Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite Part 14

"No, Papa. I am heartily sorry that he should have been what you call a bad young man. I wish young men weren't so bad;--that there were no racecourses, and betting, and all that. But if he had been my brother instead of my cousin--"

"Don't talk about your brother, Emily."

"Should we hate him because he has been unsteady? Should we not do all that we could in the world to bring him back? I do not know that we are to hate people because they do what they ought not to do."

"We hate liars."

"He is not a liar. I will not believe it."

"Why did he tell you that he was not at those races, when he was there as surely as you are here? But, my dear, I will not argue about all this with you. It is not right that I should do so. It is my duty to inquire into these things, and yours to believe me and to obey me." Then he paused, but his daughter made no reply to him. He looked into her face, and saw there that mark about her eyes which he knew he so often showed himself; which he so well remembered with his father. "I suppose you do believe me, Emily, when I tell you that he is worthless."

"He need not be worthless always."

"His conduct has been such that he is unfit to be trusted with anything."

"He must be the head of our family some day, Papa."

"That is our misfortune, my dear. No one can feel it as I do. But I need not add to it the much greater misfortune of sacrificing to him my only child."

"If he was so bad, why did he come here?"

"That is true. I did not expect to be rebuked by you, Emily, but I am open to that rebuke."

"Dear, dear Papa, indeed I did not mean to rebuke you. But I cannot give him up."

"You must give him up."

"No, Papa. If I did, I should be false. I will not be false. You say that he is false. I do not know that, but I will not be false. Let me speak to you for one minute."

"It is of no use."

"But you will hear me, Papa. You always hear me when I speak to you." She had left her chair now, and was standing close to him, not leaning upon him as was her wont in their pleasantest moments of fellows.h.i.+p, but ready to do so whenever she should find that his mood would permit it. "I will never marry him without your leave."

"Thanks, Emily; I know how sacred is a promise from you."

"But mine to him is equally sacred. I shall still be engaged to him.

I told him how it would be. I said that, as long as you or Mamma lived, I would never marry without your leave. Nor would I see him, or write to him without your knowledge. I told him so. But I told him also that I would always be true to him. I mean to keep my word."

"If you find him to be utterly worthless, you cannot be bound by such a promise."

"I hope it may not be so. I do not believe that it is so. I know him too well to think that he can be utterly worthless. But if he was, who should try to save him from worthlessness if not his nearest relatives? We try to reclaim the worst criminals, and sometimes we succeed. And he must be the head of the family. Remember that. Ought we not to try to reclaim him? He cannot be worse than the prodigal son."

"He is ten times worse. I cannot tell you what has been his life."

"Papa, I have often thought that in our rank of life society is responsible for the kind of things which young men do. If he was at Goodwood, which I do not believe, so was Mr. Stackpoole. If he was betting, so was Mr. Stackpoole."

"But Mr. Stackpoole did not lie."

"I don't know that," she said, with a little toss of her head.

"Emily, you have no business either to say or to think it."

"I care nothing for Mr. Stackpoole whether he tells truth or not. He and his wife have made themselves very disagreeable,--that is all.

But as for George, he is what he is, because other young men are allowed to be the same."

"You do not know the half of it."

"I know as much as I want to know, Papa. Let one keep as clear of it as one can, it is impossible not to hear how young men live. And yet they are allowed to go everywhere, and are flattered and encouraged.

I do not pretend that George is better than others. I wish he were.

Oh, how I wish it! But such as he is he belongs in a way to us, and we ought not to desert him. He belongs, I know, to me, and I will not desert him."

Sir Harry felt that there was no arguing with such a girl as this.

Some time since he had told her that it was unfit that he should be brought into an argument with his own child, and there was nothing now for him but to fall back upon the security which that a.s.sertion gave him. He could not charge her with direct disobedience, because she had promised him that she would not do any of those things which, as a father, he had a right to forbid. He relied fully on her promise, and so far might feel himself to be safe. Nevertheless he was very unhappy. Of what service would his child be to him or he to her, if he were doomed to see her pining from day to day with an unpermitted love? It was the dearest wish of his heart to make her happy, as it was his fondest ambition to see her so placed in the world that she might be the happy transmitter of all the honours of the house of Humblethwaite,--if she could not transmit all the honours of the name. Time might help him. And then if she could be made really to see how base was the clay of which had been made this image which she believed to be of gold, might it not be that at last she would hate a thing that was so vile? In order that she might do so, he would persist in finding out what had been the circ.u.mstances of this young man's life. If, as he believed, the things which George Hotspur had done were such as in another rank of life would send the perpetrator to the treadmill, surely then she would not cling to her lover. It would not be in her nature to prefer that which was foul and abominable and despised of all men. It was after this, when he had seen Mr. Boltby, that the idea occurred to him of buying up Cousin George, so that Cousin George should himself abandon his engagement.

"You had better go now, my dear," he said, after his last speech. "I fully rely upon the promise you have made me. I know that I can rely upon it. And you also may rely upon me. I give you my word as your father that this man is unfit to be your husband, and that I should commit a sin greater than I can describe to you were I to give my sanction to such a marriage."

Emily made no answer to this, but left the room without having once leaned upon her father's shoulder.

That look of hers troubled him sadly when he was alone. What was to be the meaning of it, and what the result? She had given him almost unasked the only promise which duty required her to give, but at the same time she had a.s.sured him by her countenance, as well as by her words, that she would be as faithful to her lover as she was prepared to be obedient to her father. And then if there should come a long contest of that nature, and if he should see her devoted year after year to a love which she would not even try to cast off from her, how would he be able to bear it? He, too, was firm, but he knew himself to be as tender-hearted as he was obstinate. It would be more than he could bear. All the world would be nothing for him then. And if there were ever to be a question of yielding, it would be easier to do something towards lessening the vileness of the man now than hereafter. He, too, had some of that knowledge of the world which had taught Lady Altringham to say that the young people in such contests could always beat the old people. Thinking of this, and of that look upon his child's brows, he almost vacillated again. Any amount of dissipation he could now have forgiven; but to be a liar, too, and a swindler! Before he went to bed that night he had made up his mind to go to London and to see Mr. Boltby.

CHAPTER XIV.

PERTINACITY.

On the day but one after the scene narrated in the last chapter Sir Harry went to London, and Lady Elizabeth and Emily were left alone together in the great house at Humblethwaite. Emily loved her mother dearly. The proper relations of life were reversed between them, and the younger domineered over the elder. But the love which the daughter felt was probably the stronger on this account.

Lady Elizabeth never scolded, never snubbed, never made herself disagreeable, was never cross; and Emily, with her strong perceptions and keen intelligence, knew all her mother's excellence, and loved it the better because of her mother's weakness. She preferred her father's company, but no one could say she neglected her mother for the sake of her father.

Hitherto she had said very little to Lady Elizabeth as to her lover.

She had, in the first place, told her mother, and then had received from her mother, second-hand, her father's disapproval. At that time she had only said that it was "too late." Poor Lady Elizabeth had been able to make no useful answer to this. It certainly was too late. The evil should have been avoided by refusing admittance to Cousin George both in London and at Humblethwaite. It certainly was too late;--too late, that is, to avoid the evil altogether. The girl had been asked for her heart, and had given it. It was very much too late. But evils such as that do admit of remedy. It is not every girl that can marry the man whom she first confesses that she loves. Lady Elizabeth had some idea that her child, being n.o.bler born and of more importance than other people's children, ought to have been allowed by fate to do so,--as there certainly is a something withdrawn from the delicate aroma of a first-cla.s.s young woman by any transfer of affections;--but if it might not be so, even an Emily Hotspur must submit to a lot not uncommon among young women in general, and wait and wish till she could acknowledge to herself that her heart was susceptible of another wound. That was the mother's hope at present,--her hope, when she was positively told by Sir Harry that George Hotspur was quite out of the question as a husband for the heiress of Humblethwaite. But this would probably come the sooner if little or nothing were said of George Hotspur.

The reader need hardly be told that Emily herself regarded the matter in a very different light. She also had her ideas about the delicacy and the aroma of a maiden's love. She had confessed her love very boldly to the man who had asked for it; had made her rich present with a free hand, and had grudged nothing in the making of it. But having given it, she understood it to be fixed as the heavens that she could never give the same gift again. It was herself that she had given, and there was no retracting the offering. She had thought, and had then hoped, and had afterwards hoped more faintly, that the present had been well bestowed;--that in giving it she had disposed of herself well. Now they told her that it was not so, and that she could hardly have disposed of herself worse. She would not believe that; but, let it be as it might, the thing was done. She was his.

He had a right in her which she could not withdraw from him. Was not this sort of giving acknowledged by all churches in which the words for "better or for worse" were uttered as part of the marriage vow?

Here there had been as yet no church vow, and therefore her duty was still due to her father. But the sort of sacrifice,--so often a sacrifice of the good to the bad,--which the Church not only allowed but required and sanctified, could be as well conveyed by one promise as by another. What is a vow but a promise? and by what process are such vows and promises made fitting between a man and a woman? Is it not by that compelled rendering up of the heart which men call love?

She had found that he was dearer to her than everything in the world besides; that to be near him was a luxury to her; that his voice was music to her; that the flame of his eyes was sunlight; that his touch was to her, as had never been the touch of any other human being.

She could submit to him, she who never would submit to any one. She could delight to do his bidding, even though it were to bring him his slippers. She had confessed nothing of this, even to herself, till he had spoken to her on the bridge; but then, in a moment, she had known that it was so, and had not coyed the truth with him by a single nay.

And now they told her that he was bad.

Bad as he was, he had been good enough to win her. 'Twas thus she argued with herself. Who was she that she should claim for herself the right of having a man that was not bad? That other man that had come to her, that Lord Alfred, was, she was told, good at all points; and he had not moved her in the least. His voice had possessed no music for her; and as for fetching his slippers for him,--he was to her one of those men who seem to be created just that they might be civil when wanted and then get out of the way! She had not been able for a moment to bring herself to think of regarding him as her husband. But this man, this bad man! From the moment that he had spoken to her on the bridge, she knew that she was his for ever.

It might be that she liked a bad man best. So she argued with herself again. If it were so she must put up with what misfortune her own taste might bring upon her. At any rate the thing was done, and why should any man be thrown over simply because the world called him bad? Was there to be no forgiveness for wrongs done between man and man, when the whole theory of our religion was made to depend on forgiveness from G.o.d to man? It is the duty of some one to reclaim an evident prodigal; and why should it not be her duty to reclaim this prodigal? Clearly, the very fact that she loved the prodigal would give her a potentiality that way which she would have with no other prodigal. It was at any rate her duty to try. It would at least be her duty if they would allow her to be near enough to him to make the attempt. Then she filled her mind with ideas of a long period of probation, in which every best energy of her existence should be given to this work of reclaiming the prodigal, so that at last she might put her own hand into one that should be clean enough to receive it. With such a task before her she could wait. She could watch him and give all her heart to his welfare, and never be impatient except that he might be made happy. As she thought of this, she told herself plainly that the work would not be easy, that there would be disappointment, almost heart-break, delays and sorrows; but she loved him, and it would be her duty; and then, if she could be successful, how great, how full of joy would be the triumph! Even if she were to fail and perish in failing, it would be her duty. As for giving him up because he had the misfortune to be bad, she would as soon give him up on the score of any other misfortune;--because he might lose a leg, or become deformed, or be stricken deaf by G.o.d's hand! One does not desert those one loves, because of their misfortunes! 'Twas thus she argued with herself, thinking that she could see,--whereas, poor child, she was so very blind!

"Mamma," she said, "has Papa gone up to town about Cousin George?"

"I do not know, my dear. He did not say why he was going."