Chapter VI: Not Quite for Money

“How like my mother to be patronising this wedding--just the thing she is certain to do! That sort of popularity costs nothing--not five shillings, or trust Milady for staying away.”

“O, but, Arthur, you forget the present,” said Kate Vavasour--“the present that cost, O, _such_ a quantity of money!--mamma did not say how much. But it’s a brooch like a bull’s-eye, only flat, with a white stripe across it; and it came from the jeweller’s at Leigh, with several others to choose from, and mamma kept the biggest. She said it was ‘just the thing,’ but I can’t say that I admired it much.”

“I should think not,” said her brother scornfully--“a wretched Scotch pebble as a wedding present for the wife of such a tenant as John Beacham--a man whose father and grandfather were born and bred on the land! Such a favourite of my father’s too;” and Arthur Vavasour, who had just returned from a nine-months’ foreign tour, and who, in the company of a pleasant and amenable tutor, had lost for a time the memory of Lady Millicent’s “wholesome retrenchments,” made a mental resolve to contrast her niggardly _cadeau_ to Honor Blake with an offering of his own which would be more worthy of the bride’s acceptance. He and his favourite sister Kate, a lively girl, but without any great pretensions to beauty, and who, in Lady Millicent’s opinion, required a good deal of keeping under, were sauntering through the once beautifully kept conservatory, where now--infinitely to Arthur’s disgust--he could trace the same “odious system of dirty economy” which everywhere met his eye.

“It isn’t nice, certainly,” Kate said, stooping while she spoke to pick off the dead leaves of a neglected pelargonium; “I am afraid they will all think it so mean. Much better to have given nothing. However, I am glad we’re going; we so seldom do anything lively, that even this seems quite a change. Besides, Atty, you will like to see the bride. She was away last year with the Clay’s Farm children for change of air, after they had scarlet-fever,” continued Kate, who was a great picker-up of local news, a peculiarity in a young lady of “position,” for which Lady Millicent’s treatment of her children was in a great degree the cause. “You missed seeing her then, I remember. But, Arthur, do tell me, is there no chance of the Castle growing livelier, do you think? What a time it is now since things have been as they used to be! and then that dismal half-mourning! It can’t be,” lowering her voice, “for my poor father all this time. Don’t you think now, Arthur, that mamma will surely make _some_ change at Gillingham soon?”

“Can’t say,” said Arthur, throwing the end of the cigar he had been smoking upon the ill-cleaned mosaic pavement of the conservatory; “I never attempt either to understand my mother or to make the slightest guess as to what she is going to do. But about this wonderful beauty who is to be made a wife of to-day--who is she? And what do people know about her?”

“Not much, I believe. The Pembertons’ housekeeper, Mrs. Bainbridge, who has lived with them for ages, and who is a great friend of the Clays, recommended Miss Blake, who is her niece, to them as nursery governess to their children, and--”

“Governess, indeed! By Jove, what will that class of people come to next? However, I suppose it will be thought a civil thing to go and see John Beacham turned off. There never was a better fellow either in his line or out of it; and then, as I said before, he was such an uncommon favourite of my father.”

“Yes, wasn’t he?” Kate said eagerly. She was a little thoughtless child of twelve when Cecil Vavasour died; but the kind father, with his mild face and winning voice, lived in her memory still, had taught her to like and appreciate all that he, in his useful lifetime, had seemed to value. “Wasn’t dear papa fond of the Beachams? How often he used to trudge away over the fields, with the thick ash stick that stands in the corner of the inner hall in his hand, to visit the Beachams at the farm! Poor dear papa! he used to say that he placed John first of the few honest men he knew. But, Arthur dear,” and she put her arm coaxingly within her brother’s, “do you really think that Rhoda will come out this year, and--”

“And will Miss Katherine Vavasour, as a natural sequence to that event, beam out upon the London world the year following--a consummation so devoutly to be wished? Upon my word, Kitty, though I am pretty well up to your crafty ways and clever little dodges, you have come to the very last person in the world who is likely even to give a guess at my lady’s plans. And as to asking her--why she would think such questions, especially from the heir-apparent, to the last degree indelicate, presuming--in the worst possible taste, in short. But here comes Horace. He can, perhaps, throw some light upon the matter. He has twice the pluck that I have when it comes to tackling my lady. I don’t think, for some reason or other, that she hates him quite as much as she does me.--I say, old fellow,” he continued, as Horace Vavasour, a fair-complexioned, intelligent-looking young man, came loungingly towards them, with his hands thrust into his trousers-pockets, “do you happen to know anything of the prospects of this cheerful family of ours? Here is Kate, at sixteen and a half--isn’t that about the mark, eh, Kitty?--naturally crazy to know when there is any chance of her being married. Don’t laugh; it’s a serious business, as I have no doubt Rhoda thinks too, though she hasn’t the brass, like you, to ask leading questions on the subject. However, what do _you_ say it is to be? London, or no London? Husbands, or no husbands? It is really time that these poor girls should know their fate.”

Horace, thus appealed to, shook his head ominously. “I am as much in the dark as you can be,” was his unsatisfactory exordium. “Milady will be long enough before she either chooses confidants from among her children, or holds a _conseil de famille_ as to their individual hopes and wishes. In the mean time,” he added, stretching himself wearily, “what a bore this life is! I declare I would rather break stones upon the road than go on as we do at Gillingham. No creature except the clergyman and the London lawyer ever asked to the house, and my mother so awfully serious and gloomy! I declare, since the day when I was supposed to have finished my education, and when old Collins took his final leave with a handsome present of my father’s photograph as a testimony of my lady’s regard and esteem, I have never once enjoyed the unpurchasable luxury of a laugh. The best chance to get one is to spend an hour with Thady Nolan in the stables. He’s an importation since your time, Arthur, and I assure you, from personal experience, that you would find his society quite a resource. He is full of genuine Irish humour--quite a character in his way--and never, by any chance, takes liberties.”

“I am glad,” Arthur said, “that my mother hasn’t reduced the stable establishment to quite the same miserable footing as everything else about this miserable place. Individually, it doesn’t so much signify to me; not personally, I mean. When a man is going to be married--”

“Then it is true? O, Atty!” exclaimed Kate, and her eyes filled with tears, for she loved that prodigal and _tant soit peu_ unprincipled brother, of whose faults she knew so little, very dearly, and the idea of his marriage was, in some undefinable way, a blow to her.

“_True!_ Of course it is. What was there besides for me to do? There was that season in London, two years ago now--how time does fly!--when you were all living so quietly in the country here, and when I--but there’s no earthly use in going over it all again. All I ask of you is, whether you, Kate, or you, Horace, or anyone that knows us both, would suspect me of marrying Sophy Duberly, unless--unless I couldn’t help myself?”

“I can’t see that exactly,” Horace said. “She’s a very fine-looking girl, and always jolly, with plenty to say for herself. I only wish that I had the good fortune to make an impression on just such another. I like your talking like a victim, Arthur! Heiresses to twenty thousand a year are not as plenty as blackberries, and Sophy Duberlys don’t grow on every hedge, to be had for the picking.”

“Well, that’s true enough, and I daresay it will all answer very well. Sophy is, I believe, what is generally called a ‘nice girl,’ and has an idea that she is fond of me, which may, or may not, be an illusion. Of the two, father or daughter, I confess I think old Dub himself the best fellow. I like the house too. There’s a _laissez-aller_ about it that is perfectly delicious when contrasted with our home. There is not an atom of _gêne_ at Thanes Court. One may say and do and look as one likes at Mr. Duberly’s house. There are no cranky speeches; no domineering determination that only one person in the house is to lay down the law. I declare that if _our_ home had been the least like that--if our mother resembled in anything that jolly old boy at Thanes Court--I, at the unripe age of--under twenty-one--should probably not be about to tie myself for life--a thing to which, at present, I feel not the least inclination--to a young woman for whom at present--well, there is no use in being over-confidential--if Sophy were as lovely as the Calipegean Venus, or even as attractive and charming as John Beacham’s Irish bride, I shall probably not look much at her face when she has been my wife a year.

‘Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?’”

he repeated to himself as he walked slowly away through a rarely-used but admirably-proportioned billiard-room into an apartment on the ground floor, which, by prescriptive right, he considered as his own.

“Poor Arthur!” Horace said, when he and his sister were left alone; “I had no idea that he cared so little about her. I wonder what my mother will say when she hears it is all settled?”

“I wonder, too. Be glad, I should think: but she won’t say so, and will be angry because she was not told while it was going on. _You_ were, I suppose, you close, ill-natured, unbrotherly boy! Of course, those long letters from Atty while he was at Cannes, and which you kept so provokingly to yourself, were all about Sophy Duberly. Now, tell me, Horace--there’s a good, dear boy--didn’t he propose then? I am sure he did, and that he told you all about what he said to Sophy, and what she answered, and--”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Kate; _men_” (Horace was nineteen, and the _down_ was beginning to darken on his chin) “are not in the habit of wasting letter-paper on such nonsense. Arthur made running at Cannes, of course, but nothing was settled till he and the Duberlys met the other day in Paris. I am sure that no one ought to wonder at his marrying. People will stare, of course--I mean those who can’t look behind the scenes. They will think it extraordinary that the heir to such a property as my mother’s should marry when he is only one-and-twenty _for money_.”

“Not quite for money only. You said just now, yourself, that Sophy was nice--”

“Did I? Well, so she is; and if I were half as good-looking a fellow as Atty, I should look out for a girl a quarter as nice, with an eighth part of Sophy’s expectations; and if she accepted me, I should think myself a deuced lucky dog. Heigh ho! What an age it seems before the examination time! I wonder how long my mother thinks one can endure such a horrible existence as this.”

“It can’t last for ever,” Kate said; “and it is quite as bad for us as it is for you; and yet you never hear either Rhoda or me lamenting over our fate as you do over yours.”

“O, girls are different! Women are meant to live in the country, and stay at home.”

It was not the first time that Katherine Vavasour had listened to the enunciation of this popular aphorism, and, as usual, it provoked her excessively. In her opinion, the “lines” that had fallen to Horace were very pleasant compared to those hard ones which had been meted out to herself and her sister. He was permitted a certain kind of liberty, had a horse to ride, and provided that the hours for meals were not infringed on, or the family-prayer bell neglected, he was allowed to go and come pretty much as he liked. As regarded her daughters, however, Lady Millicent’s family rules and arrangements were far more strict. Since the simultaneous dismissal (for the flagrant offence of joint matrimonial attentions) of Mr. Collins and Kate’s steady middle-aged governess, Lady Millicent had deemed it her duty to still further circumscribe the narrow circle of her daughters’ pleasures. She was a woman who disliked trouble, so that a few “general orders,” such as that _no_ books from the circulating library were to be read, and no walks outside the park walls were to be taken, formed the staple of her very stringent form of government. Against these retrenchments, as well as against the daily dulness of their monotonous existence, Kate Vavasour (Rhoda was made of more submissive stuff) was perpetually chafing. She dreaded the moment, too, when Horace would be emancipated from the yoke which so sorely galled her own youthful shoulders. His education had been principally a home one, a private tutor having for the last three years been busily employed at the Castle in preparing the younger sons for the ordeal of a civil-service examination. Horace had been very impatient of the home restraints which during those three years had been imposed upon him. Often had he been seized with an almost irresistible longing to fly from the tedious sameness, the almost unendurable routine, of his home life. Had Lady Millicent been only tolerably sympathetic--had she entered the least into their feelings--been but a few degrees less hard, less self-engrossed, and less unwilling to allow her children a few of the pleasures to which young flesh believes itself to be heir--it is more than probable that Horace would have been less anxious to escape from an existence which after all contained, as in later years he was ready to acknowledge, so many of the elements of happiness. That he did not so endeavour to escape was owing partly to the affection of Horace Vavasour for his sisters, who were wont to protest with tears that they could not endure their fate if he, the only one who kept their house alive, were to desert them; and partly to the _habit_ of submission which had grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength. Before Lady Millicent’s second son also there was a road in life marked out--a point in the horizon on which his eyes and hopes were fixed. That point in the future was the competitive examination for which he had been so long and diligently preparing himself; that road in life was the one that led, through mental effort, as a “government servant,” to distinction. The career chosen for Horace Vavasour was that of a “public man;” how far an almost strictly private education was calculated to fit him for that career may remain an open question.