CHAPTER VII.—THE NEXT EVENT IN THE FAMILY.
“I wonder whether Charley Clifford’s coming of age will be kept as it ought to be,” said Miss Amelia Harwood, meditatively. It was more than five years since the marriage, but there was still going to be a bazaar at Summerhayes; and still a large basket stood on the drawing-room table at Woodbine Cottage, full of embroidered cushions, babies’ socks, children’s pinafores, and needle-books and pen-wipers without number, upon which Miss Amelia was stitching little tickets which told the price. “To give him all his honours will be ticklish work for Tom Summerhayes, and to withhold them won’t answer with a boy of spirit like Charley. I am fond of that boy. He behaves very well to his mother; though really, when a woman makes a fool of herself, I don’t wonder if her children get disgusted. I should like to know what she thinks of her exploit now. I always foresaw she would see her folly as the children grew up.”
“Oh, hush, Amelia,” said her elder sister; “don’t be hard upon poor dear Mary now. I was surprised at the time—but of course she must have been in love with him; and it was hard, you know, to be left all alone at her time of life. She is quite a young woman now.”
“She is——” said Miss Amelia, pausing, with inexorable memory and a host of dates at her finger-ends, “either forty-two or forty-three. I don’t quite recollect whether she was born in ‘14 or in ‘15. Now that I think, it was ‘14, for it was before the Waterloo year, which we had all such good cause to remember; and as for being left all alone, she had her children, and I always said she ought to have had the sense to know when she was well off. However, that is not the question. I want to know whether they will make any ado over Charley’s coming of age.”
“Poor boy!—it is sad for him having no father to advise him at such an important time of his life,” said gentle Miss Harwood, with a sigh.
“Oh, stuff!” said Miss Amelia. “Harry Clifford, poor fellow, never was wise enough to direct himself, and how could he have guided his son? I daresay Tom Summerhayes would be a better adviser, if you come to that. But I am sorry for Charley all the same: he’s the heir, and yet somehow he doesn’t seem the heir. His mother, after all, is still a young woman, as you say, and Tom Summerhayes seems to have got everything so secure in his hands that one can’t help feeling something is sure to happen to make the estate his in the end. It can’t be, I suppose; they said the deeds were irrevocable, and that Mary couldn’t alter them if she wished, which I don’t suppose she does;—she loves her children, I must say that for her. Still one never feels sure with a man like Tom Summerhayes; and poor Charley has no more to do with his own affairs than if he were a little ploughboy on Mr Summerhayes’s estate.”
“Hush, my dear,” said Miss Harwood, who was in her summer chair, which commanded, through the openings of the green blind, a view of the village green and the road before the door,—“here are Louisa and Lydia coming to call—and out of breath, too; so they must have some news or something particular to say.”
“About Charley’s coming of age, of course,” said Miss Amelia. “I daresay Mary and Tom have had a fight over it, and he’s judged it as well for once to let Mary have her way. He always had a great deal of sense, had Tom Summerhayes.”
“Oh, I declare, to see how far the Miss Harwoods are on with their things!” cried Miss Louisa Summerhayes, almost before she had entered the room; “but you are always in such good time, Miss Amelia. As for us, we have such a great deal to think about just now, it drives the bazaar out of our heads; almost as bad as if we had a family ourselves,” said Miss Lydia, with a breathless outburst. “I daresay you have heard the news—you who always hear everything from Fontanel.”
“About Charley’s birthday?” said Miss Amelia.
“Well, upon my word, you are a witch of Endor, or something,” said Miss Lydia, whose turn it was to begin the duet; “for dear Tom rode down to tell us only this morning. He is so considerate, dear Tom; and I am sure there never was such a stepfather,—to think of all he means to do, just as if Charley was his own son and heir,” cried Miss Louisa, who was scarcely able to keep in time for want of breath.
“His own son and heir, if he had one, need not to make so much commotion, my dears,” said Miss Amelia, administering with great goodwill a friendly snub; “there is a difference, you know, between Fontanel and the manor-house. I suppose there will be a dinner of the tenantry, and all that. There couldn’t, you know, much as your family is respected in the county, be much of that sort of thing at Summerhayes.”
“My dear, you know Amelia always speaks her mind,” said Miss Harwood; “you don’t mind what she says? I am sure I hope poor Charley will have a good day for his fête, and that everything will go off well. I daresay they will all feel a little strange on such a day, to think of all the changes that have happened. I remember, as if it were yesterday, the day he was born; and oh how happy poor Mary was!”
“I am sure she ought to be a great deal happier now,” said Miss Laura, with a toss of her head, “if she were sensible enough to see her advantages. Dear Tom makes himself a slave to her, and spends all his strength upon the estate; and then never to get any thanks for it. I declare, to hear how you speak is enough to make one hate the world,” said Miss Lydia, with the usual joint disregard of punctuation. “But, Miss Harwood, you always take Mary’s side.”
“I didn’t know we were come so far as to take sides,” said Miss Amelia, dryly; “Mary never takes her own side, that’s clear. She tries to please everybody, poor soul; to make her husband happy by letting him suppose himself the master of Fontanel,—and to make her son happy by making believe he’s all right and in his natural place; and what’s to come of it all after Charley comes of age is more than I can tell; for Charley’s a boy of spirit, though he’s devoted to his mother, and it’s hard never to have anything to say in one’s own affairs. A woman may submit to it, perhaps, but a young man is very different,” said Miss Amelia, with great gravity, breaking off with an emphatic jerk the last end of her thread.
Both the sisters were in tears before this speech was finished. “I am sure it is very hard,” sobbed the elder, as soon as she could speak, “to be in dear Tom’s position, and to have to manage everything, and always to hear it brought up against him that he has nothing to do with the estate, and it belongs to his wife. I wonder how he ever puts up with it,” cried the other, “dear Tom, that is the head of one of the oldest families in the county—far better blood than the Cliffords, whose great-grandfather was in trade; and they would all have been ruined but for dear Tom,” concluded Miss Louisa; “he has given himself up to their interests—and this is his reward!”
“Hush, now,” said Miss Harwood, “I am sure nothing was said that could make you cry; and I see poor dear Mary herself in the pony-carriage driving down by the green. I daresay she will call here. She will be quite surprised if she sees you have been crying. Shouldn’t you like to run up-stairs and set your bonnets straight?”
“I daresay she’ll come in looking as bright as possible,” said Miss Amelia, “and could not understand, if we were to tell her, why we should quarrel and cry over her affairs. After all, it’s a shame she shouldn’t be happy, poor soul; she always makes the best of everything. There she is, kissing her hand to us already. How d’ye do, my dear? And I am sure I think she’s as pretty now as when she was twenty, whatever the men may say.”
“Oh dear, that’s just what the men say,” cried Miss Louisa, with indignation, unable even at this crisis to resist the temptation; “for she always was a gentleman’s beauty,” added Miss Lydia, half under her breath. They were not in the least malignant, and both of them secretly liked Mary in their hearts; but they could not resist the opportunity of throwing a little javelin at her, which certainly did her no harm.
Mary did not reach the door until her sisters-in-law had put themselves in order by the help of the mirror in the back drawing-room. All this time Miss Amelia stood by the window making her comments. “Of course there is a basket to be taken out of the pony-carriage,” said that mollified observer, who was nodding and smiling all the time to the new arrivals, “with a quantity of forced things in it, no doubt; for there’s nothing else to be had at this time of the year. I think I can see strawberries through the lid, which, considering it is only March, is flying in the face of nature, I think. And here is Loo. Well, I am not sure that poor Loo is not as much forced as the strawberries; she looks a long way older than her mother, it appears to me. Poor thing! perhaps it’s not wonderful under the circumstances; and I think Loo would be pretty if she was free in her mind, or had time for anything but brooding over affairs. She is, let me see, eighteen at her next birthday——”
“Hush, Amelia! My dear Mary, it makes me very happy to see you,” said old Miss Harwood, rising from her comfortable chair, with the slow motion of an old woman, to meet the kiss of the mistress of Fontanel. Perhaps it was the contrast of true old age which made Mary, though convicted of having been born in the year ‘14, appear then, in ‘57, so blooming and fresh and youthful. She had lived, on the whole, a quiet life. She had little in her constitution of that rabid selfishness which people call a sensitive temperament. She bore her troubles meekly, and got over them; and even the anxieties and uneasiness of recent years had added but few wrinkles to the fair face of a woman who always believed that everything would turn out well, and heartily hoped for the best. She came in, well-dressed, well-conditioned, sweet to look at and to listen to, in easy matronly fulness and expansion, into the pretty but strait and limited room where the two old sisters lived their life; and when she had kissed them, kissed also the two younger maidens, who were, however, of Mary’s own standing—no younger than herself. They all looked grey, and relapsed into the shade in presence of her sweet looks and natural graciousness. Even Loo, who stood behind her mother’s chair—a tall girl, still with great brown eyes, which counted for twice as much as their real size in her pale face—looked, as Miss Amelia said, old beside Mrs Summerhayes. Hers were the bright but softened tints, the round outlines, the affectionate, tender, unimpassioned heart, which confers perpetual youth.
“How nice it is to see you looking so well!” said Mary. “I don’t think you have grown a bit older, dear Miss Harwood, for twenty years. Loo and I have come down on purpose to ask you to come to Fontanel for Charley’s birthday. He comes of age, dear fellow, next month, you know; and as it is a very very great occasion, we thought a three weeks’ invitation was not too much. You must come to us the day before—the carriage will come for you—and stay at least till the day after, so that you may not be the least fatigued. We are going to have all sorts of pleasures and rejoicing; and I am sure, though I am a foolish old mother to say so,” said the smiling, blooming woman, in whom light and sunshine seemed to have entered Miss Harwood’s drawing-room, “that nobody has more reason to rejoice over a son than I—than we have,—he has always been such a dear boy; he has never given me any anxiety all his life.”
“Well, he’s only just beginning his life,” said Miss Amelia. “What anxiety could he give you, except about the measles and so forth? To be sure he might have been plucked at the university, or rusticated, or something dreadful; but I allow he’s a good boy, and not too good a boy either—which is a great comfort. I am glad you are not going to stint him at his fête: an eldest son has a right to that, I suppose; but I hope you mean to let him have something to do, my dear, after he comes of age.”
“To do? Oh, I daresay he will ynd quite enough to do, for a few fiears, amusing himself,” said Mary, perceptibly growing paler for the moment. “Of course I am calculating upon both of you, Louisa and Liddy,” she said, turning round with an air of making her escape. “To ask such near friends formally would be nonsense, you know; but you must not forget the twenty-fifth; and I hope you will come early, too, and see the preparations, and the tenants’ dinner, and all that is to go on out of doors.”
“Oh, we have got an invitation already,” said Miss Laura. “Not that we would have come unless you had asked us besides, dear Mary,” chimed in Miss Lydia; “but dear Tom called this morning to tell us it was all decided upon,” they both ran on together. “Such a comfort to our minds; for I am sure Liddy and I cannot bear to hear you ever have any difference of opinion,” cried Miss Laura, as her solo broke upon the course of the duet. “And dear Tom is always so glad to do what will please you, dear Mary,” chimed Miss Lydia, as it came to her turn.
Mary turned red and then turned pale in spite of herself. Most people have some specially sensitive spot about them, and this was Mary’s: she could not endure to think that her husband consulted his sisters about things that occurred at Fontanel.
“I was not aware we had any difference of opinion,” she said, with dignity; “things always have to be discussed, and Mr Summerhayes likes to consider everything well before he takes it in hand; but, of course, we can have but one mind about Charlie, who really is the owner of the estate, or at least will be after the twenty-fifth. He is so popular already,” continued the mother, returning to the Miss Harwoods. The tears came to poor Mary’s eyes, notwithstanding all her efforts. She felt they were all watching her, and that to do justice both to her son and her husband was all but impossible; and, besides, at that moment she was under the influence of a little irritation. Mr Summerhayes did not consult his sisters, for whose judgment he had a much greater contempt than it had ever entered into the mind of Mary to entertain for any one in the world; but when he was annoyed or irritated he occasionally took the benefit of their unreasoning sympathy and partisanship, as he had done this morning—and there was nothing in all the business which so galled and exasperated his wife.
“He always was a dear boy,” said kind old Miss Harwood; “and such a sweet baby as he was, my dear. I remember when he was born as if it were yesterday. I was just saying so before you came in. I never saw any people so happy as you, and—hem—it seems foolish, to be sure, talking of what he was as a baby now he’s a man,” she concluded, hurriedly stumbling over that unlucky allusion. Mary again grew a little pale, poor soul. She could not escape from her troubles anyhow—they hemmed her in on every side.
“And so all those things are for the bazaar,” she said, by way of making a diversion. “Loo was to have worked you something, Miss Amelia, but Loo’s fingers are not so useful as they might be. She is a great deal too fond of dreaming; but I don’t think I was very fond of work myself when I was her age; and, of course, she has something in hand for Charley. A birthday would not be a birthday if the girls had not worked something for their brother; though men are such bears, as I sometimes tell Loo,” said poor Mary, beaming brightly out again from behind her cloud, “I don’t think they ever look twice at the purses and slippers we do for them. I suppose the great pleasure is in the doing, as it is with most other things.”
“But I am sure you never found it so with dear Tom,” said Miss Laura; “he was always, from a boy, so pleased with what we made for him. Oh, do you remember those old braces, Laura?” cried Miss Lydia; “he always appreciates what is done for him—always,” and both the sisters chimed in in a breath.
“I was not speaking of Mr Summerhayes,” said Mary, returning into the cloud; “I was speaking of—men in general. I have never had any perfect people to deal with in my experience,” said the mistress of Fontanel, with a sidelong, female blow, which she could not resist giving. “And now we must say good-bye, dear Miss Harwood; it is so pleasant to see you, and to come into this sheltered place where nothing ever seems to change.”
“It is very odd,” said Miss Amelia, as she rose to shake hands with her visitors, “you people who are living and going through all sorts of changes, you like to come back to look at us old folks, and to say it is pleasant to see us immovable. I suppose it has all the effect of a calm background and bit of still life, as the painters say. Perhaps we don’t enjoy it so much as you do; we like to have something happen now and then for a little variety; we are often sadly at a loss, if you did but know it, for an event.”
“Come back soon, my dear; that will be an event for us,” said Miss Harwood, whose soft old kiss was balm to Mary’s cheek, which had flushed and paled so often. Miss Laura and Miss Lydia went out to the door with their sister-in-law, where they took leave of her. “We meant to have driven on to the manor-house,” said Mary; “but we need not go now, since we have seen you; and there is no room in this stupid little carriage, or I would set you down anywhere. Good-bye! don’t forget the twenty-fifth!” and so she drove her ponies away. The sisters went off upon their usual round of calls, discussing her, while Mrs Summerhayes drove through the village. They were not exactly spiteful women, and they did like poor Mary in their hearts: if she had been in trouble they would have rallied to her with all their little might; but they could not help being a little hard upon her now.
“Did you hear what she said about Charley being the true owner of the estate?” said Miss Laura. “After all dear Tom has done!” said Miss Lydia. “Oh, how strangely things do turn out!” cried the elder sister. “He might have done so much better; and to get himself into all this trouble and nobody even grateful to him,” said the younger. “Poor dear Tom!” they both cried together, “he deserved such a different wife.”
Such was the aspect of affairs on the other side; and though it is natural to take part with poor Mary rather than with her subtle and skilful husband, perhaps his sisters were not altogether wrong. If they had not, all of them, got somehow into conflict with nature, things might have happened very differently. As it was, a perpetual false position created mischief on every side.