by Grant Allen
Harry certainly thought the countess very beautiful, and he liked her very much. She was really kind-hearted and friendly; she was interested in the subjects that pleased him; and she was after all a pretty woman, still young as men count youth, and very agreeable — nay, anxious to please. And then she had said what she said about the artificiality of class distinctions so markedly and pointedly, with such a commentary from her eyes, that Harry half fancied — well, I don’t quite know what he fancied. As he sat there beside her on the sofa, with the ferns before him, looking straight into her eyes, and she into his, it must be clear to all my readers that if he had any special proposition to make to her on any abstract subject of human speculation, the time had obviously arrived to make it. But something or other inscrutable kept him back. “Lady Surrey — —” he said, and the words stuck in his throat.
“Yes,” she answered softly. “Shall ... shall we go on with the ferns?” Lady Surrey gave a little short breath, brought back her eyes from dreamland, and turned with a sudden smile back to the portfolio. For the rest of the evening, the candid historian must admit that they both felt like a pair of fools. Conversation lagged, and I don’t think either of them was sorry when the time came for retiring.
It is useless for the clumsy male psychologist to pretend that he can see into the heart of a woman, especially when the normal action of said heart is complicated by such queer conventionalities as that of a countess who feels a distinct liking for her son’s tutor: but if I may venture to attempt that impossible feat of clairvoyance without rebuke, I should be inclined to diagnose Lady Surrey’s condition as she lay sleepless for an hour or so on her pillow that night somewhat as follows. She thought that Harry Vardon was really a very clever and a very pleasant fellow. She thought that men in society were generally dreadfully empty-headed and horribly vain. She thought that the importance of disparity in age had, as a rule, been immensely overrated. She thought that rank was after all much less valuable than she used to think it when first she married poor dear Surrey, who was really the kindest of men, and a thorough gentleman, but certainly not at all brilliant. She thought that a young man of Harry’s talent might, if well connected, get into Parliament and rise, like Beaconsfield, to any position. She thought he was very frank, and open, and gentlemanly; and very handsome too. She thought he had half hesitated whether he should propose to her or not, and had then drawn back because he was not certain of the consequences. She thought that if he had proposed to her — well, perhaps — why, yes, she might even possibly have accepted him. She thought he would probably propose in earnest, before long, as soon as he saw that she was not wholly averse to his attentions. She thought in that case she might perhaps provisionally accept him, and get him to try what he could do in the way of obtaining some sort of position — she didn’t exactly know what — where he could more easily marry her with the least possible shock to the feelings of society. And she thought that she really didn’t know before for twenty years at least how great a goose she positively was.
Next morning, after breakfast, Lady Surrey sent for Gladys to come to her in her boudoir. Then she put her daughter in a chair by the window, drew her own close to it, laid her hand kindly on her shoulder — she was a nice little woman at heart, was the countess — and said to her gently, “My dear Gladys, there’s a little matter I want to talk to you about. You are still very young, you know, dear; and I think you ought to be very careful about not letting your feelings be played upon in any way, however unconsciously. Now, you walk and talk a great deal too much, dear, with Mr. Vardon. In many ways, it would be well that you should. Mr. Vardon is very clever, and very well informed, and a very instructive companion. I like you to talk to intelligent people, and to hear intelligent people talk; it gives you something that mere books can never give. But you know, Gladys, you should always remember the disparity in your stations. I don’t deny that there’s a great deal in all that sort of thing that’s very conventional and absurd, my dear; but still, girls are girls, and if they’re thrown too much with any one young man” — Lady Surrey was going to add, “especially when he’s handsome and agreeable,” but she checked herself in time— “they’re very apt to form an affection for him. Of course I’m not suggesting that you’re likely to do anything of the sort with Mr. Vardon — I don’t for a moment suppose you would — but a girl can never be too careful. I hope you know your position too well;” here Lady Surrey was conscious of certain internal qualms; “and indeed whether it was Mr. Vardon or anybody else, you are much too young to fill your head with such notions at your age. Of course, if some really good offer had been made to you even in your first season — say Lord St. Ives or Sir Montague — I don’t say it might not have been prudent to accept it; but under ordinary circumstances, a girl does best to think as little as possible about such things until she is twenty at least. However, I hope in future you’ll remember that I don’t wish you to be quite so familiar in your intercourse with Mr. Vardon.”
“Very well, mamma,” said Gladys quietly, drawing herself up; “I have heard what you want to say, and I shall try to do as you wish. But I should like to say something in return, if you’ll be so kind as to listen to me.”
“Certainly, darling,” Lady Surrey answered, with a vague foreboding of something wrong.
“I don’t say I care any more for Mr. Vardon than for anybody else; I haven’t seen enough of him to know whether I care for him or not. But if ever I do care for anybody, it will be for somebody like him, and not for somebody like Lord St. Ives or Monty Fitzroy. I don’t like the men I meet in town; they all talk to us as if we were dolls or babies. I don’t want to marry a man who says to himself, as Surrey says already, ‘Ah, I shall look out for some rich girl or other and make her a countess, if she’s a good girl, and if she suits me.’ I’d rather have a man like Mr. Vardon than any of the men we ever meet in London.”
“But, my darling,” said Lady Surrey, quite alarmed at Gladys’ too serious tone, “surely there are gentlemen quite as clever and quite as intellectual as Mr. Vardon.”
“Mamma!” cried Gladys, rising, “do you mean to say Mr. Vardon is not a gentleman?”
“Gladys, Gladys! sit down, dear. Don’t get so excited. Of course he is. I trust I have as great a respect as anybody for talent and culture. But what I meant to say was this — can’t you find as much talent and culture among people of our own station as — as among people of Mr. Vardon’s?”
“No,” said Gladys shortly.
“Really, my dear, you are too hard upon the peerage.”
“Well, mamma, can you mention any one that we know who is?” asked the peremptory girl.
“Not exactly in our own set,” said Lady Surrey hesitatingly; “but surely there must be some.”
“I don’t know them,” Gladys replied quietly, “and till I do know them, I shall remain of my own opinion still. If you wish me not to see so much of Mr. Vardon, I shall try to do as you say; but if I happen to like any particular person, whether he’s a peer or a ploughboy, I can’t help liking him, so there’s an end of it.” And Gladys kissed her mother demurely on the forehead, and walked with a stately sweep out of the room.
“It’s perfectly clear,” said Lady Surrey to herself, “that that girl’s in love with Mr. Vardon, and what on earth I’m to do about it is to me a mystery.” And indeed Lady Surrey’s position was by no means an easy one. On the one hand, she felt that whatever she herself, who was a person of mature years, might happen to do, it would be positively wicked in her to allow a young girl like Gladys to throw herself away on a man in Harry Vardon’s position. Without any shadow of an arrière pensée, that was her genuine feeling as a mother and a member of society. But then, on the other hand, how could she oppose it, if she really ever thought herself, even conditionally, of marrying Harry Vardon? Could she endure that her daughter should think she had acted as her rival? Could she press the point about Harry’s conventional disadvantages, when she herself had some vague idea tha
t if Harry offered himself as Gladys’ step-father, she would not be wholly disinclined to consider his proposal? Could she set it down as a crime in her daughter to form the very self-same affection which she herself had well-nigh formed? Moreover, she couldn’t help feeling in her heart that Gladys was right, after all; and that the daughter’s defiance of conventionality was implicitly inherited from the mother. If she had met Harry Vardon twenty years ago, she would have thought and spoken much like Gladys; in fact, though she didn’t speak, she thought so, very nearly, even now. I am sorry that I am obliged to write out these faint outlines of ideas in all the brutal plainness of the English language as spoken by men; I cannot give all those fine shades of unspoken reservations and womanly self-deceptive subterfuges by which the poor little countess half disguised her own meaning even from herself; but at least you will not be surprised to hear that in the end she lay down on the little couch in the corner, covered her face with chagrin and disappointment, and had a good cry. Then she got up an hour later, washed her eyes carefully to take off the redness, put on her pretty dove-coloured morning gown with the lace trimming — she looked charming in lace — and went down smiling to lunch, as pleasant and cheery a little widow of thirty-seven as ever you would wish to see. Upon my soul, Harry Vardon, I really almost think you will be a fool if you don’t finally marry the countess!
“Gladys,” said little Lord Surrey to his sister that evening, when she came into his room on her way upstairs to bed— “Gladys, it’s my opinion you’re getting too sweet on this fellow Vardon.”
“I shall be obliged, Surrey, if you’ll mind your own business, and allow me to mind mine.”
“Oh, it’s no use coming the high and mighty over me, I can tell you, so don’t you try it on. Besides, I have something I want to speak to you about particularly. It’s my opinion also that my lady’s doing the very same thing.”
“What nonsense, Surrey!” cried Gladys, colouring up to her eyebrows in a second: “how dare you say such a thing about mamma?” But a light broke in upon her suddenly all the same, and a number of little unnoticed circumstances flashed back at once upon her memory with a fresh flood of meaning.
“Nonsense or not, it’s true, I know; and what I want to say to you is this — If old Vardon’s to marry either of you, it ought to be you, because that would save mamma at any rate from making a fool of herself. As far as I’m concerned, I’d rather neither of you did; for I don’t see why either of you should want to marry a beggarly fellow of a tutor” — Gladys’ eyes flashed fire— “though Vardon’s a decent enough chap in his way, if that was all; but at any rate, as one or other of you’s cock-sure to do it, I don’t want him for a step-father. So you see, as far as that goes, I back the filly. Now, say no more about it, but go to bed like a good girl, and mind, whatever you do, you don’t forget to say your prayers. Good night, old girl.”
“I wouldn’t marry a fellow like Surrey,” said Gladys to herself, as she went upstairs, “no, not if he was the premier duke of England!”
For the next three weeks there was such a comedy of errors and cross-purposes at Colyford Abbey as was never seen before anywhere outside of one of Mr. Gilbert’s clever extravaganzas. Lady Surrey tried to keep Gladys in every possible way out of Harry’s sight; while her brother tried in every possible way to throw them together. Gladys on her part half avoided him, and yet grew somewhat more confidential than ever whenever she happened to talk with him. Harry did not feel quite so much at home as before with Lady Surrey; he had an uncomfortable sense that he had failed to acquit himself as he ought to have done; while Lady Surrey had a half suspicion that she had let him see her unfledged secret a little too early and too openly. The natural consequence of all this was that Harry was cast far more than before upon the society of Ethel Martindale, with whom he often strolled about the shrubbery till very close upon the dressing gong. Ethel did not come down to dinner — she dined with the little ones at the family luncheon; and that horrid galling distinction cut Harry to the quick every night when he left her to go in. Every day, too, it began to dawn upon him more clearly that the vague reason which had kept him back from proposing to Lady Surrey on that eventful night was just this — that Ethel Martindale had made herself a certain vacant niche in his unfurnished heart. She was a dear, quiet, unassuming little girl, but so very graceful, so very tender, so very womanly, that she crept into his affections unawares without possibility of resistance. The countess was a beautiful and accomplished woman of the world, with a real heart left in her still, but not quite the sort of tender, shrinking, girlish heart that Harry wanted. Gladys was a lovely girl with stately manners and a wonderfully formed character, but too great and too redolent of society for Harry. He admired them both, each in her own way, but he couldn’t possibly have lived a lifetime with either. But Ethel, dear, meek, pretty, gentle little Ethel — well, there, I’m not going to repeat for you all the raptures that Harry went into over that perennial and ever rejuvenescent theme. For, to tell you the truth, about three weeks after the night when Harry did not propose to the countess, he actually did propose to Ethel Martindale. And Ethel, after many timid protests, after much demure self-depreciation and declaration of utter unworthiness for such a man — which made Harry wild with indignation — did finally let him put her little hand to his lips, and whispered a sort of broken and blushing “Yes.”
What a fool he had been, he thought that evening, to suppose for half a second that Lady Surrey had ever meant to regard him in any other light than as her son’s tutor. He hated himself for his own nonsensical vanity. Who was he that he should fancy all the women in England were in love with him?
Next morning’s Times contained that curious announcement about its being the intention of the Government to appoint an electrician to the Admiralty, and inviting applications from distinguished men of science. Now Harry, young as he was, had just perfected his great system of the double-revolving commutator and back-action rheostat (Patent Office, No. 18,237,504), and had sent in a paper on the subject which had been read with great success at the Royal Society. The famous Professor Brusegay himself had described it as a remarkable invention, likely to prove of immense practical importance to telegraphy and electrical science generally. So when Harry saw the announcement that morning, he made up his mind to apply for the appointment at once; and he thought that if he got it, as the salary was a good one, he might before long marry Ethel, and yet manage to keep Edith in the same comfort as before.
Lady Surrey saw the paragraph too, and had her own ideas about what it might be made to do. It was the very opening that Harry wanted, and if he got it, why then no doubt he might make the proposal which he evidently felt afraid to make, poor fellow, in his present position. So she went into her boudoir immediately after breakfast, and wrote two careful and cautiously worded little notes. One was to Dr. Brusegay, whom she knew well, mentioning to him that her son’s tutor was the author of that remarkable paper on commutators, and that she thought he would probably be admirably fitted for the post, but that on that point the Professor himself was the best judge; the other was to her cousin, Lord Ardenleigh, who was a great man in the government of the day, suggesting casually that he should look into the claims of her friend, Mr. Vardon, for this new place at the Admiralty. Two nicer little notes, written with better tact and judgment, it would be difficult to find.
At that very moment Harry was also sitting down in his own room, after five minutes’ consultation with Ethel, to make formal application for the new post. And after lunch the same day he spoke to Lady Surrey upon the subject.
“There is one special reason,” he said, “why I should like to get this post, and I think I ought to let you know it now.” Poor little Lady Surrey’s heart fluttered like a girl’s. “The fact is, I am anxious to obtain a position which would enable me to marry.” (“How very bluntly he puts it,” said the countess to herself.) “I ought to tell you, I think, that I have proposed to Miss Martindale, and she has accepted me
.”
Miss Martindale! Great heavens, how the room reeled round the poor little woman, as she stood with her hand on the table, trying to balance herself, trying to conceal her shame and mortification, trying to look as if the announcement did not concern her in any way. Poor, dear, good little countess; from my heart I pity you. Miss Martindale! why, she had never even thought of her. A mere governess, a nobody; and Harry Vardon, with his magnificent intellect and splendid prospects, was going to throw himself away on that girl! She could hardly control herself to answer him, but with a great effort she gulped down her feelings, and remarked that Ethel Martindale was a very good girl, and would doubtless make an admirable wife. And then she walked quietly out of the room, stepped up the stairs somewhat faster, rushed into her boudoir, double-locked the door, and burst into a perfect flood of hot scalding tears. At that moment she began to realize the fact that she had in truth liked Harry Vardon much more than a little.
By-and-by she got up, went over to her desk, took out the two unposted notes, tore them into fragments, and then carefully burnt them up piece by piece, in a perfect holocaust of white paper. What a wicked vindictive little countess! Was she going to spoil these two young people’s lives, to throw every possible obstacle in the way of their marriage? Not a bit of it. As soon as her eyes allowed her, she sat down and wrote two more notes, a great deal stronger and better than before; for this time she need not fear the possibility of after reflections from an unkind world. She said a great deal in a casual half-hinting fashion about Harry’s merits, and remarked upon the loss that she should sustain in the removal of such a tutor from Lord Surrey; but she felt that sooner or later his talents must get him a higher recognition, and she hoped Dr. Brusegay and her cousin would use their influence to obtain him the appointment. Then she went downstairs feeling like a Christian martyr, kissed and congratulated Ethel, talked gaily about Bartolozzi to Harry, and tried to make believe that she took the engagement as a matter of course. Nothing in fact, as she remarked to Gladys, could possibly be more suitable. Gladys bit her tongue, and answered shortly that she didn’t herself perceive any special natural congruity about the match, but perhaps her mother was better informed on the subject.
