Chapter VIII: An Irritable Man

When we went downstairs, which I did at Mrs. Mordaunt’s request, after looking in the glass to see that no traces of tears were visible, we found Mr. Mordaunt in a towering passion--I mean _our_ Mr. Mordaunt, for Mr. Henry had just driven off on his return to London.

This was a great relief to me, for although I was determined to face him, yet I could not bear that he should perceive the effect his words had produced, for I could not succeed in appearing like the happy being I had been that very morning. It was also a relief to witness Mr. Mordaunt’s extreme anger. He was a good, worthy man in the main, but extremely passionate.

I had sometimes observed that his anger was a sort of safety-valve, or rather a kind of excitement, that seemed almost necessary to wake up his somewhat sluggish nature. I must do him the justice to say that his bad temper was generally aroused on the side of right, in the cause of the weak or oppressed, but it made him at times a disagreeable companion, and had once or twice startled his poor wife into hysterics.

And now, instead of endeavouring to comfort me as poor Mrs. Mordaunt had done, the sight of my pale face seemed to increase his rage. He broke forth into a strain of invective against everyone concerned in this extraordinary affair; and then took up the defence of each, and showed that under these wonderful circumstances they could scarcely have acted otherwise. Then he drew a vivid and, I afterwards thought, rather exaggerated picture of my wrongs and utterly hopeless condition.

“Absolutely penniless! Yes, of course she is, for her mother can have nothing. Those foreign marchesas and popish counts never have a sixpence. And what is she to do, will you allow me to ask you? And what are we to do? For of course the man, or boy, will want to come here, and there is an end of our tenancy. And _we_ can give the girl nothing.”

“Oh! Mr. Mordaunt, don’t say that!” said his wife, with tears in her eyes. “I am sure she’s welcome----”

“Welcome to what? Yes, very well, very well. But you always forget we have nothing beyond our lives. The greater part of our income is the jointure you got from your first husband, which of course dies with you; and all I have is strictly entailed on my nephew; and we have never saved a sixpence. On the contrary, when I die, there will be debts--as sure as I am alive there will.”

“Oh! dear, this is very sad, and----”

“Of course it is. Whichever way you look at it, it’s utterly hopeless. Then a girl brought up in luxury, who of course can do nothing even for herself, much less for her mother, thrown on the wide world, and obliged to become a governess, perhaps, as so many poor ladies have in these hard times; and probably not even fit for that.”

“Oh! but while we live, Mr. Mordaunt,” interposed his wife.

“While we live, indeed! And who can ensure our lives even till to-morrow morning? And where is the girl to go then, allow me to ask?”

“Why, there’s Aunt Jane,” suggested Mrs. Mordaunt, with a face of horror at the idea of her own and her husband’s certain death before the next morning.

“Aunt Jane, indeed!--why, that’s still worse. She has only quite a small annuity; and all she saves and contrives to pinch and screw out of it by dressing like a common person, must go to her starving niece, the fool who made the bad match with that Indian scoundrel--more fool she! Then there’s the arrears, too. What’s to become of all the sums your father has received for all these years?”

“Arrears! What are they?” I inquired, with sudden dread.

“Of course you know nothing of business. I was sure you could not. How could a girl brought up in a Popish convent know anything of business? Yes, miss, there’s the arrears ever since your father took possession of the property on his father’s death. He would have been made answerable for them had he lived, and now--and now we have not yet looked at the worst feature of this--this d----d--this unfortunate case.”

He contrived, after a pause, to make a violent effort to find words to substitute for the curses he had been formerly in the habit of using, I was told, before his marriage.

“We have not yet looked at the worst,” he repeated, while his excited countenance seemed to brighten up still more at the idea of an additional grievance; for he certainly enjoyed his anger, and he perhaps enjoyed it all the more from feeling that his wrath was not excited by any one person in particular, but only against these most adverse circumstances in general. “For, of course, people will blame your father for not having discovered that his brother had married that cur--that Canadian girl. Of course ill-natured people will even say that he knew of it all along, and wished deliberately to defraud his eldest brother’s son.”

“Oh! impossible!” I exclaimed, when the horror of my father being thus blamed seemed worse than anything that could befall me, and I sank down on the floor in an agony of grief, which seemed to dry up the sources of my tears.

“There! see what you have done,” moaned poor Mrs. Mordaunt. “You will kill her! Really, it is very unfeeling of you to talk to her in that way.”

“I beg pardon,” said Mr. Mordaunt, who was really frightened at the effect of his words. “I--I don’t mean, my dear young lady--pray don’t imagine--I--besides, you are not to blame in any way.”

“But if my father is, or can be blamed, I shall never be happy again. I--I don’t care what becomes of myself. I--could scrub the floors, or anything, but I could not--I will not live a day, if my dear father is----”

“Ah! well, now I am really sorry I said such a thing. There, don’t think any more about it. I will put your case--your father’s case--into the hands of the only honest lawyer there is--for they are such fools--and we will see what can be done. Henry maintains that the best authorities have been consulted, and I suppose he would not have declared the thing unless it was beyond doubt. Still, I have a great opinion of Graspem and Snareland, and I’ll write. Stay, I’ll go up to London the first thing to-morrow morning--or, stay, I may not be alive then. Ring the bell, Martha, and I’ll order the buggy directly, and I’ll drive to the station, and I’ll see Graspem this very night, before I go to bed. There--confound the bell!--the servants are so slow. I’ll go to the stable and order it myself; and, Martha, you see to my carpet-bag.”

“But you will not go till after dinner?” said Mrs. Mordaunt. “Remember, you never eat luncheon.”

“Confound--I mean, never mind the luncheon. I can get something at the station. Where’s the ‘Bradshaw?’ Of course, not to be found! There, my dear Miss Vivian, cheer up, and don’t despair till I come back from London, and till you really know the worst. And mind,” he added, as he saw my look of intense misery--“mind, no really sensible or good person can ever blame your father.”

Somewhat consoled by Mr. Mordaunt’s kind zeal in my behalf, I sat down to write an account of the whole case to Aunt Jane. I implored her to come and see me, and advise what I was to do in this most perplexing case. But the next morning’s post dashed my hopes of seeing her, for a letter came to say she was just starting for Madeira, to attend upon her niece, who they feared was dying.

The letter I had written to her the night before was not yet posted, and now it might be weeks, perhaps months, before it reached her. This was a most fearful addition to my sufferings, for I saw it was most important for me at once to decide on some course of action, and find some means to earn my bread. I must write to my mother and to Carlo; and oh! how I shrank from telling him of my poverty! No, I would not write to him, until I could see some means of gaining my own living. I would not be a burden, or--tears blinded my eyes as I thought of this, and I felt quite unequal to write even to my mother. As I sat at the writing-table in my bed-room, utterly unable to do anything, I heard a carriage drive up to the door.

It could not be Mr. Mordaunt, for no train came back from London so early, but I ran to the window of the next room, which looked towards the north entrance. It was an open barouche, and I saw two ladies get out. I fancied the tallest looked like Mrs. Chandos, and the little one--yes, that pretty fair face and light flowing curls, must be Norah--the little sensible Norah that Aunt Jane was always talking about.

I liked her air and her light buoyant step as she ascended the flight of stone steps; and as she paused for a moment to look at the lovely view, and then up at the window, she caught a sight of my face. The smile she gave me was very pleasant, there was something so informal, so genuine in its childlike expression--the kind of smile with which one young playfellow might greet another, expressing the anticipation of sunny hours and all kinds of innocent fun together. Mind, I did not think all this at that moment. I was only wonderfully pleased at meeting with the kind of unconventional greeting I had never seen before, and the impression her whole appearance gave me resolved itself into the words, “What a contrast to me!”

She was as fair as I was dark; her eyes were blue and laughing, while mine were dark and passionate in their intensity; I was tall and fully developed, she was short and slim. The only point we had in common--at least before the unfortunate discovery I had made the day before--was a look of genuine happiness.

“Then she is happy with her new mother after all,” I thought. I longed to see more of her, but I felt, under the strange cloud that now hung over me, it would be awkward to appear. So I went back to my room, and tried to read, but could fix my attention to nothing. I had a sort of vague hope that she must have felt I should be glad to see her, and I half expected that she would ask Mrs. Mordaunt to send for me.

I found afterwards that she had, but Mrs. Mordaunt, thinking I should not like to be seen or disturbed, had made some lame kind of excuse about my having heard bad news, and was suffering from a headache.

When I heard the carriage drive up to the door again, I ran to the same window; and this time I saw that she purposely looked up, in evident hopes of seeing me. Another still more hopeful smile, a little graceful nod of her pretty head and waving sunny ringlets, while her hand was playfully raised, and her little fingers wafted a childlike, happy greeting.

“What a little darling!” I thought, as she tripped down the steps; and then, as the carriage drove off, she turned round and gave me another greeting. I saw that Mrs. Chandos observed this, for she put out her hand, and said something which I feared might be a reproof for the young girl’s unusual demonstrativeness to a stranger.