"Mrs. Saulsbury is in very weak health, Miss Grey; something wrong with the lungs, I fear."
Minola was not much impressed at first. It was one of Mrs. Saulsbury's ways to cry "wolf" very often, as regarded the condition of her lungs, and up to the time of Minola's leaving, people had not been in serious expectation of the wolf's really putting his head in at the door.
Mr. Sheppard saw in Minola's face what she did not say.
"It is something really serious," he said. "Mr. Saulsbury knows it and every one. You have not been in correspondence with them for some time, Miss Grey."
"No," said Miss Grey. "I wrote, and nobody answered my letter."
"I am afraid it was regarded as—as——"
"Undutiful perhaps?"
"Well—unfriendly. But Mrs. Saulsbury now fears—or rather knows, for she is too good a woman to fear—that the end is nigh, and she wishes to be in fullest reconciliation with every one."
"Oh, has she sent for me?" Minola said, with something like a cry, all her coldness and formality vanishing with her contempt. "I'll go, Mr. Sheppard—oh, yes, at once! I did not know—I never thought that she was really in any danger."
Poor Minola! With all her wild-bird freedom and her pride in her lonely independence and her love of London, there yet remained in her that instinct of home, that devotion to the principle of family and authority, that she would have done homage at such a moment, and with something like enthusiasm, to even such a simulacrum of the genius of home as she had lately known. Something had passed through her mind that very day as she talked with Heron, and feared she had talked too freely: something that had made her think with vague pain of yearning on the sweetness of a sheltered home. Her heart beat as she thought, "I will go to her—I will go home; I will try to love her."
Mr. Sheppard dispelled her enthusiasm. "Mrs. Saulsbury did not exactly express a wish to see you."
"Oh!"
"In fact, when that was suggested to her—I am sure I need hardly say that I at once suggested it—she thought, and perhaps wisely, that it would be better you should not meet."
Minola drew back, and stood as Mr. Heron had been standing near the chimney-piece. She did not speak.
"But Mrs. Saulsbury begged me to convey to you the assurance of her entire and cordial forgiveness."
Minola bowed gravely.
"And her hope that you will be happy in life and be guided toward true ends, and find that peace which it has been her privilege to find."
Minola bore all this without a word.
"What shall I say to her from you?" he asked. "Miss Grey, remember that she is dying."
The caution was not needed.
"Say that I thank her," said Minola in a low, subdued tone. "Say that, after what flourish your nature will, Mr. Sheppard. I suppose I was wrong as much as she. I suppose it was often my fault that we did not get on better. Say that I am deeply grieved to hear that she is so dangerously ill, but that I hope—oh, so sincerely!—that she may yet recover."
Mr. Sheppard looked into her eyes with puzzled wonder. Was she speaking in affected meekness, or in irony, as was her wont? Was the proud, rebellious girl really so gentle and subdued? Could it be that she took thus humbly Mrs. Saulsbury's pardon? Yes, it seemed all genuine. There was no constraint on the lines of her lips; no scorn in her eyes. In truth, the sympathetic and generous heart of the girl was touched to the quick. The prospect of death sanctified the woman who had been so hard to her, and turned her cold, self-complacent pardon into a blessing. If the dying are often the most egotistic and self-complacent of all human creatures, and are apt to make of their very condition a fresh title to lord it for the moment over the living—as if none had ever died before, and none would die after them, and therefore the world must pay special attention and homage to them—if this is so, Minola did not then know it or think about it.
The one thing on earth which Mr. Sheppard most loved to see was woman amenable to authority. He longed more passionately than ever to make Minola his wife.
"There is something else on which I should like to have your permission to speak," he said; and his thin lips grew a little tremulous. "But I could come another time, if you preferred."
"I would rather you said now, Mr. Sheppard, whatever you wish to say to me."
"It is only the old story. Have you reconsidered your determination—you remember that last day—in Keeton? I am still the same."
"So am I, Mr. Sheppard."
"But things have changed—many things; and you may want a home; and you may grow tired of this kind of life—and I shan't be a person to be ashamed of, Minola! I am going to be in Parliament, and you shall hear me speak—and I know I shall get on. I have great patience. I succeed in everything—I really do."
She smiled sadly and shook her head.
"In everything else I do assure you, so far—and I may even in that; I must, for I have set my heart upon it."
She turned to him with a glance of scorn and anger. But his face was so full of genuine emotion, of anxiety and passion and pain, that its handsome commonplace character became almost poetic. His lips were quivering; and she could see drops of moisture on his shining forehead, and his eyes were positively glittering as if in tears.
"Don't speak harshly to me," he pleaded; "for I don't deserve it. I love you with all my heart, and today more than ever—a thousand times more—for you have shown yourself so generous and forgiving—and—and like a Christian."
Then for the first time the thought came, a conviction, into her mind—"He really is sincere!" A great wave of new compassion swept away all other emotions.
"Mr. Sheppard," she said in softened tones, "I do ask of you not to say any more of this. I couldn't love you even if I tried, and why should you wish me to try? I am not worth all this—I tell you with all my heart that I am not worth it, and that you would think so one day if I were foolish enough to—to listen to you. Oh! indeed you are better without me! I wish you every success and happiness. I don't want to marry."
"Once," he said, "you told me there was no one you cared for but a man in a book. I wonder is that so now?"
In spite of herself the color rushed into Minola's face. It was a lucky question for her, however unlucky for him, because it recalled her from her softer mood to natural anger.
"You can believe me in love with any one you please to select in or out of a book, Mr. Sheppard, so long as it gives you a reason for not persecuting me with your own attentions. I like a man in a book better than one out of it; it is so easy to close the book and be free of his company when he grows disagreeable."
She did not look particularly like a Christian then, probably, in his eyes. He left her, his heart bursting with love and anger. When Mary Blanchet returned she found Minola pale and haggard, her eyes wasted with tears.
CHAPTER XIII.
A MAN OF THE TIME.
Several days passed away, and Minola heard no more from Mr. Sheppard. She continued in a state of much agitation; her nerves, highly strung, were sharply jarred by the news of the approaching death of Mrs. Saulsbury. It was almost like watching outside a door, and counting the slow, painful hours of some lingering life within, while yet one may not enter and look upon the pale face, and mingle with the friends or the mourners, but is shut out and left to ask and wait; it was like this, the time of suspense which Minola passed, not knowing whether the wife of her father was alive or dead. As is the way of all generous natures, it was now Minola's impulse to accuse and blame herself because there had been so little of mutual forbearance in her old home at Keeton. She kept wondering whether things might not have gone better, if she had said and done this or that; or, if she had not said and done something else. Full of this feeling, she wrote a long emotional letter to Mr. Saulsbury, which, she begged of him to read to his wife, if she were in a condition to hear it. The letter was suffused with generous penitence and self-humiliation. It was a letter which perhaps no impartial person could have read without becoming convinced that its writer must have been in the right in most of the controversies of the past.
The letter did not reach the eyes or ears for which it was particularly intended. Minola received a coldly forgiving answer from Mr. Saulsbury—forgiving her upon his own account, which was more than Minola had sought—but adding, that he had not thought it desirable to withdraw, for a moment, by the memory of earthly controversies, the mind of his wife from the contemplation of that well-merited heaven which was opening upon her. Great goodness has one other advantage in addition to all the rest over unconverted error; it can, out of its own beatification, find a means of rebuking those with whom it is not on terms of friendship. The expected ascent of Mrs. Saulsbury into heaven became another means of showing poor Minola her own unworthiness. Mr. Saulsbury closed by saying that Mrs. Saulsbury might linger yet a little, but that her apotheosis (this, however, was not his word) was only a question of days.
There was nothing left for Minola but to wait, and now accuse and now try to justify herself. Many a time there came back to her mind the three faces on the mausoleum in Keeton, the symbols of life, death, and eternity; and she could not help wondering whether the mere passing through the portal of death could all at once transfigure a cold, narrow-minded, peevish, egotistical human creature into the soul of lofty calmness and ineffable sweetness, all peace and love, which the sculptor had set out in his illustration of humanity's closing state.
Meantime, she kept generally at home, except for her familiar walks in the park and her now less frequent visits to the British Museum and to South Kensington. Lucy Money, surprised at her absence, hunted her up, to use Lucy's own expression, and declared that she was looking pale and wretched, and that she must come over to Victoria street, and pass a day or two there, for companionship and change. Mary Blanchet, too, pressed Minola to go; and at last she consented, not unwilling to be taken forcibly out of her self-inquisition and her anxieties for the moment. She had made no other acquaintances, and seemed resolute not to make any, but there was always something peculiarly friendly and genial to her in the atmosphere of the Moneys' home. The whole family had been singularly kind to her, and their kindness was absolutely disinterested. Minola could not but love Mrs. Money, and could not but be a little amused by her; and there was something very pleasing to her in Mr. Money's strong common sense and blunt originality. Minola liked, too, the curious little peeps at odd groupings of human life which she could obtain by sitting for a few hours in Mrs. Money's drawing-room. All theschwärmereiof letters, politics, art, and social life seemed to illustrate itself "in little" there.
Minola, when she accompanied Lucy to her home, was taken by the girl up and down to this room and that to see various new things that had been bought, and the two young women entered Mrs. Money's drawing-room a little after the hour when she usually began to receive visitors. A large lady, who spoke with a very deep voice, was seated in earnest conversation with Mrs. Money.
"This is my darling, sweet Lucy, I perceive," the lady said in tones of soft rolling thunder as the young women came in.
"Oh—Lady Limpenny!"
"Come here, child, and embrace me! But this is not your sister? My sight begins to fail me so terribly; we must expect it, Mrs. Money, at our time of life."
Lucy tossed her head at this, and could hardly be civil. She was always putting in little protests, more or less distinctly expressed, against Lady Limpenny's classification of Mrs. Money and herself as on the same platform in the matter of age, and talking so openly of "their time of life." In truth, Mrs. Money was still quite a young-looking woman, while Lady Limpenny herself was a remarkably well-preserved and even handsome matron; a little perhaps too full-blown, and who might at the worst have sat fairly enough for a portrait of Hamlet's mother, according to the popular dramatic rendering of Queen Gertrude.
"No; this young lady is taller than Theresa. I can see that, although I have forgotten my glass. I always forget or mislay my glass."
"This is Miss Grey—Miss Minola Grey," said Mrs. Money. "Lady Limpenny, allow me to introduce my dear young friend, Miss Minola Grey."
"Dear child, what a sweet, pretty name! Now tell me, dearest, where did your people find out that name? I should so like to know."
"I think it was found in Shakespeare," Minola answered. "It was my mother's choice, I believe."
"A name in the family, no doubt. Some names run in families. I dare say you have had a—what is it?—Minola in your family in every generation. One cannot tell the origin of these things. I have often thought of making a study of family names. Now my name—Laura. There never was a generation of our family—we are the Atomleys—there never was a generation of the Atomleys without a Laura. Now, how curious, in my husband's family—Sir James Limpenny—in every generation one of the girls was always called by the pet name of Chat. Up to the days of the Conquest, I do believe—or is it the Confessor perhaps?—you would find a Chat Limpenny."
"There is a Chat Moss somewhere near Manchester," said Lucy saucily, still not forgiving the remark about the time of life. "We crossed it once in a railway."
"Oh, but that has nothing to do with it, Lucy darling—nothing at all. I am speaking of girls, you know—girls called by a pet name. I dare say that name was in my husband's family—oh, long before the place you speak of was ever discovered. But now, Miss Grey, do pray excuse me again—such a very charming name—Minola! But pray do excuse me: may I ask is that hair all your own? One is curious, you know, when one sees such wonderful hair."
"Yes, Lady Limpenny," Minola said imperturbably. "My hair is all my own."
"I should think Nola's hair was all her own indeed," Lucy struck in. "I have seen her doing it a dozen times. Not likely that she would put on false hair."
"But, my sweet child, I do assure you that's nothing now," the indomitable Lady Limpenny went on. "Almost everybody wears it now—it's hardly any pretence any more. That's why I asked Miss Grey—because I thought she perhaps wouldn't mind, seeing that we are only women, we here. And it is such wonderful hair—and it is all her own!"
"Yes," murmured Lucy, "all her own; and her teeth are her own too; and even her eyes."
"She has beautiful eyes indeed. You have, my dear," the good-natured Lady Limpenny went on, having only caught the last part of Lucy's interjected sentence. "But that does not surprise one—at least, I mean, when we see lovely eyes, we don't fancy that the wearer of them has bought them in a shop. But hair is very different—and that is why I took the liberty of asking this young lady. But now, my darling Theresa Money, may I ask again about your husband? Do you know that it was to see him particularly I came to-day—not you. Yes indeed! But you are not angry with me—I know you don't mind. I do so want to have his advice on this very, very important matter."
"Lucy, dear, will you ask your papa if he will come down for a few moments—I know he will—to see Lady Limpenny?"
Mr. Money's ways were well known to Lady Limpenny. He grumbled if disturbed by a servant, unless there was the most satisfactory and sufficient reason, but he would put up with a great deal of intrusion from Lucelet. The very worst that could happen to Lucelet was to have one of her pretty ears gently pulled. So Lucy went to disturb him unabashed, although she knew he was always disposed to chaff Lady Limpenny.
"But you really don't mean to say that you are going to part with all your china—with your uncle's wonderful china?" Mrs. Money asked with eyes of almost tearful sympathy, resuming the talk which Minola's entrance had disturbed.
"My darling, yes! I must do it! It is unavoidable."
Minola assumed that this was some story of sudden impoverishment, and she could not help looking up at the lady with wondering and regretful eyes, although not knowing whether she ought to have heard the remark, or whether she was not a little in the way.
Lady Limpenny caught the look.
"This dear young lady is sympathetic, I know, and I am sure she loves china, and can appreciate my sacrifice. But it ought not to be a sacrifice. It is a duty—a sacred duty."
"But is it?" Mrs. Money pleaded.
"Dearest, yes! My soul was in danger. I was in danger every hour of breaking the first Commandment! My china was becoming my idolatry! There was a blue set which was coming between me and heaven. I was in danger of going on my knees to it every day. I found that my whole heart was becoming absorbed in it! One day it was borne in upon me; it came on me like a flash. It was the day I had been to hear Christie and Manson——"
"To hear what?" Mrs. Money asked in utter amazement.
"Oh, what have I been saying? Christie and Manson! My dear, that only shows you the turn one's wandering sinful thoughts will take! I mean, of course, Moody and Sankey. What a shame to confuse such names!"
"Oh, Moody and Sankey," Mrs. Money said again, becoming clear in her mind.
"Well, it flashed upon me there that I was in danger; and I saw where the danger lay. Darling, I made up my mind that moment! When I came home I rushed—positively rushed—into Sir James's study. 'James,' I said, 'don't remonstrate—pray don't. My mind is made up; I'll part with all my china.'"
"Dear me!" Mrs. Money gently observed. "And Sir James—what did he say?"
"Well," Lady Limpenny went on, with an air of disappointment, "he only said, 'All right,' or something of that kind. He was writing, and he hardly looked up. He doesn't care." And she sighed.
"But how good he is not to make any objection!"
"Yes—oh, yes; he is the best of men. But he thinks I won't do it after all."
Mrs. Money smiled.
"Now, Theresa Money, I wonder at you! I do really. Of course I know what you are smiling at. You too believe I won't do it. Do you think I would sacrifice my soul—deliberately sacrifice my soul—even for china? You, dearest, might have known me better."
"But would one sacrifice one's soul?"
"Darling, with my temperament, yes! Alas, yes! I know it; and therefore I am resolved. Oh, here is Mr. Money. But not alone!"
Mr. Money entered the room, but not alone indeed, for there came with him a very tall man, whom Minola did not know; and then, a little behind them, Lucy Money and Victor Heron. Mr. Money spoke to Lady Limpenny, and then, with his usual friendly warmth, to Minola; and then he presented the new-comer, Mr. St. Paul, to his wife.
Mr. St. Paul attracted Minola's attention from the first. He was very tall, as has been said, but somewhat stooped in the shoulders. He had a perfectly bloodless face, with keen, bold blue eyes; his square, rather receding forehead showed deep horizontal lines when he talked as if he were an old man; and he was nearly bald. His square chin and his full, firm lips were bare of beard or moustache. He might at times have seemed an elderly man, and yet one soon came to the conclusion that he was a young man looking prematurely old. There was a curious hardihood about him, which was not swagger, and which had little of carelessness, or at all events of joyousness, about it. He was evidently what would be called a gentleman, but the gentleman seemed somehow to have got mixed up with the rowdy. Minola promptly decided that she did not like him. She could hear Mr. St. Paul talking in a loud, rapid, and strident voice to Mrs. Money, apparently telling her, offhand, of travel and adventure.
Lady Limpenny had seized possession of Mr. Money, and was endeavoring to get his advice about the sale of her china, and impress him with a sense of the importance of saving her soul. Minola was near Mrs. Money, and had just bowed to Victor Heron, when Mr. St. Paul turned his blue eyes upon her.
"This is your elder daughter, I presume," he said. "May I be introduced, Mrs. Money? Your husband told me she was not so handsome as her sister, but I really can't admit that."
Mrs. Money was not certain for a moment whether her daughter Theresa might not have come into the room; but when she saw that he was looking at Miss Grey, she said, in her deep tone of melancholy kindness—
"No, this is not my daughter, Mr. St. Paul; and even with all a mother's partiality, I have to own that Theresa is not nearly so handsome as this young lady. Miss Grey, may I introduce Mr. St. Paul? Miss Grey comes from Duke's-Keeton. Mr. St. Paul and you ought to be acquaintances."
"Oh, you come from Duke's-Keeton, Miss Grey"; and he dropped Mrs. Money, and drew himself a chair next to Minola. "So do I—I believe I was born there. Do you like the old place?"
"No; I don't think I like it."
"Nor I; in fact I hate it. Do you live there now?"
She explained that she had now left Keeton for good, and was living in London. He laughed.
"I left it for good long ago, or for bad. I have been about the world for ever so many years; I've only just got back to town. I've been hunting in Texas, and rearing cattle in Kansas—that sort of thing. I left Keeton because I didn't get on with my people."
Minola could not help smiling at what seemed the odd similarity in their history.
"You smile because you think it was no wonder they didn't get on with me, I suppose? I left long ago—cut and run long before you were born. My brother and I don't get on; never shall, I dare say. I am generally considered to have disgraced the family. He's going back to Keeton, where he hasn't been for years; and so am I, for a while. He's been travelling in the East and living in Italy, and all that sort of thing, while I've been hunting buffaloes and growing cattle out West."
"Are you going to settle in Keeton now?" Miss Grey asked, for lack of anything else to say.
"Not I; oh, no! I don't suppose I could settle anywhere now. You can't, I think, when you've got into the way of knocking about the world. I don't know a soul down there now, I suppose. I'm going to Keeton now chiefly to annoy my brother." And he laughed a laugh of half-cynical good humor, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets.
"A Christian purpose," Miss Grey said.
"Yes, isn't it? We were always like that, I assure you; the elders and the youngers never could hit off—always quarrelling. I'm one of the youngers, though you wouldn't think so to look at me, Miss Grey? Do look at me."
Miss Grey looked at him very composedly. He gazed into her bright eyes with undisguised admiration.
"Well, I'm going to thwart my good brother in Keeton. He's coming home, and going to do all his duties awfully regular and well, don't you know; and first of all, he's going to have a regular, good, obedient Conservative member—a warming-pan. Do you understand that sort of thing? I believe the son of some honest poor-rate collector, or something of that sort—a fellow named Sheppard. Did you ever hear of any fellow in Keeton named Sheppard?—Jack Sheppard, I shouldn't wonder."
"I know Mr. Augustus Sheppard, and he is a very respectable man."
"Deuce he is; but not a lively sort of man, I should think."
"No; not exactly lively."
"No; he wouldn't suit my brother if he was. Hope he isn't a friend of yours? Well, we're going to oppose him for the fun of the thing. How very glad my brother will be to see me. I am afraid I pass for a regular scamp in the memories of you Keeton people. You must have heard of me, Miss Grey. No? Before your time, I suppose. Besides, I didn't call myself St. Paul then; I took on that name in America; it's my mother's family name; that's how you wouldn't remember about me, even if you had heard. You know the mausoleum in the park, I dare say?"
"Very well indeed. It used to be a favorite place with me."
"Ah, yes. My last offence was shooting off pistols there—aiming at the heads over the entrance, you know. One of them will carry my mark to his last day, I believe."
"Yes; I remember noticing that the face of Death has a mark on it—a small hole."
He laughed again.
"Just so. That's my mark. Poor father! It was the great whim of his life to build that confounded thing, and he didn't enjoy it after all. My brother, I am told, proposes to occupy part of it in good time. They won't put me there, you may be sure."
"Your brother is the Duke?" Minola said, a faint memory returning to her about a wild youth of the family who had had to leave the army in some disgrace, and went away somewhere beyond seas.
"Yes; I thought I told you, or that Money had mentioned it. Yes; I was the good-for-nothing of the family. You can't imagine, though, what a number of good-for-nothings are doing well out Denver City way, out in Colorado. When I was there, there were three fellows from the Guards, and some fellows I knew at Eton, all growing cattle, and making money, and hunting buffalo, and potting Indians, and making themselves generally as happy as sandboys. I've made money myself, and might have made a lot more, I dare say."
Mr. St. Paul evidently delighted to hear himself talk.
"It must be a very dangerous place to live in," Minola said, wishing he would talk to somebody else.
"Well, there's the chance of getting your hair raised by the Indians. Do you know what that means—having your hair raised?"
"I suppose being scalped."
"Exactly. Well, that's a danger. But it isn't so much a danger if you don't go about in gangs. That's the mistake fellows make; they think it's the safe thing to do, but it isn't. Go about in parties of two, and the Indians never will see you—never will notice you."
Minola's eyes happened at this moment to meet those of Heron.
"You know Heron?"
"Oh, yes; very well."
"A good fellow—very good fellow, though he has such odd philanthropic fads about niggers and man and a brother, and all that sort of thing. Got into a nice mess out there in St. Xavier's, didn't he?"
"I heard that his conduct did him great honor," Minola said warmly.
"Yes, yes—of course, yes; if you look at it in that sort of way. But these black fellows, you know—it really isn't worth a man's while bothering about them. They're just as well off in slavery as not—deuced deal better, I think; I dare say some of their kings and chiefs think they have a right to sell them if they like. I told Heron at the time I wouldn't bother if I was he. Where's the use, you know?"
"Were you there at the time?" Minola asked, with some curiosity.
"Yes, I was there. I'd been in the Oregon country, and I met with an accident, and got a fever, and all that; and I wanted a little rest and a mild climate, you know; and I made for San Francisco, and some fellows there told me to go to these Settlements of ours in the Pacific, and I went. I saw a good deal of Heron—he was very hospitable and that, and then this row came on. He behaved like a deuced young fool, and that's a fact."
"He was not understood," said Minola, "and he has been treated very badly by the Government."
"Of course he has. I told him they would treat him badly. They wouldn't understand all his concern about black fellows—how could they understand it? Why didn't he let it alone? The fellow who's out there now—you won't find him bothering about such things, you bet—as we say out West, if you will excuse such a rough expression, Miss Grey. But of course Heron has been treated very badly, and we are going to run him for Duke's-Keeton."
Several visitors had now come in, and Mr. Heron contrived to change his position and cross over to the part of the room where Minola was.
"Look here, Heron," Mr. St. Paul said; "you have got a staunch ally here already. Miss Grey means to wear your colors, I dare say—do they wear colors at elections now in England?—I don't know—and you had better canvass for her influence in Keeton. If I were an elector of Keeton, I'd vote for the Pope or the Sultan if Miss Grey asked me."
Meanwhile Lady Limpenny was pleading her cause with Mr. Money. It may be said that Lady Limpenny was the wife of a physician who had been knighted, and who had no children. Her husband was wholly absorbed in his professional occupations, and never even thought of going anywhere with his wife, or concerning himself about what she did. He knew the Money women professionally, and except professionally, he could not be said to know anybody. Lady Limpenny, therefore, indulged all her whims freely. Her most abiding or most often recurring whim was an anxiety for the salvation of her soul; but she had passionate flirtations meanwhile with china, poetry, flowers, private theatricals, lady-helps, and other pastimes and questions of the hour.
"You'll never part with that china," Mr. Money said—"you know you can't."
"Oh, but my dear Money, you don't understand my feelings. You are not, you know—an old friend may say so—you are not a religious man. You have not been penetrated by what I call religion—not yet, I mean."
"Not yet, certainly. Well, why don't you send to Christie and Manson's at once?"
"But, my dear Money, to part with my china inthatway—to have it sent all about the world perhaps. Oh, no! I want to part with it to some friend who will let me come and see it now and again."
"Have you thought of this, Lady Limpenny? Suppose, when you have sold it, you go to see it now and then, and covet it—covet your neighbor's goods—perhaps long even to steal it. Where is the spiritual improvement then?"
"Money! You shock me! You horrify me! Could that be possible? Is there such weakness in human nature?"
"Quite possible, I assure you. You have been yourself describing the influence of these unregulated likings. How do you know that they may not get the better of you in another way? Take my advice, and keep your china. It will do you less harm in your own possession than in that of anybody else."
"If I could think so, my dear Money."
"Think it over, my dear Lady Limpenny; look at it from this point of view, and let me know your decision—then we can talk about it again."
Lady Limpenny relapsed for a while into reflection, with a doubtful and melancholy expression upon her face. Money, however, had gained his point, or, as he would himself have expressed it, "choked her off" for the moment.
"I don't like your new friend," said Minola to Victor.
"My new friend? Who's he?"
"Your friend Mr. St. Paul."
"Oh, he isn't a new friend, or a friend at all. He is rather an old acquaintance, if anything."
"Well, I don't like him."
"Nor I. Don't let yourself be drawn into much talk with him."
"No? Then thereissomebody you don't like, Mr. Heron. That's a healthy sign. I really thought you liked all men and all women, without exception."
"Well, I am not good at disliking people, but I don't likehim, and I didn't like to see him talking to you."
"Indeed? Yet he is a political ally of yours and of Mr. Money now."
"That's a different thing; and I don't know anything very bad of him, only I had rather you didn't have too much to say to him. He's a rowdy—that's all. If I had a sister, I shouldn't care to have him for an acquaintance of hers."
"Is it a vice to know him?"
"Almost, for women," Heron said abruptly; and presently, having left Minola, interposed, as if without thinking of it, between Lucy Money and St. Paul, who was engaging her in conversation.
CHAPTER XIV.
A MIDNIGHT CONFIDENCE.
Mr. St. Paul stayed to dinner that day, being invited by Money without ceremony, and accepting the invitation in the easiest way. Victor Heron declined to remain. The family and Minola, with Mr. St. Paul, made up the party. St. Paul was very attentive to Mrs. Money, who appeared to be delighted with him. He talked all through the dinner—he hardly ever stopped; he had an adventure in Texas, or in Mexico, or in the South Sea Islands,aproposof everything; he seemed equally pleased whether his listeners believed or disbelieved his stories, and he talked of his own affairs with a cool frankness, as if he was satisfied that all the world must know everything about him, and that he might as well speak bluntly out. He could not be called cynical in manner, for cynicism presupposes a sort of affectation, a defiance, or a deliberateposeof some kind, and St. Paul seemed absolutely without affectation—completely self-satisfied and easy. Victor had spoken of him as "a rowdy—that's all." But that was not all. He was—if such a phrase could be tolerated—a "gentleman rowdy." His morals and his code of honor seemed to be those of a Mexican horse-stealer, and yet anybody must have known that he was by birth and early education an English gentleman.
"I don't think I know a soul about town," he said. "I looked in at the club once or twice—always kept up my subscription there during my worst of times—and I didn't see a creature I could recollect. I dare say the people who know my brother won't care to know me. I did leave such a deuce of a reputation behind me; and they'll all be sure to think I haven't got a red cent—a penny, I mean. There they are mistaken. Somehow the money-making gift grows on you out West."
"Why don't you settle down?" Money asked. "Get into Parliament, marry, range yourself, and all that—make up with your brother and be all right. You have plenty of time before you yet."
"My good fellow, what do you call plenty of time? Look at me—I'm as bald as if I were a judge."
"Oh, bald! that's nothing. Everybody is bald nowadays."
"But I'm thirty-five! Thirty-five—think of that, young ladies! a grizzled, grim old fogey—what is it Thackeray says?—all girls know Thackeray—who on earth would marry me? My brother and his wife have given me such a shockingly bad character. Some of it I deserved, perhaps; some of it I didn't. They think I have disgraced the family name, I dare say. What did the family name do for me I should like to know? Out in Texas we didn't care much about family names."
"I entirely agree with your view of things, Mr. St. Paul," Mrs. Money said in her soft melancholy tone. "England is destroyed by caste and class. I honor a man of family who has the spirit to put away such ideas."
"Oh, it would be all well enough if one were the eldest brother, and had the money, and all that. I should like to be the Duke, I dare say, well enough. But I can't be that, and I've been very happy hunting buffaloes for months together, and no one but an old Indian to speak to. I don't disgrace the Duke's family name, for I've dropped it, nor any courtesy title, for I don't use any. I believe they have forgotten me altogether in Keeton. Miss Grey tells me so."
"Excuse me," Minola said. "I didn't say that, for I didn't know. I only said I didn't remember hearing of you by your present name; but I didn't know any of the family at the Castle. We belonged to the townspeople, and were not likely to have much acquaintance with the Castle."
"Except at election time—I know," St. Paul said with a laugh. "Well, I'm worse off now, for they won't knowmeeven at election time."
Then the talk went off again under St. Paul's leadership, and almost by his sole effort, to his adventurous life, and he told many stories of fights with Indians, of vigilance committees, of men hanged for horse-stealing, and of broken-down English scamps, who either got killed or made their fortune out West. A cool contempt for human life was made specially evident. "I like a place," the narrator more than once observed, "where you can kill a man if you want to and no bother about it." Perhaps still more evident was the contempt for every principle but that of comradeship.
After dinner Mr. St. Paul only showed himself in the drawing-room for a moment or two, and then took his leave.
"Papa," Lucy said instantly, "do tell us all about Mr. St. Paul."
"Are you curious to know something about him, Miss Grey?" Money asked.
"Well, he certainly seems to be an odd sort of person. He is so little like what I should imagine a pirate of romance."
"Not a bad hit. He is a sort of pirate out of date. But he represents, with a little exaggeration, a certain tendency among younger sons to-day. Some younger sons, you know, are going into trade; some are working at the bar, or becoming professional journalists; some are rearing sheep in Australia, and cattle in Kansas and Texas. It's a phase of civilization worth observing, Miss Grey, to you who go in for being a sort of little philosopher."
"Dear papa, how can you say so? Nola does not go in for being anything so dry and dreadful."
"The tendencies of an aristocracy must always interest a thoughtful mind like Miss Grey's, Lucy," Mrs. Money said gravely. "There is at least something hopeful in the mingling of classes."
"In young swells becoming drovers and rowdies?" Money observed. "Hum! Well, as to that——" and he stopped.
"I think I am a little interested in him," Minola said; "but only personally, not philosophically."
"Well, that's nearly all about him. He was a scamp, and he knocked about the world, and settled, if that can be called settling, out West for a while; and he has made money, and I hope he has sown his wild oats; and he has come home for variety, and, I think, to annoy his brother. I met him in Egypt, and I knew him in England too; and so he came to see me, and he found a sort of old acquaintance in Heron. That's all. He's a clever fellow, and not a bad fellow in his way. I dare say he would have made a very decent follower of Drake or Raleigh if he had been born at the right time."
Minola's attention was drawn away somewhat from the character, adventures, and philosophical interest of Mr. St. Paul to observe some peculiarity in the manner of Lucy Money. Although Lucy had set out by declaring herself wildly eager to know something about St. Paul, she very soon dropped out of the conversation, and drew listlessly away. After a while she sat at the piano, and began slowly playing some soft and melancholy chords. Minola had been observing something of a change in Lucy this present visit, something that she had not seen before. Mr. Money presently went to his study; the women all dispersed, and Minola sat in her bedroom, and wondered within herself whether anything was disturbing Lucy's bright little mind.
It was curious to note how Lucy Money's soft ways had won upon Minola. Lucy twined herself round the affections of the stronger girl, and clung to her. Mrs. Money was pleased, amused, and touched by the sight. The calm Theresa was a little annoyed, considering Lucy to show thereby a lack of the composure and dignity befitting a woman; and Mary Blanchet was sometimes disposed to be jealous. Minola herself was filled with affectionate kindness for the overgrown child, not untempered with a dash of pity and wonder. She was sometimes inclined to address the girl in certain lines from Joanna Baillie, forgotten now even of most readers of poetry, and ask her, "Thou sweetest thing that e'er didst fix its lightly-fibred spray on the rude rock, ah! wouldst thou cling tome?" For whatever the outer world and its lookers-on may have thought of her, it is certain that Minola did still believe herself to be cold, unloving, hard to warm toward her fellow-beings. The unrestrained, unaffected love of Lucy filled her at once with surprise and a sweeter, softer feeling.
So when she heard the patter of feet at her door she hardly had to wait for the familiar tap and the familiar voice to know that Lucelet was there. Minola opened the door, and Lucelet came in with her hair all loosely around her, and her eyes sparkling.
"May I sit a little and talk?" and without waiting for an answer she coiled herself on the hearthrug near the chair on which Minola had been sitting. "You sit there again, Nola. Are you glad to see me?"
"Very, very glad, Lucy dear."
"Do you love me, master? no?" For Minola had, among other things, been teaching Lucy to read Shakespeare, and Lucy had just become enamored of Ariel's tender question, and was delighted to turn it to her own account.
"Dearly, my delicate Ariel," said Minola, carrying on the quotation; and Lucy positively crimsoned with a double delight, having her quotation understood and answered, and an assurance of affection given.
"Why don't you let down your hair, Nola? Do let me see it now completely down. I'll do it—allow me." And she sprang up, came behind Minola, and "undid" all her hair, so that it fell around her back and shoulders. Minola could hardly keep from blushing to be thus made a picture of and openly admired. "There, that is perfectly beautiful! You look like Lady Godiva, or like the Fair One with Locks of Gold, if you prefer that. Did you ever read the story of 'The Fair One with Locks of Gold,' when you were a little girl? Oh, please leave your hair just as it is, and let me look at it for awhile. Do you remember Lady Limpenny's nonsense to-day?"
Minola allowed her to please herself, and they began to talk; but after the first joy of coming in, Lucy seemed a littledistraite, and not quite like herself. She fell into little moments of silence every now and then, and sometimes looked up into Minola's face as if she were going to say something, and then stopped.
Minola saw that her friend had something on her mind, but thought it best not to ask her any questions, feeling sure that if Lucy had anything she wished to say, Lucy would not keep it long unsaid.
After a moment's pause, "Nola!"
"Yes, dear."
"You don't much like men in general?"
"Well, Lucy dear, I don't know that anybody much likes men in general, or women either. Good Christians say that they love all their brothers and sisters, but I don't suppose it's with a very ardent love."
"But you rather go in for not liking men as a rule, don't you?"
Minola was a little amused by the words, "go in for not liking men." They seemed to be what she knew Lucy never meant them for—a sort of rebuke to the affectation which would formally pose itself as misanthropic. Minola had of late begun to entertain doubts as to whether a certain amount of half-conscious egotism and affectation did not mingle in her old-time proclamations of a dislike to men.
"I think I rather did go in for not liking men, Lucy; but I think I am beginning to be a little penitent. Perhaps I was rather general in my ideas; perhaps the men I knew best were not very fair specimens of the human race; perhaps men in general don't very much care what I think of them."
"Any man would care if he knew you, especially if he saw you with your hair down like that. But, anyhow, you don't dislikeallmen?"
"Oh, no, dear. How could I dislike your father, Lucelet?"
"No," Lucy said, looking round with earnest eyes; "who could dislike him, Nola? I am so fond of him; I could say almost anything to him. If you knew what I have lately been talking to him about, you would wonder. Well, but he is not the only man you don't dislike; I am sure you don't dislike Mr. Heron." Her eyes grew more inquiring and eager than before.
"No, indeed, Lucy; I don't think any one could dislike him either."
"I am delighted to hear you say so; but I want you to say some more. Tell me what you think of Mr. Heron; I am curious to know. You are so much more clever than I, and you can understand people and see into them. Tell me exactly what you see in Mr. Heron."
"Why do you want to know all this, Lucy?"
"Because I want to hear your opinion very particularly, for you are not a hero-worshipper, and you don't admire men in general. Some girls are such enthusiastic fools that they make a hero out of every good-looking young man they meet. But you are not like that, Nola."
"Oh, no! I am not like that," Nola echoed, not without a thought that now, perhaps, there were moments when she almost wished she were.
"Well, then, tell me. First, do you think Mr. Heron handsome?"
"Yes, Lucy, I think he is handsome."
"Then do you like him? Do tell me what you think of him."
"In the name of heaven," Minola asked herself, "why should I not speak the truth in answer to so plain and innocent a question?" She answered quietly, and looking straightforward at the fire:
"I like Mr. Heron very much, Lucy. I don't know many men—young men especially—but I like him better than any young man I have met as yet."
"As yet. Yes, yes. I am glad to hear you say that," Lucy said with beaming eyes, and growing good-humoredly saucy in her very delight. "As yet. Yes, you put that in well, Nola."
"How so, dear?"
"Oh, you know. Because of the one yet to present himself; the not impossible He—nearly impossible though—who is to be fit for my Nola. I tell you I shall scrutinize him before I allow his pretensions to pass. Well, now, about Mr. Heron?"
"I think him a very brave, generous, and noble-hearted young man. I think he has not a selfish thought or a mean purpose about him, and I think he has spirit and talent; and I hope one day to hear that he has made himself an honorable name."
Lucy turned now to Minola a pair of eyes that were moist with tears.
"Tell me, Nola"—and her voice grew a little tremulous—"don't you think he's a man a woman might fall in love with?"
There was a moment's silence, and Lucy leaned upon Nola's knees, eagerly looking into her face. Then Nola answered, in a quiet, measured undertone,
"Oh, yes, Lucy; I do indeed. I think he is a man a woman might fall in love with."
"Thank you, Nola. That is all I wanted to ask you."
There was another pause.
"Nola!"
"Yes, Lucy."
"You don't ask me anything."
"Perhaps, dear, because there is nothing I want to know."
"Then youdoguess?"
"Oh, yes, dear, I do guess."
"Well—but what?"
"I suppose—that you are—engaged to Mr. Heron."
Lucy started up with her face all on fire.
"Oh, no, Nola, dear darling! you have guessed too much. I wish I had told you, and not asked you to guess at all. We're not engaged. Oh, no. It's only—well, it's only—it's only that I am in love with him, Nola—oh, yes, so much in love with him that I should not like to live if he didn't care about me—no, not one day!" Then Lucy hid her head in Minola's lap and sobbed like a little child.
Perhaps the breakdown was of service to both the girls. It allowed poor Lucy to relieve her long pent-up feelings, and it gave Minola time to consider the meaning of the revelation as composedly as she could, and to think of what she ought to say and do.
Lucy presently looked up, with a gleam of April brightness in her eyes.
"Do you think me foolish, Nola, for telling you this?"
"Well, dear, I don't know whether you ought to have told it to me."
"I couldn't do without telling it to somebody, Nola. I think I must be like that king I read about somewhere—I forget his name; no, I believe it was not the king, but his servant—who had to tell the secret to some listener, and so told it to the reeds on the seashore. If I had not told this to somebody, I must have told it to the reeds."
Minola almost wished she had told it to the reeds. There were reeds enough beneath the little bridge which Nola loved in Regent's Park, and had they been possessed of the secret she might have looked over the bridge for ever, and dreamed dreams as the lazy water flowed on beneath, and even noted and admired the whispering reeds, and they would never have whispered that secret to her.
"I think papa guesses it," Lucy said. "I am sure he does, because he talked to me of—oh, well, of a different person, and asked me if I cared about him, and I told him that I didn't. He said he was glad, for he didn't much like him; but that I should marry any one I liked—always provided, Nola, that he happened to like me, which doesn't at all follow. I know papa likes Mr. Heron."
"Then, Lucy, would it not be better to tell Mr. Money?"
"Oh, Nola! I couldn't tell him that—I could tell him almost anything, but I couldn't tell him that. Are you not sorry for me, Nola? Oh, say you are sorry for me! The other day—it only seems the other day—I was just as happy as a bird. Do say you are sorry for me."
"But, my dear, I don't know why there should be any sorrow about it. Why should not everything prove to be perfectly happy?"
"Do you think so, Nola?"
She looked up to Nola with an expression of childlike anxiety.
"Why should it not be so, Lucy? If I were a man, I should be very much in love with you, dear. You are the girl that men ought to be in love with."
There was a certain tone of coldness or constraint in Minola's voice which could not escape even Lucy's observation.
"You think me weak and foolish, I know very well, Nola, because I have made such a confession as this. For all your kindness and your good heart, I know that you despise any girl who allows herself to fall in love with a man. You don't care about men, and you think we ought to have more dignity, and not to prostrate ourselves before them; and you are quite right. Only some of us can't help it."
"No," said Minola sadly; "I suppose not."
"There! You look all manner of contempt at me. I should like to have you painted as the Queen of the Amazons—you would look splendid. But I may trust to your friendly heart and your sympathy all the same, I know. You will pity us weaker girls, and you won't be too hard on us. I want you to help me."
"Can I help you, Lucy? Shall I ask Mr. Heron if he is in love with you? I will if you like."
"Oh, Nola, what nonsense! That only shows how ridiculous you think me. No, I only mean that you should give me your sympathy, and let me talk to you. And—you observe things so well—just to use your eyes for my sake. Oh, there is so much a friend may do! And he thinks so much of you, and always talks to you so freely."
Yes, Minola thought to herself; he always talks to me very freely—we are good friends. If he were in love with Lucy, I dare say he would tell me. Why should he not? She tells me that she is in love with him—that is a proof of her friendship.
We can think in irony as well as speak in it, and Minola was disposed at present to be a little sarcastic. She did not love such disclosures as Lucy had been making. There seemed to be a lack of that instinctive delicacy in them, which, as she fancied, might be the possession of a girl were she brought up naked in a south sea islet. Fresh and innocent as Lucy was, yet this revelation seemed wanting in pure self-respect. Perhaps, too, it was in keeping with Minola's old creed to believe that this was just the sort of girl whom most men would be sure to love. At any rate, she was for the moment in a somewhat bitter mood. Something of this must have shown itself in her expression, for Lucy said, in a tone of frightened remonstrance—
"Now, Nola, I have told you all. I have betrayed myself to you, and if you only despise me and feel angry with me, oh, what shall I do? Isn't it strange—you both came the same day here—you and he, for the first time—I mean the first time since I saw you at school. Am I to lose you too?"
There was something so simple and helpless in this piteous appeal, with its implied dread of a love proving hopeless, that no irony or anger could have prevailed against it in Minola's breast. She threw her arm round the child's neck and petted and soothed her.
"Why should you lose both—why should you lose either?" Minola said. "I can promise you for one, Lucy dear; and if I could promise you for the other too, you might be sure of him. He must be a very insensible person, Lucy, who fails to appreciate you. Only don't make it too plain, dear, to any one but me. They say that men like to do the love-making for themselves—and you have not the slightest need to go out of your way. Tell me—does he know anything of this?"
"Oh, no, Nola."
"Nor guess anything at all?"
"Oh, no—I am sure not—I don't think so. You didn't guess anything—now, did you?—and how could he?"
Minola felt a little glad to hear of this—for the dignity of womanhood, she said to herself. But she did not know how long it would last, for Lucy was not a person likely to accomplish great efforts of self-control, for the mere sake of the abstract dignity of womanhood. For the moment, all Minola could do was to express full sympathy with her friend, and at the same time to counsel her gently not to betray her secret. Lucy went to her bedroom at last, much fluttering and quivering, but also relieved and encouraged, and she fell asleep, for all her love pains, long before Minola did.
"She will be very happy," Minola sat thinking, when she was alone. "She has a great deal already: a loving father, and mother, and sister; a happy home, where she is sheltered against everything; a future all full of brightness. He will love her—I suppose. She's very pretty, and sweet, and obliging; and he is simple and manly, and would be drawn by her pure, winning ways; and men like him are fond of women who don't profess to be strong. Well, if I can help her, I will do so—it will be something to see her completely happy, and him too."
Whereupon, for no apparent reason, the tears sprang into Minola's eyes, and she found a vain wish arising in her heart that she had never renewed her acquaintance with Lucy Money, never been persuaded by Mary Blanchet to visit her, never stood upon her threshold and met Victor Heron there.
"Why not wish at once that I had never been born?" she said, half tearful, half scornful of her tears. "One thing is as easy now as the other, and as useful, and not to have been born would have saved many idle hours and much heartache."
CHAPTER XV.
A MORNING CONFIDENCE.
Minola rose next morning with a bewildering and oppressed sense of disappointment and defeat. The whole of her scheme of life had broken down. Her little bubble world had burst. All her plans of bold independence and of contented life, of isolation from social trammels, and freedom from woman's weaknesses, had broken down. She had always thought scorn of those who said that women could not feel friendship for men without danger of feeling love—and now, what was she but a cruel, mocking evidence of the folly of her confidence? Alas, no romantic schoolgirl could have fallen more suddenly into love than Minola had done. There was but one man whom she had ever seen with whom she had coveted a friendship, and she now knew, only too well, that in her breast the friendship had already caught fire and blazed into love. Where was Alceste now, and the Alceste standard by which she had proposed to test all men and women, well convinced beforehand that she would find them wanting? She could not even flatter herself that she had been faithful to her faith, and that if she had succumbed at the very outset, it was because the first comer actually proved to be an Alceste. No, she could not cram this complacent conviction into her mind. Victor Heron was a generous and noble-hearted young man, she felt assured; but she had not fallen in love with him because of any assurance that he was like the hero of her girlhood. She made no attempt to deceive herself in this way. In her proud resentment of her weakness she even trampled upon it with undeserved scorn. "I fell in love with him," she said to herself, "just as the silliest girl falls in love—because he was there, and I couldn't help it."
It was not merely Lucy's revelation which had forced upon Minola a knowledge of her own feelings. This had perhaps so sent conviction home as to render illusion or self-deception impossible any longer, but it was not that which first told her of her weakness. That had long been more and more making itself known to her. It was plain to her now that since the first day when she stood upon the bridge with him in the park, and looked into the canal, she had loved him. "Oh, why did I not know it then?" she asked wearily of herself. "I could have avoided him—have never seen him again—and it might so have come to nothing, and at least we should not have to meet."
Amid all her pain of the night and the morning, one question was ever repeating itself, "Will this last?" That the fever which burned her was love—genuine love—the regular old love of the romances and the poets—she could not doubt. She knew it because it was so new a feeling. Had she walked among a fever-stricken population, refusing to believe in the danger of infection, and satisfied that the fearless and the wise were safe, and had she suddenly felt the strange pains and unfamiliar heats, and found the senses beginning to wander, she would have known that this was fever. The pangs of death are new to all alike when they come, but those who are about to die are conscious—even in their last moments of consciousness—that this new summons has the one awful meaning. So did Minola know only too well what the meaning was of this new pain. "Will it last?" was her cry to herself. "Shall I have to go through life with this torture always to bear? Is it true that women have to bear this for years and years—that some of them never get over it? Oh, I shall never get over it—never, never!" she cried out in bitterness. She was very bitter now against herself and fate. She did not feel that it is better to love vainly than not at all. Indeed, such consoling conviction belongs to the poet who philosophizes on love, or to the disappointed lover who is already beginning to be consoled. It does not do much good to any one in the actual hour of pain. Minola cordially and passionately wished that she had not loved, or seen any one whom she could love. She was full of wrath and scorn for herself, and believed herself humbled and shamed. Her whole life was crossed; her quiet was all gone; she was now doomed to an existence of perpetual self-constraint and renunciation, and even deception. She had a secret which she must conceal from the world as if it was a murder. She must watch her words, her movements, her very glances, lest any sudden utterance, or gesture, or blush should betray her. She would wake in the night in terror, lest in some dream she might have called out some word or name which had roused Mary Blanchet in the next room, and betrayed her. She must meet Victor Heron, heaven knows how often, and talk with him as a friend, and never let one gleam of the truth appear. She must hear Lucy Money tell of her love, and be theconfidanteof her childlike emotions. Not often, perhaps, has a proud and sensitive girl been tried so strangely. "I thought I hated men before," she kept saying to herself. "Idohate them now; and women and all. I hate him most of all because I know that I so love him."
All this poor Minola kept saying or thinking to herself that morning as she listlessly dressed. It is not too much to say that the very air seemed changed for her. She had only one resolve to sustain her, but that was at least as strong as her love, or as death—the resolve that, come what would, she must keep her secret. Victor Heron believed himself her friend, and desired to be nothing more. No human soul but her own must know that her feeling to him was not the same. She would have known the need of that resolve even if she had never been entrusted with poor dear little Lucy's secret. But the more calmly she thought over that little story the more she thought it likely that Lucy's dream might come to be fulfilled.
The world—that is to say, the breakfast room and the Money family—had to be faced. The family were as pleasant as ever, except Lucy, who looked pale and troubled, and at whom her father looked once or twice keenly, but without making any remark.
"I have had a letter from Lady Limpenny already this morning," Mr. Money observed.
All professed an interest in the contents of the letter, even Theresa.
Mr. Money began to read: