Chapter XI

“Oh! purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves.”

TENNYSON.--_Idylls._

Sir William Hamilton’s conduct was very easy of explanation. His love for Violet had turned his thoughts towards marriage. His ill-success had not, as is sometimes the case, robbed the prospect of its charms. But he was too shy to submit again to a repulse, and lived too secluded a life to have much freedom of choice. Almost as soon, therefore, as his attention was caught by Amy’s looks, he settled his plans, and prosecuted them accordingly.

The consequences of this engagement were also such as might have been expected. He became so desperately in love with his pretty and submissive young betrothed, that her will was his will; and as hers was her mother’s will, Mrs. White reigned in all her glory. She gave herself the airs of a princess, and far from seeming elated at her daughter’s marriage, appeared to consider the alliance as a matter of course. It was the very way to deal with Sir William; he wished it to be considered a matter of course, and he treated Mrs. White with all the deference she exacted.

In one respect she used her influence wrongly. The fortune of Ida’s mother had been left in Sir William’s power, with the exception of that now cancelled document, which, in the event of Ida’s marriage to Lionel, settled all on _them_. Mrs. White insisted that half of it, since Amy had no fortune, should be settled on the younger children of the new family. Mr. Pope, who heard everything, heard of this fact, and mentioned it to Mr. Osborne. Since Ida’s portion would still be large for a young lady, the fact was more important, as showing whose influence would be paramount, than in any other light. It was so at least regarded by Violet.

Shortly afterwards there was an announcement that Mrs. White was to take up her abode at Boscombe; and at this discovery Violet, who had hitherto made the best of the matter to Ida, dwelling on Amy’s gentleness, and beauty, and other merits, found herself silenced. She had no consolation to offer. She offered therefore what she felt--sympathy and commiseration of the most intense kind. She felt that to her Mrs. White’s presence would poison every source of happiness in life.

“I don’t think it will be to me what it would be to you, Violet,” Ida said in reply. “I don’t think I mind things as you do. For one thing, I don’t expect to be very happy. I have made up my mind to it; and when one does not expect, a little more or less to bear is no great matter.”

Ida spoke quite cheerfully; more as if stating a fact than as if expressing an opinion; but Violet was shocked.

“Oh! Ida, how can you speak as you do? And I, who am older, and ought to expect less, feel that happiness is so much that thing for which I was born, that, though I may submit, I never can be content to be without it.”

“I don’t mean that I am unhappy,” Ida said apologetically. “I only mean that I don’t know, and never did know what great happiness is, and I don’t expect to know it. Even when I seemed the happiest, I was always afraid that in some way or other, and I never could tell how, I did not please Lionel; so that I am almost more _contented_ now than I have ever been.”

Violet looked grave. Ida seldom mentioned Lionel; when she did the name was always a stab to her heart; but before she spoke, Ida went on.

“And I think, Violet, it is much better as it is. I think if I was very happy I should forget things I ought to remember; and now it pleases me better to think of _those things_ than it does to dream about this world. So don’t trouble about Mrs. White and me. I don’t think I can ever like her, but I don’t think I much care whether she comes or not.”

It was seldom that Ida spoke of herself at all, and very seldom so unreservedly. The insight she gave to Violet--offering in these few words a glimpse into a young heart, which, in the midst of what is called prosperity, owned to having never been happy--shocked and saddened her. She could only hope that the same gentle and submissive spirit which bore her through definite trials, would also bear her through the undefined vexations which must assail her future lot; vexations which Violet’s own quicker and more sensitive temper pronounced unbearable.

Before the wonder excited by Sir William Hamilton’s marriage had wholly died away, a new event startled the inhabitants of Holywell, and Mr. Pope more than any. What with the cold winter, and the distress, and the marriage of Sir William, and this new event, he began to think he was rector of a parish that was but human after all.

“I think the world is really going mad!” exclaimed Mr. Osborne, entering the cottage drawing-room in the dusk of an October evening. “What do you think I have just heard from Pope? Now, only guess.”

But Violet refused to guess, and insisted on hearing the news at once. It was this: that Lord Ashford was going to be married to a farmer’s daughter.

“True! oh, yes,” when Violet said it could not be true. “Pope saw Lord Ashford himself this morning, and he told him of it, and told him to announce it right and left, if he pleased, which, by the way, he does seem pleased to do. He said he was not the least ashamed of what he was doing, that he had as good a right to select whom he chose as Sir William; and when Pope said something with regard to his son, he observed that his son might be hanged.”

The maid brought in the lamp at this moment, and Mr. Osborne, who was when he came in as excited as Mr. Pope had been with his news, sat down more composedly, and waited till the room was empty before he went on.

“It appears she is a respectable, well-conducted girl, handsome, but of little education. She has had charge of a young setter, belonging to Lord Ashford, of a peculiar breed, and in this way he has become acquainted with her. It is a bad business; worse than Sir William’s, for he never can make a lady of her, I fear.”

“Does Mr. Pope know her?” Violet enquired.

“Yes. Her father is a well-to-do farmer, but rough and ignorant. During an illness he had two years ago Pope visited him and saw her. He says there is no harm in her, but that she is coarse. She waited on her father with kindness, but did not seem to know how to behave; talked loud, and laughed loud, and burst in with questions about farm business in the midst of his reading. In short, that she did not seem to be a person with whom Lionel Vane or Miss Hamilton would easily associate. He pointed this out to Lord Ashford, but he said that was Lionel’s own business. He was growing old and wanted company, and if his son did not choose to give it him, he must provide it for himself.”

Violet made no observations. Mr. Osborne was excited with the news, but she could not be excited. It seemed as if there was to be no end to the consequences of Lionel’s fancy for her.

Mrs. Osborne asked a few questions.

To one of them Mr. Osborne replied.

“Pope thinks it is rather serious as regards the property. It is heavily mortgaged already, and, if fortunes are to be made for a new family, Lionel Vane will not come in for much when he succeeds. But I cannot have much pity for Lionel Vane. I am more sorry for Pope, who seems to have taken it quite to heart. Now, darling, what have I said to distress you?” he asked, suddenly observing Violet’s depressed countenance.

“Nothing that you have said, papa, but only I am sorry for Mr. Vane. I think he meant to do so much that was right, and he does only do mischief and cause sorrow. Like me,” she added, and a tear flashed in her eye.

“No, no,” Mr. Osborne said gravely, for both he and his wife were annoyed at Violet’s self-tormenting spirit, “there is no likeness. All people in this world make mistakes; and surely that can cause us no surprise when we consider what human nature is. But Lionel Vane’s mistakes are of another kind. Allowing whatever you please for his feeling for his mother, yet certainly, even for her sake, the well-being of his father ought to have been an object to him. He must have seen enough during his last visit here to discover that Lord Ashford required care and society--I mean that it was necessary for his welfare; but no. Lionel Vane goes on his own wilful way and takes no heed of the mischief he does or the misery he makes. Now, darling, I won’t have you taking this to heart, as Pope does. After all, we are all blind mortals, and perhaps in a year we shall say it is the best thing that could have happened for Lord Ashford. The girl may be a strong-minded, useful girl; and as she will sympathise in all his out-of-door amusements, she may make a good wife after all.”

Violet’s feelings of dismay were shared by Ida. She had taken her father’s marriage and all its accompaniments very calmly; but she was excited at Lord Ashford’s in a degree that surprised and distressed Violet. Distressed her because it revealed how very dear Lionel had been, how dear he still was, and how entirely his affairs absorbed her mind, to the exclusion of her own. She went almost immediately to see Lord Ashford, not in any hope of altering his intention, but to make one more effort to soothe his mind towards Lionel. She, like Mr. Pope, was seized with terror that the new family would cut him out, and that “poor Lionel, who would do so much good with his money, would have no money to do good with.”

Ever since the breaking off of the engagement, Lord Ashford had received her visits coldly. He felt himself injured and would not forgive; not even her, who like him was a sufferer, because she defended the culprit. But on this occasion he was in high good-humour, pinched her cheek and called her “my precious;” and she, emboldened by his kindness, made her request that he would write to Lionel himself, and tell him all about it; and that he would remember and never forget that Lionel was his own son, and must not be forgotten.

Lord Ashford was touched with the earnest manner of her petition, and promised to do what she wished.

“But depend upon it, Ida,” he added, “whatever I do, Mr. Lionel will make my conduct the ground of his absenting himself from us for years to come. But I don’t care. He did not choose to think of my pleasure, and now he may please himself, and I will not say a word against it.”

Lord Ashford was right. Lionel returned a cold answer, and remained abroad. But his cold answer did him injustice. While he wrote it his heart was throbbing with torture at the insult--for thus he considered the marriage--to his mother’s memory. Perhaps Violet only was really just in her estimate of Lionel’s character. For she only fully knew how the exclusive love for one parent, and a morbid dwelling on her wrongs, had almost warped his sense of right and wrong in other respects. “_Be ye angry and sin not._” Lionel had obeyed the first part of the precept, and been angry, and justly so, at his mother’s sorrows; but he forgot the second, and made his anger a sin. And now his sin of anger had found him out. He had neglected his father’s happiness and his father’s good, and in return his father neglected him.

Sir William was to be married in London at the beginning of November. Amid the vexation which this marriage caused to Violet, there shot from it a spark of light which brightened her heart. Amy White asked Leicester to be her trustee; and he, knowing few particulars of the case, wrote to Violet, to ask her wishes, and her opinion on the subject. The letter was concisely expressed, and was confined to its one purpose; but it and its answer caused in Violet’s mind an emotion, an excitement, which once again touched with light the cloud that had fallen on her days.

Her reply was also concise. She took good care that no feeling should be apparent. She said she was glad to hear of Amy’s application, and begged him to have no hesitation in acceding to it. That, though she regretted the marriage, Amy had done nothing deserving of blame, and she had great hopes it might turn out well.

Little as there was in such a formal application for her opinion to excite hope in her mind regarding feelings of another nature, yet such was its effect. During two dreary winter months it cheered her walks and animated her charity. It gave her spirits to endure, and to smile at the condescension with which Mrs. White received her call in the drawing-room at Boscombe, and power to smother a part of her indignation at the sight of Ida reduced to the simple position of a common daughter of the house. This was the work, not of Amy, but of her mother. Amy behaved herself very properly, and, though her mind was shallow, and her society could give little pleasure to her step-daughter, yet she and Ida got on without difficulty, and even with friendship. But Mrs. White was the Dowager Lady Hamilton, exercising all the rights, and much more than the rights, which that imaginary personage would have had; and the more Sir William submitted to her will and whims, the more she exercised him in submission. If Ida’s principles had not been stayed on a rock too high and firm for Mrs. White to move, there would have been little peace in the house. Sir William loved his daughter, and, had he known the trifling insolencies to which she was subject, he might have resented them, and in resenting them, have caused strife in his wife’s heart between her duty to her mother and to him. But Ida took at once, and of herself, the position that she thought befitting, and, armed with the invincible armour of Christian love and dutiful submission, the shafts of petty tyranny were too slight to wound her. Violet watched her with admiration, and sighed to think how far beyond her powers such endurance would have been.