THE ART OF STRATEGY.
But the Duchess’s thoughts were of a more serious kind, and it was she
who through all had the most difficult part to play.
Perhaps five or six years before, when Lady Jane was in the first bloom
of womanhood, her mother would have thought but little of Reginald
Winton as a husband for her child. She would have preferred, need it be
said, another set of strawberry-leaves; or even an earl with a good
estate would have seemed to her a more suitable match. But as the years
went on, and it became apparent to her that what with Lady Jane’s own
visionary stateliness, and the known folly of her father, it was quite
possible that there might be no match for her daughter at all, her ideas
were sensibly modified. It did not seem to her at all desirable that
Lady Jane should remain Lady Jane for ever. The Duchess had experienced
no absolute blessedness in life. Her husband had given her infinite
trouble, her son had by no means realised her ideal, and her daughter
had gone beyond it, and sometimes vexed her as much by very excellence
as Hungerford did by his commonplace nature. But still she thought it
better to be thwarted and disappointed at the head of a family, than to
sicken of solitude and pine out of it. She thought the same for her
daughter; though indeed Lady Jane’s character would have lent itself
much better to the maiden state than that of her more practical and
active-minded mother. She had, too, a still more stringent reason, not
of an abstract character at all. She knew that some time or other a
crash must come. The Duke had never denied himself in his life, and he
was not likely, of his own free will, to begin now. But as everything
has to be paid for sooner or later, one way or another, she knew very
well the time was coming when their fictitious fortunes would collapse,
and it would be known to all the world that their income was not enough
to support them, and that they were burdened with debts which they could
not pay. And indeed it often seemed to her that she would be glad when
the crash came--except for Jane. Notwithstanding her desire that it
should come and be done with, she was ready to fight with all her
strength to keep it off till Jane should be out of its reach. And
Winton, she felt, had stepped in in the very nick of time. She was under
no delusion such as filled the mind of her daughter about Winton’s
poverty. She knew exactly what his standing was, and that though he was
not a brilliant match, he was good enough for any girl, however exalted,
who had no fortune to speak of, of her own. He was more satisfactory in
appearance, and manners, and character, than three-fourths of the
eligible men in England, and in fact he was himself eminently eligible,
a man whom no parent (in full possession of his senses) could possibly
despise. The Duke was not in full possession of his senses on this
point, but his wife could not see the justice of allowing her daughter’s
future to be spoiled by this partial insanity on the part of her
husband. It is a fine thing for a wife to obey her husband, but the
Duchess was perhaps a little impatient of the yoke. She had never gone
against him, save for his good. She had submitted sorrowfully to the
consequences of his follies when she found herself powerless to restrain
them. But she said to herself almost sternly that she would not allow
Jane to be ruined. Let him say what he would, this excellent husband,
this good, nice, well-off man should not be repulsed. If she could
persuade the Duke to hear reason, so much the better; but if not---- But
she did not like domestic dissension and a breach of the decorums of
life more than another, and the thought that she might be compelled to
place herself in active opposition to her husband distressed her beyond
measure.
The Duchess laid her plans with great and anxious care. She invited
Winton to the few stately gatherings which were still to be held in
Grosvenor Square, and she threw him in the Duke’s way, prompting him
beforehand with subjects such as would please that arbiter of fate. It
was no small trial of endurance for both Winton and Lady Jane, but the
success of the attempt so far seemed great. The Duke noticed the genial
commoner who was so ready to interest himself in his Grace’s favourite
subjects. He even asked, “Who is this Mr Winton?” with an interest which
made the Duchess’s heart beat. She gave a sketch of her _protégé_
offhand, laying great stress upon the antiquity of his lineage. “Ah,
oh,” the Duke said indifferently. He was not impressed, nor did it make
any difference to him that this gentleman, whose family had been settled
for so many hundred years in their manor, had recently had a great
accession of wealth. He asked no further questions about him, and yawned
when the Duchess said that she had thought of inviting him to form one
of the usual autumn party at Billings. “Oh no, I have no objections,”
his Grace said; “there must always, I suppose, be a few nobodies to fill
up the corners.” This, after his transitory show of interest, was like a
cold douche to the Duchess. But she did not allow herself to be
dismayed. She managed, as a great lady can always manage, to get Winton
a great number of invitations to her own magnificent circle, and threw
him perpetually in her husband’s way. Some of her friends and
contemporaries more than suspected the Duchess’s game. But she kept a
brave and cheerful front to them all, and never allowed herself to be
found out; and not only had she to contrive all this and baffle all
beholders, but she had likewise a struggle to maintain even with the man
whose cause she was upholding. He wanted, forsooth, to make quicker
progress. He wanted to see more of his betrothed. He wanted to have it
announced to all the world. He was more impracticable, more unreasonable
than ever man was, although she was wearing herself out in efforts to
help him. Lady Jane did not say a word, but she looked at her mother’s
proceedings with a gentle surprise, and high, silent wonder, keeping
herself aloof from all the plottings, avoiding the subject altogether.
It was all done for Jane, but Jane disapproved, and blamed her mother in
her heart. This was the unkindest cut of all. Notwithstanding, the
Duchess held by her point; there was no other way to do it. When she
gave Winton her invitation to Billings, he received it in the most
uncomfortable way. He coloured high; he rose up and paced about the
room. “If I am to come as an impostor, I would rather not come at all,”
he said; “if I may come as Jane’s affianced----”
“How can that be, Mr Winton, unless her father gives his consent?”
To this Winton made no reply, except a peevish, “I cannot go on false
pretences any more.”
“You have met the Duke six times, without rushing at him with a request
for his daughter! Is that what you call false pretences? Jacob served
for Rachel seven years.”
“Ah! and so would I; but he had it out with her father first. He did not
hang about and profess to be there only for Laban’s agreeable
conversation; that makes all the difference.”
“I think he could have stood that; he had a robust conscience,” said the
Duchess, with a smile. And then she added, “I am trying to do what I
can for you. If you will not agree, I cannot help it.”
“I suppose I must agree. There does not seem anything else for me to
do,” he said; which was the most ungracious reply she ever had to that
invitation, which was rarely extended to any one of so little
importance. At Billings, Lady Germaine’s principle of asking people who
would amuse her was never resorted to. The people who were asked were
very noble and splendid people, but they were not amusing as a rule. It
was such a compliment to Winton as the uninitiated could not understand.
But there were, of course, a great many people who knew better than the
Duchess herself did the intention with which this invitation was given.
Lady Hungerford, for instance, sitting quietly with her husband after
dinner, having heard of it that morning, suddenly astonished him by
bursting out into a great fit of laughter. As nothing had been said to
account for this, and Lord Hungerford’s company of itself was not
calculated to produce hilarity, he was much surprised, and at once
requested to know what she was laughing about.
“Oh, it is nothing,” she said. “Your mother is asking young Winton--the
man, you know, who has that pretty house in Kensington--to go to
Billings, for the shooting.”
“Is that so very funny?” said Lord Hungerford.
“Don’t you see, you thickhead?” said his wife, who was not, perhaps, so
exquisite in her language as became her present rank; “she has taken it
into her head that he will do for Jane, and she thinks by taking him
down to Billings that she will get your father to consent.”
“For Jane!” said Hungerford in dismay.
“That is your mother’s little plan. But what amuses me is to see that
she thinks she will get your father to consent.”
But it did not appear that Hungerford found the same amusement in the
thought. He was slow of intelligence, and took some time to master it.
“For Jane!” he said at least half-a-dozen times over during the course
of the evening: and when he next met his mother he proceeded at once to
investigate the matter.
“What is this I hear about Regy Winton?” he said. “Susan tells me you
are thinking of him for Jane.”
“Susan is so well informed----” said the Duchess, with a little redness
of indignation. “But I think you know Jane well enough to be aware that
thinking of any one for her would not do much good.”
“That is what I thought,” Hungerford said, falling readily into the
snare. “But it wouldn’t be at all a bad thing,” he added, “if it could
be brought about. He has plenty of money, and nothing against him; and
Jane isn’t quite so young as she was, don’t you know?”
This was true enough; but that such a question should be discussed
between her son and his wife made the Duchess’s blood boil. “I am not so
clever as Susan and you, Hungerford,” she said, with fine satire. “You
will manage your daughter’s marriage, I don’t doubt, a thousand times
better than I shall ever manage mine.”
“What has that to do with it?” Hungerford said, surprised, for he was
not quick in his intellects. But he added, as he went away, “I should
think Regy Winton would be a very good man for Jane.”
The Duchess was very angry, and declined altogether to take her son into
her confidence. But yet she was sustained in her mind by this
volunteered opinion, and went on with more boldness. They were all very
glad to get out of London, as soon as the Duke thought it right to
withdraw that support which he felt himself bound to give to the empire
and the constitution by going to town every year. His countenance
expanded as they left that limited world in which a duke is almost as a
common man, and has to submit to see a simple commoner considered much
more important than himself. He preferred the country, if for nothing
else, on that score. There was space to move about in, and the whole
district bowed down before him. He smoothed out even during the journey,
though it was by railway, which is a levelling and impertinent way of
travelling. The Duke’s carriage had large labels of “engaged” plastered
upon it. But still such a thing had been as that a lawless traveller, a
being without veneration or feeling, had seized upon the door-handle and
attempted to make an entrance. Nevertheless, even with these drawbacks,
the Duke already began to show the genial influence of going out of
town. And to think that the wife of his bosom should have taken
advantage of this in the disingenuous way she did! It was not absolutely
on the journey, but on that first evening at home, when the noble pair
took, as had been their habit since before any one could remember, a
little stroll together after dinner in the cool of the evening under the
ancestral shades; and just when his Grace had looked round him with a
sigh of satisfaction, and announced that woods were better than bricks
and mortar, which was a remark he made habitually in about the same
spot, on about the same day of every year--
“That is very true,” the Duchess said (as she always said on similar
occasions), “and there are no trees like our own trees. I hope her
native air,” added the crafty woman, “will do something for Jane.”
“For Jane! Is there anything the matter with Jane?” said her august
papa.
“I felt sure you must have observed it; you are always so keen-sighted
where Jane is concerned. I have thought she looked pale; and she has a
little air of--what shall I call it?--preoccupation.”
“I do not see,” said the Duke, half indignantly, “what she can have to
be preoccupied about.”
“She has always been so tenderly cared for, that is true. But we must
remember that she is no longer a girl, and there are thoughts which come
into one’s mind which it is difficult to avoid.”
“What thoughts? A young lady in Jane’s position need have no thoughts
that can give her any trouble. I hope that even in these revolutionary
times, when everything is going to pieces, the house of Billings is
still sufficiently secure for that.”
“Yes, yes; there is no doubt on that question. Jane has no doubt,” the
Duchess said, correcting herself. “But there are problems, you know,
which occupy the mind. It is a revolutionary age, as you say, and even
young women are not exempt. Besides, if you will let me say so, by the
time a girl has come to be eight-and-twenty, she often begins to feel,
you know--that to be only her father’s daughter is not quite enough for
her--that she wants some sort of standing of her own.”
“Do you mean to tell me that such thoughts as these have ever entered
the mind of Jane?” said the Duke, severely. “My love, I put great faith
in you in matters quite within your sphere---- But Jane, my
daughter!----”
“I hope you will allow that she is my daughter as well,” the Duchess
said, with the half laugh, half rage natural to a woman long accustomed
to deal with an impracticable man. She was obliged to laugh at his
serious contempt of her, lest she should do worse.
The Duke waved his hand. “Yes, yes,” he said, in the tone of a man
yielding to an unreasonable child. “To be sure, in a way, we do not
dispute that. But I am certain,” he added, “that you know better than to
resist the claims of race. Jane is not so much your daughter, or even
mine, as she is the daughter of the race of Altamonts; and in that
capacity you may allow, my love, great as are your claims to respect as
her mother, that I may be supposed to understand her best.”
The exasperation with which the Duchess listened to this speech may be
understood; but it was not the first by a great many, and she made no
revelation of her feelings. On the contrary, she made use of his solemn
vanity with a craft which the exigencies of her position had developed
in her.
“You must give me the benefit of your superior insight,” she said quite
calmly, without any indication of satire in her tone. “Now that you have
leisure to give your consideration to family matters, as you could not
be expected to do in town:--tell me what you think. My impression is,
that she has begun to think of the future. I was her mother when I was
her age. She has been very much admired and sought after.”
“Naturally,” the Duke said, with a wave of his hand.
“And I have a feeling that there is a--preference, if I may call it
so--an inclination, perhaps--dawning in her mind. To lose her would be a
terrible deprivation: still,” the Duchess said, “I do not suppose it is
in your mind to prevent her from marrying.”
“To prevent her from---- You surely have the most curious way of putting
things. There is nothing I desire more truly--when a suitable match can
be found.”
“But don’t you think,” cried the Duchess, “that we are, perhaps, letting
the time slip a little? Of course, I would naturally keep my child by me
as long as possible, but in her own interests---- Women on the whole are
happier to marry, I think,” she said doubtfully.
“Marry! of course they are happier to marry. Can there be any doubt upon
that subject? A woman unmarried cannot be said to have any life at
all!”
“Yes, I should say there was a doubt,” said his wife, with again that
half laugh; “and as I am one of them, I may be allowed an opinion on the
subject. But still, in respect to Jane, I could wish my daughter to
marry. In her position, to remain unmarried would really be to remain
apart from life.”
“It is not to be thought of for a moment; an old maid!” the Duke said,
with a quaver of pain in his voice; and he thought of that slight
indentation--not a hollow, scarcely more than a dimple, which, however,
was not a dimple, on Jane’s cheek. “The truth is,” he said, “that in
respect to one’s children one deceives one’s self. I have no feeling
that I am myself any older than I was twenty years ago, and therefore I
do not notice the difference in her.”
“Hungerford is very old,” said the Duchess. “He is older in many things
than either you or I.”
“Ah, Hungerford; what can you expect with that wife?” the Duke said,
with a little shudder; and then he added, with inward alarm but outward
jauntiness (so far as dukes can be jaunty), as if her opinion was an
excellent joke, “By the way, I suppose that she will have something to
say on the subject. She generally has something to say.”
“Susan does not conceal her opinion that Jane’s chances are all over,”
said the Duchess. “She thinks her _passée_. She believes, I understand,
that a clergyman--to whom we could give the living of Billings--would be
the likely thing for Jane now.”
“A clergyman!” said the Duke, with rage and horror. His wife laughed a
little, but there was anger below her laugh. How it was that Susan’s
impertinent speeches always came to the ears of her parents-in-law it
was difficult to know, but they did so, and they generally had the
effect of warming most wholesomely the Duke’s too noble blood.
“It is very well known how difficult you are,” said the Duchess. “I
don’t think myself that the clergyman is likely to present himself; but
if Jane had a preference, as I suppose, I should, for my part, be very
unwilling to thwart her.”
“Jane will have no preference that is not justified by the merit of the
object,” cried Jane’s father. “She is too much my child for that. She
will never permit her mind to stray out of her own rank. Indeed, it is
with difficulty I realise,” he added, with dignity, “the possibility
that she can have conceived what you call a preference at all. To me she
has always been so completely superior, so serene, so----”
“But not cold,” the Duchess said.
“I don’t know what you mean by cold; yes, cold, certainly, in my sense
of the word, as every woman ought to be. I believe that unless I put it
before her--or you as my representative--she is far too pure-minded and
elevated ever to think of marriage at all.”
“If she were shut up in a tower,” said the Duchess; “but unfortunately
there are so many things in this world to force the idea upon her, and
if you really wish her to marry----”
“Of course I wish her to marry,” said the Duke, almost angrily; and then
he added, “in her own rank in life.”
The Duchess asked herself afterwards whether this had been a wise way of
directing her husband’s attention to the subject. She had meant it to be
very wise, but conversation is one of those strange things that will
manage itself. However closely we may have laid down the lines of what
we shall say, it is pretty certain to balk us and direct us in other
ways. This had been the case on the present occasion. Instead of
directing the Duke’s mind to the possibility of receiving a suitor who
should be indispensable to Jane’s happiness, though not of her rank, she
had only elicited from him a repetition of his determination that nobody
out of her own rank should marry Lady Jane. She thought with a shiver of
Winton coming down full of hope with the intention of unfolding his
rent-roll, and his statement of the settlements he was able to make, for
the Duke’s satisfaction. The Duke was one of the few men remaining in
the nineteenth century who was invulnerable to money. Susan Hungerford
was enough to give any one a disgust at that manner of filling the
household coffers. Perhaps it would have been better to say nothing, to
let Winton work upon the Duke by that respectful admiration for his
opinions which he had already shown. She walked back to the castle with
a sense of failure in her mind. For her part, she would not have been at
all disinclined towards a clergyman (had he been _nice_) who would have
established her child in the beautiful rectory not a quarter of a mile
from the lodge-gates, and kept her constantly, as it were, at home. But
there was no clergyman available, and no question of that. Lady Jane
gave her a half-timid glance when she went into the drawing-room with
the fresh air of the evening about her. She would not inquire whether
there had been any talk of herself between her parents; but she could
not keep that question out of her eyes. All the Duchess’s reply was to
give her a kiss, and ask whether she had not been out this delicious
evening. “This is better than town,” her Grace said. Was it better than
town? For the first time, with a soft sigh Lady Jane remained silent and
did not echo the sentiment. The country is sweet, and the woods, and
fields, and one’s native air, and the silence of nature--but there are
other things which perhaps even in smoky London, among the bricks and
mortar which his Grace made so little of, were still more sweet. Of all
people in the world, Lady Jane was the last to prefer a ball-room, or
the jaded and heated crowds at the end of the season. But for the first
time in her life she thought of these assemblies with a sigh.