Chapter XL: Family Opinions

It was thought best that Innocent should be brought back that evening to The Elms, where Mrs. Barclay accompanied her full of smiles and congratulations. “Since he could not have the one, my dear, he set his heart upon having the other,” she said to Mrs. Eastwood; “otherwise I am sure he would never have married at all. He had made up his mind to have one of your girls. A good mother makes a good daughter; that has always been the doctrine in our family,--and oh, how glad I am that the old stock is not to be allowed to die out! It will be such a disappointment to the Huntly Longuevilles, they never could bear Alexis,--and I am sure if I once saw him with a nice wife and a young family, I would wish for nothing more in this world----”

“We must not go so fast,” said Mrs. Eastwood.

“Oh, no, of course we must say nothing about that,” said Mrs. Barclay, nodding and laughing in supreme satisfaction. She and her brother remained to dinner, and but for the moroseness of Frederick, who contemplated the whole matter with almost savage dissatisfaction, the evening would have been a more cheerful one than the Eastwood family had passed for some time. Frederick, however, was half frantic in his opposition when the party dispersed. He asked his mother how she could permit such a sacrifice,--how she could allow such a child to pledge herself to a man old enough to be her grandfather? “If you call that love for Innocent, I don’t know what love means,” he said.

“It is Innocent’s own doing,” said his mother in self-defence; “it is she alone who is responsible. I have had nothing to do with it, for I feel as you do, Frederick,--to some extent.”

“To some extent!--I don’t know how you can limit the extent,” he cried in fiery indignation,--“and how about this,--what do you call it?--this fancy,--this delusion----? She ought not to be allowed to go out of the family with such a notion in her mind.”

“Frederick, I am afraid you will be annoyed,” said poor Mrs. Eastwood, “I was very much distressed myself. She--told him everything;--though, indeed, if they are to be married, it was indispensable that he should know----”

Frederick almost foamed at the mouth with rage and vexation. He refused to believe that Innocent could have done anything of the kind of her own initiative,--he insisted that some one had suggested it, that she had been frightened,--that the idea had been put into her mind. After the improvement and amelioration of his manners, to which they had been gradually getting accustomed, he went to the very farthest bound of their endurance. He would be no party to the arrangement, he declared,--they might carry it out if they would, but without him. Frederick, indeed, was stung to the quick by what seemed to him the most manifold and most complicated invasion of his rights. Innocent had been his slave since ever he knew her, and she was to be taken from him,--and the secret of her delusion, or whatever it was, was exposed to a stranger. His wife’s death, and Innocent’s connexion with it, whatever that might be, all talked of, discussed, pulled to pieces by others! I think Frederick had some ground for general irritation, though he had no right to blame any one individually; he was very sore and very angry at this revolution of affairs; he had begun to think that Innocent was very pretty and sweet, and that he might reward her for her devotion to him, when lo, there came, first this story about Amanda’s death, and then Innocent’s sudden, unaccountable throwing of herself into Longueville’s arms! By degrees he became less sore, and began to think that he understood the latter incident, and Innocent, feeling what a great gulf lay between them now, now that he knew what had happened, had fled to Sir Alexis from her own despair and his. This made him less sore, but not less sorry. He had been conscious that he must think of her no more when he heard her revelation on the previous night, but as soon as further thinking of her was useless, he felt that the revelation she had made was nothing,--that it was indeed mere delusion, as his mother said, and that Innocent, once removed out of his reach, became the thing he most longed for in the world. Altogether, that night brought him little comfort. He was impatient, unhappy, irritable, nay furious; and, naturally, his fury fixed upon those who deserved it least,--upon his mother and sister, who were absolutely innocent, and upon Sir Alexis, who had been brought into the matter by appeal, without any action of his. It was some days after this before he could even secure a chance of speaking to Innocent alone. They kept her from him watchfully, yet so naturally, that much as he chafed, he could say nothing,--and Longueville was there in the evenings, filling him with suppressed rage. At last fortune favoured him, and he found her for a few minutes alone.

“Innocent,” he said, “I fear you are going to take a very foolish step. Who has advised you to do it? You ought not to marry Longueville,--a man whom you cannot care for,--a man so much older than yourself.”

Innocent shrank from him into the corner of the sofa where she was sitting. She made no answer,--but she shrank unquestionably, which made him more angry still.

“You are very foolish,--because you have been unhappy, you determine to be more unhappy, to leave no way of escape for yourself. If you marry that man you can have no sympathy with him. He is older than your father. Was there no one else in the world to help you, Innocent, that you should have referred to him?”

“Do not be angry,” sighed Innocent, softly, turning upon him her anxious, deprecating eyes. “No one else offered to help me. He is very kind----”

“Oh, kind!” cried Frederick, “is any one unkind? When you say such a thing you accuse us all. Surely I could have helped you better than Longueville----”

“Not you, Frederick,” said the girl. She did not withdraw her eyes from him, but a faint flush came upon her face.

“Why not I? You are thinking of this business about--my wife. That was no reason why you should turn from me. Innocent, be wise in time, and give this man up.”

He did not remember that she too had suggested to him to give up his marriage, with more simplicity, but not less unreasonableness. She shook her head half-sadly, half-smiling. She had no wish to marry Sir Alexis. The thought, indeed, filled her with vague alarm when it occurred to her. But he had taken her burden on his shoulders,--he had promised to set it right. And Innocent, not asking any questions, had been able to believe him. Such help no one else in the world had offered her. It seemed the only thing she understood or cared for in her life.

Thus the time stole away,--the interval between this rapid settlement of affairs and the marriage-day, which was so strangely unlike other marriage-days. Innocent had her _trousseau_ prepared like other brides, and The Elms was full of the excitement of the preparations. I am not even sure, notwithstanding all the circumstances involved which tempered the pleasure, that Mrs. Eastwood and Nelly did not derive a certain enjoyment from choosing her dresses, and buying her “things,” and deciding how this and that was to be made. She was passive herself, and took little interest in what was going on, but she was a very patient lay figure in their hands, suffering draperies of all sorts to be tried upon her, without active rebellion. The other ladies had the satisfaction of artists in dressing Innocent. She had never been “dressed” before, and to get her up as Lady Longueville ought to be got up, was a delightful exercise of skill and ingenuity. Men, no doubt, have other solacements of a like character,--but one requires to be a woman to understand the genuine, simple, and natural pleasures which Nelly Eastwood, though her heart was sore, and her mind full of a thousand anxieties, got out of her cousin’s _trousseau_. To try how one thing after another would look upon Innocent, to see which shade, which fashion would become her best, to fit her out, in short, for her new position, according to their own ideal of what that position was, amused the mother and daughter as few other things could have done, and distracted them from their own cares. If you despise Mrs. Eastwood and Nelly for this, my dear reader, I do not agree with you. The marriage itself was one in which they had no responsibility. They had not been consulted in it--it was Innocent’s own doing,--and considering all the circumstances, and the peculiarity of Innocent’s character, it was, to Mrs. Eastwood at least, as she said, “a matter of great thankfulness,” that Innocent had selected for herself so efficient a protector, so kind a guardian as Sir Alexis. “He will give her everything that this world can give,” Mrs. Eastwood said, addressing an indignation meeting of her own two younger boys which had been hastily convened on the occasion. “He is very fond of her, and will consider her happiness in everything. He is an old friend of the family, and it need not trouble us to know that he is acquainted with all our circumstances.” This last remark was intended for Frederick, who stood sullenly at the window, turning his back upon the others, with his figure relieved against the light.

“Our circumstances?” said Jenny. “Is there anything in our circumstances that may not be known to all the world?”

“That is all very well, mother,” cried Dick, who was less observant, “but I don’t know how you can make up your mind to give Innocent to an old fogie like Longueville. He looks a hundred and fifty. He has old ways of thinking, old habits; in short, he is an old fogie, neither more nor less, and she is eighteen. It is the sort of thing one reads of in novels. Such things don’t happen in real life----”

“My dear boy--” began Mrs. Eastwood.

“At least they oughtn’t to,” said Dick, “and as for its being Innocent’s own choice, what does she know about it? She has been talked over. She has been seduced by all that trash of dresses and finery---”

Dick had spent half the precious morning helping to decide between a blue silk and a green one, and he was naturally wrathful (after it was over) at that loss of his valuable time.

“Innocent doesn’t care for that sort of thing,” said Jenny. “Has some one been hard upon her? has some one worried her? I don’t know what my mother means about our circumstances. I thought Innocent was to get the same as the rest of us. She may have my share, if that will keep her from marrying old Longueville. I don’t see why she should want to marry any one;--I don’t.”

“How can I explain it to you?” said poor Mrs. Eastwood; “a girl is not like a young man. If anything was to happen to me, what would become of Innocent?--who would take care of her? You, or you? Dick, who is going to India, or Jenny who has his own way to make in the world,--or Nelly? Nelly will have some one else to consult----”

“You seem to put me out of the question altogether,” said Frederick, “though it seems to me I have a right to be considered----”

“You!--oh, Frederick!--when you know how impossible, how out of all question that would be---- But Innocent has put it out of my hands, she has chosen Sir Alexis herself,--and when I think how much more he can give her than I ever could,--what advantages--what means of developing----”

“The fact is, women are all mercenary,” said Frederick, “they cannot help it. Money carries the day with them, whatever may be the drawbacks. I have long known it. Innocent is simple enough in other things, but in this she is like all the rest.”

And thus the family conclave broke up, even Jenny, who was his mother’s champion, being unable to see his way to her defence in this particular. Dick gave up the question with more light-heartedness, being unaffected by theories, but Jenny went back to Oxford somewhat melancholy, wondering if indeed “all women” were to be condemned wholesale, or whether there would be any other meaning in the allusion to the circumstances which could be trusted to Sir Alexis. What these circumstances were, and the special mystery which enveloped poor Innocent, neither of the boys knew.

The effect, however, upon the world at large was very different. In the opinion of the Molyneuxes, for instance, Mrs. Eastwood rose to a far higher degree of estimation than they had ever bestowed upon her before. They even thought it might be as well that Ernest should be “settled,” now that things had taken this turn. Nelly was not a bad match, all things considered, and to be married would probably settle Ernest, and the connexion was good. Besides, when the mother had done so well for her niece, a poor girl whom she had “shamefully neglected,” what might she not aspire to for her daughter? I do not know that Ernest was stimulated in distinct words by these sentiments--but such feelings convey themselves otherwise than by words--and the conviction came to his mind also that now was the moment to conclude his long probation, as he now chose to call it. “Don’t you think I have been kept hanging on and waiting long enough?” he said to Nelly, whom he found immersed in Innocent’s business, one morning, when, contrary to his habit, and very unexpectedly to them all, he sauntered into the drawing-room at The Elms.

“Kept hanging on?” said Nelly, with a surprise she did not attempt to conceal.

“Of course, you don’t suppose it is of my own will that I have waited for you like this,--almost as long as Jacob, eh, Nelly?--longer, I should say, considering how much faster things go now-a-days----”

“I did not know that you had ever tried to shorten it,” said Nelly slowly, growing very red.

“I don’t pretend to be able to subdue circumstances,” said Molyneux; “we are all the victims of them, and I as much as other men. But it seems to me, Nelly, that now’s our chance; now that Frederick has been providentially released from his encumbrance, and that your mother has made this triumphant stroke, and booked old Longueville for Innocent----”

“Ernest! I will not permit such words----”

“Well, well, don’t let us quarrel about the words--now that Sir Alexis is about to be made happy with the hand, &c. By Jove, you may say what you like, Nelly, but it is the cleverest _coup_ I have heard of for a very long time. Altogether the family is in luck; and if you play your cards well, and we can get hold of your mother when she is in a good humour----”

Poor Nelly’s endurance had been greatly tried. Her troubles which she dared not confide to her lover--the sense that he could not be trusted to enter into the closer circle of her family anxieties, and consequently that his sympathy with herself could never be complete--had long been gnawing at her heart and embittering all his careless words and irreverent thoughts. She turned red and then pale, tremulous and then rigid, in the passionate tumult of feeling which took possession of her; but she kept herself calm with all her might, and answered him with an artificial coldness which filled Molyneux half with ridicule, half with dismay.

“How am I to play my cards?” she said, “and what is it that you mean to ask from my mother when she is in a good humour?”

“Nelly!” he said, half laughing, half angry, “what does this tragedy-queen air portend? surely it is a little late to get on stilts with me. Of course you know as well as I do what I have to propose to your mother. We can’t marry without her help; the responsibility lies upon her of keeping you from being settled and done for--I and my people are ready enough. When I talk of playing your cards, I take it for granted you want our business to be decided as much as I do,--and the very first step for us is to know how much she means to do.”

“I look at it in a different way,” said Nelly, plunging desperately into the centre of the question which she had so long avoided. “Ernest, now we must understand each other at last; I will not have any such proposal made to mamma. I will not!--it does not matter what you say. If we cannot do with what we have and your profession, it is better to put an end to it altogether. I have not wished for anything, nor thought of any thing beyond what we could afford,” cried Nelly suddenly, the tears coming in spite of her,--“but I will not take our living from mamma!”

Molyneux was thunderstruck. “Why, Nelly!” he said, in the half-derisive, half-affectionate tone which had so often disarmed her, “you innocent little goose!” and he drew her within his arm. But Nelly was wrought to a point which did not admit of this treatment. She withdrew from his clasp, and stood fronting him, tears in her eyes, but resolution in her face.

“We must understand each other,” she cried. “I have long tried to say it. Now I have had courage to speak, and I cannot go back. I will live as poorly as you like--if you like; but I will not fight with my own mother for money; I will not take our living from hers; I am determined. But I must not bind you,” she added, faltering slightly, “if you think otherwise. If you think otherwise--if there is no other alternative--Ernest, I must set you free----”

“To speak to your mother?” he said, with a laugh in which there was some relief. “I should have done it without all this declamation, Nelly.”

“No,--but to be free from me,” said Nelly, folding closely together the hands which he tried to take.