Mrs. Lawrence brought the final word from high quarters: that the application must be deferred until Lord Ormont returned to town. It was known before, that such would be the decision. She had it from the eminent official himself, and she kicked about the room, setting her pretty mouth and nose to pout and sniff, exactly like a boy whose chum has been mishandled by a bully.
"Your dear good man is too much for us. I thought we should drive him.
"C"est un ruse homme de guerre." I like him, but I could slap him.
He stops the way. Upon my word, he seems tolerably careless of his treasure. Does he suppose Mrs. Paggy is a protection? Do you know she"s devoted to that man Morsfield? He listens to her stories. To judge by what he shouts aloud, he intends carrying you off the first opportunity, divorcing, and installing you in Cobeck Hall. All he fears is, that your lord won"t divorce. You should have seen him the other day; he marched up and down the room, smacking his head and crying out: "Legal measures or any weapons her husband pleases!" For he has come to believe that the lady would have been off with him long before, if her lord had no claim to the marital t.i.tle. "It "s that husband I can"t get over! that husband!" He reminded me, to the life, of Lawrence Finchley with a headache the morning after a supper, striding, with his hand on the shining middle of his head: "It"s that Welsh rabbit! that Welsh rabbit!"
He has a poor digestion, and he will eat cheese. The Welsh rabbit chased him into his bed. But listen to me, dear, about your Morsfield. I told you he was dangerous."
"He is not my Morsfield," said Aminta.
"Beware of his having a tool in Paggy. He boasts of letters."
"Mine? Two: and written to request him to cease writing to me."
"He stops at nothing. And, oh, my Simplicity! don"t you see you gave him a step in begging him to retire? Morsfield has lived a good deal among our neighbours, who expound the physiology of women. He anatomizes us; pulls us to pieces, puts us together, and then animates us with a breath of his "pa.s.sion"--sincere upon every occasion, I don"t doubt. He spared me, although he saw I was engaged. Perhaps it was because I "m of no definite colour. Or he thought I was not a receptacle for "pa.s.sion." And quite true,--Adder, the dear good fellow, has none. Or where should we be? On a Swiss Alp, in a chalet, he shooting chamois, and I milking cows, with "ah-ahio, ah-ahio," all day long, and a quarrel at night over curds and whey. Well, and that "s a better old pensioner"s limp to his end for "pa.s.sion" than the foreign hotel bell rung mightily, and one of the two discovered with a dagger in the breast, and the other a don"t-look lying on the pavement under the window. Yes, and that"s better than "pa.s.sion" splitting and dispersing upon new adventures, from habit, with two sparks remaining of the fire."
Aminta took Mrs. Lawrence"s hands. "Is it a lecture?"
She was kissed. "Frothy gabble. I"m really near to "pa.s.sion" when I embrace you. You"re the only one I could run away with; live with all alone, I believe. I wonder men can see you while that silly lord of yours is absent, and not begin Morsfielding. They"re virtuous if they resist. Paggy tells the world... well?" Aminta had reddened.
"What does my aunt tell the world?"
Mrs. Lawrence laid her smoothing hand absently on a frill of lace fichu above a sternly disciplined bosom at half-heave. "I think I can judge now that you"re not much hurt by this wretched business of the presentation. The little service I could do was a moral lesson to me on the subject of deuce-may-care antecedents. My brother Tom, too, was always playing truant, as a boy. It "s in the blood."
She seemed to be teasing, and Aminta cried: "My aunt! Let me hear. She tells the world--?"
"Paggy? ah, yes. Only that she says the countess has an exalted opinion of Mr. Secretary"s handwriting--as witnessed by his fair copy of the Memoirs, of course."
"Poor woman! How can she talk such foolishness! I guessed it."
"You wear a dark red rose when you"re guessing, "ma mie,"--French for, my Aminta."
"But consider, Isabella, Mr. Weyburn has just had the heaviest of losses. My aunt should spare mention of him."
"Matthew Weyburn! we both like the name." Mrs. Lawrence touched at her friend and gazed. "I"ve seen it on certain evenings--crimson over an olive sky. What it forebodes, I can"t imagine; but it"s the end of a lovely day. They say it threatens rain, if it begins one. It "s an ominous herald."
"You make me," said Aminta. "I must redden if you keep looking at me so closely."
"Now frown one little bit, please. I love to see you. I love to see a secret disclose itself ingenuously."
"But what secret, my dear?" cried Aminta"s defence of her innocence; and she gave a short frown.
"Have no fear. Mr. Secretary is not the man to be Morsfielding. And he can enjoy his repast; a very good sign. But is he remaining long?"
"He is going soon, I hear."
"He"s a good boy. I could have taken to him myself, and not dreaded a worrying. There "s this difference between you and me, though, my Aminta; one of us has the fireplace prepared for what"s-his-name--"pa.s.sion." Kiss me. How could you fancy you were going to have a woman for your friend and keep hidden from her any one of the secrets that blush! and with Paggy to aid! I am sure it means very little. Admiration for good handwriting is--" a smile broke the sentence.
"You"re astray, Isabella."
"Not I, dear, I"m too fond of you."
"You read what is not."
"What is not yet written, you mean."
"What never could be written."
"I read what is in the blood, and comes out to me when I look. That lord of yours should take to study you as I have done ever since I fell in love with you. He "s not counselling himself well in keeping away."
"Now you speak wisely," said Aminta.
"Not a particle more wisely. And the reason is close at hand--see.
You are young, you attract--how could it be otherwise?--and you have "pa.s.sion" sleeping, and likely to wake with a spring whether roused or not. In my observation good-man t"other fellow--the poet"s friend--is never long absent when the time is ripe--at least, not in places where we gather together. Well, one is a buckler against the other: I don"t say with lovely Amy May,--with an honourable woman. But Aminta can smell powder and grow more mettlesome. Who can look at you and be blind to pa.s.sion sleeping! The sight of you makes me dream of it--me, a woman, cool as a wine-cellar or a well. So there"s to help you to know yourself and be on your guard. I know I"m not deceived, because I"ve fallen in love with you, and no love can be without jealousy, so I have the needle in my breast, that points at any one who holds a bit of you. Kind of sympathetic needle to the magnet behind anything. You"ll know it, if you don"t now. I should have felt the thing without the aid of Paggy. So, then, imagine all my nonsense unsaid, and squeeze a drop or two of "sirop de bon conseil" out of it, as if it were your own wise meditations." The rest of Mrs. Lawrence"s discourse was a swallow"s wing skimming the city stream. She departed, and Aminta was left to beat at her heart and ask whether it had a secret.
But if there was one, the secret was out, and must have another name.
It had been a secret for her until she heard her friend speak those pin-points that p.r.i.c.ked her heart, and sent the blood coursing over her face, like a betrayal, so like as to resemble a burning confession.
But if this confessed the truth, she was the insanest of women. No woman could be surer that she had her wits. She had come to see things, previously mysteries, with surprising clearness. As, for example, that pa.s.sion was part of her nature; therefore her very life, lying tranced.
She certainly could not love without pa.s.sion such an abandonment was the sole justification of love in a woman standing where she stood. And now for the first time she saw her exact position before the world; and she saw some way into her lord: saw that he nursed a wound, extracted balm from anything enabling him to show the world how he despised it, and undesigningly immolated her for the petty gratification.
It could not, in consequence, be the truth. To bear what she had borne she must be a pa.s.sionless woman; and she was glad of her present safety in thinking it. Once it was absolutely true. She swam away to the golden-circled Island of Once; landed, and dwelt there solitarily and blissfully, looking forward to Sunday"s walk round the park, looking back on it. Proudly she could tell herself that her dreams of the Prince of the island had not been illusions as far as he was concerned; for he had a great soul. He did not aim at a tawdry glory. He was a loss to our army--no loss to his country or the world. A woman might clasp her feeling of pride in having foreseen distinction for him; and a little, too, in distinguishing now the true individual distinction from the feathered uniform vulgar. Where the girl"s dreams had proved illusions, she beheld in a t.i.tle and luxuries, in a loveless marriage.
That was perilous ground. Still it taught her to see that the substantial is the dust; and pa.s.sion not being active, she could reflect. After a series of penetrative flashes, flattering to her intelligence the more startling they were, reflection was exhausted.
She sank on her nature"s desire to join or witness agonistic incidents, shocks, wrestlings, the adventures which are brilliant air to sanguine energies. Imagination shot tap, and whirled the circle of a succession of them; and she had a companion and leader, unfeatured, reverently obeyed, accepted as not to be known, not to be guessed at, in the deepest hooded inmost of her being speechlessly divined.
The sudden result of Aminta"s turmoil was a determination that she must look on Steignton. And what was to be gained by that? She had no idea.
And how had she stopped her imaginative flight with the thought of looking on Steignton? All she could tell was, that it would close a volume. She could not say why the volume must be closed.
Her orders for the journey down to Steignton were prompt. Mrs. Pagnell had an engagement at the house of Lady Staines for the next day to meet t.i.tles and celebrities, and it precluded her comprehension of the project. She begged to have the journey postponed. She had pledged her word, she said.
"To Mr. Morsfield?" said Aminta.
Her aunt was astounded.
"I did tell him we should be there, my dear." "He appears to have a pleasure in meeting you." "He is one of the real gentlemen of the land."
"You correspond with him?"
"I may not be the only one."
"Foolish aunty! How can you speak to me in that senseless way?" cried Aminta. "You know the schemer he is, and that I have no protection from his advances unless I run the risk of bloodshed."
"My dear Aminta, whenever I go into society, and he is present, I know I shall not be laughed at, or fall into that pit of one of their dead silences, worse for me to bear than t.i.tters and faces. It is their way of letting one feel they are of birth above us. Mr. Morsfield--purer blood than many of their highest t.i.tles--is always polite, always deferential; he helps me to feel I am not quite out of my element in the sphere I prefer. We shall be travelling alone?"
"Have you any fear?"
"Not if nothing happens. Might we not ask that Mr. Weyburn?"
"He has much work to do. He will not long be here. He is absent to-day."