Volume Ii Part 14 (1/2)
Mrs Naylor read, and but for the sudden flus.h.i.+ng of her features, controlled herself from any outward betrayal of displeasure. It is the one unmixed good which comes of living in public, that people are compelled to suppress their manifestations of feeling; and, driven by stress of circ.u.mstances to seem calm, the more speedily become so really. Reason, unimpeded by emotion, which is nourished on its own manifestations, comes sooner to the rescue, and shows how few miscarriages are worth the distress we are apt to give ourselves over them. In pretending before observers to make light of a disappointment, we involuntarily give heed to our own words, and come to think less of it than otherwise we should have done. Mrs Naylor's mind, instead of dwelling on her provocation, was forced to conceal the wound from the impertinently curious, and thereby dividing itself upon two views of the subject--the grievance and its concealment--was less disturbed by either.
The first idea which came distinct to the surface, through her mental perturbation, was an appreciation of her own good sense; and her good fortune, in having boasted, immediately before having received this news, of her son-in-law's high connections. Now that the young man was indissolubly knotted to her family, and she must make the most of him, the Custos Rotulorum, with his ancestral hall in Memicombs.h.i.+re, was the sheet-anchor of his claim to consequence. If it was an ideal claim, instead of the grossly real one she had desired for her daughter's husband, it was infinitely finer in kind; and she prepared to take it up, and brandish it vigorously, to cow and overpower impressible minds, and suppress colonial pretension.
She began to feel quite imperial, after a little trying, and when dinner was over, had come to feel that a Custos Rotulorum made an infinitely finer father-in-law for her girl than all the judges in the Dominion rolled into one could have done. When the ladies gathered up-stairs, therefore, she played her best card, under the circ.u.mstances, with quite a good heart; she showed them her telegram, and claimed their congratulations. She talked effusively of ”an old attachment”--”two romantic children, who could not bring themselves to profane the interchange of their holy vows, with the garish vulgarities of orange-blossoms and Brussels lace, bride's-maids, breakfast, and speechifying, but had resolved to go away by themselves and be married in peace.” ”She had been persuaded to keep their secret and say nothing.” ”They were away on their wedding tour, now; but she was still under promise to reveal no more.” ”They might have gone to California or to visit the Custos Rotulorum,” she would not say which, but she let it be inferred that it was England and the ancestral hall, to which their happy steps were bent.
The ladies thus unexpectedly called on for congratulations paid them at once--they could not help themselves; but they paid them perhaps a little grudgingly, feeling injured at having been balked of the preliminary tattle. Had it been sympathy and condolence which Mrs Naylor claimed, they could have opened their hearts much more freely.
They could have mingled a tear or two quite comfortably with hers, and felt deeply interested in the new sensation; but that two young people should go away and get married, without telling anybody, and then that it should turn out a right, proper, and desirable union, was treating them very badly, in the dearth just then of pleasurable excitement.
Joseph Naylor was the only person who fully enjoyed the scene, as he walked upon the gallery with Rose, and looked in through the open windows. What a remarkable woman was this sister-in-law of his, to be sure! and how little he had been aware of those reserves of strength and quickness which she was now displaying to such good purpose!
Accustomed in the family circle to have her way, and to overbear opposition with petulance, peevishness, indignation, or convenient ill health, as best suited, it had not occurred to him that for once she could act like a sensible woman and bravely accept the inevitable. He had dreaded an explosion, a scene, perhaps a fainting-fit and general commotion, when in helpless trepidation he had handed her that telegram; and here she was, with a smiling face, claiming felicitation on the overthrow of her plans and wishes, and actually taking credit for a result which had worked itself out in defiance of her opposition.
”There is not an acrobat in Barnum's circus,” he said, ”who could have turned a somersault as neatly. I could not have believed our Susan capable of so sudden a change of front. A woman of her talent and resource is hid away and completely lost in a small place like Jones's Landing.”
Rose agreed with him, and was vastly interested in the whole affair.
She dwelt on it, recurred to the different points and stages, discussed, a.n.a.lysed, and combed out every detail separately to its greatest length. It gratified Joseph that she should concern herself so warmly in his family affairs, but he would have been glad if her interest had been sooner satisfied. She contrived that the conversation should not progress, as it naturally would have done, from Margaret's love-pa.s.sages to their own. Even the night on Fessenden's Island was not able, as Joseph had felt confident that it would be, to withdraw her thoughts from the runaways to their own tender affairs. When he endeavoured to transfer the interest, she returned with renewed curiosity to ask where Margaret and Blount first met, and from that digressed still further, to demand full particulars of his circ.u.mstances, birth, and parentage. She was as charmingly companionable as she always had been; Joseph loved and adored as he always did; but he could not draw her on to the closer and more personal topic on which he yearned to hold converse.
That topic--their engagement--was one to which this afternoon she had an insuperable, and, as she told herself, an unreasonable repugnance to reopen at the present moment. Come it must, eventually, and she would welcome it; but not to-day. A shadow was upon her, the shadow of Bertie Roe, an influence to which she was resolved that she would not yield, but which yet had power to cast an unattractiveness and dimness over all beside. She had broken with that man for ever, had she not?
but she had spoken with him, in dismissing him, and the converse of all the world beside had lost its relish. She felt, but would not own it. Had she not announced openly her new engagement? and was she, like some poor-spirited slave, to break it off and go back, because her old tyrant had chosen to lift his finger? What would her friends, the world, the free-thinking and strong-minded who had applauded her spirit, say to see her go back to bondage and resume her chains? She chafed to think of it, and tried to lash herself into new anger against her husband. And she had felt so strong in her resolve, all through the bygone week! To think that a few words, and a little pleading, should have weakened her like this! She was growing unworthy of her former self. How dim and indistinct her wrongs had grown since yesterday, when that sweet insidious voice had taken on itself to explain them away! Why had she listened?... And until yesterday, the sight of the woman he was always walking with had made her strong; but that crouching figure under the tree, seen yesterday, who could fear that? How feel jealous of aught so forlorn? There was a little triumph in it, that Bertie should have been brought so low; but she missed the tonic and strengthening influence which had been thus dispelled. She was resolved to resist, to have done with Bertie Roe; but there was a strange diffidence of the strength within her, which she would not acknowledge to herself, but still was aware of, foreboding general collapse.
Trying to keep up this waning strength, she worked hard at being interested in Joseph and his family, especially in the family; that was the easier subject of the two, and it avoided comparisons, dangerous at this moment--comparison of years, of stature and physical endowment, which told against him.
And so Joseph and Rose worked out this day in ostensible amity and intimacy, but with an inward doubt burrowing and working like hidden currents in spring beneath the ice, eating it away, and honeycombing the solid ma.s.s, which still looks huge and immovable as ever; and will continue so to seem, till comes the end, and with a crash the ma.s.sive structure crumbles and melts and disappears.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV.
MISS ROLPH IS SEVERE.
It was growing late at night. The proprietor and his clerk had concluded the labours of the day, and were arranging with the house-steward the bill of fare for the morrow. The male guests were up-stairs in the parlours with the ladies, or else had secluded themselves to play poker in private rooms, in accordance with the rigorous house-rule against gambling. Gilbert Roe alone paced the lower corridor, smoking cigar after cigar, which failed to soothe him--restless and woebegone, waiting on for he knew not what, unable to tear himself from the dreariest quarters in which he had ever sojourned.
He was not popular with the men. He took no interest in their amus.e.m.e.nts, having other cares at this time, and they voted him unsociable and of no account. Since Maida's disappearance, the few lady guests with whom he was acquainted had asked him where she was; and on his declaring that he did not know, they had turned away with a frightened and suspicious glance, as though they suspected him of having made away with her. He wandered about the house like another Cain, suspected, dreaded, and shunned, as though there were a mark of warning and of evil on his brow; but he would not go away while Rose remained an inmate of the house. He had an impression that there was an influence within her doing battle on his behalf--he had detected her furtive glances more than once wandering towards him, and averted again ere he could meet them, and he would not go away; but the waiting was inexpressibly dreary in the meantime.
The rumble of wheels was heard outside; a vehicle stopped before the door. The porter, drowsing in his corner, started to his feet and ran down to carry in baggage, and the landlord followed to inspect the untimely arrival. It was a tall spare lady, dressed in black, who walked straight to the desk and registered herself, ”Princ.i.p.al Rolph, Female College, Montpelier;” then asked to have Miss Springer's bill made out, that she might settle it, and desired that lady's effects to be packed up and forwarded.
Having finished her business with the clerk, she turned to follow the bell-boy to her appointed chamber, and met Roe straight in the eye, as he wearily paced the tiles, counting the minutes in their lagging flight, till his hour should arrive for turning in.
”Bertie Roe! Ha! you may well look guilty and ashamed to face me. You did not expect to see me here, I reckon.”
He held out his hand to her, though his look on meeting was scarcely one of welcome.
”We will dispense with hand-shaking, all things considered. We can neither of us be very pleased to see the other; but you need not pa.s.s on. I mean to speak my mind to you before I let you go.”
”Speak on, Miss Rolph. It is natural you should feel strongly against me. I will not even tell you that it was not my fault. That would seem like casting reflections where I promised and still wish to defend.”
”That sounds proper enough; but I have more against you than you think--another instance of your misconduct. What possesses you, Bertie Roe, to go prowling and ravening about the world like this?--blighting the lives and devastating the affections of trusting women? Why do you do it? What pleasure can you feel in crus.h.i.+ng a girl's self-respect, and making her feel shameless and a fool?”
”She does not feel one bit like a fool, Miss Rolph; and her self-respect is not crushed at all. Far from wis.h.i.+ng to crush her, I am ready to humble myself, and take the blame of what I did not bring about, and, heaven knows, had no wish should happen.”