He paused a moment, and then he asked her one other question: "Would you write the letter for me, Lucy?"
She smiled again as she answered him: "Yes; if you make up your mind to do as Sir Harry asks you, I will write a draft of what I think you should say to her."
CHAPTER XVI
SIR HARRY'S RETURN
Sir Harry received the grandly worded and indignant letter which had been written at the club, and Cousin George hesitated as to that other letter which his friend was to dictate for him. Consequently it became necessary that Sir Harry should leave London before the matter was settled. In truth the old Baronet liked the grandly worded and indignant letter. It was almost such a letter as a Hotspur should write on such an occasion. There was an admission of pecuniary weakness which did not quite become a Hotspur, but otherwise the letter was a good letter. Before he left London he took the letter with him to Mr. Boltby, and on his way thither could not refrain from counting up all the good things which would befall him and his if only this young man might be reclaimed and recast in a mould such as should fit the heir of the Hotspurs. He had been very bad, – so bad that when Sir Harry counted up his sins they seemed to be as black as night. And then, as he thought of them, the father would declare to himself that he would not imperil his daughter by trusting her to one who had shown himself to be so evil. But again another mode of looking at it all would come upon him. The kind of vice of which George had been undoubtedly guilty was very distasteful to Sir Harry; it had been ignoble and ungentlemanlike vice. He had been a liar, and not only a gambler, but a professional gambler. He had not simply got into debt, but he had got into debt in a fashion that was fraudulent; – so at least Sir Harry thought. And yet, need it be said that this reprobate was beyond the reach of all forgiveness? Had not men before him done as bad, and yet were brought back within the pale of decent life? In this still vacillating mood of mind Sir Harry reached his lawyer's. Mr. Boltby did not vacillate at all. When he was shown the letter he merely smiled.
"I don't think it is a bad letter," said Sir Harry.
"Words mean so little, Sir Harry," said Mr. Boltby, "and come so cheap."
Sir Harry turned the letter over in his hand and frowned; he did not quite like to be told even by his confidential lawyer that he was mistaken. Unconsciously he was telling himself that after all George Hotspur had been born a gentleman, and that therefore, underlying all the young man's vileness and villany there must be a substratum of noble soil of which the lawyer perhaps knew nothing. Mr. Boltby saw that his client was doubting, and having given much trouble to the matter, and not being afraid of Sir Harry, he determined to speak his mind freely.
"Sir Harry," he said, "in this matter I must tell you what I really think."
"Certainly."
"I am sorry to have to speak ill of one bearing your name; and were not the matter urgent as it is, I should probably repress something of my opinion. As it is, I do not dare to do so. You could not in all London find a man less fit to be the husband of Miss Hotspur than her cousin."
"He is a gentleman – by birth," said Sir Harry.
"He is an unprincipled blackguard by education, and the more blackguard because of his birth; there is nothing too bad for him to do, and very little so bad but what he has done it. He is a gambler, a swindler, and, as I believe, a forger and a card-sharper. He has lived upon the wages of the woman he has professed to love. He has shown himself to be utterly spiritless, abominable, and vile. If my clerk in the next room were to slap his face, I do not believe that he would resent it." Sir Harry frowned, and moved his feet rapidly on the floor. "In my thorough respect and regard for you, Sir Harry," continued Mr. Boltby, "I have undertaken a work which I would not have done for above two or three other men in the world beside yourself. I am bound to tell you the result, which is this, – that I would sooner give my own girl to the sweeper at the crossing than to George Hotspur."
Sir Harry's brow was very black. Perhaps he had not quite known his lawyer. Perhaps it was that he had less power of endurance than he had himself thought in regard to the mention of his own family affairs. "Of course," he said, "I am greatly indebted to you, Mr. Boltby, for the trouble you have taken."
"I only hope it may be of service to you."
"It has been of service. What may be the result in regard to this unfortunate young man I cannot yet say. He has refused our offer, – I must say as I think – honourably."
"It means nothing."
"How nothing, Mr. Boltby?"
"No man accepts such a bargain at first. He is playing his hand against yours, Sir Harry, and he knows that he has got a very good card in his own. It was not to be supposed that he would give in at once. In besieging a town the surest way is to starve the garrison. Wait a while and he will give in. When a town has within its walls such vultures as will now settle upon him, it cannot stand out very long. I shall hear more of him before many days are over."
"You think, then, that I may return to Humblethwaite."
"Certainly, Sir Harry; but I hope, Sir Harry, that you will return with the settled conviction on your mind that this young man must not on any consideration be allowed to enter your family."
The lawyer meant well, but he overdid his work. Sir Harry got up and shook hands with him and thanked him, but left the room with some sense of offence. He had come to Mr. Boltby for information, and he had received it. But he was not quite sure that he had intended that Mr. Boltby should advise him touching his management of his own daughter. Mr. Boltby, he thought, had gone a little beyond his tether. Sir Harry acknowledged to himself that he had learned a great deal about his cousin, and it was for him to judge after that whether he would receive his cousin at Humblethwaite. Mr. Boltby should not have spoken about the crossing-sweeper. And then Sir Harry was not quite sure that he liked that idea of setting vultures upon a man; and Sir Harry remembered something of his old lore as a hunting man. It is astonishing what blood will do in bringing a horse through mud at the end of a long day. Mr. Boltby probably did not understand how much, at the very last, might be expected from breeding. When Sir Harry left Mr. Boltby's chambers he was almost better-minded towards Cousin George than he had been when he entered them; and in this frame of mind, both for and against the young man, he returned to Humblethwaite. It must not be supposed, however, that as the result of the whole he was prepared to yield. He knew, beyond all doubt, that his cousin was thoroughly a bad subject, – a worthless and, as he believed, an irredeemable scamp; but yet he thought of what might happen if he were to yield!
Things were very sombre when he reached Humblethwaite. Of course his wife could not refrain from questions. "It is very bad," he said, – "as bad as can be."
"He has gambled?"
"Gambled! If that were all! You had better not ask about it; he is a disgrace to the family."
"Then there can be no hope for Emily?"
"No hope! Why should there not be hope? All her life need not depend on her fancy for a man of whom after all she has not seen so very much. She must get over it. Other girls have had to do the same."
"She is not like other girls, Harry."
"How not like them?"
"I think she is more persistent; she has set her heart upon loving this young man, and she will love him."
"Then she must."
"She will break her heart," said Lady Elizabeth.
"She will break mine, I know," said Sir Harry.
When he met his daughter he had embraced her, and she had kissed him and asked after his welfare; but he felt at once that she was different from what she used to be, – different, not only as regarded herself, but different also in her manner. There came upon him a sad, ponderous conviction that the sunlight had gone out from their joint lives, that all pleasant things were over for both of them, and that, as for him, it would be well for him that he should die. He could not be happy if there were discord between him and his child, – and there must be discord. The man had been invited with a price to take himself off, and had not been sufficiently ignoble to accept the offer. How could he avoid the discord, and bring back the warmth of the sun into his house? Then he remembered those terribly forcible epithets which Mr. Boltby had spoken. "He is an unprincipled blackguard; and the worse blackguard because of his birth." The words had made Sir Harry angry, but he believed them to be true. If there were to be any yielding, he would not yield as yet; but that living in his house without sunshine was very grievous to him. "She will kill me," he said to himself, "if she goes on like this."
And yet it was hard to say of what it was that he complained. Days went by and his daughter said nothing and did nothing of which he could complain. It was simply this, – that the sunshine was no longer bright within his halls. Days went by, and George Hotspur's name had never been spoken by Emily in the hearing of her father or mother. Such duties as there were for her to do were done. The active duties of a girl in her position are very few. It was her custom of a morning to spread butter on a bit of toast for her father to eat. This she still did, and brought it to him as was her wont; but she did not bring it with her old manner. It was a thing still done, – simply because not to do it would be an omission to be remarked. "Never mind it," said her father the fourth or fifth morning after his return, "I'd sooner do it for myself." She did not say a word, but on the next morning the little ceremony, which had once been so full of pleasant affection, was discontinued. She had certain hours of reading, and these were prolonged rather than abandoned. But both her father and mother perceived that her books were changed; her Italian was given up, and she took to works of religion, – sermons, treatises, and long commentaries.
"It will kill me," said Sir Harry to his wife.
"I am afraid it will kill her," said Lady Elizabeth. "Do you see how her colour has gone, and she eats so little!"
"She walks every day."
"Yes; and comes in so tired. And she goes to church every Wednesday and Friday at Hesket. I'm sure she is not fit for it such weather as this."
"She has the carriage?"
"No, she walks."
Then Sir Harry gave orders that his daughter should always have the carriage on Wednesdays and Fridays. But Emily, when her mother told her this, insisted that she would sooner walk.
But what did the carriage or no carriage on Wednesday signify? The trouble was deeper than that. It was so deep that both father and mother felt that something must be done, or the trouble would become too heavy for their backs. Ten days passed and nothing was heard either from Mr. Boltby or from Cousin George. Sir Harry hardly knew what it was then he expected to hear; but it seemed that he did expect something. He was nervous at the hour of post, and was aware himself that he was existing on from day to day with the idea of soon doing some special thing, – he knew not what, – but something that might put an end to the frightful condition of estrangement between him and his child in which he was now living. It told even upon his duty among his tenants. It told upon his farm. It told upon almost every workman in the parish. He had no heart for doing anything. It did not seem certain to him that he could continue to live in his own house. He could not bring himself to order that this wood should be cut, or that those projected cottages should be built. Everything was at a standstill; and it was clear to him that Emily knew that all this had come from her rash love for her cousin George. She never now came and stood at his elbow in his own room, or leaned upon his shoulder; she never now asked him questions, or brought him out from his papers to decide questions in the garden, – or rather to allow himself to be ruled by her decisions. There were greetings between them morning and evening, and questions were asked and answered formally; but there was no conversation. "What have I done that I should be punished in this way?" said Sir Harry to himself.
If he was prompt to think himself hardly used, so also was his daughter. In considering the matter in her own mind she had found it to be her duty to obey her father in her outward conduct, founding her convictions in this matter upon precedent and upon the general convictions of the world. In the matter of bestowing herself upon a suitor, a girl is held to be subject to her parents. So much she knew, or believed that she knew; and therefore she would obey. She had read and heard of girls who would correspond with their lovers clandestinely, would run away with their lovers, would marry their lovers as it were behind their fathers' backs. No act of this kind would she do. She had something within her which would make it dreadful to her ever to have to admit that she had been personally wrong, – some mixture of pride and principle, which was strong enough to keep her stedfast in her promised obedience. She would do nothing that could be thrown in her teeth; nothing that could be called unfeminine, indelicate, or undutiful. But she had high ideas of what was due to herself, and conceived that she would be wronged by her father, should her father take advantage of her sense of duty to crush her heart. She had her own rights and her own privileges, with which grievous and cruel interference would be made, should her father, because he was her father, rob her of the only thing which was sweet to her taste or desirable in her esteem. Because she was his heiress he had no right to make her his slave. But even should he do so, she had in her own hands a certain security. The bondage of a slave no doubt he might allot to her, but not the task-work. Because she would cling to her duty and keep the promise which she had made to him, it would be in his power to prevent the marriage upon which she had set her heart; but it was not within his power, or within his privilege as a father, to force upon her any other marriage. She would never help him with her hand in that adjustment of his property of which he thought so much unless he would help her in her love. And in the meantime sunshine should be banished from the house, such sunshine as had shone round her head. She did not so esteem herself as to suppose that, because she was sad, therefore her father and mother would be wretched; but she did feel herself bound to contribute to the house in general all the wretchedness which might come from her own want of sunlight. She suffered under a terrible feeling of ill-usage. Why was she, because she was a girl and an heiress, to be debarred from her own happiness? If she were willing to risk herself, why should others interfere? And if the life and conduct of her cousin were in truth so bad as they were represented, – which she did not in the least believe, – why had he been allowed to come within her reach? It was not only that he was young, clever, handsome, and in every way attractive, but that, in addition to all this, he was a Hotspur, and would some day be the head of the Hotspurs. Her father had known well enough that her family pride was equal to his own. Was it not natural that, when a man so endowed had come in her way, she should learn to love him? And when she had loved him, was it not right that she should cling to her love?
Her father would fain treat her like a beast of burden kept in the stables for a purpose; or like a dog whose obedience and affections might be transferred from one master to another for a price. She would obey her father; but her father should be made to understand that hers was not the nature of a beast of burden or of a dog. She was a Hotspur as thoroughly as was he. And then they brought men there to her, selected suitors, whom she despised. What did they think of her when imagining that she would take a husband not of her own choosing? What must be their idea of love, and of marriage duty, and of that close intercourse of man and wife? To her feeling a woman should not marry at all unless she could so love a man as to acknowledge to herself that she was imperatively required to sacrifice all that belonged to her for his welfare and good. Such was her love for George Hotspur, – let him be what he might. They told her that he was bad and that he would drag her into the mud. She was willing to be dragged into the mud; or, at any rate, to make her own struggle during the dragging, as to whether he should drag her in, or she should drag him out.
And then they brought men to her – walking-sticks, – Lord Alfred and young Mr. Thoresby, and insulted her by supposing of her that she would marry a man simply because he was brought there as a fitting husband. She would be dutiful and obedient as a daughter, according to her idea of duty and of principle; but she would let them know that she had an identity of her own, and that she was not to be moulded like a piece of clay.
No doubt she was hard upon her father. No doubt she was in very truth disobedient and disrespectful. It was not that she should have married any Lord Alfred that was brought to her, but that she should have struggled to accommodate her spirit to her father's spirit. But she was a Hotspur; and though she could be generous, she could not yield. And then the hold of a child upon the father is so much stronger than that of the father on the child! Our eyes are set in our face, and are always turned forward. The glances that we cast back are but occasional.
And so the sunshine was banished from the house of Humblethwaite, and the days were as black as the night.
CHAPTER XVII
"LET US TRY."
Things went on thus at Humblethwaite for three weeks, and Sir Harry began to feel that he could endure it no longer. He had expected to have heard again from Mr. Boltby, but no letter had come. Mr. Boltby had suggested to him something of starving out the town, and he had expected to be informed before this whether the town were starved out or not. He had received an indignant and grandiloquent letter from his cousin, of which as yet he had taken no notice. He had taken no notice of the letter, although it had been written to decline a proposal of very great moment made by himself. He felt that in these circumstances Mr. Boltby ought to have written to him. He ought to have been told what was being done. And yet he had left Mr. Boltby with a feeling which made it distasteful to him to ask further questions from the lawyer on the subject. Altogether his position was one as disagreeable and painful as it well could be.
But at last, in regard to his own private life with his daughter, he could bear it no longer. The tenderness of his heart was too much for his pride, and he broke down in his resolution to be stern and silent with her till all this should have passed by them. She was so much more to him than he was to her! She was his all in all; – whereas Cousin George was hers. He was the happier at any rate in this, that he would never be forced to despise where he loved.
"Emily," he said to her at last, "why is it that you are so changed to me?"
"Papa!"
"Are you not changed? Do you not know that everything about the house is changed?"
"Yes, Papa."
"And why is it so? I do not keep away from you. You used to come to me every day. You never come near me now."
She hesitated for a moment with her eyes turned to the ground, and then as she answered him she looked him full in the face. "It is because I am always thinking of my cousin George."
"But why should that keep us apart, Emily? I wish that it were not so; but why should that keep us apart?"
"Because you are thinking of him too, and think so differently! You hate him; but I love him."
"I do not hate him. It is not that I hate him. I hate his vices."
"So do I."
"I know that he is not a fit man for you to marry. I have not been able to tell you the things that I know of him."
"I do not wish to be told."
"But you might believe me when I assure you that they are of a nature to make you change your feelings towards him. At this very moment he is attached to – to – another person."
Emily Hotspur blushed up to her brows, and her cheeks and forehead were suffused with blood; but her mouth was set as firm as a rock, and then came that curl over her eye which her father had so dearly loved when she was a child, but which was now held by him to be so dangerous. She was not going to be talked out of her love in that way. Of course there had been things, – were things of which she knew nothing and desired to know nothing. Though she herself was as pure as the driven snow, she did not require to be told that there were impurities in the world. If it was meant to be insinuated that he was untrue to her, she simply disbelieved it. But what if he were? His untruth would not justify hers. And untruth was impossible to her. She loved him, and had told him so. Let him be ever so false, it was for her to bring him back to truth or to spend herself in the endeavour. Her father did not understand her at all when he talked to her after this fashion. But she said nothing. Her father was alluding to a matter on which she could say nothing.
"If I could explain to you the way in which he has raised money for his daily needs, you would feel that he had degraded himself beneath your notice."
"He cannot degrade himself beneath my notice; – not now. It is too late."
"But, Emily, – do you mean to say then that, let you set your affections where you might, – however wrongly, on however base a subject, – your mamma and I ought to yield to them, merely because they are so set?"
"He is your heir, Papa."
"No; you are my heir. But I will not argue upon that. Grant that he were my heir; even though every acre that is mine must go to feed his wickedness the very moment that I die, would that be a reason for giving my child to him also? Do you think that you are no more to me than the acres, or the house, or the empty title? They are all nothing to my love for you."
"Papa!"
"I do not think that you have known it. Nay, darling, I have hardly known it myself. All other anxieties have ceased with me now that I have come to know what it really is to be anxious for you. Do you think that I would not abandon any consideration as to wealth or family for your happiness? It has come to that with me, Emily, that they are nothing to me now; – nothing. You are everything."
"Dear Papa!" And now once again she leant upon his shoulder.
"When I tell you of the young man's life, you will not listen to me. You regard it simply as groundless opposition."
"No, Papa; not groundless, – only useless."
"But am I not bound to see that my girl be not united to a man who would disgrace her, misuse her, drag her into the dirt," – that idea of dragging George out was strong in Emily's mind as she listened to this, – "make her wretched and contemptible, and degrade her? Surely this is a father's duty; and my child should not turn from me, and almost refuse to speak to me, because I do it as best I can!"
"I do not turn from you, Papa."
"Has my darling been to me as she used to be?"
"Look here, Papa; you know what it is I have promised you."
"I do, dearest."
"I will keep my promise. I will never marry him till you consent. Even though I were to see him every day for ten years, I would not do so when I had given my word."
"I am sure of it, Emily."
"But let us try, you and I and Mamma together. If you will do that; oh, I will be so good to you! Let us see if we cannot make him good. I will never ask to marry him till you yourself are satisfied that he has reformed." She looked into his face imploringly, and she saw that he was vacillating. And yet he was a strong man, not given in ordinary things to much doubt. "Papa, let us understand each other and be friends. If we do not trust each other, who can trust any one?"
"I do trust you."
"I shall never care for any one else."
"Do not say that, my child. You are too young to know your own heart. These are wounds which time will cure. Others have suffered as you are suffering, and yet have become happy wives and mothers."
"Papa, I shall never change. I think I love him more because he is – so weak. Like a poor child that is a cripple, he wants more love than those who are strong. I shall never change. And look here, Papa; I know it is my duty to obey you by not marrying without your consent. But it can never be my duty to marry any one because you or Mamma ask me. You will agree to that, Papa?"
"I should never think of pressing any one on you."
"That is what I mean. And so we do understand each other. Nothing can teach me not to think of him, and to love him, and to pray for him. As long as I live I shall do so. Nothing you can find out about him will alter me in that. Pray, pray do not go on finding out bad things. Find out something good, and then you will begin to love him."
"But if there is nothing good?" Sir Harry, as he said this, remembered the indignant refusal of his offer which was at that moment in his pocket, and confessed to himself that he had no right to say that nothing good could be found in Cousin George.
"Do not say that, Papa. How can you say that of any one? Remember, he has our name, and he must some day be at the head of our family."
"It will not be long, first," said Sir Harry, mournfully.
"Many, many, many years, I hope. For his sake as well as ours, I pray that it may be so. But still it is natural to suppose that the day will come."
"Of course it will come."
"Must it not be right, then, to make him fit for it when it comes? It can't be your great duty to think of him, as it is mine; but still it must be a duty to you too. I will not excuse his life, Papa; but have there not been temptations, – such great temptations? And then, other men are excused for doing what he has done. Let us try together, Papa. Say that you will try."
It was clear to Sir Harry through it all that she knew nothing as yet of the nature of the man's offences. When she spoke of temptation not resisted, she was still thinking of commonplace extravagance, of the ordinary pleasures of fast young men, of racecourses, and betting, perhaps, and of tailors' bills. That lie which he had told about Goodwood she had, as it were, thrown behind her, so that she should not be forced to look at it. But Sir Harry knew him to be steeped in dirty lies up to the hip, one who cheated tradesmen on system, a gambler who looked out for victims, a creature so mean that he could take a woman's money! Mr. Boltby had called him a swindler, a card-sharper, and a cur; and Sir Harry, though he was inclined at the present moment to be angry with Mr. Boltby, had never known the lawyer to be wrong. And this was the man for whom his daughter was pleading with all the young enthusiasm of her nature, – was pleading, not as for a cousin, but in order that he might at last be welcomed to that house as her lover, her husband, the one human being chosen out from all the world to be the recipient of the good things of which she had the bestowal! The man was so foul in the estimation of Sir Harry that it was a stain to be in his presence; and this was the man whom he as a father was implored to help to save, in order that at some future time his daughter might become the reprobate's wife!
"Papa, say that you will help me," repeated Emily, clinging to him, and looking up into his face.
He could not say that he would help her, and yet he longed to say some word that might comfort her. "You have been greatly shaken by all this, dearest."
"Shaken! Yes, in one sense I have been shaken. I don't know quite what you mean. I shall never be shaken in the other way."
"You have been distressed."
"Yes; distressed."
"And, indeed, so have we all," he continued. "I think it will be best to leave this for a while."
"For how long, Papa?"
"We need not quite fix that. I was thinking of going to Naples for the winter." He was silent, waiting for her approbation, but she expressed none. "It is not long since you said how much you would like to spend a winter in Naples."
She still paused, but it was but for a moment. "At that time, Papa, I was not engaged." Did she mean to tell him, that because of this fatal promise which she had made, she never meant to stir from her home till she should be allowed to go with that wretch as her husband; that because of this promise, which could never be fulfilled, everything should come to an end with her? "Papa," she said, "that would not be the way to try to save him, to go away and leave him among those who prey upon him; – unless, indeed, he might go too!"
"What! with us?"
"With you and Mamma. Why not? You know what I have promised. You can trust me."
"It is a thing absolutely not to be thought of," he said; and then he left her. What was he to do? He could take her abroad, no doubt, but were he to do so in her present humour, she would, of course, relapse into that cold, silent, unloving, undutiful obedience which had been so distressing to him. She had made a great request to him, and he had not absolutely refused it. But the more he thought of it the more distasteful did it become to him. You cannot touch pitch and not be defiled. And the stain of this pitch was so very black! He could pay money, if that would soothe her. He could pay money, even if the man should not accept the offer made to him, should she demand it of him. And if the man would reform himself, and come out through the fire really purified, might it not be possible that at some long future time Emily should become his wife? Or, if some sort of half promise such as this were made to Emily, would not that soften her for the time, and induce her to go abroad with a spirit capable of satisfaction, if not of pleasure? If this could be brought about, then time might do the rest. It would have been a delight to him to see his daughter married early, even though his own home might have been made desolate; but now he would be content if he thought he could look forward to some future settlement in life that might become her rank and fortune.