“Oh! yes, for good,” said Gussy, with a flash in her eyes, which he, not very brilliant in his perceptions, took for indignation at Edgar’s presumption.
“He is a cheeky beggar,” said unconscious Harry; “a setting down will do him good.”
But though his heart was full of his own affairs, he thought it best, on the whole, to defer the confidence with which he meant to honour Lady Augusta, to a more convenient season. Harry was not particularly bright, and he felt his own concerns to be so infinitely more important than anything concerning “the girls,” that the two things could not be put in comparison; but yet the immediate precedent of the sending away of Gussy’s lover was perhaps not quite the best that could be wished for the favourable hearing of Harry’s love. Besides, Lady Augusta was not so amiable that day as she often was. She was surrounded by a flutter of girls, putting questions, teasing her for replies, which she seemed very little disposed to give; and Harry had somewhat fallen in his mother’s opinion, since it had been proved that to have him “on the spot” had really been quite inefficacious for her purpose. Her confidence in him had been so unjustifiably great, though Harry was totally ignorant of it, that her unexpected disapproval was in proportion now.
“It was not Harry’s fault,” Ada had ventured to say. “How could he guide events that happened in London when he was at Tottenham’s?”
“He ought to have paid more attention,” was all that Lady Augusta said. And unconsciously she turned a cold shoulder to Harry, rather glad, on the whole, that there was somebody, rightly or wrongly, to blame.
So Harry returned to Tottenham’s with his aunt, hurriedly proffering a visit a few days after. Nobody perceived the suppressed excitement with which he made this offer, for the house was too full of the stir of one storm, scarcely blown over, to think of another. He went back, accordingly, into the country stillness, and spent another lingering twilight hour with Margaret. How different the atmosphere seemed to be in which she was! It was another world to Harry; he seemed to himself a better man. How kind he felt towards the little girl!—he who would have liked to kick Phil, and thought the Tottenham children so ridiculously out of place, brought to the front, as they always were. When little Sibby was “brought to the front,” her mother seemed but to gain a grace the more, and in the cottage Harry was a better man. He took down with him the loveliest bouquet of flowers that could be got in Covent Garden, and a few plants in pots, the choicest of their kind, and quite unlikely, had he known it, to suit the atmosphere of the poky little cottage parlour.
Mr. Franks had begun to move out of the doctor’s house, and very soon the new family would be able to make their entrance. Margaret and her brother were going to town to get some furniture, and Harry volunteered to give them the benefit of his experience, and join their party.
“But we want cheap things,” Margaret said, true to her principle of making no false pretences that could be dispensed with. This did not in the least affect Harry; he would have stood by and listened to her cheapening a pot or kettle with a conviction that it was the very best thing to do. There are other kinds of love, and some which do not so heartily accept as perfect all that is done by their object; and there are different stages of love, in not all of which, perhaps, is this beautiful satisfaction apparent; but at present Harry could see nothing wrong in the object of his adoration. Whatever she did was right, graceful, beautiful—the wisest and the best. I do not suppose it is in the nature of things that this lovely and delightful state of sentiment could last—but for the moment so it was. And thus, while poor Lady Augusta passed her days peacefully enough—half happy, half wretched, now allowing herself to listen to Gussy’s anticipations, now asking bitterly how on earth they expected to exist—this was preparing for her which was to turn even the glory of Mary’s approaching wedding into misery, and overwhelm the whole house of Thornleigh with dismay. So blind is human nature, that Lady Augusta had not the slightest apprehension about Harry. He, at least, was out of harm’s way—so long as the poor boy could find anything to amuse him in the country—she said to herself, with a sigh of satisfaction and relief.
At the other Tottenham’s, things were settling down after the Entertainment, and happily the result had been so gratifying and successful that all the feuds and searching of hearts had calmed down. The supper had been “beautiful,” the guests gracious, the enjoyment almost perfect. Thereafter, to his dying day, Mr. Robinson was able to quote what Her Grace the Duchess of Middlemarch had said to him on the subject of his daughter’s performance, and the Duchess’s joke became a kind of capital for the establishment, always ready to be drawn upon. No other establishment had before offered a subject of witty remark (though Her Grace, good soul, was totally unaware of having been witty) to a Duchess—no other young ladies and gentlemen attached to a house of business had ever hobbed and nobbed with the great people in society. The individuals who had sent in resignations were too glad to be allowed to forget them, and Mr. Tottenham was in the highest feather, and felt his scheme to have prospered beyond his highest hopes.
“There is nothing so humanizing as social intercourse,” he said. “I don’t say my people are any great things, and we all know that society, as represented by Her Grace of Middlemarch, is not overwhelmingly witty or agreeable—eh, Earnshaw? But somehow, in the clash of the two extremes, something is struck out—a spark that you could not have otherwise—a really improving influence. I have always thought so; and, thank heaven, I have lived to carry out my theory.”