The Semi-attached Couple/Chapter 39
CHAPTER XXXIX
Poor Eliza, she was the chief victim to the great Boroughford contest. Mrs. Douglas said "Not at home," when Lady Eskdale, who could not keep up a quarrel for a week, called on her; and professed her intention of not returning such a hypocritical visit. The Castle was filled with company, but Mrs. Douglas sternly refused an invitation to dine there. Worse than all. Colonel Beaufort did not call at Thornbank. He thought of it, but one day the sun was out, and he should have a glaring dusty ride. The next day the sun went in, but he had no idea of catching cold for a mere morning visit, and he really had not courage "to face the irate Douglas père et mère," though he should rather have liked to see his little friend. He could not recollect her Christian name, but the little fair girl who had such a righteous horror of Lady Portmore. And for this man Eliza was undergoing all the pains and processes of a disappointment. She ate no breakfast and very little dinner, alternated from fits of absence in solitude to fits of impatience in society. She thought all the neighbours tiresome, and Thornbank dull; and finally set up an Extract Book, that last infirmity of blighted hopes. It opened, of course, with " She never told her love," though there was not an action in Eliza's life that did not tell it plainly if anybody had thought it worth while to interpret them. "The worm in the bud" was making a nice little feast in a quiet way. This quotation was followed by harrowing lines to the Bleeding heart and the False heart, and the Breaking heart and the Cold heart, and hearts in every variety of distress and wrong; and by short pithy scraps conveying the most cutting censures on man's inconstancy, or describing the withering lives and touching deaths of "The Lone One," or "The Early Lost," or words to that effect. And there was Colonel Beaufort, "cold, perjured, but adored" (p. 49, Extract Book), actually oblivious of her Christian name, and thinking of Parliament and Newmarket and pheasant shooting, and of anything but falling in love and marrying.
"I say, Helen," he muttered one morning after Lord Eskdale had mentioned that there would be no battue that week, "is there any chance of Teviot coming home soon? It will be monstrous if we are cut out of the pheasants he promised us by some trivial question of peace or war between two Great Powers, as they are pleased to call themselves. Do you know when he is coming back?"
"He seemed," said Helen, "in his last letter to think that his business at Lisbon might now easily be finished by others on the spot, and that he should come back to take possession of his new office."
"This is pleasing news for all of us," said Colonel Stuart, who was staying at the Castle, "and especially for you. Lady Teviot. Lady Portmore seemed sure of his return, for she asked me to meet him at Portsdown on the loth, but, with every respect for our dear busy friend, I found 'metal more attractive' here than in one of her fussy crowds."
"Lady Portmore must be in ecstasies," said Lady Walden, "at the triumph of what she calls her party."
"Well, I am not so sure," said Colonel Stuart. "Mr. G. has failed to find out Portmore's merits, and my lady is rather wrathful at not having the offer of even a household place; and I hear she is beginning to make out that Mr. Sheffield is a distant cousin of hers, and that he leads the Opposition with great talent."
"So like her," said Lady Walden. "I wish she would take up the Sheffield side, and give up appropriating Mr. G. and his friends to herself."
"I am sure, so do I," said Helen, in an absent tone.
"And yet," pursued Colonel Stuart, "she is of use too. She has great power over her friends; how or why it is difficult to say; but in some instances," he added in a hesitating voice, "it is marvellous."
Helen was silent, she hardly seemed to hear what was passing. Amelia took up the argument against Lady Portmore—her charms and her agreeableness; and Colonel Stuart, with a manifest affectation of keeping back the facts that would tell best for him, ended by saying that somehow or other her influence over some people had been exerted with great success. Amelia left the room, and Helen, rousing herself from her fit of abstraction, asked Colonel Stuart "whether there was to be a large party at Portsdown."
"Lady Portmore did not name her guests, but said, as you probably know, that Lord Teviot would land at Southampton on the 9th, and that she expected him on the 10th." He put on a look of distress, and added, "I own this surprises me; and what is more, it provokes me. I cannot endure for your sake," he added in a low earnest tone, "the infatuation which can keep Teviot for an hour from such a home as his."
Helen looked surprised, but said coldly, "We have only Lady Portmore's word for the invitation that has been given; I very much doubt whether it will be accepted. I am thinking of meeting Lord Teviot at Southampton."
"Are you, indeed?" and then he paused, and drawing his chair nearer to her, and looking at her with an air of deep compassion, said, "Perhaps you are right. If anything should occur to distress Teviot, I mean to annoy him, he must feel the comfort of having you near him. I cannot imagine he should not, and yet But I cannot speak on this subject. Whatsoever befalls him, Teviot will always be to me an object of envy."
"What do you mean?" said Helen, quietly; "there can have been no letters later than mine from him. He said he should be glad to get away from Lisbon, that it did not agree with him; he did not feel well. Colonel Stuart, you have not heard that he is really ill?"
"No, nothing of the sort; it was not to himself I was alluding. I was thinking of you. I cannot be calm and prudent where your happiness is concerned; and yet it was only a vague report."
"Oh! then do not tell it to me," she said, relapsing into her previous coldness. "If you had known anything connected with his health, you would have done well to tell me—any other reports I would rather hear from himself" She rose as she spoke, and without even a look at him left the room.
She went straight to Lady Walden, who was, for a wonder, not in the nursery. "Amelia," she said, "I cannot bear that Colonel Stuart. I do not know what he means. I cannot understand his looks and his manner. He has been trying to frighten me with some report which he says concerns my happiness. What business is it of his whether I am happy or not? Amelia, what does he mean?"
Lady Walden had seen looks of Colonel Stuart's that had aroused her suspicions, and she was sufficiently aware of his character and habits to have a distinct perception of his meaning; but she had no intention of enlightening Helen's innocent mind, and said, with an air of indifference, "Oh, nothing at all probably. He delights in petty mysteries, and in interference in the affairs of other people; and he fancies himself a good adviser, though it generally appears to me that his advice is wrong."
"Wrong or right," said Helen, "I do not wish for it, and I am very glad Mary did not marry him. But I wish, dearest, you would ascertain, without seeming to care about it, whether he does know anything about Teviot. I dare say it is only some nonsense about that silly Lady Portmore; but still he has made me feel uncomfortable."
"And that is just what he intended," said Amelia; "but I will have a talk with him this evening. Till then do not let us think of him, and in the meanwhile may I ask, Nelly, if you ever in your life saw anything half so pretty as baby's hand?"
She put aside the curtain of the little white cradle that was on her sofa, and the sisters solaced themselves for the disturbance occasioned by Colonel Stuart's dark hints by a regular course of baby twaddle, kissing its waxy little hands, trying to roll the short down on its head into curls—an attempt in which they signally failed; and poking little holes in the corners of its mouth and the dimple on its chin, fancying they made it laugh. To impartial observers, the face made by baby under this manipulation was one of unutterable disgust and annoyance.
In the course of the evening Amelia fulfilled her promise to Helen, by engaging Colonel Stuart in conversation, and his vanity was gratified by her alluding to the hints he had given to her sister, and the impression they had made on her.
"You may imagine, Lady Walden," he said, rather solemnly, "that the last thing I should wish would be to give your sister a moment of uneasiness. I could not do it, such a bright, buoyant being as she is. How she can be undervalued or misunderstood! But this is not what I have to say. It had better be said to you than to her; and you can then impart the tidings to her or not, as you think best."
"But what tidings?" said Amelia, impatiently. "What is it that requires all this preparation?"
"Merely a report. I trust it is nothing more; but a report that materially affects Lord Teviot's position, should it prove true. Have you ever seen or heard of a certain Henry Lorimer, who lives not in the best society, but occasionally hangs about it?"
"You mean a tall, dark Mr. Lorimer, who is a connection of Lord Teviot's after a fashion, a natural son of Lord Robert's, Teviot's great-uncle. I believe that old Lord Robert was a shocking old man. Luckily for Teviot, he was never married."
"Ah!" said Colonel Stuart; "but this leads, unfortunately, to my mysterious report." And then he went on to explain to Lady Walden that this Henry Lorimer, after having consented to pass for some years as an illegitimate scion of the Teviot house, had suddenly asserted a private marriage of his father's, which he was prepared to prove, and consequently to lay claim to the Teviot title and estates. "This intelligence came to me through an odd, inexplicable channel; it is not yet generally known, but it soon must be, and I leave it to you to judge whether your sister had better hear it now, or on Teviot's return. It may be kept a secret a few days longer."
Colonel Stuart's intelligence always did come to him in strange, mysterious ways: but yet it generally proved to be correct, and Amelia felt that he was only asserting what he actually knew. She questioned him as to the grounds on which Mr. Lorimer had raised his claim; but on that point Colonel Stuart could or would say nothing. He confined himself to sighs and shakings of the head, after the fashion of Lord Burleigh, and an occasional word of pity for Lady Teviot.
She had watched this colloquy with great interest, and eagerly followed her sister out of the room when Amelia professed fatigue as an excuse for retiring early.
"Well, Amelia, what is it? Tell me at once. Is it anything about Lady Portmore? or about Teviot's health?"
"Neither the one nor the other, darling, and the story may turn out false; but it is certainly very annoying"; and then she repeated to her sister the facts stated to her by Colonel Stuart.
"Oh! is that all?" said Helen, with a sigh of relief. "In the first place, I do not believe it. I do not know why it is, but I feel as if I should distrust anything and everything asserted by Colonel Stuart; and then, supposing it to be true, worse misfortunes might have happened. I doubt whether very great riches and grandeur really do give all the happiness we suppose. But Teviot, poor Teviot!" she added, in an unusual tone of tenderness, "I am afraid he will feel all this deeply, even if it ends well. He will hate the discussions and all the publicity given to his family history; and if it ends ill! Oh, Amelia, does he know it yet?"
"No, Colonel Stuart says that except 'the scamp,' as he calls Mr. Lorimer, and his advisers, it is known to no one but himself."
"I am glad," said Helen in a tone of deep feeling; "for then I shall be with Teviot when he hears it, and I think I shall be a comfort to him." There was silence between the sisters for a few minutes, and then Helen, throwing her arms round Amelia's neck, said in a faltering voice, "Dearest, I have been wrong, very wrong, in the whole course of my married life; so unlike what you would have been. I cannot talk even to you about it; but the worst of all is that I did not go with my husband to Lisbon. Amelia, I am very unhappy, but to-morrow I shall hear from him, and I mean to be at Southampton before he lands. So whatever bad news may come, we may hear it together."
"You are right, darling," said Amelia, who was too honest and true-hearted to say that Helen condemned herself unjustly. "It is better not to discuss the past if it fret my Helen, but she will be a happy good little wife for the future, and so good-night."