CHAPTER 31
A Passive Coquette
It is not to be supposed that such an
encounter as Mr. Preston had just had with Roger Hamley sweetened
the regards in which the two young men henceforward held each
other. They had barely spoken to one another before, and but seldom
met; for the land-agent’s employment had hitherto lain at Ashcombe,
some sixteen or seventeen miles from Hamley He was older than Roger
by several years; but during the time he had lived in the country
Osborne and Roger had been at school and at college. Mr. Preston
was prepared to dislike the Hamleys for many unreasonable reasons.
Cynthia and Molly had both spoken of the brothers with familiar
regard, implying considerable intimacy; their flowers had been
preferred to his on the occasion of the ball; most people spoke
well of them; and Mr. Preston had an animal’s instinctive jealousy
and combativeness against all popular young men. Their
‘position’—poor as the Hamleys might be—was far higher than his own
in the county; and, moreover, he was agent to the great Whig lord,
whose political interests were diametrically opposed to those of
the old Tory squire. Not that Lord Cumnor troubled himself much
about his political interests. His family had obtained property and
title from the Whigs at the time of the Hanoverian succession; and
so, traditionally, he was a Whig, and had belonged in his youth to
Whig clubs, where he had lost considerable sums of money to Whig
gamblers. All this was satisfactory and consistent enough. And if
Lord Hollingford had not been returned for the county on the Whig
interest—as his father had been before him, until he had succeeded
to the title—it is quite probable Lord Cumnor would have considered
the British constitution in danger, and the patriotism of his
ancestors ungratefully ignored. But, excepting at elections, he had
no notion of making Whig and Tory a party cry. He had lived too
much in London, and was of too sociable a nature, to exclude any
man who jumped with his humour from the hospitality he was always
ready to offer, be the agreeable acquaintance Whig, Tory, or
Radical. But in the county of which he was lord-lieutenant, the old
party distinction was still a shibboleth by which men were tested
for their fitness for social intercourse, as well as on the
hustings. If by any chance a Whig found himself at a Tory
dinner-table—or vice versa—the food was hard of digestion, and wine
and viands were criticized rather than enjoyed. A marriage between
the young people of the separate parties was almost as unheard-of
and prohibited an alliance as that of Romeo and Juliet’s. And of
course Mr. Preston was not a man in whose breast such prejudices
would die away. They were an excitement to him for one thing, and
called out all his talent for intrigue on behalf of the party to
which he was allied. Moreover, he considered it as loyalty to his
employer to ‘scatter his enemies’ by any means in his power. He had
always hated and despised the Tories in general; and after that
interview on the marshy common in front of Silas’s cottage, he
hated the Hamleys, and Roger especially, with a very choice and
particular hatred. ‘That prig,’ as hereafter he always designated
Roger—‘he shall pay for it yet,’ he said to himself by way of
consolation, after the father and son had left him. ‘What a lout it
is!‘—watching the receding figures. ‘The old chap has twice as much
spunk,’ as the squire tugged at his bridle reins. ‘The old mare
could make her way better without being led, my fine fellow. But I
see through your dodge. You’re afraid of your old father turning
back and getting into another rage. Position indeed! a beggarly
squire—a man who did turn off his men just before winter, to rot or
starve, for all he cared—it’s just like a venal old Tory.’ And,
under the cover of sympathy with the dismissed labourers, Mr.
Preston indulged his own private pique very pleasantly.
Mr. Preston had many causes for rejoicing: he might
have forgotten this discomfiture, as he chose to feel it, in the
remembrance of an increase of income, and in the popularity he
enjoyed in his new abode. All Hollingford came forwards to do the
earl’s new agent honour. Mr. Sheepshanks had been a crabbed, crusty
old bachelor, frequenting inn-parlours on market days, not
unwilling to give dinners to three or four chosen friends and
familiars, with whom, in return, he dined from time to time, and
with whom, also, he kept up an amicable rivalry in the matter of
wines. But he ‘did not appreciate female society,’ as Miss Browning
elegantly worded his unwillingness to accept the invitations of the
Hollingford ladies. He was unrefined enough to speak of these
invitations to his intimate friends aforesaid in the following
manner: ‘Those old women’s worrying,’ but, of course, they never
heard of this. Litde quarter-of-sheet notes, without any
envelopes-that invention was unknown in those days—but sealed in
the corners when folded up instead of gummed as they are fastened
at present, occasionally passed between Mr. Sheepshanks and the
Miss Brownings, Mrs. Goodenough, or others. From the first of these
ladies the form ran as follows: —‘Miss Browning and her sister,
Miss Phoebe Browning, present their respectful compliments to Mr.
Sheepshanks, and beg to inform him that a few friends have kindly
consented to favour them with their company at tea on Thursday
next. Miss Browning and Miss Phoebe will take it very kindly if Mr.
Sheepshanks will join their litde circle.’
Now for Mrs. Goodenough.
‘Mrs. Goodenough’s respects to Mr. Sheepshanks, and
hopes he is in good health. She would be very glad if he would
favour her with his company to tea on Monday. My daughter, in
Combermere, has sent me a couple of guinea-fowls, and Mrs.
Goodenough hopes Mr. Sheepshanks will stay and take a bit of
supper.’
No need for the dates of the days of the month. The
good ladies would have thought that the world was coming to an end
if the invitation had been sent out a week before the party therein
named. But not even guinea-fowls for supper could tempt Mr.
Sheepshanks. He remembered the made-wines he had tasted in former
days at Hollingford parties, and shuddered. Bread-and-cheese, with
a glass of bitter-beer, or a little brandy-and-water, partaken of
in his old clothes (which had worn into shapes of loose comfort,
and smelt strongly of tobacco), he liked better than roast
guinea-fowl and birch-wine, even without throwing into the balance
the stiff uneasy coat, and the tight neck-cloth and tighter shoes.
So the ex-agent had been seldom, if ever, seen at the Hollingford
tea-parties. He might have had his form of refusal stereotyped, it
was so invariably the same.
‘Mr. Sheepshanks’ duty to Miss Browning and her
sister’ (to Mrs. Goodenough, or to others, as the case might be).
‘Business of importance prevents him from availing himself of their
polite invitation; for which he begs to return his best
thanks.’
But now that Mr. Preston had succeeded, and come to
live in Hollingford, things were changed.
He accepted every civility right and left, and won
golden opinions accordingly. Parties were made in his honour, ‘just
as if he had been a bride,’ Miss Phoebe Browning said; and to all
of them he went.
‘What’s the man after?’ said Mr. Sheepshanks to
himself, when he heard of his successor’s affabihty, and
sociability, and amiabihty, and a variety of other agreeable
‘ilities,’ from the friends whom the old steward still retained at
Hollingford. ‘Preston’s not a man to put himself out for nothing.
He’s deep. He’ll be after something solider than popularity.’
The sagacious old bachelor was right. Mr. Preston
was ‘after’ something more than mere popularity. He went wherever
he had a chance of meeting Cynthia Kirkpatrick.
It might be that Molly’s spirits were more
depressed at this time than they were in general; or that Cynthia
was exultant, unawares to herself, in the amount of attention and
admiration she was receiving, from Roger by day, from Mr. Preston
in the evening, but the two girls seemed to have parted company in
cheerfulness. Molly was always gentle, but very grave and silent.
Cynthia, on the contrary, was merry, full of pretty mockeries, and
hardly ever silent. When first she came to Hollingford one of her
great charms had been that she was such a gracious listener; now
her excitement, by whatever caused, made her too restless to hold
her tongue; yet what she said was too pretty, too witty, not to be
a winning and sparkling interruption, eagerly welcomed by those who
were under her sway. Mr. Gibson was the only one who observed this
change, and reasoned upon it. ‘She’s in a mental fever of some
kind,’ thought he to himself ‘She’s very fascinating, but I don’t
quite understand her.’
If Molly had not been so entirely loyal to her
friend, she might have thought this constant brilliancy a little
tiresome when brought into every-day life; it was not the sunshiny
rest of a placid lake, it was rather the glitter of the pieces of a
broken mirror, which confuses and bewilders. Cynthia would not talk
quietly about anything now; subjects of thought or conversation
seemed to have lost their relative value. There were exceptions to
this mood of hers, when she sank into deep fits of silence, that
would have been gloomy had it not been for the never varying
sweetness of her temper. If there was a little kindness to be done
to either Mr. Gibson or Molly, Cynthia was just as ready as ever to
do it; nor did she refuse to do anything her mother wished, however
fidgety might be the humour that prompted the wish. But in this
latter case Cynthia’s eyes were not quickened by her heart.
Molly was dejected, she knew not why. Cynthia had
drifted a little apart; that was not it. Her stepmother had
whimsical moods; and if Cynthia displeased her, she would oppress
Molly with small kindnesses and pseudo-affection. Or else
everything was wrong, the world was out of joint, and Molly had
failed in her mission to set it right, and was to be blamed
accordingly. But Molly was of too steady a disposition to be much
moved by the changeableness of an unreasonable person. She might be
annoyed or irritated, but she was not depressed. That was not it.
The real cause was certainly this. As long as Roger was drawn to
Cynthia, and sought her of his own accord, it had been a sore pain
and bewilderment to Molly’s heart; but it was a straightforward
attraction, and one which Molly acknowledged, in her humility and
great power of loving, to be the most natural thing in the world.
She would look at Cynthia’s beauty and grace, and feel as if no one
could resist it. And when she witnessed all the small signs of
honest devotion which Roger was at no pains to conceal, she
thought, with a sigh, that surely no girl could help relinquishing
her heart to such tender, strong keeping as Roger’s character
ensured. She would have been willing to cut off her right hand, if
need were, to forward his attachment to Cynthia; and the
self-sacrifice would have added a strange zest to a happy crisis.
She was indignant at what she considered Mrs. Gibson’s obtuseness
to so much goodness and worth; and when she called Roger a ‘country
lout,’ or any other depreciative epithet, Molly would pinch herself
in order to keep silent. But after all, those were peaceful days
compared to the present, when she, seeing the wrong side of the
tapestry, after the wont of those who dwell in the same house with
a plotter, became aware that Mrs. Gibson had totally changed her
behaviour to Roger, for some cause unknown to Molly.
But he was always exactly the same; ‘steady as old
Time,’ as Mrs. Gibson called him, with her usual originality; ‘a
rock of strength, under whose very shadow there is rest,’ as Mrs.
Hamley had once spoken of him. So the cause of Mrs. Gibson’s
altered manner lay not in him. Yet now he was sure of a welcome,
let him come at any hour he would. He was playfully reproved for
having taken Mrs. Gibson’s words too literally, and for never
coming before lunch. But he said he considered her reasons for such
words to be valid, and should respect them. And this was done out
of his simplicity, and from no tinge of malice. Then in their
family conversations at home, Mrs. Gibson was constantly making
projects for throwing Roger and Cynthia together, with so evident a
betrayal of her wish to bring about an engagement, that Molly
chafed at the net spread so evidently, and at Roger’s blindness in
coming so willingly to be entrapped. She forgot his previous
willingness, his former evidences of manly fondness for the
beautiful Cynthia; she only saw plots of which he was the victim,
and Cynthia the conscious if passive bait. She felt as if she could
not have acted as Cynthia did; no, not even to gain Roger’s love.
Cynthia heard and saw as much of the domestic background as she
did, and yet she submitted to the role assigned to her! To be sure,
this role would have been played by her unconsciously; the things
prescribed were what she would naturally have done; but because
they were prescribed—by implication only, it is true—Molly would
have resisted; have gone out, for instance, when she was expected
to stay at home; or have lingered in the garden when a long country
walk was planned. At last—for she could not help loving Cynthia,
come what would—she determined to believe that Cynthia was entirely
unaware of all; but it was with an effort that she brought herself
to believe it.
It may be all very pleasant ‘to sport with
Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles of Naera’s hair,’cy but
young men at the outset of their independent life have many other
cares in this prosaic England to occupy their time and their
thoughts. Roger was fellow at Trinity, to be sure; and from the
outside it certainly appeared as if his position, as long as he
chose to keep unmarried, was a very easy one. His was not a nature,
however, to sink down into inglorious ease, even had his fellowship
income been at his disposal. He looked forward to an active life;
in what direction he had not yet determined. He knew what were his
talents and his tastes; and did not wish the former to lie buried,
nor the latter, which he regarded as gifts, fitting him for some
peculiar work, to be disregarded or thwarted. He rather liked
awaiting an object, secure in his own energy to force his way to
it, when he once saw it clearly. He reserved enough of money for
his own personal needs, which were small, and for the ready
furtherance of any project he might see fit to undertake; the rest
of his income was Osborne’s; given and accepted in the spirit which
made the bond between these two brothers so rarely perfect. It was
only the thought of Cynthia that threw Roger off his balance. A
strong man in everything else, about her he was as a child. He knew
that he could not marry and retain his fellowship; his intention
was to hold himself loose from any employment or profession until
he had found one to his mind, so there was no immediate prospect—no
prospect for many years, indeed, that he would be able to marry.
Yet he went on seeking Cynthia’s sweet company, listening to the
music of her voice, basking in her sunshine, and feeding his
passion in every possible way, just like an unreasoning child. He
knew that it was folly—and yet he did it; and it was perhaps this
that made him so sympathetic with Osborne. Roger racked his brains
about Osborne’s affairs much more frequently than Osborne troubled
himself Indeed, he had become so ailing and languid of late, that
even the squire made only very faint objections to his desire for
frequent change of scene, though formerly he used to grumble so
much at the necessary expenditure it involved.
‘After all, it does not cost much,’ the squire said
to Roger one day. ‘Choose how he does it, he does it cheaply; he
used to come and ask me for twenty, where now he does it for five.
But he and I have lost each other’s language, that’s what we have!
and my dictionary’ (only he called it ‘dixonary’) ‘has all got
wrong because of those confounded debts—which he will never explain
to me, or talk about—he always holds me off at arm’s length when I
begin upon it—he does, Roger—me, his old dad, as was his primest
favourite of all, when he was a little bit of a chap!’
The squire dwelt so much upon Osborne’s reserved
behaviour to himself, that brooding over this one subject
perpetually he became more morose and gloomy than ever in his
manner to his son, resenting the want of the confidence and
affection that he thus repelled. So much so that Roger, who desired
to avoid being made the receptacle of his father’s complaints
against Osborne—and Roger’s passive listening was the sedative his
father always sought—had often to have recourse to the discussion
of the drainage works as a counter-irritant. The squire had felt
Mr. Preston’s speech about the dismissal of his work-people very
keenly; it fell in with the reproaches of his own conscience,
though, as he would repeat to Roger over and over again,—‘I could
not help it—how could I?—I was drained dry of ready money—I wish
the land was drained as dry as I am,’ said he, with a touch of
humour that came out before he was aware, and at which he smiled
sadly enough. ‘What was I to do, I ask you, Roger? I know I was in
a rage—I’ve had a deal to make me so—and maybe I did not think as
much about consequences as I should have done, when I gave orders
for ’em to be sent off; but I couldn’t have done otherwise if I’d
ha’ thought for a twelvemonth in cool blood. Consequences! I hate
consequences; they’ve always been against me; they have. I’m so
tied up I can’t cut down a stick more, and that’s a “consequence”
of having the property so deucedly well settled; I wish I’d never
had any ancestors. Aye, laugh, lad! it does me good to see thee
laugh a bit, after Osborne’s long face, which always grows longer
at sight o’ me!’
‘Look here, father!’ said Roger suddenly, ‘I’ll
manage somehow about the money for the works. You trust to me; give
me two months to turn myself in, and you shall have some money, at
any rate, to begin with.’
The squire looked at him, and his face brightened
as a child’s does at the promise of a pleasure made to him by some
one on whom he can rely. He became a little graver, however, as he
said,—‘But how will you get it? It’s hard enough work.’
‘Never mind; I’ll get it—a hundred or so at first—I
don’t yet know how—but remember, father, I’m a senior wrangler, and
a “very promising young writer,” as that review called me. Oh, you
don’t know what a fine fellow you’ve got for a son. You should have
read that review to know all my wonderful merits.’
‘I did, Roger. I heard Gibson speaking of it, and I
made him get it for me. I should have understood it better if they
could have called the animals by their English names, and not put
so much of their French jingo into it.’
‘But it was an answer to an article by a French
writer,’ pleaded Roger.
‘I’d ha’ let him alone!’ said the squire,
earnestly. ‘We had to beat ’em, and we did it at Waterloo; but I’d
not demean myself by answering any of their lies, if I was you. But
I got through the review, for all their Latin and French; I did,
and if you doubt me, you just look at the end of the great ledger,
turn it upside down, and you’ll find I’ve copied out all the fine
words they said of you: “careful observer,” “strong nervous
English,” “rising philosopher.” Oh! I can nearly say it all off by
heart, for many a time when I am frabbed by bad debts, or Osborne’s
bills, or moidered with accounts, I turn the ledger wrong way up,
and smoke a pipe over it, while I read those pieces out of the
review which speak about you, lad!’