"Twentyman, I'll give you two hundred for your mare," said Lord Rufford.

"Ah, my Lord, there are two things that would about kill me."

"What are they, Larry?" asked Harry Stubbings.

"To offend his Lordship, or to part with the mare."

"You shall do neither," said Lord Rufford; "but upon my word I think she's the fastest thing in this county." All of which did not cure poor Larry, but it helped to enable him to be a man.

The fox had been killed close to Norrington, and the run was remembered with intense gratification for many a long day after. "It's that kind of thing that makes hunting beat everything else," said Lord Rufford, as he went home. That day's sport certainly had been "tanti," and Glomax and the two counties boasted of it for the next three years.



CHAPTER XX

Benedict

Lady Penwether declared to her husband that she had never seen her brother so much cowed as he had been by Miss Trefoil's visit to Rufford. It was not only that he was unable to assert his usual powers immediately after the attack made upon him, but that on the following day, at Scrobby's trial, on the Saturday when he started to the meet, and on the Sunday following when he allowed himself to be easily persuaded to go to church, he was silent, sheepish, and evidently afraid of himself. "It is a great pity that we shouldn't take the ball at the hop," she said to Sir George.

"What ball;—and what hop?"

"Get him to settle himself. There ought to be an end to this kind of thing now. He has got out of this mess, but every time it becomes worse and worse, and he'll be taken in horribly by some harpy if we don't get him to marry decently. I fancy he was very nearly going in this last affair." Sir George, in this matter, did not quite agree with his wife. It was in his opinion right to avoid Miss Trefoil, but he did not see why his brother-in-law should be precipitated into matrimony with Miss Penge. According to his ideas in such matters a man should be left alone. Therefore, as was customary with him when he opposed his wife, he held his tongue. "You have been called in three or four times when he has been just on the edge of the cliff."

"I don't know that that is any reason why he should be pushed over."

"There is not a word to be said against Caroline. She has a fine fortune of her own, and some of the best blood in the kingdom."

"But if your brother does not care for her,—"

"That's nonsense, George. As for liking, it's all the same to him. Rufford is good-natured, and easily pleased, and can like any woman. Caroline is very good-looking,—a great deal handsomer than that horrid creature ever was,—and with manners fit for any position. I've no reason to wish to force a wife on him; but of course he'll marry, and unless he's guided, he'll certainly marry badly."

"Is Miss Penge in love with him?" asked Sir George in a tone of voice that was intended to be provoking. His wife looked at him, asking him plainly by her countenance whether he was such a fool as that? Was it likely that any untitled young lady of eight-and-twenty should be wanting in the capacity of being in love with a young lord, handsome and possessed of forty thousand a year without encumbrances? Sir George, though he did not approve, was not eager enough in his disapproval to lay any serious embargo on his wife's proceedings.

The first steps taken were in the direction of the hero's personal comfort. He was flattered and petted, as his sister knew how to flatter and pet him; and Miss Penge in a quiet way assisted Lady Penwether in the operation. For a day or two he had not much to say for himself; but every word he did say was an oracle. His horses were spoken of as demigods, and his projected fishing operations for June and July became matters of most intense interest. Evil things were said of Arabella Trefoil, but in all the evil things said no hint was given that Lord Rufford had behaved badly or had been in danger. Lady Penwether, not quite knowing the state of his mind, thought that there might still be some lurking affection for the young lady. "Did you ever see anybody look so vulgar and hideous as she did when she marched across the park?" asked Lady Penwether.

"Thank goodness I did not see her," said Miss Penge.

"I never saw her look so handsome as when she came up to me," said Lord Rufford.

"But such a thing to do!"

"Awful!" said Miss Penge.

"She is the pluckiest girl I ever came across in my life," said Lord Rufford. He knew very well what they were at, and was already almost inclined to think that they might as well be allowed to have their way. Miss Penge was ladylike, quiet, and good, and was like a cool salad in a man's mouth after spiced meat. And the money would enable him to buy the Purefoy property which would probably be soon in the market. But he felt that he might as well give them a little trouble before he allowed himself to be hooked. It certainly was not by any arrangement of his own that he found himself walking alone with Miss Penge that Sunday afternoon in the park; nor did it seem to be by hers. He thought of that other Sunday at Mistletoe, when he had been compelled to wander with Arabella, when he met the Duchess, and when, as he often told himself, a little more good-nature or a little more courage on her grace's part would have completed the work entirely. Certainly had the Duke come to him that night, after the journey from Stamford, he would have capitulated. As he walked along and allowed himself to be talked to by Miss Penge, he did tell himself that she would be the better angel of the two. She could not hunt with him, as Arabella would have done; but then a man does not want his wife to gallop across the country after him. She might perhaps object to cigars and soda water after eleven o'clock, but then what assurance had he that Arabella would not have objected still more loudly. She had sworn that she would never be opposed to his little pleasures; but he knew what such oaths were worth. Marriage altogether was a bore; but having a name and a large fortune, it was incumbent on him to transmit them to an immediate descendant. And perhaps it was a worse bore to grow old without having specially bound any other human being to his interests. "How well I recollect that spot," said Miss Penge. "It was there that Major Caneback took the fence."

"That was not where he fell"

"Oh no;—I did not see that. It would have haunted me for ever had I done so.—But it was there that I thought he must kill himself. That was a terrible time, Lord Rufford."

"Terrible to poor Caneback certainly."

"Yes, and to all of us. Do you remember that fearful ball? We were all so unhappy,—because you suffered so much."

"It was bad."

"And that woman who persecuted you! We all knew that you felt it"

"I felt that poor man's death."

"Yes;—and you felt the other nuisance too."

"I remember that you told me that you would cling on to my legs."

"Eleanor said so;—and when it was explained to me, what clinging on to your legs meant, I remember saying that I wished to be understood as being one to help. I love your sister so well that anything which would break her heart would make me unhappy."

"You did not care for my own welfare in the matter?"

"What ought I say, Lord Rufford, in answer to that? Of course I did care. But I knew that it was impossible that you should really set your affections on such a person as Miss Trefoil. I told Eleanor that it would come to nothing. I was sure of it."

"Why should it have to come to nothing,—as you call it?"

"Because you are a gentleman and because she—is not a lady. I don't know that we women can quite understand how it is that you men amuse yourselves with such persons."

"I didn't amuse myself."

"I never thought you did very much. There was something I suppose in her riding, something in her audacity, something perhaps in her vivacity;—but through it all I did not think that you were enjoying yourself. You may be sure of this, Lord Rufford, that when a woman is not specially liked by any other woman, she ought not to be specially liked by any man. I have never heard that Miss Trefoil had a female friend."

From day to day there were little meetings and conversations of this kind till Lord Rufford found himself accustomed to Miss Penge's solicitude for his welfare. In all that passed between them the lady affected a status that was altogether removed from that of making or receiving love. There had come to be a peculiar friendship,—because of Eleanor. A week of this kind of thing had not gone by before Miss Penge found herself able to talk of and absolutely to describe this peculiar feeling, and could almost say how pleasant was such friendship, divested of the burden of all amatory possibilities. But through it all Lord Rufford knew that he would have to marry Miss Penge.

It was not long before he yielded in pure weariness. Who has not felt, as he stood by a stream into which he knew that it was his fate to plunge, the folly of delaying the shock? In his present condition he had no ease. His sister threatened him with a return of Arabella. Miss Penge required from him sensational conversation. His brother-in-law was laughing at him in his sleeve. His very hunting friends treated him as though the time were come. In all that he did the young lady took an interest which bored him excessively,—to put an end to which he only saw one certain way. He therefore asked her to be Lady Rufford before he got on his drag to go out hunting on the last Saturday in March. "Rufford," she said, looking up into his face with her lustrous eyes, and speaking with a sweet, low, silvery voice,—"are you sure of your self?"

"Oh, yes."

"Quite sure of yourself?"

"Never so sure in my life."

"Then dearest, dearest Rufford, I will not scruple to say that I also am sure." And so the thing was settled very much to his comfort. He could hardly have done better had he sought through all England for a bride. She will be true to him, and never give him cause for a moment's jealousy. She will like his title, his house, and his property. She will never spend a shilling more than she ought to do. She will look very sharply after him, but will not altogether debar him from his accustomed pleasures. She will grace his table, nurse his children, and never for a moment give him cause to be ashamed of her. He will think that he loves her, and after a lapse of ten or fifteen years will probably really be fond of her. From the moment that she is Lady Rufford, she will love him,—as she loves everything that is her own.

In spite of all his antecedents no one doubted his faith in this engagement;—no one wished to hurry him very much. When the proposition had been made and accepted, and when the hero of it had gone off on his drag, Miss Penge communicated the tidings to her friend. "I think he has behaved very wisely," said Lady Penwether.

"Well;—feeling as I do of course I think he has. I hope he thinks the same of me. I had many doubts about it, but I do believe that I can make him a good wife." Lady Penwether thought that her friend was hardly sufficiently thankful, and strove to tell her so in her own gentle, friendly way. But Miss Penge held her head up and was very stout, and would not acknowledge any cause for gratitude. Lady Penwether, when she saw how it was to be gave way a little. Close friendship with her future sister-in-law would be very necessary to her comfort, and Miss Penge, since the law-suit was settled, had never been given to yielding.

"My dear Rufford," said the sister affectionately, "I congratulate you with all my heart; I do indeed. I am quite sure that you could not have done better."

"I don't know that I could."

"She is a gem of inestimable price, and most warmly attached to you. And if this property is to be bought, of course the money will be a great thing."

"Money is always comfortable."

"Of course it is, and then there is nothing to be desired. If I had named the girl that I would have wished you to love, it would been Caroline Penge." She need hardly have said this as she had in fact been naming the girl for the last three or four months. The news was soon spread about the country and the fashionable world; and everybody was pleased,—except the Trefoil family.



CHAPTER XXI

Arabella's Success

When Arabella Trefoil got back to Portugal Street after her visit to Rufford, she was ill. The effort she had made, the unaccustomed labour, and the necessity of holding herself aloft before the man who had rejected her, were together more than her strength could bear, and she was taken up to bed in a fainting condition. It was not till the next morning that she was able even to open the letter which contained the news of John Morton's legacy. When she had read the letter and realized the contents, she took to weeping in a fashion very unlike her usual habits. She was still in bed, and there she remained for two or three days, during which she had time to think of her past life,—and to think also a little of the future. Old Mrs. Green came to her once or twice a day, but she was necessarily left to the nursing of her own maid. Every evening Mounser Green called and sent up tender enquiries; but in all this there was very little to comfort her. There she lay with the letter in her hand, thinking that the only man who had endeavoured to be of service to her was he whom she had treated with unexampled perfidy. Other men had petted her, had amused themselves with her, and then thrown her over, had lied to her and laughed at her, till she had been taught to think that a man was a heartless, cruel, slippery animal, made indeed to be caught occasionally, but in the catching of which infinite skill was wanted, and in which infinite skill might be thrown away. But this man had been true to her to the last in spite of her treachery!

She knew that she was heartless herself, and that she belonged to a heartless world;—but she knew also that there was a world of women who were not heartless. Such women had looked down upon her as from a great height, but she in return had been able to ridicule them. They had chosen their part, and she had chosen hers,—and had thought that she might climb to the glory of wealth and rank, while they would have to marry hard-working clergymen and briefless barristers. She had often been called upon to vindicate to herself the part she had chosen, and had always done so by magnifying in her own mind the sin of the men with whom she had to deal. At this moment she thought that Lord Rufford had treated her villainously, whereas her conduct to him had been only that which the necessity of the case required. To Lord Rufford she had simply behaved after the manner of her class, heartless of course, but only in the way which the "custom of the trade" justified. Each had tried to circumvent the other, and she as the weaker had gone to the wall. But John Morton had believed in her and loved her. Oh, how she wished that she had deserted her class, and clung to him,—even though she should now have been his widow. The legacy was a burden to her. Even she had conscience enough to be sorry for a day or two that he had named her in his will.

And what would she do with herself for the future? Her quarrel with her mother had been very serious, each swearing that under no circumstances would she again consent to live with the other. The daughter of course knew that the mother would receive her again should she ask to be received. But in such case she must go back with shortened pinions and blunted beak. Her sojourn with Mrs. Green was to last for one month, and at the end of that time she must seek for a home. If she put John Morton's legacy out to interest, she would now be mistress of a small income;—but she understood money well enough to know to what obduracy of poverty she would thus be subjected. As she looked the matter closer in the face the horrors became more startling and more manifest. Who would have her in their houses? Where should she find society,—where the possibility of lovers? What would be her life, and what her prospects? Must she give up for ever the game for which she had lived, and own that she had been conquered in the fight and beaten even to death? Then she thought over the long list of her past lovers, trying to see whether there might be one of the least desirable at whom she might again cast her javelins. But there was not one.

The tender messages from Mounser Green came to her day by day. Mounser Green, as the nephew of her hostess, had been very kind to her; but hitherto he had never appeared to her in the light of a possible lover. He was a clerk in the Foreign Office, waiting for his aunt's money;—a man whom she had met in society and whom she knew to be well thought of by those above him in wealth and rank; but she had never regarded him as prey,—or as a man whom any girl would want to marry. He was one of those of the other sex who would most probably look out for prey, who, if he married at all, would marry an heiress. She, in her time, had been on good terms with many such a one,—had counted them among her intimate friends, had made use of them and been useful to them,—but she had never dreamed of marrying any one of them. They were there in society for altogether a different purpose. She had not hesitated to talk to Mounser Green about Lord Rufford,—and though she had pretended to make a secret of the place to which she was going when he had taken her to the railway, she had not at all objected to his understanding her purpose. Up to that moment there had certainly been no thought on her part of transferring what she was wont to call her affections to Mounser Green as a suitor.

But as she lay in bed, thinking of her future life, tidings were brought to her by Mrs. Green that Mounser had accepted the mission to Patagonia. Could it be that her destiny intended her to go out to Patagonia as the wife, if not of one minister, then of another? There would be a career,—a way of living, if not exactly that which she would have chosen. Of Patagonia, as a place of residence, she had already formed ideas. In some of those moments in which she had foreseen that Lord Rufford would be lost to her, she had told herself that it would be better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. Among Patagonian women she would probably be the first. Among English ladies it did not seem that at present she had prospect of a high place. It would be long before Lord Rufford would be for= gotten,—and she had not space enough before her for forgettings which would require time for their accomplishment. Mounser Green had declared with energy that Lord Rufford had behaved very badly. There are men who feel it to be their mission to come in for the relief of ladies who have been badly treated. If Mounser Green wished to be one of them on her behalf, and to take her out with him to his very far-away employment, might not this be the best possible solution of her present difficulties?

On the evening of the third day after her return she was able to come down-stairs and the line of thought which has been suggested for her induced her to undertake some trouble with the white and pink robe, or dressing-gown in which she had appeared. "Well, my dear, you are smart," the old lady said.

"'Odious in woollen;—'twould a saint provoke, Were the last words which poor Narcissa spoke.'"

said Arabella, who had long since provided herself with this quotation for such occasions. "I hope I am not exactly dying, Mrs. Green; but I don't see why I should not object to be 'frightful,'— as well as the young lady who was."

"I suppose it's all done for Mounser's benefit?"

"Partly for you, partly for Mounser, and a good deal for myself. What a very odd name. Why did they call him Mounser? I used to think it was because he was in the Foreign Office,—a kind of chaff, as being half a Frenchman."

"My mother's maiden name was Mounser, and it isn't French at all. I don't see why it should not be as good a Christian name as Willoughby or Howard."

"Quite as good, and much more distinctive. There can't be another Mounser Green in the world."

"And very few other young men like him. At my time of life I find it very hard his going away. And what will he do in such a place as that,—all alone and without a wife?"

"Why don't you make him take a wife?"

"There isn't time now. He'll have to start in May."

"Plenty of time. Trousseaus are now got up by steam, and girls are kept ready to marry at the shortest notice. If I were you I should certainly advise him to take out some healthy young woman, capable of bearing the inclemencies of the Patagonian climate."

"As for that the climate is delicious," said Mrs. Green, who certainly was not led by her guest's manner to suspect the nature of her guest's more recent intentions.

Mounser Green on this afternoon came to Portugal Street before he himself went out to dinner, choosing the hour at which his aunt was wont to adorn herself. "And so you are to be the hero of Patagonia?" said Arabella as she put out her hand to congratulate him on his appointment.

"I don't know about heroism, but it seems that I am to go there," said Mounser with much melancholy in his voice.

"I should have thought you were the last man to leave London willingly."

"Well, yes; I should have said so myself. And I do flatter myself I shall be missed. But what had I before me here? This may lead to something."

"Indeed you will be missed, Mr. Green."

"It's very kind of you to say so."

"Patagonia! It is such a long way off!" Then she began to consider whether he had ever heard of her engagement with the last Minister-elect to that country. That he should know all about Lord Rufford was a matter of course; but what chance could there be for her if he also knew that other affair?

"We were intimately acquainted with Mr. Morton in Washington and were surprised that he should have accepted it. Poor Morton. He was a friend of mine. We used to call him the Paragon because he never made mistakes. I had heard that you and Lady Augusta were a good deal with him in Washington."

"We were, indeed. You do not know my good news as yet, I suppose. Your Paragon, as you call him, has left me five thousand pounds." Of course it would be necessary that he should know it some day if this new plan of hers were to be carried out;—and if the plan should fail, his knowing it could do no harm.

"How very nice for you. Poor Morton!"

"It is well that somebody should behave well, when others treat one so badly, Mr. Green. Yes; he has left me five thousand pounds" Then she showed him the lawyer's letter. "Perhaps as I am so separated at present from all my own people by this affair with Lord Rufford, you would not mind seeing the man for me." Of course he promised to see the lawyer and to do everything that was necessary. "The truth is, Mr. Green, Mr. Morton was very warmly attached to me. I was a foolish girl, and could not return it. I thought of it long and was then obliged to tell him that I could not entertain just that sort of feeling for him. You cannot think now how bitter is my regret;— that I should have allowed myself to trust a man so false and treacherous as Lord Rufford, and that I should have perhaps added a pang to the deathbed of one so good as Mr. Morton." And so she told her little story;—not caring very much whether it were believed or not, but finding it to be absolutely essential that some story should be told.

During the next day or two Mounser Green thought a great deal about it. That the story was not exactly true, he knew very well. But it is not to be expected that a girl before her marriage should be exactly true about her old loves. That she had been engaged to Lord Rufford and had been cruelly jilted by him he did believe. That she had at one time been engaged to the Paragon he was almost sure. The fact that the Paragon had left her money was a strong argument that she had not behaved badly to him. But there was much that was quite certain. The five thousand pounds were quite certain; and the money, though it could not be called a large fortune for a young lady, would pay his debts and send him out a free man to Patagonia. And the family honours were certainly true. She was the undoubted niece of the Duke of Mayfair, and such a connection might in his career be of service to him. Lord Mistletoe was a prig, but would probably be a member of the Government. Mounser Green liked Dukes, and loved a Duchess in his heart of hearts. If he could only be assured that this niece would not be repudiated he thought that the speculation might answer in spite of any ambiguity in the lady's antecedents.

"Have you heard about Arabella's good fortune?" young Glossop asked the next morning at the office.

"You forget, my boy," said Mounser Green, "that the young lady of whom you speak is a friend of mine:'

"Oh lord! So I did. I beg your pardon, old fellow." There was no one else in the room at the moment, and Glossop in asking the question had in truth forgotten what he had heard of this new intimacy.

"Don't you learn to be ill-natured, Glossop. And remember that there is no form so bad as that of calling young ladies by their Christian names. I do know that poor Morton has left Miss Trefoil a sum of money which is at any rate evidence that he thought well of her to the last."

"Of course it is. I didn't mean to offend you. I wouldn't do it for worlds,—as you are going away." That afternoon, when Green's back was turned, Glossop gave it as his opinion that something particular would turn up between Mounser and Miss Trefoil, an opinion which brought down much ridicule upon him from both Hoffmann and Archibald Currie. But before that week was over,—in the early days of April,—they were forced to retract their opinion and to do honour to young Glossop's sagacity. Mounser Green was engaged to Miss Trefoil, and for a day or two the Foreign Office could talk of nothing else.

"A very handsome girl," said Lord Drummond to one of his subordinates. "I met her at Mistletoe. As to that affair with Lord Rufford, he treated her abominably." And when Mounser showed himself at the office, which he did boldly, immediately after the engagement was made known, they all received him with open arms and congratulated him sincerely on his happy fortune. He himself was quite contented with what he had done and thought that he was taking out for himself the very wife for Patagonia.



CHAPTER XXII

The Wedding

No sooner did the new two lovers, Mounser Green and Arabella Trefoil, understand each other, than they set their wits to work to make the best of their natural advantages. The latter communicated the fact in a very dry manner to her father and mother. Nothing was to be got from them, and it was only just necessary that they should know what she intended to do with herself. "My dear mamma. I am to be married some time early in May to Mr. Mounser Green of the Foreign Office. I don't think you know him, but I daresay you have heard of him. He goes to Patagonia immediately after the wedding, and I shall go with him. Your affectionate daughter, Arabella Trefoil." That was all she said, and the letter to her father was word for word the same. But how to make use of those friends who were more happily circumstanced was matter for frequent counsel between her and Mr. Green. In these days I do not think that she concealed very much from him. To tell him all the little details of her adventures with Lord Rufford would have been neither useful nor pleasant; but, as to the chief facts, reticence would have been foolish. To the statement that Lord Rufford had absolutely proposed to her she clung fast, and really did believe it herself. That she had been engaged to John Morton she did not deny; but she threw the blame of that matter on her mother, and explained to him that she had broken off the engagement down at Bragton, because she could not bring herself to regard the man with sufficient personal favour. Mounser was satisfied, but was very strong in urging her to seek, yet once again, the favour of her magnificent uncle and her magnificent aunt.

"What good can they do us?" said Arabella, who was almost afraid to make the appeal.

"It would be everything for you to be married from Mistletoe," he said. "People would know then that you were not blamed about Lord Rufford. And it might serve me very much in my profession. These things do help very much. It would cost us nothing, and the proper kind of notice would then get into the newspapers. If you will write direct to the Duchess I will get at the Duke through Lord Drummond. They know where we are going, and that we are not likely to want anything else for a long time."

"I don't think the Duchess would have mamma if it were ever so."

"Then we must drop your mother for the time;—that's all. When my aunt hears that you are to be married from the Duke's, she will be quite willing that you should remain with her till you go down to Mistletoe."

Arabella, who perhaps knew a little more than her lover, could not bring herself to believe that the appeal would be successful, but she made it. It was a very difficult letter to write, as she could not but allude to the rapid transference of her affections. "I will not conceal from you," she said, "that I have suffered very much from Lord Rufford's heartless conduct. My misery has been aggravated by the feeling that you and my uncle will hardly believe him to be so false, and will attribute part of the blame to me. I had to undergo an agonizing revulsion of feeling, during which Mr. Green's behaviour to me was at first so considerate and then so kind that it has gone far to cure the wound from which I have been suffering. He is so well known in reference to foreign affairs, that I think my uncle cannot but have heard of him; my cousin Mistletoe is certainly acquainted with him; and I think that you cannot but approve of the match. You know what is the position of my father and my mother, and how little able they are to give us any assistance. If you would be kind enough to let us be married from Mistletoe, you will confer on both of us a very, very great favour." There was more of it, but that was the first of the prayer, and most of the words given above came from the dictation of Mounser himself. She had pleaded against making the direct request, but he had assured her that in the world, as at present arranged, the best way to get a thing is to ask for it. "You make yourself at any rate understood," he said, "and you may be sure that people who receive petitions do not feel the hardihood of them so much as they who make them." Arabella, comforting herself by declaring that the Duchess at any rate could not eat her, wrote the letter and sent it.

The Duchess at first was most serious in her intention to refuse. She was indeed made very angry by the request. Though it had been agreed at Mistletoe that Lord Rufford had behaved badly, the Duchess was thoroughly well aware that Arabella's conduct had been abominable. Lord Rufford probably had made an offer, but it had been extracted from him by the vilest of manoeuvres. The girl had been personally insolent to herself. And this rapid change, this third engagement within a few weeks, was disgusting to her as a woman. But, unluckily for herself, she would not answer the letter till she had consulted her husband. As it happened the Duke was in town, and while he was there Lord Drummond got hold of him. Lord Drummond had spoken very highly of Mounser Green, and the Duke, who was never dead to the feeling that as the head of the family he should always do what he could for the junior branches, had almost made a promise. "I never take such things upon myself," he said, "but if the Duchess has no objection, we will have them down to Mistletoe."

"Of course if you wish it," said the Duchess,—with more acerbity in her tone than the Duke had often heard there.

"Wish it? What do you mean by wishing it? It will be a great bore."

"Terrible!"

"But she is the only one there is and then we shall have done with it."

"Done with it! They will be back from Patagonia before you can turn yourself, and then of course we must have them here."

"Drummond tells me that Mr. Green is one of the most useful men they have at the Foreign Office;—just the man that one ought to give a lift to." Of course the Duke had his way. The Duchess could not bring herself to write the letter, but the Duke wrote to his dear niece saying that "they" would be very glad to see her, and that if she would name the day proposed for the wedding, one should be fixed for her visit to Mistletoe.

"You had better tell your mother and your father," Mounser said to her.

"What's the use? The Duchess hates my mother, and my father never goes near the place."

"Nevertheless tell them. People care a great deal for appearances." She did as she was bid, and the result was that Lord Augustus and his wife, on the occasion of their daughter's marriage, met each other at Mistletoe,—for the first time for the last dozen years.

Before the day came round Arabella was quite astonished to find how popular and fashionable her wedding was likely to be, and how the world at large approved of what she was doing. The newspapers had paragraphs about alliances and noble families, and all the relatives sent tribute. There was a gold candlestick from the Duke, a gilt dish from the Duchess,—which came however without a word of personal congratulation,—and a gorgeous set of scent-bottles from cousin Mistletoe. The Connop Greens were lavish with sapphires, the De Brownes with pearls, and the Smijths with opal. Mrs. Gore sent a huge carbuncle which Arabella strongly suspected to be glass. From her paternal parent there came a pair of silver nut-crackers, and from the maternal a second-hand dressing-case newly done up. Old Mrs. Green gave her a couple of ornamental butter-boats, and salt-cellars innumerable came from distant Greens. But there was a diamond ring—with a single stone,—from a friend, without a name, which she believed to be worth all the rest in money value. Should she send it back to Lord Rufford, or make a gulp and swallow it? How invincible must be the good-nature of the man when he could send her such a present after such a rating as she had given him in the park at Rufford! "Do as you like," Mounser Green said when she consulted him.

She very much wished to keep it. "But what am I to say, and to whom?"

"Write a note to the jewellers saying that you have got it." She did write to the jeweller saying that she had got the ring,—"from a friend;" and the ring with the other tribute went to Patagonia. He had certainly behaved very badly to her, but she was quite sure that he would never tell the story of the ring to any one. Perhaps she thought that as she had spared him in the great matter of eight thousand pounds, she was entitled to take this smaller contribution.

It was late in April when she went down to Mistletoe, the marriage having been fixed for the 3rd of May. After that they were to spend a fortnight in Paris, and leave England for Patagonia at the end of the month. The only thing which Arabella dreaded was the meeting with the Duchess. When that was once over she thought that she could bear with equanimity all that could come after. The week before her marriage could not be a pleasant week, but then she had been accustomed to endure evil hours. Her uncle would be blandly good-natured. Mistletoe, should he be there, would make civil speeches to compensate for his indifference when called upon to attack Lord Rufford. Other guests would tender to her the caressing observance always shown to a bride. But as she got out of the ducal carriage at the front door, her heart was uneasy at the coming meeting.

The Duchess herself almost went to bed when the time came, so much did she dread the same thing. She was quite alone, having felt that she could not bring herself to give the affectionate embrace which the presence of others would require. She stood in the middle of the room and then came forward three steps to meet the bride. "Arabella," she said, "I am very glad that everything has been settled so comfortably for you."

"That is so kind of you, aunt," said Arabella, who was watching the Duchess closely,—ready to jump into her aunt's arms if required to do so, or to stand quite aloof.

Then the Duchess signified her pleasure that her cheek should be touched,—and it was touched. "Mrs. Pepper will show you your room. It is the same you had when you were here before. Perhaps you know that Mr. Green comes down to Stamford on the first, and that he will dine here on that day and on Sunday."

"That will be very nice. He had told me how it was arranged."

"It seems that he knows one of the clergymen in Stamford, and will stay at his house. Perhaps you will like to go upstairs now."

That was all there was, and that had not been very bad. During the entire week the Duchess hardly spoke to her another word, and certainly did not speak to her a word in private. Arabella now could go where she pleased without any danger of meeting her aunt on her walks. When Sunday came nobody asked her to go to church. She did go twice, Mounser Green accompanying her to the morning service;—but there was no restraint. The Duchess only thought of her as a disagreeable ill-conducted incubus, who luckily was about to be taken away to Patagonia.

It had been settled on all sides that the marriage was to be very quiet. The bride was of course consulted about her bridesmaids, as to whom there was a little difficulty. But a distant Trefoil was found willing to act, in payment for the unaccustomed invitation to Mistletoe, and one Connop Green young lady, with one De Browne young lady, and one Smijth young lady came on the same terms. Arabella herself was surprised at the ease with which it was all done. On the Saturday Lady Augustus came, and on the Sunday Lord Augustus. The parents of course kissed their child, but there was very little said in the way either of congratulation or farewell. Lord Augustus did have some conversation with Mounser Green, but it all turned on the probability of there being whist in Patagonia. On the Monday morning they were married, and then Arabella was taken off by the happy bridegroom.

When the ceremony was over it was expected that Lady Augustus should take herself away as quickly as possible, not perhaps on that very afternoon, but at any rate, on the next morning. As soon as the carriage was gone, she went to her own room and wept bitterly. It was all done now. Everything was over. Though she had quarrelled daily with her daughter for the last twelve years,—to such an extent lately that no decently civil word ever passed between them,—still there had been something to interest her. There had been something to fear and something to hope. The girl had always had some prospect before her, more or less brilliant. Her life had had its occupation, and future triumph was possible. Now it was all over. The link by which she had been bound to the world was broken. The Connop Greens and the Smijths would no longer have her, unless it might be on short and special occasions, as a great favour. She knew that she was an old woman, without money, without blood, and without attraction, whom nobody would ever again desire to see. She had her things packed up, and herself taken off to London, almost without a word of farewell to the Duchess, telling herself as she went that the world had produced no other people so heartless as the family of the Trefoils.

"I wonder what you will think of Patagonia," said Mounser Green as he took his bride away.

"I don't suppose I shall think much. As far as I can see one place is always like another."

"But then you will have duties."

"Not very heavy I hope."

Then he preached her a sermon, expressing a hope as he went on, that as she was leaving the pleasures of life behind her, she would learn to like the work of life. "I have found the pleasures very hard," she said. He spoke to her of the companion he hoped to find, of the possible children who might be dependent on their mother, of the position which she would hold, and of the manner in which she should fill it. She, as she listened to him, was almost stunned by the change in the world around her. She need never again seem to be gay in order that men might be attracted. She made her promises and made them with an intention of keeping them; but it may, we fear, be doubted whether he was justified in expecting that he could get a wife fit for his purpose out of the school in which Arabella Trefoil had been educated. The two, however, will pass out of our sight, and we can only hope that he may not be disappointed.



CHAPTER XXIII

The Senator's Lecture.—No. I

Wednesday, April 14th, was the day at last fixed for the Senator's lecture. His little proposal to set England right on all those matters in which she had hitherto gone astray had created a considerable amount of attention. The Goarly affair with the subsequent trial of Scrobby had been much talked about, and the Senator's doings in reference to it had been made matter of comment in the newspapers. Some had praised him for courage, benevolence, and a steadfast purpose. Others had ridiculed his inability to understand manners different from those of his own country. He had seen a good deal of society both in London and in the country, and had never hesitated to express his opinions with an audacity which some had called insolence. When he had trodden with his whole weight hard down on individual corns, of course he had given offence,—as on the memorable occasion of the dinner at the parson's house in Dillsborough. But, on the whole, he had produced for himself a general respect among educated men which was not diminished by the fact that he seemed to count quite as little on that as on the ill-will and abuse of others. For some days previous to the delivery of the lecture the hoardings in London were crowded with sesquipedalian notices of the entertainment, so that Senator Gotobed's great oration on "The irrationality of Englishmen" was looked to with considerable interest.

When an intelligent Japanese travels in Great Britain or an intelligent Briton in Japan, he is struck with no wonder at national differences. He is on the other hand rather startled to find how like his strange brother is to him in many things. Crime is persecuted, wickedness is condoned, and goodness treated with indifference in both countries. Men care more for what they eat than anything else, and combine a closely defined idea of meum with a lax perception as to tuum. Barring a little difference of complexion and feature the Englishman would make a good Japanese, or the Japanese a first-class Englishman. But when an American comes to us or a Briton goes to the States, each speaking the same language, using the same cookery, governed by the same laws, and wearing the same costume, the differences which present themselves are so striking that neither can live six months in the country of the other without a holding up of the hands and a torrent of exclamations. And in nineteen cases out of twenty the surprise and the ejaculations take the place of censure. The intelligence of the American, displayed through the nose, worries the Englishman. The unconscious self-assurance of the Englishman, not always unaccompanied by a sneer, irritates the American. They meet as might a lad from Harrow and another from Mr. Brumby's successful mechanical cramming establishment. The Harrow boy cannot answer a question, but is sure that he is the proper thing, and is ready to face the world on that assurance. Mr. Brumby's paragon is shocked at the other's inaptitude for examination, but is at the same time tortured by envy of he knows not what. In this spirit we Americans and Englishmen go on writing books about each other, sometimes with bitterness enough, but generally with good final results. But in the meantime there has sprung up a jealousy which makes each inclined to hate the other at first sight. Hate is difficult and expensive, and between individuals soon gives place to love. "I cannot bear Americans as a rule, though I have been very lucky myself with a few friends." Who in England has not heard that form of speech, over and over again? And what Englishman has travelled in the States without hearing abuse of all English institutions uttered amidst the pauses of a free-handed hospitality which has left him nothing to desire?

Mr. Senator Gotobed had expressed his mind openly wheresoever he went, but, being a man of immense energy, was not content with such private utterances. He could not liberate his soul without doing something in public to convince his cousins that in their general practices of life they were not guided by reason. He had no object of making money. To give him his due we must own that he had no object of making fame. He was impelled by that intense desire to express himself which often amounts to passion with us, and sometimes to fury with Americans, and he hardly considered much what reception his words might receive. It was only when he was told by others that his lecture might give offence which possibly would turn to violence, that he made inquiry as to the attendance of the police. But though they should tear him to pieces he would say what he had to say. It should not be his fault if the absurdities of a people whom he really loved were not exposed to light, so that they might be acknowledged and abandoned.

He had found time to travel to Birmingham, to Manchester, to Liverpool, to Glasgow, and to other places, and really thought that he had mastered his great subject. He had worked very hard, but was probably premature in thinking that he knew England thoroughly. He had, however, undoubtedly dipped into a great many matters, and could probably have told many Englishmen much that they didn't know about their own affairs. He had poked his nose everywhere, and had scrupled to ask no question. He had seen the miseries of a casual ward, the despair of an expiring strike, the amenities of a city slum, and the stolid apathy of a rural labourer's home. He had measured the animal food consumed by the working classes, and knew the exact amount of alcohol swallowed by the average Briton. He had seen also the luxury of baronial halls, the pearl-drinking extravagances of commercial palaces, the unending labours of our pleasure-seekers—as with Lord Rufford, and the dullness of ordinary country life—as experienced by himself at Bragton. And now he was going to tell the English people at large what he thought about it all.

The great room at St. James's Hall had been secured for the occasion, and Lord Drummond, the Minister of State in foreign affairs, had been induced to take the chair. In these days our governments are very anxious to be civil to foreigners, and there is nothing that a robust Secretary of State will not do for them. On the platform there were many members of both Houses of Parliament, and almost everybody connected with the Foreign Office. Every ticket had been taken for weeks since. The front benches were filled with the wives and daughters of those on the platform, and back behind, into the distant spaces in which seeing was difficult and hearing impossible, the crowd was gathered at 2s. 6d. a head, all of which was going to some great British charity. From half-past seven to eight Piccadilly and Regent Street were crammed, and when the Senator came himself with his chairman he could hardly make his way in at the doors. A great treat was expected, but there was among the officers of police some who thought that a portion of the audience would not bear quietly the hard things that would be said, and that there was an uncanny gathering of roughs about the street, who were not prepared to be on their best behaviour when they should be told that old England was being abused.

Lord Drummond opened the proceedings by telling the audience, in a voice clearly audible to the reporters and the first half-dozen benches, that they had come there to hear what a well-informed and distinguished foreigner thought of their country. They would not, he was sure, expect to be flattered. Than flattery nothing was more useless or ignoble. This gentleman, coming from a new country, in which tradition was of no avail, and on which the customs of former centuries had had no opportunities to engraft themselves, had seen many things here which, in his eyes, could not justify themselves by reason. Lord Drummond was a little too prolix for a chairman, and at last concluded by expressing "his conviction that his countrymen would listen to the distinguished Senator with that courtesy which was due to a foreigner and due also to the great and brotherly nation from which he had come."

Then the Senator rose, and the clapping of hands and kicking of heels was most satisfactory. There was at any rate no prejudice at the onset. "English Ladies and Gentlemen," he said, "I am in the unenviable position of having to say hard things to you for about an hour and a half together, if I do not drive you from your seats before my lecture is done. And this is the more the pity because I could talk to you for three hours about your country and not say an unpleasant word. His Lordship has told you that flattery is not my purpose. Neither is praise, which would not be flattery. Why should I collect three or four thousand people here to tell them of virtues the consciousness of which is the inheritance of each of them? You are brave and generous,—and you are lovely to look at, with sweetly polished manners; but you know all that quite well enough without my telling you. But it strikes me that you do not know how little prone you are to admit the light of reason into either your public or private life, and how generally you allow yourselves to be guided by traditions, prejudices, and customs which should be obsolete. If you will consent to listen to what one foreigner thinks,—though he himself be a man of no account,—you may perchance gather from his words something of the opinion of bystanders in general, and so be able, perhaps a little, to rectify your gait and your costume and the tones of your voice, as we are all apt to do when we come from our private homes, out among the eyes of the public."

This was received very well. The Senator spoke with a clear, sonorous voice, no doubt with a twang, but so audibly as to satisfy the room in general. "I shall not," he said, "dwell much on your form of government. Were I to praise a republic I might seem to belittle your throne and the lady who sits on it,—an offence which would not be endured for a moment by English ears. I will take the monarchy as it is, simply remarking that its recondite forms are very hard to be understood by foreigners, and that they seem to me to be for the most part equally dark to natives. I have hardly as yet met two Englishmen who were agreed as to the political power of the sovereign; and most of those of whom I have enquired have assured me that the matter is one as to which they have not found it worth their while to make inquiry." Here a voice from the end of the hall made some protestation, but the nature of the protest did not reach the platform.

"But," continued the Senator, now rising into energy, "tho' I will not meddle with your form of government, I may, I hope, be allowed to allude to the political agents by which it is conducted. You are proud of your Parliament."

"We are," said a voice.

"I wonder of which house. I do not ask the question that it may be answered, because it is advisable at the present moment that there should be only one speaker. That labour is, unfortunately for me, at present in my hands, and I am sure you will agree with me that it should not be divided. You mean probably that you are proud of your House of Commons,—and that you are so because it speaks with the voice of the people. The voice of the people, in order that it may be heard without unjust preponderance on this side or on that, requires much manipulation. That manipulation has in latter years been effected by your Reform bills of which during the last half century there have in fact been four or five,—the latter in favour of the ballot having been perhaps the greatest. There have been bills for purity of elections, very necessary; bills for creating constituencies, bills for abolishing them, bills for dividing them, bills for extending the suffrage, and bills, if I am not mistaken, for curtailing it. And what has been the result? How many men are there in this room who know the respective nature of their votes? And is there a single woman who knows the political worth of her husband's vote? Passing the other day from the Bank of this great metropolis to its suburb called Brentford, journeying as I did the whole way through continuous rows of houses, I found myself at first in a very ancient borough returning four members,—double the usual number,—not because of its population but because it has always been so. Here I was informed that the residents had little or nothing to do with it. I was told, though I did not quite believe what I heard, that there were no residents. The voters however, at any rate the influential voters, never pass a night there, and combine their city franchise with franchises elsewhere. I then went through two enormous boroughs, one so old as to have a great political history of its own, and the other so new as to have none. It did strike me as odd that there should be a new borough, with new voters, and new franchises, not yet ten years old, in the midst of this city of London. But when I came to Brentford, everything was changed. I was not in a town at all though I was surrounded on all sides by houses. Everything around me was grim and dirty enough, but I am supposed to have reached, politically, the rustic beauties of the country. Those around me, who had votes, voted for the County of Middlesex. On the other side of the invisible border I had just past the poor wretch with 3s. a day who lived in a grimy lodging or a half-built hut, but who at any rate possessed the political privilege. Now I had suddenly emerged among the aristocrats, and quite another state of things prevailed. Is that a reasonable manipulation of the votes of the people? Does that arrangement give to any man an equal share in his country? And yet I fancy that the thing is so little thought of that few among you are aware that in this way the largest class of British labour is excluded from the franchise in a country which boasts of equal representation."

"The chief object of your first Reform Bill was that of realising the very fact of representation. Up to that time your members of the House of Commons were in truth deputies of the Lords or of other rich men. Lord A, or Mr. B, or perhaps Lady C, sent whom she pleased to Parliament to represent this or that town, or occasionally this or that county. That absurdity is supposed to be past, and on evils that have been cured no one should dwell. But how is it now? I have a list, in my memory, for I would not care to make out so black a catalogue in legible letters,—of forty members who have been returned to the present House of Commons by the single voices of influential persons. What will not forty voices do even in your Parliament? And if I can count forty, how many more must there be of which I have not heard?" Then there was a voice calling upon the Senator to name those men, and other voices denying the fact. "I will name no one," said the Senator. "How could I tell what noble friend I might put on a stool of repentance by doing so." And he looked round on the gentlemen on the platform behind him. "But I defy any member of Parliament here present to get up and say that it is not so." Then he paused a moment. "And if it be so, is that rational? Is that in accordance with the theory of representation as to which you have all been so ardent, and which you profess to be so dear to you? Is the country not over-ridden by the aristocracy when Lord Lambswool not only possesses his own hereditary seat in the House of Lords, but also has a seat for his eldest son in the House of Commons?"

Then a voice from the back called out, "What the deuce is all that to you?"



CHAPTER XXIV

The Senator's Lecture.—No. II

"If I see a man hungry in the street," said the Senator, instigated by the question asked him at the end of the last chapter, "and give him a bit of bread, I don't do it for my own sake but for his." Up to this time the Britishers around him on the platform and those in the benches near to him, had received what he said with a good grace. The allusion to Lord Lambswool had not been pleasant to them, but it had not been worse than they had expected. But now they were displeased. They did not like being told that they were taking a bit of bread from him in their own political destitution. They did not like that he, an individual, should presume that he had prayer to offer to them as a nation. And yet, had they argued it out in their own minds, they would have seen that the Senator's metaphor was appropriate. His purpose in being there was to give advice, and theirs in coming to listen to it. But it was unfortunate. "When I ventured to come before you here, I made all this my business," continued the Senator. Then he paused and glanced round the hall with a defiant look. "And now about your House of Lords," he went on. "I have not much to say about the House of Lords, because if I understand rightly the feeling of this country it is already condemned." "No such thing." "Who told you that?" "You know nothing about it" These and other words of curt denial came from the distant corners, and a slight murmur of disapprobation was heard even from the seats on the platform. Then Lord Drummond got up and begged that there might be silence. Mr. Gotobed had come there to tell them his views,—and as they had come there expressly to listen to him, they could not without impropriety interrupt him. "That such will be the feeling of the country before long," continued the Senator, "I think no one can doubt who has learned how to look to the signs of the times in such matters. Is it possible that the theory of an hereditary legislature can be defended with reason? For a legislature you want the best and wisest of your people." "You don't get them in America," said a voice which was beginning to be recognised. "We try at any rate," said the Senator. "Now is it possible that an accident of birth should give you excellence and wisdom? What is the result? Not a tenth of your hereditary legislators assemble in the beautiful hall that you have built for them. And of that tenth the greater half consists of counsellors of state who have been placed there in order that the business of the country may not be brought to a standstill. Your hereditary chamber is a fiction supplemented by the element of election, the election resting generally in the very bosom of the House of Commons." On this subject, although he had promised to be short, he said much more, which was received for the most part in silence. But when he ended by telling them that they could have no right to call themselves a free people till every legislator in the country was elected by the votes of the people, another murmur was heard through the hall.

"I told you," said he waxing more and more energetic, as he felt the opposition which he was bound to overcome, "that what I had to say to you would not be pleasant. If you cannot endure to hear me, let us break up and go away. In that case I must tell my friends at home that the tender ears of a British audience cannot bear rough words from American lips. And yet if you think of it we have borne rough words from you and have borne them with good-humour." Again he paused, but as none rose from their seats he went on, "Proceeding from hereditary legislature I come to hereditary property. It is natural that a man should wish to give to his children after his death the property which he has enjoyed during their life. But let me ask any man here who has not been born an eldest son himself, whether it is natural that he should wish to give it all to one son. Would any man think of doing so, by the light of his own reason,—out of his own head as we say? Would any man be so unjust to those who are equal in his love, where he not constrained by law, and by custom more iron-handed even than the law?" The Senator had here made a mistake very common with Americans, and a great many voices were on him at once. "What law?" "There is no law." "You know nothing about it" "Go back and learn."

"What!" cried the Senator coming forward to the extreme verge of the platform and putting down his foot as though there were strength enough in his leg to crush them all; "Will any one have the hardihood to tell me that property in this country is not affected by primogeniture?" "Go back and learn the law." "I know the law perhaps better than most of you. Do you mean to assert that my Lord Lambswool can leave his land to whom he pleases? I tell you that he has no more than a life-interest in it, and that his son will only have the same." Then an eager Briton on the platform got up and whispered to the Senator for a few minutes, during which the murmuring was continued. "My friend reminds me," said the Senator, "that the matter is one of custom rather than law; and I am obliged to him. But the custom which is damnable and cruel, is backed by law which is equally so. If I have land I can not only give it all to my eldest son, but I can assure the right of primogeniture to his son, though he be not yet born. No one I think will deny that there must be a special law to enable me to commit an injustice so unnatural as that."

"Hence it comes that you still suffer under an aristocracy almost as dominant, and in its essence as irrational, as that which created feudalism." The gentlemen collected on the platform looked at each other and smiled, perhaps failing to catch the exact meaning of the Senator's words. "A lord here has a power, as a lord, which he cannot himself fathom and of which he daily makes an unconscious but most deleterious use. He is brought up to think it natural that he should be a tyrant. The proclivities of his order are generous, and as a rule he gives more than he takes. But he is as injurious in the one process as in the other. Your ordinary Briton in his dealing with a lord expects payment in some shape for every repetition of the absurd title;—and payment is made. The titled aristocrat pays dearer for his horse, dearer for his coat, dearer for his servant than other people. But in return he exacts much which no other person can get. Knowing his own magnanimity he expects that his word shall not be questioned. If I may be allowed I will tell a little story as to one of the most generous men I have had the happiness of meeting in this country, which will explain my meaning."

Then, without mentioning names he told the story of Lord Rufford, Goarly, and Scrobby, in such a way as partly to redeem himself with his audience. He acknowledged how absolutely he had been himself befooled, and how he had been done out of his money by misplaced sympathy. He made Mrs. Goarly's goose immortal, and in imitating the indignation of Runce the farmer and Bean the gamekeeper showed that he was master of considerable humour. But he brought it all round at last to his own purpose, and ended this episode of his lecture by his view of the absurdity and illegality of British hunting. "I can talk about it to you," he said, "and you will know whether I am speaking the truth. But when I get home among my own people, and repeat my lecture there, as I shall do,—with some little additions as to the good things I have found here from which your ears may be spared,—I shall omit this story as I know it will be impossible to make my countrymen believe that a hundred harum-scarum tomboys may ride at their pleasure over every man's land, destroying crops and trampling down fences, going, if their vermin leads them there, with reckless violence into the sweet domestic garden of your country residences; and that no one can either stop them or punish them! An American will believe much about the wonderful ways of his British cousin, but no American will be got to believe that till he sees it."

"I find," said he, "that this irrationality, as I have ventured to call it, runs through all your professions. We will take the Church as being the highest at any rate in its objects." Then he recapitulated all those arguments against our mode of dispensing church patronage with which the reader is already familiar if he has attended to the Senator's earlier words as given in this chronicle. "In other lines of business there is, even here in England, some attempt made to get the man best suited for the work he has to do. If any one wants a domestic servant he sets about the work of getting a proper person in a very determined manner indeed. But for the care,—or, as you call it, the cure,—of his soul, he has to put up with the man who has bought the right to minister to his wants; or with him whose father wants a means of living for his younger son,—the elder being destined to swallow all the family property; or with him who has become sick of drinking his wine in an Oxford college;—or with him, again, who has pleaded his cause successfully with a bishop's daughter." It is not often that the British public is angered by abuse of the Church, and this part of the lecture was allowed to pass without strong marks of disapprobation.

"I have been at some trouble," he continued, "to learn the very complex rules by which your army is now regulated, and those by which it was regulated a very short time since. Unhappily for me I have found it in a state of transition, and nothing is so difficult to a stranger's comprehension as a transition state of affairs. But this I can see plainly; that every improvement which is made is received by those whom it most concerns with a horror which amounts almost to madness. So lovely to the ancient British, well-born, feudal instinct is a state of unreason, that the very absence of any principle endears to it institutions which no one can attempt to support by argument. Had such a thing not existed as the right to purchase military promotion, would any satirist have been listened to who had suggested it as a possible outcome of British irrationality? Think what it carries with it! The man who has proved himself fit to serve his country by serving it in twenty foreign fields, who has bled for his country and perhaps preserved his country, shall rot in obscurity because he has no money to buy promotion, whereas the young dandy who has done no more than glitter along the pavements with his sword and spurs shall have the command of men;—because he has so many thousand dollars in his pocket"

"Buncombe," shouted the inimical voice.

"But is it Buncombe?" asked the intrepid Senator. "Will any one who knows what he is talking about say that I am describing a state of things which did not exist yesterday? I will acknowledge that this has been rectified,—tho' I see symptoms of relapse. A fault that has been mended is a fault no longer. But what I speak of now is the disruption of all concord in your army caused by the reform which has forced itself upon you. All loyalty has gone; all that love of his profession which should be the breath of a soldier's nostrils. A fine body of fighting heroes is broken-hearted, not because injury has been done to them or to any of them, but because the system had become peculiarly British by reason of its special absurdity, and therefore peculiarly dear."

"Buncombe," again said the voice, and the word was now repeated by a dozen voices.

"Let any one show me that it is Buncombe. If I say what is untrue, do with me what you please. If I am ignorant, set me right and laugh at me. But if what I say is true, then your interruption is surely a sign of imbecility. I say that the change was forced upon you by the feeling of the people, but that its very expediency has demoralized the army, because the army was irrational. And how is it with the navy? What am I to believe when I hear so many conflicting statements among yourselves?" During this last appeal, however, the noise at the back of the hall had become so violent, that the Senator was hardly able to make his voice heard by those immediately around him. He himself did not quail for a moment, going on with his gestures, and setting down his foot as though he were still confident in his purpose of overcoming all opposition. He had not much above half done yet. There were the lawyers before him, and the Civil Service, and the railways, and the commerce of the country, and the labouring classes. But Lord Drummond and others near him were becoming terrified, thinking that something worse might occur unless an end was put to the proceedings. Then a superintendent of police came in and whispered to his Lordship. A crowd was collecting itself in Piccadilly and St. James Street, and perhaps the Senator had better be withdrawn. The officer did not think that he could safely answer for the consequences if this were carried on for a quarter of an hour longer. Then Lord Drummond having meditated for a moment, touched the Senator's arm and suggested a withdrawal into a side room for a minute. "Mr. Gotobed," he said, "a little feeling has been excited and we had better put an end to this for the present."

"Put an end to it?"

"I am afraid we must. The police are becoming alarmed."

"Oh, of course; you know best. In our country a man is allowed to express himself unless he utters either blasphemy or calumny. But I am in your hands and of course you must do as you please." Then he sat down in a corner, and wiped his brows. Lord Drummond returned to the hall, and there endeavoured to explain that the lecture was over for that night. The row was so great that it did not matter much what he said, but the people soon understood that the American Senator was not to appear before them again.

It was not much after nine o'clock when the Senator reached his hotel, Lord Drummond having accompanied him thither in a cab. "Good night, Mr. Gotobed," said his Lordship. "I cannot tell you how much I respect both your purpose and your courage;—but I don't know how far it is wise for a man to tell any other man, much less a nation, of all his faults."

"You English tell us of ours pretty often," said the Senator.

When he found himself alone he thought of it all, giving himself no special credit for what he had done, acknowledging to himself that he had often chosen his words badly and expressed himself imperfectly, but declaring to himself through it all that the want of reason among Britishers was so great, that no one ought to treat them as wholly responsible beings.



CHAPTER XXV

The Last Days of Mary Masters

The triumph of Mary Masters was something more than a nine days' wonder to the people of Dillsborough. They had all known Larry Twentyman's intentions and aspirations, and had generally condemned the young lady's obduracy, thinking, and not being slow to say, that she would live to repent her perversity. Runciman who had a thoroughly warm-hearted friendship for both the attorney and Larry had sometimes been very severe on Mary. "She wants a touch of hardship," he would say, "to bring her to. If Larry would just give her a cold shoulder for six months, she'd be ready to jump into his arms." And Dr. Nupper had been heard to remark that she might go farther and fare worse. "If it were my girl I'd let her know all about it," Ribbs the butcher had said in the bosom of his own family. When it was found that Mr. Surtees the curate was not to be the fortunate man, the matter was more inexplicable than ever. Had it then been declared that the owner of Hoppet Hall had proposed to her, all these tongues would have been silenced, and the refusal even of Larry Twentyman would have been justified. But what was to be said and what was to be thought when it was known that she was to be the mistress of Bragton? For a day or two the prosperity of the attorney was hardly to be endured by his neighbours. When it was first known that the stewardship of the property was to go back into his hands, his rise in the world was for a time slightly prejudicial to his popularity; but this greater stroke of luck, this latter promotion which would place him so much higher in Dillsborough than even his father or his grandfather had ever been, was a great trial of friendship.

Mrs. Masters felt it all very keenly. All possibility for reproach against either her husband or her step-daughter was of course at an end. Even she did not pretend to say that Mary ought to refuse the squire. Nor, as far as Mary was concerned, could she have further recourse to the evils of Ushanting, and the peril of social intercourse with ladies and gentlemen. It was manifest that Mary was to be a lady with a big house, and many servants, and, no doubt, a carriage and horses. But still Mrs. Masters was not quite silenced. She had daughters of her own, and would solace herself by declaring to them, to her husband, and to her specially intimate friends, that of course they would see no more of Mary. It wasn't for them to expect to be asked to Bragton, and as for herself she would much rather not. She knew her own place and what she was born to, and wasn't going to let her own children spoil themselves and ruin their chances by dining at seven o'clock and being waited upon by servants at every turn. Thank God her girls could make their own beds, and she hoped they might continue to do so at any rate till they had houses of their own.

And there seemed to Dillsborough to be some justification for all this in the fact that Mary was now living at Bragton, and that she did not apparently intend to return to her father's house. At this time Reginald Morton himself was still at Hoppet Hall, and had declared that he would remain there till after his marriage. Lady Ushant was living at the big house, which was henceforth to be her home. Mary was her visitor, and was to be married from Bragton as though Bragton were her residence rather than the squire's. The plan had originated with Reginald, and when it had been hinted to him that Mary would in this way seem to slight her father's home, he had proposed that all the Masters should come and stay at Bragton previous to the ceremony. Mrs. Masters yielded as to Mary's residence, saying with mock humility that of course she had no room fit to give a marriage feast to the Squire of Bragton; but she was steadfast in saying to her husband, who made the proposition to her, that she would stay at home. Of course she would be present at the wedding; but she would not trouble the like of Lady Ushant by any prolonged visiting.

The wedding was to take place about the beginning of May, and all these things were being considered early in April. At this time one of the girls was always at Bragton, and Mary had done her best, but hitherto in vain, to induce her step-mother to come to her. When she heard that there was a doubt as to the accomplishment of the plan for the coming of the whole family, she drove herself into Dillsborough in the old phaeton and then pleaded her cause for herself. "Mamma," she said, "won't you come with the girls and papa on the 29th?"

"I think not, my dear. The girls can go,—if they like it. But it will be more fitting for papa and me to come to the church on the morning."

"Why more fitting, mamma?"

"Well, my dear; it will."

"Dear mamma;—why,—why?"

"Of course, my dear, I am very glad that you are going to get such a lift."

"My lift is marrying the man I love."

"That of course is all right. I have nothing on earth to say against it. And I will say that through it all you have behaved as a young woman should. I don't think you meant to throw yourself at him."

"Mamma!"

"But as it has turned up, you have to go one way and me another."

"No!"

"But it must be so. The Squire of Bragton is the Squire, and his wife must act accordingly. Of course you'll be visiting at Rufford and Hampton Wick, and all the places. I know very well who I am, and what I came from. I'm not a bit ashamed of myself, but I'm not going to stick myself up with my betters."

"Then mamma, I shall come and be married from here."

"It's too late for that now, my dear."

"No;—it is not" And then a couple of tears began to roll down from her eyes. "I won't be married without your coming in to see me the night before, and being with me in the morning when I dress. Haven't I been a good child to you, mamma?" Then the step-mother began to cry also. "Haven't I, mamma?"

"Yes, my dear," whimpered the poor woman.

"And won't you be my mamma to the last;—won't you?" And she threw her arms round her step-mother's neck and kissed her. "I won't go one way, and you another. He doesn't wish it. It is quite different from that. I don't care a straw for Hampton Wick and Rufford; but I will never be separated from you and the girls and papa. Say you will come, mamma. I will not let you go till you say you will come." Of course she had her own way, and Mrs. Masters had to feel with a sore heart that she also must go out Ushanting. She knew, that in spite of her domestic powers, she would be stricken dumb in the drawing-room at Bragton and was unhappy.

Mary had another scheme in which she was less fortunate. She took it into her head that Larry Twentyman might possibly be induced to come to her wedding. She had heard how he had ridden and gained honour for himself on the day that the hounds killed their fox at Norrington, and thought that perhaps her own message to him had induced him so far to return to his old habits. And now she longed to ask him, for her sake, to be happy once again. If any girl ever loved the man she was going to marry with all her heart, this girl loved Reginald Morton. He had been to her, when her love was hopeless, so completely the master of her heart that she could not realise the possibility of affection for another. But yet she was pervaded by a tenderness of feeling in regard to Larry which was love also, though love altogether of another kind. She thought of him daily. His future well-being was one of the cares of her life. That her husband might be able to call him a friend was among her prayers. Had anybody spoken ill of him in her presence she would have resented it hotly. Had she been told that another girl had consented to be his wife, she would have thought that girl to be happy in her destiny. When she heard that he was leading a wretched, moping, aimless life for her sake, her heart was sad within her. It was necessary to the completion of her happiness that Larry should recover his tone of mind and be her friend. "Reg," she said, leaning on his arm out in the park, "I want you to do me a favour."

"Watch and chain?"

"Don't be an idiot. You know I've got a watch and chain."

"Some girls like two. To have the wooden bridge pulled down and a stone one built."

"If any one touched a morsel of that sacred timber he should be banished from Bragton for ever. I want you to ask Mr. Twentyman to come to our wedding."

"Who's to do it? Who's to bell the cat?"

"You."

"I would sooner fight a Saracen, or ride such a horse as killed that poor major. Joking apart, I don't see how it is to be done. Why do you wish it?"

"Because I am so fond of him."

"Oh;—indeed!"

"If you're a goose, I'll hit you. I am fond of him. Next to you and my own people, and Lady Ushant, I like him best in all the world."

"What a pity you couldn't have put him up a little higher."

"I used to think so too;—only I couldn't. If anybody loved you as he did me,—offered you everything he had in the world,—thought that you were the best in the world, would have given his life for you, would not you be grateful?"

"I don't know that I need wish to ask such a person to my wedding."

"Yes, you would, if in that way you could build a bridge to bring him back to happiness. And, Reg, though you used to despise him—"

"I never despised him."

"A little I think—before you knew him. But he is not despicable."

"Not at all, my dear."

"He is honest and good, and has a real heart of his own."

"I am afraid he has parted with that"

"You know what I mean, and if you won't be serious I shall think there is no seriousness in you. I want you to tell me how it can be done."

Then he was serious, and tried to explain to her that he could not very well do what she wanted. "He is your friend you know rather than mine;—but if you like to write to him you can do so."

This seemed to her to be very difficult, and, as she thought more of it, almost impossible. A written letter remains, and may be taken as evidence of so much more than it means. But a word sometimes may be spoken which, if it be well spoken,—if assurance of its truth be given by the tone and by the eye of the speaker,— shall do so much more than any letter, and shall yet only remain with the hearer as the remembrance of the scent of a flower remains! Nevertheless she did at last write the letter, and brought it to her husband. "Is it necessary that I should see it?" he asked.

"Not absolutely necessary."

"Then send it without"

"But I should like you to see what I have said. You know about things, and if it is too much or too little, you can tell me." Then he read her letter, which ran as follows:

Dear Mr. Twentyman,

Perhaps you have heard that we are to be married on Thursday, May 6th. I do so wish that you would come. It would make me so much happier on that day. We shall be very quiet; and if you would come to the house at eleven you could go across the park with them all to the church. I am to be taken in a carriage because of my finery. Then there will be a little breakfast. Papa and mamma and Dolly and Kate would be so glad;—and so would Mr. Morton. But none of them will be half so glad as your old, old, affectionate friend Mary Masters.

"If that don't fetch him," said Reginald, "he is a poorer creature than I take him to be."

"But I may send it?"

"Certainly you may send it" And so the letter was sent across to Chowton Farm.

But the letter did not "fetch" him; nor am I prepared to agree with Mr. Morton that he was a poor creature for not being "fetched." There are things which the heart of a man should bear without whimpering, but which it cannot bear in public with that appearance of stoical indifference which the manliness of a man is supposed to require. Were he to go, should he be jovial before the wedding party or should he be sober and saturnine? Should he appear to have forgotten his love, or should he go about lovelorn among the wedding guests? It was impossible,—at any rate impossible as yet,—that he should fall into that state of almost brotherly regard which it was so natural that she should desire. But as he had determined to forgive her, he went across that afternoon to the house and was the bearer of his own answer. He asked Mrs. Hopkins who came to the door whether she were alone, and was then shown into an empty room where he waited for her. She came to him as quickly as she could, leaving Lady Ushant in the middle of the page she was reading, and feeling as she tripped downstairs that the colour was rushing to her face. "You will come, Larry," she said.

"No, Miss Masters."

"Let me be Mary till I am Mrs. Morton," she said, trying to smile. "I was always Mary." And then she burst into tears. "Why,—why won't you come?"

"I should only stalk about like a ghost. I couldn't be merry as a man should be at a wedding. I don't see how a man is to do such a thing." She looked up into his face imploring him,—not to come, for that she felt now to be impossible, but imploring him to express in some way forgiveness of the sin she had committed against him. "But I shall think of you and shall wish you well."

"And after that we shall be friends?"

"By and bye,—if he pleases."

"He will please;—he does please. Of course he saw what I wrote to you. And now, Larry, if I have ever treated you badly, say that you pardon me."

"If I had known it—" he said.

"How could I tell you,—till he had spoken? And yet I knew it myself! It has been so,—oh,—ever so long! What could I do? You will say that you will forgive me."

"Yes; I will say that."

"And you will not go away from Chowton?"

"Oh, no! They tell me I ought to stay here, and I suppose I shall stay. I thought I'd just come over and say a word. I'm going away to-morrow for a month. There is a fellow has got some fishing in Ireland. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Larry."

"And I thought perhaps you'd take this now." Then he brought out from his pocket at little ruby ring which he had carried often in his pocket to the attorney's house, thinking that perhaps then might come the happy hour in which he could get her to accept it. But the hour had never come as yet, and the ring had remained in the little drawer beneath his looking-glass. It need hardly be said that she now accepted the gift.



CHAPTER XXVI

Conclusion

The Senator for Mickewa, whose name we have taken for a book which might perhaps have been better called "The Chronicle of a Winter at Dillsborough"—did not stay long in London after the unfortunate close of his lecture. He was a man not very pervious to criticism, nor afraid of it, but he did not like the treatment he had received at St. James's Hall, nor the remarks which his lecture produced in the newspapers. He was angry because people were unreasonable with him, which was surely unreasonable in him who accused Englishmen generally of want of reason. One ought to take it as a matter of course that a bull should use his horns, and a wolf his teeth. The Senator read everything that was said of him, and then wrote numerous letters to the different journals which had condemned him. Had any one accused him of an untruth? Or had his inaccuracies been glaring? Had he not always expressed his readiness to acknowledge his own mistake if convicted of ignorance? But when he was told that he had persistently trodden upon all the corns of his English cousins, he declared that corns were evil things which should be abolished, and that with corns such as these there was no mode of abolition so efficacious as treading on them.

"I am sorry that you should have encountered anything so unpleasant," Lord Drummond said to him when he went to bid adieu to his friend at the Foreign Office.

"And I am sorry too, my Lord;—for your sake rather than my own. A man is in a bad case who cannot endure to hear of his faults."

"Perhaps you take our national sins a little too much for granted."

"I don't think so, my Lord. If you knew me to be wrong you would not be so sore with me. Nevertheless I am under deep obligation for kind-hearted hospitality. If an American can make up his mind to crack up everything he sees here, there is no part of the world in which he can get along better." He had already written a long letter home to his friend Mr. Josiah Scroome, and had impartially sent to that gentleman not only his own lecture, but also a large collection of the criticisms made on it. A few weeks afterwards he took his departure, and when we last heard of him was thundering in the Senate against certain practices on the part of his own country which he thought to be unjust to other nations. Don Quixote was not more just than the Senator, or more philanthropic,—nor perhaps more apt to wage war against the windmills.

Having in this our last chapter given the place of honour to the Senator, we must now say a parting word as to those countrymen of our own who have figured in our pages. Lord Rufford married Miss Penge of course, and used the lady's fortune in buying the property of Sir John Purefoy. We may probably be safe in saying that the acquisition added very little to his happiness. What difference can it make to a man whether he has forty or fifty thousand pounds a year,—or at any rate to such a man? Perhaps Miss Penge herself was an acquisition. He did not hunt so often or shoot so much, and was seen in church once at least on every Sunday. In a very short time his friends perceived that a very great change had come over him. He was growing fat, and soon disliked the trouble of getting up early to go to a distant meet; and, before a year or two had passed away, it had become an understood thing that in country houses he was not one of the men who went down at night into the smoking-room in a short dressing-coat and a picturesque cap. Miss Penge had done all this. He had had his period of pleasure, and no doubt the change was desirable;—but he sometimes thought with regret of the promise Arabella Trefoil had made him, that she would never interfere with his gratification.

At Dillsborough everything during the summer after the Squire's marriage fell back into its usual routine. The greatest change made there was in the residence of the attorney, who with his family went over to live at Hoppet Hall, giving up his old house to a young man from Norrington, who had become his partner, but keeping the old office for his business. Mrs. Masters did, I think, like the honour and glory of the big house, but she would never admit that she did. And when she was constrained once or twice in the year to give a dinner to her step-daughter's husband and Lady Ushant, that, I think, was really a period of discomfort to her. When at Bragton she could at any rate be quiet, and Mary's caressing care almost made the place pleasant to her.

Mr. Runciman prospers at the Bush, though he has entirely lost his best customer, Lord Rufford. But the U.R.U. is still strong, in spite of the philosophers, and in the hunting season the boxes of the Bush Inn are full of horses. The club goes on without much change, Mr. Masters being very regular in his attendance, undeterred by the grandeur of his new household. And Larry is always there,—with increased spirit, for he has dined two or three times lately at Hampton Wick, having met young Hampton at the Squire's house at Bragton. On this point Fred Botsey was for a time very jealous;—but he found that Larry's popularity was not to be shaken, and now is very keen in pushing an intimacy with the owner of Chowton Farm. Perhaps the most stirring event in the neighbourhood has been the retirement of Captain Glomax from the post of Master. When the season was over he made an application to Lord Rufford respecting certain stable and kennel expenses, which that nobleman snubbed very bluntly. Thereupon the Captain intimated to the Committee that unless some advances were made he should go. The Committee refused, and thereupon the Captain went;—not altogether to the dissatisfaction of the farmers, with whom an itinerant Master is seldom altogether popular. Then for a time there was great gloom in the U.R.U. What hunting man or woman does not know the gloom which comes over a hunting county when one Master goes before another is ready to step in his shoes? There had been a hope, a still growing hope, that Lord Rufford would come forward at any such pinch; but since Miss Penge had come to the front that hope had altogether vanished. There was a word said at Rufford on the subject, but Miss Penge,—or Lady Rufford as she was then,—at once put her foot on the project and extinguished it. Then, when despair was imminent, old Mr. Hampton gave way, and young Hampton came forward, acknowledged on all sides as the man for the place. A Master always does appear at last; though for a time it appears that the kingdom must come to an end because no one will consent to sit on the throne.

THE END