The Palliser Novels (249 page)

“I can do without laughing for a while.”

“That’s lucky, Miss Morris. If they were all so good to you, what made you come away? They sent you away, didn’t they?”

“Well; — I don’t know that I can explain it just all. There were a great many things together. No; — they didn’t send me away. I came away because it suited.”

“It was something to do with your having a lover, I suppose.” To this Lucy thought it best to make no answer, and the conversation for a while was dropped.

Lucy had arrived at about half-past three, and Lady Linlithgow was then sitting in the drawing-room. After the first series of questions and answers, Lucy was allowed to go up to her room, and on her return to the drawing-room, found the countess still sitting upright in her chair. She was now busy with accounts, and at first took no notice of Lucy’s return. What were to be the companion’s duties? What tasks in the house were to be assigned to her? What hours were to be her own; and what was to be done in those of which the countess would demand the use? Up to the present moment nothing had been said of all this. She had simply been told that she was to be Lady Linlithgow’s companion, — without salary, indeed, — but receiving shelter, guardianship, and bread and meat in return for her services. She took up a book from the table and sat with it for ten minutes. It was Tupper’s great poem, and she attempted to read it. Lady Linlithgow sat, totting up her figures, but said nothing. She had not spoken a word since Lucy’s return to the room; and as the great poem did not at first fascinate the new companion, — whose mind not unnaturally was somewhat disturbed, — Lucy ventured upon a question. “Is there anything I can do for you, Lady Linlithgow?”

“Do you know about figures?”

“Oh, yes. I consider myself quite a ready-reckoner.”

“Can you make two and two come to five on one side of the sheet, and only come to three on the other?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, and prove it afterwards.”

“Then you ain’t worth anything to me.” Having so declared, Lady Linlithgow went on with her accounts and Lucy relapsed into her great poem.

“No, my dear,” said the countess, when she had completed her work. “There isn’t anything for you to do. I hope you haven’t come here with that mistaken idea. There won’t be any sort of work of any kind expected from you. I poke my own fires, and I carve my own bit of mutton. And I haven’t got a nasty little dog to be washed. And I don’t care twopence about worsted work. I have a maid to darn my stockings, and because she has to work, I pay her wages. I don’t like being alone, so I get you to come and live with me. I breakfast at nine, and if you don’t manage to be down by that time, I shall be cross.”

“I’m always up long before that.”

“There’s lunch at two, — just bread and butter and cheese, and perhaps a bit of cold meat. There’s dinner at seven; — and very bad it is, because they don’t have any good meat in London. Down in Fifeshire the meat’s a deal better than it is here, only I never go there now. At half-past ten I go to bed. It’s a pity you’re so young, because I don’t know what you’ll do about going out. Perhaps, as you ain’t pretty, it won’t signify.”

“Not at all, I should think,” said Lucy.

“Perhaps you consider yourself pretty. It’s all altered now since I was young. Girls make monsters of themselves, and I’m told the men like it; — going about with unclean, frowsy structures on their heads, enough to make a dog sick. They used to be clean and sweet and nice, — what one would like to kiss. How a man can like to kiss a face with a dirty horse’s tail all whizzing about it, is what I can’t at all understand. I don’t think they do like it, but they have to do it.”

“I haven’t even a pony’s tail,” said Lucy.

“They do like to kiss you, I daresay.”

“No, they don’t,” ejaculated Lucy, not knowing what answer to make.

“I haven’t hardly looked at you, but you didn’t seem to me to be a beauty.”

“You’re quite right about that, Lady Linlithgow.”

“I hate beauties. My niece, Lizzie Eustace, is a beauty; and I think that, of all the heartless creatures in the world, she is the most heartless.”

“I know Lady Eustace very well.”

“Of course you do. She was a Greystock, and you know the Greystocks. And she was down staying with old Lady Fawn at Richmond. I should think old Lady Fawn had a time with her; — hadn’t she?”

“It didn’t go off very well.”

“Lizzie would be too much for the Fawns, I should think. She was too much for me, I know. She’s about as bad as anybody ever was. She’s false, dishonest, heartless, cruel, irreligious, ungrateful, mean, ignorant, greedy, and vile!”

“Good gracious, Lady Linlithgow!”

“She’s all that, and a great deal worse. But she is handsome. I don’t know that I ever saw a prettier woman. I generally go out in a cab at three o’clock, but I sha’n’t want you to go with me. I don’t know what you can do. Macnulty used to walk round Grosvenor Square and think that people mistook her for a lady of quality. You mustn’t go and walk round Grosvenor Square by yourself, you know. Not that I care.”

“I’m not a bit afraid of anybody,” said Lucy.

“Now you know all about it. There isn’t anything for you to do. There are Miss Edgeworth’s novels down-stairs, and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ in my bed-room. I don’t subscribe to Mudie’s, because when I asked for ‘Adam Bede,’ they always sent me the ‘Bandit Chief.’ Perhaps you can borrow books from your friends at Richmond. I daresay Mrs. Greystock has told you that I’m very cross.”

“I haven’t seen Mrs. Greystock for ever so long.”

“Then Lady Fawn has told you, — or somebody. When the wind is east, or north-east, or even north, I am cross, for I have the lumbago. It’s all very well talking about being good-humoured. You can’t be good-humoured with the lumbago. And I have the gout sometimes in my knee. I’m cross enough then, and so you’d be. And, among ‘em all, I don’t get much above half what I ought to have out of my jointure. That makes me very cross. My teeth are bad, and I like to have the meat tender. But it’s always tough, and that makes me cross. And when people go against the grain with me, as Lizzie Eustace always did, then I’m very cross.”

“I hope you won’t be very bad with me,” said Lucy.

“I don’t bite, if you mean that,” said her ladyship.

“I’d sooner be bitten than barked at, — sometimes,” said Lucy.

“Humph!” said the old woman, and then she went back to her accounts.

Lucy had a few books of her own, and she determined to ask Frank to send her some. Books are cheap things, and she would not mind asking him for magazines, and numbers, and perhaps for the loan of a few volumes. In the meantime she did read Tupper’s poem, and “Pride and Prejudice,” and one of Miss Edgeworth’s novels, — probably for the third time. During the first week in Bruton Street she would have been comfortable enough, only that she had not received a line from Frank. That Frank was not specially good at writing letters she had already taught herself to understand. She was inclined to believe that but few men of business do write letters willingly, and that, of all men, lawyers are the least willing to do so. How reasonable it was that a man who had to perform a great part of his daily work with a pen in his hand, should loathe a pen when not at work. To her the writing of letters was perhaps the most delightful occupation of her life, and the writing of letters to her lover was a foretaste of heaven; but then men, as she knew, are very different from women. And she knew this also, — that of all her immediate duties, no duty could be clearer than that of abstaining from all jealousy, petulance, and impatient expectation of little attentions. He loved her, and had told her so, and had promised her that she should be his wife, and that ought to be enough for her. She was longing for a letter, because she was very anxious to know whether she might mention his name to Lady Linlithgow; — but she would abstain from any idea of blaming him because the letter did not come.

On various occasions the countess showed some little curiosity about the lover; and at last, after about ten days, when she found herself beginning to be intimate with her new companion, she put the question point-blank. “I hate mysteries,” she said. “Who is the young man you are to marry?”

“He is a gentleman I’ve known a long time.”

“That’s no answer.”

“I don’t want to tell his name quite yet, Lady Linlithgow.”

“Why shouldn’t you tell his name, unless it’s something improper? Is he a gentleman?”

“Yes; — he is a gentleman.”

“And how old?”

“Oh, I don’t know; — perhaps thirty-two.”

“And has he any money?”

“He has his profession.”

“I don’t like these kind of secrets, Miss Morris. If you won’t say who he is, what was the good of telling me that you were engaged at all? How is a person to believe it?”

“I don’t want you to believe it.”

“Highty, tighty!”

“I told you my own part of the affair, because I thought you ought to know it as I was coming into your house. But I don’t see that you ought to know his part of it. As for not believing, I suppose you believed Lady Fawn?”

“Not a bit better than I believe you. People don’t always tell truth because they have titles, nor yet because they’ve grown old. He don’t live in London; — does he?”

“He generally lives in London. He is a barrister.”

“Oh, — oh; a barrister is he. They’re always making a heap of money, or else none at all. Which is it with him?”

“He makes something.”

“As much as you could put in your eye and see none the worse.” To see the old lady, as she made this suggestion, turn sharp round upon Lucy, was as good as a play. “My sister’s nephew, the dean’s son, is one of the best of the rising ones, I’m told.” Lucy blushed up to her hair, but the dowager’s back was turned, and she did not see the blushes. “But he’s in Parliament, and they tell me he spends his money faster than he makes it. I suppose you know him?”

“Yes; — I knew him at Bobsborough.”

“It’s my belief that after all this fuss about Lord Fawn, he’ll marry his cousin, Lizzie Eustace. If he’s a lawyer, and as sharp as they say, I suppose he could manage her. I wish he would.”

“And she so bad as you say she is!”

“She’ll be sure to get somebody, and why shouldn’t he have her money as well as another? There never was a Greystock who didn’t want money. That’s what it will come to; — you’ll see.”

“Never,” said Lucy decidedly.

“And why not?”

“What I mean is that Mr. Greystock is, — at least, I should think so from what I hear, — the very last man in the world to marry for money.”

“What do you know of what a man would do?”

“It would be a very mean thing; — particularly if he does not love her.”

“Bother!” said the countess. “They were very near it in town last year before Lord Fawn came up at all. I knew as much as that. And it’s what they’ll come to before they’ve done.”

“They’ll never come to it,” said Lucy.

Then a sudden light flashed across the astute mind of the countess. She turned round in her chair, and sat for awhile silent, looking at Lucy. Then she slowly asked another question. “He isn’t your young man; — is he?” To this Lucy made no reply. “So that’s it, is it?” said the dowager. “You’ve done me the honour of making my house your home till my own sister’s nephew shall be ready to marry you?”

“And why not?” said Lucy, rather roughly.

“And dame Greystock, from Bobsborough, has sent you here to keep you out of her son’s way. I see it all. And that old frump at Richmond has passed you over to me because she did not choose to have such goings on under her own eye.”

“There have been no goings on,” said Lucy.

“And he’s to come here, I suppose, when my back’s turned?”

“He is not thinking of coming here. I don’t know what you mean. Nobody has done anything wrong to you. I don’t know why you say such cruel things.”

“He can’t afford to marry you, you know.”

“I don’t know anything about it. Perhaps we must wait ever so long; — five years. That’s nobody’s business but my own.”

“I found it all out; — didn’t I?”

“Yes; — you found it out.”

“I’m thinking of that sly old dame Greystock at Bobsborough, — sending you here!” Neither on that nor on the two following days did Lady Linlithgow say a word further to Lucy about her engagement.

When Frank Greystock left Bobsborough to go to Scotland, he had not said that he would return, nor had he at that time made up his mind whether he would do so or no. He had promised to go and shoot in Norfolk, and had half undertaken to be up in London with Herriot, working. Though it was holiday-time, still there was plenty of work for him to do, — various heavy cases to get up, and papers to be read, if only he could settle himself down to the doing of it. But the scenes down in Scotland had been of a nature to make him unfit for steady labour. How was he to sail his bark through the rocks by which his present voyage was rendered so dangerous? Of course, to the reader, the way to do so seems to be clear enough. To work hard at his profession; to explain to his cousin that she had altogether mistaken his feelings; and to be true to Lucy Morris was so manifestly his duty, that to no reader will it appear possible that to any gentleman there could be a doubt. Instead of the existence of a difficulty, there was a flood of light upon his path, — so the reader will think; — a flood so clear that not to see his way was impossible. A man carried away by abnormal appetites, and wickedness, and the devil, may of course commit murder, or forge bills, or become a fraudulent director of a bankrupt company. And so may a man be untrue to his troth, — and leave true love in pursuit of tinsel, and beauty, and false words, and a large income. But why should one tell the story of creatures so base? One does not willingly grovel in gutters, or breathe fetid atmospheres, or live upon garbage. If we are to deal with heroes and heroines, let us, at any rate, have heroes and heroines who are above such meanness as falsehood in love. This Frank Greystock must be little better than a mean villain, if he allows himself to be turned from his allegiance to Lucy Morris for an hour by the seductions and money of such a one as Lizzie Eustace.