CHAPTER XIII.
Berkeley Square.
AT eleven o’clock next morning, Edgar, with a beating heart, knocked at the door in Berkeley Square. The footman, who was an old servant, and doubtless remembered all about him, let him in with a certain hesitation—so evident that Edgar reassured him by saying, “I am expected,” which was all he could manage to get out with his dry lips. Heaven send him better utterance when he gets to the moment of his trial! I leave the reader to imagine the effect produced when the door of the morning room, in which Lady Augusta was seated with her daughters, was suddenly opened, and Edgar, looking very pale, and terribly serious, walked into the room.
They were all there. The table was covered with patterns for Mary’s trousseau, and she herself was examining a heap of shawls, with Ada, at the window. Gussy, expectant, and changing colour so often that her agitation had already been remarked upon several times this morning, had kept close to her mother. Beatrice was practising a piece of music at the little piano in the corner, which was the girls’ favourite refuge for their musical studies. They all stopped in their various occupations, and turned round when he came in. Lady Augusta sprang to her feet, and put out one hand in awe and horror, to hold him at arm’s length. Her first look was for him, her second for Gussy, to whom she said, “Go—instantly!” as distinctly as eyes could speak; but, for once in her life, Gussy would not understand her mother’s eyes. And, what was worst of all, the two young ones, Mary and Beatrice, when they caught sight of Edgar, uttered each a cry of delight, and rushed upon him with eager hands outstretched.
“Oh! you have come home for It!—say you have come home for It!” cried Mary, to whom her approaching wedding was the one event which shadowed earth and heaven.
“Girls!” cried Lady Augusta, severely, “do not lay hold upon Mr. Earnshaw in that rude way. Go upstairs, all of you. Mr. Earnshaw’s business, no doubt, is with me.”
“Oh! mamma, mayn’t I talk to him for a moment?” cried Mary, aggrieved, and unwilling, in the fulness of her privileges, to acknowledge herself still under subjection.
But Lady Augusta’s eyes spoke very decisively this time, and Ada set the example by hastening away. Even Ada, however, could not resist the impulse of putting her hand in Edgar’s as she passed him. She divined everything in a moment. She said “God bless you!” softly, so that no one could hear it but himself. Only Gussy did not move.
“I must stay, mamma,” she said, in tones so vehement that even Lady Augusta was awed by them. “I will never disobey you again, but I must stay!”
And then Edgar was left alone, facing the offended lady. Gussy had stolen behind her, whence she could throw a glance of sympathy to her betrothed, undisturbed by her mother. Lady Augusta did not ask him to sit down. She seated herself in a stately manner, like a queen receiving a rebel.
“Mr. Earnshaw,” she said, solemnly, “after all that has passed between us, and all you have promised—I must believe that there is some very grave reason for your unexpected visit to-day.”
What a different reception it was from that she had given him, when—coming, as she supposed, on the same errand which really brought him now—he had to tell her of his loss of everything! Then the whole house had been pleasantly excited over the impending proposal; and Gussy had been kissed and petted by all her sisters, as the heroine of the drama; and Lady Augusta’s motherly heart had swelled with gratitude to God that she had secured for her daughter not only a good match, but a good man. It was difficult for Edgar, at least, to shut out all recollection of the one scene in the other. He answered with less humility than he had shown before, and with a dignity which impressed her, in spite of herself,
“Yes, there is a very grave reason for it,” he said—“the gravest reason—without which I should not have intruded upon you. I made you a voluntary promise some time since, seeing your dismay at my re-appearance, that I would not interfere with any of your plans, or put myself in your way.”
“Yes,” said Lady Augusta, in all the horror of suspense. Gussy, behind, whispered, “You have not!—you have not!” till her mother turned and looked at her, when she sank upon the nearest seat, and covered her face with her hands.
“I might say that I have not, according to the mere letter of my word,” said Edgar; “but I will not stand by that. Lady Augusta, I have come to tell you that I have broken my promise. I find I had no right to make it. I answered for myself, but not for another dearer than myself. The pledge was given in ignorance, and foolishly. I have broken it, and I have come to ask you to forgive me.”
“You have broken your word? Mr. Earnshaw, I was not aware that gentlemen ever did so. I do not believe you are capable of doing so,” she cried, in great agitation. “Gussy, go upstairs, you have nothing to do with this discussion—you were not a party to the bargain. I cannot—cannot allow myself to be treated in this way! Mr. Earnshaw, think what you are saying! You cannot go back from your word!”
“Forgive me,” he said, “I have done it. Had I known all, I would not have given the promise; I told Lady Mary Tottenham so; my pledge was for myself, to restrain my own feelings. From the moment that it was betrayed to me that she too had feelings to restrain, my very principle of action, my rule of honour, was changed. It was no longer my duty to deny myself to obey you. My first duty was to her, Lady Augusta—if in that I disappoint you, if I grieve you——”
“You do more than disappoint me—you horrify me!” cried Lady Augusta. “You make me think that nothing is to be relied upon—no man’s word to be trusted, No, no, we must have no more of this,” she said, with vehemence. “Forget what you have said, Mr. Earnshaw, and I will try to forget it. Go to your room, Gussy—this is no scene for you.”
Edgar stood before his judge motionless, saying no more. I think he felt now how completely the tables were turned, and what an almost cruel advantage he had over her. His part was that of fact and reality, which no one could conjure back into nothingness; and hers that of opposition, disapproval, resistance to the inevitable. He was the rock, and she the vexed and vexing waves, dashing against it, unable to overthrow it. In their last great encounter these positions had been reversed, and it was she who had command of the situation. Now, howsoever parental authority might resist, or the world oppose, the two lovers knew very well, being persons in their full senses, and of full age, that they had but to persevere, and their point would be gained.
Lady Augusta felt it too—it was this which had made her so deeply alarmed from the first, so anxious to keep Edgar at arm’s length. The moment she caught sight of him on this particular morning, she felt that all was over. But that certainty unfortunately does not quench the feelings of opposition, though it may take all hope of eventual success from them. All that this secret conviction of the uselessness of resistance did for Lady Augusta was to make her more hot, more desperate, more acharnée than she had ever been. She grew angry at the silence of her opponent—his very patience seemed a renewed wrong, a contemptuous evidence of conscious power.
“You do not say anything,” she cried. “You allow me to speak without an answer. What do you mean me to understand by this—that you defy me? I have treated you as a friend all along. I thought you were good, and honourable, and true. I have always stood up for you—treated you almost like a son! And is this to be the end of it? You defy me! You teach my own child to resist my will! You do not even keep up the farce of respecting my opinion—now that she has gone over to your side!”
Here poor Lady Augusta got up from her chair, flushed and trembling, with the tears coming to her eyes, and an angry despair warring against very different feelings in her mind. She rose up, not looking at either of the culprits, and leant her arm on the mantelpiece, and gazed unawares at her own excited, troubled countenance in the glass. Yes, they had left her out of their calculations; she who had always (she knew) been so good to them! It no longer seemed worth while to send Gussy away, to treat her as if she were innocent of the complot. She had gone over to the other side. Lady Augusta felt herself deserted, slighted, injured, with the two against her—and determined, doubly determined, never to yield.
“Mamma,” said Gussy, softly, “do not be angry with Edgar. Don’t you know, as well as I, that I have always been on his side?”
“Don’t venture to say a word to me, Gussy,” said Lady Augusta. “I will not endure it from you!”
“Mamma, I must speak. It was you who turned my thoughts to him first. Was it likely that I should forget him because he was in trouble? Why, you did not! You yourself were fond of him all along, and trusted him so that you took his pledge to give up his own will to yours. But I never gave any pledge,” said Gussy, folding her hands. “You never asked me what I thought, or I should have told you. I have been waiting for Edgar. He has not dared to come to me since he came back to England, because of his promise to you; and I have not dared to go to him, because—simply because I was a woman. But when we met, mamma—when we met, I say—not his seeking or my seeking—by accident, as you call it——”
“Oh! accident!” cried Lady Augusta, with a sneer, which sat very strangely upon her kind face. “Accident! One knows how such accidents come to pass!”
“If you doubt our truth,” cried Gussy, in a little outburst, “of course there is no more to say.”
“I beg your pardon,” said the mother, faintly. She had put herself in the wrong. The sneer, the first and only sneer of which poor Lady Augusta had known herself to be guilty, turned to a weapon against her. Compunction and shame filled up the last drop of the conflicting emotions that possessed her. “It is easy for you both to speak,” she said, “very easy; to you it is nothing but a matter of feeling. You never ask yourself how it is to be done. You never think of the thousand difficulties with the world, with your father, with circumstances. What have I taken the trouble to struggle for? You yourself do me justice, Gussy! Not because I would not have preferred Edgar—oh! don’t come near me!” she cried, holding out her hand to keep him back; as he approached a step at the softening sound of his name—“don’t work upon my feelings! It is cruel; it is taking a mean advantage. Not because I did not prefer him—but because life is not a dream, as you think it, not a romance, nor a poem. What am I to do?” cried Lady Augusta, clasping her hands, and raising them with unconscious, most natural theatricalness. “What am I to do? How am I to face your father, your brothers, the world?”
I do not know what the two listeners could have done, after the climax of this speech, but to put themselves at her feet, with that instinct of nature in extreme circumstances which the theatre has seized for its own, and given a partially absurd colour to; but they were saved from thus committing themselves by the sudden and precipitate entrance of Lady Mary, who flung the door open, and suddenly rushed among them without warning or preparation.
“I come to warn you,” she cried, “Augusta!” Then stopped short, seeing at a glance the state of affairs.
They all stood gazing at each other for a moment, the others not divining what this interruption might mean, and feeling instinctively driven back upon conventional self-restraint and propriety, by the entrance of the new-comer. Lady Augusta unclasped her hands, and stole back guiltily to her chair. Edgar recovered his wits, and placed one for Lady Mary. Gussy dropped upon the sofa behind her mother, and cast a secret glance of triumph at him from eyes still wet with tears. He alone remained standing, a culprit still on his trial, who felt the number of his judges increased, without knowing whether his cause would take a favourable or unfavourable aspect in the eyes of the new occupant of the judicial bench.
“What have you all been doing?” said Lady Mary—“you look as much confused and scared by my appearance as if I had disturbed you in the midst of some wrong-doing or other. Am I to divine what has happened? It is what I was coming to warn you against; I was going to say that I could no longer answer for Mr. Earnshaw—”
“I have spoken for myself,” said Edgar. “Lady Augusta knows that all my ideas and my duties have changed. I do not think I need stay longer. I should prefer to write to Mr. Thornleigh at once, unless Lady Augusta objects; but I can take no final negative now from anyone but Gussy herself.”
“And that he shall never have!” cried Gussy, with a ring of premature triumph in her voice. Her mother turned round upon her again with a glance of fire.
“Is that the tone you have learned among the Sisters?” said Lady Augusta, severely. “Yes, go, Mr. Earnshaw, go—we have had enough of this.”
Edgar was perhaps as much shaken as any of them by all he had gone through. He went up to Lady Augusta, and took her half-unwilling hand and kissed it.
“Do you remember,” he said, “dear Lady Augusta, when you cried over me in my ruin, and kissed me like my mother? I cannot forget it, if I should live a hundred years. You have never abandoned me, though you feared me. Say one kind word to me before I go.”
Lady Augusta tried hard not to look at the supplicant. She turned her head away, she gulped down a something in her throat which almost overcame her. The tears rushed to her eyes.
“Don’t speak to me!” she cried—“don’t speak to me! Shall I not be a sufferer too? God bless you, Edgar! I have always felt like your mother. Go away!—go away!—don’t speak to me any more!”
Edgar had the sense to obey her without another look or word. He did not even pause to glance at Gussy (at which she was much aggrieved), but left the room at once. And then Gussy crept to her mother’s side, and knelt down there, clinging with her arms about the vanquished Rhadamantha; and the three women kissed each other, and cried together, not quite sure whether it was for sorrow or joy.
“You are in love with him yourself, Augusta!” cried Lady Mary, laughing and crying together before this outburst was over.
“And so I am,” said Gussy’s mother, drying her kind eyes.
Edgar, as he rushed out, saw heads peeping over the staircase, of which he took no notice, though one of them was no less than the curled and shining head of the future Lady Granton, destined Marchioness (one day or other) of Hauteville. He escaped from these anxious spies, and rushed through the hall, feeling himself safest out of the house. But on the threshold he met Harry Thornleigh, who looked at him from head to foot with an insolent surprise which made Edgar’s blood boil.
“You here!” said Harry, with unmistakably disagreeable intention; then all at once his tone changed—Edgar could not imagine why—and he held out his hand in greeting. “Missed you at Tottenham’s,” said Harry; “they all want you. That little brute Phil is getting unendurable. I wish you’d whop him when you go back.”
“I shall not be back for some days,” said Edgar shortly. “I have business——”
“Here?” asked Harry, with well-simulated surprise. “If you’ll let me give you a little advice, Earnshaw, and won’t take it amiss—I can’t help saying you’ll get no good here.”
“Thank you,” said Edgar, feeling a glow of offence mount to his face. “I suppose every man is the best judge in his own case; but, in the meantime, I am leaving town—for a day or two.”
“Au revoir, then, at Tottenham’s,” said Harry, with a nod, half-hostile, half-friendly, and marched into his own house, or what would one day be his own house, with the air of a master. Edgar left it with a curious sense of the discouragement meant to be conveyed to him, which was half-whimsical, half-painful. Harry meant nothing less than to make him feel that his presence was undesired and inopportune, without, however, making any breach with him; he had his own reasons for keeping up a certain degree of friendship with Edgar, but he had no desire that it should go any further than he thought proper and suitable. As for his sister’s feelings in the matter, Harry ignored and scouted them with perfect calm and self-possession. If she went and entered a Sisterhood, as they had all feared at one time, why, she would make a fool of herself, and there would be an end of it! “I shouldn’t interfere,” Harry had said. “It would be silly; but there would be an end of her—no more responsibility, and that sort of thing. Let her, if she likes, so long as you’re sure she’ll stay.” But to allow her to make “a low marriage” was an entirely different matter. Therefore he set Edgar down, according to his own consciousness, even though he was quite disinclined to quarrel with Edgar. He was troubled by no meltings of heart, such as disturbed the repose of his mother. He liked the man well enough, but what had that to do with it? It was necessary that Gussy should marry well if she married at all—not so much for herself as for the future interests of the house of Thornleigh. Harry felt that to have a set of little beggars calling him “uncle,” in the future ages, and sheltering themselves under the shadow of Thornleigh, was a thing totally out of the question. The heir indeed might choose for himself, having it in his power to bestow honour, as in the case of King Cophetua. But probably even King Cophetua would have deeply disapproved, and indeed interdicted beggar-maids for his brother, how much more beggar-men for his sisters—or any connection which could detract from the importance of the future head of the house.