The Duke's Daughter; and, The Fugitives; vol. 1/3

by Mrs. Oliphant

Then they put him out of the room, out of the shining of the sunset in which he thought she stood transfigured, the soft glory caressing her, the level golden radiance getting into her eyes and flooding them—and closed the door upon him, leaving him in the darkness of the passage, which looked all black to his dazzled eyes. Fortunately his guide appeared a moment afterwards and he was led up to his chamber, in the wilds so to speak of the great house, where he came back to himself as well as he could. Winton was only a man like the rest of his kind. He wondered if the women enjoyed, with a native feminine malice such as everybody has commented upon from the beginning of time, the position in which they had placed him. Ah, not they; not Jane, who was a world above all jesting—but perhaps the Duchess, who, he could imagine, did not mind making him pay a little in his dignity, in his self-regard, for the promotion he had got through her daughter’s love. She would do anything for him because Jane loved him, but perhaps she had a mischievous satisfaction in the little drama which she was arranging round him—the external slights, the sudden bliss, the dismissal back again to humility and the second floor. Was this so? He concluded it was, with a half-amused irritation, a sense of being played with. She was kind: but was it in mortal to suffer without a pang, without an attempt at reprisals, the loss of Jane? And then, perhaps the Duchess too had a little feeling that he was not one of her own caste, her daughter’s equal—not enough to make her resist that daughter’s choice, but yet enough to prompt in passing a little prick as with a needle at the too fortunate. As a matter of fact, had Winton been cool enough to notice it, the Duchess had meant him no prick at all. He had been received in the usual way, lodged according to the general rule. She had thought it wisest not to do anything to distinguish him beyond his neighbours, but that was all.

The evening was full of tantalised and suppressed expectation, yet of a moment’s pleasure now and then. Except the German librarian and the man from the clubs, and a young author who had been the fashion and was the protégé of one of the great families visiting at Billings, the company was all much more splendid than Winton. Names that were known to history buzzed about him as he sat down to dinner, with Lady Adela Grandmaison beside him, who was exceedingly relieved to fall to his lot and not to one of the elderly noblemen who illustrated the table. Lady Adela wore a sacque like a dainty lady of the eighteenth century, but was apt to throw herself into attitudes which were suggestive of the fourteenth. She did not feel at all disposed to be disdainful of Winton. Instead of this she took him into her confidence. “Did you ever see such a party of swells?” she said, notwithstanding her medieval attitudes. “Don’t they frighten you to death, Mr Winton? I am so glad to have somebody I dare talk to. The Duke is too funny for anything, don’t you think so? like an old monarch in the pantomime. It is all exactly like the theatre. He says ‘My lord’—listen! exactly as they do on the stage.”

“I suppose they did that sort of thing when his Grace was young,” said Winton, looking up the great table to where that majestic presence showed beyond the ranks of his guests. A little tremor ran over him when he realised the splendour of the personage to whom he was going so soon to carry his suit. “Perhaps we are a little too free-and-easy nowadays,” he said.

“Don’t desert your generation,” cried Lady Adela; and then she added significantly, “there is Jane looking our way. Jane is so sweet—don’t you think so, Mr Winton?”

Winton met the soft eyes of his love and the keen ones of this young observer at the same moment; and this, though he was a man of the world, brought a sudden flush to his face. All the fine company, and the gorgeous table, heavy with plate and brilliant with flowers, grew like a mist to him, and nothing seemed real except that softly tinted, tender-shining countenance, turning upon him the light of her eyes. They were so placed that though they never spoke they could see each other across the table, through a little thicket of feathery ferns and flowers. Lady Jane was too courteous, too self-forgetting to neglect her special companion or to abandon the duty of entertaining her parent’s guests. But now and then she would lift her eyes and empty out her heart in one look across the table through that flowery veil. He was not nearly so entertaining in consequence as Lady Adela had hoped.

Next morning there were some moments that were full of excitement and happiness in the midst of a day which was just like other days. Lady Jane agreed fully with Winton, that to be there under her father’s roof without informing him of the object of his visit was a thing unworthy of her lover; and she was, like him, entirely convinced that, whatever might come of it, the explanation must be made. The Duchess did not contest this high decision of principle—but she shook her head. “I have nothing to say against you. I suppose you are right. It must be done sooner or later,” she said. “There is only one thing—put it off till the last day of your visit; for this I am sure of, that you will not be able to spend another night at Billings.”

“Mamma!” Lady Jane cried, with a fervour which brought the tears to her eyes, “my father will say nothing that one gentleman may not say to another.”

The Duchess once more shook her head. “When one gentleman asks another for his daughter and is refused—though the one should be the most courteous in the world, and the other the most patient, yet it is generally considered most convenient that they should not continue in the same house.”

“I will take your mother’s advice, my dearest,” said Winton; but it was hardly possible for mortal man to have it put before him so plainly without a little feeling of offence. It had been settled that he was to stay a week, and notwithstanding the happiness which the Duchess had secured to him by giving him the entry to this sacred little sitting-room into which no stranger ever intruded, and by affording him as many opportunities as were possible of seeing Lady Jane, he spent the rest of the time with a certain feeling of hostility in his mind towards her, which was thoroughly unreasonable. He began to doubt whether she wished him to succeed, whether she was indeed so truly his friend as she represented herself to be. A man must be magnanimous indeed who can entirely free his mind from the prevalent notions about the love of women for “managing,” and their inclination towards intrigue and mystery. A conviction that his own manly statement of his case would tell more effectually with the Duke, who was a gentleman though he might be pompous and haughty, than any semi-deceitful feminine process, began to grow in his mind. And this conviction, in which there was a partially indignant revulsion of feeling—rank ingratitude and unkindness, but of that he was not conscious—from his allegiance to the Duchess, gave him a natural inclination to propitiate the head of the house and see him in his best light, which was not without a certain influence even on the Duke himself, who more and more felt this modest young commoner, though he was nobody in particular, to be a person of discrimination, and one who was capable of appreciating himself and understanding his views.

Thus with new hopefulness on one side, and mistrust on the other, Winton counted the days as they went by towards the moment which was to decide his fate. He impressed his own hopefulness upon Lady Jane, who was indeed very willing to believe that nothing but what was noble and honourable could come from her father. They discussed the subject anxiously, yet with less and less alarm. To her it seemed, as she heard all the wise and modest speeches her lover intended to make as to his own lesser importance, but great love—it seemed to her that no heart could hold out against him. That tenderest humility, which was the natural characteristic of her mind underneath the instincts of rank which were so strong in her, and the sense of lofty position which was part of her religion—was touched with the most exquisite wonder and happiness at the thought that all this noble and pure passion was hers, and hers only. “It is impossible,” she said, “if you speak to him as you do to me, Reginald—oh, it is impossible that he can resist.” “It is impossible, my darling,” said the young man, “when he hears that you love me.” Thus they encouraged each other, and on the eve of the great day wrought themselves to an enthusiasm of faith and certainty. The Duchess’s limitation of his visits had of course come to very little purpose, and every moment that Winton could manage to escape from the bonds of society below stairs he spent with Lady Jane above, discoursing upon their hopes, and the manner in which best to get them wrought into fulfilment. They talked of everything, in those stolen hours of sweetness: of what was to happen in the future, of all they were to be to each other, coming back again and again to the moment which was to decide all, always with a stronger and stronger sense that the Duke’s consent must come, and that to be balked by this initial difficulty was impossible. But it cannot be denied that Winton had certain difficulties even about that future in his communings with his bride. He could not get her to understand that very little self-sacrifice would be necessary on her part, and that the house to which he proposed to transplant her was little less luxurious than her own. Lady Jane smiled upon him when he said this with one of those little heavenly stupidities which belong to such women. She did not wish it be so, and so far as this went put no faith in him. It was a settled question in her own mind. Arabella’s famous elucidation had fortified her on that point beyond all assault. It pleased her to look forward to the little manor-house, and the changed world which would surround the Squire’s wife. If he had carried her direct to a palace more splendid than Billings, she would have felt a visionary but active disappointment. She drew him gently to other subjects when he entered upon this, especially to the one unfailing subject, the Duke, and what he might say. They both grew very confident as they talked it over: and yet when Winton came to tell her, on the evening preceding that momentous day, that he had asked for an interview and it had been granted to him, Lady Jane lost her pretty colour, which was always so evanescent, and her breath, and almost her self-possession. “No,” she said, “oh, not afraid! if you say that to him, Reginald, he cannot resist—but only a little nervous; one is always nervous when there is any doubt. And then to think that this is the last evening!”