in the present circumstances. I said, if you
had spoken to me first--I ask you to wait a month--perhaps two” (this
addition, made as it seemed in _gaieté de cœur_, with rather a pleasant
sense of the exasperation it would produce in him, called forth a
muttered exclamation, a groan from the victim)--“or perhaps two at the
most,” the Duchess repeated; “whereas tiger-shooting would take six at
least. But, Mr Winton, I repeat, I force you to nothing. There is the
bell, and the Duke is in the library. Ring it if you will, and ask him
to see you; he will not refuse.”
Winton rose slowly and went towards the bell. But he had not the courage
to take this extreme step. “I suppose I may see her sometimes?” he said;
“but it will be a kind of treachery.”
“Her mother does not object; the case is an extreme one,” said the
Duchess, though she blushed a little at her own sophistry. “What he does
not know will not do him any harm.”
“It will be deception,” said Winton, shaking his head, and he made
another step towards the bell. Then he turned back again. “How often may
I see her? If we take your way, you will not be hard upon us?” he said.
“But it will be deception,” said the Duchess, solemnly.
“I know that; that is what revolts me. Still, as you say, what he does
not know will not do him any harm.”
The Duchess laughed, and then she grew grave suddenly. “Mr Winton, I
feel as if I were betraying my husband; but at the present moment my
child has the first claim upon me. It is her happiness that is at
stake. I will not prevent you from meeting--you are both old enough to
know your own minds. I will do nothing to put off Jane from a woman’s
natural career. It is doing evil, perhaps, that good may come; but we
must risk it. Come here, but not too often: I will take the
responsibility; and when we go to Billings, Lady Germaine will invite
you, and you can try your fortune then. I will prepare the way as much
as I can. I don’t give you great hopes when all is done,” she said,
shaking her head.
“And after?” said Winton, turning once more with a kind of desperation
towards the bell.
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” said the Duchess,
piously.
But oh, the difference when he walked out crestfallen through all the
big drawing-rooms! Not a word about when It was to be. No sort of
arrangement, consultation, possible. Everything had seemed so near when
he came--so near that he could almost touch it. Now everything had been
pushed far off into the vague. He had seen Jane indeed, but in her
mother’s presence, which made her happy enough, but him only partly
happy. Was this how it was to be? The Duchess indeed was writing at her
table, taking no notice of them. But still it was very different from
what he had hoped. He did not perceive the bad pictures or the
over-gilding as he went away. The place looked like a prison to him, and
was dark and stifling. Lady Jane indeed accompanied him through the
rooms. She gave him the rose which he had thought of stealing as he
came, and told him all their engagements for a week in advance. “You
will be sure to go wherever we are going,” she said, and called him
Reginald with a blush and a tone of sweetness that went straight to his
heart. But nevertheless his disappointment, he thought, was almost more
than he could bear.