CHAPTER XLVI.VANE TREVOR AT THE WINDOWWilliam Maubray liked the appointment which his kind friend, Doctor Sprague, had virtually secured for him. It was not a great deal in salary, but opening abundant opportunities for that kind of employment which he most coveted, and for which, in fact, a very little training would now suffice to accomplish him. Literary work, the ambition of so many, not a wise one perhaps for those who have any other path before them, but to which men will devote themselves, as to a perverse marriage, contrary to other men’s warnings, and even to their own legible experiences of life—in a dream.For three years he would sojourn in Paris. He preferred that distant exile to one at the gates of the early paradise from which he had been excluded. From thence he would send to his good friend, Doctor Sprague, those little intimations of his doings and his prosperings, which he, according to his wisdom, might transmit, for inspection to the old lady at Gilroyd, who might, if she pleased, re-open a distant correspondence with the outcast.Doctor Sprague, at William’s desire, had written to accept and arrange, and would hear by the return ofpost, or nearly, and then William might have to leave at a day’s notice. Three years! It was a long time, and Aunt Dinah old! He might never see her or Gilroyd more, and a kind of home sickness fell upon him.At Gilroyd that morning, Aunt Dinah and Vi sat at breakfasttête-à-tête. The spirits of the old lady were not altogether so bright, the alacrity was gone, and though she smiled there was a sadness and a subsidence. William was banished. The pang of that sharp decision was over. Some little help he should have circuitously through Doctor Sprague; but meet again on earth they never should. So that care was over: and now her other tie, pretty Violet Darkwell, she, too, was going: and although she sat beside her at the little breakfast-table, prattling pleasantly, and telling her all the news of her friends, the Mainwarings and their new neighbours, yet her voice sounded already faint in distance, and the old lady’s cares were pretty well over. Our business here is work of some sort, and not for ourselves; and when that is ended it is time, as Fuller says, to put out the candle and go to bed.“I’m going to see old Mrs. Wagget to-day. I promised her the day before I went to the Mainwarings,” said Vi, recalling this engagement.“But, my dear, some one may call here. Your friends and mine will be looking in,” said Aunt Dinah, who knew that Trevor would arrive at about twelve o’clock.“Well, I can return their visits all the same, and see them in their own houses,” said Vi, “just as well.”“And what need to go to Mrs. Wagget to-day—to-morrow I fancy would answer,” said Miss Perfect.“But Ipromised, you know, and she wrote to remind me.”“Promisedtoleaveyour old granny alone again the day after your return!” she exclaimed, a little huffed.“Why, darling, it was you who made me promise, don’t you recollect?” pleaded Miss Violet, “the day we paid them our last visit.”“H’m—did I? Well, if there really was a promise, and I suppose you remember, we must keep it, I suppose.” Aunt Dinah had made that kind of scrupulousness an emphatic point in Violet’s simple education, and of course it could not now be trifled with. And now she did recollect the appointment, and something about walking to the school-house together at twelve o’clock—could anything be more unlucky? Aunt Dinah looked up at the sky; but no, it wasnotthreatening—clear blue, with a pleasant white cloud or two, and a sea of sunshine.“I’m so sorry, granny, we settled, it would have been so much pleasanter to have staid with you to-day, and I’m afraid it’s very wicked; but that school, except toverygood people, it is really insupportable,” said Miss Vi, whose inflexible estimate of such appointments rather vexed Aunt Dinah, and not the less that she could not deny that it was her own work.“It’s right in the main,” thought she. “But there are distinctions—there’s danger, however, in casuistry, and so let it be.” There was an odd little sense of relief too in the postponement of the crisis.At about half-past eleven, Vane Trevor arrived. He came by the path, and from the drawing-room window Miss Perfect, sitting there at her work, saw him, and knocked and beckoned with her slender mittened hand.“He looks pale, poor young man,” he was smiling as he approached, “and haggard too,” she pronounced, notwithstanding. “He’s anxious, I dare say,” and she pushed up the window as he approached. “What a sweet morning,” she said, taking off her gold spectacles, and smiling with that soft look of sympathy which insuch cases makes even old women’s faces so pretty again.“Charming morning—really quite charming.”She saw him peeping into the shadow of the room for a second figure. Aunt Dinah’s hand was now within reach, and they exchanged a friendly greeting.“My little Violet has returned,” she said, still holding Trevor’s hand kindly, “quite well—looking so well—and most unluckily I quite forgot; but I had made an appointment for her this morning with Mrs. Wagget, and I have always made the keeping of appointments so much a moral duty with her, that unless I had opened the subject on which you talked with me, and told her plainly that I expected your call, and that she must wait—which would have been not a favourable way of proceeding; and in fact I should have been obliged to say very badly what you would say, probably, very well; and indeed it is a thing that makes me nervous—always did. When my dear sister was proposed for, I refused to take the message, in fact—I could not—and—he spoke for himself—poor Charles Maubray—like a man—and—and a very happy”⸺Suddenly she stopped, and Trevor saw that tears were trickling slowly down her cheeks; and her lips were resolutely closed; and she fumbled for a minute or two among her silks and worsteds; and the young man felt that he liked her better than ever he did before; and he sat on the window-stone outside, and they chatted kindly for a long time. Then they took a little walk together among the flowers, and under the chestnuts, till it grew to be near two o’clock, and Aunt Dinah began to look for Violet’s return; and if the great Duke of Wellington on the field of Waterloo consulted his watch half so often as Mr. Vane Trevor did his on the green sward of Gilroyd that afternoon, I’m not surprised at ithaving excited all the observation it did, and being noted in the history of that great day of thunder and suspense.Not the Iron Duke, however, but his Imperial rival on the field, when lowering his glass, he muttered, “C’est les Prussien,” is the fitter representative of our friend Vane Trevor, when, not Miss Violet Darkwell, but old Mrs. Wagget’s page, a thick and stunted “buttons,” in rifle green regimentals, moved down upon his flank, with a note in his hand for Miss Perfect, who was entreated by the writer to allow Miss Violet to stay dinner, with a promise that she should arrive safe at Gilroyd in the brougham that evening at nine!There was nothing for it but submission. It would not do, in presence of that dwarfish page, who was eyeing Vane with the curiosity of a youthful gossip, to order the young lady home, detain the young gentleman where he stood, and thus by a feat of discipline compel a meeting.So Miss Perfect despatched her reply, thanking—I hope it was sincerely—Felicia Honoria Wagget, and accepting the arrangement with the best grace she might.“You must come in and take some luncheon,” said Aunt Dinah.Gilroyd was somehow so charming a spot, its resources had grown so inexhaustible, and old Miss Perfect so sensible and altogether interesting that Trevor was glad to linger a little, and postpone the evil hour of departure. It came at last, however, and Aunt Dinah called old Winnie Dobbs, and went listlessly to her room to make her toilet for her solitary dinner.
CHAPTER XLVI.
VANE TREVOR AT THE WINDOW
VANE TREVOR AT THE WINDOW
VANE TREVOR AT THE WINDOW
William Maubray liked the appointment which his kind friend, Doctor Sprague, had virtually secured for him. It was not a great deal in salary, but opening abundant opportunities for that kind of employment which he most coveted, and for which, in fact, a very little training would now suffice to accomplish him. Literary work, the ambition of so many, not a wise one perhaps for those who have any other path before them, but to which men will devote themselves, as to a perverse marriage, contrary to other men’s warnings, and even to their own legible experiences of life—in a dream.
For three years he would sojourn in Paris. He preferred that distant exile to one at the gates of the early paradise from which he had been excluded. From thence he would send to his good friend, Doctor Sprague, those little intimations of his doings and his prosperings, which he, according to his wisdom, might transmit, for inspection to the old lady at Gilroyd, who might, if she pleased, re-open a distant correspondence with the outcast.
Doctor Sprague, at William’s desire, had written to accept and arrange, and would hear by the return ofpost, or nearly, and then William might have to leave at a day’s notice. Three years! It was a long time, and Aunt Dinah old! He might never see her or Gilroyd more, and a kind of home sickness fell upon him.
At Gilroyd that morning, Aunt Dinah and Vi sat at breakfasttête-à-tête. The spirits of the old lady were not altogether so bright, the alacrity was gone, and though she smiled there was a sadness and a subsidence. William was banished. The pang of that sharp decision was over. Some little help he should have circuitously through Doctor Sprague; but meet again on earth they never should. So that care was over: and now her other tie, pretty Violet Darkwell, she, too, was going: and although she sat beside her at the little breakfast-table, prattling pleasantly, and telling her all the news of her friends, the Mainwarings and their new neighbours, yet her voice sounded already faint in distance, and the old lady’s cares were pretty well over. Our business here is work of some sort, and not for ourselves; and when that is ended it is time, as Fuller says, to put out the candle and go to bed.
“I’m going to see old Mrs. Wagget to-day. I promised her the day before I went to the Mainwarings,” said Vi, recalling this engagement.
“But, my dear, some one may call here. Your friends and mine will be looking in,” said Aunt Dinah, who knew that Trevor would arrive at about twelve o’clock.
“Well, I can return their visits all the same, and see them in their own houses,” said Vi, “just as well.”
“And what need to go to Mrs. Wagget to-day—to-morrow I fancy would answer,” said Miss Perfect.
“But Ipromised, you know, and she wrote to remind me.”
“Promisedtoleaveyour old granny alone again the day after your return!” she exclaimed, a little huffed.
“Why, darling, it was you who made me promise, don’t you recollect?” pleaded Miss Violet, “the day we paid them our last visit.”
“H’m—did I? Well, if there really was a promise, and I suppose you remember, we must keep it, I suppose.” Aunt Dinah had made that kind of scrupulousness an emphatic point in Violet’s simple education, and of course it could not now be trifled with. And now she did recollect the appointment, and something about walking to the school-house together at twelve o’clock—could anything be more unlucky? Aunt Dinah looked up at the sky; but no, it wasnotthreatening—clear blue, with a pleasant white cloud or two, and a sea of sunshine.
“I’m so sorry, granny, we settled, it would have been so much pleasanter to have staid with you to-day, and I’m afraid it’s very wicked; but that school, except toverygood people, it is really insupportable,” said Miss Vi, whose inflexible estimate of such appointments rather vexed Aunt Dinah, and not the less that she could not deny that it was her own work.
“It’s right in the main,” thought she. “But there are distinctions—there’s danger, however, in casuistry, and so let it be.” There was an odd little sense of relief too in the postponement of the crisis.
At about half-past eleven, Vane Trevor arrived. He came by the path, and from the drawing-room window Miss Perfect, sitting there at her work, saw him, and knocked and beckoned with her slender mittened hand.
“He looks pale, poor young man,” he was smiling as he approached, “and haggard too,” she pronounced, notwithstanding. “He’s anxious, I dare say,” and she pushed up the window as he approached. “What a sweet morning,” she said, taking off her gold spectacles, and smiling with that soft look of sympathy which insuch cases makes even old women’s faces so pretty again.
“Charming morning—really quite charming.”
She saw him peeping into the shadow of the room for a second figure. Aunt Dinah’s hand was now within reach, and they exchanged a friendly greeting.
“My little Violet has returned,” she said, still holding Trevor’s hand kindly, “quite well—looking so well—and most unluckily I quite forgot; but I had made an appointment for her this morning with Mrs. Wagget, and I have always made the keeping of appointments so much a moral duty with her, that unless I had opened the subject on which you talked with me, and told her plainly that I expected your call, and that she must wait—which would have been not a favourable way of proceeding; and in fact I should have been obliged to say very badly what you would say, probably, very well; and indeed it is a thing that makes me nervous—always did. When my dear sister was proposed for, I refused to take the message, in fact—I could not—and—he spoke for himself—poor Charles Maubray—like a man—and—and a very happy”⸺Suddenly she stopped, and Trevor saw that tears were trickling slowly down her cheeks; and her lips were resolutely closed; and she fumbled for a minute or two among her silks and worsteds; and the young man felt that he liked her better than ever he did before; and he sat on the window-stone outside, and they chatted kindly for a long time. Then they took a little walk together among the flowers, and under the chestnuts, till it grew to be near two o’clock, and Aunt Dinah began to look for Violet’s return; and if the great Duke of Wellington on the field of Waterloo consulted his watch half so often as Mr. Vane Trevor did his on the green sward of Gilroyd that afternoon, I’m not surprised at ithaving excited all the observation it did, and being noted in the history of that great day of thunder and suspense.
Not the Iron Duke, however, but his Imperial rival on the field, when lowering his glass, he muttered, “C’est les Prussien,” is the fitter representative of our friend Vane Trevor, when, not Miss Violet Darkwell, but old Mrs. Wagget’s page, a thick and stunted “buttons,” in rifle green regimentals, moved down upon his flank, with a note in his hand for Miss Perfect, who was entreated by the writer to allow Miss Violet to stay dinner, with a promise that she should arrive safe at Gilroyd in the brougham that evening at nine!
There was nothing for it but submission. It would not do, in presence of that dwarfish page, who was eyeing Vane with the curiosity of a youthful gossip, to order the young lady home, detain the young gentleman where he stood, and thus by a feat of discipline compel a meeting.
So Miss Perfect despatched her reply, thanking—I hope it was sincerely—Felicia Honoria Wagget, and accepting the arrangement with the best grace she might.
“You must come in and take some luncheon,” said Aunt Dinah.
Gilroyd was somehow so charming a spot, its resources had grown so inexhaustible, and old Miss Perfect so sensible and altogether interesting that Trevor was glad to linger a little, and postpone the evil hour of departure. It came at last, however, and Aunt Dinah called old Winnie Dobbs, and went listlessly to her room to make her toilet for her solitary dinner.