Volume I Part 13 (1/2)
”Yes, really and truly a very small sacrifice,” persisted Mrs. Dobbs. ”I don't see why I shouldn't be just as happy and comfortable in Jessamine Cottage as here--provided, of course, that my old friends don't cut me and sulk with me. I shall be lonely enough when once the child's gone; and you and me'll have to cheer each other up, and keep each other company, as well as we can. You won't refuse to do that, will you, Jo?
Come, shake hands on it!”
Jo slowly put out his hand and grasped her proffered one. He then took out, filled, and lighted his meerschaum, and smoked in silence for some quarter of an hour, Mrs. Dobbs, meanwhile, knitting in equal silence.
All at once she said--
”Hark! There's May's step coming downstairs. Now you'll please to understand that when my moving from this house is mentioned to the child, it's because I find Friar's Row too noisy, and think the air in Greenhill Road will agree better with my health. I trust you for that, Jo Weatherhead, mind!”
May at this moment came gaily into the room, and Mr. Weatherhead thus solemnly addressed her: ”Miranda Cheffington, you have been to a first-rate school, and have read your Roman history and all that, haven't you?”
”Not much, I'm afraid, Uncle Jo.”
”You have read about Lucretia, and Portia, and the mother of the Gracchi” (p.r.o.nounced ”Gratch-I;” for Jo's instruction had been chiefly taken in by the eye rather than the ear, in the shape of miscellaneous gleanings from his own stock-in-trade), ”and other distinguished women of cla.s.sical times, whose virtues were, in my opinion, not wholly unconnected with bounce?”
Mary laughed and nodded.
”Well, allow me to tell you that there are Englishwomen at the present day whom I consider far superior, in all that makes a real good woman, to any Roman or Grecian of them all. Englishwomen to whom bounce in every form is foreign and obnoxious. Englishwomen who do good by stealth and never blush to find it Fame, because Fame is a great deal too busy with rascals and hussies ever to trouble herself about _them_! Your grandmother, Mrs. Sarah Dobbs, whom I'm proud to call my friend, is one of those women. And what's more--and I'll have you bear it in mind, Miranda Cheffington--I believe you'd be puzzled to find her equal in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America--not to mention Australasia and the 'ole of the islands in the Pacific Ocean.”
With that, Mr. Weatherhead walked gravely out; his nose somewhat redder than usual, and his eyes glistening.
CHAPTER X.
About a year before that dinner-party at which May Cheffington had made her _debut_ in Oldchester society, Mrs. Hadlow had begun to think it probable that Theodore Bransby might wish to marry her daughter, and to consider the desirability of his doing so. On the whole she did not disapprove the prospect. Constance was very handsome, but she was also very poor. Her ambition might not be satisfied by a match with Martin Bransby's son; but on the other hand, Theodore was a young man of good abilities, and apt to rise in the world. Moreover, he had sufficient property of his own to facilitate his rising--a little ballast of that sort being as useful in the _melee_ of this world as the lead in a toy tumbler, and enabling a man, if not to strike the stars with his sublime head, at least to keep right side uppermost.
Certainly Theodore had appeared much attracted by Miss Hadlow. Not only her beauty but her self-a.s.sertion approved itself to him; for a man's wife should be able to justify his taste; and there would be no distinction in winning a woman whose meekness made it doubtful whether she could have had the heart to say ”No” to an inferior suitor. They had been playfellows in childhood, but school and Cambridge had separated them. But after Theodore began to read for the Bar, and, during the two last vacations, which he had spent chiefly at home, a great intimacy had sprung up between the young people. Theodore's frequent visits to the old house in College Quad did not pa.s.s un.o.bserved. One or two persons thought his partiality for the Hadlows--especially when contrasted with the lukewarm politeness he bestowed on other families, such as Raynes the brewer, or the Burtons who lived in a park, and had had nothing to do with retail for two generations--was creditable to Theodore's heart.
”He was not one to neglect old friends,” said they, candidly confessing at the same time that it was more than they should have expected of him.
But the majority felt sure that nothing short of being in love with Constance Hadlow could induce young Bransby to prefer the canon's old-fas.h.i.+oned parlour to Mrs. Raynes's red and gold drawing-room, or the Burtons' aesthetic upholstery. Oldchester folks did not guess that Theodore intended to frequent a style of society in which neither the Rayneses nor the Burtons would be able to make any figure, nor did they know that he set a considerable value on Mrs. Hadlow's connections. That lady had been a Miss Rivers, and her family ranked among the oldest landed gentry in the kingdom. There were not many Oldchester magnates to whom Theodore Bransby thought it worth while to be more than coolly civil. Mr. Bragg was an exception, but then Mr. Bragg was a man of very great wealth; and as mere size is held in certain cases to be an element of grandeur, so money, Theodore thought, is capable in certain cases of inspiring veneration--that is to say, when there is enough of it.
As to Miss Constance's state of mind about young Bransby, it was too complex to be described in a word. She liked Theodore, and thought him a superior person; if not quite so superior as he thought himself. She had faith, too, in his future. It would be agreeable to be the wife of a distinguished M.P. or Q.C., or perhaps of both combined in one person.
Theodore would certainly settle nowhere but in London, and to live in London had been Constance's dream ever since she was fifteen. Her visions of what her life would be if she married Theodore Bransby concerned themselves chiefly with their joint-entry into some fas.h.i.+onable drawing-room, her presentation at Court, her name in the _Morning Post_, herself exquisitely dressed driving Theodore down to the House in a neat victoria, and returning the salutations of distinguished acquaintances as they pa.s.sed along Whitehall. All more serious questions regarding their married life Constance set at rest by a few formulas. Of course, she should do her duty. Of course, Theodore would always behave like a gentleman. Of course, they should never condescend to vulgar wrangling. Of course, her husband would give way to her in any difference of opinion;--particularly since she was pretty sure to be always right. And then Constance knew herself to be so very charming, that a man of taste could not fail to delight in her society.
Yet it must not be supposed that she had fully made up her mind to marry Theodore. That Theodore would be very glad to marry her she did not doubt at all. There had been a time--nay, there were moments still--when her visions of herself as Mrs. Theodore Bransby had been blurred by the disturbing element of her cousin Owen's presence. He had shown an attractive appreciation of her attractions; and had, to use Mr.
Simpson's phrase, ”dangled after his cousin” a good deal. Owen Rivers had reached the age of three and twenty without ever having earned a dinner, and without any serious preparation to enable him to earn one.
He had had an expensive education, and had done fairly well at Oxford.
His mother had died in his infancy; and his father, a country clergyman, had allowed the young man to lounge away his life at the parsonage, under the specious pretext of taking time to make up his mind what career he would follow. Owen had fished, and shot, and walked, and boated, and cricketed; but he had also read a good deal, having an intellectual appet.i.te at once robust and discriminating. His friends and relatives agreed in thinking him very clever; and, when they reproached him with wasting his fine abilities and leading a purposeless existence, he would answer jestingly that he should be sorry to belie their judgment by subjecting his talents to the dangerous touchstone of action. His father died before he had determined on a profession. But, fortunately as he thought, and unfortunately as was thought by some other persons, including his Aunt Jane, he inherited wherewithal to live without working, and, with a hundred and fifty pounds per annum, could not lack bread and cheese. On his father's death he went to travel on the Continent. He walked wherever walking was possible, carrying his own knapsack, spending little, and seeing much. After more than two years'
absence, he returned to England and made his way to Oldchester to see his Aunt Jane, with whom he had maintained an intermittent correspondence. There he found Constance, whom he last remembered as a sallow, self-sufficient schoolgirl, grown to a beautiful young woman.
Her sallowness had turned into a creamy pallor, and her self-sufficiency was mitigated, to the masculine judgment, by the depth and softness of a pair of fine dark eyes. Owen, on his part, made a decidedly favourable impression on his cousin. He was not handsome--which mattered little--nor fas.h.i.+onably dressed--which mattered more; but he was well made, and had the grace which belongs to youthful health and strength.
And he had, too, that indefinable tone of manner which ensured his recognition as an English gentleman. Constance was by no means insensible to this attraction. If she had not the sentiments which originate the finest manners, she had the perceptions which recognize them. When Mary Raynes and the Burnet girls criticized the roughness of Owen's demeanour, comparing it with Theodore Bransby's ”polish,” she knew they were wrong. Theodore always behaved with the greatest propriety; but between his manners and Owen's there was the same sort of difference as between a native and a foreigner speaking the same language. The foreigner may often be more accurately correct of the two on minor points, but it is an affair of conscious acquirement, and must inevitably break down now and then; whereas the native talks as naturally as he breathes, and can no more make certain mistakes than an oak tree can put forth willow leaves. Then Owen was very amusing company when he chose to be so,--and he usually did choose to be so when at his Aunt Jane's; and he had good old blood in his veins. This latter fact gave a certain piquancy, in Constance's opinion, to his political theories, which were opposed to the staunch Tory traditions of his family. Constance frequently took her cousin to task on this subject; but with the comfortable conviction to sweeten their controversy that a Rivers could afford to indulge in a little democratic heresy, just as Lord Castlecombe could afford to wear a shabbier coat than any of his tenants.
All these considerations, together with the crowning circ.u.mstance that he evidently admired her a good deal, caused Owen to fill a large place in his cousin's mind. She even asked herself seriously more than once if she were in love with Owen, but failed to answer the question decisively. She did, however, arrive at the conviction that falling in love lay much more in one's own power than was commonly supposed; and that no Romeo-and-Juliet destiny could ever inspire _her_ with an ungovernable pa.s.sion for a man who possessed but a hundred and fifty pounds a year. Mrs. Hadlow had at one time felt some uneasiness--nearly as much on Owen's account as on her daughter's, to say the truth. But she had satisfied herself that there was nothing more than a fraternal kind of regard between the young people--wherein she was wrong; and that there was no danger of their imprudently marrying--wherein she was right.
Mrs. Hadlow had, indeed, made up her mind that Constance would accept Theodore Bransby whenever he should offer himself; and she privately thought it high time that the offer were made. What did Theodore wait for? His means (according to Mrs. Hadlow's estimate of things) were sufficient to allow him to marry at once. But even supposing that he did not choose to marry until he had fairly entered on his career as a barrister, still there ought to be at least some clear understanding between him and Constance. All Oldchester expected to hear of their engagement, and it was not fair to the girl to leave matters in their present uncertain condition. When, at the end of the vacation, young Bransby left Oldchester again without having made any declaration, Mrs.
Hadlow was not only surprised, but uneasy; and she opened her mind to her husband on the subject, invading his study at an unusual hour for that purpose.
”Edward,” said Mrs. Hadlow, ”don't you think that Theodore Barnsby ought to have spoken before he went to town this last time?”