The Vicar of Wrexhill Part 6

"We could not think whither you had vanished, Mr. Cartwright," said she, in her sweetest voice; "but you really were very lucky to ramble in this direction. Miss f.a.n.n.y ought to have her picture taken in this fine room, with all her books about her."

While she said this, Mr. Cartwright continued in a whisper to finish what he was addressing to f.a.n.n.y; and having done so, he turned to the party which had followed him, saying, "The bright verdure of your beautiful lawn, Miss Mowbray, tempted me out; but I hope our intrusion has not disturbed your sister?"

f.a.n.n.y answered eagerly that she was very glad to see him. At that moment Helen chanced to turn her eyes towards the window by which they entered; when she perceived that Miss Cartwright had followed them. She was, however, more than half concealed by a large orange tree which stood in a high square box beside the window; but her head was bent forward to look into the room, and a sneer of such very singular expression rested on her lip and in her eye as she looked at her father and f.a.n.n.y, who were still standing close together, that Helen remained perfectly still, staring at her. In another moment Miss Cartwright changed the direction of her eyes, and encountered those of Helen fixed upon her with a look of unconcealed astonishment; but her own did not sink before them, and she turned away with a smile quite as strange and unintelligible as the look she had bestowed on f.a.n.n.y.

At length this tedious visit was brought to its conclusion; the bonnet of the tipsy and now very pale little girl was replaced, a number of civil speeches spoken, and the whole party walked off together across the lawn to a gate which was to take them by a short cut through the Park.

"I quite envy Mrs. Simpson her walk home!" said f.a.n.n.y. "I see she has taken Mr. Cartwright's arm: I really do think he is the very handsomest and most agreeable man I ever saw in my life!"

CHAPTER VII.

THE FIRST IMPRESSIONS MADE BY MR. CARTWRIGHT.--LETTER FROM LADY HARRINGTON.

The three girls rallied round Mrs. Mowbray as soon as the guests had departed, all kindly anxious to see how she bore this first step back into a world so wholly changed for her.

She looked pale, and there was an air of languor and weariness about her: nevertheless, to the great surprise of Helen, she expressed herself much pleased by the visit:

"Mr. Cartwright," said she, "appears to me to be one of the most amiable men I ever saw; every tone of his voice speaks kindness, and indeed, if he did not speak at all, one look of his has more feeling and pity in it than other people could express by a volume of words."

"Do you really think so, mamma?" said Helen eagerly, but suddenly stopped herself, aware that in truth she had no grounds whatever for the strong feeling of dislike towards him of which she was conscious. She remembered, too, that her father had expressed himself greatly pleased by the urbanity of his manners, and that the last act of the benign influence he was wont to exercise on those around him had been to conquer the prejudice against him, to which the exclusion of the Wallace family had unjustly given rise. Helen remembered all this in a moment; the colour mounted to her cheeks, and she was silent.

Rosalind, too, was silent, at least from words; but her eyes could speak as many volumes at a glance as Mr. Cartwright's, and she fixed them for an instant on Helen with a look that told her plainly her prejudices against their new neighbour, however unreasonable, were fully shared by her.

Meanwhile f.a.n.n.y had thrown her arms round her mother's neck in a sort of rapture at hearing her own opinions confirmed by such authority. "Oh, how true that is, dearest mamma!" she exclaimed; "how exactly I feel the same when he speaks to me!... Such goodness, such gentleness, so much superiority, yet so much humility! Poor dear Mr. Wallace was an excellent good man, certainly, but no more to be compared to Mr.

Cartwright than I to Hercules!"

"How many times have you seen Mr. Cartwright, f.a.n.n.y?" said Rosalind.

"I have heard him preach three times," she replied, "and they were all the most beautiful sermons in the world; and I have seen and spoken to him four times more."

"Poor Mr. Wallace!" said Rosalind. "It was he who christened you, f.a.n.n.y; and from that time to the hour of his death, you seldom pa.s.sed many days together, I believe, without seeing and receiving affectionate words and kind looks from him: and yet four times speaking to this gentle gentleman has driven the memory of the poor old man from your heart!"

"No, it has not, Rosalind," replied f.a.n.n.y, deeply blushing: "I am sure I did not say that, did I, mamma?--But my loving and remembering Mr.

Wallace all the days of my life need not make me dislike everybody else, I suppose?"

"It would be a great misfortune to you if it did, f.a.n.n.y," said Mrs.

Mowbray. "I am delighted to see, both in you and many others, that the violent and most unjustifiable prejudice which was conceived against Mr.

Cartwright before he was seen and known, is giving way before his amiable and excellent qualities: I have no doubt that he will soon be quite as popular in the parish as Mr. Wallace was."

"And Miss Cartwright, mamma?" said Helen; "do you think we shall love her as well as we did Emma Wallace?"

"I know nothing whatever of Miss Cartwright as yet, Helen; she appears very shy, but we must try to give her courage, my dear girls. I hope we shall be on terms of as great intimacy with our new Clergyman as with our former one: it was a sort of a.s.sociation that your dear father particularly approved, and that alone is a sufficient reason for our wishing to cultivate it."

This allusion was too solemn to admit any light conversation to follow it. Mrs. Mowbray strolled with f.a.n.n.y into the conservatory, and Rosalind persuaded Helen that they should find the shrubberies infinitely cooler and more agreeable than the house.

But even under the thickest cover that the grounds could offer, Helen could not be tempted fully to open her heart upon the subject of Mr.

Cartwright, an indulgence which Rosalind certainly expected to obtain when she proposed the walk; but the name of her father had acted like a spell on Helen, and all that she could be brought positively to advance on the subject of the Cartwright family was, that she did not think Miss Cartwright was shy.

Within the next fortnight nearly every one who claimed a visiting acquaintance with the Mowbray family, both in the village and the neighbourhood round it, had called at the Park.

"All the calling is over now," said Helen, "and I am very glad of it."

"Every body has been very kind and attentive," replied her mother, "and next week we must begin to return their calls. I hope n.o.body will be offended, for some of them must be left for many days; the weather is very hot, and the horses must not be overworked."

"I wonder why that charming little person that I fell in love with--the widow, I mean, that lives in the Cottage at Wrexhill," said Rosalind,--"I wonder she has not been to see you! She appeared to like you all very much."

"I have thought of that two or three times," replied Helen. "I think, if they had any of them been ill, we should have heard it; and yet otherwise I cannot account for such inattention."

"It is merely accidental, I am sure," said Mrs. Mowbray. "But there is one omission, Helen, that cuts me to the heart!" Tears burst from her eyes as she spoke.

Poor Helen knew not how to answer: she was well aware that the omission her mother alluded to was that of Sir Gilbert and Lady Harrington; and she knew too the cause of it. Lady Harrington, who, with one of the best hearts in the world, was sometimes rather blunt in her manner of showing it, had sent over a groom with a letter to Helen, her G.o.d-daughter and especial favourite, very fully explaining the cause of their not calling, but in a manner that could in no degree enable her to remove her mother's uneasiness respecting it. This letter, which by her ladyship's especial orders was delivered privately into the hands of Helen, ran thus:

"My darling Child!

"Can't you think what a way I must be in at being prevented coming to see you? Sir Gilbert excels himself this time for obstinacy and wilfulness. Every breakfast, every dinner, and every tea since it happened, William and I do nothing but beg and entreat that I may be permitted to go over and see your poor mother! Good gracious! as I tell him, it is not her fault--though G.o.d knows I do think just as much as he does, that no man ever did make such a tom-fool of a will as your father. Such a man as Charles! as Sir Gilbert says. 'Twas made at the full of the moon, my dear, and that's the long and the short of it; he was just mad, Helen, and nothing else. But is that any reason that your poor dear mother should be neglected and forsaken this way! G.o.d bless her dear soul! she's more like a baby than any thing I ever saw, about money; and as to her being an heiress, why I don't believe, upon my honour, that she has ever recollected it from the day she married to the time that your unlucky, poor dear distracted madman of a father threw all her money back at her in this wild way. He had much better have pelted her with rotten eggs, Helen! Such a friend as Sir Gilbert, so warm-hearted, so steady, and so true, is not to be found every day--old tiger as he is. But what on earth am I to do about it? I shall certainly go mad too, if I can't get at you; and yet, I give you my word, I no more dare order the coachman to drive me to Mowbray Park than to the devil. You never saw such a tyrannical brute of a husband as Sir Gilbert is making himself about it! And poor William, too--he really speaks to him as if he were a little beggar-boy in the streets, instead of a colonel of dragoons. William said last night something very like, 'I shall ride over to Wrexhill to-morrow, and perhaps I shall see the family at Mow....' I wish you had seen him--I only wish you had seen Sir Gilbert, Helen, for half a moment!--you would never have forgotten it, my dear, and it might have given you a hint as to choosing a husband. Never marry a man with great, wide, open, light-coloured eyes, and enormous black eyebrows, for fear he should swallow you alive some day before you know where you are. 'See them! 'roared Sir Gilbert. 'If you do, by G--d, sir, I'll leave every sou I have in the world to some cursed old woman myself; but it shan't be to you, madam,' turning short round as if he would bite me:--'laugh if you will, but go to Mowbray if you dare!'

"'But are we never to see any of the family again, sir?' said the colonel very meekly. 'I never told you so, Colonel b.o.o.by,'

was the reply. 'You may see that glorious fellow Charles as often as you will, and the more you see of him the better; and I'll manage if I can, as soon as he has taken this degree that his heart's set upon, to get a commission for him in your regiment; so you need not palaver about my wanting to part you from him. And as for you, my lady, I give you full leave to kidnap the poor dest.i.tute, penniless girls if you can; but if I ever catch you doing any thing that can be construed into respect or civility to that sly, artful hussy who cajoled my poor friend Mowbray to make that cursed will, may I.... You shall see, old lady, what will come of it!'

"Now what on earth can I do, dear darling? I believe your mother's as innocent of cajoling as I am, and that's saying something; and as for your being dest.i.tute, sweethearts, you'll have fifty thousand pounds apiece if you've a farthing. I know all about the property, and so does Sir Gilbert too; only the old tiger pretends to believe, just to feed his rage, that your mother will marry her footman, and bequeath her money to all the little footboys and girls that may ensue: for one princ.i.p.al cause of his vengeance against your poor mother is, that she is still young enough to have children. Was there ever such a man!--But here have I, according to custom, scribbled my paper as full as it will hold, and yet have got a hundred thousand more things to say; but it would all come to this, if I were to scrawl over a ream. I am miserable because I can't come to see your mother and you, and yet I can't help myself any more than if I were shut up in Bridewell: for I never did do any thing that my abominable old husband desired me not to do, and I don't think I could do it even to please you, my pretty Helen; only don't fancy I have forgotten you: but for G.o.d's sake don't write to me! I am quite sure I should get my ears boxed.

"Believe me, darling child,

"Your loving friend and G.o.dmother,

"JANE MATILDA HARRINGTON."

"P. S. I am quite sure that the colonel would send pretty messages if he knew what I was about: but I will not make him a party in my sin. I was just going to tell him this morning; but my conscience smote me, and I turned very sublimely away, muttering, in the words of Macbeth--'Be innocent of this, my dearest chuck!'"

This coa.r.s.e but well-meaning letter gave inexpressible pain to Helen.

She dared not show it to her mother, who, she felt quite sure, would consider the unjust suspicions of Sir Gilbert as the most cruel insult: not could she, after Lady Harrington's prohibition, attempt to answer it, though she greatly wished to do it, in the hope that she might be able to place her mother's conduct and feelings in a proper light. But she well knew that, with all her friend's rhodomontade, she was most devotedly attached to her excellent though hot-headed husband, and that she could not disoblige her more than by betraying a secret which, under the present circ.u.mstances, would certainly make him very angry.

But the sight of her mother's tears, and her utter inability to say any thing that might console her very just sorrow, inspired Helen with a bold device. To Rosalind only had she shown Lady Harrington's letter, and to Rosalind only did she communicate her project of boldly writing to the enraged baronet himself.

"Do so, Helen," said Rosalind promptly: "it is the only measure to pursue--unless indeed you and I were to set off and surprise him by a visit."

"But my mother?..." replied Helen, evidently struck by the advantages of this bolder scheme over her own,--"what would my mother say to our going?"

"If she knew of it, Helen, I suspect it would lose all favour in Sir Gilbert's eyes, and you would have no chance whatever of softening his rage towards her. The expedition, if undertaken at all, must be a secret one. When he learns it is so, I think it will touch his tough heart, Helen, for he knows, I fancy, that such escapades are not at all in your line. I only hope that he will not find out that I proposed it, as that might lessen your merit in his eyes."

"No, no, that would do no harm. My doing it would be quite proof enough how near this matter is to my heart."

"Well, then, Helen, shall we go?"

"Let me sleep upon it, Rosalind. If we do go, it must, I think, be quite early in the morning, so as to have no questions asked before we set out. It is not a long walk. Shall we see if he will give us some breakfast?"