The Three Brides

“She will return to Africa.  I don’t know why she and Rosamond have been always so much more acceptable.”

“They are not her rivals; besides, they have not your strength.  She is a woman who tries to break whatever she cannot bend, and the instant her son began to slip from her grasp the contest necessarily began.  You had much better have it over once and for ever, and have him on your side.  Insist on a house of your own, and when you have made your husband happy in it, then, then—Ah!  Good morning—Sir George!”

She had meant to say, “Then you win his heart,” but the words would not come, and a loathing hatred of the cold-hearted child who had a property in Raymond so mastered her that she welcomed the interruption, and did not return to the subject.

She knew when she had said enough, and feared to betray herself; nor could Cecil bear to resume the talk, stunned and sore as she was at the revelation, though with no suspicion that the speaker had been the object of her husband’s affection.  She thought it must have been the other sister, now in India, and that this gave the key to many allusions she had heard and which she marvelled at herself for not having understood.  The equivocation had entirely deceived her, and she little thought she had been taking counsel with the rival who was secretly triumphing in Raymond’s involuntary constancy, and sowing seeds of vengeance against an ancient enemy.

She could not settle to anything when she came home.  Life had taken a new aspect.  Hitherto she had viewed herself as born to all attention and deference, and had taken it as a right, and now she found herself the victim of a mariage de convenance to a man of exhausted affections, who meant her only to be the attendant of his domineering mother.  The love that was dawning in her heart did but add poignancy to the bitterness of the revelation, and fervour to her resolve to win the mastery over the heart which was her lawful possession.

She was restless till his return.  She was going to an evening party, and though usually passive as to dress, she was so changeable and difficult to satisfy that Grindstone grew cross, and showed it by stern, rigid obedience.  And Cecil well knew that Grindstone; who was in authority in the present house, hated the return to be merely the visitor of Alston and Jenkins.

In the drawing-room Cecil fluttered from book to window, window to piano again, throwing down her occupation at every sound and taking up another; and when at last Raymond came in, his presence at first made her musings seem mere fancies.

Indeed it would have been hard to define what was wanting in his manner.  He lamented his unavoidable delay, and entertained her with all the political and parliamentary gossip he had brought home, and which she always much enjoyed as a tribute to her wisdom, so much that it had been an entire, though insensible cure for the Rights of Woman.  Moreover, he was going with her to this ‘drum,’ though he would greatly have preferred the debate, and was to be summoned in case of a division.  She knew enough of the world to be aware that such an attentive and courteous husband was not the rule.  But what was courtesy to one who longed for unity?

“Is Frank to be there this evening?” he asked.

“Yes, I believe so.”

“I thought he was to have gone with us.”

“He told me not to depend on him.  He had made an engagement to ride into the country with Sir Harry Vivian.”  And she added, though the proud spirit so hated what seemed to her like making an advance that it sounded like a complaint, “So you can’t avoid going with me?”

“I should any way have gone with you, but I may have to leave you to Frank to see you away,” he said.  “And I had rather have Frank here than with that set.”

“Breaking up one of our few tête-à-tête evenings, and they are becoming few enough!”

This murmur gratified him, and he said, “We shall be more alone together now.  The Rectory is almost ready, and Julius means to move in another week, and I suppose Miles will carry Anne off before the year is over.”

“Yes, we are the only ones with no home.”

“Rather, we hold fast to the old home.”

“Not my old home.”

“Does not mine become yours?”

“Not while—.”  She paused and started afresh.  “Raymond, could we not live at Swanslea, if it is bought for us?”

“Swanslea!  Five miles off!  Impossible.”

Cecil was silent.

“My dear Cecil,” he said, after a few moments’ consideration, “I can understand that you felt unfortunately crowded last year, but all that is over, and you must see that we are necessary to my mother, and that all my duties require me to live at home.”

“You could attend to the property from Swanslea.”

“The property indeed!  I meant my mother!”

“She has Anne.”

“Anne will soon be in Africa—even if she were more of a companion.  I am sorry it is a trial to you; for my proper place is clearly with my mother, the more in her helpless state, and with my brothers gone out into the world.  Now that the numbers are smaller, you will find it much easier to take the part that I most earnestly wish should be yours.”

“I cannot get on with her.”

“Do not say so!  Do not think so!  To have Rosamond there with her Irish ease, and her reserve, kept you in the background before; I say it, but I could not help it; and now there will be no hindrance to your drawing together.  There is nothing I so desire.”

If the carriage had not stopped as he spoke Cecil would not have uttered the thought that smote her, namely, that his desire was on behalf, not of his wife, but of his mother, to whom he was ready to sacrifice her happiness without a pang.  She did not see that he could imagine no greater happiness for her than a thorough love of his mother.

They certainly were not the happiest couple present as they walked up-stairs, looking like a model husband and wife, with their name echoing from landing to landing.

If any expression savouring of slang could possibly be applied to Raymond, he might be said to be struck all of a heap by his wife’s proposition.  He had never even thought of the possibility of making a home anywhere but at Compton Poynsett, or of his wife wishing that he should do so; and proverbial sayings about the incompatability of relatives-in-law suddenly assumed a reasonableness that he could not bear to remember.

But his courtesy and sense of protection, trained by a woman of the old school, would not suffer him to relax his attention to his wife.  Though he was very anxious to get back to the house, he would not quit her neighbourhood till he had found Frank and intrusted her to him.

He was not happy about Frank.  The youth was naturally of an intellectual and poetical temperament, and had only cared for horses and field-sports as any healthy lad growing up in a country house must enjoy them; and Raymond had seen him introduced to the style of men whom he thought would be thoroughly congenial to him, and not unlikely to lead him on to make a mark in the world.

But that unfortunate Vivian attachment stood in the way; Sir Harry and his elder daughter ignored it entirely, but did not forbid Frank the house; though Lady Tyrrell took care, as only she could do, that Eleonora should never have ten minutes private conversation with him, either at home or abroad.  Even in a crowd, a ball, or garden-party, the vigilant sister had her means of breaking into any kind of confidence; and Frank was continually tantalized by the pursuit.  It could not but unsettle him, and draw him into much more gaiety than was compatible with the higher pursuits his mother had expected of him; and what was worse, it threw him into Sir Harry Vivian’s set, veteran roués, and younger men who looked up to their knowingness and listened to their good stories.

What amount of harm it was doing Raymond could not guess.  He had known it all himself, and had escaped unscathed, but he did not fear the less for his younger brother, and he only hoped that the inducement to mingle with such society would be at an end before Frank had formed a taste for the habits that there prevailed.

Eleonora Vivian had been much admired at first, but her cold manner kept every one at a distance, and her reserve was hardly ever seen to relax.  However, her one friendship with the Strangeways family gave Raymond hopes that her constancy was not proof against the flattering affection, backed by wealth, that seemed to await her there.  The best he could wish for Frank was that the infatuation might be over as soon as possible, though he pitied the poor fellow sincerely when he saw him, as he did to-night, waiting with scarcely concealed anxiety while Miss Vivian stood listening to a long discourse about yachting from an eager pair of chattering girls.

Then some break occurred, and Frank moved up to her.  “Your last evening!  How little I have seen of you!”

“Little indeed!”

“I called, but you were at the Strangeways’.”

“They are very kind to me.  When is your holiday?”

“Not till spring, but I may get a few days in the autumn: you will be at home?”

“As far as I know.”

“If I thought for a moment you cared to see me; but you have shown few signs of wishing it of late.”

“Frank—if I could make you understand—”

They were walking towards a recess, when Lady Tyrrell fastened upon Raymond.  “Pray find my sister; she forgets that we have to be at Lady Granby’s—Oh! are you there, Lenore!  Will you see her down, Mr. Poynsett?  Well, Frank, did you get as far as you intended?”

And she went down on his arm, her last words being, “Take care of yourself till we meet at home.  For this one year I call Sirenwood home—then!”

Raymond and Lenore said no more to one another.  The ladies were put into the carriage.  The elder brother bade Frank take care of Cecil, and started for Westminster with the poor lad’s blank and disappointed face still before his eyes, hoping at least it was well for him, but little in love with life, or what it had to offer.

CHAPTER XXI

Awfully Jolly

When life becomes a spasm,And history a whiz,If that is not sensation,I don’t know what it is.—LEWIS CARROLL

“Is Lady Rosamond at home?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Nor Mrs. Charnock?”

“No, ma’am; they are both gone down to the Rectory.”

“Would you ask whether Mrs. Poynsett would like to see me?”

“I’ll inquire, ma’am, if you will walk in,” said Mr. Jenkins moved by the wearied and heated looks of Miss Vivian, who had evidently come on foot at the unseasonable visiting hour of 11.15 a.m.

The drawing-room was empty, but, with windows open on the shady side, was most inviting to one who had just become unpleasantly aware that her walking capacity had diminished under the stress of a London season, and that a very hampering one.  She was glad of the rest, but it lasted long enough to be lost in the uncomfortable consciousness that hers was too truly a morning call, and she would have risen and escaped had not that been worse.

At last the door of communication opened, and to her amazement Mrs. Poynsett was pushed into the room by her maid in a wheeled chair.  “Yes, my dear,” she said, in reply to Eleonora’s exclamation of surprise and congratulation, “this is my dear daughters’ achievement; Rosamond planned and Anne contrived, and they both coaxed my lazy bones.”

“I am so very glad!  I had no notion I should see you out of your room.”

“Such is one’s self-importance!  I thought the fame would have reached you at least.”

“Ah, you don’t know how little I see of any one I can hear from!  And now I am afraid I have disturbed you too early.”

“Oh no, my dear; it was very good and kind, and I am only grieved that you had so long to wait; but we will make the most of each other now.  You will stay to luncheon?”

“Thank you, indeed I am afraid I must not: papa would not like it, for no one knows where I am.”

“You have taken this long walk in the heat, and are going back!  I don’t like it, my dear; you look fagged.  London has not agreed with you.”

Mrs. Poynsett rang her little hand-bell, and ordered in biscuits and wine, and would have ordered the carriage but for Lenore’s urgent entreaties to the contrary, amounting to an admission that she wished her visit to be unnoticed at home.  This was hardly settled before there was a knock at the door, announcing baby’s daily visit; and Miss Julia was exhibited by her grandmamma with great satisfaction until another interruption came, in a call from the doctor, who only looked in occasionally, and had fallen on this unfortunate morning.

“Most unlucky,” said Mrs. Poynsett.  “I am afraid you will doubt about coming again, and I have not had one word about our Frankie.”

“He is very well.  I saw him at a party the night before we left town.  Good-bye, dear Mrs. Poynsett.”

“You will come again?”

“If I can; but the house is to be full of visitors.  If I don’t, you will know it is because I can’t.”

“I shall be thankful for whatever you can give me.  I wish I could save you that hot walk in the sun.”

But as Mrs. Poynsett was wheeled into her own room some compensation befell Eleonora, for she met Julius in the hall, and he offered to drive her to the gates of Sirenwood in what he called ‘our new plaything, the pony carriage,’ on his way to a clerical meeting.

“You are still here?” she said.

“Till Tuesday, when we go to the Rectory to receive the two De Lancey boys for the holidays.”

“How Mrs. Poynsett will miss you.”

“Anne is a very efficient companion,” said Julius, speaking to her like one of the family; “the pity is that she will be so entirely lost to us when Miles claims her.”

“Then they still mean to settle in Africa?”

“Her heart has always been there, and her father is in treaty for a farm for him, so I fear there is little hope of keeping them.  I can’t think what the parish will do without her.  By the bye, how does Joe Reynolds get on with his drawings?”

“I must show them to you.  He is really very clever.  We sent him to the School of Art twice a week, and he has got on wonderfully.  I begin to believe in my academician.”

“So you don’t repent?”

“I think not.  As far as I can judge he is a good boy still.  I make him my escort to church, so that I am sure of him there.  Renville would have taken him for a boy about his studio, and I think he will go there eventually; but Camilla thinks he may be an attraction at the bazaar, and is making him draw for it.”

“I was in hopes that the bazaar would have blown over, but the Bishop has been demanding of Fuller and his churchwardens how soon they mean to put the building in hand, and this seems to be their only notion of raising money.”

“I am very glad of this opportunity of asking what you think I had better do about it.  Your wife takes no part in it?”

“Certainly not; but I doubt whether that need be a precedent for you.  I am answerable for her, and you could hardly keep out of it without making a divided household.”

“I see the difference, and perhaps I have made myself quite unpleasant enough already.”

“As the opposition?”

“And Camilla has been very kind in giving me much more freedom than I expected, and pacifying papa.  She let me go every Friday evening to help Lady Susan Strangeways at her mothers’ meeting.”

“Lady Susan Strangeways!  I have heard of her.”

“She has been my comforter and help all this time.  She is all kindness and heartiness,—elbow-deep in everything good.  She got up at five o’clock to finish the decorations at St. Maurice’s, and to-day she is taking five hundred school-children to Windsor forest.”

“Is she the mother of the young man at Backsworth?”

“Yes,” said Eleonora, in rather a different tone.  “Perhaps she goes rather far; and he has flown into the opposite extreme, though they say he is improving, and has given up the turf, and all that sort of thing.”

“Was he at home?  I heard he was on leave.”

“He was said to be at home, but I hardly ever saw him.  He was always out with his own friends when I was there.”

“I should not suppose Lady Susan’s pursuits were much in his line.  Is not one of the daughters a Sister?”

“Yes, at St. Faith’s.  She was my great friend.  The younger ones are nice girls, but have not much in them.  Camilla is going to have them down for the bazaar.”

“What, do they patronize bazaars?”

“Everything that is doing they patronize.  I have known them be everywhere, from the Drawing-room to a Guild-meeting in a back slum, and all with equal appetite.  That is one reason why I fear I shall not see much of your mother; they are never tired, and I shall never get out alone.  The house is to be full of people, and we are to be very gay.”

She spoke with a tone that betrayed how little pleasure she expected, though it strove to be uncomplaining; and Julius, who had learnt something of poor Frank’s state of jealous misery, heartily wished the Strangeways family further, regarding the intimacy as a manœuvre of Lady Tyrrell’s, and doubting how far all Eleonora’s evident struggles would keep her out of the net; and though while talking to her he had not the slightest doubt of her sincerity, he had not long set her down at the lodge before he remembered that she was a Vivian.

Meantime Rosamond, carrying some medicament to old Betty Reynolds, found the whole clan in excitement at the appearance of Joe in all his buttons, looking quite as honest and innocent, though a good deal more civilized, than when he was first discovered among the swine.

“Only to think,” said his great-grandmother, “that up in London all they could gie to he was a bad penny.”

“It is the bronze medal, my lady,” said Joshua, with a blush; “the second prize for crayons in our section.”

“Indeed,” cried Rosamond.  “You are a genius, Joe, worthy of your namesake.  There are many that would be proud to have the grandson you have, Betty.”

“Tubby sure,” added an aunt-in-law, “’tis cheap come by.  Such things to make a young lad draught.  They ought to be ashamed of themselves, they did oughter.  Shut it up, Josh; don’t be showing it to the lady—’tis nothing but the bare back of a sweep.”

“My lady and Miss Vivian have seen it,” said Joshua, blushing.  “’Tis torso, my lady, from a cast from the museum.”

“A black-looking draught,” repeated the grandmother.  “I tells Joe if he drawed like King Geaarge’s head up at Wil’sbro’ on the sign, with cheeks like apples, and a gould crown atop, he’d arn his bread.”

“All in good time, Betty.  He can’t colour till he can draw.  I’m glad to see him looking so well.”

“Yes, my lady, he do have his health torrablish, though he lives in a underground sort of a place; and they fine servants puts upon he shameful.”

“Granny!” muttered Joshua, in expostulation.

“He’s a brave boy, and does not mind roughing it, so he can get on,” said Rosamond.

“And the ladies are very good to me,” said the boy.

“Show Lady Rosamond the draught you did of Miss Vivian, like a hangel,” suggested the aunt.

The rising artist coloured, saying, “Please, my lady, don’t name it to no one.  I would not have shown it, but little Bess, she pulled down all my things on the floor when I was not looking.  It is from memory, my lady, as she looks when she’s doing anything for Sir Harry.”

It was a very lovely sketch—imperfect but full of genius, and wonderfully catching, the tender, wistful look which was often on Eleonora’s face, as she waited on her father.  Rosamond longed that Frank should see it; but the page was very shy about it, and his grandmother contrasted it with the performances of the painter ‘who had draughted all the farmers’ wives in gould frames for five pound a head; but satin gownds and gold chains was extry.’

But Joe had brought her a pound of tea, and an ‘image’ for her mantelpiece, which quite satisfied her, though the image, being a Parian angel of Thorwaldsen’s, better suited his taste than its surroundings.

The whole scene served Rosamond for a narrative in her most lively style for Mrs. Poynsett’s amusement that evening.  There was the further excitement of a letter from Miles, and the assurance that he would be at home in November.  Anne had become far less chary of communications from his letters than she had at first been, but of this one she kept back so large a portion in public, that the instant Mrs. Poynsett had bidden them good night and been wheeled away, Rosamond put a hand on each shoulder, and looking into her face, said, “Now, Anne, let us hear!  Miles has found Archie Douglas.  It is no use pretending.  Fie, Mrs. Anne, why can’t you tell me?”

“I was not to tell any one but Julius.”

“Well, I’m Julius.  Besides, wasn’t I at the very bottom of the tracing him out?  Haven’t I the best right to know whether it is bad or good?”

“Not bad, I am sure,” said Julius, quickly and anxiously.

“Oh, no, not bad,” answered Anne.  “He has seen him—had him on board for a night.”

“Where?”

“Off Durban.  But this whole sheet about it is marked ‘Private—only for Julius,’ so I could say nothing about it before your mother.  I have hardly glanced at it myself as yet, but I think he says Mr. Douglas made him promise not to tell her or Joanna Bowater.”

“Not tell Jenny!” cried Rosamond.  “And you said it was not bad.  He must have gone and married!”

“I do not think that is it,” said Anne; “but you shall hear.  Miles says:—‘I have at last seen our poor Cousin Archie.  I told you I was following up your brother Sandie’s hint about the agents for the hunters; and at last I fell in with a merchant, who, on my inquiry, showed me an invoice that I could have sworn to as in Archie’s hand, and described his white hair.  It seems he has been acting as manager on an ostrich farm for the last three years, far up the country.  So I lost no time in sending up a note to him, telling him, if he had not forgotten old times, to come down and see me while I was lying off Durban Bay.  I heard no more for ten days, and had got in the stores and was to sail the next day, thinking he had given us all up, when a boat hailed us just come over the bar.  I saw Archie’s white head, and in ten minutes I had him on deck.  ‘For Heaven’s sake—am I cleared, Miles?’ was the first thing he said; and when I could not say that he was, it went to my heart to see how the eager look sank away, and he was like a worn-down man of fifty.  Poor fellow, I found he had ridden two hundred miles, with the hope that I had brought him news that his innocence was proved, and the revulsion was almost more than he could bear.  You see, he had no notion that we thought him dead, and so he took the entire absence of any effort to trace him as acquiescence in his guilt; and when he found out how it was, he laid me under the strongest injunctions to disclose to no one that he is living—not that he fears any results, but that he says it would only disturb every one and make them wretched—”

“He must have gone and married.  The wretch!” broke in Rosamond.

“No, oh no!” cried Anne.  “Only hear the rest.  ‘I told him that I could not see that at all, and that there was a very warm and tender remembrance of him among us all, and he nearly broke down and said, ‘For Heaven’s sake then, Miles, let them rest in that!  There’s more peace for them so.’  I suppose I looked—I am sure I did not speak—as though I were a little staggered as to whether he were ashamed to be known; for he drew himself up in the old way I should have known anywhere, and told me there was no reason I should fear to shake hands with him; however his name might be blasted at home, he had done nothing to make himself unworthy of his mother and Jenny—and there was a sob again.  So I let him know that up to my last letters from home Jenny was unmarried.  I even remembered those descriptive words of yours, Nannie, ‘living in patient peacefulness and cheerfulness on his memory.’”

“I was called on deck just then, so I gave him my home photograph-book, and left him with it.  I found him crying like a child over it when I came back; I was obliged to strip it of all my best for him, for I could not move him.  We went through the whole of the old story, to see if there were any hope; and when he found that Tom Vivian was dead, and George Proudfoot too, without a word about him, he seemed to think it hopeless.  He believes that Proudfoot at least, if not Moy, was deeply in debt to Vivian, though not to that extent, and that Vivian probably incited them to ‘borrow’ from my mother’s letter.  He was very likely to undertake to get the draft cashed for them, and not to account for the difference.  It may have helped to hasten his catastrophe.  Moy I never should have suspected; Archie says he should once have done so as little; but he was a plausible fellow, and would do things on the sly, while all along appearing to old Proudfoot as a mentor to George.  Archie seemed to feel his prosperity the bitterest pill of all—reigning like one of the squirearchy at Proudfoot Lawn—a magistrate forsooth, with his daughter figuring as an heiress.  One thing worth note—Archie says, that when it was too late, he remembered that the under-clerk, Gadley, might not have gone home, and might have heard him explain that the letter had turned up.’”