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CHAPTER XXVIII
A SQUIRE OF DAMES

 
   ‘Spited with a fool—
Spited and angered both.’
 

Cymbeline.

This long stay of Ellen’s in our family had made our fraternal relations with her nearer and closer.  Familiarity had been far from lessening our strong feeling for her goodness and sweetness.  Emily, who knew her best, used to confide to me little instances of the spirit of devotion and self-discipline that underlay all her sunny gaiety—how she never failed in her morning’s devout readings; how she learnt a verse or two of Scripture every day, and persuaded Emily to join with her in repeating it ere they went downstairs for their evening’s pleasure; how she had set herself a little task of plain work for the poor, which she did every day in her own room; and the like dutiful habits, which seemed, as it were, to help her to keep herself in hand, and not be carried away by what was a whirl of pleasure to her, though a fashionable young lady would have despised its mildness.

Indeed Lady Peacock, with whom we exchanged calls, made no secret of her compassion when she found how many parties the ladies were not going to; and Ellen’s own relations, the Lesters, would have taken her out almost every night if she had not staunchly held to her promise to her mother not to go out more than three evenings in the week, for Mrs. Fordyce knew her to be delicate, and feared late hours for her.  The vexation her cousins manifested made her feel the more bound to give them what time she could, at hours when Griffith was not at liberty.  She did not like them to be hurt, and jealous of us, or to feel forsaken, and she tried to put her affection for us on a different footing by averring that ‘it was not the same kind of thing—Emily was her sister.’

One day she had gone to luncheon with the Lesters in Cavendish Square, and was to be called for in the carriage by me, on the way to take up the other two ladies, who were shopping in Regent Street.

Ellen came running downstairs, with her cheeks in a glow under the pink satin lining of her pretty bonnet, and her eyes sparkling with indignation, which could not but break forth.

‘I don’t know how I shall ever go there again!’ she exclaimed; ‘they have no right to say such things!’  Then she explained.  Mary and Louisa had been saying horrid things about Griffith—her Griff!  It was always their way.  Think how Horace had made her treat Clarence!  It was their way and habit to tease, and call it fun, and she had never minded it before; but this was too bad.  Would not I put it in her power to give a flat contradiction, such as would make them ashamed of themselves?

Contradict what?

Then it appeared that the Misses Lester had laughed at her, who was so very particular and scrupulous, for having taken up with a regular young man about town.  Oh no, they did not think much of it—no doubt he was only just like other people; only the funny thing was that it should be Ellen, for whom it was always supposed that no saint in the calendar, no knight in all the Waverley novels, would be good enough!  And then, on her hot desire to know what they meant, they quoted John, the brother in the Guards, as having been so droll about poor Ellen’s perfect hero, and especially at his straight-laced Aunt Fordyce having been taken in,—but of course it was the convenience of joining the estates, and it was agreeable to see that your very good folk could wink at things like other people in such a case.  Then, when Ellen fairly drove her inquiries home, in her absolute trust of confuting all slanders, she was told that Griffith did, what she called ‘all sorts of things—billiards and all that.’  And even that he was always running after a horrid Lady Peacock, a gay widow.

‘They went on in fun,’ said Ellen, ‘and laughed the more when—yes, I am afraid I did—I lost my temper.  No, don’t say I well might, I know I ought not; but I told them I knew all about Lady Peacock, and that you were all old friends, even before he rescued her from the Bristol riots and brought her home to Chantry House; and that only made Mary merrier than ever, and say, “What, another distressed damsel?  Take care, Ellen; I would not trust such a squire of dames.”  And then Louisa chimed in, “Oh no, you see this Peacock dame was only conducted, like Princess Micomicona and all the rest of them, to the feet of his peerless Dulcinea!”  And then I heard the knock, and I was never so glad in my life!’

‘Well!’ I could not help remarking, ‘I have heard of women’s spitefulness, but I never believed it till now.’

‘I really don’t think it was altogether what you call malice, so much as the Lester idea of fun,’ said Ellen, recovering herself after her outpouring.  ‘A very odd notion I always thought it was; and Mary and Louisa are not really ill-natured, and cannot wish to do the harm they might have done, if I did not know Griff too well.’

Then, after considering a little, she said, blushing, ‘I believe I have told you more than I ought, Edward—I couldn’t help having it out; but please don’t tell any one, especially that shocking way of speaking of mamma, which they could not really mean.’

‘No one could who knew her.’

‘Of course not.  I’ll tell you what I mean to do.  I will write to Mary when we go in, and tell her that I know she really cares for me enough to be glad that her nonsense has done no mischief, and, though I was so foolish and wrong as to fly into a passion, of course I know it is only her way, and I do not believe one word of it.’

Somehow, as she looked with those radiant eyes full of perfect trust, I could not help longing not to have heard Peter Robson’s last night’s complaint; but family feeling towards outsiders overcomes many a misgiving, and my wrath against the malignity of the Lesters was quite as strong as if I had been devoid of all doubts whether Griff wore to all other eyes the same halo of pure glory with which Ellen invested him.

Such doubts were very transient.  Dear old Griff was too delightful, too bright and too brave, too ardent and too affectionate, not to dispel all clouds by the sunshine he carried about with him.  If rest and reliance came with Clarence, zest and animation came with Griffith.  He managed to take the initiative by declining to remain any longer with the Robsons, saying they had been spoilt by such a model lodger as Clarence, who would let Gooch feed him on bread and milk and boiled mutton, and put on his clean pinafore if she chose to insist; whereas her indignation, when Griff found fault with the folding of his white ties, amounted to ‘Et tu Brute,’ and he really feared she would have had a fit when he ordered devilled kidneys for breakfast.  He was sure her determination to tuck him up every night and put out his candle was shortening her life; and he had made arrangements to share the chambers of a friend who had gone through school and college with him.  There was no objection to the friend, who had stayed at Chantry House and was an agreeable, lively, young man, well reported of, satisfactorily connected, fairly industrious, and in good society, so that Griff was likely to be much less exposed to temptation of the lower kinds than when left to his own devices, or only with Clarence, who had neither time nor disposition to share his amusements.

There was a scene with my father, but in private; and all that came to general knowledge was that Griff felt himself injured by any implication that he was given to violent or excessive dissipation, such as could wreck Ellen’s happiness or his own character.

He declared with all his heart that immediate marriage would be the best thing for both, and pleaded earnestly for it; but my father could not have arranged for it even if the Fordyces would have consented, and there were matters of business, as well as other reasons, which made it inexpedient for them to revoke their decision that the wedding should not take place before Ellen was of age and Griffith called to the bar.

So we took our young ladies home, loaded with presents for their beloved school children, of whom Emily said she dreamt, as the time for seeing them again drew near.  After all the London enjoyment, it was pretty to see the girls’ delight in the fresh country sights and sounds in full summer glory, and how Ellen proved to have been hungering after all her dear ones at home.  When we left her at her own door, our last sight of her was in her father’s arms, little Anne clinging to her dress, mother and grandfather as close to her as could be—a perfect tableau of a joyous welcome.

CHAPTER XXIX
LOVE AND OBEDIENCE

 
‘Unless he give me all in change
   I forfeit all things by him;
The risk is terrible and strange.’
 

Mrs. Browning.

You will be weary of my lengthiness; and perhaps I am lingering too long over the earlier portion of my narrative.  Something is due to the disproportion assumed in our memories by the first twenty years of existence—something, perhaps, to reluctance to passing from comparative sunshine to shadow.  There was still a period of brightness, but it was so uneventful that I have no excuse for dwelling on it further than to say that Henderson, our excellent curate, had already made a great difference in the parish, and it was beginning to be looked on as almost equal to Hillside.  The children were devoted to Emily, who was the source of all the amenities of their poor little lives.  The needlework of the school was my mother’s pride; and our church and its services, though you would shudder at them now, were then thought presumptuously superior ‘for a country parish.’  They were a real delight and blessing to us, as well as to many more of the flock, who still, in their old age, remember and revere Parson Henderson as a sort of apostle.

The dawning of the new Poor-Law led to investigations which revealed the true conditions of the peasant’s life—its destitution, recklessness, and dependence.  We tried to mend matters by inducing families to emigrate, but this renewed the distrust which had at first beheld in the schools an attempt to enslave the children.  Even accounts, sent home by the exceptionally enterprising who did go to Canada, were, we found, scarcely trusted.  Amos Bell, who would have gone, if he had not been growing into my special personal attendant, was letter-writer and reader to all his relations, and revealed to us that it had been agreed that no letter should be considered as genuine unless it bore a certain private mark.  To be sure, the accounts of prosperity might well sound fabulous to the toilers and moilers at home.  Harriet Martineau’s Hamlets, which we lent to many of our neighbours, is a fair picture of the state of things.  We much enjoyed those tales, and Emily says they were the only political economy she ever learnt.

The model arrangements of our vestries led to a summons to my father and the younger Mr. Fordyce to London, to be examined on the condition of the pauper, and the working of the old Elizabethan Poor-Law.

They were absent for about a fortnight of early spring, and Emily and I could not help observing that our mother was unusually uncommunicative about my father’s letters; and, moreover, there was a tremendous revolution of the furniture, a far more ominous token in our household than any comet.

The truth came on us when the two fathers returned.  Mine told me himself that Frank Fordyce was so much displeased with Griffith’s conduct that he had declared that the engagement could not continue with his consent.

This from good-natured, tender-hearted Parson Frank!

I cried out hotly that ‘those Lesters’ had done this.  They had always been set against us, and any one could talk over Mr. Frank.  My father shook his head.  He said Frank Fordyce was not weak, but all the stronger for his gentleness and charity; and, moreover, that he was quite right—to our shame and grief be it spoken—quite right.

It was true that the first information had been given by Sir Horace Lester, Mrs. Fordyce’s brother, but it had not been lightly spoken like the daughter’s chatter; and my father himself had found it only too true, so that he could not conscientiously call Griffith worthy of such a creature as Ellen Fordyce.

Poor Griff, he had been idle and impracticable over his legal studies, which no persuasion would make him view as otherwise than a sort of nominal training for a country gentleman; nor had he ever believed or acted upon the fact that the Earlscombe property was not an unlimited fortune, such as would permit him to dispense with any profession, and spend time and money like the youths with whom he associated.  Still, this might have been condoned as part of the effervescence which had excited him ever since my father had succeeded to the estate, and patience might still have waited for greater wisdom; but there had been graver complaints of irregularities, which were forcing his friend to dissolve partnership with him.  There was evidence of gambling, which he not only admitted, but defended; and, moreover, he was known at parties, at races, and at the theatre, as one of the numerous satellites who revolved about that gay and conspicuous young fashionable widow, Lady Peacock.

‘Yes, Frank has every right to be angry,’ said my father, pacing the room.  ‘I can’t wonder at him.  I should do the same; but it is destroying the best hope for my poor boy.’

Then he began to wish Clarence had more—he knew not what to call it—in him; something that might keep his brother straight.  For, of course, he had talked to Clarence and discovered how very little the brothers saw of one another.  Clarence had been to look for Griff in vain more than once, and they had only really met at a Castleford dinner-party.  In fact, Clarence’s youthful spirits, and the tastes which would have made him companionable to Griff, had been crushed out of him; and he was what more recent slang calls ‘such a muff,’ that he had perforce drifted out of our elder brother’s daily life, as much as if he had been a grave senior of fifty.  It was, as he owned, a heavy penalty of his youthful fall that he could not help his brother more effectually.

It appeared that Frank Fordyce, thoroughly roused, had had it out with Griffith, and had declared that his consent was withdrawn and the engagement annulled.  Griff, astounded at the resolute tone of one whom he considered as the most good-natured of men, had answered hotly and proudly that he should accept no dismissal except from Ellen herself, and that he had done no more than was expected of any young man of position and estate.  On the other indictment he scorned any defence, and the two had parted in mutual indignation.  He had, however, shown himself so much distressed at the threat of being deprived of Ellen, that neither my father nor Clarence had the least doubt of his genuine attachment to her, nor that his attentions to Lady Peacock were more than the effect of old habit and love of amusement, and that they had been much exaggerated.  He scouted the bare idea of preferring her to Ellen; and, in his second interview with my father, was ready to make any amount of promises of reformation, provided his engagement were continued.

This was on the last evening before leaving town, and he came to the coach-office looking so pale, jaded, and unhappy that Parson Frank’s kind heart was touched; and in answer to a muttered ‘I’ve been ten thousand fools, sir, but if you will overlook it I will try to be worthy of her,’ he made some reply that could be construed into, ‘If you keep to that, all may yet be well.  I’ll talk to her mother and grandfather.’

Perhaps this was cruel kindness, for, as we well knew, Mrs. Fordyce was far less likely to be tolerant of a young man’s failings than was her husband; and she was, besides, a Lester, and might take the same view.

Abusing the Lesters was our great resource; for we did not believe either the sailor or the guardsman to be immaculate, and we knew them to be jealous.  We had to remain in ignorance of what we most wished to know, for Ellen was kept away from us, and my mother would not let Emily go in search of her.  Only Anne, who was a high-spirited, independent little person, made a sudden rush upon me as I sat in the garden.  She had no business to be so far from home alone; but, said she, ‘I don’t care, it is all so horrid.  Please, Edward, is it true that Griff has been so very wicked?  I heard the maids talking, and they said papa had found out that he was a bad lot, and that he was not to marry Ellen; but she would stick to him through thick and thin, like poor Kitty Brown who would marry the man that got transported for seven years.’  ‘Will he be transported, Edward? and would Ellen go too, like the “nut-brown maid?”  Is that what she cries so about?  Not by day, but all night.  I know she does, for her handkerchief is wet through, and there is a wet place on her pillow always in the morning; but she only says, “Never mind,” and nobody will tell me.  They only say little girls should not think about such things.  And I am not so very little.  I am eight, and have read the Lay of the Last Minstrel and I know all about people in love.  So you might tell me.’

I relieved Anne’s mind as to the chances of transportation, and, after considering how many confidences might be honourably exchanged with the child, I explained that her father thought Griff had been idle and careless, and not fit as yet to be trusted with Ellen.

Her parish experience came into play.  ‘Does papa think he would be like Joe Sparks?  But then gentlemen don’t beat their wives, nor go to the public-house, nor let their children go about in rags.’

I durst not inquire much, but I gathered that there was a heavy shadow over the house, and that Ellen was striving to do as usual, but breaking down when alone.  Just then Parson Frank appeared.  Anne had run away from him while on a farming inspection, when the debate over the turnips with the factotum had become wearisome.  He looked grave and sorrowful, quite unlike his usual hearty self, and came to me, leaning over my chair, and saying, ‘This is sad work, Edward’; and, on an anxious venture of an inquiry for Ellen, ‘Poor little maid, it is very sore work with her.  She is a good child and obedient—wants to do her duty; but we should never have let it go on so long.  We have only ourselves to thank—taking the family character, you see’—and he made a kindly gesture towards me.  ‘Your father sees how it is, and won’t let it make a split between us.  I believe that not seeing as much of your sister as usual is one of my poor lassie’s troubles, but it may be best—it may be best.’

He lingered talking, unwilling to tear himself away, and ended by disclosing, almost at unawares, that Ellen had held out for a long time, would not understand nor take in what she was told, accepted nothing on Lester authority, declared she understood all about Lady Peacock, and showed a strength of resistance and independence of view that had quite startled her parents, by proving how far their darling had gone from them in heart.  But they still held her by the bonds of obedience; and, by dealing with her conscience, her mother had obtained from her a piteous little note—

‘My dear Griffith—I am afraid it is true that you have not always seemed to be doing right, and papa and mamma forbid our going on as we are.  You know I cannot be disobedient.  It would not bring a blessing on you.  So I must break off, though—’

The ‘though’ could be read through an erasure, followed by the initials, E. M. F.—as if the dismal conclusion had been felt to be only too true—and there followed the postscript, ‘Forgive me, and, if we are patient, it may come right.’

This letter was displayed, when, on the ensuing evening, it brought Griff down in towering indignation, and trying to prove the coercion that must have been exercised to extract even thus much from his darling.  Over he went headlong to Hillside to insist on seeing her, but to encounter a succession of stormy scenes.  Mrs. Fordyce was the most resolute, but was ill for a week after.  The old Rector was gentle, and somewhat overawed Griff by his compassion, and by representations that were only too true; and Parson Frank, with his tender heart torn to pieces, showed symptoms of yielding another probation.

The interview with Ellen was granted.  She, however, was intrenched in obedience.  She had promised submission to the rupture of her engagement, and she kept her word,—though she declared that nothing could hinder her love, and that she would wait patiently till her lover had proved himself, to everybody’s satisfaction, as good and noble as she knew him to be.  When he told her she did not love him she smiled.  She was sure that whatever mistakes there might have been, he would give no further occasion against himself, and then every one would see that all had been mere misunderstanding, and they should be happy again.

Such trust humbled him, and he was ready to make all promises and resolutions; but he could not obtain the renewal of the engagement, nor permission to correspond.  Only there was wrung out of Parson Frank a promise that if he could come in two years with a perfectly unstained, unblotted character, the betrothal might be renewed.

We were very thankful for the hope and motive, and Griff had no doubts of himself.

‘One can’t look at the pretty creature and think of disappointing her,’ he said.  ‘She is altered, you know, Ted; they’ve bullied her till she is more ethereal than ever, but it only makes her lovelier.  I believe if she saw me kill some one on the spot she would think it all my generosity; or, if she could not, she would take and die.  Oh no!  I’ll not fail her.  No, I won’t; not if I have to spend seven years after the model of old Bill, whose liveliest pastime is a good long sermon, when it is not a ghost.’