The Dilemma/Chapter XLIV
CHAPTER XLIV.
The party, which came off on the evening of the day above described, began at eight o'clock, at which time Mrs. Yorke appeared in her pretty little drawing-room, attired in a very becoming grey silk dress, her soft bands of hair set off by a little arrangement of lace and ribbon that hardly deserved the name of cap, and altogether looking by the subdued candle-light more like what Arthur's sister might be than his mother. The dining-room was set out with tea and coffee, under superintendence of a waiter assisted by the parlourmaid; and thither the guests repaired on arrival, before being ushered into the drawing-room. They were some sixteen in number, the gentlemen being for the most part clergymen; while Mr. Drewitt, who with his wife was of the party, although only a solicitor, was almost more than clerical in manner, in virtue of transacting legal business for the dean and chapter; and Arthur could not but notice that the only ladies invited were married and middle-aged, with the single exception of Sophie Colson, who came with her mother and brother. There was no one, therefore, to act as a counter-attraction to the hostess, towards whom almost all the single men adopted a tone of gallantry which was evidenthy customary. Penelope and the suitors, thought Yorke, looking on grimly, except that there is no Ulysses, and that Penelope seems nothing loath to have them feasting in her house. The three bachelor clergymen were Mr. Rawlings, rector of a parish in the town, a big, middle-aged man, in a slipshod white necktie, with a loud voice, and free and easy manner; Mr. Chanter, the minor canon, who wore his hair parted down the middle, and although still young, was already inclined to obesity; and Mr. Tritton, a young curate, with light curly hair and a smooth boyish face. Mr. Rawlings shook hands familiarly with his hostess, much as if he had been the family lawyer, and knew a good deal to her disadvantage, and nodding to the company generally, sat down in an easy-chair, and crossing his legs and resting his elbows on the arms of it, looked about him with his mouth open and under jaw protruding, as if he held the company rather cheap. Mr. Chanter paid his greetings in a more respectful but still confidential manner. The light-haired curate took Mrs. Yorke's hand with a fervent manner, casting, as he did so, a deferential look in her face.
For three long hours the party lasted. First, there was general conversation about nothing in particular, although with occasional reference to India, in which, however, the company seemed generally to wait for Mr. Rawlings to take the lead, while that gentleman seemed disposed on this occasion to be silent. Then Mr. Chanter, who had a fine deep voice, sang. "O ruddier than the cherry!" Miss Colson accompanying him. Then there was more conversation, carried on apparently with the understanding that it should on no account bear on any topic in which anybody could by any possibility take any interest, everybody in short except Mr. Rawlings having put on company manners for the occasion; and then Mr. Chanter sang a duet with the young lady, and later a second solo. Whist was proposed; but as Mr. Rawlings, who was understood to be the great player, was not in the humour, the scheme fell through. That gentleman, indeed, seemed to be a good deal out of humour. To young Colson coming near his chair he vouchsafed the remark, "Well, Johnny, how are things getting on at the bank; what's the rate of discount?" On another occasion, when Mr. Chanter was singing, he beckoned to the young curate to come towards him, and on the latter meekly obeying, said in an audible voice, "What's that thing Chanter is making all that noise about ?" in a tone to imply that singing was an accomplishment quite beneath contempt.
"No wonder," thought Yorke, trying to suppress a yawn, while silence fell on the company," that Morgan backed out of this. He is a man of more sense than I supposed."
At last the waiter announced supper, and the party adjourned to the dining-room; but as they had all talked themselves out before sitting down, the meal although prolonged was not lively. But when eating had quite ended, and it seemed as if the party must at last break up, there was still a hesitation about rising, and whisperings went on at Mrs. Yorke's end of the table. Mr. Drewitt, who sat on her left, was urging Mr. Rawlings on her right to do something which the latter apparently was indisposed to undertake. "Not I," he could be heard to say gruffly; "tomfoolery of that sort is not in my line. Why don't you do it yourself?" "How can you say so?" remonstrated Mrs. Yorke, over whom this gentleman seemed to exercise a sort of fascination; "everybody knows what a public speaker you are." "Well, if it must be, there is no help for it," said Mr. Drewitt, rising nothing loath; and, calling on the company to fill their glasses, announced that with the permission of their fair hostess he would propose a toast. He need not say who was the subject of it. There was present on that occasion one who, after an absence of many years, and undergoing numerous perilous escapes in the imminent deadly breach, had returned to his native land, there to receive the honours gained by the deeds of heroism, the fame of which had preceded his advent. It would ill become him, Mr. Drewitt, as a man of peace, to endeavour to describe the actions to which he referred. He would merely venture to express a hope that the distinguished officer who was the subject of his toast might be prevailed upon at some future date to favour his fellow-townsmen with a recital of some of the moving scenes which he had witnessed; he would only refer on the present occasion to the domestic aspect of the event. What to the minds of the company assembled round this hospitable table must heighten in a peculiar degree the interest of the occasion, was the circumstance that the distinguished subject of his toast was united by the ties of closest relationship to the refined and charming lady who had for some years past been one of the chiefest ornaments of their local circle. He concluded, after more to the same effect, by proposing the gallant son of their elegant and accomplished hostess, with which toast he would beg to couple the name of their charming and accomplished and beautiful hostess herself.
Then the company rose to drink the toast, following the speaker's call to give it with all the honours, Mr. Drewitt himself leading off the cheers with his sonorous voice, followed by Mr. Chanter in his mellifluous baritone, and the curate's light tenor. Rawlings' gruff voice could also be heard, in a tone, as it seemed to Yorke, intended to be satirical; while Mrs. Yorke sat at the head of the table bowing her thanks, and raising her handkerchief to her eyes. Meanwhile Yorke, feeling thoroughly the absurdity of the situation, and half inclined to be angry, would have passed the thing off with a laugh, but that his mother began signalling him to reply in such a marked way, that there was no help for it without making a scene; and accordingly he had to rise and thank them on behalf of his mother and himself, for the honour that had been done them — which he managed to do without appearing ungracious, notwithstanding the vexation he felt. After all, the good people, except Mr. Rawlings, were all thoroughly in earnest, and quite thought they were paying him a delicate compliment.
"Well," said Mrs. Yorke, after the guests had left, which they did rather hurriedly on discovering that it was close on Sunday morning — "well, I think my little party was a great success; and oh, my dear Arthur, it makes me feel a very proud and happy mother to see you so much appreciated."
"I must say, my dear mother, I did not appreciate one of your guests. That fellow Rawlings seems a most objectionable style of man."
"My dear Arthur, what a horrid way of talking! I never heard anything so shocking. You will make me quite ashamed of you if you talk like that. Mr. Rawlings is a little brusque, but these very clever men often are like that. He took quite a wonderful degree at Cambridge, you know — an optime or a wrangler, or something of the sort — and is a fellow of his college, and has written for one of the magazines; quite a literary person in fact, and very much looked up to here. He has his little oddities, no doubt, but there is something so fresh and unconventional about literary geniuses."
"And it tends to make others unconventional too. I never felt so much disposed to kick a man before. But how comes he to be a fellow of his college and holding a living down here?"
"It is a college living, I believe. I don't quite understand the particulars, but it can be held by a fellow so long as he is a bachelor. To be sure, he might have married many times: Maria Brabazon was quite ready to have him, if he had proposed, and there were others, too; but of course it would be a great sacrifice for him to make." And it struck Yorke that his mother looked somewhat confused and self-conscious.
Next day being Sunday, Yorke accompanied his mother to St. Clement's, which was very fully attended, the pews being filled mainly by persons of the better class. The service was apparently not regarded of much importance, prayers being read by a curate, while Mr. Morgan looked about him from the communion table, as if taking stock of the congregation; the business of the morning was the vicar's sermon, delivered from the pulpit which towered above the reading-desk, and whence the preacher looked down on the top of the heads of the people in the pews below. It was a glib discourse, delivered with a powerful voice, and with readiness and self-possession, and without the aid of notes, and was throughout a denunciation of the horrors of Popery and the blessings of the evangelical faith, but was entirely free from any reference to religion; and as the congregation were apparently quite of the same way of thinking as the preacher, the address seemed to give great satisfaction. After service they took an early dinner at the vicarage, plentiful and friendly, to which Rebecca came down, as affectionate as ever, but too much absorbed in contemplation of her situation to take much share in the conversation. Arthur took occasion to express his surprise at the well-to-do appearance of the congregation, for St. Clement's was in the poorest part of Wiltonbury, a suburb of newly-built cottages on its outskirts; but Mr. Morgan explained that most of them were not parishioners, but came from all parts of the town, showing what a grievous need there had been previously to its erection, for some receptacle for sound doctrine. The people who lived in the parish were mostly Dissenters, or did not go to any place of worship. And it was the pew-rents, he added, that made up the incumbent's income. Without them the charge would not be worth holding.
After dinner Arthur and his mother went to afternoon service at the cathedral. "I used to go here both morning and evening," said Mrs. Yorke as they walked home afterwards; "but Rebecca made such a point of my going to hear William, that I feel it a duty to attend St. Clement's in the morning; it is the curate preaches in the afternoon, you know. William has quite the gift of preaching, of course, and very striking and beautiful his sermons are; but I must say I prefer the cathedral service. There is a devotional aspect about it which you miss in the other, don't you think so? the cloistered aisles, you know, and the children clad in white casting up their souls to heaven — it imparts such a devotional feeling to the mind."
"Very much so — only I wish the little scamps had not pinched each other so during the service; and as for the lay vicars, they were the most thoroughly irreverent set of fellows I ever saw in my life. They could not have looked about them more if they had been singing at a music-hall."
"My dear Arthur, how can you talk in that way! You really have brought the most shocking notions with you from India. You need not bring tea just yet," she said to the maid as they entered the house; "perhaps," she added, by way of explanation to her son, "Mr. Rawlings or Mr. Chanter will look in presently. They do so occasionally of a Sunday afternoon to take a little rest after the labours of the day." But neither of these gentlemen paid her a visit on that evening. Yorke was much exercised in mind next morning whether, before starting for town to keep an appointment with his tailor, he should speak to his mother regarding her way of life. These men, young and middle-aged, dangling about her, must probably know that she had merely a life-interest in her comfortable little income; did she believe that they were really in love with her, or did she take them to be merely intending to carry on a flirtation? and if so, was an understanding of this sort decorous for a woman of her age? But he abstained from inviting any confidences on the subject, feeling that there would be no use in doing so. And he did not communicate the half-formed idea of persuading her to leave Wiltonbury for a while, and to travel with him or live elsewhere. After all, he could be with her only for a time, and why break up the home which satisfied her tastes? The things that jarred on his senses did not reach her. Above all, he felt that anything he might say would probably be communicated to Rawlings, who, he gathered from sundry remarks let fall by his mother, was the person she usually went to for advice, and might either lead to the man's making a declaration, or to some fresh impertinence on his part. But Yorke went back to London dull at heart, and feeling more lonely than ever. The vision of a home life had been dissipated by this short experience. What is there repulsive about me, he thought, that I can not only get no woman to love me, but that even my own mother and sister do not care a pin about me?
A day or two afterwards he received a letter from his mother announcing the birth of another niece. "You will be rejoiced to hear, my dearest Arthur, that your fond mother's heart has been relieved at last from its anxieties by this happy event. It was a terrible night for me, as dear William, thinking my nerves might be upset, insisted on my going home and leaving Rebecca with the nurse and the doctor. How I got any sleep, I am sure I don't know. There is a very good account this afternoon, but I have not been allowed to see our precious invalid yet; and oh, my dear Arthur, I was almost forgetting to tell you that an invitation has just come for us to dine at the palace the day after to-morrow, with such a kind apology for the short invitation. I have accepted, of course, for both of us." But Yorke pleaded town engagements, and gave a similar excuse later on when informed that the Wiltonbury Club only awaited his return to give a public dinner in his honour. His visits to Wiltonbury were made henceforward for the most part at unexpected times, and the evenings spent on such occasions at the vicarage, which was safe from the intrusion of Rawlings and the other frequenters of the little house by the Close.Yorke had several bachelor friends in town, and once set in the way to further introductions, soon found himself in the full swing of the London season. He had got over the mauvaise honte which oppressed him as a lad. Everybody, he used to fancy in the time of his obscurity, was disposed to look down on the obscure subaltern of native infantry; but nobody could want to slight the decorated lieutenant-colonel of cavalry, who was one of the most fortunate and rising men in the service. Mutiny heroes had not gone out of fashion, and Yorke found himself welcomed and petted to the top of his bent. Always the London season has charms for the young of both sexes; but to be thoroughly enjoyed, it must come as it did to Yorke, with all the freshness of a new revelation.
And this is the man, he thought to himself sometimes, in the brief intervals allowed for reflection, who had made a vow to practise misanthropy, and never look in a woman's eyes again. I used to flatter myself that if I was not attractive, I had at least the merit of constancy. Yet here I am, as frivolous and pleasure-loving as any empty-headed fellow in London. And is it due to my constancy, I wonder, that I have not fallen in love again, or is it that the women make so much of the men, and are so easily won, that they cease to be attractive? And yet the one perfect woman I have seen was easily won too, though not by me. And then for a time he would fall to musing over the past, wondering idly what had been Olivia's fate.