Girlhood and Womanhood Part 23

Mrs. Spottiswoode gave a sigh of relief. Failure now would only be comparative.

The dance being over, Bourhope sat down beside Chrissy. No, she turned her head the other way, and he rose up and strolled through the room.

But he was soon back in his old place.

He wanted to dance with Chrissy again. She hesitated, grew nervous, and cast her eyes on Mrs. Spottiswoode. He went straight to their hostess, and said, "Mrs. Spottiswoode, you have no objection that I dance this dance again with Miss Chrissy Hunter?"

"None in the world, Bourhope," said Mrs. Spottiswoode, with a spasmodic smile, "why should I?"

"Why, indeed?" he returned, "or every dance? May I tell her so?"

"That is as she and you may agree. You are aware that would appear something serious," she said, trying to laugh.

"I will take the consequences," he significantly a.s.sured her, and went back and told Chrissy so, and then he drove her to her inmost citadel, and beat her there.

Other eyes than Mrs. Spottiswoode's were attracted to the pair.

Half-a-dozen matrons' heads went wagging significantly; girls whispered and t.i.ttered; gentlemen opened their eyes, shaped their mouths as if about to whistle, strolled up and took their observations of the pre-occupied, unconscious couple quite coolly, and then speculated and gossiped.

Mrs. Spottiswoode read these comments as well as what had gone before, and was ready with her magnanimity. It was this which const.i.tuted her a truly able tactician. She s.h.i.+fted her tack before the shout of malicious exultation and ridicule could have been raised at her discomfiture. By a dexterous sleight of hand, she shuffled her cards and altered her suit.

In a moment Mrs. Spottiswoode was winking and nodding with the matrons interested in the news of the night. She arrested a good-humoured yeoman, and crossed the room on his arm, to express and receive congratulations. "You have found out the secret? Foolish fellow, Bourhope; he cannot conceal his feelings, though their display is premature. I must scold him for exposing himself and her. Poor dear! she is not accustomed to this sort of thing. But I am so delighted--so nice, isn't it? Such an excellent marriage for my cousin Chrissy--a good girl, a very clever girl--such a fortunate beginning for the Blackfaulds family. I often say the first marriage makes or mars a family of girls.

It is so lucky that I invited Chrissy for the yeomanry weeks this summer. It is a great deal better than if it had been Corrie, because Corrie can wait," with a careless wave of her hand in the direction in which Corrie moved, deliberately followed by her train. "Corrie has too many admirers to make up her mind speedily, yet she takes it all very quietly. But this is so appropriate--Mr. Spottiswoode's cousin and my cousin--n.o.body could have planned it better."

She turned round, and heard a blunt b.o.o.by of a farmer speaking out his mind. She at once took him up--"You would not have thought it? You cannot comprehend what has come over Bourhope, or what he sees in that thin, yellow mite, Miss Hunter of Blackfaulds, even though she were as good as a saint, and as wise as the Queen of Sheba? Oh! come, Balquin, you do not allow sufficient lat.i.tude to goodness and cleverness. I tell you, Bourhope has neither eyes nor ears for anybody but that mite; he counts his colourless daisy far before the gayest painted face. He knows that we are remarking on them now, and he is holding his head as high as if he had sought and won a queen. He is right; she will prove a sensible, cheerful wife to him. Bourhope will have the cleverest, best wife in the county, for all your swaggering. And that is something, when a man comes to be old and has an old wife like me. Not old, Balquin?

away with you. I wish the Provost heard you. Do you think to flatter me because I am in spirits about my cousin's match? No, it is not lost that a friend gets, Balquin."

The public of Priorton did not know whether most to admire Mrs.

Spottiswoode's diplomacy, or this rare instance of poetic justice.

DIANA.

I.--AN UNDERTAKING.

"He will not last ten years' time, Die; and then you will be rich and independent--the lady of Ashpound."

"Don't mention it, sir, unless you mean to tempt me to commit murder next."

The speakers in the old drawing-room of Newton-le-Moor, in the south country, thirty years ago, were Mr. Baring and his daughter Diana. He was a worn and dissipated-looking man, with a half-arrogant, half-base air--implying a whole old man of the world of a bad day gone by. He was flawless in his carving, his card-dealing, his frock-coat and tie: corrupt to the core in almost everything else. She was a tall, full-formed woman, in her flower and prime, with a fine carriage and gait, which rendered it a matter of indifference that she wore as plain and simple a muslin gown as a lady could wear. Her hair was of the pale, delicate, neutral tint which the French call _blond-cendre_, a little too ashen-hued for most complexions. It was not wavy hair, but very soft and pure, as if no atmosphere of turmoil and taint had ruffled or soiled it. It made Miss Baring's fresh, clear complexion a shade too bright in the carmine, which took off the greyness of the flaxen hue and relieved the cold and steel-like gleam in her grey-blue eyes. The features of the face were fine and regular, like Mr. Baring's; but instead of the handsome, aristocratic, relentless aquiline nose, which was the most striking feature in the gentleman's face, the lady's was a modified Greek nose, broad enough at the base slightly to spoil its beauty but largely to increase its intellectual significance.

The "he" of the conversation, who was not to last ten years, was Gervase Norgate of Ashpound--a poor, impulsive, weak-willed, fast-living young neighbouring squire. Unluckily for himself, he had been early left his own master, and had ridden post-haste to the dogs ever since. Suddenly he had taken it into his muddled head to pull up in his career, and, if need be, to chain and padlock, hedge and barricade himself with a wife and family, before Ashpound should be swallowed up by hungry creditors, and he had hurried himself into a forlorn grave.

Mr. Baring was willing to let him off as a pigeon to be plucked, and to use him instead as an unconscious decoy-duck in getting rid of Die; not that Mr. Baring had an unnatural aversion to his daughter, but that she was a drag upon him both for the present and the future. But Die, after one night's reflection, accepted Gervase Norgate to escape worse evil, having neither brother nor sister nor friend who would aid her. What Die did on that night; whether she merely "slept on the proposal," like a wise, well-in-hand, self-controlled woman; whether she out.w.a.tched the moon, plying herself with arguments, forcing herself to overcome her deadly sick loathing at the leap, n.o.body knows. If Die had learned anything worth retaining, in the s.h.i.+fts and shams of her life, it was perfect reticence. The result was that Gervase Norgate was coming to woo as an accepted wooer at Newton-le-Moor on the evening of the summer day when Mr. Baring confidentially a.s.sured the bride that the bridegroom would not last ten years.

Newton-le-Moor was what its name suggested, an estate won from the southern moors by other and worthier adventurers than John Fitzwilliam Baring. In his hands the place was drifting back to the original moorland. Everything, except the stables and kennels, had been suffered to go to wreck. The house was of weather-streaked white stone, in part staring and pretentious, in part prodigal and vagabondish. The drawing-room of Newton-le-Moor, like most drawing-rooms, was a commentary--more or less complete--on the life and character of its owner. If it did not represent all his practices and pursuits--his repudiation of just claims and obligations; his sleeping till noon and waking till morning, and faring sumptuously at his neighbours' expense; his fleecing of every victim who crossed his false door by borrowing, bill-discounting, horse-dealing, betting, billiards, long and short whist, and brandy-drinking--at least it painted one little peculiarity of John Fitzwilliam Baring very fairly. Not one accessory which could contribute to his comfort and enjoyment was wanting, from the exceedingly easy chair for his back, to the alabaster lamp for his eyes, and the silver pastile-burner for his nose. On the other hand, there was scarcely an article that had no special reference to John Fitzwilliam Baring which was not in the last stages of decay.

On this evening, before Gervase Norgate came up with her father from the dining-room, where he might sit too long, considering who was waiting him, Diana had her tea-table arranged, and sat down behind it as if to do its honours. She showed no symptoms of discomposure, unless that her rose-colour flickered and flushed in a manner that was not natural to it; yet she had so entrenched herself, that when Gervase Norgate entered, with an irregular, unsteady step, although as nearly sober as he ever was, she could not be touched except at arm's length, and by the tips of the fingers, over which he bowed.

Mr. Norgate was not in his flower and prime. He was not above a year or two Miss Baring's senior; but his whole being had suffered eclipse before it reached maturity, though he still showed some remains of what might have been worth preserving. His physique had been what no word interprets so fitly as the Scotch word "braw,"--not huge and unwieldy in size and strength, but manly and comely. His shoulders were still broad, though they slouched. His hand and arm were still a model, somewhat wasted and shaken, of what in muscular power and lightness a hand and arm should be. His dark brown hair, dry and scanty at five-and-twenty, still fell in waves. His eyes, dulled and dimmed, were still the kindly, magnanimous, forgiving blue eyes. His mouth had always been a heavy mouth (better at all events than a mean mouth); it was coa.r.s.e now, but with strange lines of gentleness breaking in upon its tendency to violence. But his carriage, though he was pre-eminently a well-made man, was the attribute most spoilt about him. He had the bl.u.s.tering yet shuffling bearing of a man who is fully convinced that he has gone to the dogs, and it did not alter its expression that he was making an effort to quit his canine a.s.sociates. Perhaps the effort required to be confirmed before its effects could be seen; perhaps he was not setting about the right way of redeeming himself, after all.

Mr. Baring was pompous in his high breeding--the first gentleman in Europe was pompous also. Mr. Baring brought forward his intended son-in-law as his young friend, and alluded pointedly to the summer evening and its event as an "auspicious occasion." But he was cut short by a frosty glance from Die, and a brief remark that she was not sure that this evening and its party were more auspicious than usual.

Although Miss Baring was a person of very little consequence in her father's house, she acted on Mr. Baring as a drag. Her cold looks inadvertently damped him; and she had a way, which he could not account for in his daughter, of making blunt speeches, like that on the auspicious occasion and on her being left a rich young widow, if Gervase Norgate did for himself smartly. This was discomfiting even to a man who piqued himself on his resources in conversation. Die had uttered twice as many of these abrupt, unamiable, unanswerable rejoinders within these twenty-four hours, since she had accepted Gervase Norgate's hand.

Whatever Mr. Baring thought of the rebuff, he was above exhibiting any sign of his feelings, and no one could have refused him the tribute of consideration for the position of his companions, as he blandly announced that he had the day's 'Chronicle' to read, and begged to be excused for accomplis.h.i.+ng the task before post-time. He retired to sip his tea and disappear behind the folds of his newspaper. It was the first evening for a dozen years that he had not handled cue or fingered cards.

Gervase Norgate, a.s.suming his character of a man about to amend his ways, marry, and settle, sat by Die Baring. He noted and summed up the girl's good points, as no man in love ever yet did. She was a finer-looking woman than he had supposed,--one to be proud of as he presented her to his friends as his wife; pity that he had so few creditable friends left now! He could think of none at that moment except his strong-minded old Aunt Tabby, who had some sneaking kindness for him in the middle of her scorn, and his old man, Miles. Die Baring would not tolerate his boon companions--not that he wanted her to tolerate them; she would not suit for his mistress and manager if she did; though where she got her niceness--seeing what her father was up to in cool, barefaced scampishness, in horse-flesh, bones, and pasteboard--he could not tell.--She was a capable woman he was certain, if she got a fair field for her capability. She was clever: anybody with half an eye or an ear might recognize that. And she would want all her cleverness--ay, and her will and temper--for what she would have to do.

But she had undertaken the task, and it was not much to the purpose that if she had not been the daughter of a disreputable spendthrift she would doubtless as lief have touched live coals as have submitted to be his wife. Ah, well, it was his luck in his last toss-up, and he had never been lucky before; yet he had never felt so great a reluctance to conclude his engagement of twenty-four hours, and clinch his repentance, as he did at this moment. It was good for him that he stood committed.

But why had he not sought out some humble, meek la.s.s, who would still have looked up to him and reckoned him not quite such a reprobate, but believed that there was some good left in him, and liked him a little for himself--not married him to suit her own book and save him for her own sake, if it were possible? Why had he not chosen a simple pet lamb, in place of a proud heifer who scarcely took the trouble to conceal from him how it galled her neck to put it into his yoke? Psha! he would break any poor heart with his incorrigible wildness and beastly sottishness in a month's time. A woman without a heart; a good, hard-mouthed, strong-pulling, well-wearing woman,--honest, and a lady; a handsome, superior woman, and far beyond his deserts, was the wife for him.

Gervase pursued this line of thought; but he spoke to Miss Baring, after a little introductory flourish about the weather, his ride from Ashpound, and the embroidery which she had taken up, in a different strain.

"You have shown a great, I must say an unmerited, trust in me, Miss Baring--Diana: but I mean--I swear I mean to do the best I can for you and myself. I have thought better of the life I have been leading; I shall turn over a new leaf, and be another man if you will help me."

The confession was fatally facile, like most confessions, but it was sincere, and not without its touching element, which, however, did not reach her.

She replied, without being greatly moved, and corrected what might be a slight misconception on his part: "I am quite aware, Mr. Norgate, that you have been rather wild; but since you mean to do better, I am willing to try you and to be your wife."

Diana's candid acquiescence had the same disconcerting influence upon Gervase that her speeches had on her father, unlike as the men were: it struck him dumb when he should have overwhelmed her with thanks. After a while he recovered himself, took heart of grace, and blundered out that he was grateful,--a happy man; would she not say Gervase, when she was having him altogether?

"I suppose I may," acceded Diana, with a hard smile. "There, Gervase--it is not hard to say," as if she were humouring him.

He did not ask for any more favours or rights, but maundered a little on n.o.body calling him Gervase for many a day except his aunt Tabby, and she contracted it to Jarvie, which had a stage-coach flavour.

"Tell me something about your aunt Tabby. Do you know, I have not visited an aunt since I was a little girl of ten?" This afforded him an opening more naturally and pleasantly, and the two went off on Aunt Tabby instead of accomplis.h.i.+ng more courts.h.i.+p, and got on a little better. Diverging from Aunt Tabby to her place, and from her place to Ashpound, they went on with mention of Gervase's factotum, Miles, and discussed capabilities and future arrangements with wonderful common sense.

Mr. Baring swallowed his last gape over his 'Chronicle,' concluded that the couple had surely had their swing of private conversation for one night, and resolved to curtail the courts.h.i.+p to the shortest decorous bounds. So Mr. Baring looked at his watch, and said quite lovingly to Gervase: "My boy, when I do act the family man, I do the thing thoroughly, by supping in my dressing-room at eleven. What! you are off? A pleasant ride to you. You will receive your orders from Die, I fancy, when to report yourself in attendance. To-morrow is it, or next day? Make yourself at home, my dear fellow. Happy to think that you are going to be one of us--a son for me to be proud of.

Good-night. G.o.d bless you."

Thus the preliminaries to the alliance ended with Gervase bowing again over the tips of Die's fingers. He had not the smallest inclination to raise them to his lips.

"I will do my duty by him," said Diana to herself, when she was in the sanctuary of her own bare room. And what a poor sanctuary it had been!

"It may be bad in me to have him, but what can I do? and what can he do, for that matter? If I do my duty by him, surely some good will come of it." Perhaps her imagination was haunted by a garbled version of the text about him who turns a sinner from the error of his ways and covers a mult.i.tude of sin.

II.--THE FULFILMENT.

"She's a fine woman the mistress, a rare fine woman; but she's going the wrong way. It's the cart before the horse, and I tell you it's not conformable; and the master, G.o.d help him, poor fellow, will never be brought to go at the tail of the cart--never." So ruminated Gervase Norgate's old servant, Miles, pus.h.i.+ng back the tufts of ragged red hair on his long head ruefully, as he sat "promiscuous" in what he was pleased to call his pantry at Ashpound, while he contemplated with the eye of the body his chamois skin for what he proudly denominated his silver, and with the eye of the mind the new regime and its ruling spirit.

"She's a fine woman," remarked also of her new niece, Miss Tabitha Norgate, of Redwells. "She's a fine woman, a great deal too good for him; but she oughtn't to have gone and married Jarvie, or to have married anybody, there's the long and the short of it. She ought to have remained single, like me. She was made to stand alone, while he wanted a woman and as many children as she could muster to hang round his neck--the liker a millstone the better,--he won't drown: he could not take the straight road without a weight to ballast him and keep him steady. If he had consulted me, I would have advised him to marry that dawdling, whimpering Susie Lefroy, the widowed daughter of the Vicar, with her unprovided-for orphans. Jarvie might have stepped into a young family at once, and he would have been a kind stepfather--he might have righted himself then. To go and marry a clever, active, handsome, well-born woman like Die Baring. Oh! dear, dear, what folly!"

In spite of her critics, Mrs. Gervase Norgate spared no pains to acquit herself of her obligation, and to discharge her debt at Ashpound.

Ashpound was a much more exhilarating residence than Newton-le-Moor. At Newton-le-Moor the desolation of prodigality and immorality was objective and deductive. At Ashpound the desolation was subjective and inductive, a plague-spot within; and although the flush of decay was visible, Gervase would struggle against it to the last. He would make an effort to preserve the pleasant, rambling, mellow brick house, most of it one-storied and draped with jessamine and clematis as old as the building; the belt of ash-trees round the ferny dells of the little park; and the whitewashed offices, in excellent repair; the well cared for cattle and poultry-yard; the amply-stocked, flouris.h.i.+ng gardens; the pretty gardener's house and lodge--the prettiest things about the place, as his father had left them to him. To the last Gervase would aim at keeping up the place, to his mother's drawing-room, his father's study, Miles's pantry and cellar, even the modern housekeeper's room, and the maids' gallery, in comfort and pleasantness. Only his own rooms--dining-room, smoking-room, bedroom--had been suffered to show traces of many a brawl and fray. It was as if he had deemed anything good enough for a scapegrace and beast like him, and thought to pay the whole price in his own person. It would not be with his will if any other person, high or low, contributed to his heavy forfeits. And Gervase Norgate's servants, new as well as old, had a pitiful liking for him, a remorseful regard for his interests, even when these clashed with their own. So when Gervase had removed the traces, repaired the damages, and taken the decisive step of forbidding the inroads of his evil a.s.sociates, Mrs. Gervase Norgate found a peaceful, prosperous-seeming, as well as fair, country home awaiting her.

Neither did Mrs. Gervase Norgate droop or mope; she was alive to every advantage, alert to improve every opportunity. Frankly she praised the house at Ashpound, which she had formerly known at the distance of common acquaintances.h.i.+p, but now knew in the nearness of home, from garret to cellar. "What a well-seasoned, kindly dwelling you have here, Gervase. How I like the windows opening down to the floors, the creeping plants, the hall window-seats, and the attics with their pigeon-hole bureaux." She made herself familiar with its details, and she flattered its old occupants with the extent of her intimacy and appreciation. She did not let the gra.s.s grow beneath her feet in learning and acquiring its owner's habits. Early rising had been one of the good old country habits which had stuck to Gervase. And not a dairymaid at Ashpound was up and abroad at so primitive an hour as its mistress, ready to walk with the Squire to his horses' stalls and paddocks, his cattle sheds, his game preserves, his workpeople in the fields; anywhere but to the sign of the 'Spreading Ash-tree,' in the village of Ash-c.u.m-thorpe, for his morning draught.

"Well-a-day," cried Dolly; "I would not be the mistress, to rise and go to her work afore the stroke of six, and she a fine lady born and bred, for all the hats and feathers, table heads, and carriage-seats in this here world. If I ever have a word to say to Luke Jobling, I know it will be with an eye to a good long lie in the morning when he has gone to his mowing or his reaping. How Madam does it without ever drooping an eyelid, none of us can tell; but they do say the gentlefolks are as strong as steel when they like to put out their strength; happen it is the high living as gives it to them. I know Madam puts us to our mettle here. And lawk! the Squire, he's as restless and lost like as a new weaned calf. Eh! I had liefer have the holding-in of a senseless calf, though I had not Luke to help me with the bars of the gates, than the holding in of a full-grown, whole-witted man. But the poor mistress--them as don't know the rights of a thing calls her saucy--young lady though she be, she do work hard for her place and living, she do, since she has got Master Gervase and Ashpound."