Chapter XII: Romance

After this there followed a very exciting interval to Vera. Fane came again with another mission (nominally) from Miss Meadows, and was tolerably received. Emboldening by this, he came a third time and a fourth, addressing most of his conversation to Miss Campbell, and describing, in elaborate detail, the long series of accidents which delayed him from the grouse. The Tremenheeres themselves generally left town in the beginning of August, but this year were later than usual. Miss Campbell found it agreeable on the whole to receive so unusual a visitor, and to hear so much about the Campbells of Stormaway, whom she really began at last to believe in as her cousins. He had always some trait to relate of one or other of them, when the conversation flagged, or she began to look suspicious. Vera did not know whether she was happy or not during these visits. He gave her now and then a look, now and then a whispered word, in the intervals of his talk with Miss Campbell, and left her in no doubt as to his motives for cultivating with such extreme assiduity that lady’s friendship; but after all, at sixteen, it is but an indifferent pleasure to see your proper slave devoting himself to another person, even if it be for your sake. Vera sat silent, and now and then felt somewhat sad. But her whole life became absorbed in these visits. She thought of them all day long. She expected him till he came, mused upon him after he was gone. Except Rollin and the lessons it was all that Vera had. Her mother wrote to her less frequently than usual, and more briefly. Mrs. Tremenheere, for her part, was involved in great anxiety and trouble. “I am rather unhappy about an idea Eddy has got into his head,” she wrote, as an excuse for her short letters, “but I trust it will not come to anything.” Vera scarcely asked herself what this could be. She was lost in her own excitement.

One afternoon Mr. Tremenheere came in a little earlier than usual, and met Fane, who was leaving after a prolonged call. They stood talking together for a few minutes at the door, and Mr. Tremenheere was heard to laugh, which took a burden off the minds of both the ladies in the drawing-room; for it suddenly occurred to Miss Campbell that before she knew Mr. Fane, and was aware how well he was acquainted with the Campbells of Stormaway, she, too, had been a little suspicious of him, and thought him an undesirable visitor. However, nothing could be more friendly than Mr. Tremenheere’s tone. When he came in, however, he did not look quite so genial. He gave a half-angry glance at the governess, and a doubtful one at Vera.

“Since when has young Fane become a visitor in the house?” he asked, and there was something uncomfortable in his voice.

“Since when? I think Mr. Fane dined here first on the evening of the match.”

“I beg you pardon, that was not what I was asking. Since when has he been in the habit of calling here? He is not an acquaintance of mine. Elinor Meadows, who always has a _cortège_ of young fellows about her, brought him; she takes him everywhere. How often have you seen him, Vera? I don’t want him here.”

“How often?” Vera’s foolish face began to flush as usual, though she would, she thought, have given everything she had in the world to prevent it. This made her father very angry, who liked a prompt and plain reply.

“Yes. How often? What are you frightened about? I shan’t eat you; give me a straightforward answer. How often have you seen him here?”

“I--I met him--at mamma’s,” said Vera, under her breath.

“Ah! at your mother’s? So she has taken him up, too.”

“I ought to say it is my fault, not Vera’s,” said Miss Campbell. “He knows some cousins of mine in Argyleshire, the Campbells of Stormaway. He has come to talk to me about them. Vera has seen very little of him,” the governess added, with a little complacency, for indeed it had pleased her to feel that the visitor’s conversation had been so much addressed to herself.

“Oh! that is it, is it?” he said, rather carelessly, “then perhaps you will not mind giving him a hint that I don’t care for his visits. There is not much in him; and his relationship to Lord Fanebury scarcely worth counting. Perhaps you might hint to him, that if he calls again you are not likely to be at home.”

“Surely, if you wish it,” said Miss Campbell, though she was not pleased. As for Vera, a great blackness of darkness came over her. She had not always liked it when he came; but to lose him, to have no longer that piquant centre to her days, that something to dream of, to think of--what could she do? Vera felt that it was intolerable. At dinner she was too unhappy to preserve her usual composure. She was irritable in her suffering; so irritable as to move her father to the idea that she must be ill, and must go to the seaside, for which he issued his orders on the spot. She had never, since the days of her childhood, been so courageous before.

“I don’t want change of air,” she said. “It is all very well, papa, for you. You go to your friends. You do what pleases you. You enjoy yourself; but as for me I am sent off to a dreadful seaside, where I know nobody, where we live in horrible lodgings, and practice, and read, and walk, and do exactly as we do at home.”

“Vera!” cried Miss Campbell, “I am shocked, I am astonished; you forget yourself.”

“I just wish I could,” cried Vera. “I am so sick, so sick of myself! Let me go to Aunt Elinor, or to the villa; or let me stay at home.”

Mr. Tremenheere watched her with some astonishment. “I did not give your mother credit for so much discrimination,” he said. “She warned me you had a temper. The seaside is far the best for you. When you are a few years older, you can visit your friends, too, and enjoy yourself.”

Vera said nothing. She sat still, with flushed cheeks, excited and miserable, not trusting herself to look at any one. It seemed to her that she must strike a blow for her own deliverance, or die. For the first time in her life she waited after Miss Campbell had left the room, and going up to her father, put her hand timidly on his arm. “Papa,” she said, imploringly, “when you go away don’t leave me alone with Miss Campbell. Let me go to--to the villa; or to Aunt Elinor----”

“Why will you give Miss Meadows that absurd name? She is not your aunt.”

“I beg you pardon, papa, I will not do it again. I should be so much happier if I were not alone. The--villa? Mamma will not mind having me, and Eddy and I could be together, if only for a little while. I should be so good--so good and obedient----”

“And why should you not go to the seaside with Miss Campbell this year, as well as every other year? Go away! go away! and don’t let me hear any more of this.”

Vera went away, as he told her, without another word, without a look. She passed Miss Campbell, who was waiting and wondering on the staircase, and hurried to her room. She could not cry this time, her eyes were too hot and dry. Oh, why was she so different from other girls! Why had she not a mother to care for her, some one who would see what was happening, who would judge for her if she was wrong, who would not have left her to make Oswald Fane the centre of the world! He was the centre of the world, she felt it now!--the pivot upon which all that was worth having in life turned. If he was sent away, forbidden the house, what was to become of her? Either she would kill herself, or God would be kind and do it for her--one way or other, she must die.

Her heart beat so wildly that it made her sick and faint. But all at once, as she sat down, it gave one big jump, and then was still. Why was this? Before her lay a letter carefully placed upon her little prayer-book, where she could not miss seeing it. Vera knew at once what it was. Not from her mother, Eddy, any ordinary correspondent; from _him_. She did not know his handwriting. Why should it be from him? Perhaps it was some childish invitation, somebody’s letter whom she did not care for. Saying this over to herself with trembling lips, and knowing it was not true, she opened the note, and with another big jump of her heart read as follows:--

“I met your father to-day as I left the house. He was not rude to
me, but I read my doom in his eye. I am not to be allowed to come
any more. I shall come--I shall leave no chance untried; I will try
to see him, and plead my cause with him; but I know how it will
end, unless you, you alone, you who are my better life, will stand
by me. Is it too much? Ah, I know it is too much. I have no right
to disturb your young life, to bring painful questions into it; but
I am in despair: and you, you too--sweet Vera, you, for whom I
would give my life, you are not happy either. But for this I would
go away; I would trust to time and Providence to bring me back to
your feet, where alone I can be happy. But to know that you are
lonely and in trouble, too--that is what I cannot bear. Vera,
darling, forgive me, write me one word, only one word, and do not
let them separate us. Have pity upon me! Since the first day I saw
you, that white day, I have had no thought but you.

O. F.”

Vera read this with feelings I cannot describe. There had never been a word of love-making between them, so to speak; nothing but those vague suggestions which make the early paths of love so exquisite; but after this letter there could be no further disguise. She read it over and over again with a mixture of heartrending pain and delight, one as delicious and as heartrending as the other. Stand by him? what else could she do?--for he was her life if she was his; but write to him! How could she do that? How she trembled, how sore her heart was, how happy! Out of the despair and blank hopelessness with which she had left the dining-room, what a change to this sea of emotion, so sweet, so terrible, so alarming, yet consolatory! Neither father nor mother had any sympathy for Vera, any feeling for her feelings; but he felt for her, with her, everything she felt--yet but for her would be as much alone as she was; they were two against the world. But write to him! The thought trembled all through her, made her hand shake, and her heart beat. Could she do it? How could she do it? When she heard a sound at her door she thrust the letter away, not into her bosom, which would have been romantic, but into her pocket, which was natural; and, conscious in every look and breath and movement turned round to see who it was; fortunately it was only Mary, the daughter of her old nurse, who had lately been promoted to be Vera’s maid. Mary was over twenty, an experienced young person, who had “kept company” for many years with a tall Guardsman to whom she was faithful through many flirtations on both sides. She knew what it was to have had parents and a troublesome cook to interfere with the course of her true love; but even cook was not so bad as Miss Campbell. And to have Miss Vera’s little heart broken and her young man driven to despair was not a thing which could be allowed to be, if sympathetic Mary could prevent it. She came into the room, smiling with a consciousness equal to Vera’s own, but with more comfortable sensations.

Mary was cautious, however, in her advances. She said nothing until she was well into her pretty work of brushing Vera’s long beautiful hair, standing behind her, unseen and unseeing, a position which gave both maid and mistress ease. When this period had arrived, Mary said softly, “Miss Vera, I hope you had your letter?”

“Yes, Mary,” said Vera with a start, and seized a book on the table under pretence of reading. But Mary was not so dull as not to see the warm color that came flushing over the girl’s neck, or the tremulous instinct of self-defence which made her seize upon the book which she did not read. Mary had the matter in her own hands. She resumed----

“How long your hair do grow, to be sure, Miss Vera. Mother was always proud of your hair; and now here’s somebody come as thinks more of it than coined gold. You’ll write him just a little word, won’t you, Miss Vera, dear, to keep up his heart, poor gentleman? just a little word----”

“Mary, you ought not to speak to me so. What have you to do with gentlemen, or me either? How did you get it? Was it you that put it there? Oh Mary, you shouldn’t have done it--you must never, never do it again.”

“Miss Vera, you don’t know nothing about it,” said Mary. “Me--I’ve kept company with my young man since I was just your age, and nobody shan’t come between him and me. We’ve got to wait, but I don’t mind waiting, and I’ve told mother so, when she’s been at me about it. But look you here, Miss Vera, your papa is the only one you’ve got to look to, and if you hold out he’ll give in. They always does. I never see a young gentleman more deep in love, and to give him up would be a burning shame.”

“Oh, Mary, how can you, how dare you talk so?” said poor Vera, with her face burning. “What would become of us both if papa or Miss Campbell knew?”

“They couldn’t do much harm to me, Miss,” said Mary. “A servant as knows her work is always sure of a good place. Don’t you be afraid for me. And they can’t harm you neither, not if you holds out. Whoever holds out wins; them as gives in is the only one as is beaten. Miss Vera, you’ve got a spirit of your own, for all they think they have broken it. If I were you, I’d write him a word just to keep up his heart, poor gentleman; and I’d up and tell my papa that he might be a bluebeard or a raging Turk, as much as he likes--it wouldn’t make no effect upon me.”

“Oh, Mary, Mary, hush! You don’t know what you are saying!”

“Don’t I just? It’s you as don’t understand, Miss, not me. I know all about it, and a deal more than you do, and this I’ll say, that no father nor tyrant would ever make me false to my young man. I wouldn’t do it, not for the world; and Miss Vera, I can’t believe as you’re a traitor in your heart.”

This was such a totally new view of the question that it took away Vera’s breath. A traitor! She had never once thought of treachery in the question. How long Mary’s arguments went on I need not say. She came back, stealing into Vera’s room in the dark after Miss Campbell had been there and declared the girl to be feverish, and had given her some white homœopathic globules, to calm her down again. “It is the hot weather,” Miss Campbell said to herself, never suspecting Mary. And the maid stole back in the dark, and the little mistress cried and let her talk, happy yet ashamed of the company and the confidences, and the familiarity and sympathy. Mary pleaded so well that Vera was persuaded to write half a dozen words, in great trouble and agitation, to the effect that Mr. Fane must not be unhappy, that he must not think of her; but that she should always think of him, and pray for him, and hoped he would be very happy all the same. Was it wrong? was it very wrong? Should not a girl answer a letter from a gentleman as well as from another girl? Vera knew, alas, that this was not at all the question. But she read over Fane’s letter again, and put it under her pillow when she went to sleep. He was the only one who felt for her. They two stood against the world!