“As you like—as you like,” he said; “you are more likely to want me, I can tell you, than I am to want you.”
Frederick answered nothing: his mind was torn in pieces. Could he have had strength to go away, to break those fatal chains which in a day—in a moment—had been thrown over him, he would have done it. A sudden impulse to fly came over him; but a hundred past yieldings to temptation had sapped the strength of his nature, and taken away from him all power to make such a strenuous resistance to his own wishes. The self-willed, proud young man put down his head and licked the dust before the coarse beauty who had stolen away his wits, and the coarse man whose familiarity was so odious to him. He turned from the father, and addressed himself with eager adoration to the daughter; and, perhaps because Amanda was a thorough coquette, and enjoyed her own cleverness in pitting one admirer against another—perhaps because the misery and earnestness in the eyes of her new slave softened her, she was friendly to him for the rest of the evening, and wrapped his foolish soul in happiness. Before they parted he was made happy by another invitation. They were but to be two nights more in town, and one of these evenings Frederick was to spend with them.
“Be sure and find out for me the very nicest thing that is to be played in London,” she said, turning round to him as she left the theatre, though the rival had her hand on his arm. The sweetness of this preference, the sign she made to him as the carriage drove away, contented, and more than contented, Frederick. He went home happy; he got through—he did not know how—the intervening time. Next afternoon he went to call on her, at one moment gaining a few words, which made him blessed, at another turning away with his pride lacerated and his heart bleeding. The succession of ups and downs was enough to have given variety to months of ordinary love-making. Frederick was tossed from delight to despair, and back again. He was jibed at, flattered, made use of, tormented, and consoled. Had he been a man of finer mind, he might possibly have been disgusted; but it is astonishing what even men of the finest minds will submit to under the force of such an imperious passion. They console themselves by the conclusion that all women are the same, and that theirs is the common fate. If Frederick had any time to think in the hurry of emotion and excitement which swept him as into the vortex of a whirlpool, he excused Miss ’Manda’s cruelties and caprices by this explanation. All women who possessed, as she did, those glorious gifts of beauty—all the Cleopatras of existence—were like her; they had to be worshipped blindly, not considered as reasonable creatures. Reason! what had reason to do with those shoulders, those cheeks, those eyes?
The evening came at last—the evening of rapture and misery which he was to spend by her side, but which was to be the last. He counted how many hours it could be lengthened out to, and gave himself up to the enjoyment, not daring to forecast to himself what he might say or do before that cycle of happiness was ended. He dressed himself with so much care that Mrs. Eastwood, who had never forgotten that enthusiastic description of Miss Batty, felt an uneasiness for which she could give no very distinct reason. This time the roses in the conservatory were not enough for Frederick. He had brought one from Covent Garden, carefully wrapped up in cotton wool; and he spoiled half-a-dozen ties before he could tie one to his satisfaction. His mother peeped at him from the door of her room as he went down-stairs. In consequence of their play-going propensities, the Battys had to dine early. It was but half-past six when Frederick left The Elms in his hansom, which he had taken the trouble to order beforehand. Mrs. Eastwood opened her window, with a faint hope that perhaps the wind might convey his instructions to the driver to her anxious ear. She withdrew blushing, poor soul, when this attempt proved unsuccessful. It was almost dishonourable—like listening at a door. When one does not succeed in a little wile of this description, one realizes how ignoble was the attempt.
“Of course, if I had asked him where he was going, he would have told me,” she said to herself.
But the truth was that Frederick had so often returned disagreeable answers to such questions, and had made so many remarks upon the curiosity of women, &c., that the household had ceased to inquire into his movements. He was the only one of the family whose comings and goings were not open as daylight to whomsoever cared to see.
His heart beat higher and higher as he threaded the streets and approached the second-rate London inn which was to him the centre of the world. When he was shown into the room, however, in which dinner was prepared as usual, he went in upon a scene for which he was totally unprepared. Seated by the fire, which had suddenly become unnecessary by a change in the weather, and which made the little room very stuffy and hot, was Amanda, wrapped in a great shawl. Her usual sublime evening toilette had been exchanged for a white dressing-gown, all frills and bows of ribbon. High up on her cheeks, just under her eyes, were two blazing spots of pink. Her face, except for these, was pale and drawn. The sound of her voice, fretful and impatient, was the first thing Frederick heard. By her sat a middle-aged woman in an elaborate cap with flowers. There was a medicine bottle on the mantelpiece. Frederick rushed forward, in wonder and dismay.
“Miss Batty—Good God, you are ill——!”
“You may see that, I think, without asking,” said Amanda; “when one is well one does not show like this, I hope. The last night, too—the last time for ages I shall have the least chance of enjoying myself, or having a little fun. Oh, it is too shocking! When one is at home, with nothing going on, one does not mind; it is always something to occupy one. Oh, go away please. Dine somewhere with papa. He is waiting for you outside; never mind me. Oh, aunty, can’t you be still—rustling and rustling for ever and ever, and setting all my nerves on edge.”
A sudden blackness came over Frederick’s soul. “Dine somewhere with papa.” Good heavens! was that the entertainment offered to him after all his hopes? He stood transfixed as it were, immovable in a blank and horrible pause of disappointment. The close room and the sudden revulsion of feeling made him sick and faint. His perfect and faultless costume, the delicate rosebud in his coat, his tie which it had taken him so much trouble to bring to perfection, his boots upon which he had been so careful not to have a speck—all struck Amanda with relenting as she looked at him, and finally roused her a little out of her absorption in her own troubles. He looked such a gentleman! Miss Batty belonged to that class which is given to describe its heroes as “looking like gentlemen,” with often an uneasy sense that the looks are the only things gentlemanlike about them. Frederick impressed her profoundly and suddenly by this means. She relented as she looked at him.