It was about this time that another person appeared on the family scene, a man about whom none of the Eastwoods felt any particular interest, or rather, against whom they had all a decided prejudice. This was John Vane, a distant cousin of Innocent’s father, a squire in the north country, with considerable, but poor estates, who had lived a wandering life for some years, and who was considered by all who knew him “eccentric,” to say the least. His true name was Reginald or Roland, or something of a sentimental and ornamental description represented by the letter R; but Society, which has a way of identifying character by this simple means, called him John. He was a man of three or four and thirty, with a brown complexion tanned by much exposure to wind and weather, and a golden brown beard, which was the chief feature about him to a stranger. His hair had worn off his temples, and he had a threatening of baldness, as if the forest on his chin had drawn all his locks downwards. His forehead was clear and open and white, in contrast with the tanned and much-lined surface of the more exposed parts of his face. He was by no means the nearest or even a near relation of Innocent, but he had lost no time in seeking her out. He arrived on the very day when this first touch of doubt and pain came into Nelly’s belief in her lover; and it was by no means a happy household in which the new comer appeared one bright spring morning shortly after the events we have been telling. His mission was to ask what had become of his cousin’s child, to ascertain in the most delicate way possible what was her position in her aunt’s house, and to offer her, should that prove necessary, a refuge in his own. He made this offer with so much grace and natural kindness that Mrs. Eastwood’s prejudices against him fled like the morning dew. She was prejudiced against everything (except poor Innocent) that bore the name of Vane, and against this John Vane in particular, whose father had been a man of very unsettled opinions, and who was understood to have been badly brought up. Innocent, too, poor child, had been very badly brought up, and Mrs. Eastwood shuddered at the idea of what might follow if the one uninstructed nature was put into the hands of the other. But Mr. John Vane had that sure passport to a woman’s favour—a frank and open countenance, and a pair of smiling eyes which met your gaze frankly. He made so pleasant an impression that Mrs. Eastwood ended by inviting him to a very solemn dinner party which was to take place at her house that evening—a dinner at which “the Molyneuxes” were to be present, though the negotiations between Ernest’s side and Nelly’s side were yet far from being completed. Major Railton, who had been one of the invited guests, had felt his courage fail him at the last moment, and had sent an excuse on account of his health. “Mr. Vane is a kind of a connexion,” Mrs. Eastwood said, doubtfully, when she explained the change to her son. Frederick, who was full of other thoughts, made no objection, and Mr. Vane, who was not less pleased with his new acquaintances than they were with him, accepted frankly. This dinner-party was a very great event in the family; and though dinner-parties are not generally exciting occurrences, I may perhaps be pardoned, for the sake of the issues, if I dwell upon it a little. The chief guests were the Molyneuxes—Mr. and Mrs. and Miss, the latter of whom we may drop out of the present history, having already enough people on our hands. They were both of opinion that Mrs. Eastwood had “kept her eye upon” Ernest for years, and that Nelly had made “a dead set” at him; and they were accordingly dignified and a little condescending in their cordiality. Mr. and Mrs. Brotherton also formed part of the company, along with two other of Mrs. Eastwood’s advisers—Mr. Parchemin and Mrs. Everard; and the party was made up to the number of sixteen (which was all that could be comfortably accommodated at the Elms dinner table) by the presence of Sir Alexis Longueville and his sister. In opposition to the selection of this guest, Nelly had put forth the moral objections to him which her lover had on a certain evening pressed so warmly upon her, but had found, to her great amazement, that Ernest laughed at the whole matter, and declared Longueville one of the best fellows going; while Mrs. Eastwood silenced her with some indignation, declaring that she had known him for twenty years, and would not have any old scandals raked up. Poor Nelly, who knew nothing about the old scandals, but who felt the whole responsibility thrown upon her, withdrew, hot with angry blushes, from the discussion, feeling as if she had shown a shameful knowledge of the evil reports of the past, which the poor child was, in fact, as ignorant of as a baby. “We must forgive and forget,” even Ernest said to her. “Don’t be such a terrible moralist, Nelly.” This, too, wounded poor Nelly, in the ignorance and innocence of her youth.
The dinner went off as such dinners do everywhere. There was a great display of all the Eastwood plate, and the meal itself lasted two hours and a half, and included everything that was out of season, and all that was most costly in the way of eating and drinking. Mrs. Eastwood, at the head of her own table, with Sir Alexis on one side of her and Mr. Molyneux on the other, tried her very best to feel no sort of opposition to the latter, and to look as if nothing but family love and union was symbolized by their meeting. Frederick, at the other end, with his head full of Amanda Batty, endeavoured to give his best attention to the gorgeous Mrs. Barclay and the dignified Mrs. Molyneux. He had his Charles the First look upon him, and he was not judged severely by these ladies, who thought him superior to the rest of the family, and very probably worried by his mother, whom Mrs. Molyneux considered a scheming and worldly person. The other members of the party had, no doubt, their own cares; but their cares do not concern us greatly, except in so far as Nelly was concerned, whose poor little heart was wounded and her mind confused, and who, in her position of fiancée, felt this sort of formal reception of her by her lover’s parents to suggest all kinds of strange doubts and miseries, and to throw uncertainty instead of security upon the bond which had been tied so tightly, yet so happily, in the cold, half-frozen garden but a little while before. No doubt that she loved Ernest Molyneux, or that his love made her perfectly happy, had crossed her mind then. She had been as full of gentle bliss as a girl could be, when she had stolen in with him into the drawing-room in the firelight, frightened lest any one should see how he held her hand, and yet unable to conceive how anything or any one in the world could be ignorant of the new great flood of light and joy which had flooded earth and heaven. In that beatific moment, however, no idea of settlements or negotiations, or the suggestion that Ernest might have done better, or that it was his business and hers to try to get as much as they could, had entered into her mind. There are well-seasoned and justly-regulated minds, even of twenty, which understand all these accessories as well as the oldest of us, and have no nonsense about them, and are robust enough to enter into the whole question “as a matter of business.” But Nelly was not one of these. She had a great deal of nonsense about her. She was shocked, chilled, brought to a stand suddenly, in the first outset of her independent career. Her love seemed to have ceased to be real, now that it was being talked about and struggled over, and Ernest, Ernest himself——. She would not say, even in the depths of her own heart, any more than this; but her poor little heart gave an inarticulate cry when he opened up his philosophy to her with so much confidence, and congratulated himself that she knew nothing of business. Nelly did not know whether, perhaps, among the strange confusions of this world, he might not be right. She saw no way out of the maze. She did not know how she herself, if left to herself, could have bettered it; but her instinctive sense of what was noble and ignoble, lovely and unlovely, was deeply wounded. She was put out of harmony with herself and every one. If life was so—if such gulfs were ready to open under your feet at your very first step in it, was it worth living? Such was the painful question, not yet put into words, that breathed through poor Nelly’s heart.
Mr. John Vane was on one side of her, and Ernest on the other; but Mrs. Everard, who was a great conversationalist, had taken possession of young Molyneux, and was putting him through a catechism. Nelly did not feel herself capable of talk, but the kind looks of her next neighbour were comforting, and he was touched by her downcast, yet bright, face.
“Miss Eastwood,” he said, “may I guess at something? I am a stranger, but I am a connexion. You know your mother admitted my claims. This is a solemn family assembly to celebrate something that is to make your happiness. Have I guessed rightly; and will you forgive me, and let me make my congratulations too?”
Nelly looked up, blushing and bright and sorry, and very much tempted to cry. “Oh, Mr. Vane, I can’t bear it,” she said.
“What, not the happiness? I could bear a great deal of it if it ever came my way.”
“Has it never come your way?” said Nelly, looking at him wistfully. “But I did not mean—the happiness. I have always been very happy. It is the family assembly, and the talk, and the congratulations. If you don’t know, you can’t think how they hurt, how they——”
“Take the bloom off?”
“I suppose that is it,” said Nelly, with a soft little sigh.
Vane, who had a great deal more experience than she gave him credit for, looked past her at her lover, and concluded, on perfectly insufficient grounds, that Molyneux was not worthy of Nelly. The ladies of Ernest’s family were not only convinced of the fact that Nelly was quite unworthy of him, but that Frederick also was really misplaced in such a family. Why such ideas should be so readily entertained by the different halves of humanity, I cannot tell. It was something in Nelly’s tone and something in the cut of Ernest’s nose which decided Mr. Vane.