Marion Fay Part 4

"Yes, papa. I like Konigsgraaf very much. I always thought it the prettiest place I know. But I do not like looking forward to staying here without knowing when I am to go away."

"You had better ask your mamma, my dear."

"Mamma never says anything to me. It would be no good my asking her.

Papa, you ought to tell me something before you go away."

"Tell you what?"

"Or let me tell you something."

"What do you want to tell me, Frances?" In saying this he a.s.sumed his most angry tone and sternest countenance,--which, however, were not very angry or very stern, and had no effect in frightening his daughter. He did not, in truth, wish to say a word about the Post Office clerk before he made his escape, and would have been very glad to frighten her enough to make her silent had that been possible.

"Papa, I want you to know that it will do no good shutting me up there."

"n.o.body shuts you up."

"I mean here in Saxony. Of course I shall stay for some time, but you cannot expect that I shall remain here always."

"Who has talked about always?"

"I understand that I am brought here to be--out of Mr. Roden's way."

"I would rather not speak of that young man."

"But, papa,--if he is to be my husband--"

"He is not to be your husband."

"It will be so, papa, though I should be kept here ever so long. That is what I want you to understand. Having given my word,--and so much more than my word,--I certainly shall not go back from it. I can understand that you should carry me off here so as to try and wean me from it--"

"It is quite out of the question; impossible!"

"No, papa. If he choose,--and I choose,--no one can prevent us." As she said this she looked him full in the face.

"Do you mean to say that you owe no obedience to your parents?"

"To you, papa, of course I owe obedience,--to a certain extent. There does come a time, I suppose, in which a daughter may use her own judgment as to her own happiness."

"And disgrace all her family?"

"I do not think that I shall disgrace mine. What I want you to understand, papa, is this,--that you will not ensure my obedience by keeping me here. I think I should be more likely to be submissive at home. There is an idea in enforced control which is hardly compatible with obedience. I don't suppose you will lock me up."

"You have no right to talk to me in that way."

"I want to explain that our being here can do no good. When you are gone mamma and I will only be very unhappy together. She won't talk to me, and will look at me as though I were a poor lost creature. I don't think that I am a lost creature at all, but I shall be just as much lost here as though I were at home in England."

"When you come to talking you are as bad as your brother," said the Marquis as he left her. Only that the expression was considered to be unfit for female ears, he would have accused her of "talking the hind legs off a dog."

When he was gone the life at Konigsgraaf became very sombre indeed.

Mr. George Roden's name was never mentioned by either of the ladies.

There was the Post Office, no doubt, and the Post Office was at first left open to her; but there soon came a time in which she was deprived of this consolation. With such a guardian as the Marchioness, it was not likely that free correspondence should be left open to her.

CHAPTER V.

MRS. RODEN.

George Roden, the Post Office clerk, lived with his mother at Holloway, about three miles from his office. There they occupied a small house which had been taken when their means were smaller even than at present;--for this had been done before the young man had made his way into the official elysium of St. Martin's-le-Grand.

This had been effected about five years since, during which time he had risen to an income of 170. As his mother had means of her own amounting to about double as much, and as her personal expenses were small, they were enabled to live in comfort. She was a lady of whom none around knew anything, but there had gone abroad a rumour among her neighbours that there was something of a mystery attached to her, and there existed a prevailing feeling that she was at any rate a well-born lady. Few people at Holloway knew either her or her son.

But there were some who condescended to watch them, and to talk about them. It was ascertained that Mrs. Roden usually went to church on Sunday morning, but that her son never did so. It was known, too, that a female friend called upon her regularly once a week; and it was noted in the annals of Holloway that this female friend came always at three o'clock on a Monday. Intelligent observers had become aware that the return visit was made in the course of the week, but not always made on one certain day;--from which circ.u.mstances various surmises arose as to the means, whereabouts, and character of the visitor. Mrs. Roden always went in a cab. The lady, whose name was soon known to be Mrs. Vincent, came in a brougham, which for a time was supposed to be her own peculiar property. The man who drove it was so well arrayed as to hat, cravat, and coat, as to leave an impression that he must be a private servant; but one feminine observer, keener than others, saw the man on an unfortunate day descend from his box at a public-house, and knew at once that the trousers were the trousers of a hired driver from a livery-stable.

Nevertheless it was manifest that Mrs. Vincent was better to do in the world than Mrs. Roden, because she could afford to hire a would-be private carriage; and it was imagined also that she was a lady accustomed to remain at home of an afternoon, probably with the object of receiving visitors, because Mrs. Roden made her visits indifferently on Thursday, Friday, or Sat.u.r.day. It was suggested also that Mrs. Vincent was no friend to the young clerk, because it was well known that he was never there when the lady came, and it was supposed that he never accompanied his mother on the return visits.

He had, indeed, on one occasion been seen to get out of the cab with his mother at their own door, but it was strongly surmised that she had then picked him up at the Post Office. His official engagements might, indeed, have accounted for all this naturally; but the ladies of Holloway were well aware that the humanity of the Postmaster-General allowed a Sat.u.r.day half-holiday to his otherwise overworked officials, and they were sure that so good a son as George Roden would occasionally have accompanied his mother, had there been no especial reason against it. From this further surmises arose. Some glance had fallen from the eye of the visitor lady, or perhaps some chance word had been heard from her lips, which created an opinion that she was religious. She probably objected to George Roden because he was anti-religious, or at any rate anti-church, meeting, or chapel-going. It had become quite decided at Holloway that Mrs.

Vincent would not put up with the young clerk's infidelity. And it was believed that there had been "words" between the two ladies themselves on the subject of religion,--as to which probably there was no valid foundation, it being an ascertained fact that the two maids who were employed by Mrs. Roden were never known to tell anything of their mistress.

It was decided at Holloway that Mrs. Roden and Mrs. Vincent were cousins. They were like enough in face and near enough in age to have been sisters; but old Mrs. Demijohn, of No. 10, Paradise Row, had declared that had George been a nephew his aunt would not have wearied in her endeavour to convert him. In such a case there would have been intimacy in spite of disapproval. But a first cousin once removed might be allowed to go to the Mischief in his own way. Mrs.

Vincent was supposed to be the elder cousin,--perhaps three or four years the elder,--and to have therefore something of an authority, but not much. She was stouter, too, less careful to hide what grey hairs years might have produced, and showing manifestly by the nature of her bonnets and shawls that she despised the vanities of the world. Not but that she was always handsomely dressed, as Mrs.

Demijohn was very well aware. Less than a hundred a year could not have clothed Mrs. Vincent, whereas Mrs. Roden, as all the world perceived, did not spend half the money. But who does not know that a lady may repudiate vanity in rich silks and cultivate the world in woollen stuffs, or even in calico? Nothing was more certain to Mrs.

Demijohn than that Mrs. Vincent was severe, and that Mrs. Roden was soft and gentle. It was a.s.sumed also that the two ladies were widows, as no husband or sign of a husband had appeared on the scene. Mrs.

Vincent showed manifestly from her deportment, as well as from her t.i.tle, that she had been a married woman. As to Mrs. Roden, of course, there was no doubt.

In regard to all this the reader may take the settled opinions of Mrs. Demijohn and of Holloway as being nearly true. Riddles may be read very accurately by those who will give sufficient attention and ample time to the reading of them. They who will devote twelve hours a day to the unravelling of acrostics, may discover nearly all the enigmas of a weekly newspaper with a separate editor for such difficulties. Mrs. Demijohn had almost arrived at the facts. The two ladies were second cousins. Mrs. Vincent was a widow, was religious, was austere, was fairly well off, and had quarrelled altogether with her distant relative George of the Post Office. Mrs. Roden, though she went to church, was not so well given to religious observances as her cousin would have her. Hence words had come which Mrs. Roden had borne with equanimity, but had received without effect. Nevertheless the two women loved each other dearly, and it was a great part of the life of each of them that these weekly visits should be made. There was one great fact, as to which Mrs. Demijohn and Holloway were in the wrong. Mrs. Roden was not a widow.

It was not till the Kingsburys had left London that George told his mother of his engagement. She was well acquainted with his intimacy with Lord Hampstead, and knew that he had been staying at Hendon Hall with the Kingsbury family. There had been no reticence between the mother and son as to these people, in regard to whom she had frequently cautioned him that there was danger in such a.s.sociations with people moving altogether in a different sphere. In answer to this the son had always declared that he did not see the danger.

He had not run after Lord Hampstead. Circ.u.mstances had thrown them together. They had originally met each other in a small political debating society, and gradually friendship had grown. The lord had sought him, and not he the lord. That, according to his own idea, had been right. Difference in rank, difference in wealth, difference in social regard required as much as that. He, when he had discovered who was the young man whom he had met, stood off somewhat, and allowed the friendship to spring from the other side. He had been slow to accept favour,--even at first to accept hospitality. But whenever the ice had, as he said, been thoroughly broken, then he thought that there was no reason why they should not pull each other out of the cold water together. As for danger, what was there to fear? The Marchioness would not like it? Very probably. The Marchioness was not very much to Hampstead, and was nothing at all to him. The Marquis would not really like it. Perhaps not. But in choosing a friend a young man is not supposed to follow altogether his father's likings,--much less need the chosen friend follow them.

But the Marquis, as George pointed out to his mother, was hardly more like other marquises than the son was like other marquis's sons.

There was a Radical strain in the family, as was made clear by that tailor who was still sitting for the borough of Edgeware. Mrs. Roden, however, though she lived so much alone, seeing hardly anything of the world except as Mrs. Vincent might be supposed to represent the world, had learned that the feelings and political convictions of the Marquis were hardly what they had been before he had married his present wife. "You may be sure, George," she had said, "that like to like is as safe a motto for friendship as it is for love."

"Not a doubt, mother," he replied; "but before you act upon it you must define 'like.' What makes two men like--or a man and a woman?"

"Outside circ.u.mstances of the world more than anything else," she answered, boldly.

"I would fancy that the inside circ.u.mstances of the mind would have more to do with it." She shook her head at him, pleasantly, softly, and lovingly,--but still with a settled purpose of contradiction. "I have admitted all along," he continued, "that low birth--"

"I have said nothing of low birth!" Here was a point on which there did not exist full confidence between the mother and son, but in regard to which the mother was always attempting to rea.s.sure the son, while he would a.s.sume something against himself which she would not allow to pa.s.s without an attempt of faint denial.

"That birth low by comparison," he continued, going on with his sentence, "should not take upon itself as much as may be allowed to n.o.bility by descent is certain. Though the young prince may be superior in his gifts to the young s...o...b..ack, and would best show his princeliness by cultivating the s...o...b..ack, still the s...o...b..ack should wait to be cultivated. The world has created a state of things in which the s...o...b..ack cannot do otherwise without showing an arrogance and impudence by which he could achieve nothing."

"Which, too, would make him black his shoes very badly."

"No doubt. That will have to come to pa.s.s any way, because the n.o.bler employments to which he will be raised by the appreciating prince will cause him to drop his shoes."

"Is Lord Hampstead to cause you to drop the Post Office?"

"Not at all. He is not a prince nor am I a s...o...b..ack. Though we are far apart, we are not so far apart as to make such a change essential to our acquaintance. But I was saying-- I don't know what I was saying."

"You were defining what 'like' means. But people always get muddled when they attempt definitions," said the mother.