CHAPTER IX
Cold Heart

At that very moment the two sisters in question were driving home in the opposite corners of the carriage in the dark.

“Really, Lenore,” was Lady Tyrrell saying, “you are a very impracticable girl.”

There was a little low laugh in answer.

“What blast has come and frozen you up into ice?” the elder sister added caressingly; but as she felt for Eleonora’s hand in the dark, she obtained nothing but the cold handle of a fan.  “That’s just it!” she said, laughing; “hard ivory, instead of flesh and blood.”

“I can’t help it!” was the answer.

“But why not?  I’m sure you had admiration enough to turn any girl’s head.”

No answer.

Lady Tyrrell renewed her address still more tenderly—“Lenore, darling, it is quite needful that you should understand your position.”

“I am afraid I understand it only too well,” came in a smothered voice.

“It may be very painful, but it ought to be made clear before you how you stand.  You know that my father was ruined—there’s no word for it but ruined.”

“Yes.”

“He had to give up the property to the creditors, and live on an allowance.”

“I know that.”

“And, of course, I can’t bear speaking of it; but the house is really let to me.  I have taken it as I might any other house to let.”

“Yes,” again assented Eleonora.

“And do you know why?”

“You said it was for the sake of the old home and my father!” said the girl, with a bitter emphasis on the said.

“So it was!  It was to give you the chance of redeeming it, and keeping it in the family.  It is to be sold, you know, as soon as you are of age, and can give your consent.  I can’t buy it.  Mine is only a jointure, a life income, and you know that you might as well think of Mary buying Golconda; but you—you—with such beauty as yours—might easily make a connection that would save it.”

There was only a choked sound.

“I know you feel the situation painfully, after having been mistress so long.”

“Camilla, you know it is not that!”

“Ah, my dear, I can see farther than you avow.  You can’t marry till you are twenty-one, you know; but you might be very soon engaged, and then we should see our way.  It only depends on yourself.  Plenty of means, and no land to tie him down, ready to purchase and to settle down.  It would be the very thing; and I see you are a thoroughly sensible girl, Lena.”

“Indeed!  I am not even sensible enough to know who is to be this purchaser.”

“Come, Lena, don’t be affected.  Why! he was the only poor creature you were moderately gracious to.”

“I! what do you mean?”

Lady Tyrrell laughed again.

“Oh!” in a tone of relief, “I can explain all that to you.  All the Strangeways family were at Rockpier the winter before you came, and I made great friends with Margaret Strangeways, the eldest sister.  I wanted very much to hear about her, for she has had a great deal of illness and trouble, and I had not ventured to write to her.”

“Oh! was that the girl young Debenham gave up because her mother worried him so incessantly, and who went into a Sisterhood?”

“It was she who broke it off.  She found he had been forced into it by his family, and was really attached elsewhere.  I never knew the rights of it till I saw the brother to-night.”

“Very praiseworthy family confidence!”

“Camilla, you know I object to that tone.”

“So do most young ladies, my dear—at least by word.”

“And once for all, you need have no fancies about Mr. Lorimer Strangeways.  I am civil to him, of course, for Margaret’s sake; and Lady Susan was very kind to me; but if there were nothing else against him, he is entirely out of the question, for I know he runs horses and bets on them.”

“So does everybody, more or less.”

“And you! you, Camilla, after what the turf has cost us, can wish me to encourage a man connected with it.”

“My dear Lena, I know you had a great shock, which made the more impression because you were such a child; but you might almost as well forswear riding, as men who have run a few horses, or staked a few thousands.  Every young man of fortune has done so in his turn, just by way of experiment—as a social duty as often as not.”

“Let them,” said Eleonora, “as long as I have nothing to do with them.”

“What was that pretty French novel—Sybille, was it?—where the child wanted to ride on nothing but swans?  You will be like her, and have to condescend to ordinary mortals.”

“She did not.  She died.  And, Camilla, I would far rather die than marry a betting man.”

“A betting man, who regularly went in for it!  You little goose, to think that I would ask you to do that!  As you say we have had enough of that!  But to renounce every man who has set foot on a course, or staked a pair of gloves, is to renounce nine out of ten of the world one lives in.”

“I do renounce them.  Camilla, remember that my mind is made up for ever, and that nothing shall ever induce me to marry a man who meddles with the evils of races.”

“Meddles with the evils?  I understand, my dear Lena.”

“A man who makes a bet,” repeated Eleonora.

“We shall see,” was her ladyship’s light answer, in contrast to the grave tones; “no rules are without exceptions, and I only ask for one.”

“I shall make none.”

“I confess I thought you were coming to your senses; you have been acting so wisely and sensibly ever since you came home, about that young Frank Charnock.”

Lady Tyrrell heard a little rustle, but could not see that it was the clasping of two hands over a throbbing heart.  “I am very glad you are reasonable enough to keep him at a distance.  Poor boy, it was all very well to be friendly with him when we met him in a place like Rockpier, and you were both children; but you are quite right not to let it go on.  It would be mere madness.”

“For him, yes,” murmured the girl.

“And even more so for you.  Why, if he had any property worth speaking of, it would be a wretched thing to marry into that family!  I am sure I pity those three poor girls!  Miles’s wife looks perfectly miserable, poor thing, and the other two can’t conceal the state of things.  She is just the sort of woman who cannot endure a daughter-in-law.”

“I thought I heard Lady Rosamond talking very affectionately of her.”

“Very excitedly, as one who felt it her duty to stand up for her out-of-doors, whatever she may do indoors.  I saw victory in those plump white shoulders, which must have cost a battle; but whatever Lady Rosamond gains, will make it all the worse for the others.  No, Eleonora, I have known Mrs. Poynsett’s rancour for many years, and I would wish no one a worse lot than to be her son’s fiancée, except to be his wife.”

“She did not seem to object to these marriages.”

“The sons took her by surprise.  Besides, Raymond’s was the very parti mothers seek out for their sons.  Depend upon it, she sent him off with her blessing to court the unexceptionable cousin with the family property.  Poor Raymond, he is a dutiful son, and he has done the deed; but, if I am not much mistaken the little lady is made of something neither mother nor son is prepared for, and he has not love enough to tame her with.”

“That may be seen at a glance.  He can’t help it, poor fellow; he would have had it if he could, like anything else that is proper.”

There was a moment’s silence; then the exclamation, “Just look there!”

One of the hats was nodding on the box in a perilous manner.

“It is only James,” said Lady Tyrrell; “as long as it is not the coachman, it matters the less.  There’s no danger.”

“You will not keep him, though!”

“I don’t know.  He is much the best looking and handiest of the men; and your page, Master Joshua, is no great acquisition yet.”

“I wish you would not call him mine; I wish you would send him back to his grandmother.  I can’t bear his being among those men.”

“Very complimentary to my household!  They are not a bit worse than the company he came from!  You don’t believe in rural simplicity, eh?”

“I believe that taking that boy from his home makes us responsible.”

“And do I hinder you from catechizing him to your heart’s content? or sending him to the school of design?”

Again Eleonora was silent.  Perhaps the balancing of the footman’s head occupied her mind.  At any rate, no more was said till the sisters had reached their home.  Then, at the last moment, when there was no time left for a reply, Eleonora cleared and steadied her voice, and said, “Camilla, understand two things for truth’s sake.  First, I mean what I say.  Nothing shall ever induce me to marry a man who bets.  Next, I never have forgotten Frank Charnock for one moment.  If I have been cold and distant to him, it is because I will not draw him near me to be cruelly scorned and disappointed!”

“I don’t mind the why, if the effect is the same,” were Lady Tyrrell’s last words, as the door opened.

Eleonora’s little white feet sped quickly up the steps, and with a hasty good night, she sped across the hall, but paused at the door.  “Papa must not be disappointed,” she whispered to herself, and dashed her hand over her eyes; and at the moment the lock turned, and a gray head appeared, with a mighty odour of smoke.  “Ah!  I thought my little Lena would not pass me by!  Have you had a pleasant party, my dear?  Was young Strangeways there?”

She had nestled in his arms, and hoped to avoid notice by keeping her head bent against him, as she hastily responded to his questions; but he detected something.

“Eh?  Camilla been lecturing?  Is that it?  You’ve not been crying, little one?  It is all right, you know!  You and I were jolly enough at Rockpier; but it was time we were taken in hand, or you would have grown into a regular little nun, among all those black coats.”

“I wish I were.”

“Nonsense!  You don’t know life!  You’ll tell another story one of these days; and hark childie, when you’ve married, and saved the old place, you’ll keep the old room for the old man, and we’ll have our own way again.”

She could but kiss him, and hide her agitation in caresses, ere hurrying up the stairs she reached her own rooms, a single bed-chamber opening into a more spacious sitting-room, now partially lighted by the candles on the toilette-table within.

She flung herself down on a chair beyond the line of light, and panted out half aloud, “Oh!  I am in the toils!  Oh for help!  Oh for advice!  Oh! if I knew the right!  Am I unfair? am I cold and hard and proud?  Is she telling me true?  No, I know she is not—not the whole truth, and I don’t know what is left out, or what is false!  And I’m as bad—making them think I give in and discard Frank!  Oh! is that my pride—or that it is too bad to encourage him now I know more?  He’ll soon scorn me, and leave off—whatever he ever thought of me.  She has taken me from all my friends—and she will take him away!  No one is left me but papa; and though she can’t hurt his love, she has got his confidence away, and made him join against me!  But that one thing I’ll never, never do!”

She started up, and opened a locked purple photograph-album, with ‘In Memoriam’ inscribed on it—her hands trembling so that she could hardly turn the key.  She turned to the likeness of a young man—a painful likeness of a handsome face, where the hard verities of sun-painting had refused to veil the haggard trace of early dissipation, though the eyes had still the fascinating smile that had made her brother Tom, with his flashes of fitful good-nature, the idol of his little sister’s girlhood.  The deadly shock of his sudden death had been her first sorrow; and those ghastly whispers which she had heard from the servants in the nursery, and had never forgotten, because of the hushed and mysterious manner, had but lately started into full force and meaning, on the tongues of the plain-spoken poor.

She gazed, and thought of the wrecked life that might have been so rich in joys; nay, her tenderness for her father could not hide from her how unlike his old age was from that of Mr. Bowater, or of any men who had done their service to their generation in all noble exertion.  He had always indeed been her darling, her charge; but she had never known what it was to look up to him with the fervent belief and enthusiasm she had seen in other girls.  To have him amused, loitering from reading-room to parade or billiard-room, had been all that she aspired to, and only lately had she unwillingly awakened to the sense how and why this was—and why the family were aliens in their ancestral home.

“And Camilla, who knew all—knew, and lived through the full force of the blight and misery—would persuade me that it all means nothing, and is a mere amusing trifle!  Trifle, indeed, that breaks hearts and leads to despair and self-destruction and dishonour!  No, no, no—nothing shall lead me to a gamester! though Frank may be lost to me!  He will be! he will be!  We deserve that he should be!  I deserve it—if family sins fall on individuals—I deserve it!  It is better for him—better—better.  And yet, can he forget—any more than I—that sunny day—?  Oh! was she luring him on false pretences?  What shall I do?  How will it be?  Where is my counsellor?  Emily, Emily, why did you die?”

Emily’s portrait—calm, sweet, wasted, with grave trustful eyes—was in the next page.  The lonely girl turned to it, and gazed, and drank in the soothing influence of the countenance that had never failed to reply with motherly aid and counsel.  It rested the throbbing heart; and presently, with hands clasped and head bent, Eleonora Vivian knelt in the little light closet she had fitted as an oratory, and there poured out her perplexities and sorrows.