‘Well, Albinia,’ said Mr. Kendal, after seeing Mr. Dusautoy on his return from London.
There was such a look of deprecation about him, that she exclaimed, ‘One would really think you had been accepting this charming son-in-law.’
‘Suppose I had,’ he said, rather quaintly; then, as he saw her hands held up, ‘conditionally, you understand, entirely conditionally. What could I do, when Dusautoy entreated me, with tears in his eyes, not to deprive him of the only chance of saving his nephew?’
‘Umph,’ was the most innocent sound Albinia could persuade herself to make.
‘Besides,’ continued Mr. Kendal, ‘it will be better to have the affair open and avowed than to have all this secret plotting going on without being able to prevent it. I can always withhold my consent if he should not improve, and Dusautoy declares nothing would be such an incentive.’
‘May it prove so!’
‘You see,’ he pursued, ‘as his uncle says, nothing can be worse than driving him to these resorts, and when he is once of age, there’s an end of all power over him to hinder his running straight to ruin. Now, when he is living at the Vicarage, we shall have far more opportunity of knowing how he is going on, and putting a check on their intercourse, if he be unsatisfactory.’
‘If we can.’
‘After all, the young man has done nothing that need blight his future life. He has had great disadvantages, and his steady attachment is much in his favour. His uncle tells me he promises to become all that we could wish, and, in that case, I do not see that I have the right to refuse the offer, when things have gone so far—conditionally, of course.’ He dwelt on that saving clause like a salve for his misgivings.
‘And what is to become of Gilbert and Maurice, with him always about the house?’ exclaimed Albinia.
‘We will take care he is not too much here. He will soon be at Oxford. Indeed, my dear, I am sorry you disapprove. I should have been as glad to avoid the connexion as you could be, but I do not think I had any alternative, when Mr. Dusautoy pressed me so warmly, and only asked that he should be taken on probation; and besides, when poor Lucy’s affections are so decidedly involved.’
Albinia perceived that there had been temper in her tone, and could object no further, since it was too late, and as she could not believe that her husband had been weak, she endeavoured to acquiesce in his reasoning, and it was a strong argument that they should see Lucy bright again.
‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that you would prefer that I should announce my decision to her myself!’
It was a more welcome task than spreading gloom over her countenance, but she entered in great trepidation, prepared to sink under some stern mandate, and there was nothing at first to undeceive her, for her father was resolved to atone for his concession by sparing her no preliminary thunders, and began by depicting her indiscretion and deceit, as well as the folly of attaching herself to a man without other recommendations than figure and fortune.
How much Lucy heard was uncertain; she leant on a chair with drooping head and averted face, trembling, and suppressing a sob, apparently too much frightened to attend. Just when the exordium was over, and ‘Therefore I lay my commands on you’ might have been expected, it turned into, ‘However, upon Mr. Dusautoy’s kind representation, I have resolved to give the young man a trial, and provided he convinces me by his conduct that I may safely entrust your happiness to him, I have told his uncle that I will not withhold my sanction.’
With a shriek of irrepressible feeling, Lucy looked from father to mother, and clasped her hands, unable to trust her ears.
‘Yes, Lucy,’ said Albinia, ‘your father consents, on condition that nothing further happens to excite his doubts of Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy. It rests with yourself now, it is not too late. After all that has passed, you would incur much deserved censure if you put an end to the affair; but even that would be better, far better, than entering into an engagement with a man without sound principle.’
‘Your mother is quite right, Lucy,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘This is the only time. Gratified vanity has led you too far, and you have acted as I hoped no child of mine would ever act, but you have not forfeited our tenderest care. You are not engaged to this man, and no word of yours would be broken. If you hesitate to commit yourself to him, you have only to speak, and we would gladly at once do everything that could conduce to make you happy.’
‘You don’t want me to give him up!’ cried Lucy. ‘Oh! mamma, did not he say he had consented?’
‘I said it rested with yourself Lucy. Do not answer me now. Come to me at six o’clock, and tell me, after full reflection, whether I am to consider you as ready to pledge yourself to this young man.’
It was all that could be done. Albinia had a dim hope that the sense of responsibility, and dread of that hard will and selfish temper, might so rise upon Lucy as to startle her, but then, as Mr. Kendal observed, if she should decide against him, she would have used him so extremely ill, that they should feel nothing but shame.
‘Yes,’ said Albinia, ‘but it would be better to be ashamed of a girl’s folly, than to see her made miserable for life. Poor Lucy! if she decide against him, she will become a woman at once, if not, I’m afraid it will be the prediction about Marie Antoinette over again—very gay, and coming right through trial.’
They were obliged to tell Sophy of the state of things. She stood up straight, and said, slowly and clearly, ‘I do not like the world at all.’
‘I don’t quite see what you mean.’
‘Every one does what can’t be helped, and it is not the thing.’
‘Explain yourself, Sophy,’ said her father, amused.
‘I don’t think Lucy ought to be making the decision at all,’ said Sophy. She did that long ago, when first, she attended to what he said to her. If she does not take him now, it will be swearing to her neighbour, and disappointing him, because it is to her own hindrance.’
‘Yes, Sophy; but I believe it is better to incur the sin of breaking a promise, than to go on when the fulfilment involves not only suffering, but mischief. Lucy has repeatedly declared there was no engagement.’
‘I know it could not be helped; but Mr. Dusautoy ought not to have asked papa.’
‘Nor papa to have consented, my Suleiman ben Daood,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘Ah! Sophy, we all have very clear, straightforward views at eighteen of what other people ought to do.’
‘Papa—I never meant—I did not think I was saying anything wrong. I only said I did not like the world.’
‘And I heartily agree with you, Sophy, and if I had lived in it as short a time as you have, perhaps “considerations” would not affect my judgment.’
‘I am always telling Sophy she will be more merciful as she grows older,’ said Albinia.
‘If it were only being more merciful, it would be very well,’ said Mr. Kendal; ‘but one also becomes less thorough-going, because practice is more painful than theory, and one remembers consequences that have made themselves felt. It is just as well that there should be young people to put us in mind what our flights once were.’
Albinia and Sophy left Lucy to herself; they both wished to avoid the useless ‘What shall I do?’ and they thought that, driven back on her own resources, even her own mind might give her better counsel than the seven watchmen aloft in a high tower.
She came down looking exceedingly pale. Mr. Kendal regarded her anxiously, and held his hand out to her kindly.
‘Papa,’ she said, simply, ‘I can’t give it up. I do love him.’
‘Very well, my dear,’ he answered, ‘there is no more to be said than that I trust he will merit your affection and make you happy.’
Good Mr. Dusautoy was as happy as a king; he took Lucy in his arms, and kissed her as if she had been his child, and with her hands folded in his own, he told her how she was to teach his dear Algernon to be everything that was good, and to lead him right by her influence. She answered with caresses and promises, and whoever had watched her eye, would have seen it in a happy day-dream of Algernon’s perfection, and his uncle thanking her for it.
She had expected that grandmamma would have been very happy; but marriage had, with the poor old lady, led to so much separation, that her weakened faculties took the alarm, and she received the tidings by crying bitterly, and declaring that every one was going away and leaving her. Lucy assured her over and over again that she was never going to desert her, and as Mr. Kendal had made it a condition that Algernon should finish his Oxford career respectably, there was little chance that poor Mrs. Meadows would survive until the marriage.
All along Gilbert made no remark. Though he had been left out of the family conclaves, and his opinion not asked, he submitted with the utmost meekness, as one who knew that he had forfeited all right to be treated as son and heir. The more he was concerned at the engagement, the greater stigma he would place on his own connivance; so he said nothing, and only devoted himself to his grandmother, as though the attendance upon her were a refuge and relief. More gentle and patient than ever, he soothed her fretfulness, invented pleasures for her, and rendered her so placid and contented, that her health began to improve.
Not for a moment did he seem to forget his error; and Albinia’s resolution to separate Maurice from him, could not hold when he himself silently assumed the mournful necessity, and put the child from him when clamorous for rides, till there was an appeal to papa and mamma. Mr. Kendal gave one look of inquiry at Albinia, and she began some matter-of-course about Gilbert being so kind—whereupon the brothers were together as before. When Albinia visited her little boy at night, she found that Gilbert had been talking to him of his eldest brother, and she heard more of Edmund’s habits and tastes from the little fellow who had never seen him, than from either the twin-brother or the sister who had loved him so devotedly. It was as if Gilbert knew that he could be doing Maurice no harm when leading him to think of Edmund, and perhaps he felt some intrinsic resemblance in the deep loving strength of the two natures.
The invitation to Fairmead spared him the pain and shame of Algernon Dusautoy’s first reception as Lucy’s accepted lover. He went early on Saturday morning, and young Dusautoy, arriving in the evening, was first ushered into the library; while Albinia did her best to soothe the excited nerves and fluttering spirits of Lucy, who was exceedingly ashamed to meet him again under the eyes of others, after such a course of stolen interviews, and what she had been told of her influence doing him good only alarmed her the more.
Well she might, for if ever character resembled that of the iron pot borne down the stream in company with the earthen one, it was the object of her choice. Poor pipkin that Gilbert was, the contact had cost him a smashing blow, and for all clay of the more fragile mould, the best hope was to give the invulnerable material a wide berth. Talk of influence! Mr. Dusautoy might as well hope that a Wedgwood cream-jug would guide a copper cauldron and keep verdigris aloof.
His attraction for Lucy had always been a mystery to her family, who perhaps hardly did justice to the magnetism of mere force of purpose. Better training might have ennobled into resolution that which was now doggedness and obstinacy, and, even in that shape, the real element of strength had a tendency to work upon softer natures. Thus it had acted in different ways with the Vicar, with Gilbert, and with Lucy; each had fallen under the power of his determination, with more or less of their own consent, and with Lucy the surrender was complete; she no sooner sat beside Algernon than she was completely his possession, and his complacent self-satisfaction was reflected on her face in a manner that told her parents that she was their own no longer, but given up to a stronger master.
Albinia liked neither to see nor to think about it, and kept aloof as much as she could, dividing herself between grandmamma and the children. On Tuesday morning, during Maurice’s lessons, there was a knock at the sitting-room door. She expected Gilbert, but was delighted to see her brother.
‘I thought you were much too busy to come near us?’
‘So I am; I can’t stay; so if Kendal be not forthcoming you must give this fellow a holiday.’
‘He is gone to Hadminster, so—’
‘Where’s Gilbert?’ broke in little Maurice.
‘He went to his room to dress to go up to parade,’ said Mr. Ferrars, and off rushed the boy without waiting for permission.
Albinia sighed, and said, ‘It is a perfect passion.’
‘Don’t mourn over it. Love is too good a thing to be lamented over, and this may turn into a blessing.’
‘I used to be proud of it.’
‘So you shall be still. I am very much pleased with that poor lad.’
She would not raise her eyes, she was weary of hoping for Gilbert, and his last offence had touched her where she had never been touched before.
‘Whatever faults he has,’ Mr. Ferrars said, ‘I am much mistaken if his humility, love, and contrition be not genuine, and what more can the best have?’
‘Sincerity!’ said Albinia, hopelessly. ‘There’s no truth in him!’
‘You should discriminate between deliberate self-interested deception, and failure in truth for want of moral courage. Both are bad enough, but the latter is not “loving a lie,” not such a ruinous taint and evidence of corruption as the former.’
‘It is curious to hear you repeating my old excuses for him,’ said Albinia, ‘now that he has cast his glamour over you.’
‘Not wrongly,’ said her brother. ‘He is in earnest; there is no acting about him.’
‘Yes, that I believe; I know he loves us with all his heart, poor boy, especially Maurice and me, and I think he had rather go right than wrong, if he could only be let alone. But, oh! it is all “unstable as water.” Am I unkind, Maurice? I know how it would be if I let him talk to me for ten minutes, or look at me with those pleading brown eyes of his!’
Mr. Ferrars knew it well, and why she was steeled against him, but he put this aside, saying that he was come to speak of the future, not of the past, and that he wanted Edmund to reconsider William’s advice. He told her what Gilbert had said of the difficulty of breaking off old connexions, and the danger to Maurice from his acquaintance. An exchange into another corps of militia might be for the worse, the occupation was uncertain, and Mr. Ferrars believed that a higher position, companions of a better stamp, and the protection of a man of lively manners, quick sympathy, and sound principle, like their cousin Fred, might be the opening of a new life. He had found Gilbert most desirous of such a step, regarding it as his only hope, but thinking it so offensively presumptuous to propose it to his father under present circumstances, his Oxford terms thrown away, and himself disgraced both there and at home, that the matter would hardly have been brought forward had not Mr. Ferrars undertaken to press it, under the strong conviction that remaining at home would be destruction, above all, with young Dusautoy making part of the family.
‘I declare,’ said Mr. Ferrars, ‘he looked so much at home in the drawing-room, and welcomed Gilbert with such an air of patronage, that I could have found it in my heart to have knocked him down!’
It was a treat to hear Maurice speak so unguardedly, and Albinia laughed, and asked whether he thought it very wrong to hope that the Polysyllable would yet do something flagrant enough to open Lucy’s eyes.
‘I’ll allow you to hope that if he should, her eyes may be opened,’ said Maurice.
Albinia began a vehement vindication for their having tolerated the engagement, in the midst of which her brother was obliged to depart, amused at her betrayal of her own sentiments by warfare against what he had never said.
She had treated his counsel as chimerical, but when she repeated it to her husband, she thought better of it, since, alas! it had become her great object to part those two loving brothers. Mr. Kendal first asked where the 25th Lancers were, then spoke of expense, and inquired what she knew of the cost of commissions, and of her cousin’s means. All she could answer for was, that Fred’s portion was much smaller than Gilbert’s inheritance, but at least she knew how to learn what was wanted, and if her friends, the old Generals, were to be trusted, she ought to have no lack of interest at the Horse Guards.
Gilbert was taken into counsel, and showed so much right spirit and good sense, that the discussion was friendly and unreserved. It ended in the father and son resorting to Pettilove’s office to ascertain the amount of ready money in his hands, and what income Gilbert would receive on coming of age. The investigation somewhat disappointed the youth, who had never thoroughly credited what his father told him of the necessity of his exerting himself for his own maintenance, nor understood how heavy a drain on his property were the life-interests of his father and grandmother, and the settlement on his aunt. By-and-by, he might be comparatively a rich man, but at first his present allowance would be little more than doubled, and the receipts would be considerably diminished by an alteration of existing system of rents, such as had so long been planned. It was plain that the almshouses were the unsubstantial fabric of a dream, but no one now dared to refer to them, and Mr. Kendal desired Albinia to write to consult her cousin.
Captain Ferrars was so much flattered at her asking his protection for anything, that he would have promised to patronize Cousin Slender himself for her sake. He praised the Colonel and lauded the mess to the skies, and economy being his present hobby, he represented himself as living upon nothing, and saving his pay. He further gave notice of impending retirements, and advised that the application should be made without loss of time, lamenting grievously himself that there was no chance for the 25th, of a touch at the Russians.
Something in his letter put every one into a hurry, and a correspondence began, which resulted in Gilbert’s being summoned to Sandhurst for an examination, which he passed creditably. The purchase-money was deposited, and the household was daily thrown into a state of excitement by the arrival of official-looking envelopes, which turned out to contain solicitations from tailors and outfitters, bordered with portraits of camp-beds and portable baths, until, at last, when the real document appeared, Gilbert tossed it aside as from ‘another tailor:’ but Albinia knew the article too well to mistake it, and when the long blue cover was opened, it proved to convey more than they had reckoned upon.
Gilbert Kendal held a commission in the 25th Lancers, and the corps was under immediate orders for the East. The number of officers being deficient, he was to join the headquarters at Cork, without going to the depot, and would thence sail with a stated minimum of baggage.
Albinia could not look up. She knew her husband had not intended thus to risk the last of his eldest-born sons; and though her soldier-spirit might have swelled with exultation had her own brave boy been concerned, she dreaded the sight of quailing or dismay in Gilbert.
‘Going really to fight the Russians,’ shouted Maurice, as the meaning reached him. ‘Oh! Gibbie, if I was but a man to go with you!’
‘You will do your duty, my boy,’ said his father.
‘By God’s help,’ was the reverent answer which emboldened Albinia to look up at him, as he stood with Maurice clinging by both hands to him. She had done him injustice, and her heart bounded at the sight of the flush on his cheek, the light in his eyes, and the expression on his lips, making his face finer and more manly than she had ever seen it, as if the grave necessity, and the awe of the unseen glorious danger, were fixing and elevating his wandering purpose. To have no choice was a blessing to an infirm will, and to be inevitably out of his own power braced him and gave him rest. She held out her hand to him, and there was a grasp of inexpressible feeling, the first renewal of their old terms of sympathy and confidence.
There was no time to be lost; Mr. Kendal would go to London with him by the last train that day, to fit him out as speedily as possible, before he started for Cork.
Every one felt dizzy, and there was no space for aught but action. Perhaps Albinia was glad of the hurry, she could not talk to Gilbert till she had learnt to put faith in him, and she would rather do him substantial kindnesses than be made the sharer of feelings that had too often proved like the growth of the seed which found no depth of earth.
She ran about for him, worked for him, contrived for him, and gave him directions; she could not, or would not, perceive his yearning for an effusion of penitent tenderness. He looked wistfully at her when he was setting out to take leave at the Vicarage, but she had absorbed herself in flannel shirts, and would not meet his eye, nor did he venture to make the request that she would come with him.
Indeed, confidences there could be but few, for Maurice and Albinia hung on either side of him, so that he could hardly move, but he resisted all attempt to free him even from the little girl, who was hardly out of his arms for ten minutes together. It was only from her broken words that her mother understood that from the vicarage he had gone to the church. Poor little Albinia did not like it at all. ‘Why was brother Edmund up in the church, and why did Gilbert cry?’
Maurice angrily enunciated, ‘Men never cry,’ but not a word of the visit to the church came from him.
Algernon Dusautoy had wisely absented himself, and the two sisters devoted themselves to the tasks in hand. Sophy worked as hard as did Mrs. Kendal, and spoke even less, and Lucy took care of Mrs. Meadows, whose nerves were painfully excited by the bustle in the house. It had been agreed that she should not hear of her grandson’s intention till the last moment, and then he went in, putting on a cheerful manner, to bid her good-bye, only disclosing that he was going to London, but little as she could understand, there was an instinct about her that could not be deceived, and she began to cry helplessly and violently.
Mrs. Kendal and Lucy were summoned in haste; Gilbert lingered, trying to help them to restore her to composure. But time ran short; his father called him, and they hardly knew that they had received his last hurried embrace, nor that he was really gone, till they heard Maurice shouting like a Red Indian, as he careered about in the garden, his only resource against tears; and Sophy came in very still, very pale, and incapable of uttering a word or shedding a tear. Albinia was much concerned, for she could not bear to have sent him away without a more real adieu, and word of blessing and good augury; it made her feel herself truly unforgiving, and perhaps turned her heart back to him more fully and fondly than any exchange of sentiment would have done. But she had not much time to dwell on this omission, for poor Mrs. Meadows missed him sorely, and after two days’ constant fretting after him, another paralytic stroke renewed the immediate danger, so that by the time Mr. Kendal returned from London she was again hovering between life and death.
Mr. Kendal, to his great joy, met Frederick Ferrars at the ‘Family Office.’ The changes in the regiment had given him his majority, and he had flashed over from Ireland to make his preparations for the campaign. His counsel had been most valuable in Gilbert’s equipment, especially in the knotty question of horses, and he had shown himself so amiable and rational that Mr. Kendal was quite delighted, and rejoiced in committing Gilbert to his care. He had assumed the trust in a paternal manner, and, infected by his brilliant happiness and hopefulness, Gilbert had gone off to Ireland in excellent spirits.
‘Another thing conduced to cheer him,’ said Mr. Kendal afterwards to his wife, with a tone that caused her to exclaim, ‘You don’t mean that he saw Genevieve?’
‘You are right. We came upon her in Rivington’s shop, while we were looking for the smallest Bible. I saw who it was chiefly by his change of colour, and I confess I kept out of the way. The whole did not last five minutes; she had her pupils with her, and soon went away; but he thanked me, and took heart from that moment. Poor boy, who would have thought the impression would have been so lasting?’
‘Well, by the time he is a field-officer, even William will let him please himself,’ said Albinia, lightly, because her heart was too full for her to speak seriously.
She tried, by a kind letter, to atone for the omitted farewell, and it seemed to cheer and delight Gilbert. He wrote from Cork as if he had imbibed fresh hope and enterprise from his new companions, he liked them all, and could not say enough of the kindness of Major Ferrars. Everything went smoothly, and in the happiest frame he sailed from Cork, and was heard of again at Malta and Gallipoli, direfully sea-sick, but reviving to write most amusing long descriptive letters, and when he reached the camp at Yarna, he reported as gratefully of General Ferrars as the General did kindly of him.
Those letters were the chief pleasures in a harassing spring and summer. It was well that practice had trained Sophia in the qualities of a nurse, for Lucy was seldom available when Algernon Dusautoy was at home; she was sure to be riding with him, or sitting for her picture, or the good Vicar, afraid of her overworking herself, insisted on her spending the evening at the vicarage.
She yielded, but not with an easy conscience, to judge by her numerous apologies, and when Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy returned to Oxford, she devoted herself with great assiduity to the invalid. Her natural gifts were far more efficient than Sophy’s laboriously-earned gentleness, and her wonderful talent for prattling about nothing had a revivifying influence, sparing much of the plaintive weariness which accompanied that mournful descent of life’s hill.
Albinia had reckoned on a rational Lucy until the Oxford term should be over. She might have anticipated a failure in the responsions, (who, in connexion with the Polysyllable, could mention being plucked for the little-go?) but it was more than she did expect that his rejection would send him home in sullen resentment resolved to punish Oxford by the withdrawal of his august name. He had been quizzed by the young, reprimanded by the old, plucked by the middle-aged, and he returned with his mouth, full of sentences against blind, benighted bigotry, and the futility of classical study, and of declamations, as an injured orphan, against his uncle’s disregard of the intentions of his dear deceased parent, in keeping him from Bonn, Jena, Heidelberg, or any other of the outlandish universities whose guttural names he showered on the meek Vicar’s desponding head.
He was twenty-one, and could not be sent whither he would not go. His uncle’s resource was Mr. Kendal, who strongly hoped that the link was about to snap, when, summoning the gentleman to the library, he gave him to understand that he should consider a refusal to resume his studies as tantamount to a dissolution of the engagement. A long speech ensued about dear mothers, amiable daughters, classics, languages, and foreign tours. That was all the account Mr. Kendal could give his wife of the dialogue, and she could only infer that Algernon’s harangue had sent him into such a fit of abstraction, that he really could not tell the drift of it. However, he was clear that he had himself given no alternative between returning to Oxford and resigning Lucy.
That same evening, Lucy, all blushes and tears, faltered out that she was very unwilling, she could not bear to leave them all, nor dear grandmamma, but dear Algernon had prevailed on her to say next August!
When indignant astonishment permitted Albinia to speak, she reminded Lucy that a respectable career at Oxford had been the condition.
‘I know,’ said Lucy, ‘but dear Algernon convinced papa of the unreasonableness of such a stipulation under the circumstances.’
Albinia felt the ground cut away under her feet, and all she could attempt was a dry answer. ‘We shall see what papa says; but you, Lucy, how can you think of marrying with your grandmamma in this state, and Gilbert in that camp of cholera—’
‘I told Algernon it was not to be thought of,’ said Lucy, her tears flowing fast. But I don’t know what to do, no one can tell how long it may go on, and we have no right to trifle with his feelings.’
‘If he had any feelings for you, he would not ask it.’
‘No, mamma, indeed!’ cried Lucy, earnestly; ‘it was his feeling for me; he said I was looking quite languid and emaciated, and that he could not allow my—good looks and vivacity to be diminished by my attendance in a sick chamber. I told him never to mind, for it did not hurt me; but he said it was incumbent on him to take thought for me, and that he could not present me to his friends if I were not in full bloom of beauty; yes, indeed, he said so; and then he said it would be the right season for Italy.’
‘It is impossible you can think of going so far away! Oh, Lucy! you should not have consented.’
‘I could not help it,’ said Lucy, sobbing. ‘I could not bear to contradict him, but please, mamma, let papa settle it for me. I don’t want to go away; I told him I never would, I told him I had promised never to leave dear grandmamma; but you see he is so resolute, and he cannot bear to be without me. Oh! do get him to put it off—only if he is angry and goes to Italy without me, I know I shall die!’
‘We will take care of you, my dear. I am sure we shall be able to show him how impossible a gay wedding would be at present; and I do not think he can press it,’ said Albinia, moved into soothing the present distress, and relieved to find that there was no heartlessness on Lucy’s side.
What a grand power is sheer obstinacy! It has all the momentum of a stone, or cannon-ball, or any other object set in motion without inconvenient sensations to obstruct its course!
Algernon Dusautoy had decided on being married in August, and taking his obedient pupil-wife through a course of lectures on the continental galleries of art; and his determined singleness of aim prevailed against the united objections and opposition of four people, each of double or quadruple his wisdom and weight.
His first great advantage was, that, as Albinia surmised, Mr. Kendal could not recal the finale of their interview, and having lost the thread of the rigmarole, did not know to what his silence had been supposed to assent. Next, Algernon conquered his uncle by representing Lucy as on the road to an atrophy, and persuading him that he should be much safer on the Continent with a wife than without one: and though the two ladies were harder to deal with in themselves, they were obliged to stand by the decision of their lords. Above all, he made way by his sincere habit of taking for granted whatever he wished, and by his magnanimous oblivion of remonstrance and denial; so that every day one party or the other found that assumed, as fixed in his favour, which had the day before been most strenuously refused.
‘If you consented to this, I thought I could not refuse that.’
‘I consent! I told him it was the last thing I could think of.’
‘Well, I own I was surprised, but he told me you had readily come into his views.’
Such was the usual tenor of consultations between the authorities, until their marvel at themselves and each other came to a height when they found themselves preparing for the wedding on the very day originally chosen by Algernon.
Mr. Kendal’s letter to Gilbert was an absolute apology. Gilbert in Turkey was a very different person from Gilbert at Bayford, and had assumed in his father’s mind the natural rights of son and heir; he seemed happy and valued, and the heat of the climate, pestiferous to so many, seemed but to give his Indian constitution the vigour it needed. When his comrades were laid up, or going away for better air, much duty was falling on him, and he was doing it with hearty good-will and effectiveness. Already the rapid changes had made him a lieutenant, and he wrote in the highest spirits. Moreover, he had fallen in with Bryan O’More, and had been able to do him sundry kindnesses, the report of which brought Ulick to Willow Lawn in an overflow of gratitude.
It was a strange state of affairs there. Albinia was ashamed of the plea of ‘could not help it,’ and yet that was the only one to rest on; the adherence to promises alone gave a sense of duty, and when or how the promises had been given was not clear.
Besides, no one could be certain even about poor Lucy’s present satisfaction; she sometimes seemed like a little bird fluttering under the fascination of a snake. She was evidently half afraid of Algernon, and would breathe more freely when he was not at hand; but then a restlessness would come on if he did not appear as soon as she expected, as if she dreaded having offended him. She had violent bursts of remorseful tears, and great outpourings of fondness towards every one at home, and she positively did look ill enough to justify Algernon in saying that the present condition of matters was hurtful to her. Still she could not endure a word that remotely tended towards advising her to break off the engagement, or even to retard the wedding, and her admiration of her intended was unabated.
Indeed, his affection could not be doubted; he liked her adoration of all his performances, and he regarded her with beneficent protection, as a piece of property; he made her magnificent presents, and conceded to her that the wedding tour should not be beyond Clifton, whence they would return to Willow Lawn, and judge ere deciding on going abroad.
He said that it would be ‘de bon ton’ to have the marriage strictly private. Even he saw the incongruity of festivity alongside of that chamber of decay and death; and besides, he had conceived such a distaste to the Drury family, that he had signified to Lucy that they must not make part of the spectacle.
Albinia and Sophy thought this so impertinent, that they manfully fought the battles of the Drurys, but without prevailing; Albinia took her revenge, by observing that this being the case, it was impossible to ask her brother and little Mary, whose well-sounding names she knew Algernon ambitionated for the benefit of the county paper.
Always doing what was most contrary to the theories with which she started in life, Albinia found herself taking the middle course that she contemned. She was marrying her first daughter with an aching, foreboding heart, unable either to approve or to prevent, and obliged to console and cheer just when she would have imagined herself insisting upon a rupture at all costs.
Sophy had said from the first that her sister could not go back. She expected her to be unhappy, and believed it the penalty of the wrongdoings in consenting to the clandestine correspondence; and treated her with melancholy kindness as a victim under sentence. She was very affectionate, but not at all consoling when Lucy was sad, and she was impatient and gloomy when the trousseau, or any of the privileges of a fiancee brought a renewal of gaiety and importance. A broken heart and ruined fortunes were the least of the consequences she augured, and she went about the house as if she had realized them both herself.
The wedding-day came, and grandmamma was torpid and only half conscious, so that all could venture to leave her. The bride was not allowed to see her, lest the agitation should overwhelm both; for the poor girl was indeed looking like the victim her sister thought her, pale as death, with red rings round her extinguished eyes, and trembling from head to foot, the more at the apprehension that Algernon would think her a fright.
After all that lavender and sal-volatile could do for her, she was such a spectacle, that when her father came to fetch her he was shocked, and said, tenderly, ‘Lucy, my child, this must not be. Say one word, and all shall be over, and you shall never hear a word of reproach.’
But Lucy only cast a frightened glance around, and rising up with the accents of perfect sincerity, said, ‘No, papa; I am quite ready; I am quite happy. I was only silly.’
Her mind was evidently made up, and it was past Albinia’s divination whether her agitation were composed of fear of the future and remorse for the past, or whether it were mere love of home and hurry of spirits, exaggerated by belief that a bride ought to weep. Probably it was a compound of all, and the whole of her reply perfect truth, especially the final clause.
So they married her, poor child, very much as if they had been attending her to the block. Sophy’s view of the case had infected them all beyond being dispelled by the stately complacency of the bridegroom, or the radiant joy and affection of his uncle.
They put her into a carriage, watched her away, and turned back to the task which she had left them, dreading the effects of her absence. She was missed, but less than they feared; the faculties had become too feeble for such strong emotion as had followed Gilbert’s departure; and the void was chiefly perceptible by the plaintive and exacting clinging to Albinia, who had less and less time to herself and her children, and was somewhat uneasy as to the consequences as regarded Maurice. While Gilbert was at home, the child had been under some supervision; but now his independent and unruly spirit was left almost uncontrolled, except by his own intermittent young conscience, his father indulged him, and endured from him what would have been borne from no one else; and Sophy was his willing slave, unable to exact obedience, and never complaining, save under the most stringent necessity or sense of duty. He was too young for school, and there was nothing to be done but to go on, from day to day, in the trust that no harm could eventually ensue in consequence of so absolute a duty as the care of the sufferer; and that while the boy’s truth and generosity were sound, though he might be a torment, his character might be all the stronger afterwards for that very indocility.
It was not satisfactory, and many mothers would have been miserable; but it was not in Albinia’s nature to be miserable when her hands were full, and she was doing her best. She had heard her brother say that when good people gave their children sound principles and spoilt them, they gave the children the trouble of self-conquest instead of doing it for them. She had great faith in Maurice’s undertaking this task in due time; and while she felt that she still had her hand on the rein she must be content to leave it loose for a while.
Besides, when his father and sisters, and, least of all, herself, did not find him a plague, did it much matter if other people did?
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