"Poor dear Griselda!" said Mrs. Grantly, almost with a sigh. "I need not tell you, Lady Lufton, what my hopes were regarding her."
"Has she told you anything--anything that--"
"She would have spoken to you at once--and it was due to you that she should have done so--but she was timid; and not unnaturally so. And then it was right that she should see her father and me before she quite made up her own mind. But I may say that it is settled now."
"What is settled?" asked Lady Lufton.
"Of course it is impossible for any one to tell beforehand how these things will turn out," continued Mrs. Grantly, beating about the bush rather more than was necessary. "The dearest wish of my heart was to see her married to Lord Lufton. I should so much have wished to have her in the same county with me, and such a match as that would have fully satisfied my ambition."
"Well, I should rather think it might!" Lady Lufton did not say this out loud, but she thought it. Mrs. Grantly was absolutely speaking of a match between her daughter and Lord Lufton as though she would have displayed some amount of Christian moderation in putting up with it!
Griselda Grantly might be a very nice girl; but even she--so thought Lady Lufton at the moment--might possibly be priced too highly.
"Dear Mrs. Grantly," she said, "I have foreseen for the last few days that our mutual hopes in this respect would not be gratified. Lord Lufton, I think;--but perhaps it is not necessary to explain-- Had you not come up to town I should have written to you,--probably to-day. Whatever may be dear Griselda"s fate in life, I sincerely hope that she may be happy."
"I think she will," said Mrs. Grantly, in a tone that expressed much satisfaction.
"Has--has anything--"
"Lord Dumbello proposed to Griselda the other night, at Miss Dunstable"s party," said Mrs. Grantly, with her eyes fixed upon the floor, and a.s.suming on the sudden much meekness in her manner; "and his lordship was with the archdeacon yesterday, and again this morning. I fancy he is in Mount Street at the present moment."
"Oh, indeed!" said Lady Lufton. She would have given worlds to have possessed at the moment sufficient self-command to have enabled her to express in her tone and manner unqualified satisfaction at the tidings. But she had not such self-command, and was painfully aware of her own deficiency.
"Yes," said Mrs. Grantly. "And as it is all so far settled, and as I know you are so kindly anxious about dear Griselda, I thought it right to let you know at once. Nothing can be more upright, honourable, and generous, than Lord Dumbello"s conduct; and, on the whole, the match is one with which I and the archdeacon cannot but be contented."
"It is certainly a great match," said Lady Lufton. "Have you seen Lady Hartletop yet?"
Now Lady Hartletop could not be regarded as an agreeable connection, but this was the only word which escaped from Lady Lufton that could be considered in any way disparaging, and, on the whole, I think that she behaved well.
"Lord Dumbello is so completely his own master that that has not been necessary," said Mrs. Grantly. "The marquis has been told, and the archdeacon will see him either to-morrow or the day after."
There was nothing left for Lady Lufton but to congratulate her friend, and this she did in words perhaps not very sincere, but which, on the whole, were not badly chosen.
"I am sure I hope she will be very happy," said Lady Lufton, "and I trust that the alliance"--the word was very agreeable to Mrs.
Grantly"s ear--"will give unalloyed gratification to you and to her father. The position which she is called to fill is a very splendid one, but I do not think that it is above her merits."
This was very generous, and so Mrs. Grantly felt it. She had expected that her news would be received with the coldest shade of civility, and she was quite prepared to do battle if there were occasion. But she had no wish for war, and was almost grateful to Lady Lufton for her cordiality.
"Dear Lady Lufton," she said, "it is so kind of you to say so. I have told no one else, and of course would tell no one till you knew it.
No one has known her and understood her so well as you have done. And I can a.s.sure you of this: that there is no one to whose friendship she looks forward in her new sphere of life with half so much pleasure as she does to yours."
Lady Lufton did not say much further. She could not declare that she expected much gratification from an intimacy with the future Marchioness of Hartletop. The Hartletops and Luftons must, at any rate for her generation, live in a world apart, and she had now said all that her old friendship with Mrs. Grantly required. Mrs. Grantly understood all this quite as well as did Lady Lufton; but then Mrs.
Grantly was much the better woman of the world.
It was arranged that Griselda should come back to Bruton Street for that night, and that her visit should then be brought to a close.
"The archdeacon thinks that for the present I had better remain up in town," said Mrs. Grantly, "and under the very peculiar circ.u.mstances Griselda will be--perhaps more comfortable with me."
To this Lady Lufton entirely agreed; and so they parted, excellent friends, embracing each other in a most affectionate manner.
That evening Griselda did return to Bruton Street, and Lady Lufton had to go through the further task of congratulating her. This was the more disagreeable of the two, especially so as it had to be thought over beforehand. But the young lady"s excellent good sense and sterling qualities made the task comparatively an easy one. She neither cried, nor was impa.s.sioned, nor went into hysterics, nor showed any emotion. She did not even talk of her n.o.ble Dumbello--her generous Dumbello. She took Lady Lufton"s kisses almost in silence, thanked her gently for her kindness, and made no allusion to her own future grandeur.
"I think I should like to go to bed early," she said, "as I must see to my packing up."
"Richards will do all that for you, my dear."
"Oh, yes, thank you, nothing can be kinder than Richards. But I"ll just see to my own dresses." And so she went to bed early.
Lady Lufton did not see her son for the next two days, but when she did, of course she said a word or two about Griselda.
"You have heard the news, Ludovic?" she asked.
"Oh, yes: it"s at all the clubs. I have been overwhelmed with presents of willow branches."
"You, at any rate, have got nothing to regret," she said.
"Nor you either, mother. I am sure that you do not think you have.
Say that you do not regret it. Dearest mother, say so for my sake. Do you not know in your heart of hearts that she was not suited to be happy as my wife,--or to make me happy?"
"Perhaps not," said Lady Lufton, sighing. And then she kissed her son, and declared to herself that no girl in England could be good enough for him.
CHAPTER x.x.xI.
SALMON FISHING IN NORWAY.
Lord Dumbello"s engagement with Griselda Grantly was the talk of the town for the next ten days. It formed, at least, one of two subjects which monopolized attention, the other being that dreadful rumour, first put in motion by Tom Towers at Miss Dunstable"s party, as to a threatened dissolution of Parliament.
"Perhaps, after all, it will be the best thing for us," said Mr.
Green Walker, who felt himself to be tolerably safe at Crewe Junction.
"I regard it as a most wicked attempt," said Harold Smith, who was not equally secure in his own borough, and to whom the expense of an election was disagreeable. "It is done in order that they may get time to tide over the autumn. They won"t gain ten votes by a dissolution, and less than forty would hardly give them a majority.
But they have no sense of public duty--none whatever. Indeed, I don"t know who has."
"No, by Jove; that"s just it. That"s what my aunt Lady Hartletop says; there is no sense of duty left in the world. By-the-by, what an uncommon fool Dumbello is making himself!" And then the conversation went off to that other topic.
Lord Lufton"s joke against himself about the willow branches was all very well, and n.o.body dreamed that his heart was sore in that matter.
The world was laughing at Lord Dumbello for what it chose to call a foolish match, and Lord Lufton"s friends talked to him about it as though they had never suspected that he could have made an a.s.s of himself in the same direction; but, nevertheless, he was not altogether contented. He by no means wished to marry Griselda; he had declared to himself a dozen times since he had first suspected his mother"s manoeuvres, that no consideration on earth should induce him to do so; he had p.r.o.nounced her to be cold, insipid, and unattractive in spite of her beauty; and yet he felt almost angry that Lord Dumbello should have been successful. And this, too, was the more inexcusable, seeing that he had never forgotten Lucy Robarts, had never ceased to love her, and that, in holding those various conversations within his own bosom, he was as loud in Lucy"s favour as he was in dispraise of Griselda.
"Your hero, then," I hear some well-balanced critic say, "is not worth very much."
In the first place Lord Lufton is not my hero; and in the next place, a man may be very imperfect and yet worth a great deal. A man may be as imperfect as Lord Lufton, and yet worthy of a good mother and a good wife. If not, how many of us are unworthy of the mothers and wives we have! It is my belief that few young men settle themselves down to the work of the world, to the begetting of children, and carving and paying and struggling and fretting for the same, without having first been in love with four or five possible mothers for them, and probably with two or three at the same time. And yet these men are, as a rule, worthy of the excellent wives that ultimately fall to their lot. In this way Lord Lufton had, to a certain extent, been in love with Griselda. There had been one moment in his life in which he would have offered her his hand, had not her discretion been so excellent; and though that moment never returned, still he suffered from some feeling akin to disappointment when he learned that Griselda had been won and was to be worn. He was, then, a dog in the manger, you will say. Well; and are we not all dogs in the manger, more or less actively? Is not that manger-doggishness one of the most common phases of the human heart?
But not the less was Lord Lufton truly in love with Lucy Robarts.
Had he fancied that any Dumbello was carrying on a siege before that fortress, his vexation would have manifested itself in a very different manner. He could joke about Griselda Grantly with a frank face and a happy tone of voice; but had he heard of any tidings of a similar import with reference to Lucy, he would have been past all joking, and I much doubt whether it would not even have affected his appet.i.te.