'Fan,' said Mr. Chadwick, with a funny twinkle in his eye and a funny roll in his voice, 'prepare yourself for a blow! Mrs. Hamblin means to weed her visiting-list, and "Chadwick, Mrs." will disappear from the C's. She's in the forties, or very near them, isn't she?'
'I don't know for certain; but Mr. Pratt says so.'
'And Mr. Pratt! Terribly trustworthy authority, he. She's going in for goody, my dear; that's it, rely upon it; and poor Eleanor will be her first "example," and Uffington the text of her first sermon. Of course you'll say nothing to them about her impertinence, and I shall be more nearly angry with you than I have ever been in my life if you waste a thought of your own upon it.'
Mrs. Chadwick could not dismiss the matter with all the celerity her husband prescribed; but she really did not mind it much. Her fashionable education had made good progress in the direction of callousness.
The wedding took place, and Sir Nugent and Lady Uffington went abroad. This was on Eleanor's account. Sir Nugent had seen all that Europe had to show, but Eleanor had never travelled beyond Paris; and the old familiar scenes acquired a fresh interest for him in the delight with which they inspired her. Eleanor was very happy; as happy as she had expected to be, which, though she was much more sensible than most girls of her age, and her early life had not been of a kind to nourish illusions, is saying a great deal. She had perhaps credited Sir Nugent with some qualities in which she found him wanting; but, on the other hand, she had prepared herself to discover and bear with faults which did not exhibit themselves. She had heard him described as a 'devil of a temper,' but he was not ill-tempered to her; on the contrary, he treated her always with gentleness and courtesy, and, without departing entirely from his characteristic undemonstrativeness, studied her wishes and her welfare with practical steadiness. When their marriage was several months old, Eleanor ventured to tell him that he had 'turned out better than she expected in point of amiability;' and he remarked simply,
'You see, Nell, I have always observed that good women get horribly snubbed and bullied, where they don't meet with even more active ill-treatment. There's a better chance for the bad ones, taking life in the lump, all round. And so I am determined to keep one good woman from being sorry that she has trusted herself to a man.'
Eleanor feels and expresses a happy security that she shall never be sorry for having placed such practical confidence in him. And, indeed, it looks as if her assurance were not unfounded.
They mean to 'settle' in London, but to live their own life there; not the life of the multitude. Eleanor's home Paradise is imaged upon a different plan from that of her sister and her sister's friends. It does not exclude sociability, but it does not include servility to 'Society;' and if she carries out her ideas, the Uffingtons' house will be a pleasant one at which to have the not-too-easily-to-be-obtained entrée.
People who have met them abroad report favourably of Sir Nugent and Lady Uffington. Frank Eardley is enthusiastic about Eleanor's looks, and her increased appreciation of art and china. He always thought her bright, you know, but, by Jove, Lady Uffington takes the shine out of Eleanor Irvine in a surprising way. Lydyeard, whose irascible temper is generally sent up to white heat by the 'infernal folly,' which is his mildest term for a friend's marriage, has not once been heard to growl, and has even deigned to ask when the Uffingtons are coming home? These small particulars, together with the general news, domestic and otherwise, in which she and her husband are supposed to be interested, are communicated to Eleanor by Mrs. Chadwick, who yields to no born fine lady in existence in fluency of epistolary composition, and in always having 'an immense number of letters to get through.' Mrs. Chadwick delights in letters, dearly loves to live in an avalanche of notes and messages, and never loses an opportunity of despatching telegrams. She has a notion that it is chic to be perpetually busy 'with people and things outside her home, and she has succeeded in accreting to herself a number of fussy little intimacies which don't really mean anything--which would smash and go to pieces under the weight of a real trial, a genuine difficulty, either on her own part or on that of the object of any one of them, but which she maintains with scrupulous care. One result of this is, that she really has a good chance of hearing a great deal about every thing that is 'going on' among a certain set, and within a certain limited sphere of human action and interests, which, however, is quite wide enough for the taste and the intelligence of Mrs. Chadwick and her friends. To be beforehand with the Morning Post is a triumph to her and her like; to be forestalled in its columns of exclusive intelligence concerning any member of the favoured classes, whose movements only are worth study, whose histories only are worth tracing from point to points is a defeat. In such triumphs and such defeats it had always been desperately difficult to interest Eleanor; and it was with something approaching to exultation that Mrs. Chadwick commenced one of the latest of her letters to her sister, previous to Eleanor's return, with the announcement that she had something to tell her which would arouse even her curiosity.
'There really is quite a sensation about it, my dear Eleanor,' wrote Mrs. Chadwick; 'for it appears the Duchess of Matlock used to have a very bad opinion of Lord Forestfield, and always said he drove our poor darling friend to all that happened by his brutal neglect. So that people do think it is a little inconsistent of her to let Lady Amabel marry him, especially as the Duchess is so very evangelical,--family prayers, tracts in the kitchen, and lots of 'Low' curates to luncheon; you know exactly the sort of thing. Mr. Pratt, who really is wonderfully faithful to you in a reflected kind of way--for he's constantly here--told me all about it on Sunday. And he says it's the coal-mine. I don't know whether I told you, by the bye, that coal has been found in a small place of Lord F.'s in the North, and he is going to be ever so rich. Of course I don't quite believe that--one can't, you know, believe a thing of that kind about the dear Duchess--but it is quite certain that Lord F. was never invited to Matlock Park until the rumour of the coal got about; and in three weeks Lady Amabel was engaged to him. The Duchess despises all these rumours; she says it is not coal, but conversion, and that she is thankful her dear Amabel has been chosen by Providence to confirm a repentant sinner in grace. I hope it will be all right; but I could not help thinking of poor Lady Forestfield in her beauty and youth, and regretting he had not repented in her time. Lady Amabel is hideous, I think, and they say she has a violent temper. I hope it is true. The Duchess went to Woodburn the other day, and had every trace of poor Lady F. removed; all her boudoir furniture and a number of pictures have been sold by auction, and that good little Mr. Pratt has bought a lot of both for Sir Nugent; and he declares the Duchess speaks of the poor thing as "that unhappy person whom, of course, we cannot name." Lady Amabel will take her name cheerfully enough, and her place too. James says, "What a blessing the poor thing left no children, to suffer for her misdeeds after her death at the hands of so eminent a Christian as Lady Amabel." I daresay she isn't so bad after all, but James cannot endure that kind of religion. The wedding is to come off in three weeks, at Matlock, and Mr. Pratt says they are already getting the Duke into training, in order that he may look sober, or a least not too drunk, on the occasion.'