Is He Popenjoy? Part 29

"Ah! I dare say. You feel it so, no doubt. I am glad that you are satisfied by an alliance with my family. You are anxious for me to profess that it is reciprocal."

"I am anxious for nothing of the kind," said the Dean, jumping up from his chair. "I have nothing to get and nothing to lose by the alliance.

The usual courtesies of life are pleasant to me."

"I wish that you would use them then on the present occasion by being a little quieter."

"Your brother has married a lady, and my daughter has married a gentleman."

"Yes; George is a great a.s.s; in some respects the greatest a.s.s I know; but he is a gentleman. Perhaps if you have anything else that you wish to say you will do me the honour of sitting down."

The Dean was so angry that he did not know how to contain himself. The Marquis had snubbed him for coming. He had then justified his visit by an allusion to the connection between them, and the Marquis had replied to this by hinting that though a Dean might think it a very fine thing to have his daughter married into the family of a Marquis, the Marquis probably would not look at it in the same light. And yet what was the truth? Whence had come the money which had made the marriage possible?

In the bargain between them which party had had the best of it? He was conscious that it would not become him to allude to the money, but his feeling on the subject was very strong. "My lord," he said, "I do not know that there is anything to be gained by my sitting down again."

"Perhaps not. I dare say you know best."

"I came here intent on what I considered to be a courtesy due to your lordship. I am sorry that my visit has been mistaken."

"I don't see that there is anything to make a fuss about."

"It shall not be repeated, my lord." And so he left the room.

Why on earth had the man come back to England, bringing a foreign woman and an Italian brat home with him, if he intended to make the place too hot to hold him by insulting everybody around him? This was the first question the Dean asked himself, when he found himself outside the house. And what could the man hope to gain by such insolence? Instead of taking the road through the park back to Brotherton, he went on to Cross Hall. He was desirous of learning what were the impressions, and what the intentions, of the ladies there. Did this madman mean to quarrel with his mother and sisters as well as with his other neighbours? He did not as yet know what intercourse there had been between the two houses, since the Marquis had been at Manor Cross. And in going to Cross Hall in the midst of all these troubles, he was no doubt actuated in part by a determination to show himself to be one of the family. If they would accept his aid, no one would be more loyal than he to these ladies. But he would not be laid aside. If anything unjust were intended, if any fraud was to be executed, the person most to be injured would be that hitherto unborn grandson of his for whose advent he was so anxious. He had been very free with his money, but he meant to have his money's worth.

At Cross Hall he found Canon Holdenough's wife and the Canon. At the moment of his entrance old Lady Brotherton was talking to the clergyman, and Lady Alice was closeted in a corner with her sister Sarah. "I would advise you to go just as though you had heard nothing from us," Lady Sarah had said. "Of course he would be readier to quarrel with me than with any one. For mamma's sake I would go away for a time if I had anywhere to go to."

"Come to us," Lady Alice had said. But Lady Sarah had declared that she would be as much in the way at Brotherton as at Cross Hall, and had then gone on to explain that it was Lady Alice's duty to call on her sister-in-law, and that she must do so,--facing the consequences whatever they might be. "Of course mamma could not go till he had been here," Lady Sarah added; "and now he has told mamma not to go at all.

But that is nothing to you."

"I have just come from the house," said the Dean.

"Did you see him?" asked the old woman with awe.

"Yes; I saw him."

"Well!"

"I must say that he was not very civil to me, and that I suppose I have seen all of him that I shall see."

"It is only his manner," said her ladyship.

"An unfortunate manner, surely."

"Poor Brotherton!"

Then the Canon said a word. "Of course no one wants to trouble him. I can speak at least for myself. I do not,--certainly. I have requested her ladyship to ask him whether he would wish me to call or not. If he says that he does, I shall expect him to receive me cordially. If he does not--there's an end of it."

"I hope you won't all of you turn against him," said the Marchioness.

"Turn against him!" repeated the Dean. "I do not suppose that there is any one who would not be both kind and courteous to him, if he would accept kindness and courtesy. It grieves me to make you unhappy, Marchioness, but I am bound to let you know that he treated me very badly." From that moment the Marchioness made up her mind that the Dean was no friend of the family, and that he was, after all, vulgar and disagreeable. She undertook, however, to enquire from her son on next Sunday whether he would wish to be called upon by his brother-in-law, the Canon.

On the following day Lady Alice went alone to Manor Cross,--being the first lady who had gone to the door since the new arrivals,--and asked for Lady Brotherton. The courier came to the door and said "not at home," in a foreign accent, just as the words might have been said to any chance caller in London. Then Lady Alice asked the man to tell her brother that she was there. "Not at home, miladi," said the man, in the same tone. At that moment Mrs. Toff came running through the long hall to the carriage door. The house was built round a quadrangle, and all the ground floor of the front and of one of the sides consisted of halls, pa.s.sages, and a billiard-room. Mrs. Toff must have been watching very closely or she could hardly have known that Lady Alice was there.

She came out and stood beside the carriage, and leaning in, whispered her fears and unhappinesses. "Oh! my lady, I'm afraid it's very bad. I haven't set eyes on the--the--his wife, my lady, yet; nor the little boy."

"Are they in now, Mrs. Toff?"

"Of course they're in. They never go out. He goes about all the afternoon in a dressing-gown, smoking bits of paper, and she lies in bed or gets up and doesn't do,--nothing at all, as far as I can see, Lady Alice. But as for being in, of course they're in; they're always in." Lady Alice, however, feeling that she had done her duty, and not wishing to take the place by storm, had herself driven back to Brotherton.

On the following Sunday afternoon the Marquis came, according to his promise, and found his mother alone. "The fact is, mother," he said, "you have got a regular church set around you during the last year or two, and I will have nothing to do with them. I never cared much for Brotherton Close, and now I like it less than ever." The Marchioness moaned and looked up into his face imploringly. She was anxious to say something in defence, at any rate, of her daughter's marriage, but specially anxious to say nothing that should not anger him. Of course he was unreasonable, but, according to her lights, he, being the Marquis, had a right to be unreasonable. "The Dean came to me the other day," continued he, "and I could see at a glance that he meant to be quite at home in the house, if I didn't put him down."

"You'll see Mr. Holdenough, won't you? Mr. Holdenough is a very gentlemanlike man, and the Holdenoughs were always quite county people.

You used to like Alice."

"If you ask me, I think she has been a fool at her age to go and marry an old parson. As for receiving him, I shan't receive anybody,--in the way of entertaining them. I haven't come home for that purpose. My child will have to live here when he is a man."

"G.o.d bless him!" said the Marchioness.

"Or at any rate his property will be here. They tell me that it will be well that he should be used to this d.a.m.nable climate early in life. He will have to go to school here, and all that. So I have brought him, though I hate the place."

"It is so nice to have you back, Brotherton."

"I don't know about its being nice. I don't find much niceness in it.

Had I not got myself married I should never have come back. But it's as well that you all should know that there is an heir."

"G.o.d bless him!" said the Marchioness, again. "But don't you think that we ought to see him?"

"See him! Why?" He asked the question sharply, and looked at her with that savageness in his eyes which all the family remembered so well, and which she specially feared.

That question of the legitimacy of the boy had never been distinctly discussed at Cross Hall, and the suspicious hints on the subject which had pa.s.sed between the sisters, the allusions to this and the other possibility which had escaped them, had been kept as far as possible from their mother. They had remarked among themselves that it was very odd that the marriage should have been concealed, and almost more than odd that an heir to the t.i.tle should have been born without any announcement of such a birth. A dread of some evil mystery had filled their thoughts, and shown itself in their words and looks to each other. And, though they had been very anxious to keep this from their mother, something had crept through which had revealed a suspicion of the suspicion even to her. She, dear old lady, had resolved upon no line of conduct in the matter. She had conceived no project of rebelling against her eldest daughter, or of being untrue to her youngest son. But now that she was alone with her eldest son, with the real undoubted Marquis, with him who would certainly be to her more than all the world beside if he would only allow it, there did come into her head an idea that she would put him on his guard.

"Because,--because----"

"Because what? Speak out, mother."

"Because, perhaps they'll say that--that----"

"What will they say?"

"If they don't see him, they may think he isn't Popenjoy at all."

"Oh! they'll think that, will they? How will seeing help them?"

"It would be so nice to have him here, if it's only for a little," said the Marchioness.

"So that's it," he said, after a long pause. "That's George's game, and the Dean's; I can understand."

"No, no, no; not George," said the unhappy mother.

"And Sarah, I dare say, is in a boat with them. I don't wonder that they should choose to remain here and watch me."