CHAPTER XXIX. – ROWENA AND HER RIVAL
And yet if each the other’s name
In some unguarded moment heard,
The heart that once you thought so tame
Would flutter like a wounded bird.—ANON.
Letters continued to come with fair regularity; and it was understood that Gerald, with Lida, had taken up his quarters in an “inexpensive” boarding-house at New York, where he had sent Lida to a highly-recommended day-school, and he was looking out for employment. His articles had been accepted, he said; but the accounts of his adventures and of his fellow-inmates gave the sense that there was more humour in the retrospect than in the society, and that they were better to write about than to live with. He never confessed it, but to his aunt, who understood him, it was plain that he found it a different thing to talk philanthropic socialism, or even to work among the poor, and to live in the society of the unrefined equals.
Then he wrote that Lida had come one day and told him that one of the girls, with whom she had made friends, had a bad attack of cough and bronchitis, and could not fulfil an engagement that she had made to come and sing for a person who was giving lectures upon national music. “‘I looked at some of her songs,’ little Lida said in her humble way, ‘and I know them. Don’t you think, brother, I might take her part?’ Well, not to put too fine a point upon it, it was not an unwelcome notion, for my articles, though accepted, don’t bring in the speedy remuneration with which fiction beguiles the aspirant. Only one of them, which I send you, has seen the light, and the ‘Censor’ is slow, though sure, so dollars for immediate expenses run short. I called on the fellow, Mr. Gracchus B. Van Tromp, to see whether he were fit company for my sister, and I found him much superior to his name—gentlemanlike and intelligent, not ill-read, and pretty safe, like most Yankees, to know how to behave to a young girl. When he found I could accompany my sister on piano or violin he was transported. Moreover, he could endure to be enlightened by a Britisher on such little facts as the true history of Auld Robin Gray and the Wacht am Rhein. The lecture was a marked success. We have another tonight, 16th. It has resulted in a proposal to these two interesting performers to accompany the great Gracchus on a tour through the leading ‘cities,’ lecturing by turns with him and assisting. He has hitherto picked up as he could ‘local talent,’ but is glad of less uncertain help, and so far as appears, he is superior to jealousy, though he sees that I’m better read, ‘and of the cut that takes the ladies.’ It is no harm for Lida; she was not learning much, and I can cultivate her better when I have her to myself, and get her not to regard me so much like a lion, to be honoured with distant respect and obedience. We shall get dollars enough to keep us going till my talents break upon the world, and obtain stunning experiences for the ‘Censor’. My father’s dear old violin is coming to the front. Our first start will be at Boston; but continue to write to Gerald F. Wood, care of Editor of ‘Cole’s Weekly’.”
“How like his father!” was the natural exclamation; but the details that followed in another week were fairly satisfactory, and the spirit of independence was a sound one, which had stood harder proofs than perhaps his home was allowed to know, though these were early days.
February was beginning to open the buds and to fill the slopes with delicate anemones, as well as to bring back Mr. White’s workmen, among whom Clement could make inquiries. One young man knew the name of Benista as belonging to a family in a valley beyond his own, but it was not an easily accessible one, and a fresh fall of snow had choked the ravine, and would do so for weeks to come.
Yet all was lovely on the coast, and Mr. White having occasion to go to San Remo, offered to take the three girls with him.
“Young ladies always have a turn for shops,” said he.
“I want to see the coast,” said Franceska, with a little dignity.
“But I do want some gloves—and some blue embroidery silk, thank you, Mr. White,” said Anna, more courteously.
“And I want some handkerchiefs, if Mr. White will take me too!” returned Uncle Clement in the same tone.
“I know so well what you mean, dear,” observed Maura, sotto voce to Francie. “It is so trying to be supposed mere common-place, when one’s thoughts are on the beautiful and romantic.”
It was just one of the sayings that had begun to go against Francie’s taste, and she answered—
“Mr. White is very good-natured.”
“Ah, yes, but so—so—you know.”
Francie was called, and left Mr. White’s description to be unutterable.
The two elder ladies spent the day together, and Mrs. Grinstead then heard that Jane Mohun had written, that both Lord Ivinghoe and Lady Phyllis Devereux were recovering from the influenza, and that Lord Rotherwood had had a slight touch of the complaint.
“It is a very serious thing in our family,” said Adeline, with all the satisfaction of having a family, especially with a complaint, and she began to enumerate the victims of the Devereux house and her own, only breaking off to exclaim, “I really shall write at once to beg them all to come here for the rest of the winter, March winds and all. My cousin Rotherwood has never been here, and they might be quite quiet among relations. So unlike a common health resort.”
Mrs. White’s hospitable anticipations were forestalled. The party came home from San Remo in high spirits. They had met Lord Rotherwood and his son in the street, they had been greeted most warmly, and brought to luncheon at the villa, where they found not only Lady Rotherwood and Phyllis, but Mysie Merrifield.
It was explained that their London doctor had strongly advised immediate transplantation before there was time to catch fresh colds, and a friend of the Marchioness, who permanently possessed a charming house at San Remo, had offered it just as it was for the spring. The journey had been made at once, with one deviation on Lord Rotherwood’s part, to beg for Mysie, as an essential requisite to his “Fly’s” perfect recovery. A visit had been due before, only deferred by the general illness, and no difficulty was made in letting it be paid in these new and delightful scenes. Phyllis had been there before. She was weak and languid, and would much rather have stayed at home, except for seeing Mysie’s delight in the mountains and the blue Mediterranean, which she dimly remembered from her infancy at Malta. Only she made it a point of honour not to allow that the sea was bluer than the bay of Rockquay.
Ivinghoe was looking ill and disgusted, but brightened up at the sight of the visitors, and his mother, who thought Monte Carlo too near, though she had kept as far from it as possible, accepted the more willingly Mr. White’s cordial invitation to come and spend a day or two at Rocca Marina. Trifles were so much out of the good lady’s focus of vision that the possible dangers in that quarter never occurred to her, though Maura was demurely bridling, and Francie, all unawakened, but prettier than ever, was actually wearing a scarlet anemone that Ivinghoe had given to her.
In the intervening days, Rocca Marina was in a wonderful state of preparation. The master of it was genuinely and honestly kindly and simple-hearted, and had entertained noble travellers before, who had been attracted by his extensive and artistic works; but no words can describe the satisfaction of his wife. In part there was the heartfelt pleasure of receiving the cousin who had been like one of her brothers in the home of her childhood; but to this was added the glory of knowing that this same cousin was a marquis, and that the society of San Remo, nay of all the Riviera and the Italian papers to boot, would know that she was a good deal more than the quarry-owner’s wife. Moreover, like all her family, there was a sense of Lady Rotherwood’s coming from a different sphere, and treating them with condescension. Jane and Lily might laugh, but to Adeline it was matter of a sort of aggressive awe, half as asserting herself as “Victoria’s” equal and relation, half as protecting her from inferior people.
Geraldine perceived and was secretly amused. Of course all the party dined at the castle on Saturday night, and heard some lamentations that there was no one else to meet the distinguished guests, for the young doctor was not thought worthy.
“But I knew you would like a family party best, and the Underwoods are—almost connections, though—”
In that “though” was conveyed their vast inferiority to the house of Mohun.
“I always understood that it was a very good old family,” said Lady Rotherwood.
“Clement Underwood is one of the most valuable clergy in London,” said her lord; “I am glad he is recovering. I shall be delighted to hear him again.”
Maura was standing under the pergola with Lord Ivinghoe.
“And is not it sad for poor Franceska Vanderkist?—Oh! you know about poor Mr. Gerald Underwood?” said Maura, blushing a little at the awkward subject.
“Of course,” said Ivinghoe impatiently. “He is in America, is he not? But what has she to do with it?”
“Oh, you know, after being his Mona, and all. It can’t go any further till it is cleared up.”
Phyllis and Mysie came up, asking Maura to tell them the name of a mountain peak with a white cap. The party came up to dinner, which was as genial and easy as the host and Lord Rotherwood could make it, and as stiff and grand as the hostess could accomplish, aided by the deftness and grace of her Italian servants. In the evening Theodore came up to assist in the singing of glees, and Clement’s voice was a delightful and welcome sound in his sister’s ears. Ivinghoe stood among the circle at the piano, and enjoyed. He and his sister were not particularly musical, but enough to enjoy those remarkable Underwood voices. After that Maura never promoted musical evenings.
An odd little Sunday-school for the children of the English workmen had been instituted at Rocca Marina, where Maura had always assisted the chaplain’s wife, and Anna and Francie shared the work. Mysie heard of it with enthusiasm, for, as Ivinghoe told her, she was pining for a breath of the atmosphere, but she came down to enjoy the delights thereof alone, taking Maura’s small class. Maura was supposed to be doing the polite to Lady Phyllis, but in point of fact Phyllis was lying down in the balcony of her mother’s dressing-room, and Maura was gracefully fanning herself under a great cork tree, while Lord Ivinghoe was lying on the grass.
Francie looked languid, and said it was getting dreadfully hot, but Mrs. Grinstead took no notice, trusting that the cessation of attentions would hinder any feeling from going deeper, so that—as she could not help saying to herself—she might not have brought the poor child out of the frying-pan into the fire—not an elegant proverb, but expressing her feeling!
More especially did it do so, when she found that Lord Rotherwood was so much delighted with the beauty and variety of the marbles of Rocca Marina as to order a font to be made of them for the church that was being restored at Clarebridge, and he, and still more his son, found constant diversion in running over by train from San Remo to superintend the design, and to select the different colours and patterns of the stones as they were quarried out and bits polished so as to show their beauty. Their ladies often accompanied them, and these expeditions generally involved luncheon at the castle, and often tea at the parsonage, but it might be gradually observed, as time went on, that there was a shade of annoyance on the part of the great house at the preference sometimes unconsciously shown for the society of the smaller one.
Mysie openly claimed Anna as her own friend of some standing, and both she and Phyllis had books to discuss, botanical or geological discoveries to communicate or puzzle out, with Mrs. Grinstead or her nieces. Lord Rotherwood had many more interests in common with Clement Underwood than with Mr. White, and even the Marchioness, though more impartial and on her guard, was sensible to Mrs. Grinstead’s charm of manner and depth of comprehension. She patronized Adeline, but respected Mrs. Grinstead as incapable of and insensible to patronage.
That her gentlemen should have found such safe and absorbing occupation in the opposite direction to Monte Carlo was an abiding satisfaction to her, and she did not analyze the charms of the place as regarded her son. She had seen him amused by other young ladies, as he certainly was now by that Miss White, who was very handsome and very obliging.
She knew and he knew all the antecedents too well for alarm, till one day she saw Maura’s face, as she made him pull down a spray of banksia from the side of a stone wall, and watched the air of gallant courtesy with which he presented it.
Francie watched it too, as she had watched the like before, and said nothing, but there was an odd, dull sense of disappointment, and the glory had faded away from sea and sky, spring though it was. Yet there were pressures of the hand in greeting and parting, and kind, wistful looks, as if of sympathy, little services and little attentions, that set her foolish little heart bounding, in a way she was much ashamed to feel, and would have been more utterly ashamed to speak of, or to suppose observed. She only avowed to Anna that it was very warm, weary weather, and that she was tired of absence, and felt homesick, but Aunt Cherry was so kind that she must not be told.
Lady Rotherwood proposed moving away, but her husband and son would not hear of it till their font was finished.
It was not unwelcome to any one of the elder ladies that the young officer’s leave would be over in another week. Geraldine was glad that Francie should be freed from the trial of seeing attention absorbed by Maura, and herself so often left in the lurch, so far as that young lady could contrive it, for though not a word was said, the brightened eye and glowing cheek, whenever Lord Ivinghoe brought her forward, or paid her any deference or civility, were dangerous symptoms. Peace of mind in so modest and innocent a maiden would probably come back when the excitement was once over.
As to Adeline, there was nothing she dreaded so much as the commotion that would be excited if Ivinghoe’s flirtation came to any crisis. His mother would never forgive her, his father would hardly do so; she would feel like a traitor to the whole family, and all her attempts to put a check on endeavours on Maura’s part to draw him on—an endeavour that began to be visible to her—were met by apparent unconsciousness or by tears. And when she ventured a word to her husband, he gruffly answered that his niece’s father had been an officer in the army, and he could make it worth any one’s while to take her! Young lords were glad enough in these days to have something to put into their pockets.
CHAPTER XXX. – DREAMS AND NIGHTINGALES
Then in that time and place I spoke to her.—TENNYSON.
“Office of ‘Lacustrian Intelligencer,’
“Jonesville, Ohio,
“March 20.
“DEAREST CHERIE,
“I told you in my last that the chief boss in the office at New York had written to me that he had been asked to send an intelligent young man to sub-edit the Lacustrian Intelligencer at Jonesville, a rising city on Lake Erie. I thought it would be worth while to look at it, especially as we were booked to give a lecture at Sandusky, and moreover our relations to Gracchus have been growing rather strained, and I do not think this wandering life good for Lida in the long run; nor are my articles paid enough for to be a dependence. So after holding forth at Sandusky, we took our passage in a little steamer which crosses the little bay in the Lake to Jonesville—one of those steamers just like a Noah’s Ark.
“Presently Lida came up and touched me, saying in her little awestruck whisper (which has never been conquered), ‘Brother, I am sure I saw one of mother’s cigarettes.’ I said ‘Bosh!’ thinking it an utter delusion; but she was so decided and so frightened, that I told her to go into the saloon, and went forward. A woman was going about the deck, offering the passengers a basket of candies, lights, cigarettes, and cigars. Saving for Lida’s words, I never should have recognized her; she was thin to the last degree, haggard, yellow, excessively shabby and forlorn-looking, and with a hollow cough; but as her eyes met mine (those eyes that you say are our water-mark) both of us made a sort of leap as if to go overboard, and I went up to her at once, and would have spoken, but she cried out, ‘What have you done with Lida?’ I answered that she was safe, and demanded in my turn where were O’Leary and Jellicoe. ‘Drowned, drowned,’ she said, ‘in the wreck of the Sirius. They’ll never trouble you more. But Lida!’ I thought that it was safe to take her into the saloon to see Lida, when they fell into each other’s arms, and afforded the spectators a romantic spectacle. Don’t think I am making a joke of it, for it was tragic enough in the result of the agitation. Blood was choking the poor woman. We could only lay her down on the couch, and happily there were lemons on board. There was a good-natured Irishman who gave me all the help he could, even to the carrying her to his house, where his wife was equally kind. He fetched the priest, a French Canadian, and the doctor, and Lida has been watching over her most tenderly; poor things—they seem really to have cared for one another, and Lida will be the happier for having done these last duties.
“21st. She is a little better. So far as we have gathered from one who must not talk nor be agitated, the circus had got into difficulties and debt to Bast, the van proprietor. I believe Lida’s voice was their last hope, and they had some ghastly scheme of disposing of her in Belgium. When they lost her, their chances were over, and with the proceeds of their last exhibition, Jellicoe and the O’Leary pair left the elephant, etc., to take care of themselves and make their excuses to Mr. Bast, and started for Liverpool and the U. S. in the Sirius. Storms overtook them, the women were put into the first boat, those which followed were swamped. Poor fellows, I own I can’t sing a pious dirge for them. There were three days of hunger and exposure before the boat was picked up, and she was finally landed at Quebec, where she was laid up with pleurisy in the hospital. And there was a subscription for the wrecked when she came out, which enabled her to set up this reminiscence of her old trade, drifting from one pier or boat to another till she came to this one, but all the time with this awful cough. The doctor thinks it her knell; her lungs are far gone, but she may probably rally in some degree for the summer, though hardly so as to be moved.
“That being the case, I have been to the Lacustrian office, and engaged myself to be its hack, since I must have some fixed pay while she lives. Perhaps I shall be able to do a little extra writing and lecturing, especially if she gets better, enough to spare Lida to help me. Her voice really is a lovely soprano, and draws wonderfully, but I don’t want it to be strained too early. Our good Irishwoman, Mrs. Macbride, is willing to let us have her two rooms, left empty by her sons going west, and her daughter marrying, on fair terms, Lida promising to be a sort of help and to teach the children. We shall eat with them. I shall be at the office all day and half the night, so I don’t need a sitting-room. Don’t be anxious, dear old Cherie. We shall do very well, and it is only for a time. Lida is like a little angel, and as thankful for a smile from her mother as if she had been the reprobate runaway.
“Your ever-loving
“GERALD.”
This was the letter that came to Mrs. Grinstead, and one with similar information went to Dolores Mohun at her college at Cambridge. Dolores, who had found Mysie much more sympathetic than Gillian, could not but write the intelligence to her, and Mysie was so much struck with the beauty of the much-injured brother and sister devoting themselves to their mother, that she could not help telling the family party at breakfast.
“That’s right,” said Lord Rotherwood. “The mother can clear up the doubt if any one can. Is there nothing about it?”
“No,” replied Mysie; “I should think the poor woman was too ill to be asked.”
“They must not let her slip through their fingers without telling,” added Ivinghoe.
“I have a mind to run over to Rocca Marina and see what more they have heard there,” said Lord Rotherwood. “I suppose your letter is from one of the girls there?”
“Oh no, it is from Dolores.”
“Dolores! She is at Cambridge. Then this news must have been round by Clipstone! They must have known it for days past at Rocca!” exclaimed Lord Rotherwood.
“No,” said Mysie, “this came direct to Dolores from Gerald Underwood himself.—Oh, didn’t you know? I forgot, nobody was to know till Uncle Maurice gave his consent.”
“Consent to what?” exclaimed Ivinghoe.
“To Dolores and Gerald! Oh dear, mamma said so much to me about not telling, but I did think Cousin Rotherwood knew everything. Please—”
Whatever she was going to ask was cut short by Ivinghoe’s suddenly striking on the table so as to make all the cups and saucers ring as he exclaimed—
“If ever there lived a treacherous Greek minx!” Then, “I beg your pardon, mother.”
He was off: they saw him dash out of the house. There was a train due nearly at this time, as all recollected.
“Papa, had not you better go with him?” said Lady Rotherwood.
“He will get on much better by himself, my dear,” and Lord Rotherwood threw himself back in his chair and laughed heartily and merrily, to the amazement and mystification of the two girls. “You will have a beauty on your hands, my lady.”
“Well, as long as it is not that horrid White girl—” said her ladyship, breaking off there.
“A very sorry Rebecca,” said her lord, laughing the more.
But the Marchioness rose up, and the two cousins had to accept the signal.
The train, after the leisurely fashion of continental railways, kept Ivinghoe fuming at the station, and rattled along so as to give travellers a full view of the coast, more delightful to them than to the youth, who had rushed off with intentions, he scarce knew what, of setting right the consequences of Maura’s—was it deception, or only a thought, of which the wish was father?
He reached the station that led to the works at Rocca Marina. The sun was high, the heat of the day coming on, and as he strode along, the workmen were leaving off to take their siesta at noontide. On he went, across the private walks in the terraced garden, not up the broad stone steps that led to the house, but to a little group of olive trees which cut off the chaplain’s house from the castle gardens, and where stood a great cork tree, to whose branches a hammock had been fastened, and seats placed under it. As he opened the gate a little dog’s bark was heard, and he was aware of a broad hat under the tree. Simultaneously a small Maltese dog sprang forward, and Francie’s head rose from leaning over the little table with a start, her cheeks deeper rose than usual, having evidently gone to sleep over the thin book and big dictionary that lay before her.
“Oh!” she said, “it is you. Was I dreaming?”
“I am afraid I startled you.”
“No—only”—she still seemed only half awake—“it seemed to come out of my dream.”
“Then you were dreaming of me?”
“Oh no. At, least I don’t know,” she said, the colour flushing into her face, as she sat upright, now quite awake and alive to the question, between truthfulness and maidenly modesty.
“You were—you were; you don’t deny it!” And as she hung her head and grew more distressfully redder and redder, “You know what that means.”
“Indeed—indeed—I couldn’t help—I never meant! Oh—”
It was an exclamation indeed, for Uncle Clement’s head appeared above the hammock, where he too had been dozing over his book, with the words—
“Halloo, young people, I’m here!”
Franceska would have fled, but Ivinghoe held her hand so tight that she could not wrench it away. He held it, while Clement struggled to the ground, and then said—
“Sir, there is no reason you or all the world should not know how I love this dearest, loveliest one. I came here this morning hoping that she may grant me leave to try to win her to be my own.”
He looked at Francie. Her head drooped, but she had not taken her hand away, and the look on her face was not all embarrassment, but there was a rosy sunrise dawning on it.
All Clement could say was something of “Your father.”
“He knows, he understands; I saw it in his eyes,” said Ivinghoe.
To Clement the surprise was far greater than it would have been to his sister, and the experience was almost new to him, but he could read Francie’s face well enough to say—
“My dear, I think we had better let you run in and compose yourself, or go to your aunt, while I talk to Lord Ivinghoe.”
Trembling, frightened, Francie was really glad to be released, as her lover with one pressure said—
“I shall see you again, sweetest.”
She darted away, and Clement signed to Ivinghoe to sit down with him on the bench under the tree.
“I should like this better if you had brought your father’s full assent,” he said.
“There was no time. I only read his face; he will come to-morrow.”
“No time?”
“Yes, to catch the train. I hurried away the moment I learnt that—that her affections were not otherwise engaged. I never saw any one like her. She has haunted me ever since those days at Rockquay; but—but I was told that she cared for your nephew, and I could not take advantage of him in his absence. And now I have but three days more.”
“Whoever told you was under a great error,” said Clement gravely, “and you have shown very generous self-command; but the advantages of this affair are so much the greatest on one side, that you cannot wonder if there is hesitation on our part, till we explicitly know that our poor little girl would not be unwelcome to your parents.”
“I know that no one can compare with her for—for everything and anything,” stammered Ivinghoe, breaking from his mother’s language into his father’s, “and my father admires her as much as I do—almost.”
“But what will he and your mother say to her being absolutely penniless?”
“Pish!”
“And worse—child to a spendthrift, a man of no connection, except on his mother’s side.”
“She is your niece, your family have bred her up, made her so much more than exquisitely lovely.”
“She is a good little girl,” said Clement, “but what are we? No, Ivinghoe, I do not blame you for speaking out, and she will be the happier for the knowledge of your affection, but it will not be right of us to give free consent, without being fully assured of that of Lord and Lady Rotherwood.”
Ivinghoe could only protest, but Clement rose to walk to the house, where his sister was sitting under the pergola in the agitation of answering Gerald’s letter, and had only seen Francie flit by, calling to her sister in a voice that now struck her as having been strange and suppressed.
Clement trusted a good deal to his sister’s quicker perceptions and habit of observation to guide his opinion in the affair that had burst on him, and was relieved that when Ivinghoe, like the well-bred young man that he was, went up to her, and taking her hand said, “I have been venturing to put my fate into the hands of your niece,” she did not seem astonished or overwhelmed, but said—
“She is a dear good girl; I do hope it will be for her happiness—for both.”
“Thank you,” he said fervently. “It will be the most earnest desire of my life.”
Geraldine thought it best to go in quest of Francie, whom she found with Anna, incoherent and happy in the glory of the certainty that she was loved, after the long trial of suppressed, unacknowledged suspense. No fears of parents, no thought of inequalities had occurred to trouble her—everything was absorbed in the one thought—“he really did love her.” How should she thank God enough, or pray enough to be worthy of such joy? There was no room for vexation or wonder at the delay, nor the attentions paid to Maura. She hushed Anna, who was inclined to be indignant, and who was obliged afterwards to pour out to her aunt all her wonder, though she allowed that on his side there was nothing to be really called flirtation, it was all Maura—“she was sure Maura was at the bottom of it.”
“My dear, don’t let us be uncharitable; there is no need to think about it. Let us try to be like Francie, and swallow all up in gladness. Your mother—”
“Oh, I can’t think what she will do for joy. It will almost make her well again.”
“But remember, we don’t know what his parents will say.”
And with that sobering thought they had to go down to luncheon, where Francie sat blushing and entranced, too happy to speak, and Ivinghoe apparently contented to look at her. Afterwards he was allowed to take possession of her for the afternoon, so as to be able to tease her about what she was dreaming about him. After all it had probably been evoked by the dog’s bark and his step; for she had thought a wolf was pursuing her, and that he had come to save her. It was quite enough to be food for a lover.
Clement would have wished to keep all to themselves, at least till the paternal visit was over, but Ivinghoe’s days were few, and he made sure of bringing his parents on the morrow. An expedition had been arranged to the valley where some of the Benista family were reported to live, since the snows had departed enough for safety; but this must needs be deferred, and there was no doubt that the “reason why” would be sought out.
Indeed, so close was the great house, and so minute a watch was kept, that the fact of Lord Ivinghoe’s spending the whole day at the parsonage was known, and conclusions were arrived at. Maura stole down in the late evening among the olive trees, ostensibly to ask Anna and Francie to come and listen to the nightingales.