“O, mamma!” began poor Rhoda, whose delicacy (and she was sensitively delicate) was severely wounded by this exordium,—“O, mamma, I did nothing! Indeed, indeed, I gave no—I mean—I did not lead—”
And then she stopped, poor girl, from utter inability to make herself understood by the parent whose cold unwomanly eyes were fixed with such unassisting scrutiny on her blushing face. There are mothers and mothers, even as (I was about to say) there are friends and friends: but in using such a conjunction I was wrong, for of that rare hypostasis there can be but one variety; degrees of comparison exist not in that particular noun substantive of the many which signify “to be, to do, and to suffer.” Either a friend’s love passeth the love of woman, and he sticketh closer than a brother, or he is that daily-met-with and more generally-useful thing, id est, a good-natured acquaintance, whose services, should they not chance to interfere with his own requirements, may possibly be at our disposal. But to return to Rhoda Vavasour’s natural friend—to the one being who had it in her power, and whose sacred duty it was, as far as mortal skill can do the heavenly work, to make the crooked straight and the rough places plain to the weaker and the tottering vessel, who was less able than herself to bear the burden and the heat of the day. A few words softly, wisely spoken, a kind caress, the sweet conviction, in some unknown mysterious way conveyed, that she, the mother, was the best, the most heaven-deputed guardian for her child, would have convinced that child, whose experience of life was nil, and who had seen no man save her brothers whom she could compare with the right-minded young rector of Switcham, that an engagement with that reverend gentleman might not be exactly a desirable consummation, or one, save by the good man himself, prudently as well as devoutly to be wished. Rhoda was a girl thoroughly amenable to reason, as well as one whom the silken cords of affection could have led with the lightest, tenderest touch. Delicate of frame, physically as well as mentally, she could ill bear the wear and tear of either excitement or worry; and perhaps George Wallingford had said no more than the truth when he suggested that her life, in the seclusion of a country parsonage, would probably pass more happily away than were the nervous girl to be thrown into the whirlpool of stir and fashion, there to be tossed to and fro amongst the vessels of iron, against which her frailer, humbler self would be hopelessly, maybe, bruised and broken.
To convince Lady Millicent of this truth would, however, have required eloquence far greater than that possessed by the lowly-born clergyman, who certainly had not chosen the very likeliest way in the world to gain his ends. As milady had truly said, there were but two ways of accounting for the reverend gentleman’s preposterous conduct, and neither of those two ways was calculated to throw a roseate hue over the matter. That Rhoda—her favourite, because her most submissive, daughter—had degraded herself to the degree of giving encouragement to “the man” for whose audacity no words were sufficiently severe, caused as much surprise and indignation to the magnificent widow as if she had systematically and kindly encouraged her child to pour out into the maternal breast her cares, her sorrows, and her joys. That a heart, young and love-requiring, will, in default of home aliment, seek elsewhere for its natural, and in some cases even necessary, food, this mother, engrossed by her own plans and projects for personal aggrandisement and power, had never yet suspected. Lady Millicent—a stay-at-home, “domestic” woman, a “widow indeed,” and one of those constitutionally prudent matrons against whom the tongue of scandal never had for a single instant wagged—was precisely one of those individuals with whom self-deception is the very easiest thing in life. Her hopes and wishes, her thoughts and fancies, never—that she could truly have said—soared above or beyond the boundaries of her own property; and the interests of her children, she had taught herself to believe, were the groundwork and the motive power of all the hard, unwomanly business that she had set herself to do.
“You are not aware, perhaps,” she said coldly to the poor girl who stood unconsciously doubling down and plaiting with her trembling fingers the fringe of the table-cover that hung near her,—“you are not aware, I daresay, that, unless I succeed—for the benefit of my younger children—in a law-suit which is in progress, your fortune, as well as Katherine’s, will be very trifling indeed. Had your poor father lived, there would, of course, have been an opportunity of remedying this evil, this injustice,” she added firmly, and with a stress upon the word which poor Rhoda was far too much engrossed by her own troubles to notice. “I tell you this, not that you may suppose that, under any circumstances, you could have been permitted to disgrace your family by marrying this extraordinarily presumptuous person, but because I wish you to understand that a good marriage may be positively necessary, both for you and for Katherine. By the way, now that we are on this disagreeable subject, will you allow me to ask whether she—whether your sister, who seems to me to be self-willed and forward enough for anything—knew of this—this disgraceful entanglement: for entanglement, Rhoda,” she went on severely, “there must have been. Poor as my opinion naturally is of the intellect of a person who could write such a letter as that” (pointing to it contemptuously), “quoting Scripture too in such a personal and impertinent manner, still I cannot believe that the man could have been such an egregious fool, could have been so preposterously silly, as to have written to me, if you—just look at me, will you, instead of at the carpet—had not said or done something to authorise his presumption.”
The cold eyes fixed upon the now tearful face before her seemed to command as well as to expect an answer. None, however, came; so, still more authoritatively, Lady Millicent—could she find no better way of improving her talents (id est, her children) and of showing her appreciation of the legacy committed to her charge, than by thus torturing the feelings of Cecil Vavasour’s young daughter?—Lady Millicent pressed the question to which she had hitherto received none but the least comprehensible of replies.
“Answer me. Really I have no more time to waste. Had you any idea that this Mr. Wallingford intended making the application which strikes me as so extraordinary?”
With some difficulty, Rhoda managed to stammer forth a negative. “Indeed no,” she said; “and, mamma, Kate knew no more about it than I did. I never told her—I mean, I—”
She stopped suddenly, her face the colour of the setting sun when, “cradled in vermilion,” it throws its red reflection over slope and mountain, land and river. On her cheek and brow and slender neck the tell-tale witness rushed; and Lady Millicent—well aware that her guileless daughter knew and felt that she had committed herself—said, even more coldly than before:
“You are a poor dissembler, Rhoda. You may go to your room now. Of course you allowed this man, this hypocritical good clergyman, to lead you into deception. You let him fancy—for it is only fancy on your part—that—”
“O mamma,—dear mamma,” the girl cried in an agony of shame and grief, “if you would only listen to me,—only believe that I never did, never could have done all you say! I wish I could tell you how it was; and yet it seems—indeed it does—as if I had nothing—nothing really to tell. We used to meet—Mr. Wallingford and I—sometimes at the school, and at the poor people’s cottages. He is so good, mamma,” gaining a little courage when she found herself listened to without rebuke. “If you could but know how much the sick and the old think of him, and all he does for them, you would not wonder at—”