A Country Gentleman and his Family Part 34

"Oh, you! that is different of course," said the Hon. Mrs. Eustace Thynne; but though she was good enough to say this, it was very evident that even for her mother Minnie had no idea of waiving her rights. "When a thing is understood it is so much easier," she added, "every one must see that. Besides it was not her fault," said Minnie triumphantly, "that her first husband died."

"It was her fault that she married again, surely."

"Oh, what do you know about it, Chatty? An unmarried girl can't really have any experience on that subject. Well, to be sure it was her own doing marrying again: but a lady of any rank _never_ gives up her t.i.tle on marrying a commoner. A baronet's wife, as I say,--but then a baronet is only a commoner himself."

"You seem to have thoroughly studied the subject, Minnie."

"Yes, I have studied it; marrying into a n.o.ble family naturally changes one's ideas. And the Thynnes are very particular. You should have seen my mother-in-law arranging the dinner-party she asked to meet us. _I_ went first of course as the bride, but there was Lady Highcourt and Lady Grandmaison, both countesses, and the creation within twenty years of each other. Eustace said n.o.body but his mother could have recollected without looking it up that the Grandmaisons date from 1425 and the Highcourts only from 1450--not the very oldest n.o.bility either of them,"

said Minnie, with a grand air. "The Thynnebroods date from 1395."

"But then," said Mrs. Warrender, much amused, shooting a bow at a venture, "their descent counts in the female line."

Upon which a deep blush, a wave of trouble and shame, pa.s.sed over Minnie's countenance. "Only in one case," she cried, "only once; and that you will allow is not much in five hundred years."

This bridal pair had arrived on their visit only the day before: they had taken a long holiday, and had been visiting many friends. It was now about two months since their marriage, and the gowns in Minnie's trousseau began to lose their obtrusive newness: nor can it be said that her sentiments were new. They were only modified a little by her present _milieu_. "I suppose," she said, after an interval, "that Lady Markland will come to see me as soon as she knows I am here. Shall they have any one there for the shooting this year? Eustace quite looks forward to a day now and then. There is the Warren at least, which poor dear papa never preserved, but which I hope Theo--Eustace says that Theo will really be failing in his duty if he does not preserve."

"I know nothing about their plans or their visitors. Theo is very unlikely to think of a party of sportsmen, who were never much in his way."

Chatty in the meantime had gone out of the room about her flowers, which were always her morning's occupation. When she closed the door, Minnie, who had been waiting eagerly, leaned forward to her mother. "As for being in his way, Theo has no right to be selfish, mamma. He ought to think of Chatty. _She_ ought to think of Chatty. I shall not have nearly so good an opinion of her, if she does not take a little trouble and do something for Chatty now she is going out again and has it in her power."

"For Chatty--but Chatty does not shoot!"

"You never will understand, mamma," said Mrs. Eustace Thynne with gentle exasperation. "Chatty ought to be thought of now. I am sure I never was; if it had not been for Eustace coming to Pierrepoint, I should have been Miss Warrender all my life: and so will Chatty be Miss Warrender all her life, if no one comes to the rescue. Of course it should lie with me in the first place: but except neighbouring clergymen, we are likely to see so few people just at present. To be sure I have married a clergyman myself: but Eustace was quite an exceptional case, and clergymen as a rule can scarcely be called eligible: so there is nothing for it but that Lady Markland should interfere."

"For Chatty? I beg your pardon, my dear. You are much wiser than I am; but in the present case I think Chatty's mother is sufficient for all needs."

"That was always your way, mamma, to take one up at a word without thinking. Don't you remark Chatty, how awfully quiet she is? Eustace remarked it the very first day. He is very quick to see a thing, and he has a lot of sisters of his own. He said to me, Either Chatty has had a disappointment or she is just bored to death staying at home. I think very likely it is my marriage that has done it, for of course there could have been no disappointment," Minnie added calmly. "Seeing both me and Theo happy, she naturally asks herself, Am I always to sit here like an old person with mamma?"

Mrs. Warrender felt the p.r.i.c.k, but only smiled. "I don't think she asks herself that question: but in any case I am afraid she must just be left, however dull it may be, with mamma."

"Oh, I hope you will be reasonable," said Minnie, "I hope you will not stand in poor Chatty's way. It is time she saw somebody, and that people saw her. She is twenty-four. She has not much time to lose, Eustace says."

"My dear Minnie, I don't object to what you say about your sister--that is, I allow you have a right to speak: but Eustace is quite a different matter. We will leave him out of the question. What he may think or say about Chatty is of no consequence to me; in short, I think it is very bad taste, if you will allow me to say so----"

"Mamma!" Minnie rose up to much more than her full height, which was by no means great. "Is it possible that you would teach your own daughter to disregard what her husband says?"

The righteous indignation, the lofty tone, the moral superiority of Minnie's att.i.tude gave her mother a kind of painful amus.e.m.e.nt. She said nothing, but went to the writing-table at the other side of the room.

Everything was very peaceful around and about, no possibility of any real disturbance in the calm well-being of the family so far as any ordinary eye could see: Theo gone with his bride into a sphere a little above that which belonged to him by nature; Minnie with her husband in all the proud consciousness of virtuous bliss; Chatty quiet and gentle among her flowers; a soft atmosphere of sunshine and prosperity, shaded by blinds at the windows, by little diversities and contrarieties in the spirit, from being excessive and dazzling, was all about. In the midst of the calm Minnie's little theories of the new-made wife made a diverting incident in the foreground. Mrs. Warrender looked at her across the writing-table, with a smile in her eyes.

"I knew," cried Minnie, "that you had many ways of thinking I did not go in with--but to throw any doubt upon a woman's duty to her husband! Oh, mamma, that is what I never expected. Eustace is of course the first in all the world to me, what he says is always of consequence. He is not one to say a word that he has not weighed, and if he takes an interest in his sister-in-law, it is because he thinks it his duty to me."

"That is all very well, my dear," said Mrs. Warrender, with some impatience, "and no doubt it is a great matter for Chatty to have a sister so correct as yourself, and a brother-in-law to take an interest in her. But as long as I live I am the first authority about Chatty, and Eustace is not the first in the world to me. Chatty----"

"Were you calling me, mamma?"

Chatty was coming in with a tall vase of flowers held in both hands.

The great campanulas, with their lavish, magnificent bells, flung up a flowery hedge between her face and the eyes of the others. It was not that she had anything to conceal, but undeniably, Chatty felt herself on a lower level of being, subdued by Minnie's presence. There is often in young married persons a pride in their new happiness, an ostentation of superiority in their twofold existence, which is apt to produce this effect upon the spectators. Minnie and her husband stood between the two ladies, neither of whom possessed husbands, as the possessors of conscious greatness stand between those who have fallen and those who have never attained. And Chatty, who had no confidence to give, whose little story was all locked in her own bosom, had been fretted by her sister's questions, and by Mr. Eustace Thynne's repeated references to the fact that she "looked pale."

"No, my dear. We were talking of you, that was all. Minnie is anxious that you should see--a little more of the world."

"Mamma, be correct at least. I said that it would be a duty for myself if I had any opportunity, and for Frances--"

"Do you mean Lady Markland?"

"Well, she is Frances, I hope, to her husband's sisters. I said it was Frances' duty, now that she is going into society, to take you about and introduce you to people. A little while ago," said Minnie with dignity, "mamma was all for gadding about; and now she finds fault when I say the simplest things, all because I said that Eustace--of course Eustace takes an interest in Chatty: next to his own sisters of course he naturally takes an interest in you."

Chatty placed her tall vase in the corner which she had chosen for it, in silence. She expressed no thanks for the interest Eustace took in her. Neither did Mrs. Warrender say anything further. The chill of this ingrat.i.tude had upon Minnie a contrary effect to that which might have been antic.i.p.ated. She grew very hot and red.

"I don't know what you all mean," she cried; "it is what we have never met with yet, all the places we have been. Everybody has been grateful to Eustace for his good advice. They have all liked to know what he thought. 'Try and find out what Eustace thinks' is what has been said--and now my own mother and sister----" Here words failed and she wiped away a few angry tears.

At this Chatty's tender heart was touched. She went to her sister and gave her a gentle kiss. "Dear Minnie, I am sure you are very kind, and if there was anything to take an interest about----But mamma and I have just settled down. We want nothing, we are quite happy." Chatty looked across the room at her mother, which was natural enough, but then Mrs.

Warrender observed that the girl's eyes went farther, that they went beyond anything that was visible within those white panelled walls.

"Oh, quite happy," Chatty repeated very softly, with that look into the distance, which only her mother saw.

"That is all very well for the present--but you don't suppose you will always be quite satisfied and happy with mamma. That is exactly what Eustace says. I never knew anybody take so little interest in her girls as mamma does. You will be thrown among the little people here--a curate in Highcombe, or somebody's son who lives in the town. Mamma, you may say what you please, but to have a little n.o.body out of a country town for a brother-in-law, a person probably with no connections, no standing, no----" Minnie paused out of mere incapacity to build up the climax higher.

It is not solely characteristic of women that a small domestic controversy should excite them beyond every other: but perhaps only a woman could have felt the high swelling in her breast of that desire to cast down and utterly confound Minnie and all her pretensions by the mention of a name--and the contrariety of not being able to do it, and the secret exultation in the thought of one day cutting her down, down to the ground, with the announcement. While she was musing her heart turned to Cavendish--a relation within well-authenticated lines of the duke, very different from the small n.o.bility of the Thynnes, who on their side were not at all related to the greater family of the name.

Mrs. Warrender's heart rose with this thought so that it was almost impossible for her to keep silence, to look at Minnie and not overwhelm her. But she did refrain, and the consciousness that she had this unanswerable retort behind kept her, as nothing else could, from losing her temper. She smiled with a sense of the humour of the situation, though with a little irritation too.

"It will be very sad, my dear, if Chatty provides Eustace with an unsuitable brother-in-law; but we must not look so far ahead. There is no aspirant for the moment who can give your husband any uneasiness.

Perhaps he would like a list of the ineligible young men in the neighbourhood? there are not very many, from all I can hear."

"Oh, mamma, I never knew any one so unsympathetic as you are," said Minnie, with an angry flush of colour. Chatty had not stayed to defend herself. She had hurried away out of reach of the warfare. No desire to crush her sister with a name was in Chatty's mind. It had seemed to her profane to speak of such a possibility at all. She realised so fully that everything was over, that all idea of change in her life was at an end for ever, that she heard with a little shiver, but with no warm personal feeling, the end of this discussion. She shrank, indeed, from the idea of being talked over--but then, she reflected, Minnie would be sure to do that, Minnie could not be expected to understand. While Mrs.

Warrender began to write her letters Chatty went softly in and out of the room in her many comings and goings about the flowers. She had them on a table in the hall, with a great jug of fresh water and a basket to put all the litter, the clippings of stalks and unnecessary leaf.a.ge in, and all her pots and vases ready. She was very tidy in all her ways.

It was not a very important piece of business, and yet all the sweet orderly spirit of domestic life was in Chatty's movements. There are many people who would have been far more pleased and touched to see her at this simple work than had she been reading Greek, notwithstanding that the Greek, too, is excellent; but it was not Chatty's way.

Mrs. Warrender sat at her writing-table with a little thrill of excitement and opposition in her. She saw the angry flush on Minnie's face, and watched without seeming to watch her as she rose suddenly and left the room, almost throwing down the little spindle-legged table beside her. Just outside the door Mrs. Warrender heard Chatty's calm voice say to her sister, "Will you have these for your room, Minnie?"

evidently offering her some of her flowers. (It was a pretty blue and white china pot, with a sweet smelling nosegay of mignonette and a few of the late China roses, sweet enough to scent the whole place.) "Oh, thanks, I don't like flowers in my room, Eustace thinks they are not healthy," said Minnie, in tones that were still full of displeasure, the only interruption to the prevailing calm. Mrs. Warrender was not a wise woman. She was pleased that she and the child who was left to her were having the better of the little fray. "Eustace thinks"--Minnie might quote him as much as she pleased, she would never get her mother to quail before these words. A man may be Honourable and Reverend both, and yet not be strong enough to tyrannise over his mother-in-law and lay down the law in her house. This is a condition of affairs quite different from the fashionable view, and then, Mrs. Warrender was in her own house, and quite independent of her son-in-law. She had a malicious pleasure in the thought of his discomfiture. Cavendish! She imagined to herself how they would open their eyes, and tasted in advance the pleasure of the letter which she should write to Minnie, disclosing all that would happen. It seemed to her that she knew very well what would happen. The young man was honourable and honest, and Chatty was most fit and suitable, a bride whom no parents could object to. As for mysterious restraining influences, Mrs. Warrender believed in no such things. She had not lived in a world where they exist, and she felt as sure of d.i.c.k Cavendish as of herself--that is to say, _almost_ as sure.

All this might have been very well and done no harm, but in the energy of her angry, excited, exasperated, exhilarated mood, it occurred to Mrs.

Warrender to take such a step as she had never done before nor thought herself capable of doing. To make overtures of any sort to a man who had shown a disposition to be her daughter's lover, yet had not said anything or committed himself in any way, would, twenty-four hours before, have seemed to her impossible. It would have seemed to her inconsistent with Chatty's dignity and her own. But opposition and a desire to have the better of one's domestic and intimate opponents is very strong, and tempts people to the most equivocal proceedings. Mrs.

Warrender did not wait to think, but took out a fresh sheet of paper and dipped her pen in the ink with that impulsiveness which was characteristic of her. A note or two had already pa.s.sed between d.i.c.k Cavendish and herself, so that it was not so extraordinary a proceeding as it seemed.

This was what she wrote:--

DEAR MR. CAVENDISH--Is it worth while coming to us only from Sat.u.r.day to Monday as your modesty suggests? I fear Chatty and I in our quietness would scarcely repay the long journey. But Minnie is with us (with her husband), and she was always a much more practical person than her mother. She has just been suggesting to me that Theo has now the command of covers more interesting from the sportsman point of view than our old thicket at the Warren. If, therefore, you really feel inclined to come down for a few days, there will, it appears, be a real inducement--something more in a young man's way than the tea-parties at Highcombe. So bring your gun, and let it be from Monday to Sat.u.r.day instead of the other way.

We think of our brief campaign in town with great pleasure, and a strong sense of obligation to you who did so much for the pleasure of it. Most truly yours,

M. WARRENDER.

She sent this epistle off with great satisfaction, yet a little sense of guilt, that same evening, taking particular care to give it to the parlour maid with her own hand, lest Chatty should see the address. It was already September, and the time of the partridges had begun.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

When the ladies left London, d.i.c.k Cavendish had felt himself something like a wreck upon the sh.o.r.e. The season was very near its end, and invitations no longer came in dozens. To be sure there were a great many other wrecks whose society made life tolerable; but he felt himself out of heart, out of temper, seized by that sudden disgust with life in general which is often the result of the departure of one person who has given it a special interest. It was a strong effect to be produced by Chatty's unpretending personality, but it affected him more than if she had been in herself a more striking personage. For it was not so much that her presence made a blank in any of the gay scenes that still remained, but that she suggested another kind of scene altogether. He felt that to say it was a bore to go out was no longer that easy fiction which it usually is. It _was_ a bore to go out into those aimless a.s.semblies where not to go was a social mistake, yet to go was weariness of the flesh and spirit. In the midst of them his thoughts would turn to the little group in Half Moon Street which had made the commonplace drawing-room of the lodging-house into a home. Chatty over her muslin work--he laughed to himself when he thought of it. It was not lovely; there was no poetry about it; the little scissors and sharp pointed blade that made the little holes; the patient labour that sewed them round. So far as he was aware there was not much use in the work, and no prettiness at all; a lover might linger over an embroidery frame, and rave of seeing the flowers grow under her hand; but the little checkered pattern of holes--there was nothing at all delightful in that. Yet he thought of it, which was amazing, and laughed at himself, then thought of it again. He was not what could be called of the domestic order of man. He had "knocked about," he had seen all sorts of things and people, and to think that his heart should be caught by Chatty and her muslin work! He was himself astonished and amused, but so it was. He could not take kindly to anything now that she was gone, and even in the rapidity of the last expiring efforts of the season, he felt himself yawn and think of quite another scene: of a little house to go home to, and say what a bore it was, while Chatty took out her muslin work. He was so far gone that he scrawled patterns for that muslin work over his blotting books, arrangements of little holes, in squares, in rounds, in diagonal formations, in the shape of primitive leaf and berry, at which he would laugh all by himself and blush, and fling them into the fire--which did not, however, by any means, withdraw the significance from these simple attempts at ornamental art.