Elizabeth's Campaign

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

The thought scared and repelled her. If that were indeed the case, she would bid Mannering a long and final farewell.

But no!—she reassured herself; she recalled the Squire's passionate absorption in his archæological pursuits; how his dependence upon her, his gratitude to her, his surprising fits of docility, were all due to the fact that she helped him to pursue them—that his mind sharpened itself against hers—that her hand and brain were the slaves of his restless intelligence.

That was all—that must, that should be all. She thought vigorously of the intellectual comradeships of history—beginning with Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna. They were not certainly quite on all fours with her own situation—but give modern life and the new woman time!

Suppose, then, these anxieties set at rest, and that immediately, within twenty-four hours, or a week, the Squire were to ask her to marry him and were ready to understand the matter as she did—what else stood in the way?

Then, slowly, in the darkness of the room, there rose before her the young figures of the twins, with their arms round each other's necks, as she had often seen them—Desmond and Pamela. And they looked at her with hostile eyes!

'Cuckoo!—intriguer!—we don't want you!—we won't accept you!'

But after all, as Elizabeth reflected not without a natural exasperation, she was not—consciously—a cuckoo; she was not an intriguer; there was nothing of the Becky Sharp about her at all; it would have been so very much simpler if there had been! To swallow the Squire and Mannering at one gulp, to turn out the twins, to put Mrs. Gaddesden—who, as Elizabeth had already discovered, was constantly making rather greedy demands upon her father—on rations according to her behaviour, to bring in her own poor mother and all her needy relations—to reign supreme, in fact, over Mannering and the county—nothing would be easier.

The only thing that stood in the way was that the Squire's secretary happened to be a nice woman—and not an adventuress. Elizabeth's sense of humour showed her the kind of lurid drama that Pamela no doubt was concocting about her—perhaps with the help of Beryl—the two little innocents! Elizabeth recalled the intriguing French 'companion' in War and Peace who inveigles the old Squire. And as for the mean and mercenary stepmothers of fiction, they can be collected by the score. That, no doubt, was how Pamela thought of her. So that, after her involuntary tears, Elizabeth ended in a laughter that was half angry, half affectionate.

Poor children! She was not going to turn them out of their home. She had written to Pamela during her absence with her mother, asking again for an explanation of the wild and whirling things that Pamela had said to her that night in the hall, and in return not a single frank or penitent word!—only a few perfunctory enquiries after Mrs. Bremerton, and half a page about an air-raid. It left Elizabeth sorer and more puzzled than before.

Desmond too! She had written to him also from London a long chat about all the things he cared about at Mannering—the animals, Pamela's pony, the old keeper, the few pheasants still left in the woods, and what Perley said of the promise of a fair partridge season. And the boy had replied immediately. Desmond's Eton manners were rarely caught napping; but the polite little note—stiff and frosty—might have been written to a complete stranger.