Chapter XXVIII: A New Complication

This evening was an eventful evening at The Elms. When Mrs. Frederick had rested sufficiently and calmed down, she was carried off by her husband with the very briefest and driest of leave-takings. Old Sir Timothy and his wife had gone off before, as hurriedly as was consistent with good-breeding, shaking their old heads over the family fray they had witnessed, and forming suppositions as to the origin of Mrs. Frederick which did her injustice, unexalted though her antecedents were.

“I don’t know what Mrs. Eastwood could mean by asking me to meet such a person,” cried Lady Doul in high dudgeon.

“Hush! my dear, hush! the poor woman was trying to make the best of it,” said Sir Timothy; “and though she’s evidently a termagant, she’s extraordinarily pretty, wonderfully pretty.”

“I have no patience with you men,” said Lady Doul. “Pretty! what has pretty to do with it? Do you think a pretty face is like charity, and covers a multitude of sins?”

“A great many, my dear,” said old Sir Timothy, with a chuckle. And so the old pair jogged on to their lodgings, half sorry, half shocked, half indignant. The party they left behind was more seriously excited. The first thing Mrs. Eastwood did was to hurry off Innocent to bed, accompanying her to her room with a fear for the effect of Amanda’s ravings upon her feelings, which was really uncalled for; for Innocent’s feelings were too little on the surface to be moved by any such assault. It had given rise to vague thoughts in her mind, but no wound--thoughts which, when her aunt, with many caresses, had left her, she expressed to old Alice, with more freedom than probably she would have ventured upon with any one else. Innocent’s habitation was now in the old schoolroom, to which she had taken so great a fancy. And here Alice waited upon her with a care which amazed the other servants, for Innocent had nothing to give in return, not even thanks or caresses, and was considered “proud” and “stuck-up” in her dreamy habitual silence.

“She said I might be a companion,” said Innocent. “And Sir Alexis said something too--a companion! I am Nelly’s companion and my aunt’s, she says--Frederick’s wife meant something different. Alice, you are old; you know a great many things----”

“I know you’re but an innocent, my poor bonnie bairn,” said the old woman with a sigh.

“Of course I am Innocent; but that is only my name. Companion is not a name; it is a thing. She is Frederick’s companion. My aunt says he will never be rid of her--never--so long as she lives. What a pity that she cannot be made to stop living! She scolds--like--like--she grows red like the women we once saw quarrelling in the street.”

“When you stoppit to tell them it was ugly,” said Alice; “and why should they scold each other?”

“Yes,” said Innocent, “to scold children is natural, I suppose, at least, everybody does it, even you, Alice; but Frederick’s wife--and he cannot send her away. I wish she might die, and then Frederick would be free.”

“Bairn, bairn, hold your tongue!” cried Alice. “Are you no aware that it’s a sin, a great sin, to wish anybody dead? Never let me hear you say such a thing again.”

“But I do think it,” said Innocent; “she makes herself ill; she suffers; she makes everybody else unhappy. She scolds, it does not matter whom. Why should people go on living when they do so much harm?”

“But you would not do her harm?” said Alice, curiously gazing at her; “and why should Mr. Frederick be free? He has taken his own way, and he must put up with it. He has made his bed, and he must lie on it. What is he, that he should be delivered from what he has brought on himself?”

“I am fond of Frederick,” said Innocent dreamily. “If he is good or not I do not know, but I am fond of him. Alice, do you know I have found out something? When papa said women were hateful, he meant women like Frederick’s wife.”

“My bonnie lamb,” said Alice, “think as little as you can either of Mr. Frederick or Mr. Frederick’s wife. Such kind of thoughts are little good. Say your prayers, and mind that you must wish harm to no person. It’s against a’ Scripture; though, eh! human nature’s weak, and if it was me I doubt if I could keep my hands off her,” she added to herself.

When Mrs. Eastwood left the room with Innocent, Mr. Vane asked permission to stay. “May I wait till you come back?” he asked, “I have something to say.” Perhaps it was injudicious on all sides, for, indeed, Nelly, who was thus left alone with him in a state of high and indignant resentment, was, perhaps, too much disposed to confide in the sympathetic companion who was always ready to feel with her, always willing to be interested. They were standing together over the little fire, which on this mild October evening smouldered unnecessarily in the grate. But when there is any trouble in a house the fire becomes at once the centre; everybody goes to it mechanically. Nelly stood there, clasping her hands together by way of restraining herself; her cheeks were flushed, her eyes abashed. She was not only wounded and angry, but ashamed to the bottom of her heart. She had been doing all she could to conceal and cover over the “scene” which, like all Englishwomen, she dreaded to have known. But she had not been successful, and now her mind was so full of it, so running over with indignation and excitement, that she knew she ought not to have trusted herself with any companion; and yet absolute self-denial was so hard. She could not be so wise as to go away and bury the tumult of feeling which was eager to be expressed.

“Oh, Mr. Vane, what must you think of us?” she burst forth at last.

“What must I think of you? I am afraid some things I dare not tell you,” he said. “But what can any one think--that you have had to submit to a very ordinary form of domestic misfortune, and that, by dint of doing your very best to bear it, you have to suffer much that is disagreeable? That is all that the most curious could think. Every one who is worthy to be called your friend, Miss Eastwood, should be only too glad to stand by you in such a trial.”

I don’t know what John Vane meant, or if he fully realized what he was saying; but as for Nelly she turned crimson, and gave him a quick, furtive look of inquiry. Had he looked as if he meant anything she would have been offended; but he was sufficiently innocent or clever to dismiss all meaning from his face.

“Oh, as for that,” said Nelly, “it would be foolish to speak as if we wanted any one to stand by us. Mamma and I are able to support each other--mamma, and I, and Innocent. We are quite a strong body; we want no one else,” said Nelly. She looked up at him, smiling, to prove her assertion, but somehow just at that moment a chance tear, which had gathered on her eyelashes without her knowledge, seized the opportunity to fall. “Why what is this? I wonder,” she said, with a little laugh, wiping it from her hand with her handkerchief; “it seems I must have been crying without knowing it. How silly! It is horrid that because one happens to be a woman one should always make a fool of one’s self and cry.”

“I wish we were all fools of your description,” said Vane.

“What, to cry? Oh no. It comes natural to a girl, but it is dreadful in a man. And there is not much to cry about either,” said Nelly. “It is not Mrs. Frederick that makes me unhappy, Mr. Vane; it is that poor mamma must feel what I once said to you, that we are all trying to get as much out of her as ever we can. Why should she have given up her own comforts to let Frederick marry? If papa had been alive, no one would have expected him to do it; but because mamma is a woman, Frederick and everybody think she should give in continually. Do you think it is just or right? Why should she give up all she has been used to, to give us things we have no need of? First her carriage, and now her old servants; and she talks even of letting the dear old house. Mr. Vane, perhaps I ought not to talk like this to you--but do you think it is right? Should not a man try when he marries to make something for himself?”

“If I were ever so happy,” said Vane, “that is what I should do. I should like my wife to feel that I was working for her. _My_ wife! That sort of thing is not for me.”

“Why shouldn’t it be for you?” said Nelly in a softened tone; but she felt the ground was dangerous, and perhaps she felt that there was a certain inference in all that was being said--a something which implicated others as well as her brother; therefore she hasted to place Frederick in the foreground as the sole subject of discourse.

“Perhaps I am too angry with Frederick,” she said; “it is because I feel as if mamma might think we were all alike--all thinking of what she has, not of her; all grasping and wanting something. Rather than she should think that of me I would die.”

“She could not think that of you. It would be impossible,” said Vane.

“I don’t know,” said Nelly, the tears gathering once more on her down-dropped eyelashes. “Oh, how true it is what mamma says--that nature wrongs women more than law does! Sometimes we are compelled to look different from what we are that people may not see or find out--other things. Sometimes we have to put on false looks to make other people seem true. You men, you don’t know half nor a quarter what poor girls have to do!”

This curious and enigmatical outburst filled Vane with feelings which I will not attempt to describe. He thought he understood it, and his whole heart melted over the girl, whose case already, perhaps, he had thought over too much. He put his hand for a moment on hers, not holding it, but giving just one touch of a sympathy which went beyond words. As he did so another tear, slowly brimming over, fell on his hand. Instantly, before he knew, the water stood in his own eyes; Nelly startled, dashed the tear off with her handkerchief, and crying hastily, “Oh, I beg your pardon! I beg your pardon!” covered her hot eyes and flushed face with her hand.

It was at this moment that Molyneux came in. I do not wonder for my part that he was a little startled by the position of the two, and the attitude of affairs generally; Nelly crying, and Vane beside her with an agitated look about the eyes, which tells much that men would prefer to conceal. “Hullo, what is wrong?” he said, striding up to her side. Nelly recovered her composure instantaneously; and Vane, drawing back, felt that the charm of the moment was over, and all its magic flown.

“What is the matter?” cried Molyneux, more angry than affectionate; “crying? What are you crying for? Has Winks been taken bad, or have you lost your canary bird, or what? I think you might have kept your tears till I came.”

“They are not pleasant things to keep,” said Nelly, “and indeed I was not crying. Mrs. Frederick put us all out of temper----”

“Oh, Mrs. Frederick! Dick told me there had been a shindy,” said the young man. “I’m sorry I was not here to see the fun. Vane, you are luckier than I am--you are always on the spot.”

A retort was on John Vane’s lips; but he considered all the circumstances, and held his peace, offering no explanations. Nelly’s betrothed looked from one to the other with, I do not deny, a certain justification for his suspicions. “Well,” he said, “now that I am here you don’t seem communicative. What was it all about?”

“Oh, the subject does not matter,” cried Nelly. “It was an attack upon mamma. Don’t let us speak of it; it makes me wicked, it makes my heart sick. Poor mamma, who has always been so good to us--is this how we are to repay her at the end?”

“I can’t say, of course, if you don’t choose to tell me,” said Molyneux; “but Mrs. Eastwood is not any worse off than other people of her age, so far as I can see. We can’t all be romantic little gooses, Nelly, like you.”

“Don’t!” said Nelly, with sharp pain and shame. Why was it that her lover’s familiar tone went so near to disgust her at such a moment? She drew away, not venturing to look up, ashamed, because the other was present, she would have said. And this was true; but not entirely in the simple sense of the words.

“I must speak to your mother about Innocent,” Vane said, apologetically, feeling too that he was in the way, and they stood all there about the fire in the most awkward of positions until Mrs. Eastwood, with her clouded brow, came back. She gave Ernest a little nod of recognition--no more. It was well that he had not been there, and yet it was ill that he took no pains to stand by Nelly in any emergency. She seated herself in her usual chair, taking little notice of any one. Her pulses were still tingling, and her heart beating. She was a proud woman, though she made but small external pretensions; and she had been insulted in her own house.

“I want you to let Innocent go to my sister,” said Vane, approaching her softly, “for a week or two perhaps. Don’t you think she should make acquaintance with her father’s relations? She is grown up; she has developed so much under your kind care. Could you not trust her, even for a few weeks, out of your own hands?”

“Oh, Mr. Vane!” cried Mrs. Eastwood hastily, with tears coming to her eyes; “this is because of what you have just been hearing--because of what my daughter-in-law was so wicked and so cruel as to say.”

“What is the matter?” said Molyneux to Nelly. “What _did_ she say? and what has he to do with it? and what does your mother mean by looking so excited? It all seems a pretty muddle for a man to fall into.”

“What she said was about Innocent,” said Nelly, restraining herself with an effort; “that we ought not to keep her here--that she should be sent out as a governess--I don’t know how much more hard-hearted nonsense. I can’t tell how she dared to speak so to mamma.”

“That woman would dare anything,” said Molyneux. “About Innocent? Well, I don’t know that she was very wrong; that girl will turn into a dreadful burden one day or other if she is not made to marry somebody. I can’t think what your mother meant, when she had such a chance, by letting Longueville slip through her fingers. So that’s why _he’s_ here, I suppose? I hate that man, John Vane; always poking himself where he is not wanted.”

“I suppose mamma must have wanted him or she would not have asked him,” said Nelly. “We could not have an empty place at table.”

“Oh, that’s why you are cross, is it?” said Ernest, with a vain laugh; “but, Nelly, you must not really expect that I can always be doing duty at those family parties. A family party is the thing I most hate in the world.”

“Fortunately for mamma, Mr. Vane is not of your opinion,” said Nelly. It was the first time she had attempted anything like self-assertion. She had never stood at bay before.