'He has an exceeding dread of Louis's making as great a mistake as he did,' said Mrs. Ponsonby; 'and perhaps he thinks you the best security.'
'And you think Louis only meant to please him?'
'My dear, I am afraid it may be so. Louis is very fond of him, and easily led by a strong character.'
She pressed her daughter closer, and felt rather than heard a little sigh; but all that Mary said was, 'Then I had better not think about it.'
'Nay, my dear, tell me first what you think of his manner.'
'It was strange, and a little debonnaire, I think,' said Mary, smiling, but tears gathering in her eyes. 'He said I was too good for him. He said he would make me happy, and that he and his father would be very happy.' A great tear fell. 'Something about not being worthy.' Mary shed a few more tears, while her mother silently caressed her; and, recovering her composure, she firmly said, 'Yes, mamma, I see it is not the real thing. It will be kinder to him to tell him to put it out of his head.'
'And you, my dear?'
'Oh, mamma, you know you could not spare me.'
'If this were the real thing, dearest-'
'No,' whispered Mary, 'I could not leave you alone with papa.'
Mrs. Ponsonby went on as if she had not heard: 'As it is, I own I am relieved that you should not wish to accept him. I cannot be sure it would be for your happiness.'
'I do not think it would be right,' said Mary, as if that were her strength.
'He is a dear, noble fellow, and has the highest, purest principles and feelings. I can't but love him almost as if he were my own child: I never saw so much sweetness and prettiness about any one, except his mother; and, oh! how far superior he is to her! But then, he is boyish, he is weak-I am afraid he is changeable.'
'Not in his affections,' said Mary, reproachfully.
'No, but in purposes. An impulse leads him he does not know where, and now, I think, he is acting on excellent motives, without knowing what he is doing. There's no security that he might not meet the person who-'
'Oh, mamma!'
'He would strive against temptation, but we have no right to expose him to it. To accept him now, it seems to me, would be taking too much advantage of his having been left so long to our mercy, and it might be, that he would become restless and discontented, find out that he had not chosen for himself-regret-and have his tone of mind lowered-'
'Oh, stop, mamma, I would not let it be, on any account.'
'No, my dear, I could not part with you where we were not sure the 'real thing' was felt for you. If he had been strongly bent on it, he would have conducted matters differently; but he knows no better.'
'You and I don't part,' said Mary.
Neither spoke till she renewed her first question,
'What is to be done?'
'Shall I go and speak to him, my dear?'
'Perhaps I had better, if you will come with me.'
Then, hesitating-'I will go to my room for a moment, and then I shall be able to do it more steadily.'
Mrs. Ponsonby's thoughts were anxious during the five minutes of Mary's absence; but she returned composed, according to her promise, whatever might be the throbbings beneath. As Mrs. Ponsonby opened the door, she saw Louis and his aunt together, and was almost amused at their conscious start, the youthful speed with which the one darted into the further end of the corridor, and the undignified haste with which the other hopped down stairs.
By the time they reached the drawing-room, he had recovered himself so as to come forward in a very suitable, simple manner, and Mary said, at once, 'Louis, thank you; but we think it would be better not-'
'Not!' exclaimed Fitzjocelyn.
'Not,' repeated Mary; 'I do not think there is that between us which would make it right.'
'There would be!' cried Louis, gaining ardour by the difficulty, 'if you would only try. Mrs. Ponsonby, tell her we would make her happy.'
'You would try,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, kindly; 'but I think she is right. Indeed, Louis, you must forgive me for saying that you are hardly old enough to make up your mind-'
'Madison is younger,' said Louis, boyishly enough to make her smile, but earnestly proceeding, 'Won't you try me? Will you not say that if I can be steady and persevering-'
'No,' said Mrs. Ponsonby; 'it would not be fair towards either of you to make any conditions.'
'But if without them, I should do better-Mary, will you say nothing?'
'We had better not think of it,' said Mary, her eyes on the ground.
'Why? is it that I am too foolish, too unworthy?'
She made a great effort. 'Not that, Louis. Do not ask any more; it is better not; you have done as your father wished-now let us be as we were before.'
'My father will be very much disappointed,' said Louis, with chagrin.
'I will take care of your father,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, and as Mary took the moment for escaping, she proceeded to say some affectionate words of her own tender feeling towards Louis; to which he only replied by saying, sadly, and with some mortification, 'Never mind; I know it is quite right. I am not worthy of her.'
'That is not the point; but I do not think you understand your own feelings, or how far you were actuated by the wish to gratify your father.'
'I assure you,' cried Louis, 'you do not guess how I look up to Mary; her unfailing kindness, her entering into all my nonsense-her firm, sound judgment, that would keep me right-and all she did for me when I was laid up. Oh! why cannot you believe how dear she is to me?'
'_How dear_ is just what I do believe; but still this is not enough.'
'Just what Aunt Kitty says,' said Louis, perplexed, yet amused at his own perplexity.
'You will know better by-and-by,' she answered, smiling: 'in the meantime, believe that you are our very dear cousin, as ever.' And she shook hands with him, detecting in his answering smile a little relief, although a great deal of disappointment.
Mary had taken refuge in her room, where a great shower of tears would have their course, though she scolded herself all the time. 'Have done! have done! It is best as it is. He does not really wish it, and I could not leave mamma. We will never think of it again, and we will be as happy as we were before.'
Her mother, meanwhile, was waiting below-stairs, thinking that she should spare Louis something, by taking the initiative in speaking to his father; and she was sorry to see the alacrity with which the Earl came up to her, with a congratulatory 'Well, Mary!' She could hardly make him comprehend the real state of the case; and then his resignation was far more trying than that of the party chiefly concerned. Her praise of Fitzjocelyn had little power to comfort. 'I see how it is,' he said, calmly: 'do not try to explain it away; I acquiesce-I have no doubt you acted wisely for your daughter.'
'Nothing would have delighted me more, if he were but a few years older.'
'You need not tell me the poor boy's failings,' said his father, sadly.
'It is on account of no failing; but would it not be a great mistake to risk their happiness to fulfil our own scheme?'
'I hoped to secure their happiness.'
'Ay, but is there not something too capricious to find happiness without its own free will and choice? Did you never hear of the heart?'
'Oh! if she be attached elsewhere'-and he seemed so much relieved, that Mrs. Ponsonby was sorry to be obliged to contradict him in haste, and explain that she did not believe Fitzjocelyn's heart to be yet developed; whereupon he was again greatly vexed. 'So he has offered himself without attachment. I beg your pardon, Mary; I am sorry your daughter should have been so treated.'
'Do not misunderstand me. He is strangely youthful and simple, bent on pleasing you, and fancying his warm, brotherly feeling to be what you desire.'
'It would be the safest foundation.'
'Yes, if he were ten years older, and had seen the world; but in these things he is like a child, and it would be dangerous to influence him. Do not take it to heart; you ought to be contented, for I saw nothing so p
lainly as that he loves nobody half so well as you. Only be patient with him.'
'You are the same Mary as ever,' he said, softened; and she left him, hoping that she had secured a favourable audience for his son, who soon appeared at the window, somewhat like a culprit.
'I could not help it!' he said.
'No; but you may set a noble aim before you-you may render yourself worthy of her esteem and confidence, and in so doing you will fulfil my fondest hopes.'
'I asked her to try me, but they would make no conditions. I am sorry this could not be, since you wished it.'
'If you are not sorry on your own account, there are no regrets to be wasted on mine.'
'Candidly, father,' said Louis, 'much as I like her, I cannot be sorry to keep my youth and liberty a little longer.'
'Then you should never have entered on the subject at all,' said Lord Ormersfield, beginning to write a letter; and poor Louis, in his praiseworthy effort not to be reserved with him, found he had been confessing that he had not only been again making a fool of himself, but, what was less frequent and less pardonable, of his father likewise. He limped out at the window, and was presently found by his great-aunt, reading what he called a raving novel, to see how he ought to have done it. She shook her head at him, and told him that he was not even decently concerned.
'Indeed I am,' he replied. 'I wished my father to have had some peace of mind about me, and it does not flatter one's vanity.'
Dear, soft-hearted Aunt Kitty, with all her stores of comfort ready prepared, and unable to forgive, or even credit, the rejection of her Louis, without a prior attachment, gave a hint that this might be his consolation. He caught eagerly at the idea. 'I had never once thought of that! It can't be any Spaniard out in Peru-she has too much sense. What are you looking so funny about? What! is it nearer home? That's it, then! Famous! It would be a capital arrangement, if that terrible old father is conformable. What an escape I have had of him! I am sure it is a most natural and proper preference-'
'Stop! stop, Louis, you are going too fast. I know nothing. Don't say a word to Jem, on any account: indeed, you must not. It is all going on very well now; but the least notion that he was observed, or that it was his Uncle Oliver's particular wish, and there would be an end of it.'
She was just wise enough to keep back the wishes of the other vizier, but she had said enough to set Louis quite at his ease, and put him in the highest spirits. He seemed to have taken out a new lease of boyishness, and, though constrained before Mary, laughed, talked, and played pranks, so as unconsciously to fret his father exceedingly.
Clara's alert wits perceived that so many private interviews had some signification; and Mrs. Frost found her talking it over with her brother, and conjecturing so much, that granny thought it best to supply the key, thinking, perhaps, that a little jealousy would do Jem no harm. But the effect on him was to produce a fit of hearty laughter, as he remembered poor Lord Ormersfield's unaccountable urbanity and suppressed exultation in the morning's ride. 'I honour the Ponsonbys,' he said, 'for not choosing to second his lordship's endeavours to tyrannize over that poor fellow, body and soul. Poor Louis! he is fabulously dutiful.'
But Clara, recovering from her first stupor of wonder, began scolding him for presuming to laugh at anything so cruel to Louis. It was not the part of a friend! And with tears of indignation and sympathy starting from her eyes, she was pathetically certain that, though granny and Jem were so unfeeling as to laugh, his high spirits were only assumed to hide his suffering. 'Poor Louis! what had he not said to her about Mary last night! Now she knew what he meant! And as to Mary, she was glad she had never liked her, she had no patience with her: of course, she was far too prosy and stupid to care for anything like Louis, it was a great escape for him. It would serve her right to marry a horrid little crooked clerk in her father's office; and poor dear, dear Louis must get over it, and have the most beautiful wife in the world. Don't you remember, Jem, the lady with the splendid dark eyes on the platform at Euston Square, when you so nearly made us miss the train, with the brow that you said-'
'Hush, Clara, don't talk nonsense.'
CHAPTER XII. CHILDE ROLAND.
A house there is, and that's enough, From whence one fatal morning issues A brace of warriors, not in buff, But rustling in their silks and tissues. The heroines undertook the task; Thro' lanes unknown, o'er stiles they ventured,- Rapped at the door, nor stayed to ask, But bounce into the parlour entered. Gray's Long Story.
'No carmine? Nor scarlet lake in powder?'
'Could procure some, my Lord.'
'Thank you, the actinia would not live. I must take what I can find. A lump of gamboge-'
'If you stay much longer, he will not retain his senses,' muttered James Frost, who was leaning backwards against the counter, where the bewildered bookseller of the little coast-town of Bickleypool was bustling, in the vain endeavour to understand and fulfil the demands of that perplexing customer, Lord Fitzjocelyn.
'Some drawing-paper. This is hardly absorbent enough. If you have any block sketch-books?-'
'Could procure some, my Lord.'
James looked at his watch, while the man dived into his innermost recesses. 'The tide!' he said.
'Never mind, we shall only stick in the mud.'
'How could you expect to find anything here? A half-crown paint-box is their wildest dream.'
'Keep quiet, Jem, go and look out some of those library books, like a wise man.'
'A wise man would be at a loss here,' said James, casting his eye along the battered purple backs of the circulating-library books.
'Wisdom won't condescend! Ah! thank you, this will do nicely. Those colours-yes; and the Seaside Book. I'll choose one or two. What is most popular here?'
James began to whistle; but Louis, taking up a volume, became engrossed beyond the power of hints, and hardly stepped aside to make way for some ladies who entered the shop. A peremptory touch of the arm at length roused him, and holding up the book to the shopman, he put it into his pocket, seized his ash-stick, put his arm into his cousin's, and hastened into the street.
'Did you ever see-' began Jem.
'Most striking. I did not know you had met with her. What an idea- the false self conjuring up phantoms-'
'What are you talking of? Did you not see her?'
'Elizabeth Barrett. Was she there?'
'Is that her name? Do you know her?'
'I had heard of her, but never-'
'How?-where? Who is she?'
'I only saw her name in the title-page.'
'What's all this? You did not see her?'
'Who? Did not some ladies come into the shop?'
'Some ladies! Is it possible? Why, I touched you to make you look.'
'I thought it was your frenzy about the tide. What now?-'
James made a gesture of despair. 'The loveliest creature I ever saw. You may see her yet, as she comes out. Come back!'
'Don't be so absurd,' said Fitzjocelyn, laughing, and, with instinctive dislike of staring, resisting his cousin's effort to wheel him round. 'What, you will?' withdrawing his arm. 'I shall put off without you, if you don't take care.'
And, laughing, he watched Jem hurry up the sloping street and turn the corner, then turned to pursue his own way, his steps much less lame and his looks far more healthful than they had been a month before. He reached the quay-narrow, slippery, and fishy, but not without beauty, as the green water lapped against the hewn stones, and rocked the little boats moored in the wide bay, sheltered by a richly-wooded promontory. 'Jem in a fit of romance! Well, whose fault will it be if we miss the tide? I'll sit in the boat, and read that poem again.- Oh! here he comes, out of breath. Well, Jem, did the heroine drop glove or handkerchief? Or, on a second view, was she minus an eye?'
'You were,' said James, hurrying breathlessly to unmoor the boat.
'Let me row,' said Louis; 'your breath and senses are both lost in the fair vision.'
'It is of no use to talk t
o you-'
'I shall ask no questions till we are out of the harbour, or you will be running foul of one of those colliers-a tribute with which the Fair Unknown may dispense.'
The numerous black colliers and lighters showed that precautions were needful till they had pushed out far enough to make the little fishy town look graceful and romantic; and the tide was ebbing so fast, that Louis deemed it prudent to spend his strength on rowing rather than on talking.
James first broke silence by exclaiming-'Do you know where Beauchastel is?'
'On the other side of the promontory. Don't you remember the spire rising among the trees, as we see it from the water?'
'That church must be worth seeing. I declare I'll go there next Sunday.'
Another silence, and Louis said-'I am curious to know whether you saw her.'
'She was getting into the carriage as I turned the corner; so I went back and asked Bull who they were.'
'I hope she was the greengrocer's third cousin.'
'Pshaw! I tell you it was Mrs. Mansell and her visitors.'
'Oho! No wonder Beauchastel architecture is so grand. What an impudent fellow you are, Jem!'
'The odd thing is,' said James, a little ashamed of Louis having put Mansell and Beauchastel together, as he had not intended, 'that it seems they asked Bull who we were. I thought one old lady was staring hard at you, as if she meant to claim acquaintance, but you shot out of the shop like a sky-rocket.'
'Luckily there's no danger of that. No one will come to molest us here.'
'Depend on it, they are meditating a descent on his lordship.'
'You shall appear in my name, then.'
'Too like a bad novel: besides, you don't look respectable enough for my tutor. And, now I think of it, no doubt she was asking Bull how he came to let such a disreputable old shooting-jacket into his shop.'
The young men worked up an absurd romance between them, as merrily they crossed the estuary, and rowed up a narrow creek, with a whitewashed village on one side, and on the other a solitary house, the garden sloping to the water, and very nautical-the vane, a union-jack waved by a brilliant little sailor on the top of a mast, and the arbour, half a boat set on end; whence, as James steered up to the stone steps that were one by one appearing, there emerged an old, grizzly, weather-beaten sailor, who took his pipe from his mouth, and caught hold of the boat.
Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) Page 17
