Elsie had a headache when Francis came to take possession of his new home, and scarcely made her appearance; but Jane, who felt none of her sister's shrinking from him, showed him over the house, and told him how it had been managed, hoped he would keep the present servants, and particularly recommended to his care the gardener, who, though rather superannuated and rheumatic, had been forty years in the service of the family, and understood the soil and the treatment of it very well.
He was not only glad to hear what she said, but was resolved to be guided by it, and took a memorandum of her poor pensioners, that they, at least, should not suffer by Mr. Hogarth's will.
Then she walked with him over the grounds, and pointed out what improvements her uncle had made, and what more he had contemplated making. She was rather deficient in taste for rural beauty. She loved Cross Hall because it was her home, and because she had been happy there, rather than because she fully appreciated the loveliness of the situation and the prospect. Her cousin, townsman as he was, had far more natural taste. It was romantically situated, and the grounds were beautifully laid out; there were pretty hamlets in the distance, gentlemen's country seats embowered in trees, green cornfields, merry brooks, and winding valleys. Francis' eyes and heart were filled with the exceeding beauty of the landscape.
"You must be very sorry to leave all this Jane," he said.
"I believe that is the least of my troubles. I am more sorry to leave these;" and she led him to the stables, and showed him the two beautiful horses she and her sister had been accustomed to ride. "You will be kind to them for our sakes, and the dogs, too. I am—we are both—very concerned to part with the dogs."
"Should you not like to take any of them with you?" said Francis, eagerly.
"No, no; dogs such as these would be a nuisance in a crowded little room in Edinburgh, and I do not think they would like such a life, for their own part. You will take better care of them than we could possibly do. But I forget: you have, perhaps, as little affection for animals as I have taste for scenery."
"I am not naturally fond of pets—which is rather strange; for my solitary life should have made me attach myself to the lower animals. But perhaps I am not naturally affectionate. I must cultivate this deficient taste, however; and be assured that anything you have loved will always be cherished by me; and every wish that you may express, or that I can even guess at, that I am allowed to gratify, I will be only too happy to do so. It has been a strange and stormy introduction we have had to each other; but I am so grateful to you for not hating me, that I chafe still the more at the cruel way in which my hands are tied. I have consulted several eminent lawyers in the hope of being enabled to overturn my father's will, but without success. If a man is not palpably mad he may make as absurd a settlement of his own property as he pleases; and your assertion of your uncle's peculiar opinions tends to support the validity of the testament. Though no one thinks that the disposition of the money will serve the end Mr. Hogarth intended, yet he believed it would, and the spirit and intention of the will must be carried out. Oh, my father! why did you not give me a little love in your lifetime instead of this cursed money after your death?"
"Cousin," said Jane cheerfully, "I believe you will make a good use of this money. As my uncle says, you have served well, and should be able to rule justly and kindly. I do not think so much about the improvement of the property by your taste as of the care you will take of the condition of the people upon it. This last month has been a hard, but a useful school to me. I have thought more of the real social difficulties of this crowded country than ever I did before. Bringing my own talents and acquirements into the market, and finding myself elbowed out by competition, I think of those who have to do the real hard necessary work of the world with more sympathy and more respect. Not that I ever despised them—you must not imagine me to be so hard-hearted as that; but my feeling for them is deepened and heightened wonderfully of late. Now they are apt to say that PARVENUS are of all men the most exacting and the most purse-proud; and that a mistress who has been a servant is harsher to her female dependants than one who has been accustomed to keep domestics all her life. It is difficult for me to conceive this; but there must be truth in it, or it would not be a proverb in all languages. You will be an exception, Francis. You will have my uncle's real kindness without his crotchets and his dictatorial manner. You must not be offended if I call you a parvenu in spite of your birth. You have come suddenly into wealth that you were not brought up to expect."
"If I do not recollect my past life, I will certainly remember your present advice whenever I am tempted to think too much of myself and too little of others."
"Everything is to lead to the perfecting of your character, you see," said Jane.
"I cannot bear even improvement at the expense of any one's suffering but my own," said Francis.
"I have been thinking so much about that sermon I heard at your church. I do not know that the preacher brought out the particular point; but we are made such dependent beings, not only on God, but on each other, that we do indirectly profit by what we do not purchase by our own effort or pains. We would not choose to have it so; but when Providence brings on ourselves or others sorrows we grieve for, we are right to draw from them all the good we can. It is something if my uncle's rather unjust will has given you property with a sobered sense of its privileges and a strong sense of its duties—something to set against Elsie's sufferings and mine. And, besides, the loss of it has done me one great benefit."
"Tell me what," said Francis, eagerly.
"It is quite possible, though I cannot tell how probable, that I might have married a man to whom I am not well suited in any respect, and who was still less adapted to make me happy if I had not been disinherited. I am thus frank with you, cousin Francis, for I should like to give you all the consolation I can."
"And you have been deserted by a lover, as well as impoverished; and you ask me to take consolation from it."
"No, no; nothing so bad as that. I only explained matters to him, and we parted. I am very glad of it. Be you the same," said Jane, looking frankly and cheerfully in her cousin's face, and the cloud passed off it.
"Your sister has no affair of this kind?"
"No; nothing," said Jane.
"And yet she seems to suffer more."
"Not now; she is busy writing a volume of poems that is to make our fortune. Dear Elsie! I hope it may."
"Poems—well, she may succeed; but I have more hope of you than of her."
"Because you know me better; but yet my efforts have all been very fruitless. I am not a judge of poetry, though I like what Elsie writes. I wished her to consent to my taking your opinion as to her verses, but she shrank from it with most unaccountable and, as I thought, unreasonable fear. I wonder how she can bring her work before the public if she dreads one critic."
"It is very natural, Jane. Among the public there may be some to admire, and some to depreciate; but the one critic to whom the author submits his work may be of the latter class, and there seems to be no refuge from him. It is curious to see the revelations of the inner self that some authors make to the world—revelations that they would often shrink from making to their nearest friends. They appeal to the few in the world who sympathise with them, and disregard the censure of all the rest. And recollect that, though to you I am a friend, your sister has seen very little of me, and her first impression was exceedingly painful. If you have told her I am a good judge of poetry, she will be all the more averse to submit her compositions to my criticism, for my opinion might bias yours, and yours is her greatest comfort and encouragement. No one can wish her success more earnestly than I do. But for yourself, what are your present intentions?"
"If it were not for leaving Elsie, I might try for a situation as housekeeper in a large establishment; I know I am fully competent for that. I should prefer something by which I could rise, but the choice may not be given to me. We go to Edinburgh tomorrow. I do not think the small room we are going to will hold all the furniture we are entitled to, so will you be good enough to let what we cannot accommodate remain at Cross Hall till we can send for it?"
"Certainly; you had better lock up your room with your own things in it, and take the key," said Francis.
"No, no; I am housekeeper enough to know that all rooms must have occasional air and sunshine. I can trust either yourself or the housemaid with the key, knowing well that everything will be kept safe."
"Where are you going to live?"
"With a very humble friend in —— Street."
"That is very near where my earliest recollections of life in Edinburgh found me situated."
"Do you remember your mother at all?"
"I am not quite sure; but I think I have some shadowy recollection of a place before I came to Edinburgh, where I think I was with my mother."
"Do you think she is alive now?"
"Mr. MacFarlane says he believes she is. Do you think I should try to discover her?"
"Alive all these years, and never taking any care or notice of you! Very unmotherly on her part!" said Jane, thoughtfully.
"No one knows how she may be situated—her relations with my father must have been very miserable. I cannot tell who was most to blame—but if she were in distress, and I could help her, I am not forbidden to do that, though Mr. MacFarlane strongly advises me to make no inquiry."
"I think, if she hears of your inheriting Cross Hall, she is likely to come forward if she needs assistance, and you certainly should give it."
"I wish very much to look over Mr. Hogarth's private papers. Mr. MacFarlane has given me the keys of all his repositories. I particularly wish you to go over them all with me, as there may be many that concern you far more than myself. Could you spare me a few hours to-day for that purpose? I am in hopes that we may find some clue to this marriage, and perhaps some hint that might guide me in my conduct to my mother, supposing she is still alive. If I could find anything that would upset or modify the will, I am sure your happiness in the discovery would be less than mine."
The long and patient search which extended over the greater part of two days discovered nothing whatever at all definite with regard to Francis' birth. No scrap of writing could be found that could be supposed to be from his mother. An old bundle of papers marked outside, "Francis' school bills, &c." was all that rewarded their search, and they gave no information except that his education had cost his father a considerable sum of money.
A packet of letters in a female hand, with a French post-mark, was eagerly opened by the cousins, and contained a number of long and confidential letters from a Marguerite de Vericourt, which extended over a number of years, and stopped at the year when Jane and Elsie came to live with their uncle. Jane's knowledge of French was better than her cousin's, and the sight of the words "LE PAUVRE FRANCOIS" arrested her attention in the first she opened. "We have come to something at last," said she, and she translated the passage, "'I am glad to hear that the poor Francis is doing so well at school—surely you must learn to love him a little now. My Arnauld grows very intelligent; and Clemence, with no teaching but my own, makes rapid progress.' That is all; your name is not mentioned again in this letter. We must go on to the next."
Letter after letter was glanced over, and then translated, because though there was little mention of the poor Francis, but such a short allusion to something Mr. Hogarth had written about him as was found in the first letter, there was much that was very interesting in them all. They were written with that curious mixture of friendship and love, so natural and easy to Frenchwomen, and so difficult to Englishwomen. Madame de Vericourt appeared to be a widow with two children, a boy and girl. Her letters showed her to be a capable and cultivated woman, passionately attached to her children, living much in society for part of the year in Paris, but spending the summer in a country chateau, where she became a child again with the little ones. She wrote about her affairs, and her children's, as if she were in the habit of transacting business, and thoroughly understood it, and as if she knew Mr. Hogarth's whole history and circumstances, and took a very affectionate interest in them. She reminded him frequently of conversations they had had together, of long walks and excursions they had taken in company; her children sent messages to her good friend, and she took notice of expressions in his letters which had pleased or disappointed her.
For herself, she had been unhappily married when extremely young; but before the correspondence had begun she had been for some years a widow, and she was fully aware of the position of Mr. Hogarth. The most interesting letter of all was the last, which appeared to have been written in answer to his, telling of his resolution to adopt his sister's children; and she seemed very much delighted at the idea.
"Since you say that you cannot bring yourself to love the poor Francis, whom, nevertheless, my heart yearns after, and of whom I love to hear even the meagre details you give to me, I rejoice, my friend, that you have made a home for your sister's sweet little girls. You must have something to love. Ah! to me my Arnauld and my Clemence brought unspeakable comfort. I do not think of them as Philippe de Vericourt's children; they are the children whom God have given to me. I do not watch fearfully, lest his ungovernable temper and his selfish soul should be reproduced in them. I trust that God will make them good and happy, and aid me in my efforts towards that end. You cannot separate the idea of Francis from that of the woman who cheated you, and did not love you; who has blighted your hopes of domestic happiness; and who still, even from a distance, has the power to threaten you with exposing the disgrace that you are connected with her. I am sorry that you cannot feel as I do; but if you can love these little girls, it may make you softer towards him. When you wrote to me of your poor Mary's sad death, and of the sadder life that had preceded it, I began to wonder whether, after all, your system of free choice in marriage produces greater happiness or greater misery than ours of a marriage settled by our parents.
"I recollect how bitterly I felt that I had been made over, without my wishes or tastes being consulted, to a man who cared so little for my happiness; but at least I had no illusion to be dispelled; I did not marry as your sister did, hoping to find Elysium, and landing in hopeless misery; and yet my parents loved me after their fashion. I have often thought that those whom we love, and who love us, have far more power to injure us than those who hate us; but, alas! neither friends nor enemies can injure us more than we do ourselves. Your sister Mary had the disenchantment to go through; I had to chafe at the coercion; while you, my friend, had to muse bitterly on the consequence of one rash speech of your own, which chained you to an unworthy and detested wife.
"I think we need a future state that we may do justice to ourselves in it quite as much as to repair the wrongs we may have done to others. Which of us has really made the best of himself or herself? I really try now for the sake of my children to be cheerful; but sad and bitter memories are too deeply interwoven with my being for me to succeed as I should wish. If I live, I hope that the fate of my Clemence may be happier than her mother's, so far as the state of society in France will allow of it: I will give her a choice, and, at any rate, a power of refusing even what appears to me to be a suitable marriage; for no doubt it is better for an intelligent and responsible human being to choose its own destiny, and to run its own risks. I fancy that the mistake in your English society is, that your girls have apparently the freedom of choice without being trained to make good use of it. If your sister Mary was as inexperienced and as ignorant as I was at the time when my parents gave me to M. de Vericourt, she could not distinguish between the selfish fortune-hunter and the true lover; the conventional manners were all the same, and she chose for herself a life of misery. Your interference only roused the spirit of opposition, and without preventing the marriage, made your brother-in-law regard you with more dislike and suspicion. Ah! my friend, when I see a young girl about to be married, my heart is full of anxieties for her—I know the risk she runs. But I did not feel them much for myself. I grew into the knowledge of my unhappiness as I grew in knowledge of what might have been; but the recluse life of a French girl prevents her from expecting much from marriage but an increase of consequence. With us it is a step from tutelage to liberty—from nonentity to importance. It cannot be quite so much so in England; but, from the greater prevalence of celibacy, it has even more ECLAT and prestige than here, where marriage is the rule. The TROUSSEAU, the presents, the congratulations, the going into society under the interesting circumstances of an engagement, must divert a girl's attention from the really serious nature of the connection she is forming.
"You will have pleasure in educating your little girls. Make them strong in body and independent in mind if you can. They are likely to be handsome, intelligent, and, if you continue to be prejudiced against poor Francis, rich. Give them more knowledge and more firmness than their poor mother had. I have no doubt that they will grow up good, for you will be kind to them. Girls all turn out well if you give them good training in a happy home; but as for happiness, that depends so much on their choice in marriage, that all you have done for them may be thrown away, if you do not educate them to be something more than amiable and pleasing companions. They must be trained to feel that they are responsible beings: let their reading be as various, their education as comprehensive, as you would give to boys of their rank. You know that ignorance is not innocence, and that some knowledge of the world is necessary to all of us if we are to pass safely through it. I am glad to hear that Jane so much resembles you, and that Alice is so like her mother, and that you find their dispositions amiable and remarkably sincere.
"I have told you that I have difficulties with Clemence in the matter of truthfulness. She cannot bear to say or to do what she fancies will be disagreeable or painful to any one. She fears, if she does so, that she will not be loved; but I think I am succeeding in convincing her that we must learn to bear pain, and occasionally to inflict it. When I stood over her last night with a cup of bitter medicine she drank it like an angel, and I said to her, 'My love, I taste this bitter taste with you, and would rather that I had not to give it to you; but if I, or any one whom you love, needs it, you must learn the courage to present it.'
"Arnauld disobeyed my orders one day last week, and played with his ball in the drawing-room, and broke a vase that I prized highly. Clemence took the blame on herself, for she thought I should be less displeased with her than with her brother; but she was not sufficiently skilful to hide the truth. Her BONNE was enraptured with her generosity, and embraced her with the EMPRESSEMENT which is so ridiculous to your insular ideas; but Clemence saw that I was not pleased.
"'Mamma,' said she, 'is it not right I should bear something for Arnauld? I thought you would be so angry with him.'
"'More angry than he deserves?' said I.
"'No, mamma; but I thought he would feel it so much: and even if you were as angry with me, and punished me as severely as you would have chastised him, I should have felt that I did not deserve it.''
"'And that, on the contrary, you were very generous?'
"'Yes, mamma.'
"'Then Arnauld would have escaped altogether, and you would have borne any pain like a martyr?'
"'But would not Arnauld have loved me for it?'
"'I do not know, Clemence,' said I, 'He knew, when he did the mischief, that I would be displeased, and it is just and right that he should take the consequences. A noble soul feels a certain satisfaction in bearing deserved punishment, but it can never rejoice in the punishment of another for its fault. I know you meant kindly; but, my love, you should make no unnecessary sacrifices. Providence will bring to you many opportunities of giving up your wishes, and of bearing a great deal for others, but it must never be done at the sacrifice of truth.'
"Clemence was much impressed with what I said to her; and Arnauld, too, seemed to feel that it would have been mean to have taken advantage of his sister's mistaken generosity. I labour to make them think for themselves, for I often fear that my life will not be spared to guide them much longer. When you come again to France, bring with you your little girls. I have spoken to my children about them, and they are eager to become acquainted with them."
At the end of this letter was written, in Mr. Hogarth's hand-writing, "Died, October 14th, 18-," shortly after the date of the letter.
"I wish," said Jane, "that my uncle had shown me these letters; but I suppose there are some things that one cannot tell to another person."
"There is no encouragement here to induce me to make inquiries about my mother," said Francis. "I think, for the present, I will let the matter rest."
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