“Dinner was laid here,” she said, “as you see—but I don’t think I could stand it,—and then when one is not dressed or anything—it would not be nice for you——”
“It is perfectly nice for me,” said Frederick, coming to life again—“a thousand times more nice than anything else. Your dress is always perfect, whatever it may be. Let me stay! What do I care for dining or anything else? Let me be with you. Let me read to you. Don’t send me into outer darkness——”
“Oh, how you do talk, Mr. Eastwood,” said Amanda, though with a smile. “No, of course you must dine. We must all dine. No, now go away. I could not have it. Let some one call papa, and you can go with him——” she paused for a moment, enjoying the blank misery that once more fell upon Frederick’s face; then added suddenly,—“On second thoughts, after all, it might amuse me. Aunty, ring the bell. If you are sure you don’t mind my dressing gown—and the room being so warm—and aunty being here,—and the medicine bottle, and the big fire,—well, perhaps,” she said, pausing to laugh in a breathless way,—“you may stay.”
If the Queen had created him Earl of Eastwood with corresponding revenues, it would have been nothing to the bliss of this moment. He drew a footstool to her feet and sat down on it, half kneeling, and made his inquiries.—What was it? How was it? was she suffering? did she feel ill? had she a doctor, the best doctor that London could produce, Jenner, Gull, somebody that could be trusted? Amanda informed him that it was heart disease from which she was suffering, an intimation which she made not without complacency, but which Frederick felt to pierce him like a horrible, sudden arrow—and that “Aunty” here present, whom she introduced with a careless wave of her hand, knew exactly what to do.
“It is dreadful, isn’t it, to think I might die any moment?” she said with a smile.
“Good God!” Frederick said, with unaffected horror, “it cannot be true!” and he sat, stricken dumb, gazing at her, the tears forcing themselves to his eyes. Mr. Batty entered at this moment, and the man, who was human and a father, was touched by this evidence of emotion. He wrung Frederick’s hand and whispered him aside.
“It ain’t as bad as it seems,” he said. “We daren’t cross her. If she wanted the moon I’d have to tell her we’d get it somehow. We’ve known for years that she wasn’t to be crossed; but barring that, I hope all’s pretty safe. It’s bad for her temper, poor girl, but I’m not afraid of her life.”
Frederick spent such an evening as he had never spent in his life. He sat at Amanda’s feet and read to her, and talked to her, and listened to her chatter, which was soft and subdued, for she was languid after her spasms. Mr. Batty sat by most part of the evening admiring, and so did the person called Aunty, who kept in constant attendance. Frederick could not throw himself at Miss ’Manda’s feet according to conventional form; he could not declare his love and entreat her to marry him, as he was burning to do, for he was not permitted a minute alone with her. But short of that, he said everything that a man in love could do. He told his adoration by a hundred signs and inferences. And he went home in such a whirl of sentiment and emotion as I cannot attempt to describe. His love was frantic, yet so tinged and imbued with a sense of the virtuous and domestic character of this evening of complete happiness, that he felt as good as he was blessed. She was going away; that was the only drawback to his rapture; and even that impressed a certain intense and ecstatic character upon it, as of a flower snatched from the edge of a precipice of despair.
CHAPTER XXI.
A FAMILY DINNER.
While this wild love-fever of Frederick’s had run its course, Nelly’s little drama had also enacted itself, and the interview between Mrs. Eastwood and Mr. Molyneux, Q.C., had taken place, so that the moment had been an exciting one in the family story. The young people were absorbed in their different adventures, and it was only the mother who felt, even though she did not know, all that was going on, on either hand. She did not know what it was which had moved Frederick so much out of his usual composure, which had made him “engaged” and inaccessible to all family invitations or arrangements during one entire week. He had never mentioned Miss Batty or her beauty again, but he had been engaged every evening, going out early and staying late, and making no allusion to where he had been. Indeed during that period he had scarcely seen any of the family, except his mother herself, who had waited to pour out his coffee for him at breakfast, and who saw by his hurried manner and self-absorbed looks that something more than ordinary must be going on. But he had offered no confidences, and Mrs. Eastwood had not gone so far as to ask for any, partly from pride, and partly from a compassionate unwillingness to disturb him any more than he was already disturbed. The time when she could inquire into his troubles and set them right was over. But she was uneasy about him, not knowing what to think, anxious and unhappy; and she was still more distinctly disturbed about the Molyneux business, and the engagements which she might be forced into, against her will and her judgment, on Nelly’s account. The shadow which thus had come upon her overshadowed the whole house, as I have already said. It irritated Ernest Molyneux, and it made Nelly unhappy. Nelly, poor child, had never known what it was to have any cross influences in her life before. She had never been pulled two ways, never divided in her affections or her allegiance. Few people appreciate the difference this makes in a girl’s life. She is taken suddenly in the midst of an existence which is all tender, filial duty, or that sweet counterfeit of filial duty which animates the child’s mind who has a large part in deciding the will of the parent who guides her, and is unconsciously the inspiration of the very laws she obeys. This had been Nelly’s case. She and her mother had been as one soul—the one ruling, the other obeying, but neither able to discriminate from which came the original impulse; and now she felt herself suddenly placed in a position, if not of antagonism to her mother, yet at least of tenderest sympathy and union with one who declared himself so far her mother’s antagonist. This curious turn and twist of circumstances made the girl giddy,—it gave an uncertainty to all things, it confused her old ideas, the ideas which she had held as unchangeable till the day before yesterday, when they were suddenly undermined, and all her old gods made to totter in their shrines.