Eleanor, like Patty, withstood the seductions of English life and miscellaneous English admirers, and lived to be Miss Yelverton in her turn, unappropriated and independent. And, like both her sisters, though more by accident than of deliberate intention, she remained true to her first love, and, after seeing the world and supping full of pleasure and luxury, returned to Melbourne and married Mr. Westmoreland. That is to say, Mr. Westmoreland followed her to England, and followed her all over Europe—dogging her from place to place with a steadfast persistence that certainly deserved reward—until the major and Mrs. Duff-Scott, returning home almost immediately after Patty's marriage and departure, brought their one ewe lamb, which the Yelvertons had not the conscience to immediately deprive them of, back to Australia with them; when her persevering suitor promptly took his passage in the same ship. All this time Mr. Westmoreland had been as much in love as his capacity for the tender passion—much larger than was generally supposed—permitted. Whether it was that she was the only woman who dared to bully him and trample on him, and thereby won his admiration and respect—or whether his passion required that the object of it should be difficult of attainment—or whether her grace and beauty were literally irresistible to him—or whether he was merely the sport of that unaccountable fate which seems to govern or misgovern these affairs, it is not necessary to conjecture. No one asks for reasons when a man or woman falls a victim to this sort of infatuation. Some said it was because she had become rich and grand, but that was not the case—except in so far as the change in her social circumstances had made her tyrannical and impudent, in which sense wealth and consequence had certainly enhanced her attractions in his eyes. Thirty thousand pounds, though a very respectable marriage portion in England, is not sufficient to make a fortune-hunter of an Australian suitor in his position; and let me do the Australian suitor of all ranks justice and here state that fortune hunting, through the medium of matrimony, is a weakness that his worst enemy cannot accuse him of—whatever his other faults may be. Mr. Westmoreland, being fond of money, as a constitutional and hereditary peculiarity—if you can call that a peculiarity—was tempted to marry it once, when that stout and swarthy person in the satin gown and diamonds exercised her fascinations on him at the club ball, and he could have married it at any time of his bachelor life, the above possessor of it being, like Barkis, "willin'", and even more than "willin'". Her fortune was such that Eleanor's thirty thousand was but a drop in the bucket compared with it, and yet even he did not value it in comparison with the favour of that capricious young lady. So he followed her about from day to day and from place to place, as if he had no other aim in life than to keep her within sight, making himself an insufferable nuisance to her friends very often, but apparently not offending her by his open and inveterate pursuit. She was not kind, but she was not cruel, and yet she was both in turn to a distracting degree. She made his life an ecstasy of miserable longing for her, keeping him by her side like a big dog on a chain, and feeding him with stones (in the prettiest manner) when he asked for bread. But she grew very partial to her big dog in the process of tormenting him and witnessing his touching patience under it. She was "used to him," she said; and when, from some untoward circumstance over which he had no control, he was for a little while absent from her, she felt the gap he left. She sensibly missed him. Moreover, though she trampled on him herself, it hurt her to see others do it; and when Mrs. Duff-Scott and Kingscote Yelverton respectively aired their opinions of his character and conduct, she instantly went over to his side, and protested in her heart, if not in words, against the injustice and opprobrium that he incurred for her sake. So, when Elizabeth became the much-occupied mother of a family, and when Patty was married and gone off into the world with her Paul, Eleanor, left alone in her independence, began to reckon up what it was worth. The spectacle of her sisters' wedded lives gave her pleasant notions of matrimony, and the state of single blessedness, as such, never had any particular charms for her. Was it worth while, she asked herself, to be cruel any more?—and might she not just as well have a house and home of her own as Elizabeth and Patty? Her lover was only a big dog upon a chain, but then why shouldn't he be? Husbands were not required to be all of the same pattern. She didn't want to be domineered over. And she didn't see anybody she liked better. She might go farther and fare worse. And—she was getting older every day.
Mrs. Duff-Scott broke in upon these meditations with the demand that she (Eleanor) should return with her to Melbourne, if only for a year or two, so that she should not be entirely bereft and desolate.
"I must start at once," said the energetic woman, suddenly seized with a paroxysm of home sickness and a sense of the necessity to be doing something now that at Yelverton there seemed nothing more to do, and in order to shake off the depressing effect of the first break in their little circle. "I have been away too long—it is time to be looking after my own business. Besides, I can't allow Patty to remain in that young man's lodgings—full of dusty papers and tobacco smoke, and where, I daresay, she hasn't so much as a peg to hang her dresses on. She must get a house at once, and I must be there to see about it, and to help her to choose the furniture. Elizabeth, my darling, you have your husband and child—I am leaving you happy and comfortable—and I will come and see you again in a year or two, or perhaps you and Kingscote will take a trip over yourselves and spend a winter with us. But I must go now. And do, do—oh,dolet me keep Nelly for a little while longer! You know I will take care of her, and I couldn't bear the sight of my house with none of you in it!"
So she went, and of course she took Eleanor, who secretly longed for the land of sunshine after her full dose of "that horrid English climate," and who, with a sister at either end of the world, perhaps missed Patty, who had been her companion by night as well as by day, more than she would miss Elizabeth. The girl was very ready to go. She wept bitterly when the actual parting came, but she got over it in a way that gave great satisfaction to Mrs. Duff-Scott and the major, and relieved them of all fear that they had been selfish about bringing her away. They joined the mail steamer at Venice, and there found Mr. Westmoreland on board. He had been summoned by his agent at home he explained; one of his partners wanted to retire, and he had to be there to sign papers. And since it had so happened that he was obliged to go back by this particular boat, he hoped the ladies would make him useful, and let him look after their luggage and things. Eleanor was properly and conventionally astonished by the curious coincidence, but had known that it would happen just as well as he. The chaperon, for her part, was indignant and annoyed by it—for a little while; afterwards she, too, reflected that Eleanor had spent two unproductive years in England and was growing older every day. Also that she might certainly go farther and fare worse. So Mr. Westmoreland was accepted as a member of the travelling party. All the heavy duties of escort were relegated to him by the major, and Mrs. Duff-Scott sent him hither and thither in a way that he had never been accustomed to. But he was meek and biddable in these days, and did not mind what uses he put his noble self to for his lady's sake. And she was very gracious. The conditions of ship life, at once so favourable and so very unfavourable for the growth of tender relations, suited his requirements in every way. She could not snub him under the ever-watchful eyes of their fellow-passengers. She could not send him away from her. She was even a little tempted, by that ingrained vanity of the female heart, to make a display before the other and less favoured ladies of the subject-like homage which she, queen-like, received. Altogether, things went on in a very promising manner. So that when, no farther than the Red Sea—while life seemed, as it does in that charming locality, reduced to its simple elements, and the pleasure of having a man to fan her was a comparatively strong sensation—when at this propitious juncture, Mr. Westmoreland bewailed his hard fate for the thousandth time, and wondered whether he should ever have the good fortune to find a little favour in her sight, it seemed to her that this sort of thing had gone on long enough, and that she might as well pacify him and have done with it. So she said, looking at him languidly with her sentimental blue eyes—"Well, if you'll promise not to bother me any more, I'll think about it."
He promised faithfully not to bother her any more, and he did not. But he asked her presently, after fanning her in silence for some minutes, what colour she would like her carriage painted, and she answered promptly, "Dark green."
While they were yet upon the sea, a letter—three letters, in fact—were despatched to Yelverton, to ask the consent of the head of the family to the newly-formed engagement, and not long after the party arrived in Melbourne the desired permission was received, Mr. and Mrs. Yelverton having learned the futility of opposition in these matters, and having no serious objection to Nelly's choice. And then again Mrs. Duff-Scott plunged into the delight of preparation for trousseau and wedding festivities—quite willing that the "poor dear fellow," as she now called him (having taken him to her capacious heart), should receive the reward of his devotion without unnecessary delay. The house was already there, a spick and span family mansion in Toorak, built by Mr. Westmoreland's father, and inherited by himself ere the first gloss was off the furniture; there was nothing to do to that but to arrange the chairs and sofas, and scatter Eleanor's wedding presents over the tables. There was nothing morepossible. It was "hopeless," Mrs. Duff-Scott said, surveying the bright and shining rooms through her double eye-glass. Unless it were entirely cleared out, and you started afresh from the beginning, she would defy you to make anything of it. So, as the bridegroom was particularly proud of his furniture, which was both new and costly, and would have scouted with indignation any suggestion of replacing it, Mrs. Duff-Scott abandoned Eleanor æsthetically to her fate. There was nothing to wait for, so the pair were made one with great pomp and ceremony not long after their return to Australia. Eleanor had the grandest wedding of them all, and really did wear "woven dew" on the occasion—with any quantity of lace about it of extravagant delicacy and preciousness. And now she has settled herself in her great, gay-coloured, handsome house, and is already a very fashionable and much-admired and much-sought-after lady—so overwhelmed with her social engagements and responsibilities sometimes that she says she doesn't know what she should do if she hadn't Patty's quiet little house to slip into now and then. But she enjoys it. And she enjoys leading her infatuated husband about with her, like a tame bear on a string, to show people how very, very infatuated he is. It is her idea of married happiness—at present.
While Mrs. Westmoreland thus disports herself in the gay world, Mrs. Brion pursues her less brilliant career in much peace and quietness. When she and Paul came back to Australia, a bride and bridegroom, free to follow their own devices unhampered by any necessity to consider the feelings of relatives and friends, nothing would satisfy her but to go straight from the ship to Mrs. M'Intyre's, and there temporarily abide in those tobacco-perfumed rooms which had once been such forbidden ground to her. She scoffed at the Oriental; she turned up her nose at the Esplanade; she would not hear of any suites of apartments, no matter how superior they might be. Her idea of perfect luxury was to go and live as Paul had lived, to find out all the little details of his old solitary life which aforetime she had not dared to inquire into, to rummage boldly over his bookshelves and desk and cupboards, which once it would have been indelicate for her to so much as look at, to revel in the sense that it was improper no longer for her to make just as free as she liked with his defunct bachelorhood, the existing conditions of which had had so many terrors for her. When Paul represented that it was not a fit place for her to go into, she told him that there was no place in the world so fit, and begged so hard to be taken there, if only for a week or two, that he let her have her way. And a very happy time they spent at No. 7, notwithstanding many little inconveniences. And even the inconveniences had their charm. Then Mrs. Duff-Scott and Eleanor came out, when it was felt to be time to say good-bye to these humble circumstances—to leave the flowery carpet, now faded and threadbare, the dingy rep suite, and the smirking Cenci over the mantelpiece, for the delectation of lodgers to whom such things were appropriate; and to select a house and furnish it as befitted the occupation of Miss Yelverton that was and her (now) distinguished husband.
By good fortune (they did not say it was good fortune, but they thought it), the old landlord next door saw fit to die at this particular juncture, and No. 6 was advertised to be let. Mr. and Mrs. Brion at once pounced upon the opportunity to secure the old house, which, it seemed to them, was admirably suited to their present modest requirements; and, by the joint exercise of Mrs. Duff-Scott's and Patty's own excellent taste, educated in England to the last degree of modern perfectibility, the purveyors of art furniture in our enlightened city transformed the humble dwelling of less than a dozen rooms into a little palace of esoteric delights. Such a subdued, harmonious brightness, such a refined simplicity, such an unpretentious air of comfort pervades it from top to bottom; and as a study of colour, Mrs. Duff-Scott will tell you, it is unique in the Australian colonies. It does her good—even her—to go and rest her eyes and her soul in the contemplation of it. Paul has the bureau in his study (and finds it very useful), and Patty has the piano in her drawing-room, its keyboard to a retired corner behind a portière (draped where once was a partition of folding doors), and its back, turned outwards, covered with a piece of South Kensington needlework. In this cosy nest of theirs, where Paul, with a new spur to his energies, works his special lever of the great machine that makes the world go on (when it would fain be lazy and sit down), doing great things for other men if gaining little glory for himself—and where Patty has afternoon teas and evenings that gather together whatever genuine exponents of intellectual culture may be going about, totally eclipsing the attractions of Mrs. Aarons's Fridays to serious workers in the fields of art and thought, without in any way dimming the brilliancy of those entertainments—the married pair seem likely to lead as happy a life as can be looked for in this world of compromises. It will not be all cakes and ale, by any means. The very happiest lives are rarely surfeited with these, perhaps, unwholesome delicacies, and I doubt if theirs will even be amongst the happiest. They are too much alike to be the ideal match. Patty is thin-skinned and passionate, too ready to be hurt to the heart by the mere little pin-pricks and mosquito bites of life; and Paul is proud and crotchety, and, like the great Napoleon, given to kick the fire with his boots when he is put out. There will be many little gusts of temper, little clouds of misunderstanding, disappointments, and bereavements, and sickness of mind and body; but, with all this, they will find their lot so blessed, by reason of the mutual love and sympathy that, through all vicissitudes, will surely grow deeper and stronger every day they live together, that they will not know how to conceive a better one. And, after all, that is the most one can ask or wish for in this world.
Mrs. Duff-Scott, being thus deprived of all her children, and finding china no longer the substantial comfort to her that it used to be, has fulfilled her husband's darkest predictions and "gone in" for philanthropy. In London she served a short but severe apprenticeship to that noble cause which seeks to remove the curse of past ignorance and cruelty from those to whom it has come down in hereditary entail—those on whose unhappy and degraded lives all the powers of evil held mortgages (to quote a thoughtful writer) before ever the deeds were put into their hands—and who are now preached at and punished for the crimes that, not they, but their tyrants of the past committed. She took a lesson in that new political economy which is to the old science what the spirit of modern religion is to the ecclesiasticism which has been its unwilling mother, and has learned that the richareresponsible for the poor—that, let these interesting debating clubs that call themselves the people's parliaments say what they like, the moral of the great social problem is that the selfishness of the past must be met by unselfishness in the present, if any of us would hope to see good days in the future.
"It will not do," says Mrs. Duff-Scott to her clergyman, who deplores the dangerous opinions that she has imbibed, "to leave these matters to legislation. Of what use is legislation? Here are a lot of ignorant, vain men who know nothing about it, fighting with one another for what they can get, and the handful amongst them who are really anxious for the public good are left nowhere in the scrimmage. It iswewho must put our shoulders to the wheel, my dear sir—and the sooner we set about it the better. Look at the state of Europe"—she waves her hand abroad—"and see what things are coming to! The very heart of those countries is being eaten out by the cancer-growths of Nihilism and all sorts of dreadful isms, because the poor are getting educated to understandwhythey are so poor. Look at wealthy England, with more than a million paupers, and millions and millions that are worse than paupers—England is comparatively quiet and orderly under it, and why? Because a number of good people like Mr. Yelverton"—the clergyman shakes his head at the mention of this wicked sinner's name—"have given themselves up to struggle honestly and face to face with the evils that nothing but a self-sacrificing and independent philanthropy can touch. I believe that if England escapes the explosion of this fermenting democracy, which is brewing such a revolution as the world has never seen, it will be owing to neither Church nor State—unless Church and State both mend their ways considerably—but to the self-denying work that is being done outside of them by those who have a single-hearted desire to help, toreallyhelp, their wronged and wretched fellow-creatures."
Thus this energetic woman, in the headlong ardour of her new conversion. And (if a woman, ready to admit her disabilities as such, may say so) it is surely better to be generous in the cause of a possibly mistaken conviction of your own, than to be selfish in deference to the opinions of other people, which, though they be the product of the combined wisdom of all the legislatures of the world, find no response in the instincts of your human heart. At any rate, I believe we shall be brought to think so some day—that great Someday which looms not far ahead of us, when, as a Cornish proverb puts it, if we have not ruled ourselves by the rudder we shall be ruled by the rock. And so Mrs. Duff-Scott works, and thinks, and writes and (of course) talks, and bothers her husband and her acquaintances for the public weal, and leads her clergyman a life that makes him wish sometimes that he had chosen a less harassing profession; economising her money, and her time, and all she has of this world's goods, that she may fulfil her sacred obligations to her fellow-creatures and help the fortunate new country in which she lives to keep itself from the evil ways that have wrought such trouble and danger to the old ones.
And the man who set her to this good work pursues it himself, not in haste or under fitful and feverish impulses of what we call enthusiasm, but with refreshed energy and redoubled power, by reason of the great "means" that are now at his disposal, the faithful companionship that at once lightens and strengthens the labour of his hands and brain, and the deep passion of love for wife and home which keeps his heart warm with vital benevolence for all the world. Mr. Yelverton has not become more orthodox since his marriage; but that was not to be expected. In these days orthodoxy and goodness are not synonymous terms. It is doubtful, indeed, if orthodoxy has not rather become the synonym for the opposite of goodness, in the eyes of those who judge trees by their fruits and whose ideal of goodness is to love one's neighbour as one's self. While it is patent to the candid observer that the men who have studied the new book of Genesis which latter-day science has written for us, and have known that Exodus from the land of bondage which is the inevitable result of such study, conscientiously pursued, are, as a rule, distinguished by a large-minded justice and charity, sympathy and self-abnegation, a regard for the sacred ties of brotherhood binding man with man, which, being incompatible with the petty meannesses and cruelties so largely practised in sectarian circles, make their unostentatious influence to be felt like sweet and wholesome leaven all around them. Such a man is Elizabeth's husband, and as time goes on she ceases to wish for any change in him save that which means progression in his self-determined course. It was not lightly that he flew in the face of the religious traditions of his youth; rather did he crawl heavily and unwillingly away from them, in irresistible obedience to a conscience so sensitive and well-balanced that it ever pointed in the direction of the truth, like the magnetic needle to the pole, and in which he dared to trust absolutely, no matter how dark the outlook seemed. And now that, after much search, he has found his way, as far as he may hope to find it in this world, he is too intently concerned to discover what may be ahead of him, and in store for those who will follow him, to trouble himself and others with irrelevant trifles—to indulge in spites and jealousies, in ambitions that lead nowhere, in quarrels and controversies about nothing—to waste his precious strength and faculties in the child's play that with so many of us is the occupation of life, and like other child's play, full of pinches and scratches and selfish squabbling over trumpery toys. To one who has learned that "the hope of nature is in man," and something of what great nature is, and what man should be, there no longer exists much temptation to envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness, or any other of the vulgar vices of predatory humanity, not yet cured of its self-seeking propensities. He is educated above that level. His recognition of the brotherhood of men, and their common interests and high destiny, makes him feel for others in their differences with him, and patient and forbearing with those whose privileges have been fewer and whose light is less than his. He takes so wide an outlook over life that the little features of the foreground, which loom so large to those who cannot or will not look beyond them, are dwarfed to insignificance; or, rather, he can fix their just relation to the general design in human affairs, and so reads them with their context, as it were, and by the light of truth and justice spread abroad in his own heart—thus proving how different they are in essential value from what they superficially appear. So Mr. Yelverton, despite his constitutional imperiousness, is one of the most tolerant, fine-tempered, and generous of men; and he goes on his way steadily, bending circumstances to his will, but hurting no one in the process—rather lifting up and steadying and strengthening those with whom he comes in contact by the contagion of his bold spirit and his inflexible and incorruptible honesty; and proving himself in private life, as such men mostly do, a faithful exponent and practical illustration of all the domestic virtues.
Elizabeth is a happy woman, and she knows it well. It seems to her that all the prosperity and comfort that should have been her mother's has, like the enormous wealth that she inherits, been accumulating at compound interest, through the long years representing the lapsed generation, for her sole profit and enjoyment. She strolls often through the old plantation, where, in a remote nook, a moss-grown column stands to mark the spot where a little twig, a hair's breadth lack of space, was enough to destroy one strong life and ruin another, and to entail such tremendous consequences upon so many people, living and unborn; and she frequently drives to Bradenham Abbey to call on or to dine with her step-uncle's wife, and sees the stately environment of her mother's girlhood—the "beautiful rooms with the gold Spanish leather on the walls," the "long gallery with the painted windows and the slippery oak floor and the thirty-seven family portraits all in a row"—which she contrasts with the bark-roofed cottage on the sea-cliff within whose narrow walls that beautiful and beloved woman afterwards lived and died. And then she goes home to Yelverton to her husband and baby, and asks what she has done to deserve to be so much better off than those who went before her?
And yet, perhaps, if all accounts were added up, the sum total of loss and profit on those respective investments that we make, or that are made for us, of our property in life, would not be found to differ so very much, one case with another. We can neither suffer nor enjoy beyond a certain point. Elizabeth is rich beyond the dreams of avarice in all that to such a woman is precious and desirable, and happy in her choice and lot beyond her utmost expectations. Yet not so happy as to have nothing to wish for—which we know, as well as Patty, means "too happy to last." There is that hunger for her absent sisters, which tries in vain to satisfy itself in weekly letters of prodigious length, left as a sort of hostage to fortune, a valuable if not altogether trustworthy security for the safety of her dearest possessions.