The Reluctant Widow

Chapter II

He looked a little amused at this, but only replied with a shake of the head. Quite provoked by such conduct, Miss Rochdale said sharply, “It does not signify talking! Be so good as to tell me how I may reach Five Mile Ash before it is too late to set out!”

He glanced at the bracket clock on the mantelpiece, but as this had stopped, drew out his watch. “It is already too late,” he said “It wants only ten minutes to nine.”

“Good God!” she exclaimed, turning quite pale. “What am I to do?”

“Since I appear to have been in some sort responsible for your predicament, you will do best to trust me to provide for you.”

“You are very obliging, my lord,” she retorted, “but I prefer not to place my trust in one whose senses are clearly disordered!”

“Don’t be foolish!” he replied, in much the same tone as she might herself have used in addressing a troublesome child. “You know very well that my senses are not in the least disordered. You will do well to sit down again while I procure you some refreshment.”

His manner had the effect of soothing her exasperated nerves, and she could not but acknowledge that his offer of refreshment was welcome. She had not eaten since the morning. She went back to her chair, but said suspiciously, “I do not know how you may mean to provide for me, for I am certainly not going to marry your cousin!”

“That is as you wish,” he returned, tugging at the bell-pull.

“From what I have seen of your establishment,” remarked Miss Rochdale waspishly, “that bell is very likely broken.”

“More than probable,” he agreed, walking toward the door. “But this is not my establishment.”

Miss Rochdale put a hand to her brow. “I begin to think my own senses are becoming disordered!” she complained. “If this is neither your house nor Mrs. Macclesfield’s, whose, pray, is it?”

“My cousin’s.”

“Your cousin’s! But I cannot remain here!” she cried. “You cannot mean to keep me here, sir!”

“Certainly not. It would be quite ineligible,” he said, and left the room.

Wild ideas of precipitate flight crossed Miss Rochdale’s mind, but since she did not want for common sense, she rejected them. To be wandering about an unknown countryside all night would scarcely ameliorate her difficulties, and although her host’s behavior might be extraordinary, he did not appear to entertain any notion of constraining her against her will. She sat still, therefore, and waited for him to reappear.

This he presently did, saying as he entered the room, “There seems to be nothing but cold meat in the house, but I have ordered them to do what they can.”

“Some tea and bread and butter is all I require,” she assured him.

“It will be here directly.”

“Thank you.” She drew off her gloves and folded them. “I have been wondering what to do for the best. Is there any carriage or post chaise, perhaps, which I might hire to convey me to Five Mile Ash, sir?”

“As to that, I would convey you in my own carriage, but you will hardly endear yourself to your future employer by arriving at midnight.”

The truth of this observation struck her most forcibly. The image of the redoubtable Mrs. Macclesfield rose before her mind’s eye, and almost caused her to shudder.

“There is a decent inn at Wisborough Green where you may put up for the night,” he said. “In the morning, if you are determined to stick to your purpose, I will have you driven to Five Mile Ash.”

“I am very much obliged to you,” she faltered. “But what shall I say to Mrs. Macclesfield? The truth will not serve: she would think it fantastic!”

“It will certainly be awkward. You had better tell her that you mistook the day, and have but this instant arrived in Sussex.”

“I am much afraid that she will be justly angry, and perhaps turn me away.”

“In that case, you may return to me.”

“Yes! To be married to your odious cousin!” she said. “I thank you, I am not yet reduced to such straits!”

“You are the best judge of that,” he replied imperturbably. “I am naturally not very conversant with the duties a governess is expected to perform, but from all I have heard I should have supposed that almost anything would be preferable.”

There was so much truth in what he said that she was obliged to suppress a sigh. She said in a milder tone, “Yes, but not marriage to a drunkard, I assure you.”

“He is not likely to live long,” he offered.

She began to feel a good deal of curiosity now that her alarm had been allayed, and looked an inquiry.

“His constitution has always been sickly,” he explained. “If he does not meet his death through violence, which is by no means improbable, the brandy will soon finish him.”

“Oh!” said Miss Rochdale weakly. “But why do you wish to see him married?”

“If he dies unmarried I must inherit his estate,” he answered.

She could only stare at him. Happily, since she was for the moment unable to find words to express her bewilderment, the servant came into the room just then, with a tray of tea, bread and butter, and cold meat, which he set down on the table beside her. He looked toward Carlyon, and said in a worried voice, “Mr. Eustace is not come in yet, my lord.”

“It is of no moment.”

“If he is not in some scrape!” the man murmured. “He went off in one of his quirks, my lord.”

Carlyon shrugged his disinterest. The servant sighed and withdrew. Miss Rochdale, having drawn up her chair to the table and poured out a cup of tea, addressed herself gratefully to the cold mutton and began to feel more able to grapple with her circumstances. “I should not wish to appear vulgarly inquisitive, my lord,” she said, “but did you say that you would inherit the estate if your cousin were to die unwed?”

“I did.”

“But don’t you wish to inherit it?” she demanded.

“Not at all.”

She recruited herself with a sip of tea. “It seems very odd!” was all she could think of to say.

He came up to the table and took a chair opposite her. “I dare say it may, but it is the truth. I should explain to you that I was for five unenviable years my cousin’s guardian.” He paused, and she saw his lips tighten. After a moment, he continued in the same level voice: “His career at Eton came to an abrupt end, for which most of his paternal relatives held me to blame.”

“Why, how could that be?” she asked, surprised.

“I have no idea. It was commonly said that if his father had not died during his infancy, or if my aunt had appointed one of her brothers-in-law to be his guardian in preference to myself, his disposition would have been wholly different.”

“Well, to be sure, that seems very hard! But—pardon me!—was it not strange that you should have been chosen to be his guardian? You must have been very young!”

“Your own age. I was six and twenty. It was natural enough. My aunt was my mother’s elder sister; she inherited this estate from my grandfather. My own estates lie within seven miles of it, and the intercourse between our two families had been constant. I had myself been fatherless for many years, a circumstance that perhaps made me older than my years. I found myself, at the age of eighteen, the head of a family whose youngest members were still in the nursery.”

“Good heavens, do not tell me you were called upon to take charge of a family at that age!” Miss Rochdale exclaimed.

He smiled. “No, not quite that. My mother was then living, but she did not enjoy good health, and it was natural that they should look to me.”

She regarded him wonderingly. “They?”

“I have three brothers and three sisters, ma’am.”

“All in your charge!”

“Oh, no! My sisters are now married; one of my brothers is on SirRowland Hill’s staff, in the Peninsula; another is secretary to Lord Sidmouth at the Home Office, and in general resides in London. You may say that I have only the youngest on my hands. He is in his first year at Oxford. But at the time of which I speak they were all at home.” The smile again lit his eyes. “Your own experience must tell you, ma’am, that a family of six, ranging in age from infancy to sixteen years, is no light burden to cast upon a delicate female.”

“No, indeed!” she said feelingly. “But you had tutors—governesses?”

“Yes, I lost count of them,” he agreed. “Two of my brothers had the most ingenious ways of getting rid of their preceptors. But I do not know why I am boring on about my affairs, after all! I meant merely to explain how it was that my aunt came to leave her son to my Care. I must confess that I most signally failed either to curb his inclination for all the more disastrous forms of dissipation, or to influence him in any way for the better. I only succeeded in giving him a profound dislike of me. I cannot blame him: his dislike of me can be nothing compared with the sentiments I have always cherished in regard to him.” He looked across the table at her, and added with deliberation, “It is not an easy task to deal fairly with a youth for whom you can feel nothing but contempt and dislike, ma’am. One of my cousin’s uncles would tell you that I was always hard on him. It may have been so: I; did not mean to be. When I was obliged to remove him from Eton, I put him in charge of an excellent tutor. It did not answer. A great noise was made over my refusal to entertain the notion of letting him go to Oxford. There was, in fact, little likelihood of his proving himself eligible, but on every count I should have opposed it. I was held, however, to have acted from spite.”

“I wonder you should have listened to such ill-natured nonsense!” Miss Rochdale observed, quite hotly.

“I did not. After various vicissitudes, the boy took up a fancy to enter the Army. I thought if he could be removed from the society that was ruining him there might be some hope of his achieving respectability, so I bought him a pair of colors. I was instantly held to nourish designs on his inheritance and to have chosen this way of putting a period to his existence. Happily for my reputation, he was asked to send in his papers before he had seen any active service. By that time he was of age, and my responsibility had come to an end.”

“I am astonished you should not have washed your hands of him!”

“To a great extent I did, but as his interpretation of our relationship included a belief that he was at liberty not only to pledge my credit, but to attach my signature to various bills, it was a trifle difficult to ignore him.”

She was very much shocked. “And his paternal relatives blame you! Upon my word, it is too bad!”

“Yes, it becomes a little wearisome,” he acknowledged. “I blame myself for having lent a certain amount of color to their suspicions by once taking up a mortgage on part of the unencumbered land.

I really meant it for the best, but I should have known better than to have done it. Were he to die now, and his property to come into my hands, it would be freely said in certain quarters that I had not only encouraged him to commit all the excesses that led to his end, but had, by some unspecified means, prevented him from marrying.”

“I own it is very disagreeable for you,” she said, “but I am persuaded your own family, your friends, would not believe such slander!”

“By no means.”

“You should not allow yourself to regard it.”

“No, perhaps I should not, if I had only myself to consider. But such whisperings can be extremely mischievous. My brother John, for instance, might find them embarrassing, and I have no desire to throw any rub, however unwitting, in his way. And Nicky—no, Nicky would never bear to hear me slandered!” He broke off, as though recollecting that he was addressing a stranger, and said abruptly, “The simplest way to put a stop to all this nonsense is to provide my cousin with a wife, and that is what I am determined to do.”

“But I do not properly understand, sir! If, as you say, your cousin dislikes you, why should he not himself look about him for a wife? He cannot wish you to inherit his possessions!”

“Not at all. But not all the representations of his doctor have been enough to convince him that his life is not worth the purchase of a guinea. He considers that there is time and to spare before he need burden himself with a wife.”

“If this is so, how have you been able to persuade him to be married to some unknown female whom, I collect, you have found for him through advertisement? It must be preposterous!”

“I have said that I will meet his present debts if he does so.”

She regarded him with some shrewdness. “But he would be left with the burden of a wife on his hands. Or have you also undertaken to provide for this unfortunate female, sir?”

“Of course,” he said matter-of-factly. “There has been no suggestion on my part that the marriage should be more than a form. Indeed, I would ask no woman to live with my cousin.”

She wrinkled her brow and said with a faint flush, “Can your purpose be achieved so? Forgive me, I think you cannot have considered, sir! To exclude you from the succession must there not be an heir?”

“No, it is immaterial. The property is most foolishly left. My cousin inherited it from his and my grandfather, through his mother, but her marriage to Lionel Cheviot had so much displeased my grandfather that he was at pains to prevent its falling into his hands or into those of his family. With this aim, he settled it upon his grandson, with the proviso that if Eustace died unmarried it must revert to his younger daughter or her eldest son: myself, in fact.”

“It is entailed, I collect?”

“No, it is not an entail precisely. On the day Eustace marries he may dispose of the property as he wishes. It is an awkward arrangement, and I have often wondered what maggot can have entered my grandfather’s head. He had some odd fancies, one of them being a strong persuasion that early marriages are beneficial to young men. That may have been in his mind when he made these provisions. I cannot tell.” He paused, and added calmly, “You must acknowledge, ma’am, that my present scheme is not as fantastic as it may at first appear.”

She could not help smiling at this, but merely said, “Will you find any female ready to lend herself to such a marriage? I must hold that to be in grave doubt.”

“On the contrary, I hope I may have done so,” he retorted.

She resolutely shook her head. “No, my lord, you have not, if you have me in your mind. I could not entertain such a notion.”

“Why could you not?” he asked.

She blinked at him. “Why could I not?” she repeated.

“Yes, tell me!”

She found herself quite unable to comply with this request, although she was sure that she knew her own reasons. After struggling to put these into words, she sought refuge in evasion and replied crossly, “It must be perfectly plain why I could not!”

“Not to me.”

Apparently he was not to be so put off. Eying him with some resentment, Miss Rochdale said, “You do not appear to me to want for sense!”

“No, nor am I so set up in my own conceit that I cannot be convinced. I am wailing for you to do so.”

This very reasonable speech caused Miss Rochdale to feel a quite unjustifiable annoyance, She said coldly, “I cannot undertake to do so. You may say, if you please, that I still have enough pride to recoil from such a contract.”

“What I please to say cannot possibly signify,” he replied patiently. “Is this all your reason?”

“Yes—no! You must know that it is impossible to put into words what I feel! Every feeling must be offended!”

“Are you betrothed?” he asked,

“No, I am not!”

“You are perhaps in the expectation of becoming so?”

“I have told you that I am six and twenty,” snapped Miss Rochdale. “It is in the highest degree unlikely that I shall ever be betrothed!”

“In that case,” he returned prosaically, “you might do very much worse for yourself than to strike this bargain with me.” He saw how her color rose, and smiled with a good deal of understanding at her. “No, do not fly out upon me! Consider for a moment! You appear to be committed to a life of drudgery. I do not even know your name, but it is apparent to me—was apparent from the outset—that you were not born to the position you now occupy. If you are without the expectation of contracting an eligible alliance, what does the future hold for you? You must be too well aware of the evils of your situation to make it necessary for me to point these out to you. Many my cousin. You must own that the advantages of such an alliance would outweigh the drawbacks which, I assure you, I perceive as clearly as you do yourself. His character is disgraceful, but he comes of a good family. As Mrs. Cheviot, with an easy competence to call your own, you must command respect. You need do no more than take my cousin’s hand in church. I will engage for it that he shall not afterward molest you. You may pass the rest of your life in comfort; you may even marry a second time, for I am in earnest when I say that my cousin cannot hope to continue long in his present way of life. Think soberly before you make me an answer!”

She heard him out in silence, meeting his steady regard at first but presently lowering her eyes to the contemplation of her own hands, tightly clasped in her lap. It was impossible for her to listen to him unmoved. It was rarely that she had encountered a fellow creature who understood any part of the ills of her situation. Such casual acquaintances as she possessed seemed to think that the genteel nature of her chosen occupation must make it acceptable to her. But this strange, curt man, with his rather hard eyes and his almost blighting matter-of-factness, had called her life a drudgery. He had said it without a trace of sympathy in either face or voice, but he had said it, and only those who had endured such a life could know how true it was.

She hoped that she had too much delicacy of principle to allow the temptation she felt to overcome her scruples. That it was a temptation it would be useless to deny. Her future was indeed uncertain, and she was being offered, merely for giving her hand in nominal marriage, security, perhaps even the means of commanding again some of the elegancies of life. To remain steady in refusing must be a struggle. It was a minute or two before she could trust herself to look up. She tried to smile; it was a woeful attempt. She shook her head. “I cannot. Do not press me further, I beg of you! My mind is made up.”

He bowed slightly. “As you wish.”

“I think you must perceive that I could not do it, sir.”

“You have asked me not to press you further, and I shall not do so. You shall be conveyed to Five Mile Ash at whatever hour of the day you choose tomorrow.”

“You are very good,” she said gratefully. “I wish Mrs. Macclesfield may not turn me from her door! I am persuaded she would do so if she knew the truth!”

“You will have time to think of some more acceptable explanation. Drink your tea! When you have done so I will conduct you to the inn I spoke of and arrange for your accommodation there.”

She thanked him meekly and picked up her cup. She was relieved to find that he did not appear to be vexed or even disappointed at her refusal to fall in with his schemes. She felt herself impelled to say, “I am sorry to disoblige you, my lord.”

“I know of no reason why you should be expected to oblige me,” he answered. He took his snuffbox from his pocket, and opened it. “You still have the advantage of me,” he remarked easily. “May I know your name?”

“My name is Rochdale,” she replied after a second’s hesitation. “Elinor Rochdale.”

His hand remained poised above his open box; he looked up quickly, and repeated in an expressionless tone, “Rochdale.”

She was conscious of a heightening of the color in her cheeks. She said defiantly, “Of Feldenhall!”

He inclined his head in a gesture betokening nothing more than an indifferent civility, but she was very sure that he knew her history. She watched him inhale his snuff, and suddenly said, “You are correct in what you are thinking, sir: I am the daughter of a man who, between unlucky speculation and the gaming table, came to ruin, and shot himself.”

If she had expected to embarrass him, she was doomed to disappointment. He restored his snuffbox to his pocket, remarking merely, “I should not have supposed it to have been necessary for Miss Rochdale of Feldenhall to pursue the calling of a governess, whatever her father’s misfortunes may have been.”

“My dear sir, I have not a penny in the world but what I have earned!” she said tartly.

“I can readily believe it, but you are not, I fancy, without relatives.”

“Again you are correct! But I am the oddest creature! If I must be a drudge, as you have described me, I prefer to receive a wage for my labors!”

“You are certainly unlucky in your relatives,” he commented.

“Well,” she said candidly, “I cannot quite blame them, after all. It is no light matter to have a penniless girl foisted onto one, I am sure. And one, moreover, to whose name a disagreeable stigma is attached. You yourself know something of what it means to be whispered about. You should be able to understand my resolve not to cause either my relatives or my friends embarrassment. You will say that I might have called myself by some other name! I might perhaps have done so had I had less pride.”

“I should not say any such thing,” he answered calmly. “I will agree, however, that you have a great deal of pride—and some of it false.”

“False!” she exclaimed, quite taken aback.

“Certainly. It has led you to exaggerate the consequences of your father’s death.”

“You cannot know the circumstances that led to it,”she said in a low voice.

“On the contrary. But I have yet to learn that you were in any way concerned in them.”

“Perhaps you are right, and I have allowed myself to be too much mortified. My first experience of how the world must look upon our affairs was an unhappy one. You must know that I was betrothed to a certain gentleman at the time of my father’s death who—who was excessively relieved to be released from his obligations.” She lifted her chin, adding, “Not that I cared a button for that, I assure you!”

He remained entirely unmoved. “How should you, indeed?”

She would have spurned any expression of pity, but she felt irrationally annoyed by this unfeeling response, and said rather sharply, “Well, it is no very pleasant thing to be jilted, after all!”

“Very true, but the knowledge that you were well rid of a bad bargain must soon have allayed your chagrin, I imagine.”

A reluctant twinkle came into her eye. “I have not the most distant guess, my lord, why the extreme good sense of your remarks should put me out of charity with you, but so it is!” she said. “You will do well to conduct me to your decent inn before I am provoked into answering you in a style quite unsuited to our different degrees!”

He smiled. “Why, I am sorry if I have vexed you, Miss Rochdale. But I cannot conceive that expressions of sympathy on my part could in any way benefit you, or, in fact, be acceptable to you.”

She began to draw on her gloves. “How odious it is in you always to be so precisely right! Do your friends in general feel themselves to be remarkably foolish when they are with you?”

“As I am fortunate in having a good many friends, I believe not,” he replied gravely.

She laughed, and rose to her feet. As she did so, a bell pealed vigorously, as though pulled by a very urgent hand. It startled her, and she turned her eyes toward Carlyon in a look of dismayed inquiry. He had risen when she did, and he moved toward the door, saying, “That is doubtless my cousin. You will not wish to meet him. Do not be alarmed! I will not let him come into this room.”

“It is his own house, after all!” she said, amused. “I suppose he will not eat me!”

“Unlikely, I think. But he will probably be drunk, and I should be loath to subject you to any more annoyance than you have already suffered.”

The servant must have been nearer at hand than either of them knew, for before Carlyon could reach the door voices were heard in the hall, a hasty footstep sounded, and a tall, slender young gentleman fairly burst into the room, exclaiming in accents of heartfelt relief, “Oh, Ned, thank God you are here! I had nearly rid home, only that Hitchin told me in the very nick of time that you had driven over here! I am in the devil of a pucker! In fact, I don’t know what’s to be done, and I thought I had best come to you at once, even if you are not quite pleased with me!”

One glance at this fair-headed, fresh-faced youth, with his open blue eyes and tanned cheeks, had been enough to convince Miss Rochdale that whoever else he might be, he was not Carlyon’s dissolute cousin. A second glance was needed to enable her to discern an indefinable likeness in him to Carlyon, for it was not marked. He was plainly in considerable agitation, and he looked more than a little scared. Her experience of Carlyon, brief as it was, prevented her from feeling any surprise at his damping response to the young man’s impetuous speech.

“Yes, certainly it was the best thing to do,” he said. “But I cannot believe there is any occasion for all this commotion, Nicky. What have you been doing?”

His young brother heaved a large sigh, and smiled blindingly at him. “Oh, Ned, you always make a fellow feel there is nothing so desperately bad after all! But indeed there is! I’m excessively sorry, but I have killed Eustace Cheviot!”