Dilemmas of Pride Volume I Part 11

When the company had all retired, Lady Palliser thus addressed her daughter: "Your avoiding to dance with Mr. Arden was quite unnecessary.

I have no desire that your manners towards him in society should be at all altered: such conduct would draw down remarks which I do not choose should be made. As for to-morrow," continued her ladyship, "remember that I shall witness the scene; therefore let your obedience be perfect!

Also, if you have any regard to decency left, take care that no folly on your part gives Mr. Arden an opportunity of boasting that Lady Caroline Montague, in despite of the impropriety of the alliance, was indelicately ready to fling herself into his arms, if Lady Palliser had not interfered."

Her ladyship here quitted the room; and Caroline, her ideas confused by this new view of the subject, stood transfixed to the spot, till aroused from her reverie by the entrance of servants to extinguish the lights.

She retired, but it may be believed not to rest. She flung herself on her bed without undressing, and wept away the early morning, the brightness of which entering freely through the shutterless windows of a Cheltenham bed-room, shone with incongruous l.u.s.tre alike on her glittering ornaments and her falling tears. We speak of morning, because the night, of course, had been over before the ball concluded.

CHAPTER XXI.

Alfred had no opportunity for private conversation with his brother before he went to his appointment at Lady Palliser's; nor indeed did he now desire it till he should have come to some explanation with Caroline.

In strange perplexity of spirits, trying in vain to persuade himself that he had every thing to hope and nothing to fear, he repaired to Jessamine Bower.

On entering the drawing-room he perceived Caroline, seated and alone.

When he was announced, she did not move. He approached; her eyes still remained fixed on the ground, while the paleness of her complexion was even more remarkable than usual, and a very slight but universal tremor pervaded her whole frame. He stood before her, and as he did so, trembled himself with undefined apprehension.

"Good heavens, Caroline!" he exclaimed, sinking on one knee, and attempting to take her hand. She withdrew it hastily, and her cheeks crimsoned while she cast one involuntary glance in the direction of the conservatory. Alfred rose, folded his arms, and stood for a moment silent, then said--"If I have been presumptuous, Lady Caroline, I have much to plead in my excuse, and the interview of yesterday in particular; I was certainly led to hope for a more favourable reception, however little I may be deserving of it."

"I was--to blame," said Caroline, in a voice scarcely articulate, and still without looking up.

"Is it possible! Do I interpret you right? Were those hopes, to me so full of joy, altogether fallacious? But no, Caroline, I will not, I cannot believe it! Lady Palliser objects, and you deem it your duty to submit: even this thought would be happiness, compared with that of your indifference! Or--or--"

"My caprice!" said Caroline, looking up almost wildly for a moment, "Yes, think it my caprice!"

"I cannot believe it," he replied.

There was a considerable pause, during which he anxiously observed Caroline, and perceived that silent tears were stealing down her cheeks.

"Those tears are not caused by caprice," he said in a tone of tenderness; "in compa.s.sion say," he added with sudden and vehement earnestness, "that you are acting in obedience to Lady Palliser's commands, and I too will submit." While speaking again he sank on his knee before her, and tried to take both her hands. The terror however with which she resisted, hastily rising as she did so--the more effectually to avoid him--so much for the moment resembled aversion, that he rose as hastily, and looking his amazement, said with a hysterical intonation of voice, "If it is indeed so, I have a thousand apologies to offer to Lady Caroline Montague for my impertinent intrusiveness. To retire, however, and offend no more, will perhaps be better than entering further into the subject." He was about to depart, when pausing he said, "I will ask one question--Am I rejected? Do you finally withdraw the hopes you yesterday bestowed?"

"I do," she replied.

He stood for a few moments to master his emotion, then p.r.o.nouncing a haughty good morning, hastily quitted the room and the house. In a few moments after, he was pacing, without plan or intention, one of the many shady and usually quite solitary walks, which branch off in every direction from the general scene of gaiety, and near to which both villas stood.

His pride, as well as every tenderer and worthier feeling, was wounded beyond description. He now appeared, even to himself, in the light of one who had indelicately, unfeelingly, and presumptuously sought a match of worldly advantage, to which he had no pretension; and though he could acquit himself of interested views in so doing, he felt that it would be a romance and absurdity to expect so candid an interpretation from any one else. The one continued dream, which had made up his whole existence for many weeks past, was now dissipated in an instant. Nay, he sought in vain among his own meditations for the apologies, even to himself, which had before seemed sufficient. Caroline, so silent, so fearful at the commencement of their acquaintance, had seemed to derive a new existence from his growing attentions, while Lady Palliser, instead of checking those attentions, and showing alarm at the visible pleasure with which her daughter received them, had herself given him what he then considered the most unequivocal encouragement, being always the first to make intercourse easy to both, by desiring the always timid Caroline to dance with him, walk with him, and sing with him. And then the silent glow of secret pleasure with which the welcome command was obeyed, confirmed sometimes perhaps by a momentary expression caught when the eyes accidentally met, or at other times merely by an alacrity of movement, or cheerfulness of tone in obeying or replying, which, notwithstanding, betrayed volumes in a character too fearful and gentle to let itself be regularly read aloud, yet too artless, too unpractised, to know how utterly to seal its pages.

While such things had been, the prejudices of society had faded from his mind; he had believed it not impossible that where an only child already possessed immense estates, a parent might prefer the happiness of that child to the unnecessary addition of other estates. Now all the artificial estimates of life and manners, taught by early education, returned in their fullest force, and he thought himself a madman ever to have entertained such an opinion.

He now believed that every one who knew he had had the presumption to pay his addresses to Lady Caroline Montague, would reprobate him and say, that because he was a younger brother, and of course a beggar, he wanted to make his fortune by marrying an heiress. How bitterly did he now regret that he had ever had the rash folly to confess his pa.s.sion.

Yet, so thoroughly disinterested had that pa.s.sion been, that he had even for the time lost sight of the possibility of being suspected by others of motives of which he was himself incapable: all that through the happy intoxication of his feelings had presented itself respecting fortune, was a vaguely delightful remembrance that his poverty could never entail any privations on Caroline. What was now to be done? The wretched state of his feelings would have induced him to quit Cheltenham immediately, but wounded pride prompted him to remain; he wished to let Lady Caroline Montague see that her caprices should not govern his conduct; that he could behave with composure in her society--with polite self-possession even towards herself. But in this first moment of just resentment, he knew not the difficulty of the task he courted. He resolved to conceal the whole affair from Willoughby, and if his mother and sisters persisted in making allusion to the subject of his admiration of Lady Caroline Montague, to a.s.sure them gravely that he never meant, in his circ.u.mstances, to subject himself to the suspicion of seeking an heiress because she was an heiress.

Having come to so dignified a resolve, he flattered himself for the moment that he was almost composed. Scarcely however had he arrived at this conclusion, than fond memory, more at leisure than it had been during the late angry burst of disappointed pa.s.sion, began retracing scenes, recalling looks, repeating words, recounting circ.u.mstances, till his mind again became a troubled sea, from amidst the breakers of which he beheld, but now with all the aggravated feelings of one sent adrift in a bark without rudder or oar, tantalizing views, but too distant to admit a hope of reaching a smiling happy sh.o.r.e--a haven of bliss to fancy's eye, which appeared the more perfect now that it was unattainable.

At one time he stopped short, and stood for about ten minutes like an absolute statue, quite unconscious of any outward object. He was asking himself, if it were not still possible that Caroline was acting under the influence of Lady Palliser and if there might not come a time when that influence would cease?

CHAPTER XXII.

No language can paint the utter desolation of poor Caroline's mind; for she was too young, too inexperienced, too much accustomed from infancy, to be the unmurmuring slave of her mother's capricious tyranny to have any thing like a just estimate of her own situation.

Had she ventured to think, which she had never yet done, that when of age she should be her own mistress, she would, as very young people do when they look forward three or four years, have thought the period so remote as to be scarcely an object of hope; while she would still have trembled at the thought of venturing at any time, however distant, to disobey her mother, unless indeed she could be quite sure of never seeing her again.

Lady Palliser's plan of government when Caroline was a mere infant, had been a system of terror; nor had any thing in her subsequent conduct tended to soften that first impression. Frowns and menacing att.i.tudes had been used towards the baby before it could understand words, if when occasionally brought into its mother's presence it had happened to stretch its little hand towards any attractive object. Hours of solitary imprisonment in a dark room had been inflicted on the child, for but a fancied dilatoriness of movement in the execution of a command, till poor Caroline had learned to start with nervous alarm, and fly with the alacrity of terror at the very sound of her mother's voice; while it was melancholy to see, during the seemingly willing movement the little innocent face of the child filled with the contradictory expressions of anxiety and dread.

Thus had early a.s.sociations followed up by constant tyranny, imposed at the dictates of a temper unreasonable, capricious, and unfeeling, taught Caroline to view with a sinking of the heart the very smiles of her mother's countenance, as played off in company; none of them she knew were intended for her, even when their light, perchance, was turned upon her.

Overweening, all-engrossing vanity, was Lady Palliser's ruling pa.s.sion; society therefore in which she could be the object of universal admiration was her only element. Not that she was what is commonly called a flirt:--she was too haughty--too exacting of general adoration for such a condescension towards any individual in particular; while yet within her hidden thoughts, concealed beneath an appearance of statue-like coldness, she had a secret delight in imagining every man with whom she was acquainted, as much in love with her as he dared to be, and withheld from a declaration of his pa.s.sion only by her own haughty reserve: nay, so far did she carry this dream of vanity, that she felt more or less of resentment towards every man of her acquaintance who married or attached himself to any other woman.

Such was the person with whom poor Caroline had hitherto spent every domestic hour she could remember. Her home, which had thus never been a happy one, now by contrast with the vague hopes in which she had latterly ventured to indulge, presented to her imagination a long perspective of tenfold dreariness. The frowns in private, the artificial smiles in public of her unkind parent, were all that she antic.i.p.ated in future. Her very youth seemed an aggravation of her misery, for the grave itself, which, in her present exaggerated and hopeless state of feeling, was she believed, the only refuge to which she could look forward, appeared at an immeasurable distance, the path to it stretching before her mind's eye an interminable pilgrimage of weariness.

We do not mean to support these views of the subject as rational or just; but Caroline in experience and knowledge of the world, as well as in chancery phraseology, was still an infant; even her love had at present something in it of the feelings of the child turning to the kind and gentle, as a refuge from the harshness of the more severe; and with the idea of Alfred was blended thoughts of his sisters and of Lady Arden, and of their happy home--that scene of cheerfulness and general goodwill, which she had latterly enjoyed the privilege of entering without ceremony, and which she had never quitted without regret.

The most severe, however, of all her sufferings was the thought that Alfred must now hate and despise her.

She was shut up in her own apartment weeping bitterly and giving way to a succession of dreary reflections, when she received a summons from her mother to appear in the drawing-room. So much was she accustomed to obey implicitly that she did not dare to excuse herself.

On descending, she found with Lady Palliser, Sir Willoughby Arden and his cousin Geoffery. Willoughby was turning over new songs and professing himself a great admirer of music; the true secret of which was that he sang remarkably well himself. After some trivial conversation, he discovered several duets in which he had often taken a part with his sisters, and intreated that Caroline would try one of them. She excused herself on the plea of a headache caused by the music, lights, and late hours of the previous evening; but Lady Palliser interfering, she was compelled to make a wretched attempt; the manner spiritless, the voice tremulous and even out of tune. Willoughby's performance, however, was really good; he was therefore quite delighted. As the song was being concluded, Lady and the Misses Arden came in, and the latter being prevailed on to a.s.sist Willoughby with some more of his favourite duets, the visit was prolonged into quite a morning concert.

When the Ardens were about to take their departure for the avowed purpose of a walk, Lady Palliser insisted on Caroline's accompanying them, saying that the air would take away her headache. Caroline made a faint effort to excuse herself, but in this, as in every thing, was obliged to submit.

They soon met and were joined by Lord Darlingford and Sir James Lindsey; and it not being an hour at which any part of the walks was particularly crowded, they wandered on to where the shade by its coolness was inviting.

Willoughby attached himself entirely to our heroine, with whom he already fancied himself in love. Lord Darlingford walked soberly beside Jane, who after many relapses of a hope, fainter at each return, had resigned her early dream of first and mutual love, and was now quietly receiving his serious addresses. She had at length brought her mind to antic.i.p.ate, with a placid sort of happiness, the hope of obtaining for life the companionship and protection of a friend whom she could respect; together with the certainty of securing a perfectly eligible establishment, and thus escaping all those miseries inflicted by the unfeeling world's scorn on the poor and the unprotected;--miseries against which her mother and her aunt had so often warned her.

Louisa was attended by Sir James, her expected marriage with whom was now the universal theme. She had herself, however, by no means made up her mind; she could not even approach a decision, her meditations on the subject always ending in a fruitless wish that Henry were the elder brother.

Madeline, who did not happen to have a lover present walked and talked with her cousin Geoffery.

Mrs. Dorothea had been called for as they pa.s.sed her door; she was the companion of Lady Arden.

Arranged in the order we have described, our party came suddenly upon Alfred, standing where we last left him, and having just brought his solitary musings to the final summing up with which we concluded the last chapter.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Alfred could not without an appearance of great singularity avoid joining the party; he turned, therefore, and making his salutation to Caroline, and what other recognitions were necessary, in as hurried a manner as possible, took the unoccupied side of Madeline. Geoffery saw a good deal, and suspected more. "Where have you been all the morning, Alfred?" he said. "We have had some delightful music at Lady Palliser's."

"Indeed!" replied our hero.