Decorated HeadingCHAPTER III.CONSEQUENCES.Decorated Horizontal Rule.Wellfield, at last left alone to ponder upon his position, felt himself in thoroughly evil case. Once or twice a wonder crossed his mind as to whether there were yet time to turn back, retrace his steps along this dire and darksome path; fight his way back to the light, and to Sara Ford; confess everything, and put himself and his fate in her hands. He had a longing to do it, but when he reflected what that course involved, he had not the courage. It was to lose every assured present advantage for a problematical one; for he could not–at least he saidso to himself–be sure that Sara would forgive; and if she did not——He followed Mr. Bolton’s advice, and it struck him once or twice that it was an unusual thing for a man in Mr. Bolton’s position to have deliberately invited a ruined man like himself, without friends and without references, to marry his only daughter, and enter his family. Perhaps, had he heard Mr. Bolton’s confidential conversation of the night before with John Leyburn, he might have felt the distinction less flattering. John and Mr. Bolton had agreed that a great change had come over Nita, and both of them, though they did not openly speak it out, and confess it, owned tacitly that they considered that change had been brought about by her feelings for Jerome Wellfield. And Mr. Bolton had said:‘He’ll never be any great shakes as a man of business, but it seems to me that it is safe enough to put the management of his own–what usedto be his own–place into his hands. He will have every inducement to care for it. And if it will make Nita happy, why should I refuse her that happiness simply because the man has no money? He is steady and honest, that seems certain. I’ve taken the trouble and the precaution to find out all about his college career, and his habits there. It’s all quite satisfactory–less backbone than I could have wished in my girl’s husband, but no vice; music and painting and æsthetics–Nita likes that sort of thing. Do you think I am a great fool?’‘I think you are behaving in a very natural and very sensible manner,’ said John. ‘He seems to me to be all you say; and if he only makes Nita happy, what more is needed?’‘Exactly what I think,’ said Mr. Bolton. ‘Now, leave your books and come and have supper with us. We haven’t seen as much of you as we ought to have done.’John shut up the great folio book on ornithology which he had beenstudying when Mr. Bolton arrived, and picked up some water-colour drawings of different wild birds which lay beside the book. They were exquisitely finished, and, as one could see, copied by a faithful and loving hand, from nature.‘I promised these things to Nita,’ he casually observed. ‘Perhaps she won’t care much about them now. But I will take them, at any rate.’Mr. Bolton picked them up and looked at them.‘They are very nice,’ he observed. ‘I wish some other people had such innocent tastes and habits, and would confine their studies to natural objects like these.’John laughed, a little sarcastically, as he put away his book, and taking the sketches in his hand announced that he was ready.‘When Nita is married–or if she marries, Jack, you’ll have to look out for a wife yourself,’ observed Mr. Bolton.‘Perhaps Nita will look out for some one, then, and do the courting for me,’ said John, drily. ‘I have no mind to begin it on my own account–and am not likely to find favour if I did.’‘There you talk rubbish, despite that sage head of yours,’ replied his elderly friend. ‘Suppose you delegate the choice to my cousin; she has a wonderfully good opinion of you.’John laughed aloud. ‘If her opinion of me is so high, it might be a dangerous thing to confide the choice to her,’ he remarked.‘She might take a fancy to Abbot’s Knoll, and the master of it!’ exclaimed Mr. Bolton, highly delighted. ‘There is no accounting for the presumptuous fancies which enter a young man’s head. Here we are!’They had gone in, little suspecting the scene which was even then coming to an end, and the rest of the evening had been passed as has been related.Jerome naturally knew nothing of all this conversation. He went to theAbbey the following morning, and there was an unpleasantly-suggestive rhyme running in his head as he took his way there–that rhyme which gives the excellent advice:‘Be sure you’re well off with the old loveBefore you are on with the new.’He found Nita at home, and alone–startled and surprised to see him; overwhelmed with confusion as the sight of him recalled the scene of last night.Muttering some incoherent words she would have made her escape, but Jerome stopped her, and taking her hands, looked into her face with an expression of such intense gravity, even severity, that she gazed up at him spell-bound and fascinated.‘Did your father say anything to you this morning about me?’ he asked.‘No,’ whispered Nita. ‘Why–what–he has not told you to go away–oh,he has not told you that?’‘No. We were talking about you last night, Nita, and he told me this, that if you would marry me, I might stay; but if not,thenI was to go. What do you say? May I stay? Will you let me try to make you happy, or must I go?’Nita was nerveless, cold, and trembling–perhaps never in her life had she felt so unhappy as in this moment–which should have been the one of supreme delight–when the man she loved with all her soul asked her to be his wife.‘Jerome–I–do you mean that you wish this?’ she asked, desperately plunging into the question.‘I mean that I wish it more than anything in the world; and listen, Nita–I would not conceal this from you–that I have loved, and loved deeply, before ever I knew you: but that is all over, gone, done with, finished! I cannot offer you all the passion of a first strong love,but I can offer you my life’s devotion, if you will be so good, so wonderfully good, as to take it.’He saw the blank shade that came over her face: he believed that she was going to summon up her strength of will to refuse him. If she did, what was left to him–what in this world to make life worth an hour’s living?‘Nita!’ he pleaded, in dire and dreadful earnest; ‘for God’s sake think before you speak! Do not cast me away! Try to bear with me–or–or–I shall be the most miserable wretch that ever lived!’There was passion–there was even anguish in his tone–emotions which Nita read there, and which overpowered her. All her love, all her self-abnegation rushed out to meet him:‘Oh, Jerome, if you care for my love–if it will give you one hour’s comfort–it is yours, it is yours! And my whole life with it–for I love you better than you can ever know.’‘Better than I can ever deserve, try as I may,’ he murmured, in the deep tone of conviction, as he folded her in his arms, and soothed the passionate agitation which shook her–and tried to quench the tears which rushed from her eyes–tears which none could have named with certainty as being of joy or of grief.But the die was cast: the bargain was struck. He might return to his home with a mind free of care for the future; but with all the diviner elements in his nature degraded, soiled, maimed, for they had been dragged through the dust, and grievously maltreated.Avice and her escorts arrived late that afternoon, and he met them, and they went with him to his house. That is, Avice and Ellen went with him–Somerville returned to Brentwood.Avice felt a chill dismay strike her heart, at her brother’s reception of her. There was an absence, a constraint, a coldness in all hiswords and movements, which would not be removed. She expressed her delight at the sight of her new home, and he absently replied that it was very well, but rather dreary. She felt very soon that some miserable explanation was to come. It came almost directly. They had got into the house, and Avice had taken off her things, and was somewhat languidly partaking of the meal which had been placed before her. Suddenly she said:‘Jerome, you have never once asked after Sara.’She saw his face suddenly turn pale, and his lips set. The hand which had been lying on the table, trifling with a paper-knife, closed upon that knife quickly and firmly: he raised his eyes to his sister’s face, and said coldly:‘Miss Ford–how is she?’‘Miss Ford!’ ejaculated the young girl, horror-struck. ‘Jerome! what has happened? You speak as if she was nothing to you.’‘Nor is she anything to me now,’ he answered, with that cold and pitiless cruelty, unbending and unremorseful, which so often appears in weak natures when they are driven to choose between themselves and another–when the moment comes in which egoistic or altruistic feelings can no longer be evenly balanced–in which one set must prevail over the other.‘Sara–nothing to you! I–I do not understand,’ she stammered, with a sickening sensation of fear and bewilderment.‘I will explain,’ he said, with the same cold glitter in his eyes, his lips drawn to the same thin line–a look she had never seen him wear before, and which sent her heart leaping to her throat.‘For heaven’s sake, Jerome, do not look at me in that manner!’ she cried. ‘It is just–just as papa used to look when he thought some onewanted punishing.’‘Do not interrupt with such vague, foolish nonsense,’ he replied impatiently. ‘I am going to write to Miss Ford to-night, to set her free from her engagement to me. And I–wish to be free from her. I am going to marry some one else.’Avice had pushed back her chair, and sat looking wildly at him; her hands clenched tightly; her breath coming quickly, but unable to speak a word.‘It is as well you should understand this,’ he said, again beginning to balance the paper-knife. ‘To-night you will want to rest, I suppose, but afterwards you will have to meet the lady I speak of; and it is to be hoped you will conduct yourself with more composure, more self-respect, in fact, than you display at present.’Then Avice found words.‘Do you imagine that I will be false just because it pleases you tobe so!’ she exclaimed. ‘If you choose to behave like a coward and a liar–yes, a coward and a liar,’ she repeated, looking full into his eyes with an unblenching scorn that scorched him, ‘and that to the noblest woman that ever lived,Iam neither a coward nor a liar. I will have nothing to do with this girl you are going to marry. You have brought me home, and you can make me miserable, I suppose. And you can make me see her, I dare say; but you can never make me like her, or behave as if I liked her, or as if I wished her to be my sister. And I never will. You may take my word for it. I stand by Sara Ford to the last, if I had to die for it.’She spoke with vehement passion, and looked transformed. She spoke too like a woman, not like a child any more. And yet she was but a child, and a helpless one. He answered composedly:‘It is as well that you have shown me by this specimen how you intendto behave. I will give you till to-morrow morning to reflect upon your position. Allow me to remind you that I never asked you to behave to Miss Bolton as if you liked her. It will be perfectly immaterial to her how you behave. But I want civility from you towards my future wife, or, if you choose to withhold it, I shall have to exert my authority as your guardian, and remove you–in other words, my dear little girl, I have no wish to make your life uncomfortable, but unless you can obey me without making scenes like this, I shall send you to school.’Now ‘school’ had been the horror, and the bugbear, and thebête noireof Miss Wellfield’s life from her earliest childhood. She had often been threatened with it; and seldom had the threat failed to work its soothing spell. On hearing Jerome’s words now–on seeing the cool unrelenting expression in his eyes, and the slight sarcastic smile upon his lips, and recognising the absolute power he heldover her destiny–how easily he could make her miserable, if not so easily happy; remembering that Sara was far away, and that under the circumstances she might never see that dear friend again; remembering that she had never seen this Miss Bolton, who might be quite ignorant of all that had happened–remembering, in short, her own helplessness and desolation, she burst into a passion of tears, of hopeless, agonised weeping, exclaiming now and then:‘What a home-coming! Oh, what a dreadful coming home!’Jerome let her cry in the corner of the settee, and took no notice of her; till about seven o’clock he rose from his chair, went to her and put his hand upon her shoulder. She looked up, her face all tear-stained and pitiful; her golden hair tumbled about her head.‘I am going to the Abbey, and shall not be in till after ten o’clock,’he said. ‘Am I to tell Miss Bolton that I may take you to see her to-morrow, or not?’‘I don’t know,’ replied Avice, hopelessly.‘Ah, you will know by to-morrow. I shall tell her that I intend to bring you. Good-evening. I should advise you to go to bed before long.’But she did not go to bed. She sat in a stupor of grief and bewilderment. While she had been crying, Jerome had written a letter. Her passion had irritated him, and he had allowed his irritation to influence his words to Sara. He had ‘set her free’ (no need to put such a pitiful document into print–it was feeble and despicable, illogical, and yet stabbing like a dagger, as such productions–the efforts of selfishness to kick down the ladder by which it has risen–always must be). ‘He would not stand in her way, he who had nothing to offer her–no faintest prospect of a home, or of anything worthy to giveher.’ In short, under the pretence of consulting her interests, Jerome Wellfield very decidedly asked Sara Ford to dismiss him, to release him from his bond.Avice, of course, knew nothing of this. She only knew that she had come home to find everything miserable, to find an impostor in the brother to whom she had given the whole worship of her youthful heart. And yet, was he an impostor, or was he not rather a very wicked, dark, bad man, like some Byronic hero?She sat in the corner of the settee, darkly brooding, when some one tapped quickly at the front-door; and then she heard it open, and a man’s step in the little porch. Some one entered, saying in a slow, lazy voice:‘I say, Wellfield, I thought I’d call to wish—— Oh, I beg your pardon!’ followed in a more animated accent.Avice looked at the speaker, and saw a tall, clumsy-looking young man peering at her, rather than looking, from a pair of short-sightedbrown eyes. On his homely, square-cut face there was an expression of some embarrassment, not partaken of in the least by Miss Wellfield. She rose, made a gracious bow, mentally casting a reflection of some dismay upon her probably dishevelled appearance, and said, with self-possession:‘My brother has gone to the Abbey.’To herself she was thinking, ‘What a great, queer, awkward-looking creature. Surelyhecan’t belong to one of those “fossilised Roman Catholic families” whom Jerome told me about, as being the only aborigines fit to visit.’‘Oh! I saw the light in the window, and supposed he was in. I did not know you had arrived.’‘Do you want to see him particularly?’‘Oh, another time will do, I suppose. He has just got engaged to my cousin and my greatest friend, and I came to wish him joy.’A pause. Then Avice said:‘Miss Bolton is your cousin. Then of course you know her?’‘I have known her since she was a baby.’‘Then you must be Mr. Leyburn, I am sure. Jerome often used to speak of you in his letters.’‘Yes, that is my name,’ said John, unable to take his eyes from the figure before him, with her lovely flushed face, ruffled golden hair, and violet eyes at once bright with recent tears and dark and tired with the fatigue of travelling, and, it must be confessed, with an overpowering drowsiness, to which she had been just on the point of yielding when he arrived. She was like nothing he had ever seen before, and he felt tongue-tied and paralysed in her presence–as if, if he spoke, he would infallibly say something idiotic, even drivelling, and as though, if he moved, his boots would creak, or he would fall over something. Together with these sensations, an intense anxiety neitherto speak as a fool, nor to tumble down; which combined currents of emotion rendered his position anything but an agreeable one.Avice herself had begun to think:‘He is fearfully clumsy, but I am sure he has honest eyes; and if he has known this horrid girl all his life, he can tell me something about her. I shall ask him.’She therefore said:‘I was too tired to go out to-night, and—’‘And I am keeping you,’ exclaimed John, hastily, shocked at the reflections called up by this discovery.‘Not at all. I wish you would tell me something about Miss Bolton, as you know her so well. Is she pretty?’John looked involuntarily at the lovely face and form confronting him, and replied, slowly:‘Not very–but she is a perfect angel of goodness, and very nice.’‘Ah!’ said Avice, looking earnestly at him, while a new element seemed introduced into the complication. If Miss Bolton was good and nice, it was not Sara Ford alone who had been wronged.‘Is she clever?’ she pursued.‘She may not be exactly a genius,’ said John, ‘but she is the very least stupid girl I ever knew. She is charming. I–I should think you would like her,’ he added, a little confusedly.‘It is to be hoped I may, as she is to be my brother’s wife,’ said Avice, in so sharp and bitter a tone that John looked at her in astonishment. Avice saw the look, and said hastily: ‘The engagement is a surprise to me. I only heard of it this evening.’‘Because it was only decided this morning,’ said John, with a beaming smile. ‘Nita only told me of it herself this afternoon. I’ve been congratulating her, and it is good to see her so happy. And I think I shall pursue Wellfield up to the Abbey, and give him my good wishesthere. Nita will not mind. Good-night, Miss Wellfield.’John’s drawl saved his sentences from the appearance of abruptness which might otherwise have marred their beauty.‘Good-night,’ said Avice, absently.She held out her hand, and he shook it, and then let himself out, painfully conscious that he knocked his feet together, and dashed an umbrella or two to the ground in his exit, in a manner of which Wellfield, and such as he, would never have been guilty.As for Avice, she was reflecting more and more hopelessly on the situation. Good, clever, charming, and very happy. Then it was evident that she loved Jerome very much–and if she knew nothing, it was not she who was to blame.Avice carried her meditations to her room, where weariness soon overcame her. In sleep she forgot alike the long journey home, thestrange, cold reception accorded to her, the dreadful news Jerome had given her, her own anguish, and the great wrong done to Sara Ford. She forgot even to wonder whether she should consent to go and see Miss Bolton the following day, or sternly choose a dreary fate, and, for the sake of duty, go to school.
Decorated HeadingCHAPTER III.CONSEQUENCES.Decorated Horizontal Rule.Wellfield, at last left alone to ponder upon his position, felt himself in thoroughly evil case. Once or twice a wonder crossed his mind as to whether there were yet time to turn back, retrace his steps along this dire and darksome path; fight his way back to the light, and to Sara Ford; confess everything, and put himself and his fate in her hands. He had a longing to do it, but when he reflected what that course involved, he had not the courage. It was to lose every assured present advantage for a problematical one; for he could not–at least he saidso to himself–be sure that Sara would forgive; and if she did not——He followed Mr. Bolton’s advice, and it struck him once or twice that it was an unusual thing for a man in Mr. Bolton’s position to have deliberately invited a ruined man like himself, without friends and without references, to marry his only daughter, and enter his family. Perhaps, had he heard Mr. Bolton’s confidential conversation of the night before with John Leyburn, he might have felt the distinction less flattering. John and Mr. Bolton had agreed that a great change had come over Nita, and both of them, though they did not openly speak it out, and confess it, owned tacitly that they considered that change had been brought about by her feelings for Jerome Wellfield. And Mr. Bolton had said:‘He’ll never be any great shakes as a man of business, but it seems to me that it is safe enough to put the management of his own–what usedto be his own–place into his hands. He will have every inducement to care for it. And if it will make Nita happy, why should I refuse her that happiness simply because the man has no money? He is steady and honest, that seems certain. I’ve taken the trouble and the precaution to find out all about his college career, and his habits there. It’s all quite satisfactory–less backbone than I could have wished in my girl’s husband, but no vice; music and painting and æsthetics–Nita likes that sort of thing. Do you think I am a great fool?’‘I think you are behaving in a very natural and very sensible manner,’ said John. ‘He seems to me to be all you say; and if he only makes Nita happy, what more is needed?’‘Exactly what I think,’ said Mr. Bolton. ‘Now, leave your books and come and have supper with us. We haven’t seen as much of you as we ought to have done.’John shut up the great folio book on ornithology which he had beenstudying when Mr. Bolton arrived, and picked up some water-colour drawings of different wild birds which lay beside the book. They were exquisitely finished, and, as one could see, copied by a faithful and loving hand, from nature.‘I promised these things to Nita,’ he casually observed. ‘Perhaps she won’t care much about them now. But I will take them, at any rate.’Mr. Bolton picked them up and looked at them.‘They are very nice,’ he observed. ‘I wish some other people had such innocent tastes and habits, and would confine their studies to natural objects like these.’John laughed, a little sarcastically, as he put away his book, and taking the sketches in his hand announced that he was ready.‘When Nita is married–or if she marries, Jack, you’ll have to look out for a wife yourself,’ observed Mr. Bolton.‘Perhaps Nita will look out for some one, then, and do the courting for me,’ said John, drily. ‘I have no mind to begin it on my own account–and am not likely to find favour if I did.’‘There you talk rubbish, despite that sage head of yours,’ replied his elderly friend. ‘Suppose you delegate the choice to my cousin; she has a wonderfully good opinion of you.’John laughed aloud. ‘If her opinion of me is so high, it might be a dangerous thing to confide the choice to her,’ he remarked.‘She might take a fancy to Abbot’s Knoll, and the master of it!’ exclaimed Mr. Bolton, highly delighted. ‘There is no accounting for the presumptuous fancies which enter a young man’s head. Here we are!’They had gone in, little suspecting the scene which was even then coming to an end, and the rest of the evening had been passed as has been related.Jerome naturally knew nothing of all this conversation. He went to theAbbey the following morning, and there was an unpleasantly-suggestive rhyme running in his head as he took his way there–that rhyme which gives the excellent advice:‘Be sure you’re well off with the old loveBefore you are on with the new.’He found Nita at home, and alone–startled and surprised to see him; overwhelmed with confusion as the sight of him recalled the scene of last night.Muttering some incoherent words she would have made her escape, but Jerome stopped her, and taking her hands, looked into her face with an expression of such intense gravity, even severity, that she gazed up at him spell-bound and fascinated.‘Did your father say anything to you this morning about me?’ he asked.‘No,’ whispered Nita. ‘Why–what–he has not told you to go away–oh,he has not told you that?’‘No. We were talking about you last night, Nita, and he told me this, that if you would marry me, I might stay; but if not,thenI was to go. What do you say? May I stay? Will you let me try to make you happy, or must I go?’Nita was nerveless, cold, and trembling–perhaps never in her life had she felt so unhappy as in this moment–which should have been the one of supreme delight–when the man she loved with all her soul asked her to be his wife.‘Jerome–I–do you mean that you wish this?’ she asked, desperately plunging into the question.‘I mean that I wish it more than anything in the world; and listen, Nita–I would not conceal this from you–that I have loved, and loved deeply, before ever I knew you: but that is all over, gone, done with, finished! I cannot offer you all the passion of a first strong love,but I can offer you my life’s devotion, if you will be so good, so wonderfully good, as to take it.’He saw the blank shade that came over her face: he believed that she was going to summon up her strength of will to refuse him. If she did, what was left to him–what in this world to make life worth an hour’s living?‘Nita!’ he pleaded, in dire and dreadful earnest; ‘for God’s sake think before you speak! Do not cast me away! Try to bear with me–or–or–I shall be the most miserable wretch that ever lived!’There was passion–there was even anguish in his tone–emotions which Nita read there, and which overpowered her. All her love, all her self-abnegation rushed out to meet him:‘Oh, Jerome, if you care for my love–if it will give you one hour’s comfort–it is yours, it is yours! And my whole life with it–for I love you better than you can ever know.’‘Better than I can ever deserve, try as I may,’ he murmured, in the deep tone of conviction, as he folded her in his arms, and soothed the passionate agitation which shook her–and tried to quench the tears which rushed from her eyes–tears which none could have named with certainty as being of joy or of grief.But the die was cast: the bargain was struck. He might return to his home with a mind free of care for the future; but with all the diviner elements in his nature degraded, soiled, maimed, for they had been dragged through the dust, and grievously maltreated.Avice and her escorts arrived late that afternoon, and he met them, and they went with him to his house. That is, Avice and Ellen went with him–Somerville returned to Brentwood.Avice felt a chill dismay strike her heart, at her brother’s reception of her. There was an absence, a constraint, a coldness in all hiswords and movements, which would not be removed. She expressed her delight at the sight of her new home, and he absently replied that it was very well, but rather dreary. She felt very soon that some miserable explanation was to come. It came almost directly. They had got into the house, and Avice had taken off her things, and was somewhat languidly partaking of the meal which had been placed before her. Suddenly she said:‘Jerome, you have never once asked after Sara.’She saw his face suddenly turn pale, and his lips set. The hand which had been lying on the table, trifling with a paper-knife, closed upon that knife quickly and firmly: he raised his eyes to his sister’s face, and said coldly:‘Miss Ford–how is she?’‘Miss Ford!’ ejaculated the young girl, horror-struck. ‘Jerome! what has happened? You speak as if she was nothing to you.’‘Nor is she anything to me now,’ he answered, with that cold and pitiless cruelty, unbending and unremorseful, which so often appears in weak natures when they are driven to choose between themselves and another–when the moment comes in which egoistic or altruistic feelings can no longer be evenly balanced–in which one set must prevail over the other.‘Sara–nothing to you! I–I do not understand,’ she stammered, with a sickening sensation of fear and bewilderment.‘I will explain,’ he said, with the same cold glitter in his eyes, his lips drawn to the same thin line–a look she had never seen him wear before, and which sent her heart leaping to her throat.‘For heaven’s sake, Jerome, do not look at me in that manner!’ she cried. ‘It is just–just as papa used to look when he thought some onewanted punishing.’‘Do not interrupt with such vague, foolish nonsense,’ he replied impatiently. ‘I am going to write to Miss Ford to-night, to set her free from her engagement to me. And I–wish to be free from her. I am going to marry some one else.’Avice had pushed back her chair, and sat looking wildly at him; her hands clenched tightly; her breath coming quickly, but unable to speak a word.‘It is as well you should understand this,’ he said, again beginning to balance the paper-knife. ‘To-night you will want to rest, I suppose, but afterwards you will have to meet the lady I speak of; and it is to be hoped you will conduct yourself with more composure, more self-respect, in fact, than you display at present.’Then Avice found words.‘Do you imagine that I will be false just because it pleases you tobe so!’ she exclaimed. ‘If you choose to behave like a coward and a liar–yes, a coward and a liar,’ she repeated, looking full into his eyes with an unblenching scorn that scorched him, ‘and that to the noblest woman that ever lived,Iam neither a coward nor a liar. I will have nothing to do with this girl you are going to marry. You have brought me home, and you can make me miserable, I suppose. And you can make me see her, I dare say; but you can never make me like her, or behave as if I liked her, or as if I wished her to be my sister. And I never will. You may take my word for it. I stand by Sara Ford to the last, if I had to die for it.’She spoke with vehement passion, and looked transformed. She spoke too like a woman, not like a child any more. And yet she was but a child, and a helpless one. He answered composedly:‘It is as well that you have shown me by this specimen how you intendto behave. I will give you till to-morrow morning to reflect upon your position. Allow me to remind you that I never asked you to behave to Miss Bolton as if you liked her. It will be perfectly immaterial to her how you behave. But I want civility from you towards my future wife, or, if you choose to withhold it, I shall have to exert my authority as your guardian, and remove you–in other words, my dear little girl, I have no wish to make your life uncomfortable, but unless you can obey me without making scenes like this, I shall send you to school.’Now ‘school’ had been the horror, and the bugbear, and thebête noireof Miss Wellfield’s life from her earliest childhood. She had often been threatened with it; and seldom had the threat failed to work its soothing spell. On hearing Jerome’s words now–on seeing the cool unrelenting expression in his eyes, and the slight sarcastic smile upon his lips, and recognising the absolute power he heldover her destiny–how easily he could make her miserable, if not so easily happy; remembering that Sara was far away, and that under the circumstances she might never see that dear friend again; remembering that she had never seen this Miss Bolton, who might be quite ignorant of all that had happened–remembering, in short, her own helplessness and desolation, she burst into a passion of tears, of hopeless, agonised weeping, exclaiming now and then:‘What a home-coming! Oh, what a dreadful coming home!’Jerome let her cry in the corner of the settee, and took no notice of her; till about seven o’clock he rose from his chair, went to her and put his hand upon her shoulder. She looked up, her face all tear-stained and pitiful; her golden hair tumbled about her head.‘I am going to the Abbey, and shall not be in till after ten o’clock,’he said. ‘Am I to tell Miss Bolton that I may take you to see her to-morrow, or not?’‘I don’t know,’ replied Avice, hopelessly.‘Ah, you will know by to-morrow. I shall tell her that I intend to bring you. Good-evening. I should advise you to go to bed before long.’But she did not go to bed. She sat in a stupor of grief and bewilderment. While she had been crying, Jerome had written a letter. Her passion had irritated him, and he had allowed his irritation to influence his words to Sara. He had ‘set her free’ (no need to put such a pitiful document into print–it was feeble and despicable, illogical, and yet stabbing like a dagger, as such productions–the efforts of selfishness to kick down the ladder by which it has risen–always must be). ‘He would not stand in her way, he who had nothing to offer her–no faintest prospect of a home, or of anything worthy to giveher.’ In short, under the pretence of consulting her interests, Jerome Wellfield very decidedly asked Sara Ford to dismiss him, to release him from his bond.Avice, of course, knew nothing of this. She only knew that she had come home to find everything miserable, to find an impostor in the brother to whom she had given the whole worship of her youthful heart. And yet, was he an impostor, or was he not rather a very wicked, dark, bad man, like some Byronic hero?She sat in the corner of the settee, darkly brooding, when some one tapped quickly at the front-door; and then she heard it open, and a man’s step in the little porch. Some one entered, saying in a slow, lazy voice:‘I say, Wellfield, I thought I’d call to wish—— Oh, I beg your pardon!’ followed in a more animated accent.Avice looked at the speaker, and saw a tall, clumsy-looking young man peering at her, rather than looking, from a pair of short-sightedbrown eyes. On his homely, square-cut face there was an expression of some embarrassment, not partaken of in the least by Miss Wellfield. She rose, made a gracious bow, mentally casting a reflection of some dismay upon her probably dishevelled appearance, and said, with self-possession:‘My brother has gone to the Abbey.’To herself she was thinking, ‘What a great, queer, awkward-looking creature. Surelyhecan’t belong to one of those “fossilised Roman Catholic families” whom Jerome told me about, as being the only aborigines fit to visit.’‘Oh! I saw the light in the window, and supposed he was in. I did not know you had arrived.’‘Do you want to see him particularly?’‘Oh, another time will do, I suppose. He has just got engaged to my cousin and my greatest friend, and I came to wish him joy.’A pause. Then Avice said:‘Miss Bolton is your cousin. Then of course you know her?’‘I have known her since she was a baby.’‘Then you must be Mr. Leyburn, I am sure. Jerome often used to speak of you in his letters.’‘Yes, that is my name,’ said John, unable to take his eyes from the figure before him, with her lovely flushed face, ruffled golden hair, and violet eyes at once bright with recent tears and dark and tired with the fatigue of travelling, and, it must be confessed, with an overpowering drowsiness, to which she had been just on the point of yielding when he arrived. She was like nothing he had ever seen before, and he felt tongue-tied and paralysed in her presence–as if, if he spoke, he would infallibly say something idiotic, even drivelling, and as though, if he moved, his boots would creak, or he would fall over something. Together with these sensations, an intense anxiety neitherto speak as a fool, nor to tumble down; which combined currents of emotion rendered his position anything but an agreeable one.Avice herself had begun to think:‘He is fearfully clumsy, but I am sure he has honest eyes; and if he has known this horrid girl all his life, he can tell me something about her. I shall ask him.’She therefore said:‘I was too tired to go out to-night, and—’‘And I am keeping you,’ exclaimed John, hastily, shocked at the reflections called up by this discovery.‘Not at all. I wish you would tell me something about Miss Bolton, as you know her so well. Is she pretty?’John looked involuntarily at the lovely face and form confronting him, and replied, slowly:‘Not very–but she is a perfect angel of goodness, and very nice.’‘Ah!’ said Avice, looking earnestly at him, while a new element seemed introduced into the complication. If Miss Bolton was good and nice, it was not Sara Ford alone who had been wronged.‘Is she clever?’ she pursued.‘She may not be exactly a genius,’ said John, ‘but she is the very least stupid girl I ever knew. She is charming. I–I should think you would like her,’ he added, a little confusedly.‘It is to be hoped I may, as she is to be my brother’s wife,’ said Avice, in so sharp and bitter a tone that John looked at her in astonishment. Avice saw the look, and said hastily: ‘The engagement is a surprise to me. I only heard of it this evening.’‘Because it was only decided this morning,’ said John, with a beaming smile. ‘Nita only told me of it herself this afternoon. I’ve been congratulating her, and it is good to see her so happy. And I think I shall pursue Wellfield up to the Abbey, and give him my good wishesthere. Nita will not mind. Good-night, Miss Wellfield.’John’s drawl saved his sentences from the appearance of abruptness which might otherwise have marred their beauty.‘Good-night,’ said Avice, absently.She held out her hand, and he shook it, and then let himself out, painfully conscious that he knocked his feet together, and dashed an umbrella or two to the ground in his exit, in a manner of which Wellfield, and such as he, would never have been guilty.As for Avice, she was reflecting more and more hopelessly on the situation. Good, clever, charming, and very happy. Then it was evident that she loved Jerome very much–and if she knew nothing, it was not she who was to blame.Avice carried her meditations to her room, where weariness soon overcame her. In sleep she forgot alike the long journey home, thestrange, cold reception accorded to her, the dreadful news Jerome had given her, her own anguish, and the great wrong done to Sara Ford. She forgot even to wonder whether she should consent to go and see Miss Bolton the following day, or sternly choose a dreary fate, and, for the sake of duty, go to school.
Decorated Heading
Decorated Horizontal Rule.
Wellfield, at last left alone to ponder upon his position, felt himself in thoroughly evil case. Once or twice a wonder crossed his mind as to whether there were yet time to turn back, retrace his steps along this dire and darksome path; fight his way back to the light, and to Sara Ford; confess everything, and put himself and his fate in her hands. He had a longing to do it, but when he reflected what that course involved, he had not the courage. It was to lose every assured present advantage for a problematical one; for he could not–at least he saidso to himself–be sure that Sara would forgive; and if she did not——
He followed Mr. Bolton’s advice, and it struck him once or twice that it was an unusual thing for a man in Mr. Bolton’s position to have deliberately invited a ruined man like himself, without friends and without references, to marry his only daughter, and enter his family. Perhaps, had he heard Mr. Bolton’s confidential conversation of the night before with John Leyburn, he might have felt the distinction less flattering. John and Mr. Bolton had agreed that a great change had come over Nita, and both of them, though they did not openly speak it out, and confess it, owned tacitly that they considered that change had been brought about by her feelings for Jerome Wellfield. And Mr. Bolton had said:
‘He’ll never be any great shakes as a man of business, but it seems to me that it is safe enough to put the management of his own–what usedto be his own–place into his hands. He will have every inducement to care for it. And if it will make Nita happy, why should I refuse her that happiness simply because the man has no money? He is steady and honest, that seems certain. I’ve taken the trouble and the precaution to find out all about his college career, and his habits there. It’s all quite satisfactory–less backbone than I could have wished in my girl’s husband, but no vice; music and painting and æsthetics–Nita likes that sort of thing. Do you think I am a great fool?’
‘I think you are behaving in a very natural and very sensible manner,’ said John. ‘He seems to me to be all you say; and if he only makes Nita happy, what more is needed?’
‘Exactly what I think,’ said Mr. Bolton. ‘Now, leave your books and come and have supper with us. We haven’t seen as much of you as we ought to have done.’
John shut up the great folio book on ornithology which he had beenstudying when Mr. Bolton arrived, and picked up some water-colour drawings of different wild birds which lay beside the book. They were exquisitely finished, and, as one could see, copied by a faithful and loving hand, from nature.
‘I promised these things to Nita,’ he casually observed. ‘Perhaps she won’t care much about them now. But I will take them, at any rate.’
Mr. Bolton picked them up and looked at them.
‘They are very nice,’ he observed. ‘I wish some other people had such innocent tastes and habits, and would confine their studies to natural objects like these.’
John laughed, a little sarcastically, as he put away his book, and taking the sketches in his hand announced that he was ready.
‘When Nita is married–or if she marries, Jack, you’ll have to look out for a wife yourself,’ observed Mr. Bolton.
‘Perhaps Nita will look out for some one, then, and do the courting for me,’ said John, drily. ‘I have no mind to begin it on my own account–and am not likely to find favour if I did.’
‘There you talk rubbish, despite that sage head of yours,’ replied his elderly friend. ‘Suppose you delegate the choice to my cousin; she has a wonderfully good opinion of you.’
John laughed aloud. ‘If her opinion of me is so high, it might be a dangerous thing to confide the choice to her,’ he remarked.
‘She might take a fancy to Abbot’s Knoll, and the master of it!’ exclaimed Mr. Bolton, highly delighted. ‘There is no accounting for the presumptuous fancies which enter a young man’s head. Here we are!’
They had gone in, little suspecting the scene which was even then coming to an end, and the rest of the evening had been passed as has been related.
Jerome naturally knew nothing of all this conversation. He went to theAbbey the following morning, and there was an unpleasantly-suggestive rhyme running in his head as he took his way there–that rhyme which gives the excellent advice:
‘Be sure you’re well off with the old loveBefore you are on with the new.’
‘Be sure you’re well off with the old loveBefore you are on with the new.’
‘Be sure you’re well off with the old loveBefore you are on with the new.’
‘Be sure you’re well off with the old loveBefore you are on with the new.’
‘Be sure you’re well off with the old love
Before you are on with the new.’
He found Nita at home, and alone–startled and surprised to see him; overwhelmed with confusion as the sight of him recalled the scene of last night.
Muttering some incoherent words she would have made her escape, but Jerome stopped her, and taking her hands, looked into her face with an expression of such intense gravity, even severity, that she gazed up at him spell-bound and fascinated.
‘Did your father say anything to you this morning about me?’ he asked.
‘No,’ whispered Nita. ‘Why–what–he has not told you to go away–oh,he has not told you that?’
‘No. We were talking about you last night, Nita, and he told me this, that if you would marry me, I might stay; but if not,thenI was to go. What do you say? May I stay? Will you let me try to make you happy, or must I go?’
Nita was nerveless, cold, and trembling–perhaps never in her life had she felt so unhappy as in this moment–which should have been the one of supreme delight–when the man she loved with all her soul asked her to be his wife.
‘Jerome–I–do you mean that you wish this?’ she asked, desperately plunging into the question.
‘I mean that I wish it more than anything in the world; and listen, Nita–I would not conceal this from you–that I have loved, and loved deeply, before ever I knew you: but that is all over, gone, done with, finished! I cannot offer you all the passion of a first strong love,but I can offer you my life’s devotion, if you will be so good, so wonderfully good, as to take it.’
He saw the blank shade that came over her face: he believed that she was going to summon up her strength of will to refuse him. If she did, what was left to him–what in this world to make life worth an hour’s living?
‘Nita!’ he pleaded, in dire and dreadful earnest; ‘for God’s sake think before you speak! Do not cast me away! Try to bear with me–or–or–I shall be the most miserable wretch that ever lived!’
There was passion–there was even anguish in his tone–emotions which Nita read there, and which overpowered her. All her love, all her self-abnegation rushed out to meet him:
‘Oh, Jerome, if you care for my love–if it will give you one hour’s comfort–it is yours, it is yours! And my whole life with it–for I love you better than you can ever know.’
‘Better than I can ever deserve, try as I may,’ he murmured, in the deep tone of conviction, as he folded her in his arms, and soothed the passionate agitation which shook her–and tried to quench the tears which rushed from her eyes–tears which none could have named with certainty as being of joy or of grief.
But the die was cast: the bargain was struck. He might return to his home with a mind free of care for the future; but with all the diviner elements in his nature degraded, soiled, maimed, for they had been dragged through the dust, and grievously maltreated.
Avice and her escorts arrived late that afternoon, and he met them, and they went with him to his house. That is, Avice and Ellen went with him–Somerville returned to Brentwood.
Avice felt a chill dismay strike her heart, at her brother’s reception of her. There was an absence, a constraint, a coldness in all hiswords and movements, which would not be removed. She expressed her delight at the sight of her new home, and he absently replied that it was very well, but rather dreary. She felt very soon that some miserable explanation was to come. It came almost directly. They had got into the house, and Avice had taken off her things, and was somewhat languidly partaking of the meal which had been placed before her. Suddenly she said:
‘Jerome, you have never once asked after Sara.’
She saw his face suddenly turn pale, and his lips set. The hand which had been lying on the table, trifling with a paper-knife, closed upon that knife quickly and firmly: he raised his eyes to his sister’s face, and said coldly:
‘Miss Ford–how is she?’
‘Miss Ford!’ ejaculated the young girl, horror-struck. ‘Jerome! what has happened? You speak as if she was nothing to you.’
‘Nor is she anything to me now,’ he answered, with that cold and pitiless cruelty, unbending and unremorseful, which so often appears in weak natures when they are driven to choose between themselves and another–when the moment comes in which egoistic or altruistic feelings can no longer be evenly balanced–in which one set must prevail over the other.
‘Sara–nothing to you! I–I do not understand,’ she stammered, with a sickening sensation of fear and bewilderment.
‘I will explain,’ he said, with the same cold glitter in his eyes, his lips drawn to the same thin line–a look she had never seen him wear before, and which sent her heart leaping to her throat.
‘For heaven’s sake, Jerome, do not look at me in that manner!’ she cried. ‘It is just–just as papa used to look when he thought some onewanted punishing.’
‘Do not interrupt with such vague, foolish nonsense,’ he replied impatiently. ‘I am going to write to Miss Ford to-night, to set her free from her engagement to me. And I–wish to be free from her. I am going to marry some one else.’
Avice had pushed back her chair, and sat looking wildly at him; her hands clenched tightly; her breath coming quickly, but unable to speak a word.
‘It is as well you should understand this,’ he said, again beginning to balance the paper-knife. ‘To-night you will want to rest, I suppose, but afterwards you will have to meet the lady I speak of; and it is to be hoped you will conduct yourself with more composure, more self-respect, in fact, than you display at present.’
Then Avice found words.
‘Do you imagine that I will be false just because it pleases you tobe so!’ she exclaimed. ‘If you choose to behave like a coward and a liar–yes, a coward and a liar,’ she repeated, looking full into his eyes with an unblenching scorn that scorched him, ‘and that to the noblest woman that ever lived,Iam neither a coward nor a liar. I will have nothing to do with this girl you are going to marry. You have brought me home, and you can make me miserable, I suppose. And you can make me see her, I dare say; but you can never make me like her, or behave as if I liked her, or as if I wished her to be my sister. And I never will. You may take my word for it. I stand by Sara Ford to the last, if I had to die for it.’
She spoke with vehement passion, and looked transformed. She spoke too like a woman, not like a child any more. And yet she was but a child, and a helpless one. He answered composedly:
‘It is as well that you have shown me by this specimen how you intendto behave. I will give you till to-morrow morning to reflect upon your position. Allow me to remind you that I never asked you to behave to Miss Bolton as if you liked her. It will be perfectly immaterial to her how you behave. But I want civility from you towards my future wife, or, if you choose to withhold it, I shall have to exert my authority as your guardian, and remove you–in other words, my dear little girl, I have no wish to make your life uncomfortable, but unless you can obey me without making scenes like this, I shall send you to school.’
Now ‘school’ had been the horror, and the bugbear, and thebête noireof Miss Wellfield’s life from her earliest childhood. She had often been threatened with it; and seldom had the threat failed to work its soothing spell. On hearing Jerome’s words now–on seeing the cool unrelenting expression in his eyes, and the slight sarcastic smile upon his lips, and recognising the absolute power he heldover her destiny–how easily he could make her miserable, if not so easily happy; remembering that Sara was far away, and that under the circumstances she might never see that dear friend again; remembering that she had never seen this Miss Bolton, who might be quite ignorant of all that had happened–remembering, in short, her own helplessness and desolation, she burst into a passion of tears, of hopeless, agonised weeping, exclaiming now and then:
‘What a home-coming! Oh, what a dreadful coming home!’
Jerome let her cry in the corner of the settee, and took no notice of her; till about seven o’clock he rose from his chair, went to her and put his hand upon her shoulder. She looked up, her face all tear-stained and pitiful; her golden hair tumbled about her head.
‘I am going to the Abbey, and shall not be in till after ten o’clock,’he said. ‘Am I to tell Miss Bolton that I may take you to see her to-morrow, or not?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Avice, hopelessly.
‘Ah, you will know by to-morrow. I shall tell her that I intend to bring you. Good-evening. I should advise you to go to bed before long.’
But she did not go to bed. She sat in a stupor of grief and bewilderment. While she had been crying, Jerome had written a letter. Her passion had irritated him, and he had allowed his irritation to influence his words to Sara. He had ‘set her free’ (no need to put such a pitiful document into print–it was feeble and despicable, illogical, and yet stabbing like a dagger, as such productions–the efforts of selfishness to kick down the ladder by which it has risen–always must be). ‘He would not stand in her way, he who had nothing to offer her–no faintest prospect of a home, or of anything worthy to giveher.’ In short, under the pretence of consulting her interests, Jerome Wellfield very decidedly asked Sara Ford to dismiss him, to release him from his bond.
Avice, of course, knew nothing of this. She only knew that she had come home to find everything miserable, to find an impostor in the brother to whom she had given the whole worship of her youthful heart. And yet, was he an impostor, or was he not rather a very wicked, dark, bad man, like some Byronic hero?
She sat in the corner of the settee, darkly brooding, when some one tapped quickly at the front-door; and then she heard it open, and a man’s step in the little porch. Some one entered, saying in a slow, lazy voice:
‘I say, Wellfield, I thought I’d call to wish—— Oh, I beg your pardon!’ followed in a more animated accent.
Avice looked at the speaker, and saw a tall, clumsy-looking young man peering at her, rather than looking, from a pair of short-sightedbrown eyes. On his homely, square-cut face there was an expression of some embarrassment, not partaken of in the least by Miss Wellfield. She rose, made a gracious bow, mentally casting a reflection of some dismay upon her probably dishevelled appearance, and said, with self-possession:
‘My brother has gone to the Abbey.’
To herself she was thinking, ‘What a great, queer, awkward-looking creature. Surelyhecan’t belong to one of those “fossilised Roman Catholic families” whom Jerome told me about, as being the only aborigines fit to visit.’
‘Oh! I saw the light in the window, and supposed he was in. I did not know you had arrived.’
‘Do you want to see him particularly?’
‘Oh, another time will do, I suppose. He has just got engaged to my cousin and my greatest friend, and I came to wish him joy.’
A pause. Then Avice said:
‘Miss Bolton is your cousin. Then of course you know her?’
‘I have known her since she was a baby.’
‘Then you must be Mr. Leyburn, I am sure. Jerome often used to speak of you in his letters.’
‘Yes, that is my name,’ said John, unable to take his eyes from the figure before him, with her lovely flushed face, ruffled golden hair, and violet eyes at once bright with recent tears and dark and tired with the fatigue of travelling, and, it must be confessed, with an overpowering drowsiness, to which she had been just on the point of yielding when he arrived. She was like nothing he had ever seen before, and he felt tongue-tied and paralysed in her presence–as if, if he spoke, he would infallibly say something idiotic, even drivelling, and as though, if he moved, his boots would creak, or he would fall over something. Together with these sensations, an intense anxiety neitherto speak as a fool, nor to tumble down; which combined currents of emotion rendered his position anything but an agreeable one.
Avice herself had begun to think:
‘He is fearfully clumsy, but I am sure he has honest eyes; and if he has known this horrid girl all his life, he can tell me something about her. I shall ask him.’
She therefore said:
‘I was too tired to go out to-night, and—’
‘And I am keeping you,’ exclaimed John, hastily, shocked at the reflections called up by this discovery.
‘Not at all. I wish you would tell me something about Miss Bolton, as you know her so well. Is she pretty?’
John looked involuntarily at the lovely face and form confronting him, and replied, slowly:
‘Not very–but she is a perfect angel of goodness, and very nice.’
‘Ah!’ said Avice, looking earnestly at him, while a new element seemed introduced into the complication. If Miss Bolton was good and nice, it was not Sara Ford alone who had been wronged.
‘Is she clever?’ she pursued.
‘She may not be exactly a genius,’ said John, ‘but she is the very least stupid girl I ever knew. She is charming. I–I should think you would like her,’ he added, a little confusedly.
‘It is to be hoped I may, as she is to be my brother’s wife,’ said Avice, in so sharp and bitter a tone that John looked at her in astonishment. Avice saw the look, and said hastily: ‘The engagement is a surprise to me. I only heard of it this evening.’
‘Because it was only decided this morning,’ said John, with a beaming smile. ‘Nita only told me of it herself this afternoon. I’ve been congratulating her, and it is good to see her so happy. And I think I shall pursue Wellfield up to the Abbey, and give him my good wishesthere. Nita will not mind. Good-night, Miss Wellfield.’
John’s drawl saved his sentences from the appearance of abruptness which might otherwise have marred their beauty.
‘Good-night,’ said Avice, absently.
She held out her hand, and he shook it, and then let himself out, painfully conscious that he knocked his feet together, and dashed an umbrella or two to the ground in his exit, in a manner of which Wellfield, and such as he, would never have been guilty.
As for Avice, she was reflecting more and more hopelessly on the situation. Good, clever, charming, and very happy. Then it was evident that she loved Jerome very much–and if she knew nothing, it was not she who was to blame.
Avice carried her meditations to her room, where weariness soon overcame her. In sleep she forgot alike the long journey home, thestrange, cold reception accorded to her, the dreadful news Jerome had given her, her own anguish, and the great wrong done to Sara Ford. She forgot even to wonder whether she should consent to go and see Miss Bolton the following day, or sternly choose a dreary fate, and, for the sake of duty, go to school.