Chapter XXVII: Mrs. Frederick

The evening of the day on which the above incidents occurred was that of a periodical banquet, feared and staved off as long as possible by all the Eastwoods. Since the time of Frederick’s marriage it had been considered necessary that he and his wife should be invited to dinner formally from time to time, in order that it might be visible to the world and “Mrs. Frederick’s family” that full honour was done to her. Nelly and Mrs. Eastwood had made a great effort to adopt Amanda, if not into their hearts, at least into their society, after the terrible event was actually accomplished which made her their daughter and sister. But I need not say that this was a very hopeless attempt, and that as familiar companionship gradually failed between people who resembled each other so little, the periodical dinner gradually gained importance as the only practicable way of keeping up “a proper intercourse.” Mrs. Frederick had come to London with very great ideas. She had hoped for nothing less than an entry into the fashionable world, and all the glory of associating with lords and ladies. The visits she received from the ladies of Mrs. Eastwood’s circle disgusted and disappointed her. What! Marry and come to London for no better purpose than to be visited by ladies from the suburbs, who lived there always--ladies with no better title than Mrs.; some of them, like Mrs. Eastwood herself, paying their visits in flys, or in the plainest of little broughams, no better than a fly. Visions of splendid vehicles, with embroidered hammercloths and celestial flunkeys, had entranced Amanda’s imagination. The Eastwoods were county people at Sterborne--they were a baronet’s family--magnates in the neighbourhood; and the beauty had no means of realizing that a country baronet is no great personage in London, much less a country baronet’s cousin. The disappointment was bitter, and she was not the woman to conceal it. Gradually, however, she fell into a kind of society, or to use her own words, formed a circle, which pleased her well enough. This consisted chiefly of the men who had been her father’s visitors in former days, several of whom had handles to their names. They were not as a general rule much credit to know, but they suited Amanda better than the Mrs. Everards, and other humdrum persons, who had welcomed her first to her new position. When she had yawned through one or two dinner parties, painfully got up for Mrs. Eastwood’s sake, to make the best of a bad business, by the society which frequented The Elms, Amanda had declared her determination to have nothing more to do with “Frederick’s old-fashioned set.” They were not much in sympathy with her, to tell the truth; and dinners at Richmond, with Lord Hunterston and his kind in attendance, were a great deal more to her liking. Amanda held, in fact, the opinion which poor little Innocent had expressed innocently as a reflection of the sentiments of her father. She disliked women. They were all jealous of her beauty, she believed; they were her critics or her rivals--never her friends; spite was their chief characteristic; envy their main sentiment. The men of Amanda’s set were of her opinion--so are a great many clever persons, it must be allowed--at least, in books. Therefore it is not to be supposed that Amanda looked forward with more distinct gratification than that felt by the ladies at The Elms to her periodical dinner. She put on her handsomest dresses and her finest talk to dazzle them, and she made it a subject for her peculiar wit for some time before and after.

“I am going to dine with my old mother-in-law,” she would say to the young men, few in number at this season of the year, who filled her little drawing-room in the afternoon. “Such a set of old guys she has about her, to be sure. Why she should insist upon having me, I can’t imagine, for she hates me, of course. But duty before everything. I shall have to go.”

“Why should you have to go?” said one. “And by Jove, I’ll come to-morrow to hear all about it!” said another. The lively sympathy of this chorus did Mrs. Frederick good.

“Oh, you shall hear the whole account,” she said. “It’s like Noah’s Ark. There is the regular clergyman, and some old fogies of lawyers, and a horrible man called John Vane----”

“Oh, come, Mrs. Eastwood, John Vane’s no end of a good fellow. I know him as well as I know myself,” said one of the interlocutors.

“That may be--but he ain’t a good fellow at The Elms. The Elms! only fancy. Doesn’t it sound like Hampstead Heath? He is related to the mad girl I told you of--and he’s after my prim little puss of a sister-in-law, in a quiet way; for she is engaged, if you please, and oh! does give herself such airs on the strength of it. But the women! You should see the women! In old silks and satins that belonged to their grandmothers, with turbans and I don’t know what--all looking as if they could eat me.”

“That, of course,” said one of Amanda’s court, with a laugh.

“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Frederick, giggling slightly in response; “and to hear them lay down the law! what one should do, and what one should not do. And, then, mamma-in-law herself! But there are some things too dreadful to be talked about. Mothers-in-law are one of these things. Tell me about Hurlingham, or something pleasant. If I go on thinking of what’s before me, I shall die.”

Thus it will be seen the dispositions of Mrs. Frederick were little likely to promote harmony. On the other hand, Mrs. Eastwood and Nelly had their private conference, which was not much more hopeful.

“Try to avoid unpleasant subjects,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “Talk of Brighton, and that sort of thing, Nelly. Or stay, as they have been abroad for their holiday, get her to talk about Switzerland. That must be a safe subject. She will think it is fine to talk about Switzerland, as she was never there before; and keep her off her grievances, if possible. Frederick looks so black when she begins; poor Frederick, how he is changed!”

Nelly made no response on this point, for she was not so deeply convinced as was her mother that Frederick had been a great deal “nicer” before he was married. This is, I am sorry to say, a very common opinion among a man’s female relations. But Nelly had not been so much deluded about the “niceness” of her brother in his previous state as many sisters happily are. She maintained a prudent silence so far as Frederick was concerned.

“If I try to keep her off her grievances, you must try to keep her off Innocent, mamma,” said Nelly; and this was the bargain with which they concluded. I am not sure that Mrs. Eastwood was quite right in her selection of guests to meet Mrs. Frederick. Had she invited Sir Alexis, that imposing person might have kept her in order; but what did Amanda care for Sir Timothy Doul, who had been Governor of Barbadoes, or for Mr. Parchemin, though he was a great lawyer?--any more than she would have done for great poets and such people, in distinction to the really great, the dukes and countesses for whom her soul longed. Sir Timothy and Lady Doul were the only strangers present on this occasion, for, as the reader is aware, Mr. Parchemin was one of Mrs. Eastwood’s councillors. Ernest Molyneux had failed at the last moment, and had been hurriedly replaced by Mr. Vane, who was always ready to do a kind action, and who of late had been a great deal about The Elms. Molyneux objected much to meet Mrs. Frederick. Vane objected to nothing. Perhaps the difference lay in the fact that one of the men had attained all he wanted, and was no longer anxious about Nelly’s favour, but considered it her duty to please him; whereas the other, foreseeing the possibility of a catastrophe, felt himself (though despairingly) on his promotion, and deemed it wise to be on the spot, in order that if anything offered he might have full advantage of the chance. This, I fear, was Mr. Vane’s reason for keeping so much in the foreground. It is impossible to describe the use he was at The Elms. He was never out of temper, and Ernest was very often out of temper. He was satisfied with all the arrangements made by the ladies, and Ernest found fault continually. Nelly, with a guilty sense of treachery in her mind, had felt herself turn to the man who was “a connexion” for rest and sympathy, when she could not turn to her lover. This was a very terrible state of affairs, but no one was quite conscious how far it had gone.

Mrs. Frederick made her appearance in a dress of pink silk, with a train almost a yard long. Her beautiful shoulders were bare, and her arms. Her hair was dressed in the most elaborate way which an excited hairdresser could devise; a soft little curling fringe of it half covered her low but white forehead, and great golden billows rose above, increasing at once her height and the size of her head. All the glow of colour, all the roundness of outline, all the flush of physical beauty which had maddened Frederick, remained undimmed and undiminished; but Frederick stalked in behind her like a black shadow, gloomy, disappointed, dismal, more like Charles I. than ever. Wherever he went, all the ladies were sorry for Frederick. Poor fellow, he had made a mistake in his marriage, and how he felt it! He writhed when his Amanda began to talk fine, and to display her knowledge of great people. He looked at her morosely whenever she opened her lips, and followed her into the room with a gloom upon his countenance which here he did not think it necessary to conceal. His mother at least had forgiven all the faults that Frederick had ever committed against her, in consideration of his present sufferings. The fact that he was discontented with the toy for which he had paid so dear (and for which, alas! Mrs. Eastwood, too, was paying dear), seemed to cover all his previous sins. Had he put a better face upon it, and endured cheerfully the doom which he had brought upon himself, his mother, and womankind in general, would have thought less well of him; they would have concluded that he was happy, and would have despised him; but they were sorry for him now, and elevated him to the rank of a martyr, in consideration of his gloom and disgust. Nelly was almost the only rebel against this universal tenderness.

“He married to please himself,” said Nelly; “he ought to make the best of it now, and not the worst. It is mean of him to pose in this gloomy way. I should like to shake him,” cried the impetuous girl.

“Nelly, don’t be so hard-hearted,” her mother would say, with piteous looks.

Thus Frederick was generally successful in his gloom--at least among the feminine half of society. He came in behind Amanda’s train, which he looked at with disgust, as it curled about his foot. Nevertheless he was pleased to see that his gorgeous wife made an impression on the old fogies who sat by his mother’s side--Sir Timothy and Lady Doul.

“I am pretty well, thank you,” said Amanda, “as well as it is possible to be in London at this time of the year; when all one’s friends are gone, and when the place is full of outlandish country-looking people, or strange fishes from abroad, it is such a bore to stay in London. You don’t feel it out here in the suburbs--you have your little society of your own, which pays no attention to the season. I am sure I wish I was as well off.”

“Dear me!” said old Lady Doul, with the admiration and wonder of ignorance. “I think London is always so exciting. I could not bear too much of it. Sir Timothy and I were just saying what a racket it was. To be sure we are living in Half-Moon Street, in the centre of everything,” the old lady added with simple pride. Her cap had been made in Barbadoes, and so had her gown; she had not been “in town” for more than twenty years.

Amanda gave her a stare in passing. She was never civil to women.

“I should think you would find the desert lively if you think Half-Moon Street exciting,” she said. “Give me a nice country house choke full of people, with luncheons at the cover-side, and dances in the evening, and all sorts of fun going on. But when one marries a poor clerk in a public office, one has to put up with many things,” she went on, turning to old Sir Timothy, who, startled and embarrassed, did not know what to reply.

“Oh, ah, oh, of course,” said the old man; “very good--very good. Everybody suffers from a penurious government. I assure you, my dear young lady, the fine young fellows one meets out in the world--_attachés_, and such like--wasting their time, as I always tell them, upon twopence-halfpenny a year. Why, I had a secretary once, a young man of excellent family----”

“But I hope you did not allow him to marry,” said Amanda. “It is always upon the wives that the hardship falls. If you saw the little hole of a place we have to live in--and back to London in October--only fancy! I wonder what we are supposed to be made of. The men are much better off with their clubs, and that sort of thing. They know at least all that is going on; they hear the gossip, and see every stray creature there is to see; but as for us, poor ladies----”

“Tell me how far you went in Switzerland, Amanda,” said Nelly. “You must have enjoyed that. We have only been once among the mountains; but what a pleasure it was!--did you go to----? But I remember Frederick wrote you had changed your minds----”

Nelly spoke with the artificiality of a made-up digression, and Sir Timothy thought her but a poor little shadowy thing by the side of her beautiful sister-in-law.

“Oh, I never go into raptures I don’t feel,” said Amanda. “I don’t care twopence for Switzerland; I hate mountains; I would rather go to Margate any day--that is, if nothing better were to be had,” she added, remembering that Margate was hardly consistent with the splendour of her pretensions--“Don’t ask me about places as if I was a guide book. I like people, and talk, and to see new faces, and the play, and all that’s going on.”

“Very pleasant,” said Sir Timothy, “and very good taste, and I quite agree with you. I have promised Lady Doul and myself the pleasure of the play to-morrow.”

“The play--to-morrow!” cried Amanda, putting out her hand with an air of horror--“The play! At this time of the year? You must be out of your senses----”

Here Brownlow made his appearance at the door, and the party went in to dinner.

“You did not tell us that Mrs. Frederick was a beauty,” said Sir Timothy in Mrs. Eastwood’s ear, “and so completely one of the _beau monde_. You said _Mrs._ Frederick surely? Not a title? Ah, now you set my mind at rest. I was rather afraid to hazard a name. Allow me to congratulate you on such a charming daughter-in-law.”

“Yes--she is very handsome,” said poor Mrs. Eastwood.

“Handsome! a divinity, my dear madam, quite a divinity!” cried the old man. For half the dinner through Mrs. Eastwood was silent, wondering whether her old acquaintance had become imbecile in the climate of Barbadoes; or if he was venturing to joke at Mrs. Frederick’s expense. It was difficult to solve this question, for old Sir Timothy set up a lively flirtation with the beauty, who was placed at her mother-in-law’s other hand. All through the course of dinner, during which banquet Mrs. Eastwood lost much of her accustomed good-humoured ease, the old man went on. Was he drawing out Amanda’s folly? or was he dazzled by her beauty with the usual incomprehensible weakness of men? Mr. Vane, who sat between Mrs. Eastwood and Amanda, added this to his many attractions, that he was not dazzled by her; and he, too, was somewhat silent, finding little to say in the crossfire which the others kept up. As for Frederick, he sat gloomy and grand at the foot of the table between Lady Doul and his sister, and was not conversational. Lady Doul had a pleasant little chattering tongue, and told him she remembered him as a baby, and congratulated him on his beautiful wife.

“Mrs. Frederick seems to have been a great deal in society,” the old lady said, with a keen glance at him, which belied the simplicity of her question. And Frederick, with the consciousness of Nelly’s eye upon him, did not know how to respond.

“Oh, ah,” he said, giving a tacit assent, and wondering all the time what she was really thinking, and why that muff, Molyneux, was not there. If it was a mere quarrel between Nelly and her lover, or even if Molyneux had declared off, Frederick would not have disturbed himself much on the subject; but he could not but recollect that Molyneux had been absent the last time he and his wife had dined at The Elms. If he were to behave badly to Nelly it would be bad, no doubt; but to give himself airs with Frederick was a still more dreadful offence. “Confound his impudence,” he muttered between his teeth.

As for the other members of the party, Innocent was very passive, and Mr. Parchemin, with his spectacles pushed back upon his forehead, ate his dinner with serious devotion, and troubled himself about nothing which might be going on.

After dinner, the ladies, being so few in number, made a little group in the drawing-room round Mrs. Eastwood’s chair. It was then that Innocent attracted Amanda’s attention.

“What a great girl she is growing--almost grown up,” she said. “What do you intend to do with her?”

Innocent was leaning against the back of Mrs. Eastwood’s chair. Her attention was directed quite otherwise, or rather, she was attending to nothing, gazing across the room vacantly with her eyes fixed on the door. Whether this was mere chance, or whether it was the lingering remains of the old adoration for Frederick, Nelly, who was watching her very closely, could not tell. The girl was not attending--but she woke up and stirred slightly at this allusion to herself.

“What am I going to do with her?” asked Mrs. Eastwood in dismay.

“Yes--I mean, do you intend to send her out as a governess, or anything of that sort?” said Amanda, plucking a flower to pieces which she had taken from the dinner table. It was bad enough to abstract the flower from a bouquet which Nelly had arranged very carefully; but, having abstracted it, to pull it to pieces, throwing the petals on the floor, was almost more than human patience, personified in Nelly Eastwood, could bear.

“Now she has grown up,” continued the beauty, “I suppose you mean her to be of some use. You can’t keep her always in idleness to the injury of your own children----”

“We must not talk about the questions you don’t fully understand,” cried Mrs. Eastwood, with flushed cheeks. “Innocent, my love, go and fetch a cushion for Lady Doul. And perhaps Mrs. Frederick will give us a little music, Nelly, if you have anything new to tempt her.”

“Oh, I never play till the gentlemen come in,” said Amanda; “but I don’t see why you should take me up so sharp about Innocent. Now you’ve given her her education she ought to be made to do something. I’ll look out for a companion’s place, if you like, among my friends. Why shouldn’t I understand? it’s easy enough; and I am sure all your children have a right to interfere. Why should a girl that is only your half-niece take the bread out of their mouths? Ask any one if I am not right. Every penny you spend on her will be so much less for your own.”

“We need not trouble Lady Doul with our family concerns,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a tremendous effort to keep her temper; and she addressed a question to the old lady, upon which Amanda again broke in.

“Oh, I assure you Frederick and I often talk it over; he thinks as I do. If she couldn’t be a governess she might be a companion. It would be quite easy; I, myself----”

“Come and look at something I have got here,” cried Nelly, at the table, sending meaning looks at her mother.

“Leave me alone, Nelly, I think it’s my duty to speak. As the wife of the eldest son I have a right to interfere; the Eastwoods are not so rich that the little they have should be spent on strangers.”

“My dear Mrs. Frederick,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a forced smile, while old Lady Doul hurried to the other end of the room to speak to Nelly; “I have been used to manage my own affairs without reference either to my sons or my son’s wife.”

“And so much the worse for you,” cried Amanda, with flushed cheeks. “What can you know about business?--women never do--you ought to take sensible advice; you ought to consider your own children, and not a lot of hangers-on; you ought not just to take your own way, without ever thinking of us, starving our children for a pack of poor relations. Oh, I know what I am saying, and I ain’t to be put down by looks. I’m one of the family; and a poor enough thing for me, too, with my looks and my expectations; but to see a great beggar girl eating all up with her useless ways--what ought to come to us and our children. I cannot put up with it. I _will_ say what I’ve got to say.”

“What is the matter, Amanda?” said Frederick, behind her. He had heard the raised tone of his wife’s voice, and had rushed in, in dismay. He found his mother risen from her chair, indignant, and burning with suppressed anger, and his wife standing before her, aiding her words by gestures, her white arm raised, her cheeks deeply flushed, her breath coming quick, and her eyes flashing red fire. He put his hand on her arm. “Come and sit down here on the sofa; the other men are just coming in. For heaven’s sake, Amanda, compose yourself! Do you want to be ill again? do you want to make a scene?”

“I don’t care twopence for making a scene. I want to have it out now it’s been started,” cried Amanda. “I say that great girl oughtn’t to be kept up in idleness and luxury. She ought to be sent out into the world to make her living. Ain’t we the natural heirs, and haven’t we a right to speak? Oh, what do I care for the men coming in? let ’em come in. It’s only right and justice; since you haven’t the heart to speak up, I must. Innocent, indeed! a nice sort of Innocent, to eat up what ought to be for us. There isn’t so much of it; and a pack of younger brothers already, and that sort. Oh, I have no patience; let me have it out.”

“For God’s sake, Amanda----”

She made an ineffectual attempt to go on, but breath failed her, and she allowed herself to be drawn to the sofa, and laid herself back upon the pillows panting, her white shoulders and forehead stained with patches of vivid pink. “It’s all very well to say ‘don’t excite yourself,’” she said. “How can I help it, when people are so self-willed and stupid!”

The unhappy Frederick sat down by her and endeavoured to soothe her. Surely a little recompense for his many offences was doled out to him that evening; he talked to her in a low tone, expostulating, entreating. “Think of your health,” was the burden of his argument. He fanned her, he held her hand, he wiped her hot forehead with her laced handkerchief. Poor Frederick! He had pleased himself, and he was paying the penalty. Nelly and Lady Doul had rushed with a common impulse towards the door to meet the other gentlemen, and stood there involuntarily pointing out old pictures to their admiration, and plunging into depths of conversation which bewildered the new-comers. Mrs. Eastwood, too angry to think for the moment of keeping up appearances, had pushed back her chair as far as it would go, and after sitting down in it a minute, had risen again to look for Innocent, who stood with one hand upon the table, gazing with wide-open eyes at Frederick and his wife. No sort of offence was upon Innocent’s dreamy face. Awakened attention, a slight startled wonder, but nothing painful was in her expression, and perhaps that wonder was more roused by the sight of Amanda’s excitement and exhaustion than by anything she had said. Mrs. Eastwood hastened to her, took the girl into her arms, and held her close. “My poor child, my dear child. You must not mind her, Innocent,” she said.

“Is she ill?” asked Innocent, wondering.

“I am sure I wish she was!” cried Mrs. Eastwood, “she deserves to be, venturing to dictate to me, the little vulgar intruder, a girl not fit to be in the same room with Nelly and you!”

“Little!” said Innocent, with an amused smile. “She is not little. She is the biggest of all. Are you very angry? Did she scold you?”

“I am very angry; but don’t you mind, my dear. Never think again of what she said, Innocent. She is a passionate, selfish fool; don’t pay any attention to what she said.”

“No,” said docile Innocent; “but I should like to be of use--it would be pleasant to be of use,” she added, after a pause. “Let me do something. What is a companion? How strange that she should be so red and so breathless? Is it all about me?”

“It is because she is a fool,” said Mrs. Eastwood, though, indeed, she herself was flushed and excited too.

“But what is a companion?” asked Innocent.

“You are my companion and Nelly’s,” said Mrs. Eastwood; “my dear, don’t think of it any more.”

“And she is Frederick’s,” said Innocent, contemplating with a strange abstract spectatorship the group on the sofa. There was no enmity, only a wondering contemplation in her eyes. “Can he never be without her? Will she stay with him for ever and ever?”

“As long as she lives,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a profound sigh.