Anthony Trollope - Marion Fay - A Novel

"What I mean is, that carrying me away can do no good. You don't suppose, John, that I shall give him up after having once brought myself to say the word! It was very difficult to say; – but ten times harder to be unsaid. I am quite determined, – and quite satisfied."

"But they are not."

"As regards my father, I am very sorry. As to mamma, she and I are so different in all our thinking that I know beforehand that whatever I might do would displease her. It cannot be helped. Whether it be good or bad I cannot be made such as she is. She came too late. You will not turn against me, John?"

"I rather think I shall."

"John!"

"I may rather say that I have. I do not think your engagement to be wise."

"But it has been made," said she.

"And may be unmade."

"No; – unless by him."

"I shall tell him that it ought to be unmade, – for the happiness of both of you."

"He will not believe you."

Then Lord Hampstead shrugged his shoulders, and thus the conversation was finished.

It was now about the end of June, and the Marquis felt it to be a grievance that he should be carried away from the charm of political life in London. In the horror of the first revelation he had yielded, but had since begun to feel that too much was being done in withdrawing him from Parliament. The Conservatives were now in; but during the last Liberal Government he had consented so far to trammel himself with the bonds of office as to become Privy Seal for the concluding six months of its existence, and therefore felt his own importance in a party point of view. But having acceded to his wife he could not now go back, and was sulky. On the evening before their departure he was going to dine out with some of the party. His wife's heart was too deep in the great family question for any gaiety, and she intended to remain at home, – and to look after the final packings-up for the little lords.

"I really do not see why you should not have gone without me," the Marquis said, poking his head out of his dressing-room.

"Impossible," said the Marchioness.

"I don't see it at all."

"If he should appear on the scene ready to carry her off, what should I have done?"

Then the Marquis drew his head in again, and went on with his dressing. What, indeed, could he do himself if the man were to appear on the scene, and if his daughter should declare herself willing to go off with him?

When the Marquis went to his dinner party the Marchioness dined with Lady Frances. There was no one else present but the two servants who waited on them, and hardly a word was spoken. The Marchioness felt that an awful silence was becoming in the situation. Lady Frances merely determined more strongly than ever that the situation should not last very long. She would go abroad now, but would let her father understand that the kind of life planned out for her was one that she could not endure. If she was supposed to have disgraced her position, let her be sent away.

As soon as the melancholy meal was over the two ladies separated, the Marchioness going up-stairs among her own children. A more careful, more affectionate, perhaps, I may say, a more idolatrous mother never lived. Every little want belonging to them, – for even little lords have wants, – was a care to her. To see them washed and put in and out of their duds was perhaps the greatest pleasure of her life. To her eyes they were pearls of aristocratic loveliness; and, indeed, they were fine healthy bairns, clean-limbed, bright-eyed, with grand appetites, and never cross as long as they were allowed either to romp and make a noise, or else to sleep. Lord Frederic, the eldest, was already in words of two syllables, and sometimes had a bad time with them. Lord Augustus was the owner of great ivory letters of which he contrived to make playthings. Lord Gregory had not as yet been introduced to any of the torments of education. There was an old English clergyman attached to the family who was supposed to be their tutor, but whose chief duty consisted in finding conversation for the Marquis when there was no one else to talk to him. There was also a French governess and a Swiss maid. But as they both learned English quicker than the children learned French, they were not serviceable for the purpose at first intended. The Marchioness had resolved that her children should talk three or four languages as fluently as their own, and that they should learn them without any of the agonies generally incident to tuition. In that she had not as yet succeeded.

She seated herself for a few minutes among the boxes and portmanteaus in the midst of which the children were disporting themselves prior to their final withdrawal to bed. No mother was ever so blessed, – if only, if only! "Mamma," said Lord Frederic, "where's Jack?" "Jack" absolutely was intended to signify Lord Hampstead.

"Fred, did not I say that you should not call him Jack?"

"He say he is Jack," declared Lord Augustus, rolling up in between his mother's knees with an impetus which would have upset her had she not been a strong woman and accustomed to these attacks.

"That is only because he is good-natured, and likes to play with you. You should call him Hampstead."

"Mamma, wasn't he christianed?" asked the eldest.

"Yes, of course he was christened, my dear," said the mother, sadly, – thinking how very much of the ceremony had been thrown away upon the unbelieving, godless young man. Then she superintended the putting to bed, thinking what a terrible bar to her happiness had been created by that first unfortunate marriage of her husband's. Oh, that she should be stepmother to a daughter who desired to fling herself into the arms of a clerk in the Post Office! And then that an "unchristianed," that an infidel, republican, un-English, heir should stand in the way of her darling boy! She had told herself a thousand times that the Devil was speaking to her when she had dared to wish that, – that Lord Hampstead was not there! She had put down the wish in her heart very often, telling herself that it came from the Devil. She had made a faint struggle to love the young man, – which had resulted in constrained civility. It would have been unnatural to her to love any but her own. Now she thought how glorious her Frederic would have been as Lord Hampstead, – and how infinitely better it would have been, how infinitely better it would be, for all the Traffords, for all the nobles of England, and for the country at large! But in thinking this she knew that she was a sinner, and she endeavoured to crush the sin. Was it not tantamount to wishing that her husband's son was – dead?

There is something so sad in the condition of a girl who is known to be in love, and has to undergo the process of being made ashamed of it by her friends, that one wonders that any young woman can bear it. Most young women cannot bear it, and either give up their love or say that they do. A young man who has got into debt, or been plucked, – or even when he has declared himself to be engaged to a penniless young lady, which is worse, – is supposed merely to have gone after his kind, and done what was to be expected of him. The mother never looks at him with that enduring anger by which she intends to wear out the daughter's constancy. The father frets and fumes, pays the debts, prepares the way for a new campaign, and merely shrugs his shoulders about the proposed marriage, which he regards simply as an impossibility. But the girl is held to have disgraced herself. Though it is expected of her, or at any rate hoped, that she will get married in due time, yet the falling in love with a man, – which is, we must suppose, a preliminary step to marriage, – is a wickedness. Even among the ordinary Joneses and Browns of the world we see that it is so. When we are intimate enough with the Browns to be aware of Jane Brown's passion, we understand the father's manner and the mother's look. The very servants about the house are aware that she has given way to her feelings, and treat her accordingly. Her brothers are ashamed of her. Whereas she, if her brother be in love with Jemima Jones, applauds him, sympathizes with him, and encourages him.