Chapter IV: The Visit

Bella Chevenix took an early opportunity of questioning her father, though apparently in a casual way, as to the nature of the interview that had taken place between him and Jerry Wilmot--the interview to which the latter had referred so mysteriously and in broken accents.

Mr. Chevenix told her all about it, adding, when he saw how she changed colour, and seemed deeply moved by his information:

'Why do you ask, Bella?'

'Because--I never have secrets from you, papa--he referred to his interview in a very remarkable manner in the conservatory.'

'Did he propose to you?'

'No, papa,' said Bella, colouring painfully now; 'but he nearly--very nearly did so.'

'A nice move towards paying off the mortgages truly!' said Mr. Chevenix, with a rather contemptuous laugh.

'He _condescended_ to express his love for me,' thought Bella, 'and a proposal would, of course, have followed; he would seek to marry me that thereby the encumbrances might be cleared from his estate!'

Her thoughts were very bitter indeed, for now most anxious doubts of the purity and honesty of Jerry's intentions were implanted in her mind; and yet she loved Jerry on one hand quite as much as she--honest girl--derided and despised the inborn and constitutional selfishness of his haughty mother, and all such 'aristocratic snobs,' as she called them in the angry bitterness of her heart. But she resolved to show Jerry her indifference, and treat him as she thought he deserved to be.

'His selfishness apart, it is the old story,' she muttered, 'the old story of the earthen pot that sought to swim with those of brass. In his mind, I suppose, I am the earthenware.'

At other times, when her real regard for Jerry prevailed, she would think--

'Oh, that papa would throw these horrid mortgages in the fire, that I might be poor, and so test the truth of Jerry's love for me. How strange that my money and his lands should keep us apart; but for this involvement, would he ever have loved me for myself alone?'

If Jerry actually meant all he said, he was certainly not influenced by his mother, whose frigid hauteur to Bella was never concealed; and, if he did mean it, she, Bella Chevenix, might be mistress of Wilmothurst, and send Lady Wilmot to vegetate at the dower house of Langley Park; but to accept him would be at the price of lowering herself to the level on which he received her.

'No, no,' thought Bella, bitterly, as she recalled what she deemed Jerry's most galling speech; 'the derision and contempt of the world you live in shall never be excited by hearing my name coupled with yours, Captain Wilmot.'

Hitherto Jerry had paid her great, very great and marked attention, but until the night of the ball, and with it that ill-omened _tête-à-tête_ in the conservatory, he had gone no farther.

Should she pay a ceremonious call with her father now, or simply send her card to Lady Wilmot?

Bella was sorely perplexed--pride struggled with love--so she went for an afternoon call after the recent festivity, but resolved to be guarded; and, while giving Jerry no opportunity of recurring to the past, show him how utterly she was indifferent to him.

On riding over to Wilmothurst, she and her father were received by Lady Wilmot and 'Cousin Emily' in the drawing-room, from whence Jerry--greatly to her relief--drew her father and Bevil Goring away to his own particular sanctum, and she was left with the two ladies, whose conversation after the prospects of the weather and events of the ball were discussed, speedily took a turn that poor Bella knew was meant for her edification.

'You made quite a conquest of Lord Twesildown, Miss Chevenix,' said Lady Wilmot, with one of her company smiles.

'And of Jerry too,' added Miss Wilmot.

'We are old friends,' said Bella, faintly smiling.

'But Jerry is such a flirt!' exclaimed Lady Wilmot, remembering the visit to the conservatory. 'He has been a worry to me ever since he left Eton, and then I was only too glad to get him off to his regiment.'

'Why?'

'The silly boy fell quite in love with a little waiting-maid I had. He regards all women as puppets, and is never in earnest about any of them; seven years of him, I fear, wouldn't prove that Jerry had a heart.'

'Jerry always burns much incense at some shrine or other,' added Cousin Emily (at whose shrine he had never burned any); 'his goddess generally changes with the season or the locality; and we all know how in country quarters the most silly things are developed.'

'To make love to the lips that are near has always been poor silly Jerry's way. He is such an incorrigible flirt!'

Bella knew quite enough of the world to know what prompted these remarks, and many more that followed, together with the memory of a subtle, soft, and sympathetic manner towards herself that galled her by its implication.

With all her apparent sweetness of manner, Cousin Emily was a good hater; so she hated Bella Chevenix, and felt that if she could traverse Jerry's too probable love affair with, or penchant for, that young lady she would do so; she was too well-bred, or too careful, to show her hand, and yet she showed a dexterity almost devilish in implanting in Bella's mind serious thoughts of poor Jerry, and of adding to, or confirming, those which existed there already.

There was a slight, yet decided contraction of Bella's forehead as she listened to these speeches; a slight twitching, too, of the lovely lips; but a proud disdain of the speakers was chiefly what she felt.

Lady Wilmot could detect that much of Bella's natural verve and vivacity were gone; yet she was compelled, mentally, to admit that Bella was a splendid-looking girl--bright, beautiful, and graceful to a degree--as she sat there in her well-fitted riding habit, than which few costumes are more becoming to a pretty woman.

During a country-house visit of nearly half an hour she thought she had heard enough, and more than enough, of Jerry's fickleness and flirtations, and rose to withdraw; but a storm of snow rendered departure impossible just then; her own and her father's horse had been taken round to the stable-yard; she had now the dread of being perhaps some hours in the society of Jerry, and deeply deplored her weakness in coming, feeling that she would require some art to show the indifference she had resolved to exhibit; thus, when the gentlemen joined them again, she spoke almost exclusively to Bevil Goring and Lord Twesildown, or remained silent, for she was intensely anxious to be gone.

If the usually gay Bella said little generally in Lady Wilmot's presence, she observed keenly, and her somewhat shy and haughty manner to her hostess was to a certain extent assumed, as the result of her secret resentment of the mode in which that dame was disposed to view and treat her.

'Cousin Emily' had been more than once painfully conscious that when 'the agent's daughter' was present she was relegated completely to the background, and that even Jerry cared not to flirt or make fun with her, so much was he absorbed in Bella Chevenix; and, though in some respects rather a nice girl, she began to conceive, as we have said, an animosity against her, and to consider how she could bring about a rupture between them before Jerry's leave of absence expired. 'We do not,' says a writer, 'resort to such clumsy expedients as daggers and poisoned bowls in the nineteenth century; but vindictive people deal out as cruel reprisals, even now-a-days, in good society, though it is etiquette to receive the fatal thrust with an easy smile, and wrestle with your anguish in the silence of your chamber.'

But to Emily's great surprise she found that Jerry and Miss Chevenix scarcely addressed each other; that there was a complete change in their bearing; that the latter chatted gaily with Goring and others, and seemed at times utterly oblivious of Jerry's presence.

She was much exercised in her mind by this discovery. What did it import?

Jerry seemed reserved and _distrait_, while at times Miss Chevenix seemed gayer than ever, and when she was in the billiard-room with him, Goring, and Twesildown, and ever so many more men, she actually acted somewhat like a romp, while showing how many times she could hit running off the red ball--'a nice accomplishment for a young lady!' as Lady Wilmot remarked when she was told of it after.

But all the gentlemen were enchanted with Bella, and were full of admiration at the grace and contour of her figure as she handled her cue with hands of matchless form and whiteness; and when she did take her departure it was Twesildown that assisted her to mount, and adjusted her skirt and reins, but Jerry remained behind in the _porte-cochère_, and simply lifted his hat, while a heavy load lay on his heart. Her reception of his love-making on the one hand, her wounded pride on the other, and the knowledge that she was under the keen and cynical eyes of Lady Wilmot and his cousin, had combined to make the protracted visit a most painful one to both. So two of the actors in our little drama separated, sore with each other and bitter in heart--no longer _en rapport_.

'I am glad that girl is gone at last,' remarked his mother. 'She is not fit for polished society, or to associate with Emily.'

'I have heard,' said that young lady, 'that when at Brighton she tried to become a professional beauty, by having her photo in every shop-window.'

'How wonderfully well you well-bred women can make those you hate or envy feel that you look down upon them,' said Jerry, angrily.

'I have no doubt she feels amply compensated for all that by the flattery and attention of the gentlemen; she is quite a kind of garrison beauty,' retorted Emily.

'Why are all your remarks on that girl so dashed with vinegar--decided Chili?' asked Jerry.

'She gives herself airs far above her station in life.'

'Tush; we are all descended from Adam and Eve--a gardener and his wife.'

'You will never convince me that there is not good and bad blood in this world,' exclaimed Lady Wilmot.

'Bravo, mater--cast the scheme of creation anew! What are the odds so long as we are happy. But I think the time has now come when you should know the influence this young lady's father may have in our affairs.'

Jerry now put before his horrified mother--horrified to hear of their necessity--the matter of the mortgages, and the full extent of these, and urged that she should show Bella some more marked attention, and less hauteur or supercilious indifference, and have her more often at the mansion house, to the guests at which she--a handsome girl, full of natural gaiety, and with a decided turn for charades, _tableaux-vivants_, private theatricals, lawn tennis, and games of all kinds--would prove invaluable.

But Lady Wilmot heard him in silence, with a knit of her pencilled eyebrows and a droop in the corners of her handsome mouth. She could only think of these horrible mortgages, and the awful humiliation of half the estate being in the hands of Mr. Chevenix.

'The estate seems to be quite slipping from me,' said Jerry, after a gloomy pause.

'Slipping?'

'Yes, it is guineas to gooseberries that the rest will follow Langley Park and so forth.'

'Terrible to think--not to be thought of at all! Why, the estate has been the home of the Wilmots for four hundred years!'

'We can never recover what has been lost.'

'Unless you make a wealthy marriage, Jerry dear--such as you have every right to look forward to.'

Jerry shrugged his shoulders, and pulled dreamily at his cigar after flicking the white ash off it.

'Let the mortgaged land go!' he exclaimed. 'I do not mean to dedicate my life by clearing that for others, which others did not clear for me.'

'Jerry!'

'Remember, mater dear, I have had only a little, and not all, to do in bringing matters to this pass with Wilmothurst, and I decline to act the part of a family martyr.'

'What will society say?'

'Society be hanged! I have read in a book, and I know it to be truth, that "Society at its best will entertain you if you amuse it, and will drop you, as a rule, upon the first suspicion of your wanting a twenty-pound note. Society saps your energy, snaps your finances, and half-a-dozen good attorneys are fifty times more valuable acquaintances than half the peerage would be at present."

'Where on earth do you pick up such detestable opinions, Jerry Wilmot?' exclaimed his mother, holding up her white hands in dismay, while she began seriously to consider where a suitable bride with a long purse could be found and urged upon his attention.

He meanwhile was chiefly engaged in remembering how, at the ball, Miss Chevenix had--after that rather sensational interview in the conservatory--gone off at once into an incipient flirtation with 'that utter oaf,' young Twesildown; but where is the woman who, believing herself to be treated as Bella thought she had been, would have thrown away a chance of retaliation and revenge, when a handsome young man of rank seemed disposed to devote himself to her?