Prisoners Part 11

Wentworth trod upon the crocus and said he must be going home.

"We will walk back to the house with you," said Magdalen, and she led the way with her father.

"I wish you would tell your Aunt Mary," he said to Magdalen as they walked on, "that I will not have her servants wandering in Lindley wood.

Jones tells me they were there again last Sunday with a dog, that accursed little yapping wool mat of Aunt Aggie's! I simply won't stand it. I would rather you told her. It would come better from you."

"I will tell her."

Colonel Bellairs was beginning late in life to lean on Magdalen. She was fond of him in a way, and never yielded to him. _On ne peut s'appuyer que contre ce qui resiste._ Though Colonel Bellairs did not know it, he was always wanting to _s'appuyer_. He had found in his daughter something solid to lean against, which he had never found in his wife, who had not resisted him.

"Oh! and look here, Magdalen. I had a letter from your Aunt Mary this morning, a long rigmarole. She says she is following her letter, and is coming to have a serious talk with me. Hang it all! Can't a man have a moment's peace?"

Colonel Bellairs tore out of an inner pocket a bulky letter in a bold, upright hand, marked _Private_, at the top.

"I wish to the devil she would mind her own business, and let me manage mine," he said pettishly, thrusting the letter at Magdalen.

"I don't like to read it, as it is marked 'Private.'"

"Read it. Read it," said Colonel Bellairs irritably.

Magdalen read the voluminous epistle tranquilly from beginning to end as she and her father walked slowly back to the house.

It was an able production, built up on a solid foundation. It dealt with Colonel Bellairs' "obvious duty" with regard to the man to whom Magdalen had been momentarily engaged fifteen years before, and who, owing to two deaths in the Boer war, had unexpectedly succeeded to an earldom.

"Well! well!" said Colonel Bellairs at intervals, more interested than he wished to appear. "What do you think of it? We noticed in the papers a week ago that he had succeeded his cousin."

"Wait a minute, father. I have only come to my lacerated affections."

"How slow you are! Your Aunt Mary does pound away. She has a touch as light as a coal-sack. The wonder to me is how she ever captured poor old Blore."

"Perhaps she did it by letter. She writes uncommonly well. 'Magdalen's joyless homelife of incessant, unselfish service.' That is very well put, isn't it? And so is this: 'It is your duty now to inform him that you withdraw all opposition to the renewal of the engagement, and to invite him to Priesthope.' Really, Aunt Mary sticks at nothing. I warn you solemnly, father, this is only the thin end of the wedge. Unless you stand firm now, she'll want to choose our new stair carpet for us next.

Really, I think at her age she might take a little holiday, and leave the Almighty in charge."

"Is that all you've got to say?" said Colonel Bellairs, somewhat surprised. "Do you wish me to ask him to the house or do you not? I don't object to him. I never did, except as a son-in-law, when he had no visible means of subsistence."

"And no intention of making any."

"Just so. But I always rather liked him, and, and--time slips by"--(it had indeed), "and I can't make much provision for you, in fact, almost none, and I may marry again; in fact, it is more than likely I shall shortly marry again." Colonel Bellairs was for a moment plunged in introspection. "So perhaps, on the whole, it would be more generous on my part to ignore the past and ask him to the house."

"After forbidding him to come to it?"

Colonel Bellairs began to lose his temper.

"I shall ask whom I think fit if I choose to do so. I am master in this house. If he does not care to come, he can stay away."

"Ask him, in that case."

"You agree that on the whole that would be best."

"Not at all. I think it extremely undignified on your part, and that it is a pity that you should be so swayed by Aunt Mary as to go by her judgment instead of your own. You never thought of asking him till she tried to coerce you into it."

"I am not going to be coerced by any woman, much less by that man in petticoats," said Colonel Bellairs wrathfully. "But she will be here directly. H'm! What on earth am I to say to her if I _don't_ ask him?...

She will be here directly."

They had reached Colonel Bellairs' study by now, and he sat down heavily in his old leather arm-chair. Magdalen was standing on the hearthrug near him with the letter in her hand. She held it over the fire, he nodded, and she dropped it in.

"Perhaps, Magdalen," said her father with dignity, "it would be just as well if I kept clear of the whole affair. Women manage these little things best among themselves. I would rather not be dragged in. Anything on that subject, any discussion, or interchange of opinion would come best from _you_, eh?"

"I think so, father."

Colonel Bellairs watched his sister's letter burn, with the fixed eye of one about to drop off into an habitual nap.

The asphyxiating atmosphere of a man's room, where a window is never opened except to let in a dog, or to shout at a gardener, and where years of stale tobacco brood in every nook and curtain, enveloped its occupant with a delicious sense of snug repose, and exerted its usual soporific charm.

"Took Mary a long time to write," he said, with a sleepy chuckle, as the last vestige disappeared of the laboriously constructed missive which Lady Blore had sat up half the previous night, with gold-rimmed pince-nez on Roman nose to copy out by her bedroom candle, and had sent to pave the way before her strong destructive feet.

The footman came in.

"Lady Blore and Miss Bellairs are in the drawing-room."

"Just pull the blinds half-way down before you go," said Colonel Bellairs to Magdalen, "and remember other people have got letters to write as well as her, and I'm not to be disturbed on any account."

CHAPTER IX

On garde longtemps son premier amant quand on n'en prend point de second.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

The two aunts meanwhile were sitting waiting in the drawing-room.

When Mrs. Bellairs died, which event, according to Aunt Aggie, had been brought about by a persistent refusal to wear on her chest a small square of flannel, (quite a small square) sprinkled with camphorated oil, and according to Aunt Mary by a total misconception of the Bellairs' character; when this event happened, the two aunts became what they called supports to their brother's motherless children.

They were far from being broken reeds which pierce the hands of those who lean on them.

No one had ever leaned on Aunt Mary or Aunt Aggie. Aunt Mary might perhaps be likened to one of those stout beams which have a tendency to push ruthlessly through the tottering outer wall which they are supposed to prop, into the inner chamber of the tenement which has the misfortune to be the object of their good offices.

She had contracted, not in her first youth, a matrimonial alliance--it could hardly be called a marriage--with a general, distinguished in India and obscure everywhere else, who had built a villa called "The Towers" a few miles from Priesthope. The marriage had taken place after years of half-gratified reluctance on his part and indomitable crude persistence on hers. In short it was what is generally called "a long attachment," and proves beyond dispute, what is already proven to the hilt, that the sterner s.e.x prefer to have their affairs of the heart arranged for them; that once lost sight of they are mislaid, once let loose on parole they never return, once captured they endeavour to escape; that even when finally married nothing short of the amputation of all external interests will detain them within the sacred precincts of THE HOME.

Aunt Mary had had trouble with her general, but though she was no tactician, she was herself a general. His engagement to her had only been the first of the crus.h.i.+ng defeats which she had inflicted upon him.

Now at last at The Towers a deathlike peace reigned. Sir John, severely tried by rheumatism and advancing years, had, so to speak, given up his sword.

His wife's magnanimity had provided him with what she considered suitable amus.e.m.e.nts and occupations. He was told that he took an interest in breeding pigs, and he, who had once ruled a province rather larger than England, might now be seen on fine mornings tottering out, tilted forward on his stick, making the tour of the farmyard, and hanging over the low wall of his model pigstyes.

In Magdalen's recollections, Aunt Mary had always looked exactly the same, the same strong, tall, robust, large-featured, handsome woman, with black hair, and round, black, unwinking eyes, who invariably dressed in black and wore a bonnet. Even under the cedar at The Towers Aunt Mary wore a bonnet. When she employed herself in a majestic gardening the sun was shaded from her Roman nose by a black satin parasol.

There are some men and women whom it is monstrous to suppose ever were children, ever young, ever different from what they are now. Whatever laws of human nature may rule the birth of others, they, at any rate, like the phnix, sprang full grown, middle aged, in a frock coat, or a bugled silk gown, from some charred heap of unconsenting parental ashes.