Lottie, who was happy in the sense of her lover’s readiness to sacrifice everything for her sake (as she thought), and to whom the whole world seemed fairer in consequence, yielded without any struggle; while Polly, on her part, put on her most gracious looks.
“If you take every word I say for serious,” said Polly, “I don’t know whatever I shall do. I never was used to have my words took up hasty like that. I say a deal of naughtiness that I don’t mean—don’t I, Harry? You and me would never have come together, should we, if you’d always gone and taken me at my word?” And so the reconciliation was effected, and things went on as before. There was no similar occurrence in respect to Law, whose looks at Polly were murderous; but, then, Law had no delicacy of sentiment, and, whatever had happened, would have come into his meals all the same.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
FAMILY DUTY: BY A FINER ARTIST.
Rollo did not come away from the strange excitement of that interview on the Slopes with the same feelings which filled the mind of Lottie. The first intense sensation of shame with which he had realised the villany of the proposal which Lottie did not understand soon changed into a different sentiment. He had felt its guilt, its treacherous cruelty, under the guise of devotion, far more bitterly and intensely than as if she had understood and denounced him; and the relief of his escape from an indignation and horror which must have been as overwhelming as the confidence, had made him feel how great a danger he had run, and how terrible to him, as well as to her, would have been the discovery of his base intention. How could he ever think that Lottie, proud, and pure, and fearless of evil as she was, could have fallen into such a snare! He felt himself a fool as well as a villain; perceiving, too, by the light of fact, what he would not have understood in theory, that the very uncomprehension of innocence makes guilt contemptible as well as terrible. If she could have understood him, he would scarcely have felt so mean, so miserable, so poor a creature as he did now; not even a gay and fine betrayer, but a pitiful cheat and would-be criminal, false to everything that nature trusts in. Rollo had not been irreproachable hitherto; but such sins as he had indulged in had been done among those who were sinners like himself, among people who had a cynical comprehension of the worth of promises and the value of vows. He had never tried that rôle of the seducer before; and the fact that his own shame and horror were real made them all the more hard to bear. Shame, however, of this bitter kind is not an improving influence. Soon it began to turn to anger equally bitter. He tried to think that Lottie was partly to blame, that she had “led him on,” that he never would have gone so far but for “encouragement” from her. Even it flashed across his mind that she was not so unconscious as she appeared, but had pretended ignorance in order to rivet her chains upon him, and force him to the more honourable way which was so much more for her interest. He tried to force this idea into his own mind, which was not sufficiently depraved to receive it; but yet it was not long before he was angry, irritated against the girl who would not understand him, and sore with the humiliation she had inflicted unawares.
Other influences, too, came in to break the purer spell of honourable love under which Rollo, to his own surprise, had so entirely fallen. With the return of Augusta and her husband, the world seemed to have come back and seized him. Even the society of Augusta, of itself, had an immediate influence, breaking up the magic of the seclusion in which he had been content to live. Lady Caroline was not a woman who could be called unworldly, but she was passive, and did not take any initiative even in the way of gossip. She liked to hear it; there came a little gleam of interest to her eyes when the stories of the great world were brought to her, when she was told who was going to marry who, and by what schemes and artifices the marriage had been brought about; and who had most frequently and boldly broken the marriage vow, and by whom it had been most politely eluded; and how everybody lived and cheated, and nothing was as it seemed; and all that is done for money, and that is done for pleasure, in that busy, small, narrow-minded village society—which is the world. But though she loved to hear, she could not begin; for, unless people told her what was going on, how, she sometimes asked piteously, was she to know? As for the Dean, he was not in the habit of it any more than his wife, though when he went to town he would bring down invariably a piece of news from his club—of somebody’s appointment, or somebody’s good luck, or somebody’s wedding. “Now, why can’t you go and do likewise?” he would say to Rollo. But all this was mild and secondary in comparison with Augusta, who brought the very air of what Mr. Jenkins calls the Upper Ten into the Deanery, perfuming all the rooms and all the meals with stories of fortunes won and lost, of squabbles, ministerial and domestic, of marriages and dinners alike “arranged,” and all the wonderful dessous des cartes and behind the scenes with which so many people are acquainted in fashionable life. Who so well as Augusta knew that when the Duke of Mannering gave up his governorship, it was not from any political reason, but because the life he led was such that the place was far too hot to hold him, and Government was only too glad to send out Algy Fairfax, though he was only a younger son, and had no particular interest, simply to smooth things down? And what a lucky thing it was for Algy to be there just at the right moment, when there was nobody else handy, and just when Lord Arthur was there, who had got him to explain matters to his elder brother, and knew what he could do! It was what old Lady Fairfax had been scheming for all her life, just as she had been scheming to catch young Snellgrove for Mina. Of course she had succeeded. Mina was almost distracted, everybody knew. It was she who had that affair with Lord Colbrookdale, and now everybody said she was wildly in love with Reginald Fane, her cousin; but she might just as well be in love with St. Paul’s, for he had not a penny, and she was to be married directly. Did you hear about her settlements? They were simply ridiculous. But that old woman was wonderful. There was nothing she did not think of, and everything she wanted she got. And then there was that story about poor young Jonquil, of the War Department, who married somebody quite out of the question, a poor clergyman’s daughter, or something of that sort, without a penny (though he might have had the rich Miss Windsor Brown for the asking, people said), and of the dreadful end he had come to, living down in some horrid weedy little cottage about Kew, and wheeling out two babies in a perambulator. All these tales, and a thousand more, Augusta told, filling the Deanery with a shameful train of people, all doing something they did not want to do, or forcing others to do it, or following their pleasure through every law, human and divine. Lady Caroline sat in her easy-chair (she was not allowed to put up her feet except in the evening, after dinner, when Augusta was at home), and listened with half-closed eyes, but unfailing attention. “I knew his father very well,” she would say now and then, or “his mother was a great friend of mine.” As for Rollo, he knew all the people of whom these stories were told. He had seen the things beginning of which his cousin knew all the conclusions, and what went on behind the scenes, and thus he was carried back after the idyll of the last six weeks to his own proper world. He began to feel that there was no world but that, that nothing else could make up for the want of it; and a shudder ran over him when he thought of Jonquil’s fate. Augusta, for her part, did not conceal her surprise to find him at the Deanery. “What is Rollo doing here?” she said to her mother.
“I am sure, my dear, I do not know. He seems to like it, and we are very glad to have him,” Lady Caroline replied. But that did not satisfy Mrs. Daventry’s curiosity. What could a young man of fashion, a man of the world, do here?
“I wonder what he is after,” she said; “I wonder what his object can be. It can’t be only your society and papa’s. I should just like to know what he is up to. He is not a fool, to have gone and got entangled somehow. I wonder what he can mean by it!” Augusta cried; but her mother could give her no idea. Lady Caroline thought it was natural enough.
“I don’t see that it is so strange,” she said. “Autumn is a terrible time. To sleep in a strange bed night after night, and never settle down anywhere! Rollo likes to be comfortable; and then there is this Miss Despard. You have heard about Miss Despard?”
“What about Miss Despard?” Augusta said, pricking up her ears.
“She is to be the prima donna,” said Lady Caroline. “He thinks she will make his fortune. He has always got some wild scheme in his head. He used to annoy me very much to have her here——”