The commotion wrought in Julian's mind by the abrupt incursion of Ethelberta into his quiet sphere was thorough and protracted. The witchery of her presence he had grown strong enough to withstand in part; but her composed announcement that she had intended to marry another, and, as far as he could understand, was intending it still, added a new chill to the old shade of disappointment which custom was day by day enabling him to endure. During the whole interval in which he had produced those diapason blasts, heard with such inharmonious feelings by the three auditors outside the screen, his thoughts had wandered wider than his notes in conjectures on the character and position of the gentleman seen in Ethelberta's company. Owing to his assumption that Lord Mountclere was but a stranger who had accidentally come in at the side door, Christopher had barely cast a glance upon him, and the wide difference between the years of the viscount and those of his betrothed was not so particularly observed as to raise that point to an item in his objections now. Lord Mountclere was dressed with all the cunning that could be drawn from the metropolis by money and reiterated dissatisfaction; he prided himself on his upright carriage; his stick was so thin that the most malevolent could not insinuate that it was of any possible use in walking; his teeth had put on all the vigour and freshness of a second spring. Hence his look was the slowest of possible clocks in respect of his age, and his manner was equally as much in the rear of his appearance.
Christopher was now over five-and-twenty. He was getting so well accustomed to the spectacle of a world passing him by and splashing him with its wheels that he wondered why he had ever minded it. His habit of dreaming instead of doing had led him up to a curious discovery. It is no new thing for a man to fathom profundities by indulging humours: the active, the rapid, the people of splendid momentum, have been surprised to behold what results attend the lives of those whose usual plan for discharging their active labours has been to postpone them indefinitely. Certainly, the immediate result in the present case was, to all but himself, small and invisible; but it was of the nature of highest things. What he had learnt was that a woman who has once made a permanent impression upon a man cannot altogether deny him her image by denying him her company, and that by sedulously cultivating the acquaintance of this Creature of Contemplation she becomes to him almost a living soul. Hence a sublimated Ethelberta accompanied him everywhere-one who never teased him, eluded him, or disappointed him: when he smiled she smiled, when he was sad she sorrowed. He may be said to have become the literal duplicate of that whimsical unknown rhapsodist who wrote of his own similar situation-
This frame of mind naturally induced an amazing abstraction in the organist, never very vigilant at the best of times. He would stand and look fixedly at a frog in a shady pool, and never once think of batrachians, or pause by a green bank to split some tall blade of grass into filaments without removing it from its stalk, passing on ignorant that he had made a cat-o'-nine-tails of a graceful slip of vegetation. He would hear the cathedral clock strike one, and go the next minute to see what time it was. 'I never seed such a man as Mr. Julian is,' said the head blower. 'He'll meet me anywhere out-of-doors, and never wink or nod. You'd hardly expect it. I don't find fault, but you'd hardly expect it, seeing how I play the same instrument as he do himself, and have done it for so many years longer than he. How I have indulged that man, too! If 'tis Pedals for two martel hours of practice I never complain; and he has plenty of vagaries. When 'tis hot summer weather there's nothing will do for him but Choir, Great, and Swell altogether, till yer face is in a vapour; and on a frosty winter night he'll keep me there while he tweedles upon the Twelfth and Sixteenth till my arms be scrammed for want of motion. And never speak a word out-of-doors.' Somebody suggested that perhaps Christopher did not notice his coadjutor's presence in the street; and time proved to the organ-blower that the remark was just.
Whenever Christopher caught himself at these vacuous tricks he would be struck with admiration of Ethelberta's wisdom, foresight, and self-command in refusing to wed such an incapable man: he felt that he ought to be thankful that a bright memory of her was not also denied to him, and resolved to be content with it as a possession, since it was as much of her as he could decently maintain.
Wrapped thus in a humorous sadness he passed the afternoon under notice, and in the evening went home to Faith, who still lived with him, and showed no sign of ever being likely to do otherwise. Their present place and mode of life suited her well. She revived at Melchester like an exotic sent home again. The leafy Close, the climbing buttresses, the pondering ecclesiastics, the great doors, the singular keys, the whispered talk, echoes of lonely footsteps, the sunset shadow of the tall steeple, reaching further into the town than the good bishop's teaching, and the general complexion of a spot where morning had the stillness of evening and spring some of the tones of autumn, formed a proper background to a person constituted as Faith, who, like Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon's chicken, possessed in miniature all the antiquity of her progenitors.
After tea Christopher went into the streets, as was frequently his custom, less to see how the world crept on there than to walk up and down for nothing at all. It had been market-day, and remnants of the rural population that had visited the town still lingered at corners, their toes hanging over the edge of the pavement, and their eyes wandering about the street.
The angle which formed the turning-point of Christopher's promenade was occupied by a jeweller's shop, of a standing which completely outshone every other shop in that or any trade throughout the town. Indeed, it was a staple subject of discussion in Melchester how a shop of such pretensions could find patronage sufficient to support its existence in a place which, though well populated, was not fashionable. It had not long been established there, and was the enterprise of an incoming man whose whole course of procedure seemed to be dictated by an intention to astonish the native citizens very considerably before he had done. Nearly everything was glass in the frontage of this fairy mart, and its contents glittered like the hammochrysos stone. The panes being of plate-glass, and the shop having two fronts, a diagonal view could be had through it from one to the other of the streets to which it formed a corner.
This evening, as on all evenings, a flood of radiance spread from the window-lamps into the thick autumn air, so that from a distance that corner appeared as the glistening nucleus of all the light in the town. Towards it idle men and women unconsciously bent their steps, and closed in upon the panes like night-birds upon the lantern of a lighthouse.
When Christopher reached the spot there stood close to the pavement a plain close carriage, apparently waiting for some person who was purchasing inside. Christopher would hardly have noticed this had he not also perceived, pressed against the glass of the shop window, an unusual number of local noses belonging to overgrown working lads, tosspots, an idiot, the ham-smoker's assistant with his sleeves rolled up, a scot-and-lot freeholder, three or four seamstresses, the young woman who brought home the washing, and so on. The interest of these gazers in some proceedings within, which by reason of the gaslight were as public as if carried on in the open air, was very great.
'Yes, that's what he's a buying o'-haw, haw!' said one of the young men, as the shopman removed from the window a gorgeous blue velvet tray of wedding-rings, and laid it on the counter.
''Tis what you may come to yerself, sooner or later, God have mercy upon ye; and as such no scoffing matter,' said an older man. 'Faith, I'd as lief cry as laugh to see a man in that corner.'
'He's a gent getting up in years too. He must hev been through it a few times afore, seemingly, to sit down and buy the tools so cool as that.'
'Well, no. See what the shyest will do at such times. You bain't yerself then; no man living is hisself then.'
'True,' said the ham-smoker's man. ''Tis a thought to look at that a chap will take all this trouble to get a woman into his house, and a twelvemonth after would as soon hear it thunder as hear her sing!'
The policeman standing near was a humane man, through having a young family he could hardly keep, and he hesitated about telling them to move on. Christopher had before this time perceived that the articles were laid down before an old gentleman who was seated in the shop, and that the gentleman was none other than he who had been with Ethelberta in the concert-room. The discovery was so startling that, constitutionally indisposed as he was to stand and watch, he became as glued to the spot as the other idlers. Finding himself now for the first time directly confronting the preliminaries of Ethelberta's marriage to a stranger, he was left with far less equanimity than he could have supposed possible to the situation.
'So near the time!' he said, and looked hard at Lord Mountclere.
Christopher had now a far better opportunity than before for observing Ethelberta's betrothed. Apart from any bias of jealousy, disappointment, or mortification, he was led to judge that this was not quite the man to make Ethelberta happy. He had fancied her companion to be a man under fifty; he was now visibly sixty or more. And it was not the sort of sexagenarianism beside which a young woman's happiness can sometimes contrive to keep itself alive in a quiet sleepy way. Suddenly it occurred to him that this was the man whom he had helped in the carriage accident on the way to Knollsea. He looked again.
By no means undignified, the face presented that combination of slyness and jocundity which we are accustomed to imagine of the canonical jolly-dogs in mediaeval tales. The gamesome Curate of Meudon might have supplied some parts of the countenance; cunning Friar Tuck the remainder. Nothing but the viscount's constant habit of going to church every Sunday morning when at his country residence kept unholiness out of his features, for though he lived theologically enough on the Sabbath, as it became a man in his position to do, he was strikingly mundane all the rest of the week, always preferring the devil to God in his oaths. And nothing but antecedent good-humour prevented the short fits of crossness incident to his passing infirmities from becoming established. His look was exceptionally jovial now, and the corners of his mouth twitched as the telegraph-needles of a hundred little erotic messages from his heart to his brain. Anybody could see that he was a merry man still, who loved good company, warming drinks, nymph-like shapes, and pretty words, in spite of the disagreeable suggestions he received from the pupils of his eyes, and the joints of his lively limbs, that imps of mischief were busy sapping and mining in those regions, with the view of tumbling him into a certain cool cellar under the church aisle.
In general, if a lover can find any ground at all for serenity in the tide of an elderly rival's success, he finds it in the fact itself of that ancientness. The other side seems less a rival than a makeshift. But Christopher no longer felt this, and the significant signs before his eyes of the imminence of Ethelberta's union with this old hero filled him with restless dread. True, the gentleman, as he appeared illuminated by the jeweller's gas-jets, seemed more likely to injure Ethelberta by indulgence than by severity, while her beauty lasted; but there was a nameless something in him less tolerable than this.
The purchaser having completed his dealings with the goldsmith, was conducted to the door by the master of the shop, and into the carriage, which was at once driven off up the street.
Christopher now much desired to know the name of the man whom a nice chain of circumstantial evidence taught him to regard as the happy winner where scores had lost. He was grieved that Ethelberta's confessed reserve should have extended so far as to limit her to mere indefinite hints of marriage when they were talking almost on the brink of the wedding-day. That the ceremony was to be a private one-which it probably would be because of the disparity of ages-did not in his opinion justify her secrecy. He had shown himself capable of a transmutation as valuable as it is rare in men, the change from pestering lover to staunch friend, and this was all he had got for it. But even an old lover sunk to an indifferentist might have been tempted to spend an unoccupied half-hour in discovering particulars now, and Christopher had not lapsed nearly so far as to absolute unconcern.
That evening, however, nothing came in his way to enlighten him. But the next day, when skirting the Close on his ordinary duties, he saw the same carriage standing at a distance, and paused to behold the same old gentleman come from a well-known office and re-enter the vehicle-Lord Mountclere, in fact, in earnest pursuit of the business of yesternight, having just pocketed a document in which romance, rashness, law, and gospel are so happily made to work together that it may safely be regarded as the neatest compromise which has ever been invented since Adam sinned.
This time Julian perceived that the brougham was one belonging to the White Hart Hotel, which Lord Mountclere was using partly from the necessities of these hasty proceedings, and also because, by so doing, he escaped the notice that might have been bestowed upon his own equipage, or men-servants, the Mountclere hammer-cloths being known in Melchester. Christopher now walked towards the hotel, leisurely, yet with anxiety. He inquired of a porter what people were staying there that day, and was informed that they had only one person in the house, Lord Mountclere, whom sudden and unexpected business had detained in Melchester since the previous day.
Christopher lingered to hear no more. He retraced the street much more quickly than he had come; and he only said, 'Lord Mountclere-it must never be!'
As soon as he entered the house, Faith perceived that he was greatly agitated. He at once told her of his discovery, and she exclaimed, 'What a brilliant match!'
'O Faith,' said Christopher, 'you don't know! You are far from knowing. It is as gloomy as midnight. Good God, can it be possible?'
Faith bHANDlinked in alarm, without speaking.
'Did you never hear anything of Lord Mountclere when we lived at Sandbourne?'
'I knew the name-no more.'
'No, no-of course you did not. Well, though I never saw his face, to my knowledge, till a short time ago, I know enough to say that, if earnest representations can prevent it, this marriage shall not be. Father knew him, or about him, very well; and he once told me-what I cannot tell you. Fancy, I have seen him three times-yesterday, last night, and this morning-besides helping him on the road some weeks ago, and never once considered that he might be Lord Mountclere. He is here almost in disguise, one may say; neither man nor horse is with him; and his object accounts for his privacy. I see how it is-she is doing this to benefit her brothers and sisters, if possible; but she ought to know that if she is miserable they will never be happy. That's the nature of women-they take the form for the essence, and that's what she is doing now. I should think her guardian angel must have quitted her when she agreed to a marriage which may tear her heart out like a claw.'
'You are too warm about it, Kit-it cannot be so bad as that. It is not the thing, but the sensitiveness to the thing, which is the true measure of its pain. Perhaps what seems so bad to you falls lightly on her mind. A campaigner in a heavy rain is not more uncomfortable than we are in a slight draught; and Ethelberta, fortified by her sapphires and gold cups and wax candles, will not mind facts which look like spectres to us outside. A title will turn troubles into romances, and she will shine as an interesting viscountess in spite of them.'
The discussion with Faith was not continued, Christopher stopping the argument by saying that he had a good mind to go off at once to Knollsea, and show her her danger. But till the next morning Ethelberta was certainly safe; no marriage was possible anywhere before then. He passed the afternoon in a state of great indecision, constantly reiterating, 'I will go!'
On an extensive plot of ground, lying somewhere between the Thames and the Kensington squares, stood the premises of Messrs. Nockett and Perch, builders and contractors. The yard with its workshops formed part of one of those frontier lines between mangy business and garnished domesticity that occur in what are called improving neighbourhoods. We are accustomed to regard increase as the chief feature in a great city's progress, its well-known signs greeting our eyes on every outskirt. Slush-ponds may be seen turning into basement-kitchens; a broad causeway of shattered earthenware smothers plots of budding gooseberry-bushes and vegetable trenches, foundations following so closely upon gardens that the householder may be expected to find cadaverous sprouts from overlooked potatoes rising through the chinks of his cellar floor. But the other great process, that of internal transmutation, is not less curious than this encroachment of grey upon green. Its first erections are often only the milk-teeth of a suburb, and as the district rises in dignity they are dislodged by those which are to endure. Slightness becomes supplanted by comparative solidity, commonness by novelty, lowness and irregularity by symmetry and height.
An observer of the precinct which has been named as an instance in point might have stood under a lamp-post and heard simultaneously the peal of the visitor's bell from the new terrace on the right hand, and the stroke of tools from the musty workshops on the left. Waggons laden with deals came up on this side, and landaus came down on the other-the former to lumber heavily through the old-established contractors' gates, the latter to sweep fashionably into the square.
About twelve o'clock on the day following Lord Mountclere's exhibition of himself to Christopher in the jeweller's shop at Melchester, and almost at the identical time when the viscount was seen to come from the office for marriage-licences in the same place, a carriage drove nearly up to the gates of Messrs. Nockett and Co.'s yard. A gentleman stepped out and looked around. He was a man whose years would have been pronounced as five-and-forty by the friendly, fifty by the candid, fifty-two or three by the grim. He was as handsome a study in grey as could be seen in town, there being far more of the raven's plumage than of the gull's in the mixture as yet; and he had a glance of that practised sort which can measure people, weigh them, repress them, encourage them to sprout and blossom as a March sun encourages crocuses, ask them questions, give them answers-in short, a glance that could do as many things as an American cooking-stove or a multum-in-parvo pocket-knife. But, as with most men of the world, this was mere mechanism: his actual emotions were kept so far within his person that they were rarely heard or seen near his features.
On reading the builders' names over the gateway he entered the yard, and asked at the office if Solomon Chickerel was engaged on the premises. The clerk was going to be very attentive, but finding the visitor had come only to speak to a workman, his tense attitude slackened a little, and he merely signified the foot of a Flemish ladder on the other side of the yard, saying, 'You will find him, sir, up there in the joiner's shop.'
When the man in the black coat reached the top he found himself at the end of a long apartment as large as a chapel and as low as a malt-room, across which ran parallel carpenters' benches to the number of twenty or more, a gangway being left at the side for access throughout. Behind every bench there stood a man or two, planing, fitting, or chiselling, as the case might be. The visitor paused for a moment, as if waiting for some cessation of their violent motions and uproar till he could make his errand known. He waited ten seconds, he waited twenty; but, beyond that a quick look had been thrown upon him by every pair of eyes, the muscular performances were in no way interrupted: every one seemed oblivious of his presence, and absolutely regardless of his wish. In truth, the texture of that salmon-coloured skin could be seen to be aristocratic without a microscope, and the exceptious artizan has an offhand way when contrasts are made painfully strong by an idler of this kind coming, gloved and brushed, into the very den where he is sweating and muddling in his shirt-sleeves.
The gentleman from the carriage then proceeded down the workshop, wading up to his knees in a sea of shavings, and bruising his ankles against corners of board and sawn-off blocks, that lay hidden like reefs beneath. At the ninth bench he made another venture.
'Sol Chickerel?' said the man addressed, as he touched his plane-iron upon the oilstone. 'He's one of them just behind.'
'Damn it all, can't one of you show me?' the visitor angrily observed, for he had been used to more attention than this. 'Here, point him out.' He handed the man a shilling.
'No trouble to do that,' said the workman; and he turned and signified Sol by a nod without moving from his place.
The stranger entered Sol's division, and, nailing him with his eye, said at once: 'I want to speak a few words with you in private. Is not a Mrs. Petherwin your sister?'
Sol started suspiciously. 'Has anything happened to her?' he at length said hurriedly.
'O no. It is on a business matter that I have called. You need not mind owning the relationship to me-the secret will be kept. I am the brother of one whom you may have heard of from her-Lord Mountclere.'
'I have not. But if you will wait a minute, sir-' He went to a little glazed box at the end of the shop, where the foreman was sitting, and, after speaking a few words to this person, Sol led Mountclere to the door, and down the ladder.
'I suppose we cannot very well talk here, after all?' said the gentleman, when they reached the yard, and found several men moving about therein.
'Perhaps we had better go to some room-the nearest inn will answer the purpose, won't it?'
'Excellently.'
'There's the "Green Bushes" over the way. They have a very nice private room upstairs.'
'Yes, that will do.' And passing out of the yard, the man with the glance entered the inn with Sol, where they were shown to the parlour as requested.
While the waiter was gone for some wine, which Mountclere ordered, the more ingenuous of the two resumed the conversation by saying, awkwardly: 'Yes, Mrs. Petherwin is my sister, as you supposed, sir; but on her account I do not let it be known.'
'Indeed,' said Mountclere. 'Well, I came to see you in order to speak of a matter which I thought you might know more about than I do, for it has taken me quite by surprise. My brother, Lord Mountclere, is, it seems, to be privately married to Mrs. Petherwin to-morrow.'
'Is that really the fact?' said Sol, becoming quite shaken. 'I had no thought that such a thing could be possible!'
'It is imminent.'
'Father has told me that she has lately got to know some nobleman; but I never supposed there could be any meaning in that.'
'You were altogether wrong,' said Mountclere, leaning back in his chair and looking at Sol steadily. 'Do you feel it to be a matter upon which you will congratulate her?'
'A very different thing!' said Sol vehemently. 'Though he is your brother, sir, I must say this, that I would rather she married the poorest man I know.'
'Why?'
'From what my father has told me of him, he is not-a more desirable brother-in-law to me than I shall be in all likelihood to him. What business has a man of that character to marry Berta, I should like to ask?'
'That's what I say,' returned Mountclere, revealing his satisfaction at Sol's estimate of his noble brother: it showed that he had calculated well in coming here. 'My brother is getting old, and he has lived strangely: your sister is a highly respectable young lady.'
'And he is not respectable, you mean? I know he is not. I worked near Enckworth once.'
'I cannot say that,' returned Mountclere. Possibly a certain fraternal feeling repressed a direct assent: and yet this was the only representation which could be expected to prejudice the young man against the wedding, if he were such an one as the visitor supposed Sol to be-a man vulgar in sentiment and ambition, but pure in his anxiety for his sister's happiness. 'At any rate, we are agreed in thinking that this would be an unfortunate marriage for both,' added Mountclere.
'About both I don't know. It may be a good thing for him. When do you say it is to be, sir-to-morrow?'
'Yes.'
'I don't know what to do!' said Sol, walking up and down. 'If half what I have heard is true, I would lose a winter's work to prevent her marrying him. What does she want to go mixing in with people who despise her for? Now look here, Mr. Mountclere, since you have been and called me out to talk this over, it is only fair that you should tell me the exact truth about your brother. Is it a lie, or is it true, that he is not fit to be the husband of a decent woman?'
'That is a curious inquiry,' said Mountclere, whose manner and aspect, neutral as a winter landscape, had little in common with Sol's warm and unrestrained bearing. 'There are reasons why I think your sister will not be happy with him.'
'Then it is true what they say,' said Sol, bringing down his fist upon the table. 'I know your meaning well enough. What's to be done? If I could only see her this minute, she might be kept out of it.'
'You think your presence would influence your sister-if you could see her before the wedding?'
'I think it would. But who's to get at her?'
'I am going, so you had better come on with me-unless it would be best for your father to come.'
'Perhaps it might,' said the bewildered Sol. 'But he will not be able to get away; and it's no use for Dan to go. If anybody goes I must! If she has made up her mind nothing can be done by writing to her.'
'I leave at once to see Lord Mountclere,' the other continued. 'I feel that as my brother is evidently ignorant of the position of Mrs. Petherwin's family and connections, it is only fair in me, as his nearest relative, to make them clear to him before it is too late.'
'You mean that if he knew her friends were working-people he would not think of her as a wife? 'Tis a reasonable thought. But make your mind easy: she has told him. I make a great mistake if she has for a moment thought of concealing that from him.'
'She may not have deliberately done so. But-and I say this with no ill-feeling-it is a matter known to few, and she may have taken no steps to undeceive him. I hope to bring him to see the matter clearly. Unfortunately the thing has been so secret and hurried that there is barely time. I knew nothing until this morning-never dreamt of such a preposterous occurrence.'
'Preposterous! If it should come to pass, she would play her part as his lady as well as any other woman, and better. I wish there was no more reason for fear on my side than there is on yours! Things have come to a sore head when she is not considered lady enough for such as he. But perhaps your meaning is, that if your brother were to have a son, you would lose your heir-presumptive title to the cor'net of Mountclere? Well, 'twould be rather hard for ye, now I come to think o't-upon my life, 'twould.'
'The suggestion is as delicate as the —- atmosphere of this vile room. But let your ignorance be your excuse, my man. It is hardly worth while for us to quarrel when we both have the same object in view: do you think so?'
'That's true-that's true. When do you start, sir?'
'We must leave almost at once,' said Mountclere, looking at his watch. 'If we cannot catch the two o'clock train, there is no getting there to-night-and to-morrow we could not possibly arrive before one.'
'I wish there was time for me to go and tidy myself a bit,' said Sol, anxiously looking down at his working clothes. 'I suppose you would not like me to go with you like this?'
'Confound the clothes! If you cannot start in five minutes, we shall not be able to go at all.'
'Very well, then-wait while I run across to the shop, then I am ready. How do we get to the station?'
'My carriage is at the corner waiting. When you come out I will meet you at the gates.'
Sol then hurried downstairs, and a minute or two later Mr. Mountclere followed, looking like a man bent on policy at any price. The carriage was brought round by the time that Sol reappeared from the yard. He entered and sat down beside Mountclere, not without a sense that he was spoiling good upholstery; the coachman then allowed the lash of his whip to alight with the force of a small fly upon the horses, which set them up in an angry trot. Sol rolled on beside his new acquaintance with the shamefaced look of a man going to prison in a van, for pedestrians occasionally gazed at him, full of what seemed to himself to be ironical surprise.
'I am afraid I ought to have changed my clothes after all,' he said, writhing under a perception of the contrast between them. 'Not knowing anything about this, I ain't a bit prepared. If I had got even my second-best hat, it wouldn't be so bad.'
'It makes no difference,' said Mountclere inanimately.
'Or I might have brought my portmantle, with some things.'
'It really is not important.'
On reaching the station they found there were yet a few minutes to spare, which Sol made use of in writing a note to his father, to explain what had occurred.
Mrs. Doncastle's dressing-bell had rung, but Menlove, the lady's maid, having at the same time received a letter by the evening post, paused to read it before replying to the summons:-
This, and much more, was from her very last lover, Lord Mountclere's valet, who had been taken in hand directly she had convinced herself of Joey's hopeless youthfulness. The missive sent Mrs. Menlove's spirits soaring like spring larks; she flew upstairs in answer to the bell with a joyful, triumphant look, which the illuminated figure of Mrs. Doncastle in her dressing-room could not quite repress. One could almost forgive Menlove her arts when so modest a result brought such vast content.
Mrs. Doncastle seemed inclined to make no remark during the dressing, and at last Menlove could repress herself no longer.
'I should like to name something to you, m'm.'
'Yes.'
'I shall be wishing to leave soon, if it is convenient.'
'Very well, Menlove,' answered Mrs. Doncastle, as she serenely surveyed her right eyebrow in the glass. 'Am I to take this as a formal notice?'
'If you please; but I could stay a week or two beyond the month if suitable. I am going to be married-that's what it is, m'm.'
'O! I am glad to hear it, though I am sorry to lose you.'
'It is Lord Mountclere's valet-Mr. Tipman-m'm.'
'Indeed.'
Menlove went on building up Mrs. Doncastle's hair awhile in silence.
'I suppose you heard the other news that arrived in town to-day, m'm?' she said again. 'Lord Mountclere is going to be married to-morrow.'
'To-morrow? Are you quite sure?'
'O yes, m'm. Mr. Tipman has just told me so in his letter. He is going to be married to Mrs. Petherwin. It is to be quite a private wedding.'
Mrs. Doncastle made no remark, and she remained in the same still position as before; but a countenance expressing transcendent surprise was reflected to Menlove by the glass.
At this sight Menlove's tongue so burned to go further, and unfold the lady's relations with the butler downstairs, that she would have lost a month's wages to be at liberty to do it. The disclosure was almost too magnificent to be repressed. To deny herself so exquisite an indulgence required an effort which nothing on earth could have sustained save the one thing that did sustain it-the knowledge that upon her silence hung the most enormous desideratum in the world, her own marriage. She said no more, and Mrs. Doncastle went away.
It was an ordinary family dinner that day, but their nephew Neigh happened to be present. Just as they were sitting down Mrs. Doncastle said to her husband: 'Why have you not told me of the wedding to-morrow?-or don't you know anything about it?'
'Wedding?' said Mr. Doncastle.
'Lord Mountclere is to be married to Mrs. Petherwin quite privately.'
'Good God!' said some person.
Mr. Doncastle did not speak the words; they were not spoken by Neigh: they seemed to float over the room and round the walls, as if originating in some spiritualistic source. Yet Mrs. Doncastle, remembering the symptoms of attachment between Ethelberta and her nephew which had appeared during the summer, looked towards Neigh instantly, as if she thought the words must have come from him after all; but Neigh's face was perfectly calm; he, together with her husband, was sitting with his eyes fixed in the direction of the sideboard; and turning to the same spot she beheld Chickerel standing pale as death, his lips being parted as if he did not know where he was.
'Did you speak?' said Mrs. Doncastle, looking with astonishment at the butler.
'Chickerel, what's the matter-are you ill?' said Mr. Doncastle simultaneously. 'Was it you who said that?'
'I did, sir,' said Chickerel in a husky voice, scarcely above a whisper. 'I could not help it.'
'Why?'
'She is my daughter, and it shall be known at once!'
'Who is your daughter?'
He paused a few moments nervously. 'Mrs. Petherwin,' he said.
Upon this announcement Neigh looked at poor Chickerel as if he saw through him into the wall. Mrs. Doncastle uttered a faint exclamation and leant back in her chair: the bare possibility of the truth of Chickerel's claims to such paternity shook her to pieces when she viewed her intimacies with Ethelberta during the past season-the court she had paid her, the arrangements she had entered into to please her; above all, the dinner-party which she had contrived and carried out solely to gratify Lord Mountclere and bring him into personal communication with the general favourite; thus making herself probably the chief though unconscious instrument in promoting a match by which her butler was to become father-in-law to a peer she delighted to honour. The crowd of perceptions almost took away her life; she closed her eyes in a white shiver.
'Do you mean to say that the lady who sat here at dinner at the same time that Lord Mountclere was present, is your daughter?' asked Doncastle.
'Yes, sir,' said Chickerel respectfully.
'How did she come to be your daughter?'
'I- Well, she is my daughter, sir.'
'Did you educate her?'
'Not altogether, sir. She was a very clever child. Lady Petherwin took a deal of trouble about her education. They were both left widows about the same time: the son died, then the father. My daughter was only seventeen then. But though she's older now, her marriage with Lord Mountclere means misery. He ought to marry another woman.'
'It is very extraordinary,' Mr. Doncastle murmured. 'If you are ill you had better go and rest yourself, Chickerel. Send in Thomas.'
Chickerel, who seemed to be much disturbed, then very gladly left the room, and dinner proceeded. But such was the peculiarity of the case, that, though there was in it neither murder, robbery, illness, accident, fire, or any other of the tragic and legitimate shakers of human nerves, two of the three who were gathered there sat through the meal without the least consciousness of what viands had composed it. Impressiveness depends as much upon propinquity as upon magnitude; and to have honoured unawares the daughter of the vilest Antipodean miscreant and murderer would have been less discomfiting to Mrs. Doncastle than it was to make the same blunder with the daughter of a respectable servant who happened to live in her own house. To Neigh the announcement was as the catastrophe of a story already begun, rather than as an isolated wonder. Ethelberta's words had prepared him for something, though the nature of that thing was unknown.
'Chickerel ought not to have kept us in ignorance of this-of course he ought not!' said Mrs. Doncastle, as soon as they were left alone.
'I don't see why not,' replied Mr. Doncastle, who took the matter very coolly, as was his custom.
'Then she herself should have let it be known.'
'Nor does that follow. You didn't tell Mrs. Petherwin that your grandfather narrowly escaped hanging for shooting his rival in a duel.'
'Of course not. There was no reason why I should give extraneous information.'
'Nor was there any reason why she should. As for Chickerel, he doubtless felt how unbecoming it would be to make personal remarks upon one of your guests-Ha-ha-ha! Well, well-Ha-ha-ha-ha!'
'I know this,' said Mrs. Doncastle, in great anger, 'that if my father had been in the room, I should not have let the fact pass unnoticed, and treated him like a stranger!'
'Would you have had her introduce Chickerel to us all round? My dear Margaret, it was a complicated position for a woman.'
'Then she ought not to have come!'
'There may be something in that, though she was dining out at other houses as good as ours. Well, I should have done just as she did, for the joke of the thing. Ha-ha-ha!-it is very good-very. It was a case in which the appetite for a jest would overpower the sting of conscience in any well-constituted being-that, my dear, I must maintain.'
'I say she should not have come!' answered Mrs. Doncastle firmly. 'Of course I shall dismiss Chickerel.'
'Of course you will do no such thing. I have never had a butler in the house before who suited me so well. It is a great credit to the man to have such a daughter, and I am not sure that we do not derive some lustre of a humble kind from his presence in the house. But, seriously, I wonder at your short-sightedness, when you know the troubles we have had through getting new men from nobody knows where.'
Neigh, perceiving that the breeze in the atmosphere might ultimately intensify to a palpable black squall, seemed to think it would be well to take leave of his uncle and aunt as soon as he conveniently could; nevertheless, he was much less discomposed by the situation than by the active cause which had led to it. When Mrs. Doncastle arose, her husband said he was going to speak to Chickerel for a minute or two, and Neigh followed his aunt upstairs.
Presently Doncastle joined them. 'I have been talking to Chickerel,' he said. 'It is a very curious affair-this marriage of his daughter and Lord Mountclere. The whole situation is the most astounding I have ever met with. The man is quite ill about the news. He has shown me a letter which has just reached him from his son on the same subject. Lord Mountclere's brother and this young man have actually gone off together to try to prevent the wedding, and Chickerel has asked to be allowed to go himself, if he can get soon enough to the station to catch the night mail. Of course he may go if he wishes.'
'What a funny thing!' said the lady, with a wretchedly factitious smile. 'The times have taken a strange turn when the angry parent of the comedy, who goes post-haste to prevent the undutiful daughter's rash marriage, is a gentleman from below stairs, and the unworthy lover a peer of the realm!'
Neigh spoke for almost the first time. 'I don't blame Chickerel in objecting to Lord Mountclere. I should object to him myself if I had a daughter. I never liked him.'
'Why?' said Mrs. Doncastle, lifting her eyelids as if the act were a heavy task.
'For reasons which don't generally appear.'
'Yes,' said Mr. Doncastle, in a low tone. 'Still, we must not believe all we hear.'
'Is Chickerel going?' said Neigh.
'He leaves in five or ten minutes,' said Doncastle.
After a few further words Neigh mentioned that he was unable to stay longer that evening, and left them. When he had reached the outside of the door he walked a little way up the pavement and back again, as if reluctant to lose sight of the street, finally standing under a lamp-post whence he could command a view of Mr. Doncastle's front. Presently a man came out in a great-coat and with a small bag in his hand; Neigh at once recognizing the person as Chickerel, went up to him.
'Mr. Doncastle tells me you are going on a sudden journey. At what time does your train leave?' Neigh asked.
'I go by the ten o'clock, sir: I hope it is a third-class,' said Chickerel; 'though I am afraid it may not be.'
'It is as much as you will do to get to the station,' said Neigh, turning the face of his watch to the light. 'Here, come into my cab-I am driving that way.'
'Thank you, sir,' said Chickerel.
Neigh called a cab at the first opportunity, and they entered and drove along together. Neither spoke during the journey. When they were driving up to the station entrance Neigh looked again to see the hour.
'You have not a minute to lose,' he said, in repressed anxiety. 'And your journey will be expensive: instead of walking from Anglebury to Knollsea, you had better drive-above all, don't lose time. Never mind what class the train is. Take this from me, since the emergency is great.' He handed something to Chickerel folded up small.
The butler took it without inquiry, and stepped out hastily.
'I sincerely hope she- Well, good-night, Chickerel,' continued Neigh, ending his words abruptly. The cab containing him drove again towards the station-gates, leaving Chickerel standing on the kerb.
He passed through the booking-office, and looked at the paper Neigh had put into his hand. It was a five-pound note.
Chickerel mused on the circumstance as he took his ticket and got into the train.