Chapter Eleven.
Catching Moths.
“For my soul’s sake, Maid Marjorie,
And yet for my soul’s sake, -
I know no wrong I’ve done to thee,
Nor why thy heart should break.”
Rather late on the same evening, Sir Thomas walked into the parsonage, and rapped with his silver-hilted staff at the parlour door. Clare had gone up-stairs, and Mrs Tremayne was at that moment alone. She offered to send for her young guests, but he declined; he wished first to speak with her apart. He told her that Don Juan had gone to London; and that before leaving him, that estimable young gentleman had frankly communicated the interesting fact that he was bound by an engagement to a lady of his own country.
“Now what think you? Were it better, or worser, that Blanche should know the same?”
“Better far—by all manner of means,” said the Rector’s wife decidedly.
“I thought even so,” replied Sir Thomas. “I had come sooner, but my wife was contrary thereto.”
Mrs Tremayne could not feel astonished to hear of any amount of unwisdom on the part of Lady Enville, but she merely repeated that she thought it much better that Blanche should know.
“It should help to open her eyes. Though in sooth I do think they be scantly so close shut as at the first.”
“Then you will tell the child, good Mistress?”
“If you so desire, assuredly: but wherefore not give her to wit yourself?”
Sir Thomas evidently shrank from the idea.
“For Blanche’s sake, I do think it should be better, Sir Thomas. You speak as he that hath heard this right from Don Juan himself; for me, I have but heard it from you.”
“Well, if needs must—for Blanche’s sake, then,” said her father, sighing. “Pray you, send the child hither.”
In another minute Blanche came in, with a warm welcome for her father in eyes and voice.
“So thou comest home to-morrow, my skylark!” he said. “Art thou glad, or sorry, Blanche?”
“Oh, glad, Father!”
“And all we be glad likewise.—Blanche, Don John is gone to London.”
“Yes, I guessed so much,” she answered, in a rather constrained tone.
“And ere he went, my darling, he said somewhat unto me which I reckon it best thou shouldst hear likewise.”
Blanche looked up, surprised and expectant,—perhaps with a shade of fear. Sir Thomas passed his arm round her, and drew her close to him. He anticipated a burst of tears, and was ready to console her.
“He told me, dear heart, that he is, and for divers years hath so been, troth-plight unto a maiden of his own land, with whom he shall wed when he is gone home.”
There was no light in the room but from the fire, and Blanche’s head was bent low, so that her father could not see her face. But no tears answered him. No answer came at all. Sir Thomas was astonished.
“Doth it grieve thee, my Blanche?” he asked tenderly, when he had waited a moment.
He waited still another. Then the reply came.
“I suppose it was better I should know it,” she said in a cold, hard voice.
“So thou seest, dear child, he meant not his fair words.”
“No,” she said, in the same tone. “He meant it not.”
Sir Thomas let her go. He thought she bore it uncommonly well. She did not care much about it, thank Heaven! He was one of those numerous surface observers who think that a woman cannot be startled if she does not scream, nor be unhappy if she does not weep.
Blanche went quietly enough out of the room, saying that she would send Clare. Her father did not see that in the middle of the stairs she paused, with a tight grasp on the banister, till the deadly faintness should pass off which seemed to make the staircase go spinning round her. Clare noticed nothing peculiar when Blanche came into their bedroom, and told her that Sir Thomas was below. But as soon as her sister was gone, Blanche knelt down by the bed, and buried her face in the counterpane.
This, then, was the end. The shrine was not only deserted—it was destroyed: the idol was not only dethroned—it was broken, and shown to be nothing but stone. Don Juan was not true. Nay, worse—he never had been true. His vow of eternal fidelity was empty breath; his reiterated protestations of single and unalterable love were worth just nothing. He had only been amusing himself. He had known all the while, that in exchange for the solid gold of her young heart, he was offering her the veriest pinchbeck.
Blanche had been half awake before, and she was wide awake now. Yet the awakening, for all that, was very bitter. Naturally enough, her first thought was that all men were of this stamp, and that there was no truth in any of them. Aunt Rachel was right:—they were a miserable, false, deceiving race, created for the delusion and suffering of woman: she would never believe another of them as long as she lived. There might be here and there an exception to the rule, such as her father or Mr Tremayne; she could not believe such evil of them: but that was the rule. And Blanche, being not quite seventeen, declared to herself that after this vast and varied experience of the world, she would never—not if she lived to be a hundred—never trust man again.
She slipped quietly down-stairs, and caught Sir Thomas just as he was leaving the house.
“Father!” she whispered, sliding into his hand the little packet of Don Juan’s hair, “maybe I ought to have given you this aforetime. Allgates now take it; it is nought to me any more—sith he is hot.”
Sir Thomas transferred the little parcel to his pocket.
“’Give thee good night, my jewel! We shall all be fain to have thee home again to-morrow.”
Blanche returned the greeting, but glided away again, and was seen very little that night. But Mrs Tremayne guessed the state of the girl’s mind more truly than Sir Thomas had done.
The next day they went home.
“Bless thee, my precious Blanche!” was Lady Enville’s greeting. “And thee too, Clare. Good lack, how faded is yon camlet! ’Tis well ye were but at the parsonage, for it should have shamed thee any other whither.”
“Well, child!” said Aunt Rachel. “I trust thou hast come home to work like a decent lass, and not sit moaning with thine hands afore thee like a cushat dove. What man ever trod middle earth that was worth a moan?”
“I will essay to give you content, Aunt Rachel,” said Blanche quietly.
“Clare, my good lass, I have lacked thee sorely. I scarce wis what to do without thee.”
Clare looked pleased. “Well, Aunt Rachel, I am come to work, and that with a will,” she answered cheerily.
“I am thankful to hear it. Now, if Heaven’s will it be, all things shall go on as usual once again.”
But nothing was to go on as usual any more.
Not for Margaret, for Harry Travis had returned from the Netherlands, and her marriage was to be that day six weeks. Not for Lucrece, who was elated with what she considered her triumph over Blanche, and was on the look-out for fresh laurels. Not for Blanche, as the reader knows: nor for Clare, as he soon will know: nor even for Rachel herself—
“Though only the sorrow of others
Threw its shadow over her.”
There was but one person to whom matters went on at all as usual, and that was Lady Enville. As usual, to her, meant a handsome dress, a cushioned chair, a good dinner, and an occasional junketing: and since recent events had not interfered with any of these, Lady Enville went on much as usual. Yet even she never ceased to regret Blanche’s lost coronet, which no revelation of Don Juan’s duplicity would ever persuade her had not been lying at her daughter’s feet, ready to be taken up and worn. She was one of those persons who will not believe anything which they do not wish to be true; and on them vouchers and verifications are always thrown away.
The first point different from usual was that Arthur Tremayne began to drop in continually at Enville Court. Lady Enville was gratified, for she thought her neat little arrangement was taking effect; and it would be a comfort, she said to herself, to have Clare off her hands. She said this one day to Rachel: but though, she knew that worthy spinster’s opinion of matrimony, yet she was hardly prepared for the diatribe which she received in answer. Rachel had lately, and with much annoyance, began to perceive—what she had never seen so clearly before—that Lady Enville cared very little for her elder daughter. And of all the four girls, Clare was Rachel’s darling. She was prepared to do battle in her cause to a greater extent than she herself knew. So, having received this hint, Rachel set herself to watch Arthur, and see that he behaved properly.
It was not easy to guess Arthur’s motive in coming. He usually sat between Clare and Blanche when he was present at supper; and just now that was pretty often. But either of the two might be the attraction. In other respects, his courtesies were evenly divided among the four, and were not pointed to any.
Meanwhile, Clare was honestly trying to do the work set her well, and to be contented with it. She often carried her troubles to Mrs Tremayne, and sought advice or cheering at her hands: nor was she ever sent away unsatisfied. Rachel was delighted with Clare’s steady and cheerful help, and complacently thought that the parsonage had done her good.
So the summer drew on, and Margaret was married to Harry Travis, and went to live in another part of the county.
On a late afternoon in autumn, Clare stood in the arbour, tying up bouquets. An old friend of Sir Thomas was expected on a visit, and was likely to arrive that evening. This was Sir Piers Feversham, (fictitious person) a Norfolk knight, of Lancashire extraction on his mother’s side, who had not seen Sir Thomas Enville since both had been young squires together in the household of the Earl of Derby. His nephew and heir presumptive, John Feversham, (fictitious person) was coming with him. There was little presumption, to all appearance, about the heirship, for Sir Piers bore the character of a confirmed old bachelor, and was now upwards of sixty.
Clare’s bouquets were nearly all tied up, and ready to be carried to the hall, which was to be decorated in honour of the guests. She was tying the last but one, when she heard slow footsteps and low voices passing on the outside of the arbour. Not too low, however, for two sentences to be audible inside,—words which blanched Clare’s cheek, and made her trembling fingers loose their hold, till the gathered flowers slid away one by one, and lay a fragrant mass on the ground at her feet.
The remarks which she overheard were limited to a fervent appeal and a low reply. The appeal—which was a declaration of love—was uttered in the familiar accents of Arthur Tremayne; and the answer—a vague disclaimer of merit which sounded like a shy affirmative—came in the low, soft voice of Lucrece Enville.
Clare was totally ignorant of the fate which her mother had designed for her; nor had she ever realised until that evening that she cared more for Arthur than she did for Jack. They were both like brothers to her: but now she suddenly felt that if it had been Jack whose voice she had heard uttering similar words, it would have mattered little or nothing to her.
The hardest thought of all was that of resigning him to Lucrece. Fourteen years had elapsed since that day of their childhood on which Clare had witnessed the first instance of Lucrece’s duplicity; but she had never been able to forget it, and it had infused a sort of vague discomfort and constraint into all their intercourse.
“Oh, if it had been Lysken!” said Clare to her own heart. “I could have borne it better.”
And it had to be borne, and in utter silence. This trouble could not be carried to Mrs Tremayne; and the idea of betraying Lucrece, as that young lady had herself betrayed Blanche, would have seemed black treachery to Clare. No, things must take their course: and let them take it, so long as that would make Arthur happy, and would be for his good. In her inmost heart Clare was sorely doubtful about both items. Well, she could ask God to grant them.
It was half an hour later than she had expected when Clare carried her nosegays into the hall. She went on mechanically putting them in order, and finding, when she had finished, that there was one more than was needed, she carried it to her mother’s boudoir.
“How late thou art, Clare!” said Lady Enville, looking up from Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, which she was lazily reading. “Sir Piers may come now at any minute. Hast made an end in the hall?”
“Ay, Madam.”
“Hast one posy left o’er? Set it here, by my chair, child. Dost know where is Blanche?”
“No, Madam.”
“And Lucrece?”
“No, Madam.”
Clare’s conscience smote her as soon as she had given this answer. Certainly she did not know where Lucrece was; but she could very well guess.
“I would thou wert not fully thus bashful, Clare; hast nought but ‘Ay’ and ‘No’?—I would fain have thee seek Lucrece: I desire speech of her.”
Clare did not reply at all this time. She had disposed of her flowers, and she left the room.
Seek Lucrece! Clare had never had a harder task. If the same burden had been laid on them, Lucrece would have left the commission unfulfilled, and Blanche would have sent somebody else. But such alternatives did not even suggest themselves to Clare’s conscientious mind. She went through the hall towards the garden door in search of Lucrece.
“Child, what aileth thee?” asked a voice suddenly, as Clare was opening the garden door.
“I?” said Clare absently. “Lucrece—my mother would have me seek her.”
“Sit thee down, and I will send her to thy mother,” said Rachel.
Away she went; and Clare sat down by the fire, feeling just then as if she could do little else. Lucrece glided through the hall with her smooth, silent step, but did not appear to see Clare; and Rachel followed in a minute.
“I have sent Lucrece to thy mother,” she said. “Now, child, what aileth thee?”
“Oh—nothing, Aunt Rachel.”
“When I was a small maid, Clare, my mother told me that ’twas not well to lie.”
“I did not—Aunt Rachel, I cry you mercy—I meant not—”
“Thou meantest not to tell me what ailed thee. I know that. But I mean to hear it, Clare.”
“’Tis nought, in very deed, Aunt—of any moment.”
“Nought of any moment to thee?”
“Nay, to— Oh, pray you, ask me not, Aunt Rachel! It makes no matter.”
“Ha! When a maid saith that,—a maid of thy years, Clare,—I know metely well what she signifieth. Thou art a good child. Get thee up-stairs and pin on thy carnation knots.”
Clare went up the wide hall staircase with a slow, tired step, and without making any answer beyond a faint attempt at a smile.
“Ha!” said Rachel again, to herself. “Providence doth provide all things. Methinks, though, at times, ’tis by the means of men and women, the which He maketh into little providences. I could find it in mine heart to fall to yonder game but now. Only I will bide quiet, methinks, till to-morrow. Well-a-day! if yon grandmother Eve of ours had ne’er ate yon apple! Yet Master Tremayne will have it that I did eat it mine own self. Had I so done, Adam might have whistled for a quarter. The blind, stumbling moles men are! Set a pearl and a pebble afore them, and my new shoes to an old shoeing-horn, but they shall pick up the pebble, and courtesy unto you for your grace. And set your mind on a lad that you do count to have more sense than the rest, and beshrew me if he show you not in fair colours ere the week be out that he is as great a dunce as any. I reckon Jack shall be the next. Well, well!—let the world wag. ’Twill all be o’er an hundred years hence. They shall be doing it o’er again by then. Howbeit, ’tis ill work to weep o’er spilt milk.”
Sir Piers Feversham and his nephew arrived late that evening. The former was a little older than Sir Thomas Enville, and had mixed more in general society;—a talkative, good-natured man, full of anecdote; and Blanche at least found him very entertaining.
John Feversham, the nephew, was almost the antipodes of his uncle. He was not handsome, but there was an open, honest look in his grey eyes which bore the impress of sincerity. All his movements were slow and deliberate, his manners very quiet and calm, his speech grave and sedate. Nothing in the shape of repartee could be expected from him; and with him Blanche was fairly disgusted.
“As sober as a judge, and as heavy as a leaden seal!” said that young lady,—who had been his next neighbour at the supper-table,—when she was giving in her report to Clare while they were undressing. “He hath but an owl’s eye for beauty, of whatever fashion. Thou mindest how fair was the sunset this even? Lo’ thou, he could see nought but a deal of water in the sea, and divers coloured clouds in the sky. Stupid old companion!”
“And prithee, Mistress Blanche, who ever did see aught in the sea saving a cruel great parcel of water?”
“Good lack, Bab!—thou art as ill as he. Clare, what seest thou in the sea?”
Clare tried to bring her thoughts down to the subject.
“I scantly know, Blanche. ’Tis rarely beautiful, in some ways. Yet it soundeth to me alway very sorrowful.”
“Ay so, Mistress Clare!” returned Barbara. “It may belike to thee, poor sweet heart, whose father was killed thereon,—and to me, that had a brother which died far away on the Spanish main.”
“I suppose,” answered Clare sighing, “matters sound unto us according as we are disposed.”
“Marry, and if so, some folks’ voices should sound mighty discordant,” retorted Barbara.
Blanche was soon asleep; but there was little sleep for Clare that night. Nor was there much for Rachel. Since Margaret’s marriage, Lucrece had shared her aunt’s chamber; for it would have been thought preposterous in the Elizabethan era to give a young girl a bedroom to herself. Rachel watched her niece narrowly; but Lucrece neither said nor did anything from which the least information could be gleaned. She was neither elated nor depressed, but just as usual,—demure, slippery, and unaccountable.
Rachel kept her eye also, like an amateur detective, upon Arthur. He came frequently, and generally managed to get a walk with Lucrece in the garden. On two occasions the detective, seated at her own window, which overlooked the garden, saw that Arthur was entreating or urging something, to which Lucrece would not consent.
The month of Sir Piers Feversham’s stay was drawing to a close, and still Rachel had not spoken to her brother about Lucrece. She felt considerably puzzled as to what it would be either right or wise to do. Lucrece was no foolish, romantic, inexperienced child like Blanche, but a woman of considerable worldly wisdom and strong self-reliance. It was no treachery to interfere with her, in her aunt’s eyes, since Lucrece herself had been the traitor; and for Clare’s sake Rachel longed to rescue Arthur, whom she considered infatuated and misled.
Before Rachel had been able to make up her mind on this point, one Saturday afternoon Sir Thomas sought her, and asked her to come to the library.
“Rachel,” he said, “I would fain have thy counsel. Sir Piers Feversham—much to mine amazing—hath made me offer of service (courtship) for Lucrece. What thinkest thereon?”
“Brother, leave her go!”
“He is by three years elder than I, Rachel.”
“Ne’er mind thou.”
“Methinks he should make the maid a good husband?” remarked Sir Thomas interrogatively.
“Better than she shall make him a wife,” said Rachel grimly.
“Rachel!”
“Brother, I have ne’er said this to thee aforetime; but my true conviction is that Lucrece is a mischief-maker, and until she be hence, there is like to be little peace for any. I saw not all things at the first; but I can tell thee now that she hath won Arthur Tremayne into her toils, and methinks she tried hard to compass Don Juan. If she will wed with Sir Piers (and he dare venture on her!) let it be so: he is old enough to have a care of himself; and she is less like to wreck his life than she should be with a younger man. In good sooth, there is all the less of it to wreck.”
“Yet, Rachel, if the maid be entangled with Arthur—”
“Make thy mind easy, Tom. ’Tis Arthur is entangled, not she. Trust her for that! She hath good enough scissors for the cutting of a like knot.”
“Arthur ne’er spake word to me,” said Sir Thomas, with a perplexed, meditative air.
“That is it which I would know, Tom. Ne’er spake word, quotha? So much the better. Well! I reckon thou shalt be like to tell Orige; but leave her not persuade thee to the contrary course. Yet I think she is scarce like. A knighthood and Feversham Hall shall go down very sweetly with her.”
“But there is yet another matter, Rachel. Sir Piers maketh offer to set Jack in good place about the Court, for the which he saith he hath power. What sayest to that, trow?”
“I say that Jack is safe to go to wrack some whither, and may be ’twere as well hence as hither.”
“It shall be mighty chargeable, I fear,” said Sir Thomas thoughtfully.
“Jack shall be that any whither.”
“Wouldst have me, then, say Ay to both offers?”
“Nay, think well touching Jack first. I meant not that. Good sooth! I sorely misdoubt—”
“Well, I will see what saith Orige unto both, and Jack and Lucrece to either.”
“If I be a prophet,” answered Rachel, “one and all shall say, Ay.”
If that were the criterion, Rachel proved a prophet One and all did say ay. Lady Enville was enchanted with both schemes. Jack averred that life at home was a very humdrum kind of thing, and life might be worth having in London, and at Court. And Lucrece, in her demure style, softly declared that she was thankful for Sir Piers’ goodness, and would gladly accept his offer, though she felt that her merits were not equal to the kind estimate which he had formed of her.
“But, Lucrece,” said her father gravely, “one told me that Arthur Tremayne had made suit unto thee.”
If he expected the mask to drop for an instant from the soft, regular features of Lucrece, he was sadly disappointed. Not a look, nor a gesture, showed that she felt either surprised or disconcerted.
“’Tis true, Father. The poor lad did say some like words unto me. But I gave him no encouragement to seek you.”
“Thou wouldst have me to conceive, then, that thou art wholly free from any plight whatsoe’er unto Arthur?”
“Wholly free, Father. I ne’er gave him to wit otherwise.”
Sir Thomas believed her; Rachel did not. The next thing, in the squire’s honest eyes, was to let Arthur know that Lucrece was about to marry Sir Piers,—not directly, since Arthur himself had made no open declaration; but he proposed to go down to the parsonage, and mention the fact, as if incidentally, in Arthur’s presence. He found Lucrece rather averse to this scheme.
“It should but trouble the poor lad,” she said. “Why not leave him discover the same as matters shall unfold them?”
“Tom!” said Rachel to her brother apart, “go thou down, and tell Arthur the news. I am afeared Lucrece hath some cause, not over good, for wishing silence kept.”
“Good lack!” cried the worried Squire. “Wellnigh would I that every one of my childre had been a lad! These maidens be such changeable and chargeable gear, I verily wis not what to do withal.”
“Bide a while, Tom, till Jack hath been in the Court a year or twain; maybe then I shall hear thee to wish that all had been maids.”
Down to the parsonage trudged the puzzled and unhappy man, and found that Arthur was at home. He chatted for a short time with the family in general, and then told the ladies, as a piece of news which he expected to interest them, that his daughter Lucrece was about to be married. Had he not intentionally kept his eyes from Arthur while he spoke, he would have seen that the young man went white to the lips.
“Eh, ma foi!” said Mrs Rose.
“With whom shall she wed?” asked Mrs Tremayne.
“Sir Thomas, is that true?” was the last remark—in hoarse accents, from Arthur.
“It is true, my lad. Have I heard truly, that you would not have it so?”
Mrs Tremayne looked at her son in a mixture of astonishment and dismay. It had never occurred to her guileless, unsuspicious mind that the object of his frequent visits to Enville Court could be any one but Clare.
“Sir, I cry you mercy,” said Arthur with some dignity. “I do readily acknowledge that I ought not to have left you in the dark. But to speak truth, it was she, not I, that would not you should be told.”
“That would not have me told what, Arthur?”
“That I loved her,” said Arthur, his voice slightly tremulous. “And—she said she loved me.”
“She told me that she had given thee no encouragement to speak to me.”
“To speak with you—truth. Whene’er I did approach that matter, she alway deterred me from the same. But if she hath told you, Sir, that she gave me no encouragement to love and serve her, nor no hope of wedding with her in due time,—why, then, she hath played you false as well as me.”
It was manifest that Arthur was not only much distressed, but also very angry.
“And thou never spakest word to me, my son!” came in gentle tones of rebuke from his mother.
“Ah, the young folks make not the confessor of the father nor the mother,” said Mrs Rose smiling, and shaking her head. “It were the better that they did it, Arthur.”
“Mother, it was not my fault,” pleaded Arthur earnestly. “I would have spoken both to you and to Sir Thomas here, if she had suffered me. Only the very last time I urged it on her—and that no further back than this last week—she threatened me to have no further dealing with me, an’ I spake to either of you.”
“Often-times,” observed Mrs Rose thoughtfully, “the maidens love not like the mothers, mon chéri.”
“God have mercy!” groaned poor Sir Thomas, who was not least to be pitied of the group. “I am afeared Rachel hath the right. Lucrece hath not been true in this matter.”
“There is no truth in her!” cried Arthur bitterly. “And for the matter of that, there is none in woman!”
“Le beau compliment!” said his grandmother, laughing.
His mother looked reproachfully at him, but did not speak.
“And Rachel saith there is none in man,” returned Sir Thomas with grim humour. “Well-a-day! what will the world come to?”
These little pebbles in her path did not seem to trouble the easy smoothness of Lucrece’s way. She prepared her trousseau with her customary placidity; debated measures and trimmings with her aunt as if entirely deaf to that lady’s frequent interpolations of wrath; consulted Blanche on the style of her jewellery, and Clare on the embroidery of her ruffs, as calmly as if there were not a shadow on her conscience nor her heart. Perhaps there was not.
Sir Piers took Jack down to London, and settled him in his post of deputy gentleman usher to the Queen; and at the end of six months, he returned to Enville Court for his marriage. Everything went off with the most absolute propriety. Lucrece’s costume was irreproachable; her manners, ditto. The festivities were prolonged over a week, and on their close, Sir Piers and Lady Feversham set out, for their home in Norfolk. No sign of annoyance was shown from the parsonage, except that Arthur was not at home when the wedding took place; and that Lysken, whom Lucrece graciously requested to be one of her bridesmaids, declined, with a quiet keenness of manner which any one but Lucrece would have felt.
“If it should like thee to have me for thy bridesmaid, Lucrece,” she said, looking her calmly in the face, “it should not like me.” (In modern phraseology,—I should not like it.)
The bride accepted the rebuke with unruffled suavity.
Of course there were the ceremonies then usual at weddings, and a shower of old slippers greeted bride and bridegroom as they rode away.
“Aunt Rachel, you hit her on the head!” cried Blanche, looking astonished.
“I took metely good aim,” assented Rachel, with grim satisfaction. “A good riddance of— Blanche, child, if thou wouldst have those flowers to live, thou wert best put them in water.”