"Not a doubt of it. n.o.body can accuse you of ever making jokes."
"I am seriously sorry--"
"Oh, dear!"
"It is quite useless to interrupt me. I have it on my conscience to tell you--and I _will_ tell you--that I am sorry to see how this intimacy is growing. I am sorry to see a secret understanding established already between you and Mr. Francis Clare."
"Poor Frank! How you do hate him, to be sure. What on earth has he done to offend you?"
Norah"s self-control began to show signs of failing her. Her dark cheeks glowed, her delicate lips trembled, before she spoke again. Magdalen paid more attention to her parasol than to her sister. She tossed it high in the air and caught it. "Once!" she said--and tossed it up again.
"Twice!"--and she tossed it higher. "Thrice--" Before she could catch it for the third time, Norah seized her pa.s.sionately by the arm, and the parasol dropped to the ground between them.
"You are treating me heartlessly," she said. "For shame, Magdalen--for shame!"
The irrepressible outburst of a reserved nature, forced into open self-a.s.sertion in its own despite, is of all moral forces the hardest to resist. Magdalen was startled into silence. For a moment, the two sisters--so strangely dissimilar in person and character--faced one another, without a word pa.s.sing between them. For a moment the deep brown eyes of the elder and the light gray eyes of the younger looked into each other with steady, unyielding scrutiny on either side. Norah"s face was the first to change; Norah"s head was the first to turn away.
She dropped her sister"s arm in silence. Magdalen stooped and picked up her parasol.
"I try to keep my temper," she said, "and you call me heartless for doing it. You always were hard on me, and you always will be."
Norah clasped her trembling hands fast in each other. "Hard on you!" she said, in low, mournful tones--and sighed bitterly.
Magdalen drew back a little, and mechanically dusted the parasol with the end of her garden cloak.
"Yes!" she resumed, doggedly. "Hard on me and hard on Frank."
"Frank!" repeated Norah, advancing on her sister and turning pale as suddenly as she had turned red. "Do you talk of yourself and Frank as if your interests were One already? Magdalen! if I hurt _you_, do I hurt _him_? Is he so near and so dear to you as that?"
Magdalen drew further and further back. A twig from a tree near caught her cloak; she turned petulantly, broke it off, and threw it on the ground. "What right have you to question me?" she broke out on a sudden.
"Whether I like Frank, or whether I don"t, what interest is it of yours?" As she said the words, she abruptly stepped forward to pa.s.s her sister and return to the house.
Norah, turning paler and paler, barred the way to her. "If I hold you by main force," she said, "you shall stop and hear me. I have watched this Francis Clare; I know him better than you do. He is unworthy of a moment"s serious feeling on your part; he is unworthy of our dear, good, kind-hearted father"s interest in him. A man with any principle, any honor, any grat.i.tude, would not have come back as he has come back, disgraced--yes! disgraced by his spiritless neglect of his own duty. I watched his face while the friend who has been better than a father to him was comforting and forgiving him with a kindness he had not deserved: I watched his face, and I saw no shame and no distress in it--I saw nothing but a look of thankless, heartless relief. He is selfish, he is ungrateful, he is ungenerous--he is only twenty, and he has the worst failings of a mean old age already. And this is the man I find you meeting in secret--the man who has taken such a place in your favor that you are deaf to the truth about him, even from _my_ lips!
Magdalen! this will end ill. For G.o.d"s sake, think of what I have said to you, and control yourself before it is too late!" She stopped, vehement and breathless, and caught her sister anxiously by the hand.
Magdalen looked at her in unconcealed astonishment.
"You are so violent," she said, "and so unlike yourself, that I hardly know you. The more patient I am, the more hard words I get for my pains.
You have taken a perverse hatred to Frank; and you are unreasonably angry with me because I won"t hate him, too. Don"t, Norah! you hurt my hand."
Norah pushed the hand from her contemptuously. "I shall never hurt your heart," she said; and suddenly turned her back on Magdalen as she spoke the words.
There was a momentary pause. Norah kept her position. Magdalen looked at her perplexedly--hesitated--then walked away by herself toward the house.
At the turn in the shrubbery path she stopped and looked back uneasily.
"Oh, dear, dear!" she thought to herself, "why didn"t Frank go when I told him?" She hesitated, and went back a few steps. "There"s Norah standing on her dignity, as obstinate as ever." She stopped again. "What had I better do? I hate quarreling: I think I"ll make up." She ventured close to her sister and touched her on the shoulder. Norah never moved.
"It"s not often she flies into a pa.s.sion," thought Magdalen, touching her again; "but when she does, what a time it lasts her!--Come!" she said, "give me a kiss, Norah, and make it up. Won"t you let me get at any part of you, my dear, but the back of your neck? Well, it"s a very nice neck--it"s better worth kissing than mine--and there the kiss is, in spite of you!"
She caught fast hold of Norah from behind, and suited the action to the word, with a total disregard of all that had just pa.s.sed, which her sister was far from emulating. Hardly a minute since the warm outpouring of Norah"s heart had burst through all obstacles. Had the icy reserve frozen her up again already! It was hard to say. She never spoke; she never changed her position--she only searched hurriedly for her handkerchief. As she drew it out, there was a sound of approaching footsteps in the inner recesses of the shrubbery. A Scotch terrier scampered into view; and a cheerful voice sang the first lines of the glee in "As You Like It." "It"s papa!" cried Magdalen. "Come, Norah--come and meet him."
Instead of following her sister, Norah pulled down the veil of her garden hat, turned in the opposite direction, and hurried back to the house. She ran up to her own room and locked herself in. She was crying bitterly.
CHAPTER VIII.
WHEN Magdalen and her father met in the shrubbery Mr. Vanstone"s face showed plainly that something had happened to please him since he had left home in the morning. He answered the question which his daughter"s curiosity at once addressed to him by informing her that he had just come from Mr. Clare"s cottage; and that he had picked up, in that unpromising locality, a startling piece of news for the family at Combe-Raven.
On entering the philosopher"s study that morning, Mr. Vanstone had found him still dawdling over his late breakfast, with an open letter by his side, in place of the book which, on other occasions, lay ready to his hand at meal-times. He held up the letter the moment his visitor came into the room, and abruptly opened the conversation by asking Mr.
Vanstone if his nerves were in good order, and if he felt himself strong enough for the shock of an overwhelming surprise.
"Nerves!" repeated Mr. Vanstone. "Thank G.o.d, I know nothing about my nerves. If you have got anything to tell me, shock or no shock, out with it on the spot."
Mr. Clare held the letter a little higher, and frowned at his visitor across the breakfast-table. "What have I always told you?" he asked, with his sourest solemnity of look and manner.
"A great deal more than I could ever keep in my head," answered Mr.
Vanstone.
"In your presence and out of it," continued Mr. Clare, "I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is--the enormous prosperity of Fools. Show me an individual Fool, and I will show you an aggregate Society which gives that highly-favored personage nine chances out of ten--and grudges the tenth to the wisest man in existence. Look where you will, in every high place there sits an a.s.s, settled beyond the reach of all the greatest intellects in this world to pull him down. Over our whole social system, complacent Imbecility rules supreme--snuffs out the searching light of Intelligence with total impunity--and hoots, owl-like, in answer to every form of protest, See how well we all do in the dark! One of these days that audacious a.s.sertion will be practically contradicted, and the whole rotten system of modern society will come down with a crash."
"G.o.d forbid!" cried Mr. Vanstone, looking about him as if the crash was coming already.
"With a crash!" repeated Mr. Clare. "There is my theory, in few words.
Now for the remarkable application of it which this letter suggests.
Here is my lout of a boy--"
"You don"t mean that Frank has got another chance?" exclaimed Mr.
Vanstone.
"Here is this perfectly hopeless b.o.o.by, Frank," pursued the philosopher.
"He has never done anything in his life to help himself, and, as a necessary consequence, Society is in a conspiracy to carry him to the top of the tree. He has hardly had time to throw away that chance you gave him before this letter comes, and puts the ball at his foot for the second time. My rich cousin (who is intellectually fit to be at the tail of the family, and who is, therefore, as a matter of course, at the head of it) has been good enough to remember my existence; and has offered his influence to serve my eldest boy. Read his letter, and then observe the sequence of events. My rich cousin is a b.o.o.by who thrives on landed property; he has done something for another b.o.o.by who thrives on Politics, who knows a third b.o.o.by who thrives on Commerce, who can do something for a fourth b.o.o.by, thriving at present on nothing, whose name is Frank. So the mill goes. So the cream of all human rewards is sipped in endless succession by the Fools. I shall pack Frank off to-morrow. In course of time he"ll come back again on our hands, like a bad shilling; more chances will fall in his way, as a necessary consequence of his meritorious imbecility. Years will go on--I may not live to see it, no more may you--it doesn"t matter; Frank"s future is equally certain either way--put him into the army, the Church, politics, what you please, and let him drift: he"ll end in being a general, a bishop, or a minister of State, by dint of the great modern qualification of doing nothing whatever to deserve his place." With this summary of his son"s worldly prospects, Mr. Clare tossed the letter contemptuously across the table and poured himself out another cup of tea.
Mr. Vanstone read the letter with eager interest and pleasure. It was written in a tone of somewhat elaborate cordiality; but the practical advantages which it placed at Frank"s disposal were beyond all doubt.
The writer had the means of using a friend"s interest--interest of no ordinary kind--with a great Mercantile Firm in the City; and he had at once exerted this influence in favor of Mr. Clare"s eldest boy. Frank would be received in the office on a very different footing from the footing of an ordinary clerk; he would be "pushed on" at every available opportunity; and the first "good thing" the House had to offer, either at home or abroad, would be placed at his disposal. If he possessed fair abilities and showed common diligence in exercising them, his fortune was made; and the sooner he was sent to London to begin the better for his own interests it would be.
"Wonderful news!" cried Mr. Vanstone, returning the letter. "I"m delighted--I must go back and tell them at home. This is fifty times the chance that mine was. What the deuce do you mean by abusing Society?
Society has behaved uncommonly well, in my opinion. Where"s Frank?"
"Lurking," said Mr. Clare. "It is one of the intolerable peculiarities of louts that they always lurk. I haven"t seen _my_ lout this morning.
It you meet with him anywhere, give him a kick, and say I want him."
Mr. Clare"s opinion of his son"s habits might have been expressed more politely as to form; but, as to substance, it happened, on that particular morning, to be perfectly correct. After leaving Magdalen, Frank had waited in the shrubbery, at a safe distance, on the chance that she might detach herself from her sister"s company, and join him again. Mr. Vanstone"s appearance immediately on Norah"s departure, instead of encouraging him to show himself, had determined him on returning to the cottage. He walked back discontentedly; and so fell into his father"s clutches, totally unprepared for the pending announcement, in that formidable quarter, of his departure for London.
In the meantime, Mr. Vanstone had communicated his news--in the first place, to Magdalen, and afterward, on getting back to the house, to his wife and Miss Garth. He was too un.o.bservant a man to notice that Magdalen looked unaccountably startled, and Miss Garth unaccountably relieved, by his announcement of Frank"s good fortune. He talked on about it, quite unsuspiciously, until the luncheon-bell rang--and then, for the first time, he noticed Norah"s absence. She sent a message downstairs, after they had a.s.sembled at the table, to say that a headache was keeping her in her own room. When Miss Garth went up shortly afterward to communicate the news about Frank, Norah appeared, strangely enough, to feel very little relieved by hearing it. Mr.
Francis Clare had gone away on a former occasion (she remarked), and had come back. He might come back again, and sooner than they any of them thought for. She said no more on the subject than this: she made no reference to what had taken place in the shrubbery. Her unconquerable reserve seemed to have strengthened its hold on her since the outburst of the morning. She met Magdalen, later in the day, as if nothing had happened: no formal reconciliation took place between them. It was one of Norah"s peculiarities to shrink from all reconciliations that were openly ratified, and to take her shy refuge in reconciliations that were silently implied. Magdalen saw plainly, in her look and manner, that she had made her first and last protest. Whether the motive was pride, or sullenness, or distrust of herself, or despair of doing good, the result was not to be mistaken--Norah had resolved on remaining pa.s.sive for the future.
Later in the afternoon, Mr. Vanstone suggested a drive to his eldest daughter, as the best remedy for her headache. She readily consented to accompany her father; who thereupon proposed, as usual, that Magdalen should join them. Magdalen was nowhere to be found. For the second time that day she had wandered into the grounds by herself. On this occasion, Miss Garth--who, after adopting Norah"s opinions, had pa.s.sed from the one extreme of over-looking Frank altogether, to the other extreme of believing him capable of planning an elopement at five minutes"
notice--volunteered to set forth immediately, and do her best to find the missing young lady. After a prolonged absence, she returned unsuccessful--with the strongest persuasion in her own mind that Magdalen and Frank had secretly met one another somewhere, but without having discovered the smallest fragment of evidence to confirm her suspicions. By this time the carriage was at the door, and Mr. Vanstone was unwilling to wait any longer. He and Norah drove away together; and Mrs. Vanstone and Miss Garth sat at home over their work.
In half an hour more, Magdalen composedly walked into the room. She was pale and depressed. She received Miss Garth"s remonstrances with a weary inattention; explained carelessly that she had been wandering in the wood; took up some books, and put them down again; sighed impatiently, and went away upstairs to her own room.