It was morning--not the morning that Rose had described to her lover, but not more than seven o"clock--when Rose, who had been up late the previous night, was awoke by her cousin"s maid. On entering Helen"s dressing-room she found her already dressed, but so pale and distressed in her appearance, that she could hardly recognise the brilliant lawgiver of the evening"s festivities in the pale, languid, feverish beauty that was seated at her desk.
"Dear Helen, you are weary; ill, perhaps," exclaimed her gentle cousin. "You have entered too soon into gay society, and you suffer for the public restraint in private."
Her cousin looked steadily in her face, and then smiled one of those bitter disdainful smiles which it is always painful to see upon a woman"s lip.
"Sit down, Rose," she said; "sit down, and copy this letter. I have been writing all night, and yet cannot get a sufficient number finished in time, without your a.s.sistance."
Rose did as she was desired, and, to her astonishment, found that the letters were to the inhabitants of a borough, which Mr. Ivers had expressed his desire to represent. Rose wrote and wrote; but the longest task must have a termination. About one, the gentleman himself came into the room, and, as Rose thought, somewhat indifferently, expressed his surprise, that what he came to commence, was already finished. Still he chid his fair wife for an exertion which he feared might injure her health, and evinced the strongest desire to succeed in rescuing the people of L---- from the power of a party to which he was opposed; hinting, at the same time, that the contest would drain his purse and many of his resources.
"And let it," exclaimed Helen, when he left the room, "let it. I care not for _that_, but I will overturn every thing that interposes between me and the desire I have to humble the wife of the present representative. Look, I would hold this hand in the fire, ay, and suffer it to smoulder into ashes, to punish the woman who called me a proud _parvenue_! She did so before I had been a week in London.
Her cold calm face has been a curse to me ever since. She has stood, the destroying angel, at the gate of my paradise, poisoning every enjoyment. Let me but humble _her_," she continued, rising proudly from the sofa upon which she had been resting; "let me but humble _her_, and I shall feel a triumphant woman! For that I have watched and waited; _anxiety for that caused me the loss of my child_; but if Ivers succeeds, I shall be repaid."
Rose shuddered. Was it really true, that having achieved the wealth, the distinction she panted for, she was still anxious to mount higher?
Was it possible that wealth, station, general admiration, and the devoted affection of a tender husband did not satisfy the humbly-born beauty of an obscure English village? Again Helen spoke; she told how she had at last succeeded in rousing her husband to exertion--how, with an art worthy a better cause, she had persuaded him that his country demanded his a.s.sistance--how he had been led almost to believe that the safety of England was in the hands of the freeholders of L----; and then she pictured her own triumph, as the wife of the successful candidate, over the woman who had called her a _parvenue_.
"And, after all," murmured poor Rose, "and after all, dear Helen, you are really unhappy."
"Miserable!" was the reply--"no creature was ever so perfectly miserable as I am! The one drop of poison has poisoned the whole cup.
What to me was all this grandeur, when I felt that _that_ woman looked down upon me, and induced others to do the same; that though I was with them, I was not of them; and all through her means. Ivers could not understand my feeling; and, besides, I dare not let him know what had been said by one of his own clique, lest _he should become inoculated by the same feeling_."
"Another fruit," thought Rose Dillon, "of the evil which attends unequal marriages."
"But _my_ triumph will come!" she repeated; "Ivers must carry all before him; and _who knows what may follow_?"
"Still unsatisfied!" thought Rose, as she wandered through the splendid rooms and inhaled the perfume of the most expensive exotics, and gazed upon beautiful pictures, and listened to the roll of carriages, and heard the kind fond voice of Helen"s devoted husband urging the physician, who made his daily calls, to pay his wife the greatest attention. "Still unsatisfied!" she repeated; and then she thought of one of Edward"s homely but wise proverbs--"All is not gold that glitters;" and she thought how quite as beautiful, and more varied by the rich variety of nature, was the prospect from the parlour-window of the farm-house, that was to be her own. "And woodbine, roses, and mignonette breathe as sweet odours as exotics, and belong of right to the cottages of England. Ah!" continued the right-minded girl, "better is a little and content therewith, than all the riches of wealth and art without it. If her ambition had even a _great_ object I could forgive her; but all this for the littleness of society." This train of thought led her back to the days of their girlhood, and she remembered how the same desire to outshine manifested itself in Helen"s childhood. If Mr. Stokes had been there he could have told her of the pink gingham, with her grandmother"s injudicious remark thereupon--"Be content with the pink gingham _now_, Helen--_the time will come when you shall have a better_;" instead of--"Be always content, Helen, with what befits your sphere of life."
That day was an eventful one to Rose. In the evening she was seated opposite the window, observing the lamplighter flying along with his ladder and his link through the increasing fog, and wondering why the dinner was delayed so much beyond the usual hour--when the little old cranky gentleman, whose keen and clever observations had given Rose a very good idea of his _head_, and a very bad one of his heart, stood beside her. In a few brief words he explained, that seeing she was different to London ladies, he had come to the determination of making her his wife. He did not seem to apprehend any objection on her part to this arrangement; but having concluded the business in as few words as possible, stood, with his hands behind him, very much as if he expected the lady he addressed to express her grat.i.tude, and suffer him to name the day. Firmly and respectfully Rose declined the honour, declaring "she had no heart to give," and adding a few civil words of thanks to the old gentleman, who would have evinced more sense had he proposed to adopt, not marry her. Without a reply, the old gentleman left the room; but presently her cousin entered, and in terms of bitter scorn, inquired if she were mad enough to refuse such an offer--one that would immediately take her out of her humble sphere, and place her where she might be happy. Rose replied, with more than usual firmness, that she had learned, since she had been with her, the total insufficiency of rank and power to produce happiness. "I am convinced," she continued, "that it is the most likely to dwell where there are the fewest cares, and that the straining after distinction is at variance with its existence. To be useful, and fulfil well the duties of our native sphere, is the surest way to be happy. Oh!
Helen, you do not know what it is; you look too much to the future to enjoy the present; and I have observed it ever since you threw away the handful of jessamine we had gathered at the grey fountain of Abbeyweld, because you could not have moss roses like the squire"s daughter."
"Foolish girl!" she answered, "has not perseverance in the desire obtained the moss roses?"
"Yes," said her cousin, sadly, "but now you desire exotics. I should despise myself if it were possible that I could forget the affection of my heart in what appears to me the unsubstantial vanities of life.
Dear Helen, in sickness or sorrow let me ever be your friend; but I must be free to keep on in my own humble sphere."
It seemed as if poor Rose was doomed to undergo all trials. Helen was not one to yield to circ.u.mstances; and though her physician prescribed rest, she lived almost without it, avoiding repose, laying herself under the most painful obligations to obtain her end, and enduring the greatest mental anxiety. Not only this; she taunted poor Rose with her increased anxieties, affirming, that if she had not rendered the old gentleman her foe by the ill-timed refusal, he would have a.s.sisted, not thwarted, her cherished object; that his influence was great, and was now exerted against them. "If," she added, "you had only the common tact of any other girl, you might have played him a little until the election was over, and then acted as you pleased."
This seemed very shocking to Rose, and she would have gone to Abbeyweld immediately, but that she thought it cruel to leave her cousin while she felt she was useful to her. "Ah, Rose!" she said, when poor Rose hinted that in a short time she must return, "how can you think of it?--how can you leave me in an _enemy"s country_? I dare not give even my husband my entire confidence, for he might fancy my sensitiveness a low-born feeling. I can trust you, and none other."
Surrounded, according to the phrase, "with troops of friends," and yet able to _trust_ "none other" than the simple companion of her childhood! "And yet," murmured the thoughtful Rose, "amongst so many, the blame cannot be all with the crowd; Helen herself is as incapable of warm, disinterested friendship as those of whom she complains."
Rose Dillon"s constancy was subjected to a still greater trial.
Amongst the "troops of friends" who crowded more than ever round Mr.
Ivers while his election was pending, was a young man as superior to the rest in mind as in fortune, and Rose Dillon"s ready appreciation of the good and beautiful led her to respect and admire him.
"Is it true, Miss Dillon," he said to her one morning, after a lagging conversation of some twenty minutes" duration--"is it true, Miss Dillon, that you have discarded altogether the attentions of Mr.
----?" and he named the old gentleman whose offer had been so painful to Rose, and who was now made painfully aware that the subject had been publicly talked of. This confused her. "Nay," he continued, "I think you ought to be very proud of the fact, for he is worth two hundred thousand pounds."
"If he were worth ten hundred thousand, it would make no difference to me," was the reply.
"Then, you admit the fact."
Rose could not tell a falsehood, though she confessed her pain that it should be known. "I intend," she added, "to remain in my own quiet sphere of life; I am suited for no other."
The gentleman made no direct reply, but from that hour he observed Rose narrowly. The day of the election came, with its bribery and its bustle. Suffice it, that the Honourable Mr. Ivers was declared duly elected--that the splendour of the late member"s wife"s entertainments and beauty, were perfectly eclipsed by the entertainments and beauty of the wife of the successful candidate--that every house, _except_ one, in the town was splendidly illuminated--and that the people broke every pane of gla.s.s in the windows of that house, to prove their attachment to the great principle of freedom of election. "G.o.d bless you, cousin!" said Rose; "G.o.d bless you--your object is attained. I hope you will sleep well to-night."
"Sleep!" she exclaimed; "how can I sleep? Did you not hear the wife of a mere city baronet inquire if late hours did not injure a country const.i.tution; and see the air with which she said it?"
"And why did you not answer that a country const.i.tution gave you strength to sustain them? In the name of all that is right, dearest Helen, why do you not a.s.sert your dignity as a woman, instead of standing upon your rank? Why not, as a woman, boldly and bravely revert to your former position, and at the same time prove your determination to support your present? You were as far from shame as Helen Marsh of Abbeyweld, as you are as the wife of an honourable member. Be yourself. Be simply, firmly yourself, my own Helen, and you will at once, from being the scorned, become the scorner."
"This from you, who love a lowly state?"
"I love my own birthright, lowly though it be. No one will attempt to pull me down. I shall have no heartaches--suffer no affronts?"
"Oh!" said Helen, "if I had but been born to what I possess."
"Mr. Stokes said if you had been born an honourable, you would have grasped at a coronet."
"And I _may_ have it yet," replied the discontented beauty, with a weary smile; "I _may_ have it yet; my husband"s brother is still childless. If I could be but certain that the grave would receive him a childless man, how proudly I would take precedence of such a woman as Lady G----"
Rose looked at her as she spoke. In the glorious meridian of her beauty--a creature so splendid--of such a fair outside--with energy, and grace, and power--married by a weak ambition--an ambition achieved by the accident of birth--an ambition having neither honour, nor virtue, nor patriotism, nor any one laudable aim, for its object. And she sorrowed in her inmost soul for her cousin Helen.
CHAPTER VII.
Rose never, of course, made one at the brilliant a.s.semblies which Mrs.
Ivers gave and graced; she only saw those who breakfasted or lunched in the square, or who, like the little old gentleman, and one or two others, joined the family circle. The excitement of an election, and the (_pro tem._) equality which such an event creates, brought her more into contact with her cousin"s acquaintances than she had yet been, and gave the gentleman, who evidently admired her, an opportunity of studying her character. There was something strange in a young woman, situated as was Rose, preserving so entirely her self-respect, that it encircled her like a halo; and wherever it is so preserved, it invariably commands the respect of others. After the first week or two had pa.s.sed, Rose Dillon was perfectly undazzled by the splendour with which she was surrounded, and was now engaged in watching for a moment when she could escape from what she knew was splendid misery. If Helen had been simply content to keep her own position--if she had, as Rose"s wisdom advised, sufficient moral courage to resent a slight openly, not denying her humble birth, and yet resolved to be treated as became her husband"s wife--all would have been happiness and peace. Proud as Mr. Ivers was of her, her discontent and perpetual straining after rank and distinction, watching every body"s every look and movement to discover if it concealed no _covert_ affront, rendered him, kind and careful though he was, occasionally dissatisfied; and she interpreted every manifestation of his displeasure, however slight, to contempt for her birth. Rose suffered most acutely, for she saw how simple was the remedy, and yet could not prevail on Helen to abate one jot of her restless ambition. The true spirit of a Christian woman often moved her to secret earnest prayer, that G.o.d, of His mercy, would infuse an humbler and holier train of thought and feeling into Helen"s mind; and, above all, she prayed that it might not come too late.
"You do not think with Mrs. Ivers in all things, I perceive," said the gentleman I have twice alluded to.
"I am hardly, from my situation," replied Rose, "privileged to think her thoughts, though perhaps I may think of them."
"A nice distinction," he answered.
"Our lots in life are differently cast. In a week I return to Abbeyweld; I only came to be her nurse in illness, and was induced to remain a little longer because I was useful to her. They will go to the Continent now, and I shall return to my native village."
"But," said the gentleman, in a tone of the deepest interest, "shall you really return without regret?"
"Without regret? Oh yes!"
"Regret nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Suppose," he continued, in a suppressed tone of deep emotion--"suppose that a man, young, rich, and perfectly aware of the value of your pure and unsullied nature, was to lay his hand and heart"--
"I pray, I entreat you, say not another word," interrupted Rose, breathlessly. "If there should be any such, which is hardly possible, sooner than he should deign to make a proposal to me, I would tell him that before I came to visit my cousin, only the very night before, I became the betrothed of another."