Chapter XIV

“Judging of others, we can see too well
Their grievous fall, but not how grieved they fell.”

CRABBE.

Three days after the final scene between Leicester and Violet, Albert Ellis came to call in Clarges Street. He was shown up into the room where the five sisters were sitting together.

He was not accustomed to be a visitor; except occasionally, when he went in in Leicester’s company, and at the door he paused as if scared by the number; but quickly recovering himself, made his way to Margaret, bowing to the others, and shaking hands with her.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, drawing a chair to her side, “for intruding in this way, but I want to know what has become of your brother, and a note is so unsatisfactory.”

“We are very glad to see you,” Margaret said, “for we are _very_ dull.”

“Can you tell me where Leicester is? His clerk gave me some odd direction. Where is he gone, and what is he doing?”

“We know very little about it. His direction _is_ odd. Grumbleton-Thorpe; some place down in Yorkshire. He is gone on business; but we have not seen him since....”

She paused.

“Since the end of that affair?” Albert said, nodding his head towards Park Lane.

“Yes.”

“What is it all about?” he inquired, leaning forward, and, though speaking aloud, speaking confidentially; “I am completely in the dark. I go to Leicester’s chambers, and I find him gone. I go to Park Lane, and my aunt tells me the marriage is broken off. I ask why, and she does not know, or will not tell. I ask to see Violet, but Violet does not choose to see me. And it is hard, when I have taken such an interest in them all. Will you be more kind, Miss Leicester?”

“I would if I could,” Margaret said, with a half smile at his discontent, “but I really know as little as you do. My sister Marian had a note, a very short one.... Marian!” she exclaimed, suddenly rising, “will you let Mr. Ellis see John’s note? Do if you can!”

Marian made a little bustle in consenting, but took it from her work-box, and gave it to Margaret. Margaret silently put it into Albert’s hands.

It was this. The date was the evening of the day on which he had parted from Violet.

“MY DEAREST MARIAN,

“I know you must all be anxious about my future prospects, and I
relieve you as soon as I can. The hopes I have lately indulged are at
an end for ever. Few have known they were indulged, and by those few
they must be forgotten as if they had never been. It is probably best
as it is. Thank you all for your sympathy with my hopes and with my
fears; and assist me now by your silence in overcoming vain regrets.

“An offer was made me this day to undertake some business for
a gentleman in Yorkshire. It was not unwelcome to me, and I
accepted it. I shall be absent about ten days. My direction is
Grumbleton-Thorpe. I took my bag, and must beg you to send my
portmanteau by to-night’s mail. I am sorry to leave you alone in this
dismal weather, but you will understand, I hope, my motives; and on
my return, we will begin a new life again. My love to all.

“Your affectionate brother,

“JOHN LEICESTER.”

Albert read the note twice over before he returned it to Margaret, and then sat in meditation.

“What do you think of it?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“May I tell you what _I_ think?” she said, a moment afterwards. “I think your cousin has behaved to him shamefully.” And her cheeks glowed, and her eyes sparkled as she spoke.

“My dear Margaret!...” Rachel exclaimed.

“Don’t stop her,” Albert said, placidly; “I quite agree with her.”

“Do you?” said Margaret; “then I am sorry I said it. I feel only that John is unhappy--no one, not one of us, ever can or ever will know how unhappy--and that she has done it.”

“True,” Albert replied; “but I pity Violet too.”

“So do I,” said Rachel, eagerly; “I think she has been wrong, but I think _we_ cannot understand or do justice to her motives. We cannot feel what she is now feeling.”

“No,” Albert said; “they brought her up to reign over us all, and she cannot understand a fall. Poor thing! you can hardly guess how changed she is.”

“I am sure I have felt for her,” Margaret said, gravely; “but I cannot forget that she drew John on, and, almost against his will, forced him to love her. She has done a mischief greater than we can any of us know. It is not a question of a young man’s foolish love; it is something very different, and I cannot forgive her.”

“Why is a young man’s love foolish?” asked Albert, in his downright tone.

“I don’t care for young men, or what they feel,” she said, quickly; “what I care for is John.”

“Young men are very much obliged to you,” he said in the same tone.

“Margaret always speaks in that odd way.”

Jessie here put in her word, thinking the conversation was taking a turn of great interest; but Henrietta kicked her foot and disconcerted her, and the subject dropped.

“Well, I am very much obliged to you for shewing me your brother’s letter,” Albert said, slowly rising. “I think I shall write to him, but I suppose the less I say about it all the better. I am very sorry it is all over. Very sorry,” he repeated; “and what a change has come over the world in the last ten days! I don’t feel as if London was the same place. The streets look as black and blank to me as if they had the plague.”

“So they do to me,” said Margaret. “I did not know that men had those odd feelings.”

“I am very sorry, too, that we are not to be relations,” he continued. “I had thought it would be a very comfortable thing. I hope you are sorry too.”

“Very,” she replied cordially.

He then shook hands with her and Marian, bowed to the others, and went away.

“Do you know, Margaret,” Jessie said, after sitting for about five minutes in profound thought, “it came into my head just now that perhaps Mr. Ellis is in love with you.”

“And do you know, Jessie,” Margaret cried with one of her most ferocious looks, “that if ever you make such a remark again, I will beat you into twenty thousand pieces.”

“I only said _perhaps_,” said Jessie submissively.

“I like Mr. Ellis,” Margaret boldly observed, turning to Rachel; “he does seem so very sorry for John.”

“I wish he had told us about Mr. Osborne’s affairs,” said Marian. “I was longing to ask, but he addressed himself so entirely to Margaret, I was afraid of being considered impertinent.”

“I saw just now in the _Times_ an advertisement for the sale of the house in Park Lane,” observed Henrietta. “I was longing to ask about it too, but I was not sure if it would be discreet.”

“The house sold!” exclaimed Jessie; “oh! how ever will they bear to live in a street, after looking out into the Park all their lives!”

“People in Mr. Osborne’s situation cannot choose,” said Marian wisely. “They will be fortunate if they have _any_ house of their own.”

“You don’t mean they are going to the workhouse?” asked Jessie in consternation.

“Nonsense!” said Henrietta. “But I do wish we knew something. I _cannot_ think of Miss Osborne poor.”

The surmises regarding Mr. Osborne’s future plans were not confined to the house in Clarges Street. All the world who knew him longed to know what he would do, and many excellent plans were laid out for him by his friends and acquaintance.

He was not left by any means destitute. When the affairs of the bank were wound up, so little loss was sustained by the creditors, that every partner retired with an unspotted reputation, and might, with a clear conscience, enjoy what was left to him in life. To Mr. Osborne, £500 a-year, the property of his wife, settled upon herself and her children, remained. It necessitated a change great and strange, for the affluent and luxurious banker; but it was not destitution.

When this became known, many excellent schemes were, as has been said, laid out for Mr. Osborne’s future. An honest man of business habits is, it was argued, at all times a desirable thing; and the fancy of his friends very shortly settled him in a smaller but comfortable house, with some remunerative employment, bringing in at least a thousand a-year. With £1500 a-year, they argued,--the imaginary one thousand soon growing into a reality,--his small family could be supplied with every luxury, and Miss Osborne would shortly appear again as cheerful and lovely as ever.

The kind feeling inspired by the misfortunes of the Osbornes, and the popularity they had enjoyed, gave great zest to these speculations on their behalf, and this pleasant settlement of their affairs was a real repose to many compassionate minds. When, therefore, the announcement of Mr. Osborne’s real plans broke upon the world, it caused not a surprise only, but a shock. The announcement consisted in the news that Mr. Osborne and his family intended to retire to some remote village, and there live in obscurity upon the small income that remained to them.

The speculations had caused much conversation. Disapprobation and astonishment caused still more. It was a most ill-judged step; it withdrew Mr. Osborne from the sphere of usefulness; it was hard upon Mrs. Osborne; it was tyranny to his daughter. The latter grew at length to be the prevalent complaint. Few could picture the lovely and brilliant Violet, the frequenter and favourite of society, buried in an obscure village; and Mr. Osborne, the kindest of men, the fondest of fathers, and well known in those characters, bore for many weeks the stigma of most unfatherly selfishness.

But meanwhile the plan was Violet’s own.

“Oh! for a lodge in some vast wilderness!” This was her sole desire, a spot where she might hide her humbled head.

After her parting with Leicester, after one paroxysm of despair, indulged in solitude, and concealed from all observation, she fell into an apathy, a kind of mechanical life, from which no caresses of her father, no soft words from her mother, could rouse her. Her life spread out before her under so black a cloud, the future seemed so utterly stripped of all that could give it beauty, that she had not power to rouse herself even to think. She had lived like a good and happy child in a bright present, and now she was forced into a future which there was not one star to gild.

The first thing that roused her from this apathy was the question about a future abode. The mere question would not have been enough; but when she found that a small house in or near London was contemplated, and chiefly for her sake, she was startled into her own old eager self at once. Her opinion was given with vehement words; her persuasion enforced with passionate arguments; and too happy to rouse her, too happy to please her, and himself acquiescent and interested because she was so, Mr. Osborne put himself into her hands, to be guided at her will.

There are few minds to whom action is not a restorative. To Violet it was as the very breath of life. Roused by the appeal, excited by the responsibility, eager to choose well and happily for her parents’ sake, and drawn out of herself by her interest for them, she went forth with animation into new life, and sank back into apathy no more.

It is not uncommon, especially among women, to _cherish_ a sorrow, to _indulge_ in melancholy; and, if their sorrow be of a sentimental cast, to feed it with something of pleasurable emotion; but this can only be the case where the sorrow or regret, though great, is not keen. Melancholy may have pleasurable sensations; but those whose feelings are sharp and keen, suffer too much in their sorrow to wish to _indulge_ in it. They escape when they can, and are thankful to escape. This was Violet’s case. Her regret for Leicester, now that she had cast his love away, was so sharp and poignant, that, far from indulging it, her desire was to put it aside. It was over; with the rest of the past it was over; and, like the past, must be thought of no more.

Thus she argued, and she acted on her argument. With violent effort regrets were banished; and she began her new life with the vigour of a new being.

“You look quite like your old self to-day,” Albert said to her one afternoon, when he found her vigorously packing. “My dear Violet, I am so glad!”

“Let us blot the word ‘old’ out of our dictionary,” she replied, playfully. “I am like my new self to-day, and not my old one.”

“Do you mean to think of old times no more?” he asked gravely.

“No; no more.”

“I am sorry for that, Violet.”

She made no remark, except to ask him to fetch a parcel she pointed out.

He brought it, and sat down on one of the boxes that stood near.

“You are a very odd woman,” he said at last.

“Am I?” She spoke with a slight laugh.

“A week ago, ten days ago at least, I almost thought you would not live; you had such a look in your face, Violet, I really did begin to think that you would die, and now....”

“There is nothing odd in the case,” she said. “_Then_ I had not blotted the word ‘old’ out of my dictionary; now I have.”

“Then I think you a very odd woman, and an unfeeling one!”

A look came over her face that contracted it for half an instant; but the emotion was violently withstood, and she said calmly,

“That is not a kind speech, Albert. I suppose we are all _odd_ to each other, because no one knows why another acts as he does; you should be more charitable in the use of the word. Odd or not,” she then added resolutely, “I mean to think of old times no more. With me everything shall be new, and oh! how I wish,” and she sighed a deep sigh, “that the new things, so far as regards my own conduct at least, could be better than the old!”

“You are a good girl, Violet, though an odd one,” Albert said kindly, “I am sorry I have worried you.”