The Young Step-Mother Part 75

It rests with yourself now, it is not too late. After all that has pa.s.sed, you would incur much deserved censure if you put an end to the affair; but even that would be better, far better, than entering into an engagement with a man without sound principle.'

'Your mother is quite right, Lucy,' said Mr. Kendal. 'This is the only time. Gratified vanity has led you too far, and you have acted as I hoped no child of mine would ever act, but you have not forfeited our tenderest care. You are not engaged to this man, and no word of yours would be broken. If you hesitate to commit yourself to him, you have only to speak, and we would gladly at once do everything that could conduce to make you happy.'

'You don't want me to give him up!' cried Lucy. 'Oh! mamma, did not he say he had consented?'

'I said it rested with yourself Lucy. Do not answer me now. Come to me at six o'clock, and tell me, after full reflection, whether I am to consider you as ready to pledge yourself to this young man.'

It was all that could be done. Albinia had a dim hope that the sense of responsibility, and dread of that hard will and selfish temper, might so rise upon Lucy as to startle her, but then, as Mr. Kendal observed, if she should decide against him, she would have used him so extremely ill, that they should feel nothing but shame.

'Yes,' said Albinia, 'but it would be better to be ashamed of a girl's folly, than to see her made miserable for life. Poor Lucy! if she decide against him, she will become a woman at once, if not, I'm afraid it will be the prediction about Marie Antoinette over again--very gay, and coming right through trial.'

They were obliged to tell Sophy of the state of things. She stood up straight, and said, slowly and clearly, 'I do not like the world at all.'

'I don't quite see what you mean.'

'Every one does what can't be helped, and it is not _the_ thing.'

'Explain yourself, Sophy,' said her father, amused.

'I don't think Lucy ought to be making the decision at all,' said Sophy.

She did that long ago, when first, she attended to what he said to her.

If she does not take him now, it will be swearing to her neighbour, and disappointing him, because it is to her own hindrance.'

'Yes, Sophy; but I believe it is better to incur the sin of breaking a promise, than to go on when the fulfilment involves not only suffering, but mischief. Lucy has repeatedly declared there was no engagement.'

'I know it could not be helped; but Mr. Dusautoy ought not to have asked papa.'

'Nor papa to have consented, my Suleiman ben Daood,' said Mr. Kendal.

'Ah! Sophy, we all have very clear, straightforward views at eighteen of what other people ought to do.'

'Papa--I never meant--I did not think I was saying anything wrong. I only said I did not like the world.'

'And I heartily agree with you, Sophy, and if I had lived in it as short a time as you have, perhaps "considerations" would not affect my judgment.'

'I am always telling Sophy she will be more merciful as she grows older,' said Albinia.

'If it were only being more merciful, it would be very well,' said Mr.

Kendal; 'but one also becomes less thorough-going, because practice is more painful than theory, and one remembers consequences that have made themselves felt. It is just as well that there should be young people to put us in mind what our flights once were.'

Albinia and Sophy left Lucy to herself; they both wished to avoid the useless 'What shall I do?' and they thought that, driven back on her own resources, even _her_ own mind might give her better counsel than the seven watchmen aloft in a high tower.

She came down looking exceedingly pale. Mr. Kendal regarded her anxiously, and held his hand out to her kindly.

'Papa,' she said, simply, 'I can't give it up. I do love him.'

'Very well, my dear,' he answered, 'there is no more to be said than that I trust he will merit your affection and make you happy.'

Good Mr. Dusautoy was as happy as a king; he took Lucy in his arms, and kissed her as if she had been his child, and with her hands folded in his own, he told her how she was to teach his dear Algernon to be everything that was good, and to lead him right by her influence. She answered with caresses and promises, and whoever had watched her eye, would have seen it in a happy day-dream of Algernon's perfection, and his uncle thanking her for it.

She had expected that grandmamma would have been very happy; but marriage had, with the poor old lady, led to so much separation, that her weakened faculties took the alarm, and she received the tidings by crying bitterly, and declaring that every one was going away and leaving her. Lucy a.s.sured her over and over again that she was never going to desert her, and as Mr. Kendal had made it a condition that Algernon should finish his Oxford career respectably, there was little chance that poor Mrs. Meadows would survive until the marriage.

All along Gilbert made no remark. Though he had been left out of the family conclaves, and his opinion not asked, he submitted with the utmost meekness, as one who knew that he had forfeited all right to be treated as son and heir. The more he was concerned at the engagement, the greater stigma he would place on his own connivance; so he said nothing, and only devoted himself to his grandmother, as though the attendance upon her were a refuge and relief. More gentle and patient than ever, he soothed her fretfulness, invented pleasures for her, and rendered her so placid and contented, that her health began to improve.

Not for a moment did he seem to forget his error; and Albinia's resolution to separate Maurice from him, could not hold when he himself silently a.s.sumed the mournful necessity, and put the child from him when clamorous for rides, till there was an appeal to papa and mamma.

Mr. Kendal gave one look of inquiry at Albinia, and she began some matter-of-course about Gilbert being so kind--whereupon the brothers were together as before. When Albinia visited her little boy at night, she found that Gilbert had been talking to him of his eldest brother, and she heard more of Edmund's habits and tastes from the little fellow who had never seen him, than from either the twin-brother or the sister who had loved him so devotedly. It was as if Gilbert knew that he could be doing Maurice no harm when leading him to think of Edmund, and perhaps he felt some intrinsic resemblance in the deep loving strength of the two natures.

The invitation to Fairmead spared him the pain and shame of Algernon Dusautoy's first reception as Lucy's accepted lover. He went early on Sat.u.r.day morning, and young Dusautoy, arriving in the evening, was first ushered into the library; while Albinia did her best to soothe the excited nerves and fluttering spirits of Lucy, who was exceedingly ashamed to meet him again under the eyes of others, after such a course of stolen interviews, and what she had been told of her influence doing him good only alarmed her the more.

Well she might, for if ever character resembled that of the iron pot borne down the stream in company with the earthen one, it was the object of her choice. Poor pipkin that Gilbert was, the contact had cost him a smashing blow, and for all clay of the more fragile mould, the best hope was to give the invulnerable material a wide berth. Talk of influence!

Mr. Dusautoy might as well hope that a Wedgwood cream-jug would guide a copper cauldron and keep verdigris aloof.

His attraction for Lucy had always been a mystery to her family, who perhaps hardly did justice to the magnetism of mere force of purpose.

Better training might have enn.o.bled into resolution that which was now doggedness and obstinacy, and, even in that shape, the real element of strength had a tendency to work upon softer natures. Thus it had acted in different ways with the Vicar, with Gilbert, and with Lucy; each had fallen under the power of his determination, with more or less of their own consent, and with Lucy the surrender was complete; she no sooner sat beside Algernon than she was completely his possession, and his complacent self-satisfaction was reflected on her face in a manner that told her parents that she was their own no longer, but given up to a stronger master.

Albinia liked neither to see nor to think about it, and kept aloof as much as she could, dividing herself between grandmamma and the children.

On Tuesday morning, during Maurice's lessons, there was a knock at the sitting-room door. She expected Gilbert, but was delighted to see her brother.

'I thought you were much too busy to come near us?'

'So I am; I can't stay; so if Kendal be not forthcoming you must give this fellow a holiday.'

'He is gone to Hadminster, so--'

'Where's Gilbert?' broke in little Maurice.

'He went to his room to dress to go up to parade,' said Mr. Ferrars, and off rushed the boy without waiting for permission.

Albinia sighed, and said, 'It is a perfect pa.s.sion.'

'Don't mourn over it. Love is too good a thing to be lamented over, and this may turn into a blessing.'

'I used to be proud of it.'

'So you shall be still. I am very much pleased with that poor lad.'

She would not raise her eyes, she was weary of hoping for Gilbert, and his last offence had touched her where she had never been touched before.

'Whatever faults he has,' Mr. Ferrars said, 'I am much mistaken if his humility, love, and contrition be not genuine, and what more can the best have?'

'Sincerity!' said Albinia, hopelessly. 'There's no truth in him!'

'You should discriminate between deliberate self-interested deception, and failure in truth for want of moral courage. Both are bad enough, but the latter is not "loving a lie," not such a ruinous taint and evidence of corruption as the former.'

'It is curious to hear you repeating my old excuses for him,' said Albinia, 'now that he has cast his glamour over you.'

'Not wrongly,' said her brother. 'He is in earnest; there is no acting about him.'

'Yes, that I believe; I know he loves us with all his heart, poor boy, especially Maurice and me, and I think he had rather go right than wrong, if he could only be let alone. But, oh! it is all "unstable as water." Am I unkind, Maurice? I know how it would be if I let him talk to me for ten minutes, or look at me with those pleading brown eyes of his!'