Chapter V: The Astute Mrs. Vyner

L'epoux retint cette leçon par cœur.
Onc il ne fut une plus forte dupe
Que ce vieillard, bon homme au demeurant.
LAFONTAINE.--_Contes._

On returning to the hall, Meredith Vyner found a letter from Cecil. He retired into his study; for he was one of those who fancy that you cannot possibly read anything with attention elsewhere than in a study. Having deliberately adjusted his spectacles, and taken a liberal pinch, he began the perusal.

Its contents may easily be guessed. It was very penitent, very clever, contained two adroit quotations from 'Horace,' and a well-worked-up petition for pardon. Blanche signed it with him, and added a pretty little postscript of her own.

Mrs. Meredith Vyner having learned from Rose that a letter had arrived, the handwriting of which looked like Cecil's, hastened to join her husband, whom she found not only in his own study, but in what is usually termed a "brown study." He was sitting in an easy-chair. His body slightly bent forward; the spectacles shifted from his nose to his forehead, one arm resting on the inner part of his thigh, the pendent hand grasping the opened letter, the other arm resting on the table, the hand caressing his snuff-box.

"So you have had a letter from your son-in-law?" she said, as she entered.

He handed it to her. She read it slowly. On looking into his face as she returned it to him, she saw that he had forgiven them.

"A very clever epistle," she said; "very clever. And of course you grant the pardon. They know that very well. They were quite sure of that when they ran away, otherwise Cecil would not have been such a fool; but he knew your weakness--knew how easily you were to be managed, and was quite sure that _I_ should never oppose him."

Meredith Vyner took a pinch, angrily.

"Shall we have them to live with us? I dare say that is what they expect--and, perhaps, it would be the best. Or do you intend making them an allowance?"

Meredith Vyner took three pinches, rapidly.

"Do you know, dear, I think, perhaps, it would be as well not to relent at once, because it will be such a precedent. Keep them waiting a little. They will be all the more grateful when it does come."

"And _who_ said it was to come at all?" asked the indignant Vyner.

"I took that for granted."

"Yes, yes, of course, for granted. Everybody seems to take things in my house _for granted_. _I'm_ not to be considered. _My_ wishes are not to be consulted. And yet I believe I am master here--I may be wrong--but I fancy this house is mine."

His wife smiled inwardly, as she added, "And your children's."

"How my children's?" he sharply asked. "It is none of theirs; it will not even be theirs at my death. Theirs, indeed!"

Mrs. Meredith Vyner knew perfectly well the effect to be produced by her apparently careless phrases, and played upon her husband's mind with a certainty of touch highly creditable to her skill.

"I am surprised, my dear Mary, to hear you talk so. For granted, indeed! No; it shall not be for granted; it shall not be at all. I will be master in my own house. I have already submitted too much to my daughters; and they shall find I will do so no more. A pretty thing, indeed, to brave her father, to bring a slur upon her name by running away with a penniless adventurer: a man I don't like; a mere superficial dabbler, who pretends to understand 'Horace,' and is quite at sea with respect to the Horatian metres. He'll never do anything; never be anything. And yet he expects that he has only to write me a whining letter, and all will be forgotten. He doesn't think it possible I can refuse. No, no; takes my pardon for granted. But it is not granted. It shall not be."

"This will soon blow over, I'm not at all afraid for my dear Blanche. You will not be able to hold out long."

"There is your mistake."

"We shall see, we shall see," said she, with a tone of most expressive certainty of the truth of what she said, and left the room.

Meredith Vyner was seldom angry; but the provoking confidence of his wife, in what he chose to consider her opinion of his weakness, made him furious against the cause thereof--the offending Cecil.

From what impulses spring human actions! Here is a man delighted by the opportunity afforded him of forgiving his offending child, and ready to clasp her to his bosom. That is the natural instinct of his heart. His wife comes; and, by pretending to urge the very act he is about to perform, by choosing to assume it as a settled thing, and insinuating thereby, that, from his known weakness, everybody must also assume it, she stifles the parental feeling, awakens his miserable vanity, and makes him exhibit his weakness by the very action which he intends as a proof of his fortitude and decision.

Resolved to show how mistaken those were who fancied that he was to be led by the nose, he sat down, and wrote this brief, and, as he thought, crushing reply:--

"WYTTON HALL, 10_th Nov._ 1840.

"SIR,

"You have made an error in your calculations, I am not so easily bamboozled as you imagine. You are very clever, I have no doubt; but,--

Vix illigatum te triformi
Pegasus expediet chimæræ.

And with this I close all correspondence between us.

"Yours truly,
"H. S. MEREDITH VYNER."

"That quotation is rather happy," he said to himself, as he folded the letter. Indeed, so pleased was he at its felicity, that it would now have cost him some pangs not to send the letter; he could not afford to lose such an effect.

Mrs. Meredith Vyner was very shortly after found sobbing in her room, by Rose. To the anxious inquiries of the affectionate girl, at first no other reply could be elicited than--

"Oh, my poor Blanche! poor Blanche!" accompanied by fresh sobs.

After about five minutes of this irritating and inexplicit grief, Rose managed to ascertain that Blanche was not to be forgiven.

"Impossible!" she exclaimed. "Oh, I will go this instant, and intercede for her!"

"Do, my dear--do--lose no time! And, Rose, don't mention that you have seen me. Pretend to know nothing, except that Cecil has written; and ask your papa when we are to see them, just as if it were a matter of course that he would forgive them."

"I will."

She went. Her success may be imagined; Vyner stormed at her; said, she was just like her sister, and had been so long accustomed to regard him as a cipher, that she could not even suppose him capable of punishing such an act of wretched disobedience.

On going to bed that night, Meredith Vyner seemed to have become greatly pacified by the day's reflections.

"It is rather a good letter that, of Cecil's," he said. "Well expressed."

"Very," answered his wife. "Perhaps rather too well expressed for sincerity. But he's a clever fellow. I always liked him. He is so gay and rattling."

"Better qualities in a guest than a son-in-law!"

"Humph! That depends----"

"His first quotation from Horace, too, is very well chosen--pat and pointed. Not so good, though, as mine to him! Egad! that was a stinger. Still, his deserves praise."

"I rather suspect, dear, that he made Horace a go-between. He pretended to be very interested in the poet, in order that he might woo the editor's daughter."

"No, indeed, there you wrong him. He came to me at first purely out of love for Horace. He took great interest in my commentary--I must do myself the justice to say that it is a little out of the common--and he seemed to think so. He was never tired of it, till his head got stuffed full of foolish love nonsense. When he began hankering after Blanche, he left off reading my commentary. Still I cannot deny that the great attraction first was the study of my notes and emendations."

She saw that he was getting on dangerous ground, and therefore threw out this lasso:

"Well, well, he knows your weak point, and by that he will gain the day. You won't long be able to disown a son-in-law who can quote Horace _àpropos_. So that if your natural goodness doesn't make you relent, Horace will!"

"You think so; but you are greatly mistaken."

In this way she from time to time restored his faltering resolution. Whenever symptoms of relenting exhibited themselves, she contrived to banish them by irritating his vanity. Shakspeare, that great master of the human heart, has, in the third act of _Othello_, anticipated the scenes which are perpetually recurring between a cool, calculating scoundrel and his writhing, unsuspecting victim. With consummate art, Iago always manages to keep before Othello's mind, the very idea he pretends to banish or to palliate; and directly he sees his victim relenting, as thoughts of tenderness for Desdemona arise, Iago contrives that the very tenderness shall add intensity to his sense of wrong. For instance, Othello says:--

I do not think but Desdemona's honest.

Whereupon Iago, with brutal-seeming frankness, says:--

Long live she so! and long live you to think so!
_Oth._ And yet how nature erring from itself.
_Iago._ Ay, there's the point--As--to be bold with you--
Not to affect many proposed matches, &c.

With somewhat of the diabolical art Iago used, did the sylph-like humpback play upon her husband. And when she began to fear that, after all, she might lose the game, she adroitly changed her tactics and said:--

"It has occurred to me that there is a way of settling this difficulty. Do not countenance Blanche's disobedience--do not see her husband--but we can from time to time assist them secretly. I can give them money, as if from my own funds. You will not appear in the matter at all, and yet you will have the satisfaction of knowing they are not in want."

This seemed so admirably calculated to save his dignity, and yet to preserve Blanche from the more serious consequences of his refusal, that he gladly adopted the suggestion.

Having gained this point, Mrs. Meredith Vyner sallied forth to pay some visits to her poor.

The devil is not so black as he is painted. Mrs. Vyner had her good qualities: and she was worshipped in her village. No one was so liberal to the poor; no one looked after the schools with greater or more judicious care; no one was more active in benevolence. She not only did kind things, she said them also; and that is an element in benevolence many charitable people omit. She attended upon the sick; she comforted the sorrowing; she listened to their long stories; she gave them advice; she interested herself in their joys and sorrows.

From what we know of her, we shall not be altogether dupes of this benevolence: we shall not suppose it pure, unmixed kindness. But it would perhaps be grossly wronging her to believe that it was hypocrisy, that it had not some real good feeling at the bottom. Although we may, and not uncharitably, suppose there was some selfishness and ostentation in this care for the poor; we may also believe that she felt some of the real glow of generosity and delight in doing good. In the ordinary sense of the word, she had no "interest" in her conduct. She might have done her duty to the poor without going so far as she did. Their good opinion was of no "use" to her. Examine it how you will, you can discover none of the "interested motives" usually supposed to influence the benevolence of selfish people.

Such a character is a paradox; but only a paradox, because we are so prone to regard human nature as very simple and _all of a piece_, when, in truth, it is, as I have remarked before, marvellously complex. Mrs. Meredith Vyner was wicked, cruel, unloving, and selfish; it would be a contradiction in terms, to add that she was also kind, generous, and benevolent; but it is perfectly true that she would occasionally perform kind, generous, and benevolent actions perfectly disinterested. The secret I take to be this. Her cruelty was not wanton: it always had reference to some selfish object. But on occasions completely alien to her interest or her vanity, she could be kind; and being an impulsive, imaginative woman where she _was_ kind, she was strikingly so, thereby turning it into a thing of _éclat_, and so gratifying her vanity.

It was said of himself, by Benjamin Constant, "_Je puis faire de bonnes et fortes actions; je ne puis avoir de bons precédés._" This is a revelation of the profound depths of certain minds; and Mrs. Vyner belonged to that class. In a moment of enthusiasm she might even have forgotten her selfishness--or rather have staked all the gratification of her selfishness on the triumph of one moment; but she could not have completed her sacrifice, she could not have gone through with any line of conduct after it had lost its _éclat_; above all, she could not, in the ordinary transactions of life, have been generous, thoughtful, kind--she could not go through "the little nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love" which constitute real goodness.

Her conduct towards the poor seems to be thus explained: they did not stand in her light; nothing she could do, or omit to do for them could influence her interests. But they were picturesque objects which struck her imagination, and appealed to her protection. A little trouble and a little money made her their benefactress. The pleasure of doing good was a pleasure she could appreciate, and it could be purchased for so little.

If any one supposes from the foregoing remarks, that I have what is called _explained away_ her benevolence, he is mistaken. There are hundreds quite as selfish, who cannot appreciate the pleasure of doing good; and she is so far their superior.