CHAPTER XXVIII. TOM COGGLESEY’S PROPOSITION
The appearance of a curricle and a donkey-cart within the gates of Beckley Court, produced a sensation among the men of the lower halls, and a couple of them rushed out, with the left calf considerably in advance, to defend the house from violation. Toward the curricle they directed what should have been a bow, but was a nod. Their joint attention was then given to the donkey-cart, in which old Tom Cogglesby sat alone, bunchy in figure, bunched in face, his shrewd grey eyes twinkling under the bush of his eyebrows.
‘Oy, sir—you! my man!’ exclaimed the tallest of the pair, resolutely. ‘This won’t do. Don’t you know driving this sort of conveyance slap along the gravel ‘ere, up to the pillars, ‘s unparliamentary? Can’t be allowed. Now, right about!’
This address, accompanied by a commanding elevation of the dexter hand, seemed to excite Mr. Raikes far more than Old Tom. He alighted from his perch in haste, and was running up to the stalwart figure, crying, ‘Fellow!’ when, as you tell a dog to lie down, Old Tom called out, ‘Be quiet, Sir!’ and Raikes halted with prompt military obedience.
The sight of the curricle acting satellite to the donkey-cart staggered the two footmen.
‘Are you lords?’ sang out Old Tom.
A burst of laughter from the friends of Mr. Raikes, in the curricle, helped to make the powdered gentlemen aware of a sarcasm, and one with no little dignity replied that they were not lords.
‘Oh! Then come and hold my donkey.’
Great irresolution was displayed at the injunction, but having consulted the face of Mr. Raikes, one fellow, evidently half overcome by what was put upon him, with the steps of Adam into exile, descended to the gravel, and laid his hand on the donkey’s head.
‘Hold hard!’ cried Old Tom. ‘Whisper in his ear. He’ll know your language.’
‘May I have the felicity of assisting you to terra firma?’ interposed Mr. Raikes, with the bow of deferential familiarity.
‘Done that once too often,’ returned Old Tom, jumping out. ‘There. What’s the fee? There’s a crown for you that ain’t afraid of a live donkey; and there ‘s a sixpenny bit for you that are—to keep up your courage; and when he’s dead you shall have his skin—to shave by.’
‘Excellent!’ shouted Raikes.
‘Thomas!’ he addressed a footman, ‘hand in my card. Mr. John Feversham Raikes.’
‘And tell my lady, Tom Cogglesby’s come,’ added the owner of that name.
We will follow Tom Cogglesby, as he chooses to be called.
Lady Jocelyn rose on his entering the library, and walking up to him, encountered him with a kindly full face.
‘So I see you at last, Tom?’ she said, without releasing his hand; and Old Tom mounted patches of red in his wrinkled cheeks, and blinked, and betrayed a singular antiquated bashfulness, which ended, after a mumble of ‘Yes, there he was, and he hoped her ladyship was well,’ by his seeking refuge in a chair, where he sat hard, and fixed his attention on the leg of a table.
‘Well, Tom, do you find much change in me?’ she was woman enough to continue.
He was obliged to look up.
‘Can’t say I do, my lady.’
‘Don’t you see the grey hairs, Tom?’
‘Better than a wig,’ rejoined he.
Was it true that her ladyship had behaved rather ill to Old Tom in her youth? Excellent women have been naughty girls, and young Beauties will have their train. It is also very possible that Old Tom had presumed upon trifles, and found it difficult to forgive her his own folly.
‘Preferable to a wig? Well, I would rather see you with your natural thatch. You’re bent, too. You look as if you had kept away from Beckley a little too long.’
‘Told you, my lady, I should come when your daughter was marriageable.’
‘Oho! that’s it? I thought it was the Election!
‘Election be – hem!—beg pardon, my lady.’
‘Swear, Tom, if it relieves you. I think it bad to check an oath or a sneeze.’
‘I ‘m come to see you on business, my lady, or I shouldn’t have troubled you.’
‘Malice?’
‘You ‘ll see I don’t bear any, my lady.’
‘Ah! if you had only sworn roundly twenty-five years ago, what a much younger man you would have been! and a brave capital old friend whom I should not have missed all that time.’
‘Come!’ cried Old Tom, varying his eyes rapidly between her ladyship’s face and the floor, ‘you acknowledge I had reason to.’
‘Mais, cela va sans dire.’
‘Cobblers’ sons ain’t scholars, my lady.’
‘And are not all in the habit of throwing their fathers in our teeth, I hope!’
Old Tom wriggled in his chair. ‘Well, my lady, I’m not going to make a fool of myself at my time o’ life. Needn’t be alarmed now. You’ve got the bell-rope handy and a husband on the premises.’
Lady Jocelyn smiled, stood up, and went to him. ‘I like an honest fist,’ she said, taking his. ‘We ‘re not going to be doubtful friends, and we won’t snap and snarl. That’s for people who’re independent of wigs, Tom. I find, for my part, that a little grey on the top of any head cools the temper amazingly. I used to be rather hot once.’
‘You could be peppery, my lady.’
‘Now I’m cool, Tom, and so must you be; or, if you fight, it must be in my cause, as you did when you thrashed that saucy young carter. Do you remember?’
‘If you’ll sit ye down, my lady, I’ll just tell you what I’m come for,’ said Old Tom, who plainly showed that he did remember, and was alarmingly softened by her ladyship’s retention of the incident.
Lady Jocelyn returned to her place.
‘You’ve got a marriageable daughter, my lady?’
‘I suppose we may call her so,’ said Lady Jocelyn, with a composed glance at the ceiling.
‘‘Gaged to be married to any young chap?’
‘You must put the question to her, Tom.’
‘Ha! I don’t want to see her.’
At this Lady Jocelyn looked slightly relieved. Old Tom continued.
‘Happen to have got a little money—not so much as many a lord’s got, I dare say; such as ‘tis, there ‘tis. Young fellow I know wants a wife, and he shall have best part of it. Will that suit ye, my lady?’
Lady Jocelyn folded her hands. ‘Certainly; I’ve no objection. What it has to do with me I can’t perceive.’
‘Ahem!’ went Old Tom. ‘It won’t hurt your daughter to be married now, will it?’
‘Oh! my daughter is the destined bride of your “young fellow,”’ said Lady Jocelyn. ‘Is that how it’s to be?’
‘She’—Old Tom cleared his throat ‘she won’t marry a lord, my lady; but she—‘hem—if she don’t mind that—‘ll have a deuced sight more hard cash than many lord’s son ‘d give her, and a young fellow for a husband, sound in wind and limb, good bone and muscle, speaks grammar and two or three languages, and—’
‘Stop!’ cried Lady Jocelyn. ‘I hope this is not a prize young man? If he belongs, at his age, to the unco quid, I refuse to take him for a son-in-law, and I think Rose will, too.’
Old Tom burst out vehemently: ‘He’s a damned good young fellow, though he isn’t a lord.’
‘Well,’ said Lady Jocelyn, ‘I ‘ve no doubt you’re in earnest, Tom. It ‘s curious, for this morning Rose has come to me and given me the first chapter of a botheration, which she declares is to end in the common rash experiment. What is your “young fellow’s” name? Who is he? What is he?’
‘Won’t take my guarantee, my lady?’
‘Rose—if she marries—must have a name, you know?’
Old Tom hit his knee. ‘Then there’s a pill for ye to swallow, for he ain’t the son of a lord.’
‘That’s swallowed, Tom. What is he?’
‘He’s the son of a tradesman, then, my lady.’ And Old Tom watched her to note the effect he had produced.
‘More ‘s the pity,’ was all she remarked.
‘And he ‘ll have his thousand a year to start with; and he’s a tailor, my lady.’
Her ladyship opened her eyes.
‘Harrington’s his name, my lady. Don’t know whether you ever heard of it.’
Lady Jocelyn flung herself back in her chair. ‘The queerest thing I ever met!’ said she.
‘Thousand a year to start with,’ Old Tom went on, ‘and if she marries—I mean if he marries her, I’ll settle a thousand per ann. on the first baby-boy or gal.’
‘Hum! Is this gross collusion, Mr. Tom?’ Lady Jocelyn inquired.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Have you spoken of this before to any one?’
‘I haven’t, my lady. Decided on it this morning. Hem! you got a son, too. He’s fond of a young gal, or he ought to be. I’ll settle him when I’ve settled the daughter.’
‘Harry is strongly attached to a dozen, I believe,’ said his mother. ‘Well, Tom, we’ll think of it. I may as well tell you: Rose has just been here to inform me that this Mr. Harrington has turned her head, and that she has given her troth, and all that sort of thing. I believe such was not to be laid to my charge in my day.’
‘You were open enough, my lady,’ said Old Tom. ‘She’s fond of the young fellow? She’ll have a pill to swallow! poor young woman!’
Old Tom visibly chuckled. Lady Jocelyn had a momentary temptation to lead him out, but she did not like the subject well enough to play with it.
‘Apparently Rose has swallowed it,’ she said.
‘Goose, shears, cabbage, and all!’ muttered Old Tom. ‘Got a stomach!—she knows he’s a tailor, then? The young fellow told her? He hasn’t been playing the lord to her?’
‘As far as he’s concerned, I think he has been tolerably honest, Tom, for a man and a lover.’
‘And told her he was born and bound a tailor?’
‘Rose certainly heard it from him.’
Slapping his knee, Old Tom cried: ‘Bravo!’ For though one part of his nature was disappointed, and the best part of his plot disarranged, he liked Evan’s proceeding and felt warm at what seemed to him Rose’s scorn of rank.
‘She must be a good gal, my lady. She couldn’t have got it from t’ other side. Got it from you. Not that you—’
‘No,’ said Lady Jocelyn, apprehending him. ‘I’m afraid I have no Republican virtues. I ‘m afraid I should have rejected the pill. Don’t be angry with me,’ for Old Tom looked sour again; ‘I like birth and position, and worldly advantages, and, notwithstanding Rose’s pledge of the instrument she calls her heart, and in spite of your offer, I shall, I tell you honestly, counsel her to have nothing to do with—’
‘Anything less than lords,’ Old Tom struck in. ‘Very well. Are you going to lock her up, my lady?’
‘No. Nor shall I whip her with rods.’
‘Leave her free to her choice?’
‘She will have my advice. That I shall give her. And I shall take care that before she makes a step she shall know exactly what it leads to. Her father, of course, will exercise his judgement.’ (Lady Jocelyn said this to uphold the honour of Sir Franks, knowing at the same time perfectly well that he would be wheedled by Rose.) ‘I confess I like this Mr. Harrington. But it’s a great misfortune for him to have had a notorious father. A tailor should certainly avoid fame, and this young man will have to carry his father on his back. He ‘ll never throw the great Mel off.’
Tom Cogglesby listened, and was really astonished at her ladyship’s calm reception of his proposal.
‘Shameful of him! shameful!’ he muttered perversely: for it would have made him desolate to have had to change his opinion of her ladyship after cherishing it, and consoling himself with it, five-and-twenty years. Fearing the approach of softness, he prepared to take his leave.
‘Now—your servant, my lady. I stick to my word, mind: and if your people here are willing, I—I ‘ve got a candidate up for Fall’field—I’ll knock him down, and you shall sneak in your Tory. Servant, my lady.’
Old Tom rose to go. Lady Jocelyn took his hand cordially, though she could not help smiling at the humility of the cobbler’s son in his manner of speaking of the Tory candidate.
‘Won’t you stop with us a few days?’
‘I ‘d rather not, I thank ye.’
‘Won’t you see Rose?’
‘I won’t. Not till she’s married.’
‘Well, Tom, we’re friends now?’
‘Not aware I’ve ever done you any harm, my lady.’
‘Look me in the face.’
The trial was hard for him. Though she had been five-and-twenty years a wife, she was still very handsome: but he was not going to be melted, and when the perverse old fellow obeyed her, it was with an aspect of resolute disgust that would have made any other woman indignant. Lady Jocelyn laughed.
‘Why, Tom, your brother Andrew’s here, and makes himself comfortable with us. We rode by Brook’s farm the other day. Do you remember Copping’s pond—how we dragged it that night? What days we had!’
Old Tom tugged once or twice at his imprisoned fist, while these youthful frolics of his too stupid self and the wild and beautiful Miss Bonner were being recalled.
‘I remember!’ he said savagely, and reaching the door hurled out: ‘And I remember the Bull-dogs, too! servant, my lady.’ With which he effected a retreat, to avoid a ringing laugh he heard in his ears.
Lady Jocelyn had not laughed. She had done no more than look and smile kindly on the old boy. It was at the Bull-dogs, a fall of water on the borders of the park, that Tom Cogglesby, then a hearty young man, had been guilty of his folly: had mistaken her frank friendliness for a return of his passion, and his stubborn vanity still attributed her rejection of his suit to the fact of his descent from a cobbler, or, as he put it, to her infernal worship of rank.
‘Poor old Tom!’ said her ladyship, when alone. ‘He ‘s rough at the rind, but sound at the core.’ She had no idea of the long revenge Old Tom cherished, and had just shaped into a plot to be equal with her for the Bull-dogs.
CHAPTER XXIX. PRELUDE TO AN ENGAGEMENT
Money was a strong point with the Elburne brood. The Jocelyns very properly respected blood; but being, as Harry, their youngest representative, termed them, poor as rats, they were justified in considering it a marketable stuff; and when they married they married for money. The Hon. Miss Jocelyn had espoused a manufacturer, who failed in his contract, and deserved his death. The diplomatist, Melville, had not stepped aside from the family traditions in his alliance with Miss Black, the daughter of a bold bankrupt, educated in affluence; and if he touched nothing but L5000 and some very pretty ringlets, that was not his fault. Sir Franks, too, mixed his pure stream with gold. As yet, however, the gold had done little more than shine on him; and, belonging to expectancy, it might be thought unsubstantial. Beckley Court was in the hands of Mrs. Bonner, who, with the highest sense of duty toward her only living child, was the last to appreciate Lady Jocelyn’s entire absence of demonstrative affection, and severely reprobated her daughter’s philosophic handling of certain serious subjects. Sir Franks, no doubt, came better off than the others; her ladyship brought him twenty thousand pounds, and Harry had ten in the past tense, and Rose ten in the future; but living, as he had done, a score of years anticipating the demise of an incurable invalid, he, though an excellent husband and father, could scarcely be taught to imagine that the Jocelyn object of his bargain was attained. He had the semblance of wealth, without the personal glow which absolute possession brings. It was his habit to call himself a poor man, and it was his dream that Rose should marry a rich one. Harry was hopeless. He had been his Grandmother’s pet up to the years of adolescence: he was getting too old for any prospect of a military career he had no turn for diplomacy, no taste for any of the walks open to blood and birth, and was in headlong disgrace with the fountain of goodness at Beckley Court, where he was still kept in the tacit understanding that, should Juliana inherit the place, he must be at hand to marry her instantly, after the fashion of the Jocelyns. They were an injured family; for what they gave was good, and the commercial world had not behaved honourably to them. Now, Ferdinand Laxley was just the match for Rose. Born to a title and fine estate, he was evidently fond of her, and there had been a gentle hope in the bosom of Sir Franks that the family fatality would cease, and that Rose would marry both money and blood.
From this happy delusion poor Sir Franks was awakened to hear that his daughter had plighted herself to the son of a tradesman: that, as the climax to their evil fate, she who had some blood and some money of her own—the only Jocelyn who had ever united the two—was desirous of wasting herself on one who had neither. The idea was so utterly opposed to the principles Sir Franks had been trained in, that his intellect could not grasp it. He listened to his sister, Mrs. Shorne: he listened to his wife; he agreed with all they said, though what they said was widely diverse: he consented to see and speak to Evan, and he did so, and was much the most distressed. For Sir Franks liked many things in life, and hated one thing alone—which was ‘bother.’ A smooth world was his delight. Rose knew this, and her instruction to Evan was: ‘You cannot give me up—you will go, but you cannot give me up while I am faithful to you: tell him that.’ She knew that to impress this fact at once on the mind of Sir Franks would be a great gain; for in his detestation of bother he would soon grow reconciled to things monstrous: and hearing the same on both sides, the matter would assume an inevitable shape to him. Mr. Second Fiddle had no difficulty in declaring the eternity of his sentiments; but he toned them with a despair Rose did not contemplate, and added also his readiness to repair, in any way possible, the evil done. He spoke of his birth and position. Sir Franks, with a gentlemanly delicacy natural to all lovers of a smooth world, begged him to see the main and the insurmountable objection. Birth was to be desired, of course, and position, and so forth: but without money how can two young people marry? Evan’s heart melted at this generous way of putting it. He said he saw it, he had no hope: he would go and be forgotten: and begged that for any annoyance his visit might have caused Sir Franks and Lady Jocelyn, they would pardon him. Sir Franks shook him by the hand, and the interview ended in a dialogue on the condition of the knees of Black Lymport, and on horseflesh in Portugal and Spain.
Following Evan, Rose went to her father and gave him a good hour’s excitement, after which the worthy gentleman hurried for consolation to Lady Jocelyn, whom he found reading a book of French memoirs, in her usual attitude, with her feet stretched out and her head thrown back, as in a distant survey of the lively people screening her from a troubled world. Her ladyship read him a piquant story, and Sir Franks capped it with another from memory; whereupon her ladyship held him wrong in one turn of the story, and Sir Franks rose to get the volume to verify, and while he was turning over the leaves, Lady Jocelyn told him incidentally of old Tom Cogglesby’s visit and proposal. Sir Franks found the passage, and that her ladyship was right, which it did not move her countenance to hear.
‘Ah!’ said he, finding it no use to pretend there was no bother in the world, ‘here’s a pretty pickle! Rose says she will have that fellow.’
‘Hum!’ replied her ladyship. ‘And if she keeps her mind a couple of years, it will be a wonder.’
‘Very bad for her this sort of thing—talked about,’ muttered Sir Franks. ‘Ferdinand was just the man.’
‘Well, yes; I suppose it’s her mistake to think brains an absolute requisite,’ said Lady Jocelyn, opening her book again, and scanning down a column.
Sir Franks, being imitative, adopted a similar refuge, and the talk between them was varied by quotations and choice bits from the authors they had recourse to. Both leaned back in their chairs, and spoke with their eyes on their books.
‘Julia’s going to write to her mother,’ said he.
‘Very filial and proper,’ said she.
‘There’ll be a horrible hubbub, you know, Emily.’
‘Most probably. I shall get the blame; ‘cela se concoit’.’
‘Young Harrington goes the day after to-morrow. Thought it better not to pack him off in a hurry.’
‘And just before the pic-nic; no, certainly. I suppose it would look odd.’
‘How are we to get rid of the Countess?’
‘Eh? This Bautru is amusing, Franks; but he’s nothing to Vandy. ‘Homme incomparable!’ On the whole I find Menage rather dull. The Countess? what an accomplished liar that woman is! She seems to have stepped out of Tallemant’s Gallery. Concerning the Countess, I suppose you had better apply to Melville.’
‘Where the deuce did this young Harrington get his breeding from?’
‘He comes of a notable sire.’
‘Yes, but there’s no sign of the snob in him.’
‘And I exonerate him from the charge of “adventuring” after Rose. George Uplift tells me—I had him in just now—that the mother is a woman of mark and strong principle. She has probably corrected the too luxuriant nature of Mel in her offspring. That is to say in this one. ‘Pour les autres, je ne dis pas’. Well, the young man will go; and if Rose chooses to become a monument of constancy, we can do nothing. I shall give my advice; but as she has not deceived me, and she is a reasonable being, I shan’t interfere. Putting the case at the worst, they will not want money. I have no doubt Tom Cogglesby means what he says, and will do it. So there we will leave the matter till we hear from Elburne House.’
Sir Franks groaned at the thought.
‘How much does he offer to settle on them?’ he asked.
‘A thousand a year on the marriage, and the same amount to the first child. I daresay the end would be that they would get all.’
Sir Franks nodded, and remained with one eye-brow pitiably elevated above the level of the other.
‘Anything but a tailor!’ he exclaimed presently, half to himself.
‘There is a prejudice against that craft,’ her ladyship acquiesced. ‘Beranger—let me see—your favourite Frenchman, Franks, wasn’t it his father?—no, his grandfather. “Mon pauvre et humble grand-pyre,” I think, was a tailor. Hum! the degrees of the thing, I confess, don’t affect me. One trade I imagine to be no worse than another.’
‘Ferdinand’s allowance is about a thousand,’ said Sir Franks, meditatively.
‘And won’t be a farthing more till he comes to the title,’ added her ladyship.
‘Well,’ resumed Sir Franks, ‘it’s a horrible bother!’
His wife philosophically agreed with him, and the subject was dropped.
Lady Jocelyn felt with her husband, more than she chose to let him know, and Sir Franks could have burst into anathemas against fate and circumstances, more than his love of a smooth world permitted. He, however, was subdued by her calmness; and she, with ten times the weight of brain, was manoeuvred by the wonderful dash of General Rose Jocelyn. For her ladyship, thinking, ‘I shall get the blame of all this,’ rather sided insensibly with the offenders against those who condemned them jointly; and seeing that Rose had been scrupulously honest and straightforward in a very delicate matter, this lady was so constituted that she could not but applaud her daughter in her heart. A worldly woman would have acted, if she had not thought, differently; but her ladyship was not a worldly woman.
Evan’s bearing and character had, during his residence at Beckley Court, become so thoroughly accepted as those of a gentleman, and one of their own rank, that, after an allusion to the origin of his breeding, not a word more was said by either of them on that topic. Besides, Rose had dignified him by her decided conduct.
By the time poor Sir Franks had read himself into tranquillity, Mrs. Shorne, who knew him well, and was determined that he should not enter upon his usual negociations with an unpleasantness: that is to say, to forget it, joined them in the library, bringing with her Sir John Loring and Hamilton Jocelyn. Her first measure was to compel Sir Franks to put down his book. Lady Jocelyn subsequently had to do the same.
‘Well, what have you done, Franks?’ said Mrs. Shorne.
‘Done?’ answered the poor gentleman. ‘What is there to be done? I’ve spoken to young Harrington.’
‘Spoken to him! He deserves horsewhipping! Have you not told him to quit the house instantly?’
Lady Jocelyn came to her husband’s aid: ‘It wouldn’t do, I think, to kick him out. In the first place, he hasn’t deserved it.’
‘Not deserved it, Emily!—the commonest, low, vile, adventuring tradesman!’
‘In the second place,’ pursued her ladyship, ‘it’s not adviseable to do anything that will make Rose enter into the young woman’s sublimities. It ‘s better not to let a lunatic see that you think him stark mad, and the same holds with young women afflicted with the love-mania. The sound of sense, even if they can’t understand it, flatters them so as to keep them within bounds. Otherwise you drive them into excesses best avoided.’
‘Really, Emily,’ said Mrs. Shorne, ‘you speak almost, one would say, as an advocate of such unions.’
‘You must know perfectly well that I entirely condemn them,’ replied her ladyship, who had once, and once only, delivered her opinion of the nuptials of Mr. and Mrs. Shorne.
In self-defence, and to show the total difference between the cases, Mrs. Shorne interjected: ‘An utterly penniless young adventurer!’
‘Oh, no; there’s money,’ remarked Sir Franks.
‘Money is there?’ quoth Hamilton, respectfully.
‘And there’s wit,’ added Sir John, ‘if he has half his sister’s talent.’
‘Astonishing woman!’ Hamilton chimed in; adding, with a shrug, ‘But, egad!’
‘Well, we don’t want him to resemble his sister,’ said Lady Jocelyn. ‘I acknowledge she’s amusing.’
‘Amusing, Emily!’ Mrs. Shorne never encountered her sister-in-law’s calmness without indignation. ‘I could not rest in the house with such a person, knowing her what she is. A vile adventuress, as I firmly believe. What does she do all day with your mother? Depend upon it, you will repent her visit in more ways than one.’
‘A prophecy?’ asked Lady Jocelyn, smiling.
On the grounds of common sense, on the grounds of propriety, and consideration of what was due to themselves, all agreed to condemn the notion of Rose casting herself away on Evan. Lady Jocelyn agreed with Mrs. Shorne; Sir Franks with his brother, and Sir John. But as to what they were to do, they were divided. Lady Jocelyn said she should not prevent Rose from writing to Evan, if she had the wish to do so.
‘Folly must come out,’ said her ladyship. ‘It’s a combustible material. I won’t have her health injured. She shall go into the world more. She will be presented at Court, and if it’s necessary to give her a dose or two to counteract her vanity, I don’t object. This will wear off, or, ‘si c’est veritablement une grande passion, eh bien’ we must take what Providence sends us.’
‘And which we might have prevented if we had condescended to listen to the plainest worldly wisdom,’ added Mrs. Shorne.
‘Yes,’ said Lady Jocelyn, equably, ‘you know, you and I, Julia, argue from two distinct points. Girls may be shut up, as you propose. I don’t think nature intended to have them the obverse of men. I ‘m sure their mothers never designed that they should run away with footmen, riding-masters, chance curates, as they occasionally do, and wouldn’t if they had points of comparison. My opinion is that Prospero was just saved by the Prince of Naples being wrecked on his island, from a shocking mis-alliance between his daughter and the son of Sycorax. I see it clearly. Poetry conceals the extreme probability, but from what I know of my sex, I should have no hesitation in turning prophet also, as to that.’
What could Mrs. Shorne do with a mother who talked in this manner? Mrs. Melville, when she arrived to take part in the conference, which gradually swelled to a family one, was equally unable to make Lady Jocelyn perceive that her plan of bringing up Rose was, in the present result of it, other than unlucky.
Now the two Generals—Rose Jocelyn and the Countess de Saldar—had brought matters to this pass; and from the two tactical extremes: the former by openness and dash; the latter by subtlety, and her own interpretations of the means extended to her by Providence. I will not be so bold as to state which of the two I think right. Good and evil work together in this world. If the Countess had not woven the tangle, and gained Evan time, Rose would never have seen his blood,—never have had her spirit hurried out of all shows and forms and habits of thought, up to the gates of existence, as it were, where she took him simply as God created him and her, and clave to him. Again, had Rose been secret, when this turn in her nature came, she would have forfeited the strange power she received from it, and which endowed her with decision to say what was in her heart, and stamp it lastingly there. The two Generals were quite antagonistic, but no two, in perfect ignorance of one another’s proceedings, ever worked so harmoniously toward the main result. The Countess was the skilful engineer: Rose the General of cavalry. And it did really seem that, with Tom Cogglesby and his thousands in reserve, the victory was about to be gained. The male Jocelyns, an easy race, decided that, if the worst came to the worst, and Rose proved a wonder, there was money, which was something.
But social prejudice was about to claim its champion. Hitherto there had been no General on the opposite side. Love, aided by the Countess, had engaged an inert mass. The champion was discovered in the person of the provincial Don Juan, Mr. Harry Jocelyn. Harry had gone on a mysterious business of his own to London. He returned with a green box under his arm, which, five minutes after his arrival, was entrusted to Conning, in company with a genial present for herself, of a kind not perhaps so fit for exhibition; at least they both thought so, for it was given in the shades. Harry then went to pay his respects to his mother, who received him with her customary ironical tolerance. His father, to whom he was an incarnation of bother, likewise nodded to him and gave him a finger. Duty done, Harry looked round him for pleasure, and observed nothing but glum faces. Even the face of John Raikes was, heavy. He had been hovering about the Duke and Miss Current for an hour, hoping the Countess would come and give him a promised introduction. The Countess stirred not from above, and Jack drifted from group to group on the lawn, and grew conscious that wherever he went he brought silence with him. His isolation made him humble, and when Harry shook his hand, and said he remembered Fallow field and the fun there, Mr. Raikes thanked him.