“I shall make a point of calling upon Mrs Bennett this afternoon,” said Mrs Featherly, who had been listening in blank amazement, “so that I may learn exactly what has happened. Mr Warren the son of a baronet! Well, I must say he has always performed his duties in an exemplary manner, and I shall be quite glad to show him a little attention, that he may see we appreciate it. It is certainly one’s duty to do so. I shall make a point of it.” Even Mrs Bennett had been raised to something like excitement, when her husband told her of Mr Warren’s sudden prosperity.
“So much happens every day that it quite takes away my breath,” she said comfortably from the soft chair in which she was sitting. “Then, my dear Tom, Mr Warren will not stay with you? Dear me, Ada, you and I shall be quite sorry to lose him, he has really always made himself so pleasant and so attentive. I hope he will come and tell us all about it. And the poor young man who is dead, how sudden for him! Only three-and-twenty, too!”
“He takes it very properly,” said Mr Bennett, rubbing his hands. “Of course it puts me to a little inconvenience, and he spoke very well about it, very well. Offered to stay, and said quite the right thing. But I should not take any advantage of that sort, as you may suppose. He’ll go to the University, I imagine, and probably to the bar afterwards. Odd world, Ada, my dear, isn’t it?” As for Ada, the tears had rushed suddenly into her eyes. She murmured something in reply, but the weight of disappointment which she felt almost frightened herself, and when she made a faint attempt to assure herself that Mr Warren was nothing to her, it was only to become conscious that he was truly the embodiment of those things for which she most cared,—brightness, compliments, admiration, attention; and now—how much more besides! Ada was only romantic when romance did not interfere with more solid comforts, but to have all within her reach, and yet to be obliged to turn away, was a trial which touched her sorely. It seemed to develop a vein of bitterness, as opposed as possible to the petty prettinesses of her life, which made her thoroughly uncomfortable, and which she tried to dignify by the name of misery, although her feelings were at no time deep enough to admit of strong names. It added to her vexation that, so short a time ago, Anthony should himself have offered to free her from her engagement. Her vanity found so pleasant an excuse for his words in setting them down to a fear on his part that she should not be fully satisfied, that she felt no anger towards him for what he had said, but it provoked her that it should not have been later, when she might have been guided by these new circumstances. Marriage with Mr Warren had hitherto been out of the question; and now that its possibility was suddenly presented to her, Ada wept the bitterest tears of disappointment she had ever shed in her life. People with whom life has gone smoothly are not disposed to admit of any course of events whereby they are defrauded, as they think, of the good things that yet should fall to their share; the very shadow of withdrawal astonishes them in a manner which is not without its pathetic side to those who have tasted draughts out of the depths. There is, too, in these natures, often a curious power of centralisation, so that their own life becomes the point round which all others revolve, and in relation to which all others are considered. Ada would have understood the sin of another girl acting in what the world would call a heartless fashion; yet, so far as Anthony’s heart was concerned, she looked at it only as made for the satisfaction of her own; so that it would not have entered her head that suffering which seemed wrong and unendurable for herself might not properly have fallen to his share, and indeed there was, perhaps, a feeling as if a balance were struck with Providence, by admitting the necessity of tribulation for other people. It was not the pain she might inflict which weighed upon her now, but a vague dissatisfied conviction that her uncle and aunt would not permit her to throw over Anthony; a kind of dim sense, it might be, of honour, growing out of an atmosphere which, if easily selfish, was not dishonourable. Marrying him, she would feel all her life long that a great injury had been done her, yet she was aware that, cruel as it was, she might be called upon to endure this wrong.
Things seemed so harshly upset that, for the first time in her life, Ada caught sight of her tear-stained face in the glass, and her pretty eyes swollen and discoloured, without any answering impulse being awakened to put aside what so greatly marred her beauty, as easily crushed as a flower by a storm. On the contrary, she was touched by a sort of despair that the prettiness of which she was wholly conscious could not, after all, give her what she had a right to expect from it. It was a curious petty turmoil, yet for one of Ada’s nature it marked serious disturbance that she should have gone down stairs after only languidly pushing back her hair, without the usual marks of trim order which characterised her, and that she should have been pettish in her answers to her aunt. She was so evidently out of spirits when Anthony came in, that it was impossible for him not to remark it, but he was almost grateful for the change. Her constant flow of smiles grew at times to be full of weariness, the weariness which makes people feel conscience-stricken at the little repulsion that rises up. He looked very ill, and unlike a man from whom a heavy burden had just been lifted. Is it not so often?—what we want comes, and it is no longer what we want,—the load is taken off, but we would fain have it back again, if its weight might only be exchanged for the aching pain that has grown up elsewhere; we rail at the present, and lo, it passes away, and in its vanishing shadow we see the glory of an angel’s face, and stretch out our hands with vain weeping.
Anthony Miles had come that day with a determination to press his marriage, and to take Ada away from Underham. They would settle in London, by which he knew that he should fulfil one of Ada’s dreams, and there he would fling himself into work with a will, if not with much heart. Something of that shame of disappointment which scourges into fresh energy was upon him. He had resolved to be very gentle with Ada, and the change in her manner made it more easy than usual. She was sitting listlessly in an arm-chair near the fire, for her grief would never be likely to interfere with her comforts, and at this moment a sense of injury was uppermost, for which she instinctively felt compensations to be her due.
“I am afraid you have another headache,” said Anthony, standing before her, and looking down, with a vague compassion in his heart.
“Nobody thinks anything about my headaches,” said Ada, in a complaining voice. “When Aunt Henrietta is ill herself, she makes a great fuss about it, but she never cares about other people. This place does not agree with me; Dr Fletcher has always said so, but they will not believe him.”
“Will you let me take you away from it, then?” said Anthony, speaking sadly, but kindly, and trying to put away all thoughts but care for her. “London, you know, might suit you better.”
“Are you talking about our marrying?” Ada’s face lit up for a moment with a vision of her wedding-dress, but dropped again into its new expression of dissatisfied listlessness. “My uncle must settle all that.”
“But you do not object?”