Chapter XIX: Arthur Receives Absolution

Arthur Vavasour had, as the reader has already learned, found little difficulty in persuading the kind-hearted, unsuspicious man whose colossal fortune had been made in the manufacturing districts, and who entertained exalted ideas (very convenient ones on this occasion) of the honour of a high-born English gentleman, that he, Arthur Vavasour, was entirely free from spot or blemish, or any such thing as regarded his future son-in-law’s intimate acquaintance with John Beacham and his two yearlings.

Old Dub, as he was familiarly called, inhabited, during his annual sojourn in the country, a magnificent “mansion” on the western borders of Sandyshire. It was an abode that had once belonged to a Duke, and princely hospitality had been, during the residence of the aforesaid nobleman, for a lengthened period dispensed within the noble walls of Fairleigh Manor. His Grace, however, coming--according to nineteenth-century slang--“to grief,” the place was degraded to the hammer, being purchased by the solvent Mr. Duberly for a sum that would have liquidated any debts save those of a Duke or a crowned head, but which was barely sufficient to satisfy the more clamorous creditors of the quondam owner of Fairleigh.

The immediate change for good effected in the neighbourhood through the abiding therein of a wealthy proprietor, who paid his bills and “lived cleanly as a gentleman should,” was very speedily evident. It might be supposed, too, that the satisfaction at that change would have been great and general. This, however, was far from being the case. There is a certain magic in the very name of _Duke_, and the “neighbourhood,” clinging, in a kind of stupid, unreasoning way to old associations, old habits, and traditions, took exception at old Dub; and for a long while either treated him as a usurper, or consented, as it were under protest, to admit him among their intimates. This was the more extraordinary, inasmuch as the new-comer showed very little inclination to hide his talents, _id est_ his pieces of gold, in a napkin. On the contrary, he not only kept open house, and was ten times as genial as the “Dook,” but he owned (as we have shown) a very nice-looking daughter, who was withal (for Mr. Duberly was a widower) the heiress to his wealth; whereas the “Duchess” girls were plain young women with high noses, whose only fortune was the pedigree on which their parent had brought as much discredit as it is possible for a duke to entail upon his belongings.

But notwithstanding all his manifest advantages, “old Dub,” the merchant-prince, who paid his way, employed the people, and was a blessing to his neighbourhood, found it up-hill work to conciliate the goodwill of individuals whose social tastes had been refined--ripened, indeed, so to speak--under the sunshine of ducal notice, and who had enjoyed the privilege of ducal proximity. By slow degrees, however, the thorough excellence of the man told against the spurious advantages of position; the memory of the princely banquets few and far between as compared to those offered to their acceptance by the new owner of Fairleigh, faded away from the minds of the invited. “Dub’s” wines were excellent, and his daughter’s face (to say nothing of her being an heiress) was fair to see; so in process of time, the descendant of the Manchester warehouseman took his place--no longer under protest--amongst the magnates of the land; and the dark-eyed, lively Sophy was sought for in marriage by the great ones of the earth.

“Say no more about it, my dear boy; say--no--more,” the kind-hearted old man had said to Arthur when the latter, for the first time after Horace Vavasour’s vicarious explanation, found himself in the library at Fairleigh; “say--no--more;” and, as he spoke, pausing between each word as if to emphasise their meaning, he pressed his wrinkled hand on the young man’s shoulder. “I’m almost sorry I wrote to Milady at all. I suppose,” rather wickedly, “that it made the deuce and all of a kick-up, eh? As for Sophy, I can tell you, I’ve had a pretty time with her! I wish you joy of that young lady, Arthur!” and he laughed heartily, the good old man, at the excellence and originality of his joke. “And so you’re off to the Pembertons? old family friends, you say--All right; just as well to keep those sort of people up, I daresay, though I can’t say I have many of the kind to trouble _me_. No young ladies there though, eh, to worry Sophy? You young London fellows are not always to be trusted,” and again he laughed--a genial hearty laugh that did one good to hear.

“No, indeed,” Arthur said, joining, though rather feebly, in the merriment. “All that sort of thing is over for me now. I shouldn’t care to go to Sir Richard’s, only it is an old engagement; and if I don’t go now--”

“You won’t be allowed to later, you rogue! Is that what you mean--a previous engagement to Miss Sophy, eh? Well, well, my dear boy, do as you like about it all--or rather, I should say, what Sophy likes. And now be off with you. You’ve given more time already than she’ll think right to the old fellow, and you’ll find her in the conservatory, I fancy, or, if not, in her own flower-garden. By George!” continued the old man, rubbing his forehead with a recollection half comic and half sorrowful of a certain interview with his daughter, whose tears he was never known to be proof against, and who had shown herself a true woman on the occasion of her lover’s temporary eclipse,--“by George! what a way she was in, to be sure! I could hardly fancy it was my little Sophy, the slip of a girl that I was dancing on my knee no longer ago than yesterday, as it seems! And now she’s a woman, and able to take her own part; ay, and _your_ part too, my lad. God bless her! I could have told her then, only I didn’t like to, she was so rampageous, and it doesn’t do to spoil the creatures, that I was more than half sorry I’d called you over the coals. But on the whole, Arthur, it’s just as well as it is; and between ourselves, my boy, although I don’t know that my brother the parson, who is going to splice you and Sophy, wouldn’t call me an old fool for saying it, I’m not sure that I don’t like you the better for what’s past and gone. You might, you know--and I’m told that many a young man would have done such a thing--you might have kept it to yourself that you’d given that long sum for one of John Beacham’s yearlings; for it was a long sum, eight hundred pounds, I think your brother said it was; and terribly like gambling, you must own, it looked! However, that is all over now, and you are well out of it. I am sure you think so too, eh?”

Arthur hesitated a little ere he answered this leading question. For some reason, which it is not necessary at this stage of the story to explain, he was not particularly partial to talking of that famous colt, known in the betting-ring, and in sporting circles generally, as Rough Diamond. It is just possible that he was not quite so glad to be what Mr. Duberly called “out of it” as that gentleman seemed to think; still, he contrived to answer cheerfully enough that “it was all right,” and that he hoped that Norcott would have good luck with the brute now he had got him.

“Ha, ha!” laughed the cheerful old man. “So Roughrider, or whatever his name is, has come to be called a brute, eh? The way of the world, sir; the way of the world! Whatsoever is our own is perfection; but directly it becomes our friend’s--poof!”--and he snapped his fingers significantly--“it isn’t worth a brass farthing! Seen the sort of thing, by George! a hundred times. But I say, Arthur,” lowering his voice to a whisper, “about this Colonel Norcott; what and who is he? I’ve a sort of idea that I know something about him. Didn’t he go to the colonies, or the dogs, or some confounded place? I’m a bad hand at remembering that kind of thing; couldn’t even when I was a young man; and now I might as well try and recollect who built the Monument.”

Again, as at the mention of Colonel Norcott in connection with that unlucky steed Rough Diamond, Arthur looked ill at ease. He answered readily enough, however, to the effect that he believed Colonel Norcott had formerly been in the Irish Greys, but that it was long before _his_ time, and that he (Arthur) knew very little in any way about the purchaser of John Beacham’s colt.

“In the Irish Greys, was he?” Mr. Duberly said thoughtfully. “Ah, that reminds me! How little it takes sometimes to do that kind of thing! Colonel Norcott was the man--correct me if I’m wrong--who had something to do with an advertisement. Answered one from a respectable young woman, eh? and--ah yes! It all comes home to me now. A bad business--a shocking bad business indeed!”

Arthur reflected a little, and then said that he was afraid, from some things he had heard, that Colonel Norcott was the identical man existing for life under the kind of cloud alluded to by Mr. Duberly. “I don’t think that I ever heard the particulars,” he said. “I fancy his wife left him, or was an objectionable person, or something extenuating of that kind. She is dead now, fortunately for him, and he has married again, I fancy--some colonial person, whom they say is rather nice.”

“The triumph of hope over experience, eh?” remarked Mr. Duberly, who was rather fond of extracting from the limited stores of his memory sundry quotations, ancient as they were classic. “But what has the man been doing down here? Is he in society, or is he not? He is a fine-looking fellow enough for a middle-aged man. I saw him one day driving what you call a ‘trap’ in the High-street at Leigh, and asked who he was. What is his connection, I wonder--for I suppose he has one--with Sandyshire?”

“O, as to that, there is reason enough for his hanging about here,” said Arthur, glad, as it seemed, to offer a legitimate guarantee for Colonel Norcott’s quasi-respectability. “The Norcotts are, or I should rather say _were_, a county family. Fred Norcott’s father was a rich man, and his mother, who is nearly related to the Pembertons, has a comfortable jointure, luckily for her, as her son (there was only him) managed to get rid of everything else very early in his career, I fancy.”

“And lives now upon his wits, I suppose?”

“Partly; and then I imagine his mother helps him a little; not much, though, for she is married again to a Mr. Baker, who is not particularly attached to Colonel Fred. The Bakers--he is a retired solicitor, or something of that kind--live in a pretty little place about three miles the other side of Leigh; and the fact of its lying convenient to the Gawthorpe racecourse is quite sufficient to account for Fred Norcott turning up occasionally in these parts. And now, sir, having told you all I know and suspect about the family, I think I may as well go and say good-bye to Sophy.”

Leaving the placidly happy old man comfortably ensconced, newspaper in hand, in his favourite arm-chair by the wide open French window of the library, Arthur Vavasour went in search of his betrothed. He knew as well almost as if the interview were over what would take place between him and that tender, unassuming, rather commonplace little girl (as I am afraid he called her) who was waiting for him in the magnificent conservatory, book in hand, but without a passing idea, poor child! save of the man who gave her in return so little of his love, so small a portion of his waking as well as sleeping thoughts. There was none--and the want in _her_ case was a serious misfortune--of the “delightfully capricious,” the “charmingly various,” the “tantalisingly mysterious,” in the character of Sophy Duberly. Her nature, which was simple and guileless as a child’s, could be read at a glance in the soft brown eyes, honest, tender, and trusting--eyes which are rarely to be seen in a human countenance, but which those who are addicted to canine friendships can recollect in the head of more than one faithful beast which has lain at his feet, and been unto him as a brother. Coquetry, that useful woman’s weapon, was an utterly unknown “arm” to this simple-hearted heiress. The most practised teacher in the female art of self-defence would have failed to make Sophy understand the handling of that perilous instrument. Her “yea” was “yea,” and her “nay” “nay,” and somewhat “yea,” “nay,” it is to be feared that her variety-loving _intended_ sometimes found her.

In person, this humble heiress to countless thousands was quite sufficiently attractive to have been loved--as all women in her position naturally desire to be--for herself alone. Her features were not regular, nor can her eyes be described as either large or “liquid;” but her figure was fine, her complexion good, her teeth white, and her _tout ensemble_ decidedly effective. She worshipped Arthur Vavasour with a devotion which was alike unmerited and inexpedient. At Rome,--where he first became acquainted with the millionaire English _mees_, at whose feet penniless princes with titles dating from the days of the Tribunes laid their pedigrees humbly down, and where the money of the Manchester warehouseman proved the “open sesame” to the highest and the most exclusive society,--Arthur Vavasour had taken a high place amongst the many aspirants for Miss Duberly’s favourable notice. He was his mother’s son, and that mother, at present in possession of an income of some thirty thousand pounds per annum, must, in a very few years (for the particulars of the Earl of Gillingham’s will were in the world very generally known), abdicate--or rather, be very unpleasantly deposed in favour of her eldest son. With such prospects as these, it was impossible to attribute mercenary motives to that handsome, agreeable _pretendant_; and that Mr. Vavasour could be thinking of marrying for money was an idea that never once presented itself, either to Mr. Duberly or his daughter. It was pleasant to believe that the attentions of one in Mr. Vavasour’s position must of necessity be so purely (as was patent to the world) disinterested. To Sophy, who had been duly warned against the mercenary nature of all human motives, the conviction that Arthur was an exception to the general rule was especially delightful. After all that she had heard, and read, and seen--after the raids by impecunious aristocrats into the regions where the richer ten thousand guarded their well-earned gold, of which she had more than once been herself the destined victim--what wonder that this middle-class young lady, who was not (what girl of any promise is?) without her small ambitions, should have seen in Arthur Vavasour the realisation of all her fondest dreams, her highest aspirations?

She made no secret of her preference. An indulged and petted only child, Sophia Duberly had never known the necessity, scarcely even the advisableness, of sometimes keeping her feelings to herself; and so it followed that Arthur knew full well, long before the avowal had been made in words, that the rich heiress loved him.

It was well for him that Miss Duberly could not guess how very slight was the effect that the discovery produced upon him. Well, too, for him that the girl to whom he was about to plight his troth knew, in common with all the world, so very little of the actual state of affairs at Gillingham Castle. They were a proud race, those Vavasours; their pride--Arthur’s, at least, taking the turn of resenting in silence his mother’s meanness, love of power--call it what you will--which led her to keep him, the heir-apparent, so “short,” that he was _driven_ (that was the young man’s way of putting it) to run in debt, and eventually to marry for money; results which were of course intensely odious and “disgusting.”

The heir of Gillingham was descending in a very compromising manner from his pedestal in thus mixing his blue blood, and being brought down to the dull dignity of a “family-man,” by an enforced union with the Manchester man’s daughter. Arthur had, however, no resource but to submit. In silence (with the single exception of his almost unbounded confidence in his brother Horace) this self-indulgent, self-pitying young English gentleman bore his cross, inwardly chafing the while against the “shifts” to which he was reduced, and the self-denial that he was sometimes called upon to practise.

It was not till Arthur was firmly established in the good graces of the merchant-prince--not till he was, in short, one of themselves--that he ventured to open the eyes of Mr. Duberly to the peculiarities of Lady Millicent’s character, and the unjust as well as unmotherly conduct of which he was himself a victim. As he had fully expected would be the case, this confession had no power to shake his hold on the good opinion of the unsuspecting Duberly. As a matter of course, Lady Millicent (whose pride and “stand-aloof” ways had already caused her to be no favourite with the plain-spoken, independent millionaire) came in for her full share of invective, and of a contemptuous ridicule of which, had she known of its existence, she would have strongly disapproved; but it is more than probable that “old Dub” liked his future son-in-law even better after this rather humiliating confession than he had done before. The love of patronising and protecting is inherent in most human breasts; and fortunate, indeed, is it that so it has been ordained to be, for where very frequently, were it otherwise, would the feeble and the friendless be? The love, then, of patronising being one of our nature’s idiosyncrasies, and Mr. Duberly not being _un_naturally constituted, that excellent man felt more than ever disposed to act a father’s part towards the “good-looking young fellow” of whom his only child, his dearly-beloved little Sophy, was so fond.

With regard to that simple-minded and rather benighted young lady, who was entirely ignorant of the great moral truth that over-indulgence is equally prejudicial to the grown-up among mankind as it is to children of a smaller growth, she scarcely knew how to make enough, (after the knowledge of what she considered his ill-usage,) of Arthur Vavasour. The way that she petted and coaxed, and yielded to, and made much of this not particularly humble-minded young gentleman, was, as the Yankees say, a caution. It was very nice, of course, and sweet, and flattering, and the object of all this worship ought, by rights, to have demonstrated unbounded gratitude, and have shown himself to be more deeply and ardently in love than ever; but for some reason or other--human nature is so thoroughly inscrutable that we can by no means account for this unsatisfactory result--Arthur’s affection for his unsuspecting and devoted _fiancée_ began to decrease in an inverse ratio to that which she so evidently entertained for him. Of this melancholy decadence he was himself, for a while, happily unconscious; indeed, it required the awakening within him of another love to arouse this _infidèle malgré lui_ to a proper sense of his position.

The conviction that he is bound to marry one woman while his feelings, passions--call them what you will--are wrapped up in another, can never be agreeable to any man. Arthur Vavasour was no practised dissembler, and it was fully as much as he found himself able to effect to prevent Sophia Duberly, during a stay of four-and-twenty hours, from discovering the truth--namely, that though he was with her in the body, his thoughts--alas, for her!--were far away.