Chapter Twenty.
Who will Live at the Vicarage?
Perhaps few evil-doers are marked down as such with so little personal eagerness and satisfaction as was Oliver Trent by Jack or Clive, who, indeed, necessarily took only a passive part. There was nothing in Jack’s nature congenial to the task, and his only wish being to set Clive on his legs again, as soon as there was a good prospect of this labour being accomplished, he cared nothing at all for bringing down punishment on Trent.
Clive’s own feeling, when he heard the news, was rather shocked and bewildered than in any way revengeful. His cousin having been a sort of good genius in his eyes, the one successful man of the family, the friend who had placed him where he was, and to whom he believed himself indebted for all that had been done either to shield him or to push him on, the revelation which Ibbetson brought was beyond his comprehension. All the new hopes which had been excited in his mind really turned round a central desire that Trent should recognise that he had spoken the truth and not disgraced his family. And now that Trent himself should be the one on whom disgrace and shame should fall! It was more than his mind could grasp.
Neither, think as he would, was he helped by seeing any imaginable motive for his conduct. If he could have found it he might possibly have acquiesced in what had happened, as something for which Trent—the adviser—had reasons, and believed that he would also soon have had reasons for clearing it up. Clive’s faith was shaken, but it was not yet absolutely gone, from the very difficulties of understanding why on earth Trent should have acted as he had apparently acted. Jack had muttered something about having him in his power, but that seemed ludicrous while Clive could trace no advantages to result. Jack himself, indeed, was not half so clear about it as Phillis, whose womanly intuition had leapt to a conclusion not far from the truth; and when he found out something of the young fellow’s perplexities as to his cousin, he respected the feeling and abstained from much comment. He supposed that it would be necessary to see Trent, perhaps in Clive’s presence, and that then certain home truths would require expression, but for so long as they could be postponed, he was not at all unwilling to postpone them. Meanwhile there was a real satisfaction in seeing how Clive brightened under this lifting off of his troubles. He held himself straighter, and altogether had a more open and hopeful appearance. Ibbetson felt no anxiety in leaving him, and went down to his father’s for a few days. There a letter followed him from Mr Thornton, very concise and formal, taking no notice of his remarks about Clive, but alluding to his own regret at losing his good friend Mr Trent, who, he grieved to say, had received letters the morning before which induced him at once to start for Rome.
Jack crumpled the letter in his hand and shoved it into his pocket.
“Bad news?” asked his father. “Here’s bad news for me at any rate. What do you think, Arabella? Carter finds that horse he wrote about as likely to suit me to a T, has just been picked up. It’s uncommonly annoying. Do you think your uncle has anything that would do for me, Jack?”
“I don’t know,” said Jack, “I haven’t seen his stables lately.”
“You seem to me making a mull of matters with your uncle,” said his father, pouring out his coffee from a peculiar machine of his own. “I have never interfered, for I think his manners are insufferable, but if you don’t object to them you might have done better, I should say.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Jack brightly. “I dare say I should think so if I were you; but being myself, I don’t exactly see what I could have done.”
“Couldn’t you marry that girl?”
Jack flushed.
“She didn’t care to marry me,” he said stiffly. “Whew!” said his father, lifting his eyebrows. “Not enough money, I suppose?”
“I doubt that influencing her,” said Jack, in the same tone.
“Well, you’d better look out, for I hear there’s a man of the name of Trent a good deal at Hetherton, and your uncle swears by him. It’s quite certain we never get any luck in our family.”
This was a statement which, with Lady Ibbetson sitting by, who might have been supposed by outsiders to have brought her husband a good deal of the sort of luck to which he alluded, could only be received in silence. Jack finished his breakfast and took himself off to the smoking-room. Trent seemed to haunt him, and he had an uneasy feeling of not knowing how much or how little to say. Then he remembered Bice, and began to wonder whether this sudden departure of Trent’s was an energetic effort on his part to forestall disclosures, or at any rate to soften their force. If what he had said was true, and the two were engaged, he might be able to enlist her feelings in his favour. Jack had desired Clive to write, but was not very sure that he had yet done so. Now he promptly made up his mind to write himself to Phillis.
The letter was not easy to him. When he had written before, they were engaged to be man and wife, and he remembered, with a pang, the feeling of dissatisfaction with which he had laid down her little missive from Bologna. It had seemed to him as if nothing in it went below the surface, unconscious as he chose to be that it was he who had kept her there, he who had chilled and disappointed her. Well, he was punished now, he thought gloomily, and the shy brown eyes seemed to be looking at him with sad pity. He had lost Phillis, and he had lost Hetherton. He knew his uncle, with all his foibles, was a just man, and fond of Phillis, so that he had little doubt that after his solemn assurance that he alone was to blame, he would provide liberally for Phillis, though not to the extent of making her his heiress. The estate might perhaps be reserved for Oliver Trent, if Jack kept silence. Jack was not sufficiently superior to mortal weaknesses to find that reflection pleasant. But it would have been easier to endure, or, at any rate, so he thought at this moment, if he could have shifted the cause of its doing on any shoulders but his own. He made a wry face as he acknowledged his own absolute folly. He would thankfully now have thrown away his old prospects of Hetherton for the hope of winning Phillis, but it was far from soothing to remember that he had flung both to the winds. First he had listened too easily, then repented too hastily, then had found out too late what he might have known from the very first. It seemed to him as if he could never reproach another man with folly. And he had a distracting consciousness as he wrote—stopping every now and then, jumping up to poke the fire or do something which might by some good chance assist his expressions—that although it was Phillis, and nobody but Phillis, who had sent him on his errand, she would believe nothing but that Bice’s deliverance had been the actual spur. It made it, as has been said, difficult for him to write. He did not like to paint Trent’s conduct in too black colours, lest it might seem it was his object to effect a break between him and Bice. Yet it was quite clear to him that the break ought to be effected, if only it could be done by other hands than his, and he grew vexed that he had not assured himself that Clive would speak out and to the purpose. His sentences read coldly, because he wished to treat all that part, which was his only excuse for writing, in a business-like manner. Phillis, thinking to shield him, and feeling sure it would be broken, had not told him of the actual tie existing between Bice and Oliver Trent, and he guarded his words about them both with an evident restraint. It was a great relief to him when at last his letter was finished and placed in the letter-bag, and then he half smiled to find that his thoughts had wandered to a calculation of the number of days that must pass before he would receive an answer.
His stepmother met him in the hall. She had an uneasy manner which Jack hated and called mincing, but a good heart underneath, to which he persistently blinded himself. When a kindly-natured person does get hold of a prejudice, you may be sure he will take a firmer grasp than one less amiable. Perhaps there is a secret satisfaction in finding himself able to dislike someone heartily, or perhaps it is so unlike himself that he is instinctively convinced that excellent reasons must exist to justify him. Jack had never been able to forgive Lady Ibbetson for marrying his father, although he knew quite well that she made his home as happy as he would allow her to make it, which was a reservation not likely to be removed. And this sense of his own injustice did not render him more friendly towards her. With the best intentions in the world, all she did seemed to rub him the wrong way. Naturally, she had changed the old furniture at Elmsleigh, but unfortunately the change was not justified by the results; for taste, being an artistic feeling, is as subject to failure as other points in which our ideal is beyond our powers of execution, and is by no means that simple intuition which people like to imagine it. Conservative Jack had been much disgusted by the shifting and embellishment of chairs and tables he found on his arrival had taken place, and which she, poor misguided woman, had pointed out to him with pleasure as improvements. He had the grace to keep his opinions to himself, but for almost the first time in his life it seemed as if his father’s spirit of opposition had been roused in him, and Lady Ibbetson sighed, after one wistful glance in his face. She was almost timidly desirous to please him, and never showed at her best in his presence, finding a not unnatural difficulty in understanding him. Now she spoke with evident effort:
“Your father tells me you are going back to town to-morrow. Is that really a necessity? It is so long since you have been here, and this has been such a very short visit. I had hoped you would have stayed over Tuesday, and that we might have had some people to meet you on that day.”
“Thank you,” said Jack shortly, “I can’t afford any longer time.” Mentally he was thinking, “Where on earth does the woman get her gowns?”
“You are working very hard, then?” she ventured to say.
“Well, it’s necessary.”
She hesitated, looked round, and said in a low voice—
“I hope you will not think what I am saying interfering,—perhaps I might not have spoken, but that your father alluded to—to it at breakfast. It is your engagement I mean.”
Jack drew himself up, and she went on hurriedly—“Pray do not think I am asking questions from curiosity. But sometimes pecuniary difficulties cause a great deal of unhappiness and—and I thought I would venture to say that if this were the case—”
“It is not, indeed.”
“Ah!” She looked at him with wistful disappointment. “Then I must not say any more. It has always seemed to me a most grievous thing, that money should unnecessarily play such an important part in these matters, and I should have been very sorry if it had been allowed to do so with you.”
Jack was touched—it was impossible not to feel that she was speaking from her heart—though he was no less stiffly determined to accept nothing at her hands. Nevertheless, she brightened at his tone, for he spoke warmly:
“I am exceedingly obliged to you. Money has not made any difficulty here. And as to my working harder than I have done, it is more from shame for past idleness than from ambition for the future, I am afraid.”
“Jack,” said his father, coming in at the door with a little girl clinging to each hand, “will you ride over to Whitcote this morning?”
“Whitcote? Yes,” said Jack, wondering; for Sir John seldom made these early expeditions.
“Hastings wants me to look at the schools. There’s a new Vicar coming in, and things have to be put straight. Time, too.”
“Jack,” said little May, possessing herself of his hand, “tell us about Cartouche. Does he always jump out of the window when you go back?”
“And does he beg? Carlo begs,” this from Effie. “Poor Cartouche!” said Jack, “I’m afraid he is wanting in all accomplishments.”
“Accomplishments means music and drawing,” said May, with a stare. “Dogs don’t do their scales.”
“Don’t tease, children,” said Lady Ibbetson. It was one of the things in which she and her step-son were at cross-purposes, for he was fond of children, and she always nervously afraid that they annoyed him. She carried them away now unwillingly, looking back and calling to Jack that he had promised to come into the school-room.
It was not until they were close on Whitcote that he asked his father who the new Vicar was.
“He’s called Penington, I hear,” said Sir John, pulling up his cob to look at a field of springing wheat. “Don’t know the name, but Hastings speaks uncommonly well of him.”
“I met a man of that name in Rome. He had a sister with him.”
“That’s he. Hastings said he had gone abroad for two or three months’ rest before beginning work again. And I dare say he would have a sister. I hear he’s a likely man to many. There’s the Vicarage: you can see the chimneys; it’s been uncommonly improved and made into really a nice place. Hallo, here comes Miss Ward. You recollect the Miss Wards, cousins of Mrs Hastings, and living in that little cottage half a mile on?”
A kindly, intelligent faced woman greeted them. “Sir John, you are the very person I wished to see. Do you know of a horse?”
“Another horse, Miss Ward?”
“Another! I should think so. That last great thing wouldn’t go at all. How d’ye do, Mr Ibbetson? I didn’t see it was you. But really, Sir John, we are in a pretty condition; reduced to the butcher’s mare to take, us to the station, and when we want to cut a dash among our neighbours, to the most extraordinary affair from Hedsworth. Do be neighbourly and look in at our stables. You’ll find three waiting to be looked at, and they’ve all something against them. One has curby hocks, I know—whatever that may mean.”
“It means a strong objection.”
“Well, the other alternatives are age and nobility of appearance, and youth and snobbishness. I am inclined to youth; the habit of requiring to be shot is very serious.”
“I’ll give my opinion at any rate,” said Sir John laughing, “and so shall Jack. By the way, he has just come from Rome, and seems to have met your Mr Penington there—”
“Has he, really? Mr Penington is our other subject just now; he and the horses form a sort of conversational see-saw. Very charming, is he not, Mr Ibbetson? But you need not tell me if he is not, for we all agree in placing him on a pinnacle of merit, in order that we may have the excitement of gradually deposing him. Otherwise, I might whisper to you that we are already—just a little—hurt.”
“Why?”
“Well, we considered—and justly, I think—that coming here unmarried, we had a right to the excitement of choosing him a wife. But in a letter from his sister to Mrs Hastings, who is, you know, her old friend, she seems to hint that he is taking it on his own shoulders.”
“Oh, ho! Any names mentioned? Perhaps Jack may know her, too.”
“No, no, not so bad as that. Still it is bad, I own. You’ll look at those horses then, won’t you?”
“To be sure. How was it you weren’t at the Grange on Friday?”
“I was making up my accounts. I always think that is only a decent tribute to the departing year. Remember me to Lady Ibbetson, and do try to consider that horse a treasure.”
Sir John, who liked the Wards, went on talking of the way women were taken in about horses, Jack meanwhile riding along without hearing many of his father’s words. So it had come to this, for he could not doubt that Phillis was the one to whom Miss Penington alluded. There was the pretty Vicarage to his left, standing picturesquely among trees, a pleasant homelike place, such as he could well imagine she would love. He thought of her, brought there by that man, going in and out of the gate on her kindly errands, waiting, perhaps, in the porch to welcome him—Well, what could he say? He had had his chance and had thrown it away. Since he had loved her, he had understood very clearly what she had found wanting in his love before. Now it seemed to him as if it had been an insult. He felt no hope. He had had his chance and had thrown it away.