"Is he gone?" Mr. Pole burst forward. "You're gone, sir? Wilfrid, have you gone to that girl? I ask you whether…(there's one shot at my heart," he added in a swift undertone to one of the heads near him, while he caught at his breast with both hands). "Wilfrid, will you stay here?"
"For God's sake, go to him, Wilfrid," murmured Adela. "I can't."
"Because if you do—if you don't—I mean, if you go…" The old man gasped at the undertone. "Now I have got it in my throat."
A quick physical fear caught hold of him. In a moment his voice changed to entreaty. "I beg you won't go, my dear boy. Wilfrid, I tell you, don't go. Because, you wouldn't act like a d—d—I'm not angry; but it is like acting like a—Here's company, Wilfrid; come to me, my boy; do come here. You mayn't ha—have your poor old father long, now he's got you u—up in the world. I mean accidents, for I'm sound enough; only a little nervous from brain—Is he gone?"
Wilfrid was then leaving the room.
Lady Gosstre had been speaking to Mr. Powys. She was about to say a word to Lady Charlotte, when the latter walked to the doorway, and. In a manner that smote his heart with a spasm of gratitude, said; "Don't heed these people. He will bring on a fit if you don't stop. His nerves are out, and the wine they have given him… Go to him: I will go to Emilia, and do as much for her as you could."
Wilfrid reached his father in time to see him stagger back into the arms of Mrs. Chump, whose supplication was for the female stimulant known as 'something.'
CHAPTER XXXIII
On reaching home that night, Arabella surprised herself thinking, in the midst of her anguish: "Whatever is said of us, it cannot be said that there is a house where the servants have been better cared for." And this reflection continued to burn with an astounding brilliancy through all the revolutions of a mind contemplating the dread of a fallen fortune, the fact of a public exposure, and what was to her an ambition destroyed. Adela had no such thoughts. "I have been walking on a plank," she gasped from time to time, as she gave startled glances into the abyss of poverty, and hurried to her bedchamber—a faint whisper of self-condemnation in her ears at the 'I' being foremost. The sisters were too proud to touch upon one another's misery in complaints, or to be common by holding debate on it. They had not once let their eyes meet at Besworth, as the Tinleys wonderingly noticed. They said good night to their papa, who was well enough to reply, adding peremptorily, "Downstairs at half-past eight,"—an intimation that he would be at the break-fast table and read prayers as usual. Inexperienced in nervous disease, they were now filled with the idea that he was possibly acting— a notion that had never been kindled in them before; or, otherwise, how came these rapid, almost instantaneous, recoveries?
Cornelia alone sounded near the keynote. Since the night that she had met him in the passage, and the next morning when Mrs. Chump had raised the hubbub about her loss, Cornelia's thoughts had been troubled by some haunting spectral relationship with money. It had helped to make her reckless in granting interviews to Purcell Barrett. "If we are poor, I am free;" and that she might then give herself to whomever she pleased, was her logical deduction. The exposure at Besworth, and the partial confirmation of her suspicions, were not without their secret comfort to her. In the carriage, coming home, Wilfrid had touched her hand by chance, and pressed it with good heart. She went to the library, imagining that if he wished to see her he would appear, and by exposing his own weakness learn to excuse hers. She was right in her guess; Wilfrid came. He came sauntering into the room with "Ah! you here?" Cornelia consented to play into his hypocrisy. "Yes, I generally think better here," she replied.
"And what has this pretty head got to do with thinking?"
"Not much, I suppose, my lord," she replied, affecting nobly to acknowledge the weakness of the female creature.
Wilfrid kissed her with an unaccustomed fervour. This delicate mumming was to his taste. It was yet more so when she spoke playfully to him of his going soon to be a married man. He could answer to that in a smiling negative, playing round the question, until she perceived that he really desired to have his feeling for the odd dark girl who had recently shot across their horizon touched, if only it were led to by the muffled ways of innuendo.
As a dog, that cannot ask you verbally to scratch his head, but wishes it, will again and again thrust his head into your hand, petitioning mutely that affection may divine him, so:—but we deal with a sentimentalist, and the simile is too gross to be exact. For no sooner was Wilfrid's head scratched, than the operation stuck him as humiliating; in other words, the moment he felt his sisters fingers in the ticklish part, he flew to another theme, then returned, and so backward and forward—mystifying her not slightly, and making her think, "Then he has no heart." She by no means intended to encourage love for Emilia, but she hoped for his sake, that the sentiment he had indulged was sincere. By-and-by he said, that though he had no particular affection for Lady Charlotte, he should probably marry her.
"Without loving her, Wilfrid? It is unfair to her; it is unfair to yourself."
Wilfrid understood perfectly who it was for whom she pleaded thus vehemently. He let her continue: and when she had dwelt on the horrors of marriages without love, and the supreme duty of espousing one who has our 'heart's loyalty,' he said, "You may be right. A man must not play with a girl. He must consider that he owes a duty to one who is more dependent;"—implying that a woman s duty was distinct and different in such a case.
Cornelia could not rise and plead for her sex. Had she pushed forth the 'woman,' she must have stood for her.
This is the game of Fine Shades and Nice Feelings, under whose empire you see this family, and from which they are to emerge considerably shorn, but purified—examples of One present passage of our civilization.
"At least, dear, if" (Cornelia desperately breathed the name) "—if Emilia were forced to give her hand…loving…you…we should be right in pitying her?"
The snare was almost too palpable. Wilfrid fell into it, from the simple passion that the name inspired; and now his hand tightened. "Poor child!" he moaned.
She praised his kind heart: "You cannot be unjust and harsh, I know that. You could not see her—me—any of us miserable. Women feel, dear. Ah! I need not tell you that. Their tears are not the witnesses. When they do not weep, but the hot drops stream inwardly:—and, oh! Wilfrid, let this never happen to me. I shall not disgrace you, because I intend to see you happy with…with her, whoever she is; and I would leave you happy. But I should not survive it. I can look on Death. A marriage without love is dishonour."
Sentiment enjoys its splendid moods. Wilfrid having had the figure of his beloved given to him under nuptial benediction, cloaked, even as he wished it to be, could afford now to commiserate his sister, and he admired her at the same time. "I'll take care you are not made a sacrifice of when the event is fixed," he said—as if it had never been in contemplation.
"Oh! I have not known happiness for years, till this hour," Cornelia whispered to him bashfully; and set him wondering why she should be happy when she had nothing but his sanction to reject a man.
On the other hand, her problem was to gain lost ground by letting him know that, of the pair, it was not she who would marry beneath her station. She tried it mentally in various ways. In the end she thought it best to give him this positive assurance. "No," he rejoined, "a woman never should." There was no admission of equality to be got out of him, so she kissed him. Of their father's health a few words were said—of Emilia nothing further. She saw that Wilfrid's mind was resolved upon some part to play, but shrank from asking his confidence, lest facts should be laid bare.
At the breakfast-table Mr. Pole was a little late. He wore some of his false air of briskness on a hazy face, and read prayers—drawing breath between each sentence and rubbing his forehead; but the work was done by a man in ordinary health, if you chose to think so, as Mrs. Chump did. She made favourable remarks on his appearance, begging the ladies to corroborate her. They were silent.
"Now take a chop, Pole, and show your appetite," she said. "'A Chump- chop, my love?' my little man used to invite me of a mornin'; and that was the onnly joke he had, so it's worth rememberin'."
A chop was placed before Mr. Pole. He turned it in his plate, and wonderingly called to mind that he had once enjoyed chops. At a loss to account for the distressing change, he exclaimed to himself, "Chump! I wish the woman wouldn't thrust her husband between one's teeth. An egg!"
The chop was displaced for an egg, which he tapped until Mrs. Chump cried out, "Oh! if ye're not like a postman, Pole; and d'ye think ye've got a letter for a chick inside there?"
This allusion scared Mr. Pole from the egg. He quitted the table, muttering, "Business! business!" and went to the library.
When he was gone Mrs. Chump gave a cry to know where Braintop was, but, forgetting him immediately, turned to the ladies and ejaculated, "Broth'm. It's just brothin' he wants. Broth, I say, for anny man that won't eat his chop or his egg. And, my dears, now, what do ye say to me for bringing him home to ye? I expect to be thanked, I do; and then we'll broth Pole together, till he's lusty as a prize-ox, and capers like a monkey."
Wretched woman! that could not see the ruin she had inflicted—that could not imagine how her bitter breath cut against those sensitive skins! During a short pause little Mrs. Lupin trotted to the door, and shot through it, in a paroxysm.
Then Wilfrid's voice was heard. He leaned against a corner of the window, and spoke without directly looking at Mrs. Chump; so that she was some time in getting to understand the preliminary, "Madam, you must leave this house." But presently her chin dropped; and after feeble efforts to interpose an exclamation, she sat quiet—overcome by the deliberate gravity of his manner, and motioning despairingly with her head, to relieve the swarm of unborn figure-less ideas suggested by his passing speech. The ladies were ranged like tribunal shapes. It could not be said of souls so afflicted that they felt pleasure in the scene; but to assist in the administration of a rigorous justice is sweet to them that are smarting. They scarcely approved his naked statement of things when he came to Mrs. Chump's particular aspiration in the household—viz., to take a station and the dignity of their name. The effect he produced satisfied them that the measure was correct. Her back gave a sharp bend, as if an eternal support had snapped. "Oh! ye hit hard," she moaned.
"I tell you kindly that we (who, you will acknowledge, must count for something here) do not sanction any change that revolutionizes our domestic relations," said Wilfrid; while Mrs. Chump heaved and rolled on the swell of the big words like an overladen boat. "You have only to understand so much, and this—that if we resist it, as we do, you, by continuing to contemplate it, are provoking a contest which will probably injure neither you nor me, but will be death to ham in his present condition."
Mrs. Chump was heard to mumble that she alone knew the secret of restoring him to health, and that he was rendered peaky and poky only by people supposing him so.
"An astonishin' thing!" she burst out. "If I kiss 'm and say 'Poor
Pole!' he's poor Pole on the spot. And, if onnly I—"
But Wilfrid's stern voice flowed over her. "Listen, madam, and let this be finished between us. You know well that when a man has children, he may wish to call another woman wife—a woman not their mother; but the main question is, will his children consent to let her take that place? We are of one mind, and will allow no one—no one—to assume that position. And now, there's an end. We'll talk like friends. I have only spoken in that tone that you might clearly comprehend me on an important point. I know you entertain a true regard for my father, and it is that belief which makes me—"
"Friends!" cried Mrs. Chump, getting courage from the savour of cajolery in these words. "Friends! Oh, ye fox! ye fox!"
And now commenced a curious duett. Wilfrid merely wished to terminate his sentence; Mrs. Chump wantonly sought to prevent him. Each was burdened with serious matter; but they might have struck hands here, had not this petty accidental opposition interposed.
–"Makes me feel confident…" Wilfrid resumed.
"And Pole's promos, Mr. Wilfrud; ye're forgettin' that."
"Confident, ma'am."
"He was the firrst to be soft."
"I say, ma'am, for his sake—"
"An' it's for his sake. And weak as he is on 's legs, poor fells; which marr'ge 'll cure, bein' a certain rem'dy."
"Mrs. Chump! I beg you to listen."
"Mr. Wilfrud! and I can see too, and it's three weeks and ye kissed little Belloni in the passage, outside this vary door, and out in the garden."
The blow was entirely unexpected, and took Wilfrid's breath, so that he was not ready for his turn in this singular piece of harmony.
"Ye did!" Mrs. Chump rejoiced to behold how her chance spark kindled flame in his cheeks. "It's pos'tuv ye did. And ye're the best blusher of the two, my dear; and no shame to ye, though it is a garl's business. That little Belloni takes to 't like milk; but you—"
Wilfrid strode up to her, saying imperiously, "I tell you to listen!"
She succumbed at once to a show of physical ascendency, murmuring, "It's sure he was seen kissin' of her twice, and mayhap more; and hearty smacks of the lips, too—likin' it."
The ladies rewarded Wilfrid for his service to their cause by absolutely hearing nothing—a feat women can be capable of.
Wilfrid, however, was angered by the absurdity of the charge and the scene, and also by the profane touch on Emilia's name.
"I must tell you, ma'am, that for my father's sake I must desire you to quit this—you will see the advisability of quitting this house for a time."
"Pole's promus! Pole's promus!" Mrs. Chump wailed again.
"Will you give me your assurance now that you will go, to be our guest again subsequently?"
"In writin' and in words, Mr. Wilfrud!"
"Answer me, ma'am."
"I will, Mr. Wilfrud; and Mr. Braintop's a witness, knowin' the nature of an oath. There naver was a more sacrud promus. Says Pole, 'Martha—'"
Wilfrid changed his tactics. Sitting down by her side, he said: "I am sure you have an affection for my father."
"I'm the most lovin' woman, my dear! If it wasn't for my vartue I don't know what'd become o' me. Ye could ask Chump, if he wasn't in his grave, poor fella! I'll be cryin' like a squeezed orr'nge presently. What with Chump and Pole, two's too many for a melanch'ly woman."
"You have an affection for my father I know, ma'am. Now, see! he's ill.
If you press him to do what we certainly resist, you endanger his life."
Mrs. Chump started back from the man who bewildered her brain without stifling her sense of justice. She knew that there was another way of putting the case, whereby she was not stuck in the criminal box; but the knowledge groped about blindly, and finding herself there, Mrs. Chump lost all idea of a counter-accusation, and resorted to wriggling and cajolery. "Ah! ye look sweeter when ye're kissin' us, Mr. Wilfrud; and I wonder where the little Belloni has got to!"
"Tell me, that there maybe no misunderstanding." Wilfrid again tried to fix her.
"A rosy rosy fresh bit of a mouth she's got! and pouts ut!"
Wilfrid took her hand. "Answer me."
"'Deed, and I'm modust, Mr. Wilfrud."
"You do him the honour to be very fond of him. I am to believe that? Then you must consent to leave us at the end of a week. You abandon any idea of an impossible ceremony, and of us you make friends and not enemies."
At the concluding word, Mrs. Chump was no longer sustained by her excursive fancy. She broke down, and wrung her hands, crying, "En'mies! Pole's children my en'mies! Oh, Lord! that I should live to hear ut! and
Pole, that knew me a bride first blushin'!"
She wailed and wept so that the ladies exchanged compassionate looks, and Arabella rose to press her hand and diminish her distress. Wilfrid saw that his work would be undone in a moment, and waved her to her seat.
The action was perceived by Mrs. Chump.
"Oh, Mr. Wilfrud! my dear! and a soldier! and you that was my favourut! If half my 'ffection for Pole wasn't the seein' of you so big and handsome! And all my ideas to get ye marrud, avery one so snug in a corner, with a neat little lawful ring on your fingers! And you that go to keep me a lone woman, frightened of the darrk! I'm an awful coward, that's the truth. And ye know that marr'ge is a holy thing! and it's such a beaut'ful cer'mony! Oh, Mr. Wilfrud!—Lieuten't y' are! and I'd have bought ye a captain, and made the hearts o' your sisters jump with bonnuts and gowns and jools. Oh, Pole! Pole! why did you keep me so short o' cash? It's been the roon of me! What did I care for your brooches and your gifts? I wanted the good will of your daughters, sir— your son, Pole!"
Mrs. Chump stopped her flow of tears. "Dear hearts!" she addressed her silent judges, in mysterious guttural tones, "is it becas ye think there's a bit of a fear of…?"
The ladies repressed a violent inclination to huddle together, like cattle from the blowing East.
"I assure ye, 'taint poss'ble," pursued Mrs. Chump. "Why do I 'gree to marry Pole? Just this, now. We sit chirpin' and chatterin' of times that's gone, and live twice over, Pole and myself; and I'm used to 'm; and I was soft to 'm when he was a merry buck, and you cradle lumber in ideas, mind! for my vartue was always un'mpeach'ble. That's just the reason. So, come, and let's all be friends, with money in our pockuts; yell find me as much of a garl as army of ye. And, there! my weak time's after my Porrt, my dears. So, now ye know when I can't be refusin' a thing to ye. Are we friends?—say! are we?"
Even if the ladies had been disposed to pardon her vulgarity, they could not by any effort summon a charitable sentiment toward one of their sex who degraded it by a public petition for a husband. This was not to be excused; and, moreover, they entertained the sentimentalist's abhorrence of the second marriage of a woman; regarding the act as simply execrable; being treason to the ideal of the sex—treason to Woman's purity—treason to the mysterious sentiment which places Woman so high, that when a woman slips there is no help for it but she must be smashed.
Seeing that each looked as implacable as the other, Mrs. Chump called plaintively, "Arr'bella!"
The lady spoke:—
"We are willing to be your friends, Mrs. Chump, and we request that you will consider us in that light. We simply do not consent to give you a name…."
"But, we'll do without the name, my dear," interposed Mrs. Chump. "Ye'll call me plain Martha, which is almost mother, and not a bit of 't. There—Cornelia, my love! what do ye say?"
"I can only reiterate my sister's words, which demand no elucidation," replied Cornelia.
The forlorn woman turned her lap towards the youngest.
"Ad'la! ye sweet little cajoler! And don't use great cartwheels o' words that leave a body crushed."
Adela was suffering from a tendency to levity, which she knew to be unbefitting the occasion, and likely to defeat its significance. She said: "I am sure, Mrs. Chump, we are very much attached to you as Mrs. Chump; but after a certain period of life, marriage does make people ridiculous, and, as much for your sake as our own, we would advise you to discard a notion that cannot benefit anybody. Believe in our attachment; and we shall see you here now and then, and correspond with you when you are away. And…"
"Oh, ye puss! such an eel as y' are!" Mrs. Chump cried out. "What are ye doin' but sugarin' the same dose, miss! Be qu't! It's a traitor that makes what's nasty taste agree'ble. D'ye think my stomach's a fool? Ye may wheedle the mouth, but not the stomach."
At this offence there fell a dead silence. Wilfrid gazed on them all indifferently, waiting for the moment to strike a final blow.
When she had grasped the fact that Pity did not sit in the assembly, Mrs.
Chump rose.
"Oh! if I haven't been sitting among three owls and a raven," she exclaimed. Then she fussed at her gown. "I wish ye good day, young ladus, and mayhap ye'd like to be interduced to No. 2 yourselves, some fine mornin'? Prov'dence can wait. There's a patient hen on the eggs of all of ye! I wouldn't marry Pole now—not if he was to fall flat and howl for me. Mr. Wilfrud, I wish ye good-bye. Ye've done your work. I'll be out of this house in half-an-hour."
This was not quite what Wilfrid had meant to effect. He proposed to her that she should come to the yacht, and indeed leave Brookfield to go on board. But Mrs. Chump was in that frame of mind when, shamefully wounded by others, we find our comfort in wilfully wounding ourselves. "No," she said (betraying a meagre mollification at every offer), "I'll not stop. I won't go to the yacht—unless I think better of ut. But I won't stop. Ye've hurrt me, and I'll say good-bye. I hope ye'll none of ye be widows. It's a crool thing. And when ye've got no children of your own, and feel, all your inside risin' to another person's, and they hate ye— hate ye! Oh! Oh!—There, Mr. Wilfrud, ye needn't touch me elbow. Oh, dear! look at me in the glass! and my hair! Annybody'd swear I'd been drinkin'. I won't let Pole look at me. That'd cure 'm. And he must let me have money, because I don't care for 'cumulations. Not now, when there's no young—no garls and a precious boy, who'd say, when I'm gone, 'Bless her' Oh! 'Poor thing! Bless—' Oh! Augh!" A note of Sorrow's own was fetched; and the next instant, with a figure of dignity, the afflicted woman observed: "There's seven bottles of my Porrt, and there's eleven of champagne, and some comut clar't I shall write where ut's to be sent. And, if you please, look to the packing; for bits o' glass and a red stain's not like your precious hope when you're undoin a hamper. And that's just myself now, and I'm a broken woman; but naver mind, nobody!"
A very formal and stiff "Good-bye," succeeding a wheezy lamentation, concluded the speech. Casting a look at the glass, Mrs. Chump retired, with her fingers on the ornamental piece of hair.
The door having closed on her, Wilfrid said to his sisters: "I want one of you to come with me to town immediately. Decide which will go."
His eyes questioned Cornelia. Hers were dropped.
"I have work to do," pleaded Adela.
"An appointment? You will break it."
"No, dear, not—"
"Not exactly an appointment. Then there's nothing to break. Put on your bonnet."
Adela slipped from the room in a spirit of miserable obedience.
"I could not possibly leave papa," said Arabella, and Wilfrid nodded his head. His sisters knew quite well what was his business in town, but they felt that they were at his mercy, and dared not remonstrate. Cornelia ventured to say, "I think she should not come back to us till papa is in a better state."
"Perhaps not," replied Wilfrid, careless how much he betrayed by his apprehension of the person indicated.
The two returned late that night, and were met by Arabella at the gate.
"Papa has been—don't be alarmed," she began. "He is better now. But when he heard that she was not in the house, the blood left his hands and feet. I have had to use a falsehood. I said, 'She left word that she was coming back to-night or to-morrow.' Then he became simply angry. Who could have believed that the sight of him so would ever have rejoiced me!"
Adela, worn with fatigue, sobbed, "Oh! Oh!"
"By the way, Sir Twickenham called, and wished to see you," said Arabella curiously.
"Oh! so weary!" the fair girl ejaculated, half-dreaming that she saw herself as she threw back her head and gazed at stars and clouds. "We met Captain Gambier in town." Here she pinched Arabella's arm.
The latter said, "Where?"
"In a miserable street, where he looked like a peacock in a quagmire."
Arabella entreated Wilfrid to be careful in his management of their father. "Pray, do not thwart him. He has been anxious to know where you have gone. He—he thinks you have conducted Mrs. Chump, and will bring her back. I did not say it—I merely let him think so."
She added presently, "He has spoken of money."
"Yes?" went Adela, in a low breath.
"Cornelia imagines that—that we—he is perhaps in—in want of it.
Merchants are, sometimes."
"Did Sir Twickenham say he would call to-morrow?" asked Adela.
"He said that most probably he would."
Wilfrid had been silent. As he entered the house, Mr. Pole's bedroom- bell rang, and word came that he was to go to his father. As soon as the sisters were alone, Adela groaned: "We have been hunting that girl all day in vile neighbourhoods. Wilfrid has not spoken more than a dozen sentences. I have had to dine on buns and hideous soup. I am half-dead with the smell of cabs. Oh! if ever I am poor it will kill me. That damp hay and close musty life are too intolerable! Yes! You see I care for what I eat. I seem to be growing an animal. And Wilfrid is going to drag me over the same course to-morrow, if you don't prevent him. I would not mind, only it is absolutely necessary that I should see Sir Twickenham."
She gave a reason why, which appeared to Arabella so cogent that she said at once: "If Cornelia does not take your place I will."
The kiss of thanks given by Adela was accompanied by a request for tea.
Arabella regretted that she had sent the servants to bed.
"To bed!" cried her sister. "But they are the masters, not we! Really, if life were a round of sensual pleasure, I think our servants might congratulate themselves."
Arabella affected to show that they had their troubles; but her statement made it clear that the servants of Brookfield were peculiarly favoured servants, as it was their mistress's pride to make them. Eventually Adela consented to drink some sparkling light wine; and being thirsty she drank eagerly, and her tongue was loosed, insomuch that she talked of things as one who had never been a blessed inhabitant of the kingdom of Fine Shades. She spoke of 'Cornelia's chances;' of 'Wilfrid's headstrong infatuation—or worse;' and of 'Papa's position,' remarking that she could both laugh and cry.
Arabella, glad to see her refreshed, was pained by her rampant tone; and when Adela, who had fallen into one of her reflective 'long-shot' moods, chanced to say, "What a number of different beings there are in the world!" her reply was, "I was just then thinking we are all less unlike than we suppose."