“I am sure it was uncommonly kind, ma’am,” says poor Kew, with a rueful face.
“That horrible woman against whom I always warned but you—but young men will not take the advice of old grandmammas—has gone away these ten days. Monsieur le Duc fetched her; and if he locked her up at Moncontour, and kept her on bread-and-water; for the rest of her life, I am sure he would serve her right. When a woman once forgets religious principles, Kew, she is sure to go wrong. The Conversation-room is shut up. The Dorkings go on Tuesday. Clara is really a dear little artless creature; one that you will like, Maria—and as for Ethel, I really think she is an angel. To see her nursing her poor father is the most beautiful sight; night after night she has sate up with him. I know where she would like to be, the dear child. And if Frank falls ill again, Maria, he won’t need a mother or useless old grandmother to nurse him. I have got some pretty messages to deliver from her; but they are for your private ears, my lord; not even mammas and brothers may hear them.”
“Do not go, mother! Pray stay, George!” cried the sick man (and again Lord Steyne’s sister looked uncommonly like that lamented marquis). “My cousin is a noble young creature,” he went on. “She has admirable good qualities, which I appreciate with all my heart; and her beauty, you know how I admire it. I have thought of her a great deal as I was lying on the bed yonder” (the family look was not so visible in Lady Kew’s face), “and—and—I wrote to her this very morning; she will have the letter by this time, probably.”
“Bien! Frank!” Lady Kew smiled (in her supernatural way) almost as much as her portrait, by Harlowe, as you may see it at Kewbury to this very day. She is represented seated before an easel, painting a miniature of her son, Lord Walham.
“I wrote to her on the subject of the last conversation we had together,” Frank resumed, in rather a timid voice, “the day before my accident. Perhaps she did not tell you, ma’am, of what passed between us. We had had a quarrel; one of many. Some cowardly hand, which we both of us can guess at, had written to her an account of my past life, and she showed me the letter. Then I told her, that if she loved me she never would have showed it me: without any other words of reproof. I bade her farewell. It was not much, the showing that letter; but it was enough. In twenty differences we have had together, she had been unjust and captious, cruel towards me, and too eager, as I thought, for other people’s admiration. Had she loved me, it seemed to me Ethel would have shown less vanity and better temper. What was I to expect in life afterwards from a girl who before her marriage used me so? Neither she nor I could be happy. She could be gentle enough, and kind, and anxious to please any man whom she loves, God bless her! As for me, I suppose, I’m not worthy of so much talent and beauty, so we both understood that that was a friendly farewell; and as I have been lying on my bed yonder, thinking, perhaps, I never might leave it, or if I did, that I should like to lead a different sort of life to that which ended in sending me there, my resolve of last month was only confirmed. God forbid that she and I should lead the lives of some folks we know; that Ethel should marry without love, perhaps to fall into it afterwards; and that I, after this awful warning I have had, should be tempted to back into that dreary life I was leading. It was wicked, ma’am, I knew it was; many and many a day I used to say so to myself, and longed to get rid of it. I am a poor weak devil, I know, I am only too easily led into temptation, and I should only make matters worse if I married a woman who cares for the world more than for me, and would not make me happy at home.”
“Ethel care for the world!” gasped out Lady Kew; “a most artless, simple, affectionate creature; my dear Frank, she——”
He interrupted her, as a blush came rushing over his pale face. “Ah!” said he, “if I had been the painter, and young Clive had been Lord Kew, which of us do you think she would have chosen? And she was right. He is a brave, handsome, honest young fellow, and is a thousand times cleverer and better than I am.”
“Not better, dear, thank God,” cried his mother, coming round to the other side of his sofa, and seizing her son’s hand.
“No, I don’t think he is better, Frank,” said the diplomatist, walking away to the window. And as for grandmamma at the end of this little speech and scene, her ladyship’s likeness to her brother, the late revered Lord Steyne, was more frightful than ever.
After a minute’s pause, she rose up on her crooked stick, and said, “I really feel I am unworthy to keep company with so much exquisite virtue. It will be enhanced, my lord, by the thought of the pecuniary sacrifice which you are making, for I suppose you know that I have been hoarding—yes, and saving, and pinching,—denying myself the necessities of life, in order that my grandson might one day have enough to support his rank. Go and live and starve in your dreary old house, and marry a parson’s daughter, and sing psalms with your precious mother; and I have no doubt you and she—she who has thwarted me all through life, and whom I hated,—yes, I hated from the moment she took my son from me, and brought misery into my family, will be all the happier when she thinks that she has made a poor, fond, lonely old woman more lonely and miserable. If you please, George Barnes, be good enough to tell my people that I shall go back to Baden,” and waving her children away from her, the old woman tottered out of the room on her crutch.