“And would it be impertinent of a stranger, who is a connexion, to ask if it is all settled,” he said, “and when it is to be?”
“Nothing is settled,” said Nelly, with a deeper blush than ever; and after a pause she turned to him with a despairing simplicity, which he did not quite understand. “Mr. Vane,” she said, “I should like to ask you something. You say it has never come your way. Yet you look as if one might ask you things. Do you think that people, relations, those who have been each other’s dearest friends—or more than friends—I mean,” said Nelly, “one’s father or mother even—do you think they change to you, when your interests are in opposition to theirs?”
“One’s father or mother?” said Vane, trying to follow her thought; “but that must be so rare a case, Miss Eastwood.”
“You think so too?” said Nelly brightly, recovering herself in a moment. “That is my opinion; but they tell me I know nothing of the world. How can one’s interests be in opposition to those of one’s own people? Since ever I have known anything, I have been taught the contrary. I am so glad you think as I do.”
“But stop a little,” said Vane, “perhaps we are going too far. Suppose we were to take an instance. Regan and Goneril felt their interests to be in opposition to their father’s, and it did make a great change in them. If we were to ask more than we ought from our nearest relation, it would wound his sense of justice and his trust in us; even love might be impaired. I have known men who threw themselves upon their friends to save them from ruin, real or supposed, and to whom there was no change of feeling. And I have known others who made demands upon the same friends for no greater sacrifice, to whom it was given with a sore heart and a deep sense of injury. All the difference depends upon the circumstances.”
Nelly grew wistful again; she was not satisfied. “Tell me this, then,” she said in a low voice, which he had to stoop to hear. “Is it natural that we should be always trying how much we can get, and they how little they can give?”
“Any one who told you so,” said Vane indignantly, “must have the lowest and meanest conception”—then he caught Nelly’s eye with a mingled look of fright and entreaty in it, which at the moment he could make nothing of, but which touched some instinct in his mind more capable of action than reason, and compelled him to change his tone. “I mean,” he said, with a forced laugh, “that this is the conventional way in which we speak in society, which sounds terrible but means nothing. It is the fashionable cynical view, which we all pretend to take to hide the real feeling, which it is not English to show. How didactic you have made me, Miss Eastwood, and what a serious strain we have drifted into! I am afraid you will never sit next to me again.”
“Indeed, I will, and like it,” said honest Nelly, smiling at him with her heart in her eyes. It seemed to Nelly that here was a sort of big brother, kinder than Frederick, wiser than Dick, who had suddenly come to her aid to disentangle for her that ravelled skein which had troubled her mind so much. She turned round to Ernest forthwith, and whispered something to him with a sweet compunction, to make up for the injustice she had done him in her heart. Mr. Vane, I am sorry to say, was not moved with like sentiments. He gave a short, audible breath of impatience through his nostrils, which he ought not to have done, and glanced at young Molyneux over Nelly’s head, and said to himself, “Confound the fellow!” I have observed that, towards a young man in Ernest’s position, this is a common sentiment—with men.
Innocent was on her cousin’s other side. Mrs. Eastwood had hesitated much about this, feeling that at sixteen, and with no education, the girl ought not perhaps to be allowed to assist at a dinner party. But Mr. Vane’s presence and the family character of the whole ceremony decided her. It was a very poor pleasure to Innocent. She was dressed in a black tulle dress, like nothing she had ever worn before, and which seemed to transmogrify her and turn her into some one else. Nelly had made a valiant effort to put up her hair, and give her something of the aspect of a young lady of the period, but this even Mrs. Eastwood had resisted, saying wisely, that if Innocent appeared with her hair hanging on her shoulders, as she always wore it, it would be presumed at once that she was “still in the schoolroom” (poor Innocent, who had never been in the schoolroom in her life!), a girl not yet “out.” She answered only “Yes” or “No” to the questions Vane put to her, and would have stolen away from the drawing-room afterwards altogether if she had not been detained by something like force. The great Mrs. Molyneux took condescending notice of her, and plied her with a great many questions, all actuated by an idea of which no one in the family had the smallest conception. “I don’t doubt they neglect her shamefully,” she said to her daughter, after she had ascertained that Innocent neither played, nor sang, nor drew; that she had never been to school, nor had a governess, nor masters, and that, in short, she knew nothing.
I am quite unable to tell why this discovery should have given pleasure to Ernest’s mother, but it did so, and was remembered and made use of afterwards in most unthought-of ways. But Innocent interested more people than Mrs. Molyneux. When Sir Alexis came into the drawing-room after dinner, he requested to be presented to the young stranger. “I think I knew her father,” he said, and he went and sat by her, and did his best to call forth some response. “Since he cannot have the one, he is going to try for the other,” said Mrs. Barclay in Mrs. Eastwood’s ear. But whatever his intentions or desires might be, he did not make much of Innocent, who was frozen back into her old stupefied dulness by the many strange faces and fresh appeals made to her. “You remember your father?” said Sir Alexis, meaning to move her. “Oh, yes,” said Innocent, but took little further interest in hearing about him. Perhaps, had it been Niccolo, he might have moved her more.