The Semi-attached Couple/Chapter 31
CHAPTER XXXI
But Mrs. Douglas could not be so deceived. She could not allow such a promising bud of unhappiness to wither without, as Othello says, "smelling it on the tree." She was willing to prevent Lady Portmore from persecuting Helen; but she could not consent to deprive herself of the pleasure of pointing out the shadows of the Teviot picture.
"Well, Mr. Douglas!" she said, as soon as they were alone, "well!"
"Well, my dear; what now?"
"Why, what do you think of it all?"
"All what, my dear?"
"You know very well what I mean, love, only you don't choose to speak."
"I am quite ready to speak, Anne; but what is it to be about?"
"About this evening, to be sure. What did you think of it?"
"Between ourselves, I thought it not quite so pleasant as most of the evenings we have passed here. It was rather dull, was it not?"
"Now, Mr. Douglas, don't be tiresome, you are only affecting ignorance; pray what do you think of the Teviots now?"
"Very much what I always did; that they are very charming people, and keep a very pleasant house, and I am sorry to leave them."
"And you think they are a happy couple?"
"Very—not to-day, by the by, for he is going away for a few weeks, which annoys her. I do not know whether you heard him say at dinner that he was to be sent on a special mission to Lisbon; and it strikes me that Lady Teviot was perhaps a little low at his going without her, which would account for the evening being dull. I have not an idea how those Portuguese and Spanish affairs are to end."
"Now, my dear Mr. Douglas, don't go off on those tiresome foreign affairs. What can it signify which conquers which, or who dethrones who, at that distance? Let them fight it out quietly. Besides, you need not pretend to understand national feuds if you have not found out what is passing under your eyes; but I cannot believe it, you must see what an unhappy couple these poor Teviots are."
"Unhappy, Anne, the Teviots!"
"Yes, by far the most unhappy young couple I know. In fact, I have been trying to recollect, but I cannot recall any instance of two young people separating so early in their married life."
"But, my dear Anne, you surely cannot twist this into a separation—an official trip, which is to last six weeks at the outside."
"As if the merest child could be taken in by that! I said from the first, Mr. Douglas, that Lord Teviot had a horrid temper, and that Helen did not care a straw for him; but Lady Eskdale was, I suppose, determined to catch a great parti, and now see what it has come to! There is he going off with a married woman, one of the most unprincipled people I ever encountered, and excessively old-looking; and there is Helen going back to her friends, quite broken-hearted. I declare I think it is very shocking, and that Lady Eskdale has a great deal to answer for. Then there is Sophia dying, by all accounts. I fancy they have wretched constitutions, though they look well for a time; but I will answer for it that all those Beauforts, before they are thirty, will have outlived their looks completely, and Helen is just the sort of person to fret herself into a decline."
"My dear, how you do run on, conjuring up one chance of unhappiness after another! and I cannot believe there is any foundation for any of them."
"No, because you do not choose to believe, Mr. Douglas; but I thought that even you must have observed Lord Teviot's guilty look when Helen said she was going home. You must have remarked that; and then that wicked Lady Portmore proposing, actually proposing to follow him in her yacht. I was quite annoyed that Eliza should hear such improper conversation. However, my belief is that she and Lord Teviot will go no further than London, and the Lisbon journey will be given up, now that, under pretence of it, he has got rid of his wife."
"I cannot think all this can be so, Anne; it is too bad to be true."
"Nothing is too bad to be true, Mr Douglas, and nothing is true that is not bad. Those are two axioms I never can persuade you to remember; and I am certain that we do not give that fine set credit for half the vices they practise. We may good-naturedly try to gloss over this Teviot story" (Mr. Douglas looked up, and shook his head); "but just consider what you would have said if the same circumstances had occurred in a lower rank of life. Why, when James Wheeler went off to America, and Sally Wheeler came home to her mother, what a fuss you and the churchwardens and the vestry made! and James only forsook his own wife, he did not carry off another person's."
"Neither will Lord Teviot. I must say, Anne, you have no right to put together such histories; still less to spread such reports. It is most ungrateful," he added, in an accent of deep displeasure, "after the kindness the Teviots have shown us; and if there be any foundation for your suppositions, it would certainly be becoming, and I should hope natural, that you would act by that young creature as you would wish her mother to act by one of your daughters in similar circumstances. You might have helped her with advice, if the circumstances you state are true. Lady Eskdale would have acted a kinder part by you, Anne."
Mr. Douglas was so seldom roused to anger that a lecture from him had a startling effect on his wife; and her conscience, moreover, rather reproached her on Helen's account; so she assured Mr. Douglas that her observations had been confided solely to him, and should go no further, and that if she saw any chance of being of use to Helen the next day, she would do what she could; but as for not thinking ill of Lord Teviot and Lady Portmore and Colonel Stuart, and indeed of most people, she really could not oblige him by going so far as that. It was a concession he did not appear to expect, so they ended very amicably.