The Semi-detached House/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX.
There seemed, however, no threatening of this danger for the present. Mr. Greydon had, till lately, so sedulously repressed any notion of falling in love, or of the possibility of marrying, that now he had once admitted the idea, he acted upon it with his usual energy. He said it was singular how often he met Captain Hopkinson and his daughters out walking—there must be a fatality about it—the fatality being, that he looked out of his window, which commanded a partial view of their house, till they came out, and then, by walking very fast, he either overtook them or met them; and in either case, by another strange fatality, he happened to have some parish work to do, precisely in the direction in which they were going. Then he professed to feel so much interest in Lady Chester and her baby, that it could only be satisfied by authentic accounts from Mrs. Hopkinson, who was constantly at Pleasance; and if she happened to be there when he called, Captain Hopkinson received him and took him up to the drawing-room, and then there was a school talk, and perhaps a little music; and altogether, if Mr. Greydon's income had increased at all in proportion to his passion, there would have been a Mrs. Greydon in a very few weeks. Captain Hopkinson saw how matters stood, and abstained from interference. He supposed if the young people liked each other, they would make it out somehow, when Jane and he married they had not more than a hundred a year, and now they had more money than they could spend. Mr. Greydon might ask him for his daughter, and would, perhaps, be surprised to find that little Janet would bring her fair share towards the expenses of a family, and in the meanwhile they were welcome to see as much of each other as they liked.
Willis, in former days, would not have observed whether anybody spoke to his sisters-in-law or not; but some change had come over the spirit of his very melancholy dream. He looked more at what was passing around him, and less at his own petty grievances, It generally appeared that he had been dining with the Sampsons, or calling on them; and he talked of the necessity of giving a great fête at Columbia Lodge, to return the civilities that had been shown to him; and, to the unutterable surprise of Janet and Rose, announced that he had had the pianoforte tuned, on which poor Mary had been used to play some little tunes that sounded like the wailings of a moulting linnet. "And if you will bring your music, girls, it will be a great treat for—" and then he added in one of his old querulous tones, "for the Baroness."
The girls were much flattered that Charles should think their singing a treat for anybody, and acute enough to guess what the pause in his sentence meant; and when Miss Monteneros was announced soon after, the something almost amounting to animation in Willis's manner confirmed their suspicions. Rachel had called on them frequently lately; sometimes with gifts for poor people, a list of whom she had obtained from Janet—sometimes in a moody humour, which she assured them could only be dispelled by talking it off to them—sometimes full of dry fun, and seeming to take life as a farce; but whatever was the vein of the day, little Charlie was the "master of the situation."
The child had taken a fancy to her the first time he saw her, and Rachel had had so little experience of affection, that his artless fondness touched her to the heart; she loved him with a passionate love, she made herself his willing slave, told him odd amusing stories, and then again talked to him in sober earnest, as if he and she understood the world and each other better than any other two people on earth. There is nothing so attractive to a child, particularly to a sick child, as being treated like a very old man, Charlie would sit on Rachel's knee, his eyes fixed admiringly on her, while she "fabled of green fields," or turned the white feathery clouds on the bright blue canopy above, into troops of angels, to whose swift flight she gave fanciful destinations; and Charlie would gravely say, "Yes, veddy true, pooty Rachel," and shake his head with an air of precocious wisdom that delighted her.
"Nay, never shake your gory locks at me, such dear little curling locks, too, as they are. And now, Charlie, your aunts have got some more visitors to entertain," she whispered, as Mr. Greydon was announced, "so you and I will go and sit in the shade in gradmamma's garden, and I will tell you such a funny story of a little kitten," and with a nod to the girls, she carried him off. Willis looked fidgetty, and did not lend himself to conversation with his usual asperity, and after a time he too disappeared in the direction of the garden. There he found Charlie in fits of laughter at the extraordinary sayings and doings of the supposititious kitten.
"You will spoil my poor little man, Miss Monteneros," looking at Charlie with an ominous shake of the head.
"Oh! nebber shake your golly locks at me," said the child.
"Now, was there ever such a darling?" said Rachel, "and I only said that once to him. He is too clever!"
"Ah, yes, poor little fellow," said Willis, with another shake of his 'golly locks,' meant to imply the probable fate of such early precocity.
"Charlie pet, go and pick me a quantity of daisies and I will make such a necklace for you. I sent him away, Mr. Willis, because I want to beg you not to speak so discouragingly of his health when he is present. He is old enough, or, at least, quick enough to understand, in some degree, your forebodings. I know," she added, in her most gracious manner, "that I am taking a very great liberty in saying this; but you are very fond of your little boy, and I am sure you will forgive me."
"More than that," said Mr. Willis, looking extremely complacent, "I feel very much obliged to you, I know I ought to conceal my habitual melancholy from the observation of that babe."
"Certainly," said Rachel, "and from everybody else. There is no great merit in bearing grief grievously, and there is certainly no great charm in habitual melancholy, be it real or artificial."
"I hope, Miss Monteneros, you do not suspect me of being artificial."
"Are not you? Well, I do not know, I am very artificial myself, a regular actress, but I have always thought you outdid me in that line. Why now, Mr. Willis, Hamlet, you know, says that,
"'The inky cloke
The windy inspirations of forced breath,
And the dejected 'haviour of the visage,'
are actions that a man may seem, they do not 'denote him truly.' Now, what good reason have you for all this shew of distress?"
Willis was posed. He could hardly allege to Rachel, with whom he was really in love, that he was still inconsolable for the loss of a wife, for whom he had cared little while she was alive, and when he came to think what other griefs he had, he somehow could not recollect them at the moment; so he murmured something about a solitary home and Charlie's health, a great bereavement and a natural proneness to foresee the worst, &c.
"That is a misfortune, certainly," said Rachel, "many people would call it a fault. But dear little Charlie's health is improving daily, so there is one ray of happiness. With that kind cheerful set of people we have just left, who treat you like a son and brother, you can always find a home that is not solitary. As for your great bereavement, for which I heartily pity you, time must have done something for you, and as for the constant reference you constantly make to it, I long to say to you—but no, I have no right to speak. Ah," she added, trying to relapse into her usual careless manner, "of all people in the world, I am about the last fitted to give good advice."
"No, you are not," said Willis, with more eagerness than he often evinced. "What is it you long to say?"
"Why, just what the Quaker said to the Duchess of Buckingham, when he found her, two years after her husband's death, in a darkened room, hung with black, 'What, friend, hast thou not forgiven God Almighty yet?' And now I really must go to Charlie and his daisies," said Rachel, rising hastily and escaping, for she was half frightened at her own daring.
But thither Willis followed, staggered by her last stroke of wisdom, and slightly ashamed of her insight into his character, but flattered to the last degree by the interest she appeared to take in his happiness, and not at all aware that Charlie was at the bottom of all this plot against his querulousness. Rachel did not choose that Charlie should sit under the shadow of Willis' withered gourd, and she did not think that the gourd had any right to wither with such a Charlie to shine on it.
"Miss Monteneros," he began, "I hope you will allow me to thank you for the advice you have given me, and I beg to assure you—"
"Oh!" said Rachel, "if I have not affronted you, I am more than satisfied; and now for my daisy-chain. Papa must not interrupt us, must he, Charlie? we are decided on that point."
"Twite detided," said Charlie with great energy, "papa, please go."
"Are you not going to do what Charlie tells you?" said Rachel, smiling, finding after a time that Willis was still standing by them.
"I am not going," he said, rather moodily. "Miss Montencros," he added after a pause, "you seem to take great interest in my little boy."
"The greatest possible, Charlie and I are intimate friends."
"Dat we are," said Charlie, "oh, veddy imitate."
"Cannot you extend that friendship to his father?"
"I am not much given to friendship," she said carelessly, and more occupied in tying her daisy bracelets round Charlie's wrists, than in his father's remarks. "But if I had been your friend for the last twenty years, I could not have told you more crude, disagreeable truths than I did to-day. I can tell you as many again," she added, laughing, "if that proof of friendship will satisfy you."
"No, it will not," he said with some spirit; "I ask for more, the truths you have spoken were not disagreeable, because they came from you, and I hope you will see they have not been spoken in vain. When you tell me to be more cheerful, when you say my home might be happy, Miss Monteneros, it is in your power to verify your own prophecy."
Rachel looked up with an air of intense astonishment.
"You are fond of that child, oh! Miss Monteneros, let him find in you the mother he has lost. It is in your power to make both the child and father happy."
"Oh, Mr, Willis, what are you saying? Stay one moment—" 'Then there was a pause, and to Willis' extreme surprise, she burst into a hearty laugh.
"I beg your pardon," she said, "but to think of all my exhortations to you to be happy, ending in your asking me to be your wife. Why, of all the methods of being miserable, which you are so fond of trying, you could not have invented one so certain to produce the desired unhappy result as that. I suppose there are not two people in England who would suit each other so little as we should. We do not care about each other, to begin with; and there are you, still in the deepest mourning, and avowedly inconsolable for the loss of your first wife, asking a woman every way dissimilar to her, to be your second."
"But Mary did not suit me," faltered the unhappy Willis, "I could not love her; she was amiable certainly, but quite without the charm, the power that you have, Miss Monteneros. You would give an interest to my home that it has never had, and the gloom—"
"Say no more, Mr. Willis," said Rachel gravely; "you can hardly expect that I should have accepted your proposal under any circumstances, and we know each other so little, that my refusal can give you but little pain. But think of the avowal you are now making; you have sought sympathy far and wide, and paraded sorrow in all directions, and yet you tell me that the Mary whose loss has been bewailed with such ostentation, 'did not suit you,' you could not love her. Oh! where is Truth? am I never to find it? I can bear artifice in the frivolities and gauds of the world, it is all artificial in itself, all heartless—but sorrow should be as true as it is sacred. Falseness there, appals and disgusts me."
She was trembling with excitement, but she took up Charlie as she spoke, and perhaps the sight of his wistful eyes, and the touch of his tiny hands softened her, for she turned back and added: "Perhaps I have spoken too harshly, but the dead should never be named slightingly; she was Charlie's mother, too, do not say you never loved her."
And so she departed, leaving Willis more ashamed, more lowered in his own conceit than he could have supposed possible, and yet with a perception of the greatness and nobleness of truth, that gave him an elevation of feeling he had hitherto never known.
Rachel deposited Charlie with his aunts, and walked home half annoyed, half amused with what had passed. "That comes of giving advice," she thought. "It never answers, but I did it for Charlie's sake; and as the man has no real feeling, no great harm is done. I wish little Charlie had not been so funny and clever about the 'golly locks,' it made me long to be his mother; but to be sure it would not do to marry poor Mr. Willis on the strength of that one quotation."