STEICTLY TIED UP.
STRICTLY TIED UP.
BY
THE RIGHT HON.
A. J. B. BERESFORD HOPE, M.P.
' In many shapes the powers mould human things ;
In varying notes God's world-wide edict rings,
Of elements unhoped-for blended.
Fruition long assured is dashed at last;
The dark cause wins, when heaven the lot hath cast;
And so this tangled matter ended.'—Euripides.
LONDON AND NEW YORK :
FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.
%0
THE DEAR LIGHT
AND
GUIDE
OF
THE AUTHOR'S LIFE.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WHY SO WEARY? - - - - - 1
II. MARRIED IN DUBLIN - - - - - 9
III. FAILED IN LONDON - - - - - 17
IV. HOW SHE FAILED - - - - -22
V. A CRUEL SON - - - - - - 29
VI. A DAUGHTER WANTED - - - - 34
VII. CONSOLATION - - - - - - 39
VIII. ADOPTION - - - - - - 46
IX. THE DECISION - - - - - 53
X. THE CHILD HEIRESS - - - - - 58
XI. ONLY SIXTEEN - - - - - 69
XII. THE GIRL WIFE - - - - - 75
XIII. WIDOW AND MOTHER - - - - 83
XIV. SELF-RELIANCE - - - - - 89
XV. GROWING UP - - - - - - 96
XVI. THE INVITATION ----- 104
XVII. PERPLEXITY - - - - - - 111
XVIII. MISUNDERSTANDING ----- 115
XIX. SON AND FATHER ----- 122
XX. A POPULAR HERO ----- 129
XXI. FONTARABIA ------ 137
XXII. A PLEASANT PARTY ----- 143
XXIII. THE FOULIS CUP ----- 148
XXIV. DIANA'S ISLAND ----- 154
XXV. THE PARTY SORTED - - - - - 160
XXVI. HELPLESS - - - - - - 167
viii Contents.
CHAPTER PAGE
XXVII. A NIGHT'S WORK ----- 173
XXVIII. A MODEL HOUSEHOLD - - - - 181
XXIX. A LUCKY THOUGHT - - - - 185
XXX. THE EMBASSY - - - " - 192
XXXI. CASTAWAYS ----- 200
XXXII. A DOOR OF SAFETY - 207
XXXIII. STRIKE QUICK, STRIKE STRAIGHT - - 213
XXXIV. A CHILD'S LETTER- - 220
XXXV. STRANGE TIDINGS ----- 227
XXXVI. HONOURED MATER - 234
XXXVII. A FOOL'S PARADISE - 241
XXXVIII. DISILLUSIONED ----- 252
XXXIX. DISCARDED - - - - - - 261
XL. THE REVISING BARRISTER - - - 266
jCLI, THE WOES OF TASTE - 275
XLII. DETENTION ----- 281
XLIII. ADAM'S WEATHER-GLASS - - - - 289
XLIV. LEGATUS NATUS ----- 299
XLV. CONSEQUENT ARRANGEMENTS - - - 307
XLVI. ONLY TWO LETTERS - 314
XLVII. CLEARED UP 325
XLVIII. UNMASKED '- ----- 330
XLIX. THE MIGHTY FALLEN - - - - 344
L. GREAT GRIMSBY AT LAST - - - - 353
LI. RIGHTED - - - - . . 353
STRICTLY TIED UP.
CHAPTER I.
why so weary?
Delicia, Countess of Foulisville, yawned.
The average superficial man might excusably have
inferred that weariness had grown upon the lady from
her lord's town house standing in the street, of all
streets, most solemn, dull and ugly, without life,
without character, without mission—Eaton Place.
But the reasoner would have been much mistaken in
so commonplace an inference. That yawn of the
languid fine lady was the involuntary confession of a
life-long failure compressed into a single movement of
the muscles. It was pathetic in its helplessness, but,
if it had been more closely scrutinized, it might have
repelled sympathy from the selfishness which so
clearly provoked the action. It was a yawn inde¬
pendent of place, of bodily ease or physical exercise,
—the abdication of energy in the latter days of a
wasted life.
1
2
Strictly Tied Up.
We shall be asked who the wearied lady was, what
it was that she had attempted, and how she failed.
But as she was not only a woman, but a married
woman, and not a married woman only, but by mar¬
riage a countess, we can most clearly and briefly
answer these reasonable questions by explaining who
the Earl was to whose preference for herself she owed
her coronet ; and to do this effectively we must
make a short excursion into a history of past genera¬
tions.
The race of Foulis, ennobled in the peerage of
Ireland, of which her husband was head, was quite
unconnected with any other family of the same name
existing in various parts of the kingdom, and was of
French origin. According to a pedigree preserved in
the family, and rather more than eighty years old, it
boasts an unbroken descent of at least eight centuries,
with more than one Crusader in the lineage, besides a
Saracenic ancestress. The first of the race to come to
Ireland was a gentleman who, in the words of the
Peerage, ' accompanied the army of the deliverer,
William III., in a post of high trust, in which he was
able to render conspicuous services to that great
monarch, as well as to the cause of civil and religious
liberty. Since that date the family has been settled
in Ireland, and has continued to enjoy much dis¬
tinction.'
The unwritten tradition of all who do not trace
their lineage to him adds that the special occupation
of M. Pierre Foulis with William's army was not the
brutal work of shedding blood, but the beneficent
responsibility of purveying to the comforts and sus-
Why so Weary ?
3
tenance of the manslayers; and it whispers that this
good man had his reward for his devotion to civil and
religious liberty even in this world. It is certain
that, not many years after the settlement of the new
dynasty, Mr. Foulis, as he was very particular to be
called, became, with much ease to himself, and with
an unaccountable acquiescence on the part of the out-
goers, to whom the transaction seemed to bring but
little good, purchaser from a fallen line of chieftains,
named McSwinny, of the mountainous domain of
Ballybanaghermore, in Western Ireland. The cluster
of cabins which nestled at the gate became, to the
surprise of its inhabitants, a town, with the euphonious
appellation of Foulisville ; while the successive owners
made efforts, short and rare, to reside in the ancient
castle.
So unapproachable, and so destitute even of those
inferior comforts which Mr. Froude might considerately
allow to an Irish mansion of the last century, was this
grim fortalice, that it was, perhaps, more creditable to
have lived there at all, for however brief a period, than
reprehensible to have been so continuously absent.
Besides, it must be owned that it did not conduce to
the enjoyment of one's property to be constantly
made aware, in all sorts of ingenious ways, that the
graphic phrase by which neighbour and tenant alike
loved to indicate the uncongenial intruder was 'French
pig-jobber.' Identified as the fallen cause was with
sympathy for France, the use of this nickname, as a
term of reproach in the mouths of Celtic Papists,
implied an unusual concentration of contemptuous
hatred. Still the descendants of the foreigner were
1—2
4
Strictly Tied Up.
accepted as an Irish family. Dublin was in those
days, for social purposes, a real capital; and in Dublin
the line of Foulis were much greater people than they
could have become if seated in London.
At length, in the last quarter of the eighteenth
century, Mr. Denis Foulis, great-grandson of the
original immigrant, declared himself smitten with a
O O '
sudden admiration of his long-neglected property, and
succeeded in reaching it after a journey only marked
by broken springs, but whole bones. Not only did he
go there, but he stopped on for some weeks, and when
he had expended a due amount of that fidget which
passes as deliberation, he ordered a large expanse of
meadow to be turned into a park by levelling the
ditches, and sticking in the trees, and then selected
what was actually neither the best nor the worst spot
for the purpose as the site of his future home. Here
he constructed a long, low, two-storied mansion,
coated with cement, crouching down to the ground,
and boasting for only ornament a wooden porch,
supported by two Doric columns painted white, with
a bow at that end of the house which was turned
away from the prospect; while a little cupola was
built over the servants' wing to contain a bell which
never was cast.
So sweet a masterpiece of architectural genius could
not condescend to perpetuate the barbarous sounds of
a Celtic name. Long and grave were the consulta¬
tions as to the new appellation. Foulisville Lodge,
which was at first suggested, was voted iteration, and
the pride of the Crusader's descendant would not
brook being cribbed in a lodge. At that date it was
Why so Weary ?
5
thought genteel in Dublin to cultivate sentimentality,
and the Honourable Mrs. Foulis, who never missed a
drawing-room at the Castle, was, of course, brimful of
that amiable weakness. So, even before the builder
had handed over the half-dry mansion, Ballybanagher-
more became Fontarabia; while Mr. Foulis's return
to his patrimony so stimulated the gratitude of the
county electors that they enabled him to add ' M.P.'
to his surname.
Those were great days in the Irish House of Com¬
mons, when Grattan and Flood, Curran and Fitz-
gibbon, declaimed, with a rhetoric often very far
superior to the subject of the debate or the motive of
the debater; when Sir Boyle Roach blundered with a
witty purpose, and Sir Jonah Barrington watched the
political weathercock and laughed in his sleeve as he
chronicled the weaknesses of better men than himself.
Mr. Foulis, we presume, was a modest senator, for
history does not record any oration which fell from
his lips; and as no division lists in those days were
printed, his name would have been engulfed in that
most stagnant creek of Lethe, which is thick with the
unknown members of Irish Parliaments, had it not
been for a proceeding which marked that silent
member as a man possessed of original habits of
thought. Session after session, so we are told, had he
steadily voted for his country's independence ; while,
session after session, he and his charming lady showed
that to be patriotic did not involve ceasing to be loyal,
by the dignified deference which they exhibited
towards each successive representative of King George
who appeared at Dublin Castle.
6
Strictly Tied Up.
At last, the economic and political advantage to
Ireland of a union with more powerful and wealthy
Great Britain pressed upon the cosmopolitan mind of
the county member with such irresistible cogency,
that he frankly abandoned all the patriotic but
fallacious prejudices which a naturalization of a
hundred and ten years had nourished in the breast of
an artificially genuine old Irish gentleman. Mr.
Foulis's vote was given for the Union at a critical
moment; and, praiseworthy as his conduct appeared
to the enlightened statesmanship which then presided
over the destinies of the empire, his bigoted and
narrow-minded constituents so deeply resented the
act as to burn their worthy member in effigy, and
tumultuously to pledge themselves not to return him
for the Imperial Parliament. The wind, as Sterne
(and not, as so often believed, the Bible) says, was,
however, tempered to the shorn lamb ; and in that
glorious coruscation of coronets which shed a sunset
splendour over the last days of an Irish Parliament,
one bright particular star beamed above the brow of
him who now became Lord Foulisville.
Denis, Lord Foulisville, did not long live to enjoy
his honours; but he left a son, his father's counter¬
part in his views of what constituted patriotic states¬
manship. The new lord had the good fortune,
purchased by his own assiduity, to make himself
necessary to one of those great patrons of many
boroughs in England, in the fine old time, when to
conciliate such a benefactor was to take a far step in
the favour of the Ministry. Our younger readers will
shudder at so corrupt a system, and they are masters
Why so Weary t
7
of their own emotions; still, we pray them to allow
us to contemplate, in pleased astonishment, the results
in our own days of scientific and statistical representa¬
tion, which has reached so high an excellence, and
which will, no doubt, be still further perfected when
the hedger and the ditcher are bidden to outvote
squire and parson at the county polls. Anyhow, Lord
Foulisville had too much on hand of a practical kind
to waste time in philosophizing. To him the perfect
system of representation was that which made him
a representative; and in the performance of his
senatorial duties he had as clear a purpose before him
as ever Wilberforce or Cobden.
It was a purpose, however, with a complex and
flexible solution, and one of its elements involved a
choice between two somewhat puzzling alternatives.
The two things necessary for the salvation of the
State were, as he felt convinced, first, that the country
should be richer by an Earl of Foulisville; and that,
secondly, that estimable nobleman should sit in the
House of Lords. To the prior of those objects there
was, generally speaking, only one possible way: a man
could only become an earl by being made an earl. He
might, to be sure, be either an English or an Irish
earl, but the difference was, as far as earls went, really
not worth thinking of. But into the House of Lords
two divergent paths opened to the man who was
already peer of Ireland. A British baron was an
appropriate appendage to an Irish earldom, but the
Irish earl who gracefully and patriotically declined
British honours was in a fair way to be chosen a
representative by the members of a peerage who
8
Strictly Tied Up.
valued tlie distinctiveness of their position. Either
alternative had its bright and its dark side. The
baron of Great Britain had acquired an hereditary
tenure of the vantage-ground, but he was only a
baron at Westminster. The representative earl was
an earl all over, but his seat in the Upper House died
with him. The English earldom per saltum Lord
Foulisville put out of sight, as there was no precedent
for such a distinction being offered to an Irish baron.
On the whole, these advantages and disadvantages
were so evenly balanced, that if the same policy could
have been trusted as the best for running the chance
of either prize, he would have certainly made a dash
for the double result as successfully as he did for the
rise in the Irish peerage. Such, however, was not the
case; for while a single Prime Minister bestows peer¬
ages, a close corporation of Irish peers co-opts as to
their representative body. The leaders of the side to
which the majority of Irish peers belong have, un¬
doubtedly, immense influence; but this is an influence
which, if ridden too hard, may provoke jealousy and
cause a reaction. At the time, too, of which we are
speaking, the majority of the Irish peerage were
suspicious of the Ministry, whom they believed to be
inclined to surrender Catholic Emancipation.
It followed from this tangled condition of matters
that while Lord Foulisville's operations for securing
the first aim of his ambition were marked with all
the hereditary tact, patience, and unscrupulousness
which he had inherited from the companion of King
William and from the builder of Fontarabia, it fared
very differently with his other project. In scheming
Why so Weary ? 9
for the seat in the House of Lords, he blundered and
vacillated, as one alternative or the other seemed to
offer more easy chances, until he had succeeded in
persuading the Minister, through his intrigues to
secure an election to the representative body, that he
was an unscrupulous and ungrateful agitator; and, at
the same time, in leading the members of the Irish
peerage to conclude that the man who could descend
to such meanness in craving for an English title must
be the subservient lackey of the Treasury Bench. So
the first Earl of Foulisville died, discredited by all
parties as one who debased considerable talents by
want of principle and truth. He bequeathed his rank,
his grievance, and his pursuit to a son very inferior to
him in ability and perseverance, but the true heir of
his selfish aspirations. It was the wife of that son
whom we lately found weary and out of heart, in
spite of her title and her splendour, and much in
consequence of the man to whom she owed those
illusory blessings.
CHAPTER II.
married in dublin.
Frederick, Earl of Foulisville, so named after the
Duke of York, was a bundle of imperfect and
incongruous developments, a flashy failure, and a
cunning dupe. This man, in his blase after-youth,
blundered into being fascinated by a provincial
beauty, with an equipment of ringlets, pink cheeks,
10
Strictly Tied Up.
and that delicately choked brogue which is attractive
when it falls from pretty lips—Delicia, only child of
Sir Bryan Driscoll, whilom Mayor of Kilmallock, and
knight by grace of the Lord Lieutenant. As may be
inferred from the facts which we have recounted, the
second Earl of Foulisville, at the date of our simple
tale, was neither representative peer nor British baron.
The Countess's yawn told this ; but it also expressed
an Iliad of those personal mortifications which to Lady
Foulisville were even more galling than the frustration
of the ambitious aspirations of the self-seeking lineage
of a lucky French adventurer. She would, indeed,
have been a remarkable woman if her collapse could
have been traced to so simple and, in female eyes, so
tolerable a mishap. Scotch and Irish peeresses are
provokingly insensible to their husbands' exclusion
from a House which hardly ever makes its members
late for dinner. Their instinct is to bridge over the
difference between themselves and their English
sisters. The lady had, in truth, far more real
causes for her forfeited cheerfulness. Lord Foulis¬
ville had in his bachelor days tried habitual play, but
found the after-taste of lost money far more bitter
even than the exciting nausea of seeing it slip away;
so that he early contented himself with occasional
whist at the club, and found even that recreation
very helpful in muddling away a year's income. He
trained several horses, and once ran one, which
bolted, fell, and broke its back. He haunted the
purlieus of the theatres, and discovered that he had
been supplanted in the affections of his figurante by a
very objectionable gentleman of Hebrew nationality,
Married in Dublin.
11
who had just affronted him by a downright refusal to
advance a loan on the security of his estates in a
western county. He wooed and won a borough, and
was then unseated upon petition, and after a scrutiny
at which his own committee volunteered evidence
which secured the disfranchisement of the peccant
constituency. His social achievements after he had
sown those wild oats which sprang up into so rank
a crop of darnel, will best be understood in connection
with his wife's career.
To her father the future peeress owed little beyond
the fact of her existence. Swaggering towards the
helpless, pompous to his equals, and obsequious to the
mighty, Sir Bryan drained to the dregs the cup of
pleasure proffered by his petty title. Happy would it
have been for him had this been the only cup which
gave him solace, but excessive colchicum completed
the work of reckless whisky punch. On her mother,
as wife and as widow, had devolved the chief charge
of the little Delicia; and as the good lady had been
the governess of many women's daughters before she
became the mother of her own single one, it was not
extraordinary that she should have determined to
make a paragon, as Dublin understood paragons, of
a girl who was really very pretty, slightly an heiress,
and who owned a parent who answered to ' My lady.'
Circumstances strongly favoured her ambitious dreams.
Society was unusually brilliant in Dublin when Miss
Driscoll made her dibut at the Castle, for the mag¬
nificent Duke of Northumberland was then Lord
Lieutenant ; while Irish politics had swollen to
imperial dimensions in the agonies of consummated
12
Strictly Tied Up.
emancipation. So to Dublin it was that Lord Foulis-
ville resorted for that season, rather than to London ;
not only because he fancied that there were peculiar
opportunities there of pushing his grand search, but
because he was much embittered against England and
all the associations connected with its peerage, except
that visible, tangible presence of the House of Lords,
of which he still hoped to become a member. The
origin of his anger was personal. A duke's daughter,
passably good-looking, unimpeachably fashionable, the
favourite child of a mighty wire-puller, and mistress,
on the day when the settlements should be signed, of
forty thousand pounds, had almost been his own.
The prospect of such an alliance was the sure fore¬
taste of much prosperity to any active man of good
family ; but to one whose whole soul was rapt in self-
advancement, as was that of Lord Foulisville, the
anticipation was one pre-eminently hopeful. To be
the relation of the Duke of Merioneth was, unless for¬
feited by personal misconduct, to be his friend; and
to be his friend was to stand on the steps of the stair¬
case which led to sure and rapid promotion. With
the name, the prestige, and the blood of the mighty
Earl who helped to raise Salisbury Cathedral, the
actual chief of the Longespees, had his bearing been
haughty, would have been declared ' arrogant with
extenuating circumstances' by the suffrages even of
those whom he most loftily dominated. But the Duke
of Merioneth was, not only a gentleman to the back¬
bone, but a very sensible man of the world; and he
never forgot that, in the paternal line, the original
surname of his ancestors was Hodgkinson. So he
Married in Dublin.
13
reasoned thus with himself, ' If I swagger, society-
will avenge itself upon me by calling me Hodgkinson
behind my back.' Following this rule of conduct, the
Duke steadily worked out the principle that if honesty
is the best policy in the first instance, good-nature is
so in the second. Thus he built up for himself an
influence in politics which would have put any office
at his disposal which he had cared to stretch out a
finger to touch, but his ambition was to continue the
private adviser of his Sovereign's advisers. When the
Garter came to him it seemed rather to have blossomed
out like the flowers on the hawthorn, than to have been
offered, accepted, and conferred.
Such was the family with which Lord Foulisville
was about to have allied himself, and the prospects of
a seat upon the red benches of the Upper House
never had seemed so near and dear to him as when
the Duke blithely patted him on the back, and said,
4 Well, Frederick, my boy, we'll soon have you among
us.' A word from the Duke of Merioneth to the
Prime Minister would be, so thought the vain young
aspirant, more than a command, and his heart swelled
with greedy vanity.
The day was fixed, and the dresses ordered; the
Archbishop had promised his presence; the invitations
were sent out,—when the Hebrew gentleman whom
the Earl had insulted during their quarrel over the
light legs and lighter morals of an Italian dancer,
astutely contrived to convey such intelligence of her
future son-in-law's doings to the really estimable and
unworldly Duchess as to make it a point of moral
duty on her part to break off the match.
14
Strictly Tied Up.
The malignant conspirator succeeded in obtaining,
at a price which nothing but revenge could have per¬
suaded him to offer, from his equally rapacious
paramour, a letter written to the girl by the besotted
lord only a few days before he had discovered her
treachery and cast her off for ever. Amused at the
evidence of devotion from one for whom she only felt
contempt, she showed it as soon as received to her
more favoured admirer. The money-lender laughed,
and forqot the incident till Lord Foulisville had
insulted him. Then, its possible use struck his
cunning mind.
The document was neatly enclosed, and directed, in
a strange but unexceptionable hand, to the Duchess
of Merioneth. Besides the fatal letter, the envelope
contained a slip of paper with these words only upon
it, ' With the respectful compliments of a well-wisher.'
The Duchess concluded it was some begging letter,
and, as her methodical charity prompted her to
postpone all other duties to such appeals, she read on.
The note was short and clumsy, but terribly to the
point, informing his correspondent, as it did, that
Lord Foulisville had lately made the acquaintance of
a girl, very stupid and ugly, but with lots of tin,—the
daughter of those cursed humbugs, the Merioneths;
and that, as very likely he and she would soon be
spliced, he wished to assure his Yiolante that the
accident would make no difference in their relations,
and that he would take precious good care old mother
Merioneth never sniffed it.
The Duchess was a wise as well as a good woman;
so she locked up the note, and looked her usual placid
Married in Dublin.
15
self to tlie visitor, whom she had been keeping waiting
during the perusal. She knew Lord Foulisville was
engaged to her for a family dinner that evening; so
she had it put off for a quarter of an hour, and bade
that he should be shown up into her boudoir. She
received him with the remark that, knowing as she
too well did, that her code of morality was a different
and stricter one than that of many of the young men
of the day, she had made it her rule never to question
Lord Foulisville as to his previous life. Never had
she, as she might easily have done, set any inquiry on
foot upon the matter. All she now desired was to
have a promise that so soon as he was married to her
daughter, of whose devotion he was so sure, he
never would give Dorinda any reason to regret her
choice.
The cunning man was quite thrown off his guard by
her mild common-sense, and, with many and totally
unnecessary invocations of the Divine name, began
asseverating that, while perhaps not a paragon of
strict virtue, he was, at least, a man of honour and
right feeling. He begged the Duchess to believe that
he had never for one instant cherished so foul a
thought as the possibility of being unfaithful to the
bright and pure creature who was about to make him
the happiest of men. 'I swear, dear Duchess,' he
said, kissing his prospective mother-in-law, who with
difficulty restrained herself from shrinking back, ' that
from next Tuesday my hand, my heart, my every
thought, and wish, and prayer, and dream, will be
Dorinda's—Dorinda's solely, completely, unalterably,
till death do us part; and if death takes my darling
16
Strictly Tied Up.
first, the sad recollection of her inconsolable widower
will be of the treasure he has lost.'
The Duchess waited till this rhapsody was ended.
Then she silently unlocked her box, handed to him
the epistle to Yiolante, rang the bell, and told the
servant,' We are one less for dinner to-day, as Lord
Foulisville does not dine with us.'
Ignorant as the unlucky Earl was of all foreign
languages, insensible to art, and bored by all society
which did not appreciate his own transcendent
grandeur, he had no inclination to imitate Lord Byron
and betake himself to Italy. On the other hand, to
stay in London would be to provoke the animosity
and incur the deserved evil-speaking of the powerful
clique who looked up to the Duke and Duchess as
their unquestionable social leaders. Ireland, strange
to say, was the only possible refuge for the baffled and
discredited Irishman. A man so balked, by his own
misconduct, of a marriage of which ambitious self-
seeking was the pivot, is peculiarly susceptible, for a
short time, to the delusion of fancying himself made
for disinterested love and the appreciation of uncon-
spicuous connections.
Lady Driscoll, if stiff, never committed a solecism
in her social deportment, and she had the tact to
measure her conversation so as to conceal the narrow
provincialism of the circle in which her ideas had
so long been moving. What was still better, her
daughter had, in addition to her solid education,
learned to smile, then to dance, and, thirdly, to
grapple with her Munster legacy of brogue. Lord
Failed in London.
17
Foulisville met the pair at the best houses of the Irish
capital, forgot to disabuse himself in time of the
rapid conclusion that the lost parent must have
been a baronet, and, before he well knew where he
stood, found himself the affianced husband of the
orphan of a provision merchant in a Southern country
town.
CHAPTER III.
FAILED IN LONDON.
As far as selfishness and mendacity would allow, the
Earl was at that time not ill-natured, and having made
Delicia Driscoll his own for life, he took her into the
partnership of the traditionary policy of the Foulis
race. She was not only an apt pupil, and succeeded in
protracting what otherwise would probably have been
a rapid collapse, but she opened out for herself fields of
fascinating failure which he never would have dreamed
of exploring. It was natural in the couple to fix upon
London as their future head-quarters. The reasons
which biassed Lord Foulisville in his determination
are too obvious to recount; and his wife, while sharing
some of these, and being totally ignorant of others,
had her own complementary motives for the choice.
She was imbued, even to excess, with a foible which
has certainly more complete possession of Irish gen¬
tility of the second rate, and particularly of its
woman-kind, than of the children of any other
nationality,—the intense and almost unselfish, because
2
18
Strictly Tied Up.
genuine, worship of rank for rank's own simple sake.
It was born in her, and her mother's trumpery
ladyhood intensified the passion. To Delicia Driscoll
the dream of being the lowest among all countesses
would have been not so much paradise as the seventh
heaven. Her heart was tender by anticipation to all
countesses, if only for the strawberry-leaves.
As Countess of Foulisville, her aspirations rose, and
it was now essential for her happiness to be a countess
among countesses. But her nature held more than
merely the quality of being a countess. Daughter, as
she was, of a governess, much of her patrimony had
drained into the pockets of Dublin's most fashionable
masters and mistresses; so she had conceived blue¬
stocking proclivities which her mother's prudence had
jealously kept in check while she was still husband-
hunting.
Once the big fish was hooked, there was no longer
any reason for restraining the now great lady's
harmless taste. The world was then some half-century
nearer to the days of Mrs. Montague than it now is,
and Lady Holland was still a living power. London
clearly was the goal for such a pair, and in London a
house must be procured—a house such as should not
be too big for Lord Foulisville, as Lord Foulisville knew
himself to be in his banker's eyes, or too little for him,
as the world deemed that great nobleman to be in his
material circumstances.
In truth, Lord Foulisville's fortune was regulated
upon those elastic principles which had long been too
familiar to Irish gentlemen of every party and creed.
The traveller who scanned the broad acres of Bally-
Failed in London.
19
banaghermore, with their steep coronal of encircling
mountains, would have reckoned their owner among
the wealthiest of the land ; but what his banker might
have to say to this potentate was that banker's own
business, into which strangers had no right to pry.
Altogether, there were affinities between Eaton Place,
then in the first crudeness of its shapeless monotony—
the new spoiled child of the West End—and the Earl
and Countess of Foulisville's characters. They became
lessees of a house in, and were at the period of our
story the oldest inhabitants of, that gruesome region.
In acquiring that mansion in Eaton Place the noble
couple anticipated the possession of an instrument of
brilliant triumphs, both in social life and in politics—
if the great word 'politics' can be prostituted to mean
the knack of personal advancement. In reality, its
rooms became the dreary scene of a failure, long-
creeping, progressive, and intangible. It was so
unostentatious, it was so respectable a failure—a
subjective, and not an objective one, as a German
philosopher would say—that the prime actors in it
were always imagining it to be a success until they
were undeceived by some collateral incident. Yet
there was no reason to have anticipated that the new
bid for fashionable distinction would have failed.
Lord Foulisville's vices and follies were those which
the world, in its calculating selfishness, whitewashes
when a man marries ; and he had while young an
Irishman's knack of making himself agreeable when he
chose to take the trouble. Lady Dorinda was happily
married in the country, and the Merioneths were
content with silently avoiding the Earl and coldly
2—2
20
Strictly Tied Up,
bowing to the Countess. His more respectable wife's
prospects were even more promising, for she started in
society with a pretty face, good-natured manners, and
no existing enmities. Those were the days of The
Literary Souvenir, The Keepsake and The Gem; and
of their pages the charming Delicia was a congruous
and popular heroine.
What was she now ? Had the Foulisvilles ever
sustained some great material calamity, there would
have been an epic dignity about the catastrophe. Had
they been adventurers, the excitement of the game
would have helped to compensate them for its losses.
But they had no such comfort to brighten their wasted
old age. They were always Earl and Countess. The
boundless expanse of boggy mountain which stretched
away from Fontarabia was a never-failing text for the
vehement sermons of land-law reformers. The Earl
gloated over this tribute to his vanity, while the
exertions of a fearless agent to do justice to his lord
and show kindness to the tenantry over whom he
watched were met with resistance and ingratitude.
With all his faults and weaknesses Lord Foulisville
appreciated and supported this worthy man, and his
brutal murder was not only a grave calamity, but a
severe though transitory sorrow to the generally selfish
Earl. The family of Foulis was accepted as a repre¬
sentative of old nobility by all who expected to
make any profit from the assertion; and Lady Foulis¬
ville, when her still comely matronship already counted
by decades, continued the prey of all the discredited
authors and unexhibited painters, the titles of whose
joint works combined 'beauty' and 'aristocracy.' Her
Failed in London.
21
husband, if left to himself, might not have realized the
increasing weakness of their public position, but would
have gone on stupidly muddling away the diminishing
remnants of a fictitious respectability. But the keener
wits of the woman appreciated that, somehow, nothing
ever turned up quite as she had planned and hoped,
and that this augmenting sum total of little defeats
had long been very surely, and was now rapidly,
leaving her in the lag of that delirious race of life on
which she had started with the assured anticipation
of a foremost prize.
Delicia's nature, with all its varnish of cleverness,
was not a deep one, although it originally exhibited
qualities which wear an external likeness to genuine
excellence. She was high-spirited and genial, and
with the world at first at her feet, as she thought, she
believed herself, and was believed to be, decidedly
good-natured. As year, however, was added to year,
and the pile of disappointment grew bigger and bigger,
these superficial graces of character became continually
more indistinct, until at last Lady Foulisville's nature
hardened into a cold cynicism, veiled to the world by
a manner gently apathetic, yet capable, with alternate
moods of elation and of despondency, of patient
persistence in a set purpose. Still, underneath this
repulsive after-growth, the old disposition—provincial
and vulgar, no doubt, yet hearty—of the Kilmallock
girl lay smothered, but not stifled by the huge load
of London affectation. The fire would on rare occasions
flicker up, the woman overmaster the peeress, and the
brogue return to season language strangely racy in
the mouth of a Belgravian countess.
22
Strictly Tied Up.
CHAPTER IV.
how she failed.
Delicia's first fashionable misfortune was her missing
success as a popular beauty. She was, as we have
seen, a favourite figure-head with the makers of
picture-books, but she had sufficient sense to realize
the hollowness of such homage. Still, there can be
no doubt that she was, if not beautiful, yet exceedingly
pretty; and that she kept her good looks very long.
But there was a want of finish about those looks. It
was not only that the figure hardly corresponded to
the face, but the expression of the face was not in
correspondence with the utterances of the tongue.
When she was at a loss for conversation, she would
expand into one of those smiles which ought to have
followed suit to some witty remark, and then she
would relapse into heavy silence. Sometimes it hap¬
pened that she said a good thing, but in its incubation
she would frown and fidget, and twitch her fingers, as
if painfully ridding herself of an encumbrance. Worst
of all, for a great lady, she never could drill her laugh
properly. It was shrill and loud, and would come
when it was not wanted, and fail at the moment when
to laugh would have been to pay the highest tribute
to the man whom it was most essential to compliment
on some brilliant effort. She appeared to mock when
she only meant to rally, and when she was puzzled
she looked cross and defiant. Rogers once said, re¬
ferring to Lady Foulisville's looks, that he ' fell in
love with her at dinner, and fell out of love with her
How She Failed.
23
after dinner ;* and as the mot got currency, it gave
the final blow to her pretensions of becoming a reign¬
ing beauty. To her credit, it must be added that
there never was the slightest suspicion of impropriety
attaching to her name. Had there been any, she
might have commanded the mercenaries who would
have shown fight in the cause of her charms, and a
credulous world outside her favoured circle would
have believed their assertions.
But Delicia, vain as she might be, never had any
carpet knight to pick a quarrel for her face; in the
battle of beauty she fought fairly, and was beaten,
which was, perhaps, more than could be said for some
of her successful opponents.
To talk brilliantly, and to maintain an influential
position, was her ladyship's next ambition, as she
began to make acquaintances and realize the ways of
London; and she would very probably have won
laurels in this campaign, for her cook was excellent,
and she kept an Italian confectioner for her exclusive
service—only there were two obstacles, one more
insuperable than the other. Always laboriously
studying to be light in hand, she never could divest
herself of being a pedant; and—far worse and more
unpardonable—she patronized. Wit after wit, philo¬
sopher after philosopher, artist after artist, statesman
after statesman, was brought up to her, was petted,
fed, flattered; and each man, after all, went away
swearing that no more would he encounter that
terrible woman. All the while she was dandling
herself in the pleased contemplation of the judicious
° An actual saying of Eogers's.
24
Strictly Tied Up.
archness, the irresistible affability, the diplomatic
versatility of her company manners.
Pedants sometimes get on, almost as well as more
brainless fools; for they are unwitting butts, and
selfish man enjoys drawing out and laughing in his
heart at the pretty woman whom he flatters with his
lips and studies like some academic model as she
reveals the material loveliness of a face animated by
the excitement of her own ridiculous prattle. In this
war the man of the world knows that he has the
mental and social superiority, and he is therefore
moderately charitable in his cruelty. But patronizing
is the weapon by which folly and stupidity disarm
compassion by paralyzing wit and worth. The crea¬
ture who feels that he is submitting to being patronized
is alike discomforted and humiliated, and in the bitter¬
ness of this thought the utmost allurements of per¬
sonal grace and beauty lose all their attractive power.
The victim knows that he went into the tyrant's
house a Hercules, and that he has consented to put
on the petticoats of a vulgar Omphale and spin at her
capricious bidding.
With such drawbacks in their giver, Lady Foulis-
ville's parties were proverbially second-rate. Lions
she secured in plenty—British and foreign, of all
shapes, colours, and sizes—to roar in her over-gilded,
over-furnished, over-lighted, over-draped, over-scented,
and over-seated drawing-room; or to batten in her
dining-room, where there was too much foie gras to
leave room for bread and butter, and where the young
lady who asked for lemonade was given her choice of
Steinwein or Chambertin. But the lions, like the
How She Failed.
25
mistress, were second-rate, and each lion had an acute
perception of the defects of his fellow-beasts, and
thought himself badly treated at being asked to meet
such company. The poor Countess was never happy
enough even to attain to the enjoyment of that Bohe¬
mian abandon which so often enlivens the reunion
of inferior lions when their try sting-place is not in
Belgravia, and their entertainer unknown to Lodge.
She herself was so respectable, and her husband's de¬
ficiencies in respectability were so stupid and selfish,
that the men whose irregularities are condoned for
gifts of amusing never dreamed of crossing her thres¬
hold. Her disreputables, and they were many, were
all plausible hypocrites, and she was deceived by every
one of them.
The affectionate sympathy of an indulgent husband
might have brought some comfort to the poor woman
in her weary but ineffectual pilgrimage after objects
in which his advancement, no less than her own success,
was engaged. Her smart speeches, which she imagined
were sallies of wit, were intended to compensate for
her lord's growing stupidity; and whenever she posed
in her most affected attitudes as a beauty, it was to
sustain the credit of a husband who possessed so lovely
a wife, and not to excite the passions of a lover who
longed after so voluptuous a mistress. In fact, it was
one of Lady Foulisville's failures that she had just
missed being a very good woman. The evil influences
to which she had succumbed were innate vanity and
an after-growth of selfishness, rather than any actively
bad qualities; while her elevation to a social position
for which she had been in no way qualified by training
26
Strictly Tied Up.
or early surroundings, must be admitted in mitigation
of a too harsh judgment. A wise and loving consort
would have amended her faults, and developed her
merits; but her choice of a husband, while it seemed
to be the beginning of her fortune, was in reality the
first and greatest of her failures.
Anyone who could have been Quixotic enough to
look for a soft or magnanimous side to Lord Foulis-
ville's character might be found knocking at the door
of Frohsdorf for a programme of Liberal policy. Soured
at the repeated failures of his wife, to which he had
himself so largely contributed, he stifled any prompt¬
ings of gratitude in his mean breast for her perpetual
attempts—failure after failure, to be sure, but still
courageous attempts—to compass his advancement.
He saw that she had failed as a popular beauty, but
in appreciating how anxiously she had coveted the
popularity of looks, he resented the action with the
sullen jealousy of a jaded man of pleasure. When he
was, by comparison, tolerably good-tempered, he would
expatiate on the dulness of the parties which he was
always instigating her to make up; for of learning,
arts, or science he had not the slightest smattering,
and he looked on the eminent men who occasionally
visited his house as so many wandering mountebanks.
Now and then, however, his displeasure was coarse
and insulting. When the evening was sacred to
politics, the most voluble declaimers in Eaton Place
were sometimes disappointed young men of advanced
opinions, ex-members of the German Parliament of
1848, grizzled by years of exile, and fugitive Presidents
of South-American Republics; or, on other occasions,
How She Failed.
27
the representatives and hangers-on of fallen royalty.
Then the old intriguer, full of wine and bile, would
insist that, for some reason utterly bejrnnd his ken,
those detestable Saturdays were planned as conspiracies
against one political party or the other, from each of
which he still believed himself capable of extorting
the long-deferred seat in the House of Lords. So he
scowled and muttered in corners, or else betook him¬
self to that supper-table which alone, of all the
paraphernalia, was his own department, and would
alone, we are free to add, have been, within its own
limits, a success if he had not so far outstripped taste
in the research of profusion.
Moreover, he could latterly be hardly trusted so to
indulge in his own supply of wine as not to leave his
wife in a continual apprehension that the guests would
perceive that their host was in a condition unfitting
him for any decent company. On one unlucky night,
as he was leaning against the supper-table persecuting
a puzzled dowager with more than questionable
anecdotes, a Scotch professor, famous for his profound
essay upon 'the distinction between emotional mind
and mental emotion in relation to their formative and
sympathetic action,' strode up to the Earl and stood
before him. The fuddled old man croaked out,' What
do you want, sir?' Whereupon the subtle doctor, who
was on the look-out for such a lead, delivered himself
of his prepared compliment by asking his lordship
whether he belonged to the family of that eminent
Scotch printer, Robert Foulis of Glasgow, whose
exquisite handiwork is still so prized by bibliomaniacs.
The mighty man was too overwhelmed at being thus
28
Strictly Tied Up.
coupled with a tradesman even to swear at his clumsy
interrogator. He turned his back, and seeking out his
wife, assailed her with coarse abuse in the loudest of
voices for collecting the scum of the earth to insult
him in his own house. The poor lady held her peace,
and determined to let the matter drop ; but worse was
in store for her on that unlucky evening, before her
guests had departed.
Much as Lady Foulisville had undergone long before
their silver wedding, unfeeling as had been the
behaviour of the old reprobate on many former
occasions, it did not add to her peace of mind, self-
respect, or waning hopes of getting on, to overhear,
later in the evening, an impudent Sir Miles Brandreth,
her own particular toady, from whom she expected
and had hitherto received the most ceremonious
deference, laughing over his lordship's outburst and
the lady's discomfiture, with young Fiennes and some
other pretentious youths, and calling the Earl, in tones
which proved the name to be vernacular, 'Boozy Fou.'
The shock of this discovery was severe, and it was
aggravated by the consciousness of certain transactions
between her husband and the offender, which made it
expedient for the lady to be deaf to his insults, which
were, besides, too well founded in truth to be met by
an indignant denial. She had her revenge, however,
but in a cowardly way, which punished many innocent
sufferers for the offence of a single ill-doer, while it
left the offender himself unconvicted of his outrage
against social decorum. She announced in the Morn¬
ing Post that her parties had come to an end for the
year, and in so doing merely augmented her own
How She Failed.
29
unpopularity by providing for the waifs and strays of
society who fed on her ambition and credulity a dis¬
agreeable surprise at her inexplicable early closing.
Society dealt with this blunder as might have been
expected. Professing sympathizers spread in every
direction exaggerated stories of ruin and proximate
flight to the Continent. Tradesmen's bills poured in
with unexampled rapidity, and were quickly followed
up by visits from the dealers themselves, who
vehemently averred that they had never before really
known what it was to want money. Even Lady
Foulisville's afternoons were made miserable from
having to be constantly finding specious talk to puzzle
inquisitive visitors. One audacious woman profited
by the catastrophe by contriving very cleverly to
insinuate that while other callers were besieging Eaton
Place to gratify a selfish curiosity, she was there to
comfort and support her kind benefactress. The
stroke was a complete success, and the adventuress
who came in visitor went out confidante,
CHAPTER Y.
a cruel son.
The congenial sympathy of children sweetens many a
bitter cup, and it might have cheered the miserable
fireside of the soured grandees in Eaton Place. But
even this consolation was withheld from them; for
although they had an only son, he was born to
cause his mother many an hour of bewilderment, and
30
Strictly Tied Up.
draw from her eye many a tear, and to extract from
his father's lips the repeated curse. The pair were
too much alienated in feeling to talk over their common
grief, but it seared either heart more deeply, because
the movements of that heart were closely veiled from
the sight of the other spouse.
All that father and mother had toiled for, each most
precious object of either's ambition—rank, power,
political position, social success, general adulation—
was as the whistling of the wind to Lord Kilcormac.
A living Minister was to him of no more value than a
dead demagogue. He laughed at a Representative Peer¬
age, and would not pity the peers outside that blessed
company, but asked, with a great hoarse laugh, in
which market, Smithfield or Covent Garden, people
bought English baronies, and what was the quotation.
When pressed to play his part at the family drums, he
began to calculate the cubic feet of air necessary to
maintain healthy respiration; and as he was comput¬
ing, he used to stride the length and breadth of the
drawing-room with his hands buried in his trousers'
pockets. Had the youth been palpably touched in the
head, these eccentricities might have been pitied and
forgiven; but the man had hobbies and tastes such as,
in his mother's belief, no lord before him ever thought
of, and such as in ten thousand years would never
raise a commoner into a lord. His whole soul was
wrapt in Entomology. He was president or vice-
president of societies without number, and his signature
was equally well known to the Linnean Transactions
and the outer sheet of the Times in the dull season.
Once the unfilial wretch, when taxed by his mother
A Cruel Son.
31
for his unnatural behaviour, actually retorted that he
would gladly exchange his prospective coronet for a
remarkable beetle which fed upon the water-lilies
growing in one of the minor affluents of the Orinoco.
No doubt, as hostess to all the arts, all the sciences,
and all the politics, the Countess of Foulisville ought,
if she had been disinterestedly logical, to have had her
sympathetic corner for her son's favourite pursuit.
But to demand that she should be disinterestedly
logical would have been to call upon her to forswear
her principles of action and to transmute her nature.
On the contrary, the fact of the affinity which existed,
with a difference, between the scientific studies to
which her son had devoted himself with a single pur¬
pose, and those which she made believe to encourage
for her own worldly, self-seeking ends, infuriated her
against the unremunerative pursuits of her offspring.
It had come to her ears that he had more than once
said that, of all persons in the world, the one who
ought to comfort him in his arduous labours was that
parent in whose drawing-room he had first learnt to
reverence men of science; and the sarcasm rankled in
her soul.
The unnatural young lord did worse than indulge
in scientific vagaries,—he married, at Bradford, the
daughter of a gentleman who had entertained him
during the famous Entomological Congress. Though
the heiress of Sir Bryan Driscoll would have scintillated
with divine fury if she had ever heard a word whispered
against the nobility of her race, she had matured in
her innermost soul a Darwinian theory of Foulisville
marriage. Her own was, of course, a brilliant and
32
Strictly Tied Up,
unique exception; and granting that, she was persuaded
that the coming Foulisville of each generation should
only so far study variety in the type of his marriage as
it consisted in selecting from equal specimens of the
same exalted class. No one, of course, could be greater
than a Foulisville in himself; but greatness might not
only condescend to match with other greatnesses, but
even be benefited by a condescension which absorbed
fresh supplies of its own quality from another source.
Lady Foulisville's pet little ambition had been to
become mother-in-law of some Lady Clara or Lady
Elizabeth Kilcormac; for, as she said,—by what
process of reasoning it might puzzle a prelector of logic
to decipher,—' an earl's eldest son, you know, should
marry a duke's or a marquess's daughter, and then
she does not drop her Christian name.' So when
Kilcormac took to wife a girl whose social position
was as abstractedly provincial as his mother's own,
but so infinitely superior in its incidents as to provoke
inevitable comparisons to her own disparagement,
Lady Foulisville's jealous anger knew no bounds. Her
father was what, in provincial towns, is termed a mer¬
chant ; so was the father of Lady Kilcormac; but the
transactions, no less than the reputation, of the
Bradford magnate were those of a man whose name
was known and respected in every market in the
world, while the once Mayor of Kilmallock won his
knighthood by unscrupulous electioneering, and his
means of maintaining that mushroom dignity by over¬
reaching when young, and hoarding when old.
' I'm sure I won't be able to stand her; I'm sure I
will hate her,' Lady Foulisville would whimper, in her
A Gruel Son.
33
Dative dialect, and with a no longer stifled brogue.
All the while, however, she inwardly comforted her
lacerated heart by constructing odious pictures of
vulgarity, affectation, and awkwardness, and thus
persuading herself that she would after all win society
over to her side in reprobating so incongruous an intru¬
sion into the privileged pale. At last Lady Kilcormac
came to town, and the gloomy anticipations of her
mother-in-law fell far short of the reality, although the
shape which the misfortune took was very different
from the anticipation. Lady Foulisville's hope and
intention had been to force a grand quarrel, put the
vulgar provincial openly in the wrong, and appeal to
the world; then she intended to be magnanimous,
and forgive; but conquer at first she must and would.
But Lady Kilcormac could not, and would not be
quarrelled with. She was so gentle and equable,
and she had such tact in putting on a convenient
obtuseness, that the most envenomed shafts would
dissolve and disappear. Besides, the younger lady
never would help on a scolding match, either by asking
indiscreet questions on Foulis affairs, and so inviting
a quarrel, or by blabbing of her own family concerns,
and thus provoking a sneer. She was always dressed
well, but never so well as to encourage criticism by
incurring praise. Assisting her husband as she did in
all his preparations and experiments, she never allowed
a technical phrase to escape her lips in the presence of
her mother-in-law, to whom, since the marriage, the
great men of entomology had become impossible lions.
The Ti's' were all there, and the dialect absent.
It cannot be denied that in the matter of looks the
3
34
Strictly Tied Up.
daughter-in-law, with all her attractive friendliness of
face, could stand no comparison with the reigning
peeress, although the difference of years was so much
in her favour. But even this advantage was turned
by the proud dame into a grievance. Had Lady Kil-
cormac, so she argued, been the beauty, and she the
dowdy, there would have been reason for the social
success of the younger rival; but as the facts were so
notoriously in the other direction, such mysterious
injustice to herself on so wide a scale could only exist
as a thing to be repined at, but not to be explained.
Even Lady Foulisville did not mould a complaint
in words so illogical, but her vague and unformed
thoughts were as nebulge which declined to assume any
other concrete shape.
Such were the reasons, great and small—some
tragical and others trivial—which led Lady Foulisville
to yawn in weariness of heart.
CHAPTER YI.
a daughter wanted.
Unhappy Lady Foulisville ! Failure as a beauty, and
failure as a wit ; with a tippling, unkind husband,
insect-mad son, and an irreproachable daughter-in-law
from Bradford ! A daughter or daughters of her own
might have done something to redress the wrong.
People in the country have a very limited and
erroneous idea of the use of daughters. They believe
A Daughter Wanted.
35
that daughters delight their parents' hearts by prudent
marriages, or, if still unwedded, nurse them in sickness,
cheer them in health, read to them when they are
sleepy, refresh their memories when they are oblivious,
keep the lists, and fill the invitation cards. All these
functions are undeniable advantages of the institution;
but still, they only represent the surface value of
daughters. Many girls are, to a mother who knows
how to make an advantageous use of her possessions,
alternately foils and stepping-stones. When her
daughters are ugly, the comely matron steps forward
in well-accentuated contrast; when they are good-
looking, the mother possessed of resource and of good
sense can easily devise concords of dress which pro¬
claim her kinship, and lure the unwary on to the
threadbare compliment of declaring that they had
taken her for the eldest sister.
When the girls, however, are pretty, and the mother
ugly,inventive genius finds its widest field for construct¬
ing brilliant success out of adverse materials. Dress is
really far more intended for the decoration of the ugly
than of the beautiful. Raiment on the person of the
beauty only sets off nature, with considerable chances
of its having a directly contrary effect. In fact, the
proof is absolutely mathematical that, granting the
necessary existence of the profession of dressmaker,
women cannot be dressed proportionately to their
natural beauty.
A dressmaker works to live. Her or his livelihood
depends on general popularity; but such popularity
cannot be general without being levelling in its action,
delicate levelling down with the lovely, and more
3—2
36
Strictly Tied Up,
ostentatious levelling up with the ugty. Such policy
alike reduces to a minimum the friction of the
purchaser's vanity, as well as the expenditure of
thought on the part of the purveyor, and raises to a
maximum that outlay on ' dry goods ' (as the Ameri¬
cans call them) on which a principal part of the
dressmaker's profits depends. These have not even to
undertake the puny labour of invention, floated as they
are by the crudely daubed engravings in the dress
journals from Paris, over which the pure daughters of
English manor-houses and parsonages gloat, little
weening that the}7 are probably admiring the effigies
of women whose fame for viciousness is European.
Shortly, then, and plainly, ' Fashions,' so called, are
only the introduction of wholesale principles into
retail trade. As long as each fashion lasts, the dress¬
maker's invention is taxed to the least possible degree;
and the sooner and more completely it is changed, the
more brisk is her market in fresh work and in
fresh material. The willingly blind fine ladies
hurry to rid themselves of their still new dresses
of the last ordering—so sweet a few days before, and
so horrid now—and never discover how they are
offering their persons and their husbands' purses a
sacrifice for the benefit of trade. With some of them
it is possible that the money might otherwise have
been worse spent, than in filtering in notable pro¬
portions into the honest homes of industrious poverty.
Only let things be known in their right aspects, and
for arbitress of taste let the fine lady write herself
purveyor of sustenance to needy industry.
These considerations equally apply in their com-
A Daughter Wanted.
37
mercial aspects to the clothing of the ugly woman ;
but, speaking artistically, dress with her should
transmute and glorify, as it cannot do upon a more
lovely body. It discovers for ugliness its place in the
economy of things, as a link in that universal order
and harmony in which its own dissight is swallowed
up. The ugly mother, modestly, decorously, but
richly dressed, constantly ranging herself by her lovely
daughters, is a sublime spectacle. If she is clever,
tactical, and agreeable, she may convert her deficiency
in looks into a positive gain by the assurance which her
demeanour expresses that she is not vain enough to
risk a competition in which age ought not to expect to
win honour. The young men of that superior class
who dance, indeed, but do not confine themselves to
dancing—Foreign Office clerks, with something of the
diplomatic swing; officers who intend some day to
hold Staff appointments at the Horse Guards;
members who are rising into being rising men; eldest
sons who have gone into the History School; well¬
born foreigners come over for the season,—all these
social elements can only be caught and kept in leading-
strings by the combination of daughter and mother.
The girl alone is too unsubstantial, and the mother by
herself too antique. With a well-regulated partner¬
ship, the mother's established reputation for beauty
will often be accepted as evidence of a passably
looking daughter's attractiveness. On the other hand,
if the mother be ugly and wise, the child may secure
a husband on the fancied inheritance of the parent's
mental qualities.
Upon such obvious material considerations as the
38
Strictly Tied Up.
difficulty which the daughterless matron must always
experience in forcing her way into crowded ball-rooms
we need not dwell. With daughters, even Lady
Foulisville might have done something to retrieve
herself, for at a ball the personality of the mistress of
the house is far less important than at a party,
and provided that her smile is amiable and her eye
keen for the provincials who expect to have their
hands shaken, she never need say more than ' How
d'ye do V Pedantry and patronising are alike difficult
in assemblies where to spin round like teetotums, and
to be ranged like jam-pots against the wall, are the re¬
spective amusements of the two distinctive classes—
classes created by the eternal distinction of youth and
age—which make up delighted ball-goers.
Lady Foulisville would, if better advised, have got
hold of a good list, and taken society by storm with a
successive couple of balls; but, with her proclivity for
failure, she began with her dreary parties. As she
started, so she continued with her drums, till these had
got a bad name, before attempting a ball, and naturally
she found no one then to help her in making it up, and
very few tovcome to it. She tried, as it was, three balls
in different years, and then abandoned the experiment,
out of pocket and bitter against Society. Had she had
daughters, she might have persevered in ball-giving,
and at last possibly won success. People always re¬
spect the practical, and a ball-giving mother of
daughters is credited with meaning business. With
daughters, too, the handsome Delicia would have won
a continuous entry to other people's balls, which,
season after season, she failed to obtain. Her dtbut
Consolation.
39
was before the days of frisky matrons ; and no one in
London ever cared to know whether the Irishwoman
of obscure antecedents could or would dance. Yet in
Dublin Miss Driscoll had been a very popular partner
even at the Castle Balls, and with the fastidious
officers of that exclusive age.
CHAPTER VII.
consolation.
'Dearest Lady Foulisville, you are very tired. Poor,
poor dear!' murmured, in response to the yawn, a
voice which was low, clear, and artificially gentle, but
so measured and uninflected as to seem rather to pro¬
ceed from some instrument than from a human mouth.
The speaker was a lady of middle height and moderate
plumpness, with a colourless face, handsome in the
contour of the brow, and with fine, though hard, grey
eyes, but coarse and heavy in the lower part, which
spread out at the jaws, like the old caricatures which
so annoyed Louis Philippe by figuring him as a pear.
This outburst of sympathy was clearly expected,
and yet it set Lady Foulisville off into an hysterical cry.
'Yes, yes, dear Robbins, I am very tired—very tired
indeed—but I am unhappy still more; solitary, baffled,
disappointed,—and how have I deserved it? No
husband, no son; left quite alone! Splendid misery!
Nobody cares for me now that I am an old woman ;
and I'm sure I've slaved for the world all iny days.'
' Only me, dearest—me that care for you above all
the world,' was the answer dropped, as if in a mum-
40
Strictly Tied Up.
ble not meant to be overheard, by the lady named
' Robbins.'
Miss Robbins, as politeness constrains us to call her,
had gradually won her way into Lady Foulisville's
home and heart.
Originally one of the many literary ladies who
successively thronged the Saturday receptions, needy,
ambitious, and crafty, she early mastered the details
of the Countess's second and more artificial character,
while quite unconscious of the Delicia Driscoll who
lay at the bottom, smothered, yet not dead. She sub¬
mitted to be patronized, and she flattered in return.
The rest of her story only repeats once more the
commonest of histories. She it was who paid that
well-timed visit to the Countess in her great social
trouble. The grand but desolate woman was taken
in by the stagy fulsomeness of her flatterer. First
she asked her on a visit to Eaton Place, and then, not
without much brutality from Lord Foulisville, shown
both to Delicia and to Miss Robbins—by which the
bully only made the sympathy of the parasite more
precious to his solitary wife—succeeded in converting
her friend's tenancy at will of her room into a perpetual
lease. Once safely installed, the adroit dame took the
measure of the lord's foot, and by little attentions,
never too obtrusively rendered, gradually converted
his sulky toleration into a recognised acceptance of
her presence as a person who might be useful to him,
without expecting him in return to put himself out of
the way on her behalf.
f My room, my knife, and my fork are all I expect,'
she used to repeat.
Consolation.
41
' Oh, how I wish I had a daughter !' continued Lady
Foulisville, as if speaking to herself, but yet antici¬
pating Eobbins's commentary.
' Providence disposes all things for the best,' senten-
tiously responded the satellite, who could not quite
make out what this sudden loosening of the bitter
waters portended, and had accordingly to talk in
proverbs.
' Oh, yes, very likely; but I wish I had a daughter.
It is so lonely. I will have a daughter!' shrieked
Delicia, suddenly jumping up, and slapping herself as
only an excited Irishwoman could think of doing in
the sobering air of Eaton Place.
Miss Bobbins, who was thoroughly English, and very
decorous in her social demeanour, found her breath
fairly taken away by what was to her an unprecedented
and inexplicable outburst on her friend's part. Those
who had known Lady Foulisville longer, had generally
found cause to recollect that the Milesian blood occa¬
sionally boiled over as for a few moments the genuine
Delicia Driscoll reappeared. But Miss Eobbins's ac¬
quaintance was of only about three years' standing,
and the extreme intimacy much shorter, and it hap¬
pened that one of these comet-like visits of the old
nature had never recurred in her presence. She
fancied she had keys to all the chambers of her friend's
mind, and she suddenly discovered that there was one
closet which she could not open, nor measure its capa¬
city. It was not, therefore, wonderful that she was
thoroughly taken aback when she found, as she
thought, the clue of her policy snapping in her hand.
Had she really known her fbeloved Delicia,' as she
42
Strictly Tied Up.
was wont periodically, but not too often, to call the
Countess, she would have been aware that these out¬
bursts, judiciously treated, were the most harmless
and evanescent exhibitions possible, as a light and
sneering laugh was enough to drive Lady Foulisville
back upon her cold and selfish second nature. Instead
of acting with this calm wisdom, the usually cautious
Eobbins hazarded an inquiry, in a tone in which curi¬
osity and concern were so strongly mingled as to bring
home to the now roused Countess the suspicion that
she must have said something very remarkable to have
provoked an approach to criticism from the woman
who had never before ventured on anything but cat¬
like acquiescence,—
' But, dearest, dear Delicia, how will you get a
daughter ?—I really do not quite understand you.'
This inopportune appeal, jerked at Lady Foulisville
in the acme of her wild fit, led to a very unexpected
reply.
' Sure, and how am I to get a daughter ? As if I
hadn't got a daughter already—my dear son's wife,
whom I treat like a brute baste !'
Robbins was more than staggered. Lady Kilcormac
coming in would be Miss Robbins going out, for both
the son and his wife distrusted, dreaded, and detested
the favourite; and she knew that they did so. She
rapidly gathered up her wandering wits, and said with
deliberation:
'But, my dear Lady Foulisville, consider the
liabilities—the lady who is looking forward to take
your place.'
These words, as she perceived at once, had all the
Consolation.
43
mischievous effect which their author intended. Had
she been contented with this easy victory, it would in
the future have been well for her, while the events
which came crowding in upon the family of Foulis
never would have taken place in the strange sequence
of their actual fulfilment. But Miss Robbins's evil
genius prompted her to follow up her advantage by
advancing a counter-suggestion, with which she fancied
that Lady Foulisville's jealous nature never would
close, while her offering it would create in her own
behalf, and on her friend's mind, the impression of
disinterested devotedness to the comfort of one whose
home was so cheerless.
' I wonder,' said she, after a little pause, ' that you
have never thought of adopting some young lady. It
is, you know, such an advantage to anybody, however
highly placed and distinguished, however honoured
and beloved, to be a chaperon. Society is so large,
you know. At some houses, at some of the best, the
most fashionable houses, they grudge asking any but
the dancers. I have always said that it was very bad
taste and improper, but they are not likely to listen to
an old-fashioned body like me; and it would be too
shocking, dear Delicia, if you found yourself shut out
of their houses, because you are not a chaperon.'
Well did the hypocrite know that Lady Foulisville
was already shut out; but, with all her cunning, she
had not grasped how deeply the iron of that exclusion
had entered into the lonely woman's soul, because she
did not appreciate how radical the exclusion was.
Her mistake arose from her having allowed herself to
be too much dazzled by the second-rate splendours of
44
Strictly Tied Up.
Eaton Place. She had never been in any really first-
rate house, and as her own vulgar nature never
resented patronage, she had been slow to enter into
the feelings of other guests, or to realize that the grand
lady who gave those brilliant receptions and sumptuous
suppers was all the time being laughed at by the herd
which she had driven into her pound. In fact, in the
earlier daj^s of her acquaintance that supper was of
much material importance to the adventuress, and her
thankfulness at getting the sustenance overmastered
her powers of general observation. So, while she
gradually appreciated her patroness's failure as a
material or statistical fact, she looked on the Countess
of Foulisville rather as a defeated leader than as an
unacknowledged pretender to leadership. In blunder¬
ing out those words she had touched a chord of which
she did not suspect the existence.
' True, Robbins, every word of what you say. I
have long, very long felt, long indeed before I ever
knew you, that society was not doing me justice,
because I had nobody to take out—no girls for the
mothers to scheme after and the men to spoon. This
shan't be so. I'll follow your advice, and get my girl,
—by the holy poker I will!' again slapping herself;
* and my Lady Kilcormac will see that it's long she'll
be waiting to step into my shoes. She won't be
dancing over my grave in a jiffey, I'll warrant.'
Again Delicia Driscoll lived, and Robbins inwardly
shuddered; for though the girl unnamed was not a
known and open foe, as the Kilcormacs had declared
themselves to be, yet she was certain to be in the
present a rival, and in the future possibly a
Consolation.
45
supplanter. The parasite's only resource, if her
friend—who must, she thought, have gone rather
mad—further pressed the notion, would he to suggest
the stupidest and most pliable creature she could
think of.
She was not long kept from giving shape to her
idea, for the lady, in whom the old nature kept rising
higher and higher, turned quickly on her with :
' Well, now, who's the girl to be ? Why d'ye stand
gaping and jabbering like a big fool, and won't tell me
the girl V
' What do you say, dear Delicia, to Mary Burton V
' Mary Burton ! Why, she's as tall as Goliath, and
as stupid as your grandmother. She'd be grinning
like a born idiot over my head, and making all the
young men jeer at her ape's tricks.'
' Why not, then, Isabella Travis V
i Pert little shrimp ! Why, my dear Bobbins, your
brain is addled to-day; you do propose such horrid
girls. I have it, though; I know the girl—Meriel
Foulis shall come to me.'
' But would her mother ever consent ? All that
you have so often told me of her convinces me what a
particular and independent dame she is; and I have
heard you say, dearest, that Lord Foulisvillo never
could get on with his brother.'
' We can only see.'
46
Strictly Tied Up,
CHAPTER VIII.
adoption.
Miss Robbins little knew that she had unwittingly
set the match to a train long laid in the mind of Lady
Foulisville, whose confidential friend she fancied her¬
self, while she was all the time her confidante only.
Her vanity had blinded her to the obvious fact that
she had been raised to her present dignity by circum¬
stances in which her own merits might have done
little for her, had it not been for the accident of Sir
Miles Brandreth's disgrace. So far, however, as Lady
Foulisville did fondle her, this kindness—superficial
and selfish as it might be—ought to have put her
more upon her guard, proceeding as it did from the
flickering, intermittent, but never quite extinguished
craving after maternity, as the Countess understood
maternity to be—namely, patronizing in excelsis.
Patronizing was the besetting sin of this vain Irish¬
woman. The seeds of it were born in her, but they
might never have sprouted had not she climbed that
pinnacle of what, with all her failures, was to the
daughter of the Kilmallock tradesman a remarkable
elevation of worldly greatness, and one for which she
was quite untrained. The world appeared to her as
the one great thing which, in her magnificence, she
was bound in the natural order of things to patronize
as an entirety. But the world was complex, and of
its many elements each was patient of its own kind of
subsidiary patronage.
Adoption.
47
A husband, who was not Foulisville, or else a child,
who was not Kilcormac, would, she often dreamed,
have been a being which she could have patronized
with some additional tenderness for the object of that
process. Had she been the childless wife of an
affectionate husband, he would have absorbed all her
available stock of domestic patronizing, and been to
her child as well as spouse. But tied as she was to
the sot, still more selfish than herself, whom she had
taken as her lord because he was ' My lord'; mother
of a son whom she could not understand nor appre¬
ciate, and against whose wife she was unreasonably
and therefore irreconcilably prejudiced, and destitute
of any daughter, she could only find such a makeshift
as the parasite, Miss Bobbins, on whom to bestow
something of those attentions which she mistook for
a mother's love.
Thus dimly, and in the distance, the unsubstantial
phantom of an adopted daughter would more and more
often float through the solitary Delicia's visions of the
night. In the day-time, too, when she saw the tables
of her friends strewn with big cards inviting Lady
this, and Mrs. that, with daughter or daughters, to
meet Highnesses Imperial, Boyal, and Serene, at
houses which were never open to her, and one per¬
chance might say that she had got leave to bring a
niece instead of a child, the thought of her utter lone¬
liness would rise before the Countess with black dis¬
tinctness. Still she never mustered courage nor found
the opportunity to give utterance to the project till
upon this memorable afternoon, when Bobbins, like
the Eastern fisherman, unknowingly opened the chest
48
Strictly Tied Up.
from which the genie rose a vapour and hardened into
a monstrous giant.
There was, in fact, a special cause at work which
had notably contributed both to the Countess's lassi¬
tude and to the excitement into which she worked
herself.
A slight to which she had been subjected a few days
previously had raised the flame of her discontent to a
white heat, and in no little degree contributed to the
collapse under which she was suffering. No one who
claims to be fashionable can have so soon forgotten the
thrill of pleased excitement which ran through English
society a few years ago, when the telegraph flashed the
news that the Micado of Japan and his imperial spouse
were actually upon their road to learn their lessons
of civilized enjoyment in the cities of the western
World.
At the same time some other distinguished person¬
ages, who were mere European Christians—the Pala¬
tine of the Rhine, the King and Queen of Yvetot, and
the hereditary Prince of Neustria—found their way to
England only to be subjected to the painful discovery
that in competition with the tawny Asiatics they were
only fit to be reserved as consolation prizes for the
failures and parvenus of fashionable society.
These had been invited to Eaton Place, where they
were feted and petted by Lady Foulisville, with smiles
on her face and envy at her heart at the unaccountable
unwillingness of those who conducted the Micado to
let him honour her reception with his august presence.
At last the general furore reached a climax. The
young Duke of Merioneth (nephew of the Earl's in-
Adoption.
49
tended father-in-law, who only left daughters) and his
spritely bride, tired of the staid, old family house in
Hamilton Place, had bought and thrown together the
two most eligible lots in the newly laid-out Planta-
genet Road. There they constructed a gorgeous
palace, under the personal inspection of M. Viollet le
Due, who had been, with much difficulty, coaxed over
from Paris to carry out a masterpiece of architectural
pomp. Granite, brick, and terra cotta, cunningly
counterchanged, adorned the exterior—for carved
stone was eschewed in dread of London smoke. Inside,
the carpets were Cashmere shawls, and the curtains
were the work of the nimble needles of the 'Lady
Associates of Noble Embroidery '—a society which the
Duchess had honoured by becoming its patroness : a
meritorious enterprise, and one which proved a toler¬
able financial success to its shareholders, although
Philistine purchasers would grudgingly compare the
cost of these high art productions of industrious
gentlewomen with the cost of similar articles purveyed
by vulgar shopkeepers. The apartments were designed
and fitted so as to reproduce the history of those great
races of Northmen and Franks, from whom the Longe-
spees exultingly traced their descent. There was the
Vikings' Hall, the Merovingian Staircase, lined with
fauteuils de Dagobert, the Carlovingian Gallery,
arcaded in imitation of the Dom at Aachen, the Ante¬
chamber of Rollo, the Banqueting-room of Francis I.,
and the Saloon of Louis the Great. The Duchess was
a M'Corquodale, so the Armoury of the Clans was also
paraded in spite of the incongruity. All these spacious
apartments led up to a mysterious decagonal sanctum
4"
50
Strictly Tied Up.
of small capacity, windowless, and closed in the day¬
time, but not unventilated; while at night lamps of
translucent onyx half revealed panels of Russian niello,
separated by malachite pilasters, encrusted with clus¬
ters of carnelian and amethystine fruit. Troublesome
critics inquired what this Muscovite extravagance had
to do with Franks and Northmen; but their curiosity
was satisfied by a literary Queen's Counsel, who
reminded them that the founder of the Hodgkinsons'
fortunes had been in the Russian trade.
The completion of this extravagant pile and the
visit of the Micado happened to coincide, so the house-
warming was to be a fete—a ball and more than a ball
—given in his especial honour, but, at the same time,
intended to sweep in the Yvetots and the Palatine;
all the royalties, in fact, but his Highness of Neustria.
He too would have been included, but the etiquettes
of London, and the results of a foolish speculation at
Newmarket, proved so irksome to him that he had
taken a convenient occasion to fly in the dead of the
night to Paris, after posting a bundle of tradesmen's
bills to his banker's, who smiled grimly, and tore them
up.
The f£te was not to be one of those vulgar gather¬
ings for which the visiting-book is handed over to the
domestic secretary, and cards fly abroad by the hun¬
dred. The list for this party was picked and sifted,
and signified the brevet, not of the world, but of the
Merioneths, whose claim to pass their censorship upon
their equals was undisputed in presence of the calm
assurance with which they ignored the possibility of
any one disputing their right.
Adoption.
51
Society, in a spasm of selfish curiosity, decided that
in respect of the entertainment, exceptional as this
one was to be, pride could have no place. Invitations
might be begged for,fought for, scrambled for, intrigued
for. The form of these invitations denoted the unusual
character of the event, for they were no common cards,
but real folded notes, headed with a charming woodcut
of Barmouth House, while they stated that the Duke
and Duchess of Merioneth would esteem it a high favour
if so-and-so would assist them to entertain His Majesty
the Micado and his august spouse, with a postscript
reciting the other royalties who were expected.
The matrons whom the graceful fiction of the
entertainers had associated with them in the honours
of the feast, were treated with distinguished honour,
not to say petted and spoiled. Each found her own
seat allotted to her, with the intimation that she
might exchange as she pleased, for there was room for
every chaperon. Each also was made happy with a
bouquet of rarest orchids, contained in a holder of
silver filigree; while -the young ladies had to be con¬
tent with tuberose and stephanotis, encased in china.
Consummate tact was shown in the distribution of the
few selected old maids, some being ranked as brevet
matrons, and others treated as still upon the roll of
young ladies.
The greatest of the great were at the show, and
came in time, and not a relation of the Longespees,
however unconspicuous, was forgotten, only excepting
those with whom the young couple had quarrelled.
His scared wife hung on the arm of Sir Plumley
Tregelles,the fortunate contractor; and Dick Reynolds*
4—2
52
Strictly Tied Up.
the popular enactor of burlesque, elbowed the peerage.
Only Lord and Lady Foulisville were overlooked,
uninvited, absent, although they and the Merionetlis
left reciprocal cards upon each other, and, as the
Countess spitefully recollected, she had invited both
to her recent royal party. The truth was that the
Duke, early left an orphan, had been tended with a
mother's care by his cousin, several years his senior,
Lady Dorinda, then happily married to a Suffolk
squire of unimpeachable character, country tastes, and,
counting in his wife's dower, of sufficient income. In
her confidences the good lady had often declared her¬
self fortunate at having escaped a degrading alliance
with the profligate Foulisville ; so the boy imbibed a
deep prejudice against the worthless peer, which he
now found an easy means of gratifying. But to Lady
Foulisville the rudeness was inexplicable. Conscious
as she was, when she went to the altar, of the disrepu¬
table character of her husband's bachelor life, the more
scandalous features of the Merioneth engagement had
never been revealed to the exulting Delicia. All she
knew was that Lady Dorinda had nearly forestalled
her in her coronet. So she set down her exclusion
from Barmouth House to that mysterious conspiracy
against her social position, which, in her angry craze,
she had begun to imagine had its ramifications in
every direction, and was entered into by all who called
themselves her friends.
The Decision.
53
CHAPTER IX.
the decision.
It might have been imagined that Lady Foulisville's
rejection from Barmouth House would have opened
Miss Robbins's eyes to the ambiguous social standing
of her patroness. It did shake her belief for a short
time. But her suspicions were dissipated as she fell
back upon the bitterness of partisanship, to which she
was incited by the way in which the Countess received
the humiliation. Lady Foulisville had never yet
bestowed her whole confidence upon her new intimate,
and pride now largely contributed to govern her anger.
So, instead of indulging in lamentations over her
disappointment, she gave unbridled license to expres¬
sions of contempt at the wicked lavishness of the
preposterous revel, for which, in truth, there was ample
foundation.
There was nothing in all this to make Miss Robbins
suspect any growing coldness; for the condescending
attentions of her 'own Delicia' were still under the
control of the pride and vanity of the giver, and the
patroness had never yet thought it expedient to open
to her thrall the cupboards in which the Foulis
skeletons were kept. To say the truth, Miss Robbins
was sometimes in the habit of just a little overdoing
it. The Countess never consciously perceived this
mistake, but she was often secretly oppressed and
driven back upon herself, when a more natural
demeanour would have lured her forward. Robbins had
54
Strictly Tied Up>
indeed, often heard how Lord Foulisville's scampish
brother had been killed soon after his marriage with
an English heiress. She also knew that his widow
was quietly bringing up their posthumous daughter
upon her own acres in an English county; still she
had never thought of ferreting out Lady Foulisville's
feelings about relations whom she very seldom saw
and only occasionally mentioned. Miss Robbins was
sufficiently curious whenever her own interests were
at stake, but it had never crossed her mind to think
that any information about those buried connections
would be of value. On her principle, accordingly, of
keeping her memory open and strong for everything
which would help her by discarding all which seemed
useless lumber, she allowed the existence of Mrs.
Foulis and her child to remain, as far as she was con¬
cerned, but barren facts. So the Countess's violent
new mood, and the determination, which appeared as
strange as it was sudden and unexpected, to adopt
the girl, made the schemer feel like one suddenly
called upon to fight in the dark against an unknown
foe. Matters had been bad enough on the previous
evening, but the situation had grown ten times more
perilous when, upon the following morning, Robbins
found that the Countess had not, as she had hoped,
slept off a passing fancy, but was, on the contrary,
more bent than ever upon proposing to her sister-in-
law to lend her daughter to her for some indefinite
time.
Almost before the companion had time to ask Lady
Foulisville how she had slept, she was called on to
assent to the advantage which it would be to the
The Decision.
55
suddenly beloved niece, that, under the chaperonage
of her aunt, she might enjoy a fuller measure of gay
society than her mother—confirmed rustic as she was
—had made herself competent to provide. Bitterly
did Bobbins then recollect how, in the earliest days of
her acquaintanceship in Eaton Place, at a very dull
drum, Lady Foulisville had asked her to look after her
sister-in-law's supper, as she was only in town for a
day or two. It was as a nightmare now to her to
think that just because she fancied that Mrs. Foulis
must be heavy in hand, as being, by the Countess's
description, a confirmed rustic, that the rebellious
delegate had said as little as she could to her charge,
and rid herself as fast as possible of an unwelcome
encumbrance. Had she but known then what was in
store, she could have cringed, she could have pumped,
she could have wheedled, she could have taken
possession. Vainly she sought comfort in reasoning
that at that time she was young to the house and its
ways, and that her blunder came of inexperience—not
stupidity. At a later period of her toadyship, so
unusual an attention shown by the Countess to an
infrequent visitor would have aroused her suspicions,
and she would have acted with due discrimination.
Still, all these thoughts were poor consolation; she
had had her chance, and had lost it. She had done
worse than lose it, for she had misused it. Her
conscience told her that she had been rude to Mrs.
Foulis, and she felt sure that the sister-in-law would
not have forgotten her impertinence, and had probably
gone on hating her for it. Such behaviour to the
family's nearest relation was, she now felt, intolerable.
56
Strictly Tied Up.
All the guidance which was left to her was the convic¬
tion to which her self-interest prompted her, that
Meriel Foulis, or any other girl, if an inmate of the
Foulisville family, must be her rival, and ought by
any means to be kept away. Her first ai-gument in
opposition to the project was well conceived.
' I am sure, my dearest Delicia, that I should most
heartily rejoice at any change which would give you
additional pleasure ; but are you quite sure how
dear Lord Foulisville might take it ? He is, you
know, not quite so young or so strong as he was, and
elderly gentlemen are apt sometimes to be a little
particular, and don't like to be put out of their usual
ways ; and Lord Foulisville is occasionally—forgive
me for saying anything so shocking to you—sometimes
a little trying.'
If the whole incident had been to Robbins a surprise,
what she got as her answer was the climax of her
astonishment.
' Make yourself easy, my dear; I've settled all that.
I've been to Lord F., and told him all, and he says he
thoroughly approves. He'd seen little of, and never
done what he wanted for, his poor brother Jack, scape¬
grace as he was,—you know, he always called him
Jack, though he was Augustus; so now he would be
glad to make it up to the poor fellow by doing some¬
thing kind to his daughter.'
O ©
This was quite true; the one kindly corner in
Lord Foulisville's heart had been reserved for the
brother who was so little deserving of any affection,
and who soon quarrelled with his benefactor; and, on
his dreadfully sudden death, Lord Foulisville, who had
The Decision.
57
shortly before refused to see him, felt that he ought to
do something; but he could not think what. At that
time, however, the Earl himself was much troubled
with money difficulties, and in the months which
elapsed between Jack's death and Meriel's birth, he
had found vexations enough of his own to bother his
brain, and to efface the image of Jack ; so that he had,
in fact, never connected Mrs. Foulis's child with his
affectionate but transitory resolve.
His former feelings had not, however, escaped his
wife's observation; so she judiciously began the con¬
versation by some retrospective sentimentality, which
very much astonished the Earl, over poor Jack, and so
led him round to her point. Besides his love for his
brother, Lord Foulisville, as an Irishman, was very
clannish, and, as the head of the House of Foulis,
especially penetrated with the greatness and the
wrongs of his distinguished race. So he gave that
ready permission to his wife to take out Meriel Foulis,
over which he might have demurred had she suggested
inviting one of the Ladies de Bohun, or even, under
other circumstances, a Longespee.
Still Robbins did produce some effect, as she con¬
vinced Lady Foulisville that it would be more prudent,
in the interests of her own scheme, not to plunge at
once into what would have been a virtual offer of life-
adoption hazarded to a young person of whose cha¬
racter and affections she knew so little. The judicious
plan would be simply to begin by inviting her niece
to pay a long but terminable visit to Fontarabia,
whither the family intended to go at the close of the
season. They had been there in the preceding sum-
58
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mer, after an absence of two or three years, and had
taken Miss Bobbins with them; so she felt that she
would have the advantage of finding herself at home
in a place where the youDg visitor would be a perfect
stranger.
CHAPTER X.
the child heiress;
At this point we must again interrupt the consecutive
current of our narrative, and go back to the days when
our sovereigns were kings. We shall traverse our
ground as quickly as we can; but, without the retro¬
spect which we shall take, it would be impossible to
appreciate the respective positions of two sisters-in-
law who had hitherto been living so far apart, and
whose respective lives seemed to have taken very
widely differing departures.
We shall have to remove the scene of our story
awhile from Eaton Place and the purple mountains of
Ballybanaghermore, and invite all who are interested
in this simple narrative to accompany us to a country
house pleasantly seated among the rolling meadows
and woody hedgerows of a South Midland county in
England.
The last Squire Curteis, of Yaxley, was master of an
imperturbable temper, and singular-ly free from either
ambition or jealousy. When we add to these merits
that he had good health, a stately, florid presence, an
unfailing appetite, and a ringing, cheery voice, while
The Child Heiress.
59
he shook hands all round with a grip which made
delicate fingers tingle, rode well to hounds, and kept
up that open-door hospitality which really costs the
man of limited avocations very little in money or
trouble, because it is so evenly continuous, we have
said enough to explain why it came about that he
was in his day the best good fellow and most popular
country gentleman of half a county. None of his
neighbours reasoned out the fact that he was, at
bottom, sluggish in intellect and weak of purpose ;
for, as he never had a lawsuit, and possessed a property
which gave him enough to live on, with his simple
tastes and natural antipathy to vicious indulgences,
the more feeble side of his nature was never exposed
to the temptations from which his mental powers
might not have saved a differently constituted physique.
Like other weak men, too, he was obstinate, and that
defect passed for consistency in public life among those
who thought as he did.
Besides, the Squire shone by comparison with the
two preceding generations of the family of Curteis, of
whom alone the neighbourhood had ever heard. His
grandfather was a prosperous Turkey merchant, who
invested his money in land, and by a polite marriage
with a lady in not quite her first youth, daughter of
the great Earl who was then Lord-Lieutenant of the
county, took immediate brevet rank among the notables
of his shire. But he was a hard man, who strove to
conceal a deficient pedigree by a superabundance of
haughtiness, and he was appreciated accordingly in
social life by the squires, to whom, on the contrary,
the daughter of the Lord-Lieutenant was the object of
60
Strictly Tied Tip.
a legitimate respect, which they balanced by politely
detesting her husband.
The only son of the couple was a nonentity, who
was not unpopular only because no one thought at all
about him. His biography may be summed up in
three monosyllables—Gout and Port Wine; Dawdle
and Dress described his wife, and the only evidence
that either had ever lived was the survival of sons
and daughters, two of the former making their way to,
and dying in, India, and three girls marrying well, as
the neighbours described their choice in husbands,
without knowing much of the matter, and caring less.
By the side of these forefathers, the eldest son, the
dear old Squire, shone in radiant contrast. The essen¬
tial sluggishness of his character and the coldness of
his temperament were shown in what a partial world
thought the caution, but which was really the stupi¬
dity, with which he passed by beauty after beauty,
fortune after fortune, great connection after great con¬
nection, sweet ingenue after sweet ingenue—one more
ready than another to dare for him the troubles of
housekeeping and the infliction of a silly and jealous
maiden sister, in order to take the domestic reins at
Yaxley.
At last, in later middle age, he stumbled into a com¬
plication of polite sentences, which, to his surprise,
were taken as a proposal by a girl, estimable, no doubt,
and thoroughly respectable in her connections, -but far
gone in consumption. He was at first unable to see
the force of his expressions, but as the lady's brother,
a pert officer of Militia, said that no man of honour
could have two opinions about them, Mr. Curteis
The Child Heiress.
61
capitulated, and went to church. His wife's brief
married life closed within two or three years after the
birth of an only daughter. Strange as it may seem,
with a marriage so contracted, the poor lady's death,
in no long time afterwards, was the cause of bringing
down to the grave the colossal frame of her widower,
in sheer surprise and blank despair at a catastrophe
to the imminence of which he, of all the world, had
alone been blind. Married at first by accident, his
good nature and the force of habit—always so strong
with him—had made him sincerely love the poor,
pale, querulous invalid who was fading away by his
fireside. At the last he was carried off by an illness
which, although rapid, left him time to provide both
for the custody of the person of his child and for the
settlement of the property to which she succeeded.
For guardians he made, in the first place, the worst
but the most obvious selection which it was in his
power to do, by taking the only near relation then
alive, with whom he had been on terms of constant
intimacy, his maiden sister, Miss Harriett Curteis, a
shrivelled, elderly damsel, who had been the house¬
keeper of his bachelor life and his wife's companion.
The theoretic primness of this lady's sentiments and
the suspicious jealousy with which she exacted from
high and low the deference due to her distinguished
position, oddly contrasted with girlish extravagance of
dress, unbridled incontinence of tongue, and an in¬
satiable spirit of flirtation. These qualities impelled
her, in whatever company or under whatever circum¬
stances she might find herself, to seize hold of and
detain any unfortunate man who might be weak or
62
Strictly Tied Up.
ignorant enough to venture within sound of her piping
call. Her own character, as she presented it, was the
embodied ' whole duty of manbut the stranger on
whom she had cast her spell must have gone off with
the suspicion that he had strayed into a land where man
knew not honestly, nor more than one woman virtue.
Once upon a time, the Bishop had, upon his visita¬
tion, unwarily accepted the old Squire's hospitable
invitation to meet his clergy at luncheon at Yaxley,
instead of risking the very indifferent fare which the
village inn could offer. There was much at that time
to trouble serious minds, and the accomplished prelate
had, with great painfulness, prepared a confidential
word in season to offer on so propitious an occasion to
his brethren, in supplement of his more formal charge.
Mr. Curteis was not yet married; so, of course, the
chief guest had to give his arm to Miss Harriett, and
sit next to her. It was at the period of Queen
Caroline's trial; and the spinster chose that scandalous
event as the theme with which to entertain right-
reverend ears. The Bishop at all times hated scandal,
and, courteous as he was,, he was no lady's man, and
quite unversed in the fine art of badinage over risky
ground. Above all, he felt how incongruous the topic
was to what he had said and was going to say. Still
Miss Harriett, as his hostess, was for the moment his
commanding officer. He would be troubled with a
short cough, and pull out his handkerchief, he would
fidget on his seat, or deprecatorily creak the leg of his
chair, and still the vivacious virgin was ready with
some fresh inquiry as to his view of the credibility of
the evidence, the probabilities of such shameless
The Child Heiress.
63
behaviour on the part of a lady of such exalted birth, the
sincerity of Mr. Brougham, the supposed feelings and
motives of the King, the effect which the proceedings
might have on public morality and loyalty, and twenty
similar demands, in a low, shrill voice, which inter¬
rupted all other conversation.
His lordship could see the clergy swallowing smiles
and looking at each other, and he felt more and more
keenly that this was not the most wholesome after¬
piece to his charge. He not only dreaded that the
Queen's trial might edge out the remembrance of his
monitions from the ingenuous minds of the assembled
flock, but he felt that the time was slipping away for
his own intended supplement. So he grew scarlet in
striving to parry the questions, and the more he parried
the more Miss Harriett pressed, until, some time after
his carriage had been announced, a glance at his
watch showed that he would be infallibly late at the
Lord-Lieutenant's, fifteen miles off, where a large
party of the principal people of the county had been
asked to meet him; All that was left to him was to
jump up, and very hastily take leave of the clergy in
words quite different from those which he had been
meditating, chiefly consisting, as they did, in some
excuses which everybody appreciated, as a flimsily
veiled reference to the Duchess's known ill-temper
when her company kept her exalted self waiting for
dinner.
Lucy Curteis's other guardian was the Squire's
second cousin and friend, Mr. Robert Featherston,
known all round the country as Bob Featherston.
We cannot better describe him than by saying that he
64
Strictly Tied Up.
was a younger counterpart of the Squire himself, born
in a later generation. The only difference was that
Mr.'Featherston had an occasional tang in his temper.
Besides, he was not so rich a man; and his residence,
Warbury Lodge, situated a few miles off, on the
outskirts of the principal town of those parts, was a
villa compared with Yaxley. Between the older and
the younger man there was deep and genuine, though
undemonstrative, English affection; and he received
his share of the charge of the young treasure as if she
were a gift from heaven. To be sure, if there was one
person whom he detested more than another, it was
that' old cat,' Miss Harriett; but he swallowed even
this aversion in view of his new responsibilities. He
was also trustee of the property, in concert with the
family lawyer, Mr. Swettenham; but the Squire
indicated that in this he desired his professional
adviser to have the ruling voice, although Featherston's
name was placed first. The property, as Mr. Swetten¬
ham was wont to boast, was c strictly tied up,' although
he declined to explain that it was so by the ordinary
settlement of a life interest to the young lady and to
her husband, with remainder to their son or sons, if
any, and failing them, to the daughters in succession.
Miss Harriett, from her thorough incompetency and
distaste for the office of an educator, proved to be a
less mischievous one than if she had been, with the
same intellect, just a little more conscientious and less
fussy. In plain English, she left her charge to run
wild ; and Lucy Curteis, contrary to what might have
been expected in a child so handled, proved to be not
so very bad a governess to herself. She had her
The Child Heiress.
65
father's robust constitution and equable temper; and
running about, as she did, in all weathers, she was the
picture of rustic health; and not so uncomely either
with her person of medium height and plumpness;
her oval face, slightly embrowned and ruddy withal;
mobile mouth, from which issued a voice which could
lead the hymn on Sunday and halloo the dogs on
Monday with the same clear, incisive ring; full eyes
of a light brown hue, which sparkled under eyebrows
clearly marked, without being thick; and clustering
hair unstained by any trace of red. She was a terrible
slattern, and the expostulatory ' Oh, Miss Lucy !'
' What a mess for a young lady to come home in!'
' How could you get your new frock so torn, Miss
Lucy V and similar objurgations, were daily heard, as
the merry child would bounce home, her inseparable
dog bounding by her side, after a cheery scramble
through some half-dozen hedges, and, very likely, a
quiet climb up an easy tree or two.
These hours of independence and muscular exertion
were Lucy's holidaj's, with no companions but her
own bright thoughts, sometimes inspired by the green
of the earth and the blue of the sky, sometimes by
fanciful reminiscences of the books which she had
been devouring, and often the spontaneous growth of
her innocent mind. When she made lier enforced
attendances upon her fretful and exacting aunt in the
drawing-room, she had to adapt herself to the mien
of simpering, sham-demure composure which in the
superannuated coquette's eyes was the manner of high
society. Sometimes Featherston would drop in, and
then she dared the certainty of the old hypocrite's
5
66
Strictly Tied Up.
scolding to laugh and talk in her own springy way.
In fact, her moral training could be summed up in two
words—neglect and nagging.
Partly from jealousy, partly out of dread of the
contingent trouble, and partly from the stingy calcula¬
tion of saving as much out of the allowance as she
could for her own selfish use, Miss Harriett absolutely
forbade the poor child the pleasure of any companion¬
ship. No playmate had she, either girl or boy; and
when she asked whether all children were, like her¬
self, brought up in solitude, she was pettishly bidden
to hold her tongue, and not meddle with what she
could not understand. A worse nature would have
been irretrievably ruined by such persistent and
heartless mismanagement. With Lucy, these early
sufferings—petty as they may appear to us elders, in
our supercilious retrospect at the feelings of childhood,
but very severe to the tender victim—were a provi¬
dential schooling for life's battle.
The girl was like the aromatic Eucalyptus, which,
as it grows apace, imbibes health-giving properties
from the deadly swamp in which it has been planted,
and fills the close air with the fresh fragrance of life
and sweetness. Reading, writing, and summing Lucy
Curteis somehow picked up; for a village schoolmaster
eked out his poor pittance by attendance at Yaxley,
not minding how he left his legitimate charges in the
enjoyment of holidays, the frequency of which would
nowadays have much disturbed the easiest going of
her Majesty's Inspectors. Luckily, too, the accident
of a gentlemanly old 6migr6 having settled at the
neighbouring town gave her a start in French of
The Child Heiress.
67
which her mother-wit took good advantage. It was
a particular amusement of the girl, in her teasing
moods, to jabber on to Miss Harriett in a macaronic
tongue which she pleased to call French. The
language of Paris would have been equally intelligible
to the puzzled impostor, whose vanity compelled
her to sham comprehension, as she nodded wildly
by way of answer, and fidgeted more and more
grotesquely under the hopelessness of her embarrass¬
ment. A vain little dancing-master, and his cross
wife, who ' professed' music, were frequently
at Yaxley, as Miss Harriett never troubled herself
to attend the lessons, and Featherston paid those
bills.
Meanwhile, the girl was gradually storing her mind
with information, acquired in the most irregular
fashion, but somehow sorted and warehoused in her
head. Her prime delight was the Morning Post,
which Miss Harriett ostentatiously took in for her own
sole reading, 'as young girls should never look at
newspapers,' but which the old lady invariably forgot,
and left lying about. She also ran wild over a goodly
store of the last century's standard authors, pompously
bound in morocco, with which the first Curteis had
lined the Long Gallery, thenceforward known as the
Library, and which, as was commonly believed, had
stood there absolutely unopened from the first day of
their installation, until his graceful little descendant
scrambled up the chairs which were stiffly ranged
against the bookcases, to pull down the dusty volumes.
Sometimes, when her newspaper told her of any new
book which promised to be interesting, she would coax
5—2
68
Strictly Tied Up.
Featherston to buy it for her; and though the good
man never could comprehend why his darling should
press for such a purchase, when she might have chosen
a trinket or a new silk dress, he was glad to assert
his guardian's authority by insisting on something
being done independent of Miss Harriett and her
peevish jealousy.
But more than books, old or new, did Lucy seek
and profit by the instructive conversation and wise
counsels of her refined and scholarly, though shy,
friend, Mr. Edlin, the Rector, a true representative of
the best school of the genuine Church of England,
embodied in that life of the country parsonage for
which no other land can show the equivalent.
Featherston, with all his profusion of self-forgetting
affection, had not the insight into human nature which
Mr. Edlin possessed; and Lucy instinctively chose the
Rector as her confidential counsellor in many little
troubles, careful as she was not to let her guardians
suspect any preference for the advice of the grave
but gentle clergyman.
Mr. Edlin's death, which happened just as she was
completing her sixteenth year, was a real misfortune,
as his quiet influence had been for many months the
chief obstacle to her aunt's silly determination, bounce-
ably proclaimed, to take her charge out at that
immature age. She would, by way of pretext,
pretend pity at the solitude of the girl whom she
had herself always restrained from companionship.
Every one, however, saw that her real motive was a
growing and, at last, uncontrollable hankering to
procure, as chaperon, the indulgence of another term
Only Sixteen.
69
of that dissipation from which, as she resentfully
discovered, she was, on her own account, being
excluded.
CHAPTER XI.
only sixteen.
Lucy, after all, was only a child, and a child, too, who
had never had a playmate, who never had been
allowed to join a children's party, and whose Christ¬
mas festivities had been restricted to the present
which Featherston never failed to bring to Yaxley.
Society was to her an unknown bliss, a fairyland
close by, but of which she had never yet descried the
bright reflection. A ball, as it had been described to
her, was lights, music, dancing, supper, and not the
marriage mart. So we must not blame the poor inex¬
perienced girl if she fell into her aunt's trap, and
seconded the unprincipled proposal with the im¬
petuosity of her eager disposition. Featherston did
not at all like what he called ' nursery gallivanting,'
but before that unwonted alliance between Miss
Harriett, whom, with occasional rebellions, he feared
and dreaded, and Lucy, whom he loved and spoiled,
he was utterly powerless. With a girl so unsophis¬
ticated, ball-going was a pleasure, not a business ; and,
provided a partner was chatty and active, he had no
difficulty in obtaining a dance from the good-tempered
damsel.
Of the successful number, one, by superior assurance
70
Strictly Tied Up.
and a knowledge of the world not possessed by the
home-trained youths from the surrounding parishes—
Captain Augustus Foulis, the brother Jack of whom
we have already heard—soon made himself conspicu¬
ous. This officer, who was quartered at the neigh¬
bouring depot, never missed a ball, and by unwearied,
equable attentions soon secured the unquestioned
position of being Miss Curteis's most regular partner.
Sometimes she was glad, sometimes she would have
preferred more variety; but, in one way or other,
Foulis was always foremost. Fie manoeuvred more
boldly than the rival beaux who fluttered round the
heiress, not only because he knew the game better, but
because he had a greater interest in winning it. There
was nothing at that time between him and beggary
except some sudden windfall; so he concentrated all
the energies of a cunning, bad nature on a venture
which he was well fitted to undertake. Augustus
Foulis could only be described as a paragon of badness
—a man in whom every evil quality kept every other
evil quality so well in check, that he had hitherto suc¬
ceeded in making the world content with hating him,
without giving it the opportunity of finding him out.
Foulis, as Foulis really was, would have been uni¬
versally cut; as he contrived to present himself, he
was only avoided in public, and cursed behind his
back. He knew the world's ill opinion of him, and
repaid it in kind as he swaggered on with his insolent
laugh and noisy obtrusiveness, cringing to grandees
and great ladies, jestingly familiar with girls, and
bullying general society with an affectation of military
hauteur.
Only Sixteen.
71
His method of courting Lucy was one of bold sim¬
plicity—to win the niece by making love to the aunt.
He soon discovered that Miss Harriett had, with
increasing years, only grown into an old girl, more
vain and more affected than in real girlhood; and, in
spite of her conventional subservience to the world's
codes of behaviour, hardly more capable, if temptation
should beset her, of controlling her passions than on
that memorable day when her brother was only just
able to prevent her elopement with the doctor's assist¬
ant by firing the blunderbuss over their heads. To
such a woman the amorous flattery of a showy, fluent
dandy, with his petty title and military swagger, was
irresistible ; and, as he further discovered, that, next to
love, rank stood most sacred in her eyes, his game was
plain. Lord Kilcormac had lately been laid up at
school with an alarming attack of measles or scarlet
fever; it was, therefore, very easy to insinuate that
the boy was but a puny bantling, that his constitution
was undermined, and his days already numbered;
while Lord Foulisville's own well-earned reputation
for fastness led up to the reasonable inference that
neither could his life be of very long duration. It was
also certain that for the few years at most, before he
could take corporate possession of Fontarabia Augustus
Foulis was an c honourable,' a prefix of much dignity
to Miss Harriett's vulgar mind.
In a word, Miss Harriett was fully persuaded that
the Captain had been first led to fix his regards upon her
niece from his appreciation of her own charms, and that
the idea of becoming her nephew was a powerful in¬
ducement for him to persevere, and also that her future
72
Strictly Tied Up.
loving nephew was destined soon to become an earl.
Lucy, clever beyond her year's in all which did not
concern society, was a perfect child, even for her age
of sixteen, in the hands of such a man. His swagger
imposed upon a girl to whom not only fashionable
society, but, until a few weeks before, even provincial
gaieties were an absolutely unknown thing; and the
showy novelty of his voluble and conceited tattle carried
her away. He was good looking in a vulgar way, and
she was too guileless and too ignorant to scrutinize his
professions of devotion when she had never before
heard the words of love from the lips of any man, or,
indeed, had any but the most childish idea of what
love meant. So pure was she that not even Miss Har¬
riett's vulgarly suggestive tattle, dinned as it was into
her ears, left a fleck upon the sweet unsuspicious inno¬
cence of her virgin mind. In fact, of man she knew
absolutely nothing, except so far as she could generalise
(which she never thought of doing), from Featherston,
Mr. Edlin, the old abbd who taught her French, and
the little Welshman from whom she learned dancing,
who, together with Mr. Arlett the doctor, were the
only five persons in all, claiming to be gentlemen, with
whom she had ever made a real acquaintance. Mr.
Swettenham she had sometimes gazed at with awe;
but the old bear, with his wig, his snuff-box, and his
slow, grating tone, was not a creature moulded to
inspire any other feelings than fright and aversion in
a joyous maiden of sixteen.
Miss Harriett encouraged the adventurer in his
advances, and snappishly ordered off one or two young
gentlemen of good birth but modest manners who had
Only Sixteen.
73
the presumption to look at her ward. So, in fact, poor
little Lucj7 had as much chance of escape as the mouse
would have of parting company with the cat which
was playing with it. One person only could have
saved her—her guardian, Featherston ; but Feather-
ston was found wanting in the hour of need, from the
very intensity of his loyal devotion and his chivalrous
appreciation of duty. In fact, this frank, boisterous,
unintellectual Squire, whose years could now be little
short of fifty, carried about with him a secret which
he would have suffered any torture rather than
divulge ; better have his tongue wrenched out by red-
hot pincers than utter such a blasphemy. Still, there
it was in his heart. As Lucy grew from a child
almost to being a woman, Featherston fell silently,
but desperately, in love with her. A more worldly
man would have said, ' Why not win the prize ? A
gentleman of general good repute, and of older lineage
than the Curteises, is a match whom she has no right
to refuse.' Featherston argued very differently; and
his soliloquies with his own heart, agonizing as they
were, always concluded with the decision that, placed
as he had been by her father in the room of a father
over Lucy, and knowing as he did, better than amy
man, except his co-trustee, how very advantageous in
the way of money a marriage with her would be, it
would be dastardly and base, and, in his view of
matters, almost incestuous, to seek her as his wife.
This conclusion cost him many a tear, which he took
much care to conceal, in the privacy of the night-
watches; for to be seen crying would, as Featherston
viewed matters, have been only less monstrous than to
74
Strictly Tied Up.
marry Lucy. But having once reached a clear con¬
viction, he stuck to it with the pertinacity of a hero.
He resolved to carry the secret with him to the grave,
and the stout old bachelor has never yet been untrue
to his determination.
But, by the strange irony of events, this very resolve
of the brave, good man, so magnificently self-denying,
led him to be Lucy's worst friend at a moment when,
had it not been for it, he might have saved her. He,
too, was deceived, though not completely, by the
audacious scamp; and although in the depths of his
honest heart he could not be satisfied that Foulis was
the man for Lucy Curteis, he stifled his suspicions of
him by arraying against them a more dreadful
suspicion of himself. ' Am I not,' he soliloquised,
' setting myself against her marrying this man because
I still hanker after marrying her myself ? He has had,
they say, a wild time of it; but dear little Lucy will
sober any man, and I cannot doubt but that he really
loves her. He can absolutely stand the old cat for
her sake. He comes of a fine old family too, and so he
ought to be a gentleman ; and the chances are, I
hear, that it won't be long before he's Earl of Foulis-
ville. It would be cruel and selfish to deprive Lucy
of such a chance, though she's only sixteen. Hang the
old cat for taking her out when she ought to have
been in the nursery !'
Thus crying down sense by affection and a false
feeling of duty, did Featherston consent to sacrifice
Lucy Curteis to Augustus Foulis. The mischief might
have been prevented if Swettenham could have pre¬
vailed in making Lucy a ward in Chancery, as he
The Girl Wife.
75
attempted to do shortly after the Squire's death.
He had succeeded in convincing Featherston of the
propriety of the step, but Miss Harriett, on its being
broached to her, put herself into so violent a rage
that the idea had to be abandoned.
CHAPTER XII.
the girl wife.
When Mr. Featherston had, unluckily, persuaded
himself to give his consent to the match, he resolved
that it was a first duty to explain to the child wife-
expectant her pecuniary situation. Well would it
have been for the prospects of her understanding her
own position if he had himself discharged the duty.
Ill-luck, however, led him to confide the intention to
the family lawyer, Mr. Swettenham. This gentleman,
who was the soul of punctiliousness and the pink of
honesty, at once drew himself up, and after swinging
the gold seals which heavily depended from his fob,
and taking a pinch of snuff, slowly rebuked the asto¬
nished guardian for his temerity.
' Mr. Featherston, you astonish me. You are, no
doubt, by her father's will, the guardian of the young
lady. Anything that affects her character, Mr. Feather¬
ston—any warning that can save her from the abyss
into which her giddy young feet may be hurrying her
—is yours, Mr. Featherston, to give. But I, Mr.
Featherston, am her adviser, and the adviser of your¬
self and of her other guardian, as I was of her lamented
76
Strictly Tied Up.
father. And remember, also, Mr. Featherston, when
the late Mr. Curteis appointed yourself and me as
trustees, he particularly explained that mine was to
be the ruling voice in the pecuniary affairs of the
young lady. That responsibility I can only fulfil on
the terms of that confidence which I have the right to
claim being fully and freely conceded to me. On me,
Mr. Featherston, devolves the duty of enlightening
Miss Curteis as to her property in possession, as well
as upon her reasonable expectations.'
Featherston quailed before the solemn monitor, and
left the task to him, while he merely presumed to
prepare Miss Curteis for the expected visitation. The
poor girl heard the news with no little trepidation, for
the few occasions on which she had been confronted
with Mr. Swettenham had been sufficient to inspire
her youthful nature with a dread for that respectable
but repellent individual, in favour of whom, unversed
as she was in affairs, she could recall nothing which
could provoke confidence.
Mr. Swettenham duly arrived, full of his great tale,
and prepared to deal it out like Rhadamanthus giving
sentence from his dusky throne. Conviction, not
imagination, made him an enthusiast for his profession.
In his eyes the prudent laws of real estate and settle¬
ment were transfigured into the likeness of a second
Decalogue, revealed on some insular Sinai for the
benefit of all generations of Englishmen. So completely
were they part of his own being that he could not
imagine anyone, even a miss in her teens, so crass, so
unpolished, or so wicked as not to appreciate the de¬
tails no less than the extent of the blessing. His
The Girl Wife.
77
conversation, when upon business, was an amalgam of
legal phrases strung together without the slightest
attempt to make the chaos of technical expressions
intelligible to the client, in whom ignorance of what
to his professional mind was the vulgar tongue was
inconceivable. That a girl of sixteen was not familiar
with the mysteries of tenant for life and remainder
man, of a term over, and of suffering a recovery, were
dark suspicions which no man had ever dared to sug¬
gest to this surly, faithful bull-dog. The neighbour¬
hood trusted in Swettenham's probity, knowledge,
and business-like capacity, while it dreaded the incubus
of his presence and the obscurity of his conversation;
so he had gone on managing their affairs by himself,
much as he wished, in the retirement of his dusty den,
into which even his old clerk, Marrable, never dared
enter without first tapping at the door. To his credit,
it must be added that there was no part of the country
in which there were so few lawsuits, for the various
controversies which ordinarily embitter neighbourhoods
were all judged in camera, and without appeal, in a
Vehmgericht, where the counsel for the plaintiff was
Swettenham, the counsel for the defendant Swetten-
ham also, and where Swettenham sat as judge and
jury.
Such was the awful personage whom Lucy was
bidden to confront, and to receive from him the most
important communication of her life, next to, and con¬
sequent on, Captain Foulis's declaration. She implored
her aunt to keep her company and assist her, but the
old lady unequivocally and crossly refused; for, in
fact, the awe of Swettenham was stronger in her than
78
Strictly Tied Up.
in the remaining entire country-side put together, not
only from the eternal antipathy which exists between
ponderosity with learning, and frivolity with ignorance,
but because she bore, deeply seared into her vindictive
mind, the recollection of the scolding which she had
received from the lawyer on the morning after she had
so nearly made her escape with the assistant apothe¬
cary. Her brother, totally unable to vituperate as he
felt that the occasion required, called in his adviser,
and with admirable effect. Between the overwhelming
array of legal terrors which Swettenham marshalled,
and the excruciatingly minute references to Rahab
and her profession, to the Prodigal, and to Esau's sale
of his birthright, which he scattered like armour-clad
parentheses, as he worked back to the stocks, the
ducking-stool, and the Assizes, the solemn pedant
pounded away till he succeeded in reducing the silly,
crushed butterfly to a condition of screaming, kicking
hysterics, from which she did n-ot completely recover
under ten days.
Perhaps his triumph was more exquisite, and Miss
Harriett's mortification more acute, because, although
the Squire was as ignorant and unsuspicious of the
fact as a three months' old babe, the attorney, for the
first and last time yielding to the promptings of Venus
backed as she seemed to be by those of Plutus, had, a
short time previously, proposed to the sister of his
principal patron, and had been rebuffed at the in¬
stigation, as he now realized, of that good-for-nothing
Mr. Leech. Mr. Swettenham was, of course, a much
younger man at that time, and in the intervening
years, though his energy of expression had been
The Girl Wife.
79
dulled, his gifts of amplification became even more
remarkable.
Lucy, thus left to herself, could only ask the old
gentleman to sit down, and submit herself to his
endless story, involved beyond comprehension in
episodes and amplifications, taken up at one point,
and dropped to be resumed at another, and then,
perhaps, started afresh at some still earlier stage, which
she had in the meanwhile quite forgotten; and all
cast in a language which she irreverently called
gibberish. All this flood of verbiage was so drearily
illustrated by jerks of the seals, so disgustingly inter¬
larded with huge pinches of strong snuff, that the
attention which at first she endeavoured to render as
a duty soon collapsed into the mechanical process of
letting words drop into one ear and pass out of the
other. She was just able to grasp a pleasant idea that
she would have a great deal of money, and that her
child, if she had one, would have a great deal after
her; but that all was 'strictly tied up'—an awful
condition of matters, which she hazily connected with
some form of imprisonment as the punishment for the
transgression of unknown and incomprehensible laws.
Dear old, affectionate Featherston lost no time in
riding over to Yaxley, and asking his darling child (as
he was wont to call Lucy) whether Swettenham had
made everything clear and plain. ' Perfectly so,'
she answered, in dread of another lecture. The honest
gentleman turned round and swallowed down a big
lump which he found swelling in his throat. As we
have said, though he had never revealed his secret to
any living soul, this noble fellow would have sacrificed
80
Strictly Tied Up.
possessions untold to have stood by lier side at the
altar, not as father, but as bridegroom. This was a
supreme moment. He was almost tempted to speak;
but he recalled the steadfastness of the promise which
he had made to himself to let the secret go down with
him to the grave. ' How could I,' he said to himself,
' standing, as I do, in place of her father ? And then
to think of her money. Fancy Bob Featherston
taking advantage of her innocence and filching her
inheritance ! The whole county would kick me and
spit on my worthless hide.' It was, as we have seen,
the strength of these feelings which made him consent,
without inquiry or conditions, to the marriage of the
child with a man of suspicious antecedents, and taken
upon his own account of himself. Featherston mis¬
trusted his own steadfastness, and dreaded that by
delay he would help on his own forbidden game.
Heed there was that he should put himself out of the
way of temptation. Vanity then stepped in and
suggested that it would be heroic to give to another
that peerless prize whom he had self-appreciation
enough to conceive he might have easily secured for
himself. So did Lucy's last plank drift away. Foulis,
having not a single farthing to put into settlement,
and being quite satisfied with the Squire's will,
declined giving Mr. Swettenham any work to do. On
Lucy's side, too, little was forthcoming which was not
in settlement. The annual savings were laid out in
the improvement of the estate to the visible benefit of
the rent-roll. In truth, the Captain sincerely dreaded
anything which might possibly lead to an investigation,
however superficial, of his own affairs. As he had
The Girl Wife.
81
secured Miss Harriett to his side; and as Featherston
rather sulkily declined to take the lawyer's part, Mr.
Swettenham could only acquiesce, while to his brother-
trustee he angrily expostulated,,c It's all very irregular.
Supposing Madam Harriett were to drop dead of tight-
lacing without making a will, the Captain would pouch
all her savings.' But to the general world he was
dumb as death, and met every impertinent cross-
questioner with an unchanging f All is right.'
We shall not describe the wedding. The chief
difficulty was in finding the two bridesmaids whom
social usage then required. The ceremony was hand¬
some, but commonplace, and moderately merry to all,
except those only two persons whose enjoyment was
of permanent consequence. These found themselves
launched on a short honeymoon, which had hardly
lasted three days before the mask was dropped from
the Captain's brazen countenance. As if directly
accredited from below, Foulis set to work continuously
and systematically to pollute the mind and undermine
the faith of that tender, loving, reverential child who
had so unhappily become his possession. Probably it
was a physical impossibility on his part not to do so.
Love her, or anyone else, he could not do; but he
could appreciate the possession of a desirable property;
and all that to his degraded nature was wanting to
make Lucy desirable was that she should be like
himself—that she should wallow with him in his foul¬
ness, and abet his rogueries. Fortunately for her soul's
peace, he set to work so abruptly, and with such
cynical clumsiness, that he did not succeed even in
stirring up her alarmed curiosity; all that she grasped
6
82
Strictly Tied Up.
was the shocking discovery that her husband was a
very wicked man, and that his conversation turned on
inconceivable topics of which she had never known
anything, and with which she had no desire to make
acquaintance. Soon she learned to throw herself into
the stupor of a feigned attention, while her poor
thoughts travelled afield over the recollections of
forfeited happiness, as Captain Foulis went on
dropping his devil's lessons into ears which he vainly
imagined stood open to the hideous lore.
The honeymoon barely lasted a month, and they
had been back some two or three days at Yaxley, when
Lucy awoke one morning with strange feeings of sick¬
ness and lassitude. Foulis burst roughly into her
room, booted and spurred, and announced that a
steeplechase between himself and a brother-officer,
which his marriage had interrupted, was coming off
that day. Mrs. Foulis at that moment craved for
companionship, even the companionship of Captain
Foulis, and she implored him pathetically for once to
postpone his pleasures to her distress. With a sneer,
a laugh, and an oath, he refused, and bounced out of
the room. His poor wife's day of solitude, of tears
and pain, was closed in the chill eventide by his
return home a corpse, with dislocated neck.
Widow and Mother.
83
CHAPTER XIII.
widow and mother.
A shock such as a honeymoon terminating in widow¬
hood had well-nigh proved fatal to a girl-woman so
young, and at the first moment of life's most critical time.
In some respects it was more terrible than if the dead
man had left behind him any one lovable reminiscence.
Above all the most torturing recollections of shattered
felicity, the pagan poet's touching saying, ' How much
better is it to be thinking of thee than to be associating
with those who are left!' asserts itself with double
emphasis in the Christian's heart; for at the end of the
vista, distant but bright, shines the hope of re-association.
But when such as Eoulis was has gone away, and is no
more seen, the intrusive thought, ' But where to V
stifled as it may be, and run away from, never can be
exorcised.
Lucy heard the door-bell ring violently, ran to the
hall, and saw, without preparation, the hideous sight,
as two rough men laid upon the floor the dead body
of her husband, with its face of a ghastly pallor,
distorted into a horrible grin, as if the shadows of a
great cloud had passed over the sufferer's mind. One
of the yokels screamed, without looking at whom he
was accosting, ' Where's the mistress ?' She heard no
more, but fell down heavily in a fit, and remained for
some days insensible; then acute delirious fever
supervened. Slowly brought back to life and thought,
b—2
84
Strictly Tied Up.
she still had before her the long dragging months of a
bad pregnancy, unrelieved by any of those sweet con¬
solations of a husband's or a mother's love which
lighten and compensate for those protracted sufferings,
which go for so much in the great mystery of human
life, when even the presence of pain is so sacredly
delicate a confidence as the pledge and seal of the
truest and most complete love. The pain was hers
now most intensely, but the love had never really
been bestowed upon Lucy ; while he who should have
proffered it had gone away beyond the possibility of
personal atonement. The conduct of silly Miss
Harriett—who had worked herself into a condition of
love for Foulis which was hardly so much indecent
and unnatural as absolutely imbecile—was marked
with such an absolute want of sense or consideration,
that the quiet Featherston had to interfere and warn
her not to molest the gentle sufferer. But, even in
spite of his kind help, the disappointed old crone's
fatuity added terribly to the unhappiness of the child
with whose prospects she had so unjustifiably
tampered. Of Lucy's confinement, which happily
occurred after seven months, all that need be said is
that it was as bad a one as was barely consistent with
the absence of acute danger. She was herself practi¬
cally insensible for some little time before, during, and
after it; and all through her life she declared that
upon her recovery she was for some time totally
unable to account for her new acquisition of a little
girl. There was she, and there the infant; and that
was all she knew.
In fact, by a merciful process of compensation, her
Widow and Mother.
85
early convulsions and insensibility, her fever, then the
preoccupations of her pregnancy, and, finally, the
incidents of her confinement, all conduced to a remark¬
able psychological result — that of blurring, in a
memory otherwise clear, discriminative, and retentive,
the one hideous reminiscence of Augustus Foulis. He
was to Lucy ever afterwards as a nightmare which
the waker cannot forget, and not a man with whom
she had consorted. She recollected that she had had
for a few days a husband, and that that husband,
during those few days, was associated with every
recollection of cynical unkindness, foul of speech, loath¬
some in his suggestions, an infidel, a blasphemer, and
a master of mean and teasing persecution. But she
could not help looking upon this tyrant and his victim
in a strange ab extra fashion. She entered internally
into the poor girl's wrong, and shuddered at the re¬
collections of the persecutor; but still that girl
appeared before her as a strange person. She knew
that she was now Lucy Foulis, and had once been
Lucy Curteis; but, in the continuous retrospect of her
life, this was a pure and simple change of name, for
she could never quite connect the girl who had been
an unwedded Lucy Curteis, and who had now become
Lucy Foulis, leading the life of a spinster, with this
ephemeral wife. She knew all about her; she realized
her sufferings, for they passed before her eyes like a
moving panorama; but they seemed rather the
sufferings of a being with whom she had some strange
mystical relations than those of her own veritable,
identical self.
Our Scotch readers, if we have any, may perhaps
86
Strictly Tied Up.
stop us to ask how this could be, with the daughter
there to prove the marriage. Of course her reason
told her all along that this duality of existence was an
hallucination. But reason is one thing, and feelings
are another, and in this case the dreams engendered
by Lucy's imagination were far more pleasant than
the facts which her reason compelled her to accept.
So she never made any serious attempt to banish them
from her mind. In fact, with guileless absence of
logic the widowed matron hugged the phantom of
continuous spinstership, and thought on Meriel as the
fairy child laid in the cradle.
Gradually, Mrs. Foulis's naturally magnificent con¬
stitution came to her aid. So, feeling strong and well
again, the mother of a girl to whom she was both
father and mother, and owner of a property for which
she acknowledged herself responsible to God and man,
she seriously determined to lay down and carry out a
course of life of which the guiding principle was to be
the good of that Yaxley from which she never desired
to be parted, and with which, in her bright fancy,
mother and daughter were to be for ever identified.
When a house has to be set in order, the first thing
which the wise housewife undertakes is to sweep out
the rubbish ; so Miss Harriett had to be disposed of.
This was, fortunately, a very easy process. Chelten¬
ham, with its cards and gossip, had long been the
earthly paradise of the gay spinster's dreams; so a
generous allowance, in supplement of her patrimony,
enabled the lady to pitch her tent in that happy land.
As she fell at this point out of the current of the
events in which we are interested, we have omitted to
Widow and Mother.
87
inform ourselves how long her valuable life was spared
to her fellow-creatures. Fortunately, she was no great
scholar, and as writing letters was always a trouble to
her, which she made sure would not prove remunera¬
tive by eliciting reciprocal gossip, she early dropped a
correspondence with a niece whom she envied too
much to care for.
Relieved, as she was, from her giggling, nagging
incubus, Lucy was at liberty to regulate her own
concerns in her own way. She, first of all, determined
to cut—her petticoat, as we suppose we must call it—
according to her cloth. She must find out what she
had to spend, and then spend within its limits. A
model heroine would have summoned Swettenham,
and bidden him bring to her the rental, and after a
learned discussion on stock, patent manures, land
tenure, and the custom of the manor, have commanded
him to raise the rents in compliance with the then
state of the money market. But Lucy, at seventeen,
was not a heroine, only a girl-woman—not only clever,
good, and practical, but modest; while her modesty
took the unusual form of depreciating her sex's
capacity in the wider spheres of business. Law and
land agency were, as she fancied, for men to under¬
stand and carry out, though women might be
trusted to make a good spending use of the accruing
income.
So she did what was most natural, and very in¬
effectual, and resolved to talk over her affairs with
that trustee whom she loved, and of whom she was
not afraid. We have said enough about Featherston
to show that he was muddle-headed on legal matters ;
88
Strictly Tied Up.
although, for once in his life, at the promptings of
affection, he had screwed his courage up to the point
of offering, and had prepared, that which really would
have been a far more useful explanation to Lucy of
her situation, unencumbered with technical expres¬
sions, than the one with which she had been actually
inflicted. The disappointment of having subjected
himself for nothing to the mental strain of the needful
preparation, added to the mortification which he felt
at Swettenham's unmannerly snub, which, though
more than a year old, still made him smart as if it had
been inflicted on the day before. Certainly, with un¬
diminished interest in Lucy's welfare, he felt himself
rather put on one side in all that related to her money
matters. Besides this, his guardianship had ceased,
though not his trusteeship. It was difficult to shut
up Featherston, but when the cloture was effected it
was a very fast one. However, when Mrs. Foulis sent
him a note on a little piece of paper, with more black
margin than white centre, begging him to come over
for a chat, he set spurs to his horse, little forecasting
what the subject of the interview was to be.
Self-Reliance.
89
CHAPTER XIY.
self-reliance.
Featherston could have sunk into his boots, he after¬
wards said, at the sight of the child in its widow's
cap—so calm so pale, with such bright eyes, and a
voice which, with all its girlish ring, had gained a
new intensity of pathetic expression. Lucy, totally
ignorant as she was, alike of his life's secret and of
the sore which the blundering attorney had set up in
the honest fellow's heart, said, with a sweet, sad smile,
' Guardian dear, I have sent for you to ask a couple of
questions.'
' Ask two thousand.'
'Well, then, question number one is, how much a-
year have I got ? And question two is, whether I
understood Mr. Swettenham correctly when he told me
that my fortune was strictly tied up; and what does
" strictly tied up" mean V
This was fairly taking the aggrieved old friend at
his tenderest point; so he satisfied himself by replying
with forced cheeriness, ' Of course, strictly tied up, as
old Swettenham explained. It is all yours for life,
and then dear little Merrie's—and not less than
(we forget how many) thousands a year.'
This careless assurance, given in a tone which
implied that he knew everything, from the mouth of
the one man to whom she really looked for counsel
and information, stereotyped a misapprehension on
which the widow was basing her whole prospective
90
Strictly Tied Up.
plan of life. Featherston would have cut out his
tongue rather than have misled the darling little
woman who might have been his wife, and was now
to him as a daughter ; but, as we have indicated, he
was, however warm-hearted and right-minded, not a
profound nor a clear thinker. It did not occur to him
that in Lucy's short, gently put questions a world of
meaning lay concealed, and a whole catechism of
further interrogatories wrapped up. Besides, he had
not only been put out by Swettenham's assumption,
but humbled by the intervening marriage. He
reproached himself for having allowed it, and was
sulky when he should have been confidential. ' How
could it have been,' he implicitly argued to himself,
' that, bear as Swettenham is, and brute as that
Captain turned out, they should not have made it all
clear to her, when all their interests had become
identical V
So it came about that solitary, helpless Lucy was
quite misled by Featherston's offhand assertion, and
lived on in the undoubting idea that, come what
would, Merrie, and none but Merrie, could ever succeed
to her possessions. No statesman had then arisen to
prove to her that, in taking property from her grand¬
father, Merrie would be sinning against God and
nature. Had any man suggested this to Lucy, we fear
that she would have fancied he was making a bad
joke, or had taken leave of his reasoning powers.
It was not long before old Mr. Swettenham died,
and his business passed by purchase to a young gentle¬
man who had been educated in a first-class London
firm. Mr. Musgrave stood, both socially and pro-
Self-Reliance.
91
fessionally, on a higher level than his provincial
predecessor, but he had paid his way as a stranger to
his practice; while the unwritten traditions of the
Curteis clientele had ever since the Turkey merchant
settled at Yaxley attached to successive Swettenhams.
That family had now died out, and so had also the
name of Curteis, while to the new-comer Mrs. Foulis
was but one of many clients; and, on her side, she
never thought of consulting the London-bred solicitor
about the doings of people to whose personality she
knew that he was a perfect stranger.
Stranger, however, as he was, Mr. Musgrave proved
himself a far more competent and enterprising trustee
of Mrs. Foulis's interests than his square-toed, jog-trot
predecessor ; for he was hardly in the saddle before he
discovered that, under an outlying farm in a more
northerly Midland county, lay a rich store of iron and
coal. By opening the find to a judicious and safe
speculation, as well as by general enterprise, the
lawyer gradually raised the income of what had been
a neglected portion of the young widow's estate to
such an extent that, when the Countess was planning
the adoption of Meriel, her sister-in-law was enjoying
each year about half as many thousands as Mr. Curteis
had reckoned hundreds, and this with the certainty of
further annual increment. Previously to Mr. Mus-
grave's stewardship, people used to talk of ' Mrs.
Foulis, the widow, you know, with that nice property
gradually the Midland counties recognised the presence
of 'the great Mrs. Foulis of Yaxley.' The distance
between Mrs. Foulis and her faithful agent was not
from ingratitude on her side, but simply from the
92
Strictly Tied Up.
lady's habits and ignorance of the ways of business,
and the gentleman's proud susceptibility. Featherston
ought to have advised her better, but he hated the
whole race of lawyers.
These incidents resulted in a curious anomaly.
Mrs. Foulis developed into a brisk and careful woman
of business, within her appointed sphere of home
responsibilities, while she vaguely grasped the
machinery of the transactions which lay a little beyond
her familiar horizon. In all matters of account merely
involving the application of the four rules, she was
quick and accurate. She kept a bountiful table, but
the average of meat per week, calculated by pounds
and heads, was low and uniform. More lengths of
gravel walks were swept by fewer hands than in the
showy pleasure-grounds of her distant cousin, the
Earl—now again, as his great and her great-great¬
grandfather had done, combining the personal dignity
of Lord-Lieutenant with his peerage and possessions.
But when it came to law or Bank of England work
she was fairly dazed. It was not that she was stupid,
but simply that she was prosperous. A week's
cramming would have imbued her with all the juris¬
prudence which a squiress could require. But, clever,
honourable, though not very companionable, Mr.
Musgrave saved her all practical trouble of managing
her patrimony, and never pressed her to submit to an
audit. The sum totals of remittances which he made
periodically to her banker, taught her nothing except
her own prosperity. So she lived on, without her
enjoyment of ' Paul Ferrol' being marred by the
preposterous absurdity of the trial scene.
Self-Reliance.
93
In fact, talking of herself as a young lady, and
encouraging her friends to do the like, had become an
habitual characteristic of Mrs. Foulis's frock-dress life,
while she would laughingly say that she was sure she
wanted a sheep-dog much more than Becky Sharp
ever could have done. At length, some of her more
matter-of-fact neighbours took this persiflage seriously ;
as they observed the deepening of Mrs. Foulis's con¬
scientious and consistent course of religious life, in
accordance with the wise practical system of the
Prayer Book, which she exemplified in the new church
raised at her sole, unstinted cost at her gate, not
without the regrets of the foundress at parting from
the old mother church of the parish, very differently
served as it was from what it had been in good Mr.
Edlin's time. Certain village busybodies accordingly
developed a myth that the Squiress of Yaxley, whose
tastes and principles they neither appreciated nor
sympathized with, lay under some vow of spiritual
obedience secretly made ' to the Cardinal,' including,
of course, an obligation of perpetual celibacy. These
stories sometimes amused Mrs. Foulis, and sometimes
they vexed her ; but most generally she took the wise
view that it was a matter of course that, as a well-
governed and constitutional commonwealth, Yaxley
must possess its local opposition, which in no respect
fell behind the mighty oppositions of the great world
in its exertions to keep the ruling powers up to their
professions, by blackening their characters, impugning
their motives, misrepresenting their actions, and, to
speak generally, giving them the universal lie.
This opposition was created and headed by—if not.
94
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rather, composed of—Mrs. Rees and Miss Turner.
Mrs. Rees' late husband was a clergyman who had
succeeded Mr. Edlin in the Rectorship. His tenure
of the living did not exceed seven or eight years,
but it was long enough to leave behind it a result
little intended by himself; as it was his cold-blooded
neglect of his sacred duties, if not of those decent
conventionalities to which most clergymen, however
remiss, are wont, in their own interests, to pay
some respect, which finally drove Mrs. Foulis to sever her
life-Ions connection with the mother church, and con-
o '
struct that beautiful district one, the development
of which—with its parsonage, its schools, and its
beneficent institutions—thenceforward became one
of her chief occupations and most cherished plea¬
sures.
The arrangements were made with all delicate care
for Mr. Rees' feelings, and attention to his material
interests; while the ostensible reason put forward
—namely, the long distance of uneven ground lying
between the house and the old church—was more
than ample justification for the procedure, which
ought, indeed, to have been taken long before, but
for two reasons—that Mr. Edlin was Rector, and that
Miss Harriett was guardian. None the less, however,
did Mr. Rees conceive a bitter and unreasonable
grudge against the Squiress, of which his widow
showed herself the faithful inheritress. Miss Turner's
animosity was of a rather long standing, reaching
back, as it did, to Miss Harriett's retreat to Chelten¬
ham. She had been the congenial confidante and
gossip of that lady, and she resented her patroness's
Self-Beliance.
95
departure as a personal and intended insult to herself.
She was poor, and she felt the loss of the luncheons
and dinners at Yaxley ; and as she was a bore, she
never found any second person to seek out her com¬
pany. Mrs. Rees, more clever, more malicious, and
better off than Miss Turner, was ceaselessly vigilant
in preventing the lonely spinster from establishing
herself as her trencher-friend, while never scrupling
to use her cackling tongue as a public instrument of
her own animosity.
Of old, the two hated each other, and their present
alliance against the common foe, Mrs. Foulis, was
strictly limited to a desperate attempt to ruin her in
the estimation of the neighbourhood by insinuations and
misrepresentations levelled against those good works
in which she was spending herself for those spiritual
and material interests of all, to whom she presented
herself as a missioner of peace and good-will. It
must not be supposed that either lady had a natural
bias for theology. If they could have ferreted out and
nursed some nice little piece of scandal, they would
have understood far better how to work it, and far
more keenly enjoyed the sport. But Lucy was invari¬
ably and provokingly circumspect. Once, indeed,
they fancied they had a great chance, when the first
incumbent of the new church, a relation of Feather-
ston's mother, whom Mrs. Foulis, in her good nature/
had overpersuaded herself to appoint, abruptly
resigned. To fill his place, she recalled to the
neighbourhood a clergyman whom in his last days
Mr. Edlin used to describe as the best curate he
ever had. Mr. Lidyard was naturally a frequent
96
Strictly Tied Up.
visitor at his patroness's house, and the old ladies
whispered, ' The first love, you know, before the
Captain cut in;' and Miss Turner would add, 'Poor
dear Miss Harriett! she had her eyes about her,
she had.' As, however, the demure young man spent
his first holiday in a visit to his former chief in
Cornwall, from whose vicarage he returned not alone,
and still was as welcome as before at Yaxley, the
discomfited conspirators vowed everlasting vengeance
against the misleading priest, and henceforward
concentrated their spite on Mrs. Foulis's religion as
the most vulnerable point. Again, their hopes revived
on the early death of Mrs. Lidyard, but the silent
grief of the widower abashed even their impertinent
inventiveness.
CHAPTER XY.
growing up.
' Didn't you see it ?' once asked Mrs. Rees of Miss
Turner, the morning after they had both been dining
with Mr. Rees' far different successor, Archdeacon
Dymoke, to feast the opening of a school to which
Mrs. Foulis had been a bountiful benefactor.
' See what V
' Why, Mrs. Foulis's hair shirt! As I am a living
woman, this is the third or fourth time I've seen it
working and rucking up under her dinner-gown.'
'She should not wear low dresses; that's what I
say. Let her muffle up like a nun, and whip herself.'
Growing Up.
97
' Well, now, I don't agree at all. When a lady is
asked to meet ladies, she should dress as a lady; let
alone her fads and her doldrums. It isn't civil to the
company she's in to come like a guy, and tell her beads
in Christian company.'
' Don't you see the difference, my dear ? You and
I may expose our persons as much as we like, and no
one can say but it's quite proper,' squeaked Miss
Turner to her gossip, whose beefy skin was bursting
with unwholesome fat; ' but when a woman is a nun,
she should dress as a nun. That's my opinion ; and I
don't care for any Pope or any Cardinal, or for Lidyard,
who's as bad as the Pope.'
' Perhaps her confessor makes her dress like a lady
to throw dust in our eyes. I always said there was
something very sly in that Lidyard.'
'Then he should make her cut her hair shirt low.
But these men don't know much of women's dresses.'
' Humph! How can you tell that ? But isn't it
dreadful—Mrs. Foulis, with her pride and her money,
her coals and her flannels, coming down upon us with
her monks and her friars ; and that Archdeacon, who's
eating Protestant bread, backing her up ? Do you
know,' continued Mrs. Bees, in a lower voice, and with
her brows sternly knitted, ' I've been told Dr. Arlett's
wife has taken to going to church of week-days V
' Poor Dr. Arlett! To think his domestic happiness
should be so broken up; and they were so comfort¬
able.'
'Well, Madam Foulis never shall make me kiss the
Pope's great toe.'
' Nasty old man ! I should think not!'
98
Strictly Tied Up.
Mrs. Rees felt she had made a great score by her
ingenious discovery of the hair shirt, and she followed
with a glance of conscious triumph the unlovely figure
of the soured virgin, breaking into that peculiar trot
which showed when she was on any malicious errand.
She was right in her guess that Miss Turner was
making for Mrs. Arlett's cosy cottage, in hopes of
finding her counting her beads, or flagellating herself
with a knotted scourge, or kneeling before some graven
image. She was much disappointed at coming upon
the worthy lady in a holland undress, somewhat hot
and very dishevelled, pouring out tea and spreading
bread with raspberry jam, for the benefit of her chubby
progeny, the youngest of whom was keeping his sixth
birthday. As Miss Turner had naturally no great
affection for the honest matron, and as she suddenly
remembered that her account with the doctor was still
unsettled, she adroitly took refuge in the extempore
but plausible lie that she had just recollected it was
sweet little Jemmy's birthday, and had dropped in to
wish joy; and so beat a rapid retreat, leaving Mrs.
Arlett considerably puzzled at the unexpected outburst
of neighbourly and well-informed affection from one
between whom and herself had always existed a tacit
antipathy.
In the meanwhile, as the iron-works and the col¬
lieries yielded more and more income, so grew the
sum total of Mrs. Foulis's pious munificence; and,
hand in hand with her offerings to God, increased her
gifts to man. If every labourer's child on her estate
received its lessons of abstract morality in church and
at the school, the practical morality of the new cot-
Growing Up.
99
tages, with their three bedrooms, with which she
covered the estate, duly supplemented the voice of
vicar and school-teacher. Mr. Lidyard might often
be closeted with her on some question regarding the
choir, but he was generally followed by Dr. Arlett with
his report of the cottage hospital.
All Mrs. Foulis's equable persistence in good works,
no less than the malicious tattle spread abroad against
her—the picture and the caricature of Lucy's calm life
—combined in strengthening the general conviction
that it was morally impossible that anything could
stand between Miss Meriel and the succession, except
her not living long enough to come into it. But the
person who should have believed upon the authority
of Mrs. Bees and Miss Turner that the good little
young-lady widow was an austere, morose devotee
would have been found ludicrously in the wrong by
the evidence of the entire neighbourhood. There was
but one opinion beyond the Bees-Turner coterie, and
that was that Yaxley was the most cheery house to
lunch at, to waste an afternoon at, or to sleep at, in
all the country-side. The garden seemed always
bright, with its Turkey carpet of flowers, chosen for
colour, smell, and foliage, and not for the lateness of
their introduction or the uncouthness of their names;
and the thymey turf was always rebounding fragrantly
from the passer's tread.
Luncheon with Mrs. Foulis meant house and home
to acquaintances to drop in, with the certainty of a
genial greeting, sufficiency of sustenance, and perfect
liberty to amuse themselves or go away. A more
formal garden-party now and then served as a rally;
7—2
100
Strictly Tied Up.
and the hostess's playfully confessed inability to
recollect the laws of croquet, then so popular, from
teatime one night till the following breakfast, was no
restraint to those whose memory for that athletic
sport was more robust. On one point she was stern.
Whenever a neighbouring beau approached her with
a pretty suggestion of the popularity which would
certainly attend the institution at Yaxley of a branch
of the county Archery Club, he would be commanded
to go and learn, like a man, to handle his rifle. Of the
poultry, and the turkeys, and the ducks, and the pigs,
of which Yaxley and its lady were justly proud, it is
not for us to speak ; their merit stands on record in
the books of more than one Agricultural Society.
Sometimes of a winter's evening, after Meriel had
gone to bed, Mrs. Foulis, sitting alone in the half-
lighted expanse of her beloved library, would put her
feet on the fender and ask herself whether, with all
the hospitality which it was her delight, no less than
her duty, to offer, and with all the impartial accessi¬
bility which she consistently cultivated, and which
made her (though she hardly realized it) the first
favourite of all her neighbourhood, she was not still,
in some of the highest aspects of life, the same solitary,
self-communing orphan as she had been in those young
days when, driven back on her own thoughts, she
stood on the chair to pull down the books now around
her, or roamed over the fields alone, in defiance alike
of nurse and aunt. She could not now even enjoy
Mr. Edlin's conversation ; while, excellent as her own
clergyman was, he was not the ripe scholar the old
Rector, his former chief, had been.
Growing Up.
101
Her mind had expanded till her appetite after
knowledge was in excess of what she knew in a
definite and systematic shape. She was decidedly a
well-informed woman, but much of her most valuable
information consisted in knowing how many things
there still were with which she ought to make herself
familiar. But she feared that, in order to do this, it
would be even more important to make the acquaint¬
ance of men than of books. Constantly, as she read
her paper or her review, she would come across the
name of some one who had made a great name for
himself, and whom society loved to honour, and she
would think, ' Why don't I, why won't I, know him ?
How many hundreds are there, without a tithe of my
material advantages, who find it so easy to live in
constant familiarity with the powers of the earth,
while I can only read of them!' The recollection of
practical duties to be recorded for the morrow's tale of
work would then crop up in her cheerful mind; she
would resume her reading at the point where the
name of note had set her wool-gathering, and her
honest face would resume its habitual gentle smile.
But still this orphan widow of a few days' marriage
carried with her the doom of the intellectual solitude
which the stupid selfishness of her aunt and the
brutality of her husband had pronounced against her.
The parties in Lady Foulisville's drawing-room at
which she had been present when in London gave her
no comfort; and the manifest repulsion between the
patronized savants and all who belonged to the
patronizing hostess, seemed to her only to make the
distance greater between intellect and the woman
102
Strictly Tied Up.
■who would be known as Lady Foulisville's sister-in-
law.
' When I go to town,' she would reflect, ' to take
Meriel out, people will ask who is that woman with
the country-looking girl, and they will then hear that
her mother is the widow of Foulisville's brother, and
that will settle my account; though the girl's money
will, I dare say, give her a start. Heaven grant it is
one of which I can approve!'
So everything about Lucy Foulis continued to renew
its cheerful youth, tenderly fostered by her gentle
presence, all except her favourite animals, and upon
them the hand of time pressed heavier and heavier.
The Angora cat still flashed its blue eye and curved
its plume-like tail; but, instead of bounding from
carpet to table, and from table to bureau, would stiffly
hobble about as one sore tried with rheumatism. The
dear old dog, who used to gallop before pony or
phaeton, now clung with increasing tenacity to the
sheepskin before the fire, which everyone learned to
regard as his exclusive possession. Merciful in its
mystery is that dispensation of Providence which has
allotted shortness of days to household darlings; for
were their span of life to run parallel with that of
their masters, many a sensitive soul might be diverted
from a course of manly usefulness by the dumb, irre¬
sistible fascination beaming from the ageing eye of his
coeval companion. As things are, each pet—as in a
few years, which may have made no sensible change in
his mistress's or master's consciousness of powers, it
runs through its seven ages—is a living monition of
mortality, teaching a lesson often more sharp than the
Growing Up.
103
dread of ridicule may lead the pupil to confess, but a
lesson absolutely bearable by all but flabby, maudlin
hearts. But let the man fancy his favourite dog a
puppy when he was a child, frisky in his college days,
mature when he was mature, and, in extreme decrepi¬
tude, dying as it feebly licked the half-paralyzed hand
of its aged widower master—and then reason out, if
he can, the impossible conditions of such an order of
domestic life.
In the meanwhile the great inevitable change in
Lucy's household had all but reached the term of its
accomplishment. Meriel, the baby, had grown into
the child in the nursery, then passed into the girl in
the school-room, and was now on the point of bursting
on the world—the young lady in the drawing-room.
She was her father's child in cunning, and her
mother's sad pregnancy was stamped upon her
character. Of Foulis or of Curteis there was no trace
in her appearance, while her thin, undersized figure
and stooping shoulders recalled her valetudinarian
grandmother. From her, too, she inherited the un¬
usual combination of a long chin and a pug nose,
black beady eyes, uneasily twinkling, and a querulous
voice. To the same source might, no doubt, be
attributed a petty, timid provincialism of aim, which
marked all her ideas and actions. Solitary in the
midst of apparent sociability as her mother was, her
sympathies embraced a wide circle: while to her
wicked father the confinement of a regular country
life was that most dreadful of anticipations against
which he was plotting when the horse threw him
over its neck. Mrs. Foulis loved her daughter as of
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Strictly Tied Up.
duty and necessity, and Meriel was not openly
stubborn or ungrateful: but between the two natures
there was fixed a deep, broad gulf, of which the
measure had never been consciously taken by the
sanguine, loving mother. Lucy never would formulate
to herself that she did not possess Meriel's confidence,
but she always unconsciously acted for herself in
a way which would have been impossible to so
affectionate a heart which had been met half way
by a confiding child.
CHAPTER XVI.
the invitation.
Neither Lord nor Lady Eoulisville, though much
pressed to come, had been present at the marriage of
Augustus; for the quarrel between the Earl and
his brother was then at its hottest, and the Captain's
letter announcing his good fortune, which he had
designed to be playfully affable, appeared defiant
and insolent to his jealous and irritated kinsman.
Even his cynical nature had for the instant been
upset by the sudden change from duns and penury
to a large and assured income ; and the terms in
which he declared his own good luck, and gloated over
the social position of his future helpmate, was taken
as veiled sarcasm by the cruelly pressed lord, whose
only matrimonial fortune had been a very pretty face,
the charms of which were for the moment much
overcast by importunate demands from a whole clan
The Invitation.
105
of Driscolls, who had mustered from the farm-houses
and village shops of County Limerick.
The persona] acquaintance of the Countess and
Lucy commenced at Meriel's christening, when, with
much moral courage and abundant tears, the widow
decided that, a Foulis as her daughter was, it would
be right to invite a lady of unblemished character—
wife, too, of the head of the family—to be one of the
godmothers. It was very painful to the young and
shattered recluse to have to play hostess to a strange
great lady, but yet she was sure that duty compelled
the exertion. Miss Harriett, only too elated at becom¬
ing co-sponsor with a countess, warmly seconded
the idea ; and Featherston, who was to be godfather,
said that nobody but his little darling would have ever
hit upon so admirable an idea. Lady Foulisville accord¬
ingly came to Yaxley, and she appeared there at her
best. She was really touched by the desolate state
and sweet resignation of the lovely child-widow. The
na'ive inexperience of Lucy's demeanour gave proof
of an inbred gentility, which extorted the unconscious
respect of the better drilled but really more coarse
temperament of her guest, who, in becoming a countess,
had never ceased to be a Driscoll in masquerade.
Even the external beauty and brightness of the
surroundings, of which she had formed no definite
conception, exaggerated themselves to Delicia's Irish
imagination, contrasted as they were with the lone¬
liness of the owner.
This brief meeting did not result in any close
intimacy between the sisters-in-law, but it created
reciprocal kindly feeling. Delicia, swayed by her
106
Strictly Tied Up.
better nature, had become heartily ashamed of Captain
Foulis previously to his marriage. Whatever may
have been her faults, she never had any inclination to
debauchery or to pecuniary dishonesty, and his in¬
famous character stood revealed to her, while he still
trafficked on the friendship of his coarse-minded and
hardly half reformed brother. His quarrel with Lord
Foulisville arose from no reaction of moral feeling on
the part of the Earl, but simply from the discovery that
Jack was swindling him, and had, indeed, so gossip
said, forged his name. There was still some com¬
munity of affection between the lord and the lady, and
she heartily took her husband's part.
So, when she learned the particulars of the unfor¬
tunate marriage, she could not be too sympathetic or
enthusiastic over the girl, so young, so lovely, so inno¬
cent, as she heard, trapped into a hateful marriage with
a scoundrel, and so soon widowed in that awful
manner. The christening party lasted for a very few
days: and there was this remarkably fortunate cir¬
cumstance about the incident, that it brightened,
instead of dimming, the halo which surrounded Lucy
in the eyes of her who had been Delicia Driscoll.
Some few years intervened between this event and
the next meeting of the ladies, and in that interval
Lucy had ripened from a child into a young woman, as
her knowledge of the world, though mainly seen from
the Yaxley observatory, had grown in clearness and
breadth. Meanwhile, no jarring interests had sprung
up to mar the reciprocal good impressions of that in¬
teresting time. Her husband's hideous confidences
had revealed to Lucy what Lord Foulisville had been
The Invitation.
107
in his bachelor riot; so she credited the considerate
lady, who had spoken kind words of sympathy to her
in the days of her blankest solitude, with having
reformed the disreputable man. For a while Lady
Foulisville was her heroine; but, as Mrs. Foulis's
strength and spirits returned, she indulged, in her more
mature age of from twenty to thirty, in short occa¬
sional visits to London; and then it was more than
Delicia could do to resist patronizing her sister-in-law.
For this, extenuating circumstances must be pleaded,
as the presence at her parties of a widow so fresh,
pretty, rich, and attractive was no doubt a great
allurement.
Lucy saw through this game, and did not like it;
but her buoyant nature was very forgiving. It was,
after all, a study of character, and a change from the
humdrum of Yaxley. So she submitted to it with a
good-tempered and humorous resignation, which took
her vain sister-in-law in.
Delicia fancied that she had made a conquest of
Lucy, while behind her back she used to talk of her
as La Belle Sauvage. Lucy's revenge for the intoler¬
able and persistent patronage was, when she got back,
to make Featherston roll on his chair with laughing at
her stories of the town mouse and the country mouse.
Sometimes, also, when she was dull, and wanted an
intellectual pick-up, she would open her secret desk,
and reperuse certain tender proposals of marriage,
which had been made to her by swains whom she had
fallen in with in Eaton Place. She took great and suc¬
cessful pains to keep the knowledge of these episodes
of her London experience concealed from the match-
108
Strictly Tied Up.
making Countess. Officious as she had been in intro¬
ducing these gentlemen to Lucy, it never occurred to
her that her country friend would be proposed to, and
then hold her tongue. As to the rejected suitors, the
replies which they received from the pen of the modern
Penelope—wedded to her ideal of maidenlike indepen¬
dence—effectually closed their mouths.
So Delicia was deposed from her throne of heroine,
but she still continued in Lucy's eyes to be a near con¬
nection, with whom there was every reason for keeping
up friendly intercourse. Mrs. Foulis maintained her
own independence while she was in London by claim¬
ing to be in nobody's way, but to enjoy the freedom
of an hotel; particularly as she used to bring Meriel
up for the benefit of masters, and never professed to be
herself taking advantage of the season. Indeed, she
went so far as to make the mistake of refusing to be
presented at Court. Still, she was careful to maintain
her possession of the entrde of Eaton Place. The
appearance, at rare intervals, of Lady Foulisville at
Yaxley trimmed the balance of hostess and guest, and
confirmed the good understanding.
For the last two or three years Mrs. Foulis's visits
to London had been shorter; and, excepting for such
pleasures as an audience with the dentist, she had
not brought Meriel with her, as she had secured the
presence at Yaxley of the teachers whom she was
at the time employing.
All the details of the friendship between Lady Foulis¬
ville and Mrs. Foulis were only known in a very
vague way to Miss Robbins, and she misapprehended
their scope ; for she had got hold of the vulgar, super-
The Invitation.
109
ficial idea that Mrs. Foulis was like any other rustic
connection whom it pleased the great lady to tolerate.
Her personal recollection of Lucy, as we have seen, was
of a bore whom the Countess had passed on to her,
and she had shaken off. So she blundered from first
to last in all her suggestions, after her one coup of fan¬
ning up the Countess's jealousy against LadyKilcormac
to a still more white heat. Her conceited self-assur¬
ance had led her to drop the word so fatal to her own
position—adoption. The girls whom she suggested for
the honour were so flagrantly ridiculous as to expose
her to Lady Foulisville's contempt; and her sneer at
Mrs. Foulis, when her name first fell from the Coun¬
tess's lips, stirred up the old Driscoll pugnacity on
behalf of perhaps the only person whom the Countess
still respected.
With Lady Foulisville, worn out with the long
routine of monotonous failures, the delight of a new
idea was genuine, and it went on growing in her mind
with incredible rapidity ; and it not merely grew, but
shaped itself in one definite and necessary form. The
suggestion of adopting some girl gave place to the
determination of adopting Meriel Foulis. The more
the lady reflected on the question in all its conflicting
aspects, the more clearly did she appreciate that the
chaperon age of a stranger might be taken as a signal
of distress. It would, as it were, have proclaimed,
'I have no daughter, and my daughter-in-law is
impossible.' But with a niece of her own name and
her husband's family, and that niece an heiress, what
could be so natural as to hold out a hand to her, and
what so kind and meritorious ? All the world must
110
Strictly Tied Up.
applaud. Lady Foulisville felt that, in her position,
she went out of her way to give the girl the advan¬
tages which her birth and circumstances entitled her
to expect, but of which her mother's pertinacious
rusticity seemed likely to deprive her. Above all
things, what an engine would she thereby acquire to
secure and retain possession of the young men, in
owning an heiress—a great and a young heiress, and
that heiress so near to her in blood, under her own
control, found out by herself, bearing her own name,
and launched into the world by her own superior
cleverness!
Clearly, not a day was to be lost in securing so
great an advantage. All the trouble which had for
the present to be taken was to write a short letter,
cordial and spontaneous in tone, but, at the same time,
not so eager as to raise any suspicion—the letter, in
short, by which an affectionate aunt might invite even
a penniless niece on a visit. So it ran as follows :
' Eaton Place, Tuesday.
' Dearest Lucy,
'We have been reproaching ourselves for
seeing so little of you for the last year or two. Dear
little Meriel must, by this time, be quite grown up.
Do let her come and spend the summer with her god¬
mother at Fontarabia. She will see a little society,
and I am sure she will like the change.
' Your affectionate sister,
' Delicia Foulisville.'
Perplexity.
Ill
CHAPTER XVII.
perplexity.
Mrs. Foulis was quite unprepared for any letter from
her infrequent correspondent, and the contents of this
one puzzled her exceedingly. She could not under¬
stand this sudden increment of affection, and how to
answer it was a problem. Meriel was not out, and, in
fact, was only just turned seventeen; and the sad
recollections of her own premature marriage made
her look with horror on exposing her child to the
same fate. On the other hand, she felt the unfairness
of rebuffing a friendly advance, which might be useful
to her girl, from her own nearest relations, and people,
too, who were, with all their shortcomings, of acknow¬
ledged social standing. Her own experience of Eaton
Place had made her well aware of Delicia's pro¬
pensity for match-making, and that recollection was
dinning a loud ' No' into her ears. On the other side,
however, came the thought that, little as she would
relish the change of existence, she would soon have
to betake herself to town, and drop Meriel into the
social vortex, with the apparent certainty of the girl
being taken up by Lady Foulisville.
' If it must be, it must,' Lucy reflected; ' and so,
perhaps, it might be better that she should be accli¬
matized. There may be less risk in her beginning
it in the back settlements of Ireland. There won't be
the temptations and the opportunities there would be
in London ; and I don't think the dear Delicia would
think of burdening herself with, boys there, to run
112
Strictly Tied Up.
after Meriel; and I don't think the boys would go.
Meriel, too, may perhaps be better up to her after
such a trial than if she made the start in Eaton Place.
What can I do 1 I am sure I am thoroughly dazed.
Bother sisters-in-law ! I wish there was no civility
in this world. Why can't I he left to manage my
own child ? I am sure I never wished to catch Lord
Kilcormac. It's lucky, though, he's married, or Delicia
would have been trying to make a match there.'
She then tried to comfort herself with the reflection
that all Lady Foulisville's attempted matches had
proved, by her own experience, failures ; and then she
reread the letter, which, on this second perusal, struck
her in a fresh light.
Lady Foulisville's clever, because apparently casual,
reference to Meriel as her god-daughter, to which she
had not at first paid much attention, now puzzled
Lucy not a little. In the frank simplicity of her heart,
she argued that if she were to decline, and if the
Countess were to complain of her as unkind and in¬
consistent in not trusting one on whom she had im¬
posed so enduring and sacred a responsibility with the
slight and fleeting one of chaperoning her godchild for
a short time at her own country-house, she would not
know what to answer.
' I cannot quarrel outright with her, after she was
so kind to me at that dreadful time when I was so
miserable and thought I had no friend; and she shows
how she remembers it when she calls herself Meriel's
godmother. I don't suppose she will ever ask Meriel
her Catechism, if she remembers there is such a thing
as a Catechism to ask; and she has been a precious
Perplexity.
113
long time recollecting that the girl is her godchild.
Still, as she now comes plump upon me with it, she
makes it so difficult for me to refuse. Meriel will be
sure to find the invitation out, and she may then so
reasonably tax me with refusing her—who has,
poor child, very little change or enlivenment, so
little to amuse her—her first chance of anything
a little gay. If there is any dodge about it, it beats
me. But I don't think it, and I won't think it.
She really means it good-naturedly. Delicia has
her faults, and plenty of them, and Lord F. is a
drunken pig; but the woman is not at all a bad one,
after all, and she really seems when we meet to care
for me. I never found her out trying to do anything
malicious by me, though she has, confound her ! tried
to saddle me with a dozen husbands, every one a
greater brute than the other.'
This was Lucy's own very confidential soliloquy to
herself. But yet she was more puzzled than she
owned—cross with herself, cross with Delicia, cross
with the world; and the form of her thoughts fol¬
lowed her mental disturbance. The climax of her
perplexity was that she had no one whom she could
profitably consult; for although she felt that, with
very few exceptions, her neighbours thought kindly
of her, she had no one whom she could call a confidant,
except Mr. Lidyard, to whom London society was an
unopened book, and Bob Featherston, whose advice on
any point involving finesse was, as she well knew, as
valuable as would have been the counsels of her collie,
if whines and wags could be transmuted into words.
She and her cousin, the Lord-Lieutenant, were on the
8
114
Strictly Tied Up.
footing of using reciprocal Christian names, but since
that dull and pompous widower had made some ad¬
vances, with an eye, as she believed, to her collieries
rather than to her heart, she had become cautious in
saying anything to him involving real intimacy. At
last she was driven to the conclusion that her only
possible course was the unsatisfactory expedient of
laying the invitation before Meriel, and leaving her
to please herself. Yet Mrs. Foulis fretted and kicked
against this course, for her ever-present friend, Com¬
mon Sense, whispered into her ear that it was not all
right, but rather the abdication of her own responsi¬
bility. But the warning voice was drowned by a
strident ' Can't be helped.'
In fact, the one great weakness and error in the
career of Miss Harriett's ward and Captain Foulis's
widow had found her out. To misunderstand and
mismanage a child is grievous in any parent, but if
this blunder could be characterized as an unavoidable
calamity with any parent, it was with Lucy Foulis.
To her neither father nor mother ever had any con¬
scious existence, so the parental tradition of the nur¬
sery was to her a perfect blank. Marriage and mother¬
hood, again, had been to her merely the unlovely
accident of a life otherwise travelling on a line of
celibate self-reliance. Boughly speaking, that life
had divided itself into two long periods of (throwing
in the few years of childhood) identical length—one
of a self-instructed, self-amused orphanhood and a
companionless girlhood, and the other of an equally
companionless, self-reliant, spinster-like widowhood,
full of kindly acquaintances, and with a few friends,
Perplexity, 115
but no true confidants. Between these two long
epochs came a dimly remembered episode, of less than
a month's duration, of dismal cohabitation with one
whose every word and action, once he had got his
victim within his clutches, froze confidence and killed
love; and then delirium. Here Meriel dropped in like
a waif; and on Lucy, unassisted, unadvised, fell the
burden of her training.
There was not a single married woman among her
friends with whom she could take loving counsel and
garner up experience. What she had to rely upon—
namely, her own mental and moral growth—was mis¬
leading ; for the eccentric courses which, under Miss
Harriett's burlesque rule, turned out so undeservedly
well in maturing the strong, pure elements of her own
character, combining as it did her father's geniality
and kindness with a perspicacity and courage all her
own, were pitfalls when applied to forming the baser
nature with which she had to deal. The loving mother
was as open as the day; the beloved daughter crooked
and sly.
CHAPTEK XVIII.
misunderstanding.
There was quite enough in all the circumstances
which we have recounted, little apparent as they were
upon the surface, to create that atmosphere of unap¬
preciated misunderstandings in which Mrs. Foulis and
Meriel lived; while its indirect influence led two
careers by ways—whether rough or smooth events
8—2
116
Strictly Tied Up.
will show—along which they never would otherwise
have travelled. On some days little Meriel was good,
and on others naughty; on one morning the child
would say its prayers, and on another yell and claw
its nurse; and it got slaps or sugar-plums accordingly.
But, slapped or stuffed, the mystery of mysteries, that
world of good and evil, the human mind, growing up
within those tiny limbs, was never inventoried, never
grappled with, never moulded by strong discipline.
Bad nurses and local masters, at cheap rates, had been
provided for Lucy; the best of instructors, brought
down to Yaxley at exorbitant stipends, were at
Meriel's service; and in the case of teachers who
would not be so engaged, she was brought up to
London. But for her the old morocco-bound volumes
of the patriarchal Curteis, and all her mother's sub¬
sequent and continually growing acquisitions, were as
so many logs. Coaxing and scolding were equally
ineffective to make her open a book except at lesson-
time. Had Meriel been a vixen, very likely she would
have chafed her mother's independent spirit. But
though she cared in her heart no more for her mother
than for any living being except herself, she had in stock
kissing, coaxing, and wheedling, as well as pouting
and grumbling; and although certainly the former
actions came to her much less naturally than the
latter, yet the exercise was so purely mechanical as
to give her very little trouble, and to be well worth
that trouble in view of the accruing benefits. Her
nurse said she was the most ' contrayry ' child she
had ever had to do with, and Mrs. Foulis accordingly
gave her daughter credit for honest independence
Miswnder standing.
117
of character, and called her her dear little rough
diamond.
The result of all was, that Lucy, so clear-judging in
other matters, lived in a fool's paradise in her relations
to Meriel. She did not really care so much as she
fancied for her daughter, whose nature repelled all
truest and deepest sympathy; but as she had never
had any other child, and herself had never known a
parent's love, she was incapable of comparing the
reciprocal confidence of herself and of Meriel with
that of other parents and children. But yet, some¬
how, Meriel never entered unconsciously into any of
Lucy's schemes of duty, business, or pleasure. She
had to be sought out and brought in, like an unknown
quantity into an equation.
So Mrs. Foulis, without any preface, put the
Countess's letter into Meriel's hand, and asked her
what she would like to do. No one will be astonished
to learn that our amiable Meriel jumped at a scheme
which carried with it excitement, change of scene, and
relief from the tedium of the lessons to which she still
had .to submit; and, sweetest of all, the chance of
turning those talents of hers, which she rated at a
value inconceivable to the remaining human race, to
some personal advantage, not so much in the way of
marriage as of getting on—a process as to which she
had exalted though hazy notions. So Mrs. Foulis lost
little time in returning a graceful and grateful accept¬
ance, which was followed by further correspondence
touching times and trains, which would be wearisome
to recount.
The news of Miss Meriel's speedy departure soon
118
Strictly Tied Up.
spread like wildfire round the neighbourhood of
Yaxley. Featherston, Lidyard, and Arlett, who knew
the facts of the case, saw nothing in them mysterious
or needing any explanation, so they said nothing, and
by this natural but mistaken policy left the field open
to those who, knowing nothing, felt no restraint in
romancing at their own sweet wills. Miss Turner,
who was never afraid of grappling with a long word,
and never quick at catching it, mumbled and stumbled
over ' kleptymanny ' and (tipsymanny.' ' Poor young
creature ! to think it should be needful to send her
away so soon from home—such a child, and with such
prospects too. Well, I hope they'll be kind to her at
the Asylum. Do you know they pretend it's her uncle
in Ireland she's going to V
Mrs. Pees, always more astute, fired her double-
weighted bolt at another foe, as she would mysteriously
observe, ' Such an old fellow, too, as that Featherston
is. I don't wonder at Mrs. Foulis, who knows what's
what, with all her pride, getting Miss Meriel out of the
way till the foolish fancy is past.'
But the excitement reached its height at Yaxley
School when the master, Mr. Murgatroyd, a new
arrival, and destined to be a speedy departure, a senti¬
mental overtrained youth, as laden with certificates
as he was unencumbered with sense, determined to
present an address in verse to the departing damsel.
Miss Larcom, the mistress, a steady-going body, who
never pretended to be brilliant and was never caught
out making a mistake, bluntly told the would-be
Byron that he was a fool. An address should be
written in honest prose, and if he was too magnificent
Misunderstanding.
119
to undertake so matter-of-fact a job, she felt sure that
she could manage to write a decent sort of thing.
O O
Murgatroyd coloured up with mortified vanity, and
moodily turned towards his cottage ; but he did not
succeed in getting off till Miss Larcom, whose sturdy
determination had often before been too much for his
petulant, weak, and wavering nature, made him pro¬
mise that they both should appear at the Yicarage
that evening with their rival compositions, and that
Mr. Lidyard's decision should be final.
Accordingly the two appeared, and Murgatroyd
commenced, prefacing with the remark that he wished
to tender a poetic trifle based, as far as its system of
rhyming went, upon Orlando's verses to Rosalind in
As You Like It. ' Touchstone's more likely,' muttered
the Yicar; but his remark was happily lost on the self-
absorbed rhapsodist, who proceeded to recite the
following address :
O graceful lady Meriel,
In Yaxley mansion who dost dwell,
First of its flowers of sweetest smell,
Our loveliest, most charming belle.
Young hermit in luxurious cell,
By honoured mother nurtured well,
Away from strife and murderous mell!
Must you then go by fate so fell 1
Must we then toll the dolesome knell,
And rising tears and weeping quell,
As low and sullen swings the bell,
While you move onward in travel,
Across the Ocean's solemn swell,
To seek new homes in Celtic dell;
Where tenants shoot and rents impel
The fiends o'er slaughtered squires to yell 1
120
Strictly Tied Up.
At least write home your friends to tell
That you have snared and hold in spell
A dashing Irish Colonel.
Miss Larcom, who had been fidgeting first with one
foot and then with another, as the spouter mouthed
each successive line, could no longer contain her con¬
tempt, but screamed:
' Co-lo-nel, Co-lo-nel, pooh, pooh ! It's something to
live till now to learn that! I never guessed before I
should get any good by being schoolmistress.
Co-lo-nel, indeed! where have you been living all your
days, Mr. Murgatroyd, I should like to know ? Why
man, it's "kurnel," "kurnel," all the world over. I
should just like to see how you would be received on
parade when you and your volunteers are out playing
at soldiers if you were to go up to Colonel Vincent,
and call him Co-lo-nel!'
' Miss Larcom, you are very facetious, but please to
recollect that our immortal Milton sang in his majestic
sonnets :
' Captain, or Colonel, or Knight-in-Arms.'
c He did, did he ? Maybe; but he cut the king's
head off, also. Really, Mr. Murgatroyd ! Besides, it's
so vulgar to think of Miss Meriel throwing herself
away upon an Irish Co-lo-nel. Why, she must come
back a duchess at least. You may be master in your
own school, but I am mistress outside ; and if you go
to the mansion with that doggerel, I stop here with my
girls, and don't disgrace myself before Mrs. Foulis.
That's flat.'
In her impatience she had dropped her own paper,
Misunderstanding.
121
and Lidyard had taken it up and read it. It was
singularly commonplace, and absolutely unexception¬
able ; but he saw that to prefer it to the moonstruck
youth's balderdash would be to set up an unappeas¬
able feud. He acted accordingly with promptitude,
and turning to Miss Larcom, said:
' While you and our good friend Murgatroyd have
been arguing, I have been conning your address. It
is to the point, and practical, as Mr. Murgatroyd's
verses are full of fire and imagination. But, do you
know, I much doubt whether Mrs. Foulis would like
any address at all. It's as if she was going to lose her
daughter for ever. Nothing but a girl getting married
or lying on her death-bed justifies so solemn a way of
taking matters. Why, you toll the funeral knell as if
you never expected Mrs. Foulis to see Miss Meriel
again, when she is only going off for a summer holi¬
day to her uncle and aunt, as I hope she will often do
again, for, pleasant as Yaxley is, it is dull never to
have a change. My advice to both of you is to keep
your papers till some more important occasion calls for
them.'
Miss Larcom, who was properly diffident as to her
literary style, cheerfully acquiesced, and the crest¬
fallen schoolmaster was compelled very ungraciously
to submit.
122
Strictly Tied Up,
CHAPTER XIX.
son and father.
Lady Foulisville and MissRobbins, on the arrival of
Lucy's answer, found much work cut out for them in
the necessity of following up the coup by collecting,
at short notice, the party which was to gather at
Fontarabia. This was a proceeding of much import¬
ance, and not to be slurred over hastily, as the
occasion was destined to give the Countess her ddbut
in her new character of chaperon, as to which she was
resolved that there should be no ambiguity. The
departure was so entirely novel and unencumbered
with antecedents, that it would, she thought, be
absolutely superstitious to admit failure, even as a pos¬
sible contingency; still, to secure success, she had to
work. Yet her first shots were misses, and as one
eligible young man after another pleaded the
Continent, Scotland, yachting, or duty, and two
eminent savants had to read papers at the British
Association, Delicia's spirits fell.
A final effort must be made, or the coronet of
Foulisville would be made ridiculous in the eyes of the
prosperous sister-in-law.
Anxiously and lengthily did the little conclave
canvass many names, noting some and rejecting others.
Robbins at last called out, ' Dear me, we've quite
forgotten that nice Eustace Brandreth.'
£ Well, he'd do well enough in himself, but I don't
want to get mixed up again with his father if I can
help it, now that I am so happily rid of them.'
Son and Father.
123
'I said Eustace, not Sir Miles. Nobody nowadays
obliges a father by courting his heir; and, besides,
you can't better snub the exemplary baronet than
by doing the civil to Eustace, whom he hates.'
' Perhaps you are right. Well, write to ask him for
me, and I'll sign the note.'
So the note was written, expressing, with the
amplification dear to a literary hack such as Miss
Robbins had been, when working for the pedant Lady
Foulisville, the great pleasure which the company of
one like Mr. Eustace Brand re th at Fontarabia would
give to her and to Lord Foulisville. When it was
folded and gummed, Bobbins asked where she should
direct it to.
' To his club, of course.'
' But I don't know his club.'
' Then, to his lodging.'
' But the Blue Book doesn't give his lodging.'
The visiting book was duly sent for, and it appeared
that the hall-porter, who had been dismissed two days
before for loving beer not wisely but too well, had
systematically forgotten to enter any address for
some three months.
' Then, my dear Robbins, we must send it to
his father's to be forwarded; the old fellow won't
think there's money in it, so I don't think he'll
steal it.'
So the note went, and on the following morning a
missive, directed in a stiff, old-fashioned, but legible
hand, which made her creep, was placed in Lady
Foulisville's hand. She opened it, and to her con¬
sternation read :
124
Strictly Tied Up.
The Phlyabium, June 3rd.
Honoured and distinguished Lady,
Yesternight your devoted slave was ponder¬
ing, in his desolate home, as only a solitary man can
do, over those happy evenings when the humblest of
your servants has so often been privileged to take his
place at the ^cartd table of the most charming mansion
in Belgravia, when his domestic silently placed before
him a note with a well-known monogram, directed to
my dear boy, to be forwarded. Alas! my beloved
Eustace has left his doating old father, and is now
disporting himself in foreign lands, where I know not,
for he is an infrequent correspondent. So, as his
faithful friend and natural representative, I ventured
to open the missive, and then learned of how great a
pleasure and privilege my young scapegrace had
deprived himself by his vagabond ways. You con¬
descend to tell that young fellow in your own charm¬
ing manner, and with more than your usual emphasis,
that you are in much need of one like him to complete
your party at Fontarabia; and I believe that there
is no one so like Eustace Brandreth as Eustace
Brandreth's father. In this emergency I feel that it
is the duty of a stationary father to supply the short¬
comings of his vagrant son, and in place of my lost
boy I venture to tender to you and to his dear lord¬
ship the company and the services of your old retainer
and faithful friend,
Miles Brandreth.
Had Lady Foulisville been a gentleman, we fear
Son and Father.
125
that she would have had resort to a very naughty
monosyllable ; as it was, she contented herself with
another which was only vulgar, and exclaiming, ' Drat
his impudence !' tossed the note to Miss Robbins.
' What's to be done V asked the confidante.
'What's to be done? You fool!' snapped out the
Driscoll-born. 'It's all your dunderheaded meddling.
Nothing's to be done. Odious, insolent thing as the
fellow is, we can't afford to quarrel with him, as you've
chosen to put me in the hole with your folly and your
flummery.'
Then she cooled as the fit subsided, and she recol¬
lected that she was in her anger floundering into
revelations which, with all her external confidence in
her instrument, Robbins, were far too delicate for that
woman's ears. So she lowered her tone, and with
forced calmness continued, 'You know how I hate the
man. But he is on the footing of a family friend,
though there has been a coolness between us; so it
would never do, you know, to be so rude as to repel
him when he is clearly so anxious to make up the
difference.'
Lady Foulisville did really not only hate, but
dread, Sir Miles Brandreth, from her knowledge of the
questionable adventures into which that brazen-faced
promoter of speculative enterprises had drawn the too
credulous, but not sufficiently scrupulous, Earl; in
some of which, too, she had embarked money which
she could ill afford to lose, obtained as it had been by
mortgaging her prospective jointure. The man was
an ambitious, plausible adventurer, who made full use
of an ancient baronetcy of historical fame, but
126
Strictly Tied Up.
shattered fortunes. With the impudence of Thersites,
a jaunty volubility which passed for agreeable con¬
versation in some houses, and no small share of
misdirected ability, Sir Miles Brandeth had, while
often held at arm's length by society, al ways contrived
to avoid the cut direct, and generally managed to
reinstate himself, sooner or later, with those who had
taken most trouble to shake him off.
At this time he had nearly reached the age of sixty,
and still preserved a medium-sized figure, neither thin
nor fat. His head, indeed, showed a large bald patch,
but young blue eyes, capable of a sudden expression
of extreme fierceness, were rather deeply seated under
straight, slightly bushy eyebrows, and parted by a
prominent nose, hooked and pinched at the nostrils.
His lips were thin, and his teeth the best which
science could produce; while his well-tended brown
beard was beginning to turn grizzly. His great pride
and reliance were in a voice, the musical flexibility of
which never failed its master when he desired to
obscure a fact or win belief for an invention.
Indeed, apart from some public services on which
he persistently traded, Sir Miles Brandeth could only
be credited by the impartial chronicler with one action
which was for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, and
that was of having endowed the world with so ex¬
cellent a personage as his son Eustace. Even this good
deed was now matter of ancient history, and only
accomplished at the loss of a wife as admirable as a
woman as for a man her husband was the worse ; and
who would have left life with the reputation of having
been as wise as she was charming, but for the incom-
Son and Father.
127
prehensible infatuation which led her to say 'Yes'
when Sir Miles asked her to marry him.
The character of this distinguished Baronet was
early summed up in an anecdote of the boyhood of
one with whom, emphatically, the child was father of
the man. Indeed, we believe that his conviction of
his power of managing his fellow-creatures, engendered
in him by the boundless self-sufficiency of his nature,
was fostered by the unfortunate success of his boyish
escapade, which we proceed to narrate as he was wont
to tell the story.
It happened that, upon some passing occasion, his
father—a staid, pompous old don—gave an entertain¬
ment to the corporation of the borough near which he
was living, and for which he was in hopes of being
elected. Now our friend, at that period a true
mamma's darling, had been freely allowed to spoil the
harmony of every social gathering under the paternal
roof. At this point, however, the sluggish authority
of the old Baronet asserted itself, and the young Miles
was with all due precaution informed that there was
no room for him at the feast, as the size of the dining-
room bore no proportion to the number and dignity of
the guests. Most spoiled children would have yelled
and stamped at the disappointment: not so the suck¬
ing man of the world. The sweet humility with
which he took the blow earned him much spoiling for
many days after, and quite defeated his father's pro¬
jects of tightened discipline; and yet he carried out a
hideous but undetected revenge.
The Baronet had, at much trouble and expense, pro¬
cured from Bristol a large supply of the richest turtle-
128
Strictly Tied Up.
soup—in days when turtle-soup was always thick.
The invitations had been issued for a turtle feast.
Now this turtle lay temptingly accessible to the ill-
used Miles, as also did the savoury bottle of catsup.
The young philosopher noticed this, and, with the
inspiration of genius, grasped a great idea. Turtle-
soup flavoured with catsup would, as he inductively
reasoned, be a nauseous delicacy, while it was possible,
considering the respective darkness of colour attach¬
ing to the soup and to the condiment, and also the
pronounced flavour of each, to sauce the turtle with
just so much of catsup as to make it perfectly unpalat¬
able, and yet raise no suspicions that the nasty mess
was anything but turtle that had proved a failure in
the Bristol purveyor's hands. For a child—and an
angry child, too—to realize such sound conclusions,
was no small triumph of mind over passion, and the
self-control which strictly adhered to the resolution
was even more commendable. A little over-zeal, a
drop or two of superfluous catsup, a supplementary
garnish of vinegar or mustard or snuff, would have
probably ruined all and led to detection. As it was,
• the boy was able, from his throne of moral greatness,
to witness his father and his father's guests made
thoroughly wretched by the unexpected badness of
the much-coveted turtle, and his hypocritical con¬
dolences were effectual in rubbing the disappoint¬
ment in.
A Popular Hero.
129
CHAPTER XX.
a popular hero.
Since his boyish adventure Sir Miles Brandreth's life
might have been compendiously described as a con¬
sistent course of spoiling to his own advantage his
neighbours' turtle with surreptitious catsup. Yet he
was for a short time a popular hero. The interest of
his wife's relations, who found it convenient thus to
compromise some engagements into which his father-
in-law had unfortunately entered, procured for the
Baronet, after her death, a colonial appointment, and
here he had the good fortune to act for the advantage
of the State in a case where dexterity rather than any
higher quality was requisite. His name was mentioned
with praise in the newspapers and in Parliament, and
on more than one occasion after his return he made
good use of this stroke of fortune; the amplitude of
the Colonial Secretary's eulogy approving him to the
party then in power, while the scantiness of his reward
procured much sympathy on the other side for the
brilliant administrator whose courageous prescience
had been acknowledged by a mere C.B. It is probable
that some flickering reminiscences of this brief repu¬
tation were, even down to the period of the present
events, serviceable in screening Brandreth from the
repeated exposures which might have befallen a more
obscure adventurer who had done far less to outrage
and provoke society.
Another safeguard which the astute baronet had
thrown up round his precious person was the avoid-
9
130
Strictly Tied Up.
ance of any pretensions to the character of a fire-eater.
He could wound deeply with barbed sarcasms, but he
never flagrantly and openly insulted anyone; and
brought up as he was in jovial days, before the his¬
torical cock-pheasant had made affairs of honour
ridiculous, his boast was that he had never fought
a duel, got drunk, or appeared either as plaintiff or
defendant in any court. More than once he hovered
round the outskirts of a constituency, and, while he
never would make up his mind to go to the poll, his
place as candidate was always taken by some man
whose gratitude might presumably be supposed to be
of solid texture. Yet he was as little defrauded by
dishonest confederates as ever was any man in his line
of life, for he never failed to hold some accomplice
within his clutches, who found himself compelled to
run the gauntlet of litigation for the real benefit of
the modest baronet in the background. A mere
esquire might often have been compelled to float risky
ventures by accepting the chairmanship which an
original baronet of James I.'s creation could afford to
surrender, in his generosity to an untitled friend.
Chairman indeed he often became, but he never trusted
his weight to a seat of which the sustaining capacity
had not been previously well tested by earlier and
more simple occupants.
It has already been explained that the reason of Sir
Miles's disgrace in Eaton Place was Lady Foulisville
having overheard him talking of the Earl at one of
her own parties as 'Boozy Fou.' It was creditable to
her to have taken such serious notice of an expression
insulting to her husband, for whom she could no longer
A Popular Hero.
131
feel affection or respect, particularly as her own ex¬
perience led her so painfully to recognise its truth.
At the same time it mortified her pride, and it put her
self-interest on its guard. To be the wife of ' Boozy
Fou' was to fill a humiliating and ridiculous position,
while the reputation of his being the boozy Earl of
Foulisville would take away the last chance of any
advantage which she could derive from her husband's
coronet. It ought to be no derogation from her moral
merit that her action was so profoundly inconsistent.
She made her cognisance of the offence a profound
secret, as if it carried some stain on her own reputation;
and yet the course she took was not only capricious
but unintelligible, except as a public protest against
scandal. But she could not conceal the expression of
her face when the injurious words fell on her ear.
Brandreth caught it, and understood all. A bungler
in the game of life would have sought an explanation
or sent an apology. He felt that his strength lay in
his supposed ignorance, for he could not allow himself
to doubt that he would be, sooner or later, found
necessary again, when it would be much easier for him
to resume his place in quiet, if he could pretend that
nothing had happened.
"When the Phlyarium was first started, and had still
to content itself with renting the Duke of Merioneth's
house in Hamilton Place, the provisional committee,
on which Sir Miles Brandreth had managed to be
appointed vice-chairman, decided that, in order to
float the enterprise, it was indispensable to obtain
some one of a degree not inferior to an earl to accept
the offices of trustee and permanent chairman. The
9—2
132 Strictly Tied Up.
provisional chairman was, indeed, a member of the
diplomatic corps, and, therefore, rightly claimed his
place at Court and any dinner-party above all mar¬
quesses ; but as he only represented a South American
Republic, and might run home any day and pronounce
as President, the representation of ' His Excellency'
went for very little. ' Issachar Brothers,' gentlemen
well known to Sir Miles, and whose money, in fact,
contributed in no small degree to float the new club,
suggested the Earl of Foulisville as the nobleman
most likely to take the bait. The suggestion was joy
to Sir Miles, who had long had his eye upon the Earl
as a clever fool who could be moulded so as to become
useful to him in his own pursuits. So he organized a
deputation upon a day when he guessed that the
chairman must be absent, and then, as its spokesman,
played his cards so well as not only to obtain the ready
consent of the vain Earl, but to lay the foundations of
a friendly acquaintance. "When his Lordship heard
that the Club had leased the Duke of Merioneth's
house, he inwardly winced at having to re-enter rooms
so tragically familiar to him, but the scruple passed
away in a few moments. Lord Foulisville had not
yet settled down into his later condition of a helpless
bon vivant, and the enterprising Baronet induced him
to enter into several speculations more or less question¬
able, out of which he emerged more hit each time than
he had been with the prior one. How Brandreth
fared in them was a mystery, but he kept his place at
Foulisville's table ; and as he had little trouble in
making himself agreeable to her Ladyship, he was
very soon installed as her odd man, retailer of scandal,
A Popular Hero.
133
£out, errand boy, and honorary secretary. Meanwhile,
as the lord's devotion to the claret-bottle increased, so
did his restless craving after speculation dull. It was
disappointment at this change which provoked Sir
Miles to dub him by that opprobrious name, the in¬
cautious use of which had procured his exclusion from
Eaton Place.
Brandreth's disgrace, as we have seen, had much to
do with the singular exaltation of Miss Bobbins. The
Countess could not manage without some aide-de¬
camp, and Sir Miles had filled this post to perfection.
He always knew what was the right thing to do or
say, and he acted or spoke with consistent prompti¬
tude; so that he never found himself overtaken by
any change of purpose. With Lady Foulisville her¬
self, his manner was the perfect example of what the
deportment of chief toady to a vain grande dame
should be, combining, as it did, obsequiousness to her
rank with that delicate banter which presupposed her
wit. Every look, every action, every word, every tone
said, 'You are clever, and I fain would engage you in
the duel of wits; you are charming, and I fain would
make love to you ; you are capable, and I fain would
win you to be my drudge: but you are sensible, you
are virtuous, you are delicate, you are a lady, and I
respect you.' It was a rare mortification for one who
was so accomplished, and who was aware of his own
talent, to be ousted, and all on account of one silly
burst of quite unaccountable imprudence. It was
still more cruel to be supplanted by a Bobbins, whose
ability he did not rate as highly as it deserved. Her
powers were inferior, in the extent of their operations,
134
Strictly Tied Up.
to those of the Baronet, but they were incontestable
within their special area. After all, while woman¬
kind remains unemancipated, women cannot openly
parade themselves as the ready directors of bubble
companies, nor take their place with promising young
heirs at the whist-tables of clubs. Had Sir Miles
been a woman, and Bobbins a man, their careers might
have been reversed.
Miss Bobbins was never more sincere in her life
than when she urged the Countess to invite Eustace
Brandreth to Fontarabia, and gave as the reason for
showing this civility to the son of the man who had
so greatly offended her patroness, that her doing this
would be a genuine mortification to the old schemer.
Eustace Brandreth was, in truth, worthy of all the
good things which Bobbins could report or invent
about him; but he and she were uncongenial spirits,
and in her heart she hated him only less than she did
his father. Still, she knew his good looks and his
social talents, and her one great object was now to get
rid, as soon as possible, of the new inevitable incubus,
Meriel, either by disgracing or by marrying her. It
was not strange that, as he had been for different
reasons the common object of animosity to both the
rival competitors for the office of Prime Minister of
Eaton Place, Eustace Brandreth should have been very
seldom inside the house, and almost unknown to the
Countess.
Under any other circumstances she would have long
since put out all her tentacles to catch so promising a
lion. As it was, he had been nearly as much out of
her calculations as a Liberal statesman can be out of
A Popular Hero.
135
those of his party when he snubs his Four Hundred,
and will not hear of ploughman suffrage for the
counties.
Not many days after his feat of forcing himself
upon Lady Foulisville's party, Sir Miles was sitting
in his room, when in walked his son. In truth, the
Baronet might, had he been so inclined, have easily
found where Eustace was by asking the porter at the
Phlyarium, and have sent the invitation after him.
Still, he did not reckon on the young man's return
quite so soon, and having at a moment's notice to
account for his recent action, he rapidly came to the
conclusion that in this exceptional emergency the
truth was more clever and tactical than any lie. It
was an unusual experience for him, and he deserves
credit for the unflinching veracity with which he ex¬
plained, in all its details, the trick which he had
played, chuckling over his gain and his son's loss.
As he hoped and expected, Eustace walked out of the
room without answering a word. His father hated
him for his probity, good looks, ability, and indepen¬
dence of disposition ; and Eustace, for his part, always
anxious to avoid furnishing sport to the scandal¬
mongers by unseemly squabbles between parent and,
child, and inspired also by a wise spirit of filial
reverence, saw as little as he could of his father, and,
when they were thrown together, avoided conversation
as much as possible. Eustace Brandreth had gone to
college from a conspicuous school, the most popular
and brilliant boy of his generation, and in due time,
after a remarkable degree, won his Fellowship. So he
ought, at the age of thirty-three, to have been a very
136
Strictly Tied Up.
distinguished man, and on the road to becoming a
very rich one, considering that he had been ten years
called to the Bar. What he was was a man of whom
everybody said that there was a great deal in him,
and who had done many clever and some brilliant
things, but who was allowing his direct onward course
to the Woolsack or the Marble Chair to be interrupted
by stoppings and sniffings at the bundles of literature,
art, and journalism which bordered his way to the
right hand and to the left. It was not wonderful that
Lady Foulisville, who had followed up the invitation
by inquiring into the young man's antecedents,
regretted and resented the substitution of father for
son in the party which she was toiling to make up.
' Another failure !' the Countess would go on gasp¬
ing, as excuse after excuse came dropping in.
Miss Bobbins felt guilty and puzzled, for she recol¬
lected all the smooth things which she had prophesied,
and dreaded their being brought up against her; so
she plied her fondling ways with redoubled assiduity.
The young men whom Delicia did pick up were none
of them eldest sons, except Fiennes, and he was heir
to nothing; while Sergood's looks and Pringle's swag¬
ger were no compensation for lack of land. ' Well,
she was in for it,' she said, and worked on till at last
she made up a list, such as it was, and prepared for
the family progress to Ireland. She and the Earl were
to travel together by slow stages ; while Miss Bobbins,
who stopped behind to finish some business, was so to
time her more rapid movements as to arrive at Font-
arabia twenty-four hours later from Dublin. To her
was to be confided the responsibility of escorting
Fontarabia.
137
Meriel, who would thus meet her uncle and aunt for
the first time at Fontarabia itself.
There was some risk in letting Lady Foulisville find
out how well she could travel with the assistance of
servants, and away from her Robbins. Still the advan¬
tage of preoccupying the ground with Miss Foulis
seemed so important that the confidante gladly lent her
influence to this arrangement.
CHAPTER XXI.
fontarabia.
After all Lady Foulisvilie's exertions, the party, as it
gathered on a hot summer's evening in the drawing-
room at Fontarabia, did not look promising. The
memorable event of Miss Foulis's ddbut could only
bring together, besides the Earl, Countess, Meriel, and
Robbins, the small knot of self-appreciatory youths
and a couple of dull married couples, one Irish and one
English, with a daughter to one or the other of them,
whose looks and entire bearing proclaimed that they
had once been accustomed to look to an annual round
of country-house visits, but that, in the evil days on
which they were fallen, such treats had become rare
and precious. One lady had probably once been
rather pretty, and the other had taught herself to be¬
lieve in her own conversation. Moreover, there were
two single gentlemen of a certain age, Sir Miles
Brandreth and the Count of Sant' Onofrio.
The Count was a burly gentleman, about forty-eight
138
Strictly Tied Up.
years old, boisterously unctuous, deficient in tact, and
constantly backsliding into admissions which betrayed
him as weak in his principles, though, perhaps, not
devoid of good nature, and particularly ridiculous from
his persistent efforts to smother a full Munster brogue
under a foreign accent. He was slow and awkward at
repartee; but when the line was clear and the steam
up, he could rattle on with much volubility. He was
fond of posing as a master of conversation, yet he
never seemed to perceive the merriment which his
grotesque pronunciation was apt to produce. Persons
who are clever in looking through milestones were
wont to explain this inconsistency by saying that he
was carrying out a theory as to what was practically
advantageous for gentlemen of his profession. The
character, within manageable limits, of a social butt
was (he would contend) useful from its tendency to
disarm undue suspicion. The summer flies, he was
sure, stretched their legs and made fun of the awkward
old spider. He would account for his phenomenal
speech by referring with effusion to his blessed mother,
who was now with the saints. He might have also
thrown in his blessed father, as, in truth, he was for
the earlier years of his life, Maurice Cassidy, son of a
respectable distiller at Cork, where he might have
wasted his days rolling up money in the cold shade of
the family counting-house if some complication about
a signature had not arisen, which led him to pine for
the leisure of foreign haunts. He first tried the
German watering-places, and, finding that they did not
agree with his health, he turned southward.
Then, after sundry vicissitudes, he fell in with the
Fontarabia.
139
Grand Duke of Ferrara, and contrived to make himself
useful and agreeable to that potentate. As sole pay¬
ment for services which cost him both time and money,
he obtained a patent of nobility. This was no great
outlay for a Grand Duke, but the recipient never com¬
plained, for he appreciated that in the wide world one
Count Sant' Onofrio is worth many Maurice Cassidys.
The Count had come down before the Baronet, and
when they were both in her presence the Countess in¬
troduced them to each other. Each bowed in silence,
with that odd sort of half-ashamed, half-knowing look
which says that the man knows more of his new
acquaintance than it would be good for either of them
to betray—a truce, but not ' of God.'
When dinner was announced, his Lordship shuffled
off with one of the old ladies; the other fell to the lot
of Sir Miles ; while, to her great disgust, Meriel found
herself an Iphigenia, offered on the altar of precedence
by being allotted to the older, the more ugly, and the
more stupid of the two elders. The Countess was the
prize of the foreign nobleman.
All through the feast, Sir Miles, whose seat was just
opposite to her, kept continually looking at Meriel and
saying little to his voluble neighbour, who talked for
both. The girl's identity, and the legend of her
assured inheritance, were familiar to him ; for, among
the knot of impecunious young dandies and battered
old spendthrifts who were wont to gather in the smok¬
ing-room of the ' Phly,' conversation often turned upon
the natural history of the heiresses and the jointured
widows who sailed like planets round the orderly orbit
of the British heaven, or shot like comets from the un-
140
Strictly Tied Up.
known abysses of New York and Boston. In such
company the widow and the daughter, both so eligible,
and both keeping so dark, were, of course, objects of
much interest. Meriel's country bringing up —
' trained by the gardener,' as the sporting men used to
say—gave a zest to her name, and added to the mys¬
tery of her mother's existence.
Sir Miles was the more bound not to lose the chance,
as, from his known intimacy in Eaton Place, he used
to be constantly appealed to for details about the
Yaxley Foulises. He had hitherto been able to evade
confessing that they were strangers to him, but he felt
that he could not much longer maintain the imposture.
In this respect, then, the cast of the party was most
opportune; otherwise, he was sorry that his intro¬
duction to Miss Foulis should have occurred in the
company of Sant' Onofrio. The two worthies had
crossed each other's paths more than once, and it was
only the last season that Brandeth had procured the
blackballing at the ' Phly' of the soi-disant Italian,
who, of course, knew to whom he was indebted for
that good turn, and was grateful accordingly. Sant'
Onofrio, much inferior, in the long run, to Sir Miles in
conversational powers, was, to the first glance of even
a tyro, no more than a showy pretender to the name
of gentleman. He smiled, showed his teeth, and shot
his linen. Still, by the fortunes of war, and owing to
her own inexperience, he preoccupied the ground with
Meriel, to the detriment of the Baronet. This made
the Englishman very angry, not only from his previous
dislike to his Bohemian fellow-professional, but be¬
cause, without having any definite intention of any
Fontarabia.
141
sort, he resolved upon forcing upon Meriel a retainiDg
fee which might lead to an introduction to the widow
and a lodgment at Yaxley. The man who had re¬
covered his place at the table of the Foulisvilles, and
forced the stronghold of Fontarabia, might be forgiven
for indulging in projects of bold, far-reaching strategy.
He took occasion, accordingly, one afternoon, when
they happened to be thrown together, to ask Miss
Foulis, in a lowered and sympathetic tone, what she
thought of Cassidy's airs and graces.
' Cassidy V she answered; ' I don't know any
Cassidy.'
' Ob, "Paddy from Cork," who swaggers as an Italian
nobleman,' he replied, with a smothered laugh ; and
proceeded to pour into Meriel's curious ear so clever
and malicious a report of the rival adventurer as
effectually to put him in the young lady's bad books
for three days. It was a new sensation on her part to
be made the depository of any one's confidence, and
the story was framed in expressions calculated to
tickle her vanity, and withal magnify himself. Had
she been only a visitor, the Baronet said he would not
have troubled her with these details about a man for
whom no one in a good position could care. But she
was the niece of the house, and as her aunt's old and
faithful friend he felt it was his duty to give her the
opportunity of putting in a word in season with her
relation. Lady Foulisville's good nature must have
been abused by those who knew very little of the
composition of good society when she was induced to
invite a person of antecedents which so ill stood any
scrutiny.
142
Strictly Tied Up.
Meriel rather emphatically disclaimed any influence
in a house where she was herself really only a
stranger; and what she said much comforted Sir
Miles, who inferred that she swallowed all his boasts,
and so gave the denial to any suspicion that the
Countess could have told her niece the story of his
disgrace. So he smiled and said, ' No one need care
to know much of such a tabernacle in the wilderness
as this tumble-down Irish retreat if half of what the
world says of lovely Yaxley and its popular owner be
true.' This was, however, a fly to which he observed
that the damsel did not rise, and he likewise inferred
that his insinuation about ftobbins had fallen dead.
Meriel, he saw at once, was stupid and untrained both
in intellect and in social lore. The Baronet had, how¬
ever, established an influence over her mind, while he
also unconsciously succeeded in inspiring the girl with
a strange dread, which she never threw off, of himself
as master of a fearful art of heaping contempt upon
his fellow-creatures. In her small acquaintaince with
human life hitherto the country-bred girl had never
before had any experience of what sarcasm really
meant, and such a first sample of it was very alarming
to her rustic mind. Besides, she had, on one or two
occasions, descried him shooting one of his savage
glances at Sant' Onofrio, and, though the action was
involuntary and quite transient, the effect upon her¬
self was deep on account of the novelty of the dis¬
agreeable experience, and she would think that if she
were ever to fall into the power of that terrible man,
he could make her do anything out of sheer fright.
Then he would say something acute and comic which
A Pleasant Party.
143
made her laugh, feeling all the while that his amusing
her was condescension which involved a visible
recognition on her part. The general feeling which
resulted from these moods was one of respect, rather
than liking. He was, she was sure, the cleverest
man she had ever met, and the most amusing, but,
at the same time, the one who frightened her more
than any acquaintance whom she had ever before
come across.
CHAPTER, XXII.
a pleasant paety.
But we are outrunning time, as the party was deep
in its second week before the conversation between
the Baronet and the young lady took place. Each
day in the meanwhile had passed just like the one
before. The young men flirted, and aired their
London phrases; the old men grumbled, snorted, and
prosed ; the old ladies ran wild in the prodigal
effusiveness of their small talk ; the young lady whom
one of them owned said 'Yes,' and she said 'No,'
and generally said the one when she ought to have
said the other. Meriel looked on much puzzled, in
her inmost heart bored and disappointed, but yet
rejoicing at her emancipation from a parental yoke
whose very easiness and indulghnce had palled
upon her. She despised the old ladies' cumbrous
catalogues of grievances, and their chronicle of losses
and gains at cards; and, willing as she was to keep
144
Strictly Tied Up.
pace with the dandies in their rattle and their slang,
she was pulled up at every turn by her ignorance
of their dialect, and her inexperience of their allusions
and of their references, and had nothing left to her
but to fall back upon a general attitude of pert
silliness. She was constantly coupled with the strange
young lady, and as she never could extort any reply to
her gabble but ' Yes,' and ' No,' and ' Indeed,' she hated
the very sight of her insipid companion. The Count
bore down upon her like an alligator, and, as a cobra,
lubricated her with with his slimy compliments;
while Sir Miles lay quietly in wait to trip up the
Hibernian step-child of the sunny south—a feat
which he performed several times on successive
evenings with such adroitness as to leave his rival
no consolation but a sulk and a cigar.
As for my lord and my lady, the former passed
the bottle and made up the whist-table with the old
men and one or other of the wives, while Lady
Foulisville grew more and more strong in the unplea¬
sant conviction that the married men did not
appreciate her, their wives did not cotton to her, and
the young men looked upon her as a bore; while Sir
Miles and the Count were too full of their plots and
counter-plots to mind man, woman, or child, except
so far as they might be helpful towards their own
ends. Delicia sighed to herself: ' What a failure that
tiresome Bobbins has made of it by bringing these old
bores together! She must have known how they
hated each other. And how could she have been
such a fool as to make me ask the Italian, after old
Brandreth had forced himself on me ?' What she
A Pleasant Party.
145
did not know was that a few years previously, before
Robbins had gained a footing in Eaton Place, and
while she was earning a livelihood by translating
Mazzinian effusions for the London papers, she had
come across Sant' Onofrio in the character which,
forgetful of his former patron at Ferrara, he had
assumed of Agent-General in London of the Italian
Republic, and that some love passages had occurred
between the interesting pair. Now he would hardly
look at the confidante ; and this cruelty of the perfi¬
dious swain tended to keep the lady in a chronic
condition of ill-humour, which she had much difficulty
in stifling even before her patroness.
The worst of all was that the acquisition of an adopted
daughter, such as Meriel proved to be, was no conso¬
lation to the unfortunate Foulisvilles as far as the
probabilities of a happy conclusion to the party went.
When first she arrived, the old gentleman warmed up
into something like affection for his brother Jack's
daughter. But his coarse ways disgusted Meriel, and
she snubbed his clumsy endearments. She got on no
better with Lady Foulisville, to whom flattery was
the breath of life, and who unconsciously divided the
world into two parties—the one, her friends, in those
who did ; the other, her enemies, in those who did
not flatter her. Meriel thoroughly appreciated the
necessity of keeping well with an aunt who had the
power of giving or withholding a London season ;
but, with the most sincere intentions of flattering so
powerful a relation, she found that the power had
gone from her, even if she had ever possessed it.
Mrs. Foulis hated flattery, and was peremptory, so
10
146
Strictly Tied Up.
far as it affected herself, in stamping out the germs
of it in her daughter, though she could, from ten er
ness of heart, stand mere coaxing of a babyish
description, which presupposed no merit in the
recipient; and this, for her part, Lady Foulisville
hated as a stupid waste of time.
Meriel early learned that to flatter her mother
would be to spoil her own game, and she schooled
herself accordingly. When she liked anything, she
used to throw in some silly words of endearment,
and when she disliked it she was equally candid;
but in either case her language was direct and
unmistakable, while somehow the sum total of things
which she did not like was far in excess of those
which she was pleased to approve. When she got to
Fontarabia, and realized how Robbins made her way
by flattery, her attempts in that direction resembled
the efforts of a man who has lived from childhood
among savages, and has, upon his rescue, to recall
the language of his civilized youth. The genuine
brusqueries which she always began by blurting out
(perhaps seasoned by an 'auntie dear,' which made
matters worse), and the obtrusive ill-adjusted compli¬
ments with which she tried in vain to catch up her
unlucky preludes, were a constant irritation to the
much-tned Countess. Nor did Meriel in company
atone for Meriel en robe de chambre ; for, with all the
money which had been spent on her accomplishments,
Miss Foulis played without expression, sang out of
tune, and did both sulkily; and at the tea-table she
was equally useless, for while the talk of the young
men was all of London, her talk was all of Yaxley.
A Pleasant Party.
147
Lady Foulisville at last began very seriously to
think that she had made another mistake, and had
incurred a fresh failure; and, with all Christian
charity, she wished Meriel back with her mother, and
the party at Jericho, particularly as—gloss it over as
she might in public—she still cherished in her heart a
warm indignation against Sir Miles for the shameless
trick by which he had again succeeded in thrusting
his distasteful company upon her.
The speculations into which he had lured her to
embark had turned out so irredeemably bad that she
had not even the inducement of common pecuniary
interests to persuade her to keep on civil terms with
him. At the same time, she had the mortification of
feeling that she had forfeited, for the term of her
natural life, a wife's privilege of standing out against
an offensive husband; for, with the reversion of her
jointure squandered, she had only the bequest which
might be found in my lord's will to look to in the
probable event of her surviving him; and she knew
his suspicious jealousy too well not to be more than
careful.
After a few days' watching, Brandreth felt his
power, and was sure that the Countess dared not
revert to their quarrel. Till he had reached his con¬
clusion, his manner to her had been deferential, and
he neither sought nor avoided her company. Now,
however, he assumed that half-sarcastic, craftily
courteous tone of badinage which compels the best
of friends to keep his eyes wide open when it is taken
up by the most trusted of comrades, but which is
simply intolerable in the mouth of the man whom
10—2
148
Strictly Tied Up.
you distrust and dislike. The poor Countess was
revolted at the constant humiliation, and felt how
powerless she was. She made one last effort—very
strange to her, after so many years' coolness—to
awaken her husband's sympathy and stir up his pride,
only to discover how completely alcohol had eaten
away the small amount of self-respect with which he
started in life. The Earl listened to her with a very
bored expression, and then, with a hoarse laugh,
chuckled out:
c So Brandreth chaffs you, does he ? Cool hand,
Brandreth ! He amuses me, do you know, with his
confounded impudence. Why don't you make up a
match between him and mother Bobbins ? Ell give
her away, and Meriel could be bridesmaid.'
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE FOULIS CUP.
No wonder that, with such guests, and with the hosts
so entirely put out, the party should grow more
and more stupid, and the failure glare in more and
more apparent ugliness. Lady Foulisville was in
despair. Bobbins, who was not in the best of tempers
since her blunder with Delicia about the Italian Irish¬
man, and the discovery, which she bitterly resented in
her own behalf, of his infidelity, was disconcerted as
she had never before been since she entered Eaton
Place—bored and puzzled, and very sulky. Meriel
was a vexation and a mystery both to lady and to
satellite. The Count and the Baronet were too busy
The Foulis Gup.
149
stalking and taking pot-shots at each other to concern
themselves with the amusement of their hostess and
the company. The young men made bad jokes to
show their own cleverness, and avenged their ennui
by depreciating the efforts made for their enjoyment;
while all that Lord Foulisville did was more vehemently
than ever to push the claret backwards and forwards
to the two fat-headed patriarchs, till the three hippo¬
potami used to waddle into the drawing-room, winking
and blinking, till they stumbled, with a snore, into the
nearest armchairs. As for the gabble of the wives,
or the silence of the daughter, it was difficult to say
which was the more exasperating.
Whispers passed of surprised inquiry, between the
men why, with the grouse mountains so near, and
August well past its middle, the party had never been
sent out shooting; which, as they were meant to do,
reached the sharp ears of Miss Bobbins, who duly
reported them to the Countess. This happened to be
a very sore subject with the noble family. Time had
been when the shootings of Ballybanaghermore were
the admiration of the whole country ; but a few years
previously, during an acute crisis of Lord Foulisville's
affairs, and when Lord Kilcormac was more than
usually out of favour, the shooting had been let on
a lease, which had still some time to run. Since that
day Lord Kilcormac had never set foot in Fontarabia,
although the wild ground near it was famous for some
almost unique specimens of coleoptera.
Her ladyship at first stormed, but she was soon
brought to see that some explanation was due; and
so Miss Bobbins was duly primed with a long, incom-
150
Strictly Tied Up.
prehensible story, in which Lord Foulisville's respect
for the wishes of his lamented father and the grouse
disease were hazily amalgamated, as the reason for the
denial of the expected amusement. The fiction was
clumsy, so that it was generally laughed at, and in¬
creased the universal discontent.
At last, in spite of the distance between them which
late events had caused, Delicia was driven pitifully to
exclaim to Robbins, ' What can we do, Bobbins % I
shall go mad !'
' Supposing you try a picnic on the mountains V
' Well, but supposing it rains V
' The glass is keeping up nicely. But, anyhow, try
it. If it does fail, it can't be a worse failure than this
horrible death-alive, with all these frumpy men and
frowzy dowagers.'
1 Yery well, then ; let us try it. Where shall it be V
' On the far side of the lough facing Diana's Island,'
suggested the companion, keenly remembering the one
pleasant day of the dull visit to Fontarabia which she
had endured a year before.
' But it is so far off, and such a road, and the boat
and all! Do think of some nearer and easier place.'
' The very reason why. Desperate evils need
desperate remedies ; and nothing but a little adven¬
ture can lift this beastly party out of the Slough of
Despond.'
The Countess could but yield to such sound logic,
and it was decided that the picnic at the lough should
come off at three days' distance, so as to give time for
reasonable preparations. It was to be announced at
luncheon on the following day, but at breakfast Lady
The Foulis Cup.
151
Foulisville received with much inward satisfaction the
regrets of the couple who were blessed with a
daughter, and of Captain Pringle, at being compelled
to depart on the following day. They had been very
stupid, and given themselves airs, and there would
have been difficulties, had they stopped, in arranging
the conveyances to the picnic. Lady Foulisville,
however, had a misgiving lest the knowledge of what
was in store might influence their movements and
lead them to beg grace; so she put off the public
announcement till they were safely gone, so this made
a day's delay in the event itself.
Commissariat arrangements cost less trouble than
they usually occasion, for as the French cook had
insisted on bringing to Ireland a totally unnecessary
store of cold pates, potted good things, and so forth,
the picnic proved a happy accident for consuming
some of the costly encumbrance of viands. Neither
was there any need to trouble about wine, for the
cellar at Fontarabia was famous throughout Ireland.
The only difficulty arose with the person who was
usually most passively acquiescent over pomps and
gaieties, Lord Foulisville, and his objection was merely
as to a detail. The plate-chest, which held the forks
and spoons necessary for the banquet, was also so
arranged as to contain the Foulis Cup, a heavy and
tasteless chalice of the early seventeenth century, the
workmanship of some inferior goldsmith at Augsburg,
but intrinsically valuable from its material, which was
solid gold, and from the jewels which were stuck over
it like currants in a bun. This sacred vessel caught
the attention of the great founder of the Foulis
152
Strictly Tied Up.
fortunes, the Commissary-General, on one of his forag¬
ing excursions in Bavaria, while hospitably entertained
at the wealthy Abbey of Ettal, so well known to all
who have made pilgrimage to the Ammergau Passion
Play. A valise in the seventeenth century was a con¬
venient article, and in due time the chalice reached
Ireland, where it gradually became the nucleus and
visible evidence of that legend of Saracenic blood to
which the Foulis line was wont to appeal in defence
of any action on their part more than usually out¬
rageous. Archaeology was not the forte of Irish
squires in the days of George III.; so it lay on the
soul of no guest at Fontarabia to avoid the pre¬
dicament of a duel by corroborating the family boast
that this was the veritable Cup which the renowned
Crusader, Sir Lionel de Foulis, bore off from Saladin's
own table while hundreds of Saracen javelins hurtled
round him, and laid it at the feet of the Emir's lovely
daughter, Narjali. She had promised him her hand
on condition of his succeeding in the exploit, and the
gallant Saladin, in admiration of his prowess, sanc¬
tioned their union, and did not reclaim the goblet. So
the Cup would appear on high days filled full with
punch of extra strength, which the revellers would
toss oft to the glorious pious and immortal memory,
and to the charitable wish that the Bishop of Rome
might be deported whither we decline to indicate.
Lord Foulisville, who had little faith in anything in
heaven or earth, did believe in the Cup. It was the
apple of his eye, the Palladium of the prosperity of
his line. If anything befell it, he was sure that his
glory (whatever that might be) would soon depart,
The Foulis Gup.
153
and a stranger call his broad lands his own. So, when
he first heard of the chest being put into requisition
for the picnic he was furious. ' Then leave the Cup
at home/ interposed his wife ; ' it will be safe in the
plate-closet.' This was even worse. Never in the
memory of man had the Cup left its chest, except for
use. 'Why not, then, take out the forks and spoons,
and leave the Cup where it is ?' This was no better,
and the Earl stormed at the idea of his beautiful plate,
in which he took so much pride, being knocked about
by a lot of lubberly gossoons. ' What do you want
with forks and spoons V At this question even Lady
Foulisville, whose sense of humour was none of the
keenest, could not help smiling. At last the ever-
ready Robbins happily solved the dead-lock by
suggesting that solemnly to drink prosperity to
Foulisville and Fontarabia from the sacred Cup on the
sacred spot might bring the old prosperity back to its
shootings when they returned into the hands of their
rightful owners. The idea was quite new to Lord
Foulisville, and so captivated was he by the suggestion
that he became the most ardent advocate and pro¬
moter of the picnic.
154
Strictly Tied Up.
CHAPTER XX IV.
diana's island.
Fontarabia owed its reputation for beauty to the
views which might be obtained from its grounds, and
to the fine growth of its trees, rather than to the
conformation of its park, which is very flat; and even
for its second merit it is mainly indebted to the pre¬
science of that old agent, to whom Mr. Dennis Foulis
entrusted the original plantation. This wise man
contrived to mistake his orders, and eschewed oaks to
put in beeches and limes. ' The oaks,' he would say,
' will be sure to fall before the first blast from Judea.'
At a short distance from the entrance-gate the tumbled
ground begins, which stretches out as the advance-
guard of the higher mountains beyond. The boundary
between hill and mountain is a river, which issues,
already a considerable stream, from a deep black
lough, and, after running for some miles between
steep banks, without bridge, ford, or stepping-stones,
makes a rather sudden turn as it enters into the open
country, and spreading out into a broader and more
shallow bed, affords opportunity for that ' Great Ford'
from which Bally ban aghermore derived its name, and
which was for unknown generations the only means
of transit between two large adjacent baronies, until
Lord Foulisville's grandfather built the handsome
bridge which now spans the river hard by.
The further side of the lough was the appointed
scene of the picnic, and one more lovely for such a
Diana's Island.
155
purpose could not be dreamed of. It seemed like
nature's cut de sac—a little amphitheatre scooped out
of the encircling heights, with a carpet so green that
to pretend the emerald could vie with it would be
absurdly to repeat stock phrases of old comparison,
although persons may have seen streaks in some
choice piece of malachite which might be placed in
competition. A few alders shielded the pleasure-
seekers from the summer heat, and the little sanctuary
was closed in by the shadowy mountains which ran
down to the water's brink, purple in every aspect,
purple at a distance, in the soft Irish haze, and purple
close by, in the rich expansiveness of heather blossom.
By horse or wheel this dainty spot was wholly
inaccessible, and those who used their feet had but
the choice of going many miles round over the bridge,
and then taking a long mountain path, with a steep
at either end, and intervening ranges of rolling
moorland, or of gaining the near side of the lough,
and then availing themselves of a handy boat which
lay in readiness for the sole use of Lord Foulisville
and his friends—a restriction, by the way, very sternly
insisted upon by the lessee of the shooting, who had
no fear of poachers sallying from Fontarabia, but who
would have been very uneasy at his fastness being
invaded by the mixed multitude of professed tourists.
The conspicuous feature of the lough was Diana's
Island, as the bad taste of the same superfine genera¬
tion which conjured over Fontarabia from the Bay of
Biscay renamed Iniscormac, the retreat, centuries back,
of an old ascetic, of much local reputation for sanctity,
but no connection of the more famous Cormac, Bishop-
156
Strictly Tied Up.
King of Cashel. The almost obliterated ruins of his
little church, or cell—Kilcormac—were still to be traced
on the island, and, in fact, they gave his second title
to the peer, more because it sounded so well than from
any regard for the holy man whose name it perpetuated.
Diana's Island, as we must call it, lay nearer to the far
shore than to the other side, in front of, and com¬
plete^7" masking, the amphitheatre; thus adding to the
mysterious solitude of that exquisite nook. On its
outer side its aspect was that of a low line of gnarled
and richly tinted rock, crowned with the profuse
vegetation of a copse, at the time of the picnic red
with countless berries of the mountain-ash, and soon to
be still more bright with the ripening fruit of the holly,
while the undergrowth of shrubs was stifled under a
wild jungle of gigantic osmundas. On the inner side
and facing the amphitheatre, the rocks broke in the
centre and gave place, for a length of some seventy
yards, to a shelving bank of pure white sand,
sparkling in the sun like diamond-dust. Some rough
foundations on the crowning plateau were commonly
pointed out as the remains of the hermit's cell. This had
been, in the days of the McSwinnys, a place of popular
pilgrimage, and the suppression of the annual gathering
by the first Foulis largely contributed to its unpopu¬
larity. It became the traditionary conviction of the
people that some doom would sooner or later overtake
the intrusive family in connection with the desecrated
island. St. Cormac was too much of a gentleman, they
would say, to stand by and not see the outrage which
had been put upon his children duly avenged.
All round the island the black, calm water was of
Diana's Island.
157
great and, as vulgarly supposed, of fathomless depth,
and, of course, that submerged palace of the wicked
king and his still more wicked daughter, with the
fatal well hard by, which belong to every Irish lake,
were, in local legend, placed at that spot, with the
special addition that the punishment had been incurred
by the princess trying her unholy wiles on good St.
Cormac, whose cell then stood upon a rocky knoll
close to her father's palace walls, and was alone
spared when fortress and city sank under the aveng¬
ing wave.
Miss Bobbins, whenever conversation began to flag
with strangers, would sometimes gently murmur
confidential speculations whether the island owed its
lovely name to its crescent shape, or was so called
because the poet might well dream that sweet Dian
and all her nymphs would love to bathe from ' those
yellow sands' (which happened to be peculiarly
white), where no Actseon could disturb the innocent
revels of the virgin huntresses. She was, however,
never lucky enough to find anyone with sufficient
imagination to follow up her day-dream, until, at a
recent dinner-party in honour of the Rector and his
demure family, an honest young squireen, who had
fallen to the share of Miss Robbins, holloaed out, to
the great surprise of the other guests, who were not
troubling themselves to listen to her ponderous
conversation, ' Sure, and the ladies would come out
like blackamoors, washing thimselves stark naked in
the filthy bog-water !'
The poor fellow paid dearly for his inconsiderate
exclamation. Miss Amy Blake, prim indeed, stiff,
158
Strictly Tied Up.
and easily prejudiced, but rosy and plump, with blue
eyes, silky hair, and a small mouth, happened to sit
next him. Between this young lady and the squireen
mutual tender feelings had begun to grow up, and be
counted himself happy at having her as his dinner
companion. His good fortune proved his bane. Miss
Amy was not prepared to have the non-costume of
personages, whom she believed to be no heathen
goddesses, but real flesh and blood, described in such
plain language; and she declared that she never could
have anything more to say to a man who indulged
in such coarse language before ladies. Happy would
it have been for Mr. Marum if he had left matters in
that condition, for he would only have been a negative
sufferer, in having lost that which was dear to him.
His temerity led him on, and he had to endure the
painful calamity of obtaining that which he learned
by experience to abhor. He sought an interview with
Mr. Blake, and found the gentleman affable, con¬
siderate, and very affectionate. He was full of
concern for the disappointment of Mr. Marum, and
for the rude disillusionment of poor dear Amy. But,
as he went on to remark, all things are ordered for the
best if only we could view them in their right light.
Amy was indeed a priceless treasure, and a great part
of her charm resided in her sensitive organization—
perhaps too sensitive. Her elder sister Susan, in¬
trinsically as honest, good, affectionate, and virtuous
as dear little Amy, was of a more robust type, and
made allowances for foibles which cut Amy to the
quick. He was sure that Susan and his honest but
somewhat rough young friend whom he saw before
Diana's Island.
159
him were made for each other. Marum had only to
say the word, or only not to say anything to the con¬
trary, and Susan was his. Warned by the trouble
into which he had got by speaking at Fontarabia,
Marum held his tongue, and Susan did become his;
and in a few weeks he was lawfully joined to a shrew
and a screw, whose natural inability to be cheerful
herself made cheerfulness in others hateful to her acid
soul.
No pleasure-seekers ever started with happier pros¬
pects than the party which left Fontarabia on the
appointed morning. The season was midway between
summer and autumn, the day voluptuously warm, the
sky intensely blue, but flecked with quick-floating,
ever-changing clouds of dazzling whiteness. The
ground still glowed with the heather, which, thanks to
the fineness of the weather, preserved its bloom even
in days when the bilberry leaf was here and there
assuming its richest autumn red. Their road lay over
broken ground, and from each elevation more and
more conspicuously rose in front of them the compact
mass of mountains towards which their course was
tending, higher and bigger than the remaining hills,
but heavier and less impressive in outline. The forms
on which the eye rested with greater pleasure were
those of outlying heights compactly built, pyramidising,
buttressed with apparent rock, and rising sheer from
the flat plain of surrounding bog, just as if they were
the surviving summits of Matterhorns which had in
the sequence of ages gradually sunk into the half-solid
earth, leaving only their scarped tops to tell the world
what mighty mountains once had been.
160
Strictly Tied Up.
But did any of the party from Fontarabia feel this
magic of home scenery, the illimitable grace and
sublimity which can be extracted from heights of only
two or three thousand feet in altitude ? Certainly the
noble couple did not, nor Meriel, nor Bobbins, nor the
two old adventurers; but one man did—the most
flippant of the dandies, under whose superficial mask
of levity lay the true artist's soul, and who has often
said that the impressions of this day gave the impulse
to his wavering resolutions, and so placed him, in
spite of the protests of a foolish, fashionable mother,
foremost among our rising landscape-painters.
CHAPTEB XXY.
the party sorted.
The party had been conveyed in a landau and a
break, each accompanied by a footman ; while a light
van followed, convoyed by a stable-boy, containing
the plate-chest and the luncheon-hamper. The orders
to the drivers were to take out the horses and put
them in a neighbouring shed, afterwards these were to
be harnessed and the carriages ready again in three
hours. On their arrival at the lough, there was a
good deal of delay, for the lock and key of the boat-
house were equally rusty, and the door itself hung on
its hinges in a loose, dissipated kind of way. After
much kicking and cuffing, however, seasoned with
very expressive language, the rickety old thing was
forced open, and the big, dirty, splay punt lugged out.
The Party Sorted. 161
It was calculated that two voyages would carry
ever the whole party, the gentlemen undertaking to
ict as Charons. The Count offered to make the
louble voyage, and to reconduct the punt. The first
Lot comprised Lord and Lady Foulisville, that one of
ihe old gentlemen who was still stopping with them,
and his wife. To this were also told off the two re¬
maining young men, to look after the matrons and help
diem out, as well as that footman who was to attend
upon the luncheon party. These personages having
been duly deposited on the further shore, the punt
put back again, managed by Sant' Onofrio, and re¬
ceived its second load—Miss Meriel, chaperoned by
Miss Robbins; the Baronet, with the Count himself;
die hamper with the food, wine-glasses, knives, table-
iloths, and so forth ; and the plate-chest, with the
corks and spoons, and the precious Foulis Cup. The
;wo gentlemen prepared to take the oars, but Miss
Elobbins, grasping one, and looking Sant' Onofrio very
straight in the face, declared her determination to
make herself, for once in her poor little worthless life,
useful to her fellow-creatures. The loss could only be
chat of a few more minutes, so Sir Miles, who had
uold of the other, assented with some half-sarcastic
compliment; and the Count, with his hands on his
hips and his legs stretched out, made a salutation of
withering politeness. He was determined not to give
her any opportunity of attempting to renew their old
intimacy, which he found had cost him far more in
material outlay than it had brought in profits by her
literary contributions to the cause of Italian revolution.
The attachment had, on his part not a spark of true
11
162
Strictly Tied Up.
love about it, and, before he broke it off from sordid
considerations, he bad got thoroughly wearied of the
lady's effusive endearments, and took care after the
rupture to give her a wide berth. So little did he
know of her movements that it was a complete surprise
to him to find her grafted upon the Foulisville family.
He had been the acquaintance and fellow-speculator
of the Earl, and not of the Countess; who was,
however, easily persuaded by Robbins to invite a
gentleman with so high-sounding a title, and about
whom'she invented a very plausible story. The poor
creature was prompted to this experiment by a vain
hope of perhaps winning back her adored one. Sant'
Onofrio was soon satisfied, to his relief of mind, that
this romance of their two lives was totally unknown
to the remaining company, even to Sir Miles ; and he
knew very well that, unless he chose to own her as one
for whom he had once cared, she must keep silence, in
dread of the too veracious revelations which it was in
his power to make. He felt how far she must have com¬
mitted herself by inducing the Countess to invite him.
So he resolved to let Robbins buzz about him without
shrinking at the rustle of her gossamer wings. But he
was equally on his guard not to give her a pretext for
accusing him of any rudeness of behaviour. It was to
be no cut, but the politeness of a strange gentleman to
a strange lady whom he meets in a country house, never
having seen her before and never caring to see her again.
The picnic put this artificial courtesy to a severe strain
in a way which he little expected.
Miss Robbins' style of punting was slow and
devious, and at last the boat, wobbling as it did,
The Party Sorted.
163
with a somewhat uncertain course, under the eccentric
pulling of the fair dame, bumped rather unexpectedly
against the bank, and at a few yards from the steps
at which it was bound to have touched. At that
spot the bank shelved down to the water rather
abruptly for a height of not more, indeed, than a
yard, but a yard of very slippery grass. Miss Robbins
was all at sea, for she felt that her last shot had
glanced off the stone which the Count carried in lieu
of a heart, and that what to them would seem her
purposeless vanity must have made her ridiculous to
Brandreth and Meriel. Her back was aching, her
hands were chafed with the rough oar, and her brow
was streaming with the exertion. Moreover, the
bump shook her, and very nearly sent her sprawling
into the bilge-water which had collected at the bottom
of the punt. So, half in rage, half in scare, and wholly
clumsy, she started up, quite forgetting to leave hold
of her oar, and, floundering on shore, caught the hem
of her gown in the dilapidated side of the boat.
She might have met with a very ugly accident had
not the Count, whose hands were disengaged, jumped
forward, and by main force lifted her up, leaving a
long streamer of her dress pendent from the punt.
To save himself from reeling round again, he had to
throw himself forward on to the land, still grasping
his burden, while the poor scared creature clung
unconsciously to her useless oar. The bank was steep,
and the grass exceeding slippery ; so that it was not
wonderful that, instead of alighting in a graceful and
statuesque attitude, he should have fallen prone on
his stomach, and, as men are apt to do who find
11—2
164
Strictly Tied Up.
themselves in that humiliating posture, he should
have kicked out violently behind. His kick had a
result little anticipated by him, for it fell full upon
the punt, causing it to drift away from the land with
its precious freight of Meriel, Brandreth, plate and
food. The Baronet had carelessly left his oar in the
rowlock, and the unexpected jerk sent it into the
water, when the boat was caught by the imperceptible
current which worked down the apparently stagnant
lough. Meriel and he stared at each other for a few
seconds, reciprocally realizing their inevitable fate of
either drifting on to Diana's Island, or back again to the
other side, and hoping that the latter might be their
lot, so as to secure the assistance of the men who
were left with the carriages, when suddenly the girl,
with an uncontrollable paroxysm of acute terror,
screamed out, ' It's filling ! it's filling !' ' What's fill¬
ing ?' £ The boat! the boat! ' Sir Miles looked down,
and saw that she was speaking truth. With the
happy-go-lucky recklessness of their race, the keepers,
first of the lord and then of the lessee, had allowed
the punt to go on for year after year unpainted,
unmended, and unexamined. In the course of time
the wood shrank, and a small leak was sprung.
During the transit of the earlier batch the influx of
water was not sufficient to arrest the attention of
such town-folk as the Countess and the remaining
party. With the second voyage, however, it was
becoming serious, and the weight of the plate-chest
and the hamper, foolishly put down on a very weak
part, was too much for the crazy barque, while the
final damage was done by the too impetuous kick of
The Party Sorted.
165
the Cork-born nobleman. Now the inky waters of the
lough were rising fast in the doomed punt.
'Please Heaven !' exclaimed Sir Miles, 'we may be
saved by drifting on to the Island;' and, suiting
action to exclamation, he worked away with the
stump of a broken oar which was lying on the
bench.
Meriel was too stupefied with fear to speak, or
think, or pray. But in a few moments, which seemed
to the almost demented girl to be hours, the punt
did impinge upon the island, but not upon the bank
of sand, where, at all events, it would have sunk in
water shallow enough to allow of the hamper, with its
contents and the all-precious plate-chest being reco¬
vered. But it struck, instead, against a rock which
bounded the bank to the right, rising about four feet
above the water, with a fiat surface, while below it
went perpendicularly down to an indefinite depth.
Sir Miles soon satisfied himself that the boat
would reach the island before it could sink, and
with the quick eye of a great man, he saw and,
determined to take advantage of a marvellous oppor¬
tunity. To be Meriel's saviour might lead to—who
could tell what height of good fortune % Unluckily
for him, her fears for herself nearly spoilt his plans
for his own advancement; for, with the speed of a
scared gazelle, she was taking the earliest possible
instant for jumping ashore. With an effort, however,
for which he could hardly afterwards account, he
dashed before her, pulling her to where she would
have, by her own exertions, sprung, as if she had been
a bundle, and exclaimed in an aside, meant to be
166
Strictly Tied Tip.
overheard, ' Thank Heaven, I have saved her! but
how near!' Meriel, with all her activity, was so
terrified and demoralized by the apprehensions of
death, that she was actually taken in by this ruse,
and fancied that she owed her life to the elderly
impostor.
This last thud was fatal to the crazy old tub, now
rapidly sinking as the black fluid kept rising. The
weight of the water in it and of the fatal chest was
too great to be counterbalanced by the relief caused by
the departure of its passengers; it turned half round with
the impact of the rock and the propulsion of the escaping
fugitives, quivered like a palsied invalid, and subsided
into the abyss of the deep, dark lough, just at the spot
where tradition placed the mystical well, the outburst
of which had drowned the city of Cormac's tempter.
Pasties, chickens, plates, glasses, champagne, knives,
spoons and forks of silver, embossed salt-cellars, and
the Foulis Cup, all sank down into the gulf, and the
silent waters closed over the irrecoverable loss of a
treasure which never could be replaced or substituted.
Helpless.
167
CHAPTER XXVI.
helpless.
Diana's Island was distant some two hundred yards,
in a straight line, from the mainland; so the party,
who were just re-settling after the Robbins scare, were
near enough to see all that was occurring, while
absolutely impotent to help, and out of practical
earshot, even if anyone had had presence of mind
to speak when all were preoccupied with thinking of
their own safet3r. They could see Sir Miles looking
round at the disappearing punt, and they then per¬
ceived that he held Miss Foulis by the hand, and
was leading her beyond a thicket which intercepted
any further view of the pair.
Open-mouthed, dumb amazement fell upon all the
party ; onty the Earl gasped, with a sob of anguish
such as had never escaped him on the death of either
of his parents, 'The Cup!' The Count uneasily
conscious that he had, somehow, had a principal share
in bringing about a catastrophe which he confusedly
felt to be most serious, sidled up to Lord Foulisville,
and muttered some suavely polite platitudes about
his extreme regret. At this, the Earl, whose savage
nature, now unchained, was chafing to relieve itself
by saying or doing something violent, wheeled round
with a gesture of rage, and concentrating his well-
matured proficiency in swearing into one prolonged
climax of horrible profanity, ordered the unfortunate
man, as he valued his salvation, to run up a low
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point of rocky ground which rose from the meadow
about a hundred and fifty yards off, and see if any
hope of human help were visible from any quarter
within the horizon.
Saint' Onofrio, now thoroughly scared, started with
all speed on his errand. The shortest line lay across
a flat of deliciously fresh grass ; so he naturally chose
this course, and, bounding upon the verdant carpet,
he found himself rapidly sinking in a caldron of
filthy, stinking, black ooze. His yell of terror was so
genuine and so strident as momentarily to divert the
attention even of the Foulisvilles and Miss Robbins
from their already overwhelming anxiety.
Fortunately, the footman and Mr. Fiennes, the
future painter, preserved some presence of mind, and
were just able to reach the spot and drag out the
spluttering wretch before he had swallowed more than
three or four gulps of nauseous fluid, all glistening
as he was in his cuirass of noisome mire. The
spectacle was most ludicrous, but the party were all
too frightened to laugh. The Countess had dropped
on the ground, regardless of the charming promenade
dress which had first appeared on that very morning,
and was sitting, her legs wide apart, in scared
bewilderment, as Robbins, half stooping, fondled her
hand; while the matron clutched hold of Mr. Ser-
good's arm, and kept time to a widely diversified
string of ' Oh, Lords!' and ' Oh, gracious's!' by
pinching the suffering youth with a rapidity and
vehemence which effectively diverted his thoughts
from his neighbours' misfortunes. His lordship
snorted like a spent volcano, and the old gentleman
Heirless.
169
stuck his hands into his trousers pockets as if he
would rive the garment.
Fiennes, out of breath as he was with his feat of
rescue, was the first to speak, or rather gasp, some
words of common sense. The predicament, as he
pointed out, was one from which nothing could extri¬
cate them but their own unaided personal exertions,
in which the most infirm must share alike with the
most vigorous. Diana's Island concealed not only
themselves, but the accident to the punt, from the
carriages, and ere now the servants would have
obeyed their instructions by taking the horses away
to the prescribed shelter, from which they were only
to emerge after a rest of three hours, with no
guarantee then of an immediate return of the pleasure-
seekers. There was nothing to make them suspect
any accident for many hours, nothing to lead to the
supposition, after they had made the discovery, that
they could be of help for many more hours. Again,
what help could the party even then forecast ? Night
would be falling, and now that the passage by the
punt had been cut off, the only possible expedient by
which they could extricate themselves from the
wilderness would be to climb the precipitous mountain
which, as they all too well saw, hemmed in that
woful valley, and then, after a rough walk of, he
dared not guess how many miles over the uneven
moorland, they would reach the bridge, distant, as
he had heard, three miles from Fontarabia. It was
a dismal prospect at the best, as it involved a night¬
long march by delicate ladies on fasting stomachs;
but otherwise there was no possible hope of rescue.
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e But the coachman will send another boat/ Bobbins
ejaculated.
' Where is there one that he can ?' replied the
young man; and she could only answer she knew of
none. With much patience he explained again that
the stablemen would not guess that the punt was
lost, and it was not, therefore, to be expected that
they would think of getting a boat, even supposing
that the country contained another, as to which no
one knew anything. If some extraordinary inspira¬
tion led to such a lucky thought, he could not calculate
how many hours it would take to bring so bulky an
article to that desolate spot, at night and over rough
roads. The choice, in fact, was absolute and simple,
—a night-long walk for old and young over mountain
and morass, or the prolonged and very likely fatal
agony of chill and starvation both to themselves and
to the still more helpless castaways.
The alarmed old lady, with a pinch of Sergood's
arm more excruciating than any previous one,
wondered why the ladies could not stop till the
gentlemen—if they were gentlemen—came back with
the needful help.
' Because,' quietly rejoined Fiennes, ' the only help
which would in that case be of any use would be
four hearses (taking in the young lady over there),
with coffins to match.
The party shuddered at the terrible picture of their
situation so graphically brought before them, but as
no one could deny its truth, they all united in pressing
their Mentor to become their guide.
Fiennes was well suited for the post from youth,
Helpless.
171
strength, activity, a quick eye, and good sense, which
he had the habit of concealing under a mask of
affected and supercilious flippancy; but he was a
stranger to the road. So, with a modesty which no
one expected from him, he promised to do his best
for the general safety, provided that Lord Foulisville
—who, he presumed, knew well his own mountains—
would promise to contribute his local knowledge.
This claim, reasonable and natural as it was, put
the unlucky Earl into an immense perplexity. Loudly
as he used to boast in London of his magnificent
shooting, he was well known in Ireland for personally
shirking the sport; and he could have shown the
way over the Himalayas as easily as over the moun¬
tains of Ballybanaghermore. But it was more than
ever necessary now to keep up the imposture; so
he acquiesced in silence, with a ceremonious bow and
a forced smile.
Bobbins, elated by her unusual success in making
things pleasant with the Earl, simpered out, ' Of
course, dear Lord Foulisville, we all know you know
every inch of your mountains,' and got in reply so
emphatic and gruff an objurgation to mind her own
business, and not waste precious time, that she
shivered as she tucked up her skirt, and asked her¬
self whether he really did know the way, followed
as that doubt was by the reflection that if he did not,
no one else did.
This interlude was not, however, observed by the
remaining party, and Mr. Fiennes, according to pro¬
mise, arranged the order of march.
Miserable as were the three women, none of them
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young, and helpless as were the gouty old gentlemen,
there were three others still more truly objects of
pity : the London footman, whose chief exercise was
wont to have been getting off and on the footboard
of a chariot; the Count, stiff in his armadillo-like
coating of greasy black mud; and c Beauty Sergood,'
who had turned out like an Adonis of the mountains,
in varnished boots and heather-coloured tweed. The
first spurt was the stiffest part of the whole march,
being a sheer scramble up the precipitous mountain,
which shut in the amphitheatre, by a scarcely discern¬
ible track, in which slippery grass, stunted heather,
unexpected stones, and greasy earth alternated to
vex the foot of the wanderer. No one had had the
forethought to provide himself with a walking-stick,
and the ladies' parasols soon split. When this ascent
had nearly been achieved, with, as he felt, a waste of
time which would bring nightfall ominously near,
Fiennes, from his general knowledge of mountain
conformation, concluded that the remaining journey
would be over a rolling expanse of moorland, with
many ups and downs, but no conspicuous precipices,
until they fairly descended upon the lowland near the
bridge. At the same time he saw the hopelessness
of hurrying his unwieldy troop, and proclaimed a
short halt before the final spurt.
A Night's Work.
173
CHAPTER XXVII.
a night's work.
Who can attempt to delineate the scrambling, the
slipping, the grabbing, the slithering, the stumbling,
the jarring, the reeling, the clutching of each other's
clothes or of one of the heather tufts, the moaning,
the sighing, the vague prayers, the blaspheming and
the screaming which had filled up the tale of an
ascent more full of real anxiety than many an Alpine
exploit ?
The summit was almost reached, and the party
entered one of those little gullies, bestrewed with
stones, the course of a winter torrent, which are so
often found in mountains as the summit-level is being
reached. Here the first occasion occurred to Mr.
Fiennes to put Lord Foulisville's knowledge to the
test.
It was the good lord's custom to drink at luncheon
sometimes a pint and sometimes a bottle of Cante-
merle, and if by any mischance he failed to imbibe
that or some equivalent restorative, his perceptions as
the afternoon melted into evening would be apt to
become somewhat confused. Such was his fate on
this unhappy day, and the strain upon his wits was
much intensified by the unwonted toil of that sharp
ascent. This blind gully was a spot where the man
with the keenest instinct of locality might, if destitute
of local knowledge, pardonably go wrong. Two paths
diverged at a most acute angle right and left of a
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rather big stone which stood up in the waterless
channel which then formed the tract. So Fiennes,
turning to the proprietor, asked, ' Which way, my
lord V ' To the right,' gasped his lordship, without
taking the trouble even to look at the competing
paths.
It is much to be desired that Mr. Jowett, or some
other accomplished Platonist, might explain why the
man who does not know his road always answers, ' To
the right.' In this case the advice led the party
frightfully to the wrong. Had they followed the left-
hand path, they would, after several miles of straight
though very rough walking, have reached the bridge,
while the right-hand one led them literally back into
the wilderness.
The party, let us again note, which was so fatally
misled, was composed, besides its guide, of three
women, two old men, a footman, a mud-cased Count,
and of young Reginald Sergood—known in London as
' Beauty Sergood'—who exhibited himself as inferior
in pluck to anything which might have been ex¬
pected from so comely a creature calling itself man,
as Fiennes had soared above all reasonable expectations
which could have been formed of his character and
resources.
We have spoken of that terrible night as if it had
been one continuous tramp. It really was a tramp,
broken by many short rests. There was one particu¬
larly distressing interval, due to the weakness of Lady
Foulisville, who had all along shown herself the least
capable in bodily powers to perform her task, with,
perhaps, the exception of Sergood.
A Night's Work.
175
In the middle of the night, Delicia, who had been
for some minutes leaning heavily on Miss Robbins,
after reeling, like a drunkard, stumbled against a
treacherous piece of rock, and, falling prone on her
face, made no effort to rise. Her companion gently
turned her over on her back, and drew her on to a
comparatively soft patch of bilberries which happened
to be near. She was still alive, that was certain, but
she seemed to be little more, and the cavalcade had
nothing to do but proclaim a halt. They could not
desert her, and yet they felt that every moment of
delay, by prolonging the time before which help or
food could be reached, only increased the peril to the
whole party. At last she recovered, and the march
was resumed ; while Fiennes charged himself with the
extra labour of supporting her on one side, and on the
other she was helped, in spite of his unpleasant con¬
dition, by the brawny Count. Sergood and the
footman were respectively assigned to the two other
ladies, and the old gentlemen allowed to take care of
themselves. During this frightful time of suspense,
Lord Foulisville was heard more than once to mutter,
' My Cup !' No one, however, noticed his uttering, ' My
wife !'
Such a wilderness, too, as it was ! The agonies of
mind and body which they had suffered, and the
many hours of wandering still in store for them, con¬
trasted as they were with the usual comforts of daily
life, made the period seem like forty years.
It would be sad if there were anyone among those
whom these adventures may interest who is such a
stranger to the delights of wild nature that he or she
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has never set foot upon the open moor. There is then
little need to recapitulate the twigs of heather, slippery
as glass, or matted so as to snare the incautious foot, the
hypocritical patches of green that mask the mud-
holes, the hidden stones that twist the ankle. All
these and the heavy drag of walking over a perpetual
mass of vegetation, are to the tourist or the sports¬
man, cheerily tramping in well-nailed boots, but the
little excitements which add zest to the health-giving
walk. But when the walk is not alone for a whole
afternoon, but for a whole afternoon and all night after,
and much of the day following that night—a walk per¬
formed by persons most unfit for even much less severe
exercise, the women's wretched feet shod in flimsy
French boots, already torn to rags, and the poor flesh
blistered and bleeding at every step—all this endured
upon stomachs empty, at first, with a five hours' fast, and
empty at last, with one of nearly a whole day—we
have given a glimpse of misery which it would be
cruel to dissect or enlarge upon.
Strangers as all the party were to the mountains,
they had not appreciated, during the night's march,
that they had strayed away from the road leading to
the bridge; and as day broke, they eagerly strained
their eyes in hopes of descrying that eagerly coveted
structure, or, if not the bridge, at all events the low
country beyond it. But they were met with a very
different prospect—that of desolate, rolling moorland
on every side; and they instinctively guessed that
they must have lost their way, and were probably
still some miles distant, though none of them could
guess how many, from their destination. But Fiennes,
A Night's Work.
177
with his sharp eye for locality and form, rapidly con¬
cluded that the false turn in the gully must have
made the mischief, and after scanning the horizon,
which now glowed with the rising sun, and computing
the points of the compass, gave it as his decided
opinion that if they struck off to the left, they would
at last find themselves on the road leading to the
bridge. The best he could promise to them was a
very long walk over quite as trying ground as that
which they had been traversing all night. But there
was no choice between that effort and starvation. As
for poor old Foulisville, no one thought of consulting
him now, for all regarded him as the author of the
last crowning misfortune; so he sheepishly and
silently followed their invaluable guide like a whipped
dog.
The ground was, in itself, just as difficult to traverse
as that which they had been painfully measuring all
night, for any vestige of path had long been lost; but
they could see their way, and, in spite of augmented
fatigue and growing hunger, the party was buoyed up
with a new feeling that escape was becoming every
minute more near. So several miles were traversed,
on a regular system, devised by Fiennes, of alternate
progress and rest; while, as there were three ladies
among them, he decided that the Countess only
needed the support of a single arm, and insisted on
Sergood, the middle-aged and mud-cased Sant' Onofrio,
and the footman, as the three most capable hands,
each respectively devoting himself to his particular
charge, while he himself was free to act as pioneer ;
whereby Bobbins, to her disgust, not only because the
12
178
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odour of the mire still stuck to him, but for reasons
deep hidden in her secret breast, fell to the share of
the Count. Still, she could not openly rebel at the
assignment, as her patroness and the strange lady had
the obvious right to the most savoury supports. The
Earl and his boon companion were bidden to take
care of each other.
At last they unexpectedly bore down at right
angles upon a path so buried in heather that it was
unseen till actually reached. Fiennes, without hesi¬
tation, declared this to be the long-lost road from
which they had wandered in the fatal gully after they
had accomplished the first ascent. By his orders they
advanced along it in single file, over a weary stretch
of rolling ground, until at last it ascended a rather
longer and more conspicuous elevation than those
across which they had for some time been striking.
Its crest once gained, their eyes were delighted by a
landscape which at any time would have detained the
passer-bjr by its harmoniously contrasted beauty as it
shone in the glory of that delicious autumn morning,
but which to that spent and sickened band was even
as the Pacific to Cortez (or more correctly Balboa)
and his crew as they stood e silent upon a peak in
Darien.' The mountain range—which, as to their
cost they knew, stretched to their right and behind
them, in long, monotonous swellings—to the left and
in front ended in a sheer steep hill, hugged by the
folds of the sparkling serpentine river hundreds of
feet below them ; while across it the rolling lowlands
grew flatter and flatter as they spread out into the wide
plain of central Ireland. Just beyond the last and
A Night's Work.
lowest hill, wreaths of early smoke from a tuft ot trees
indicated the place where Fontarabia nestled; and
sheer at their feet, but oh! how dizzily deep below,
two parapets and a narrow road appeared. This was
the longed-for bridge.
The descent was one to try any but professed
mountaineers, and all which any one of that exhausted
crew but Fiennes had to say of it afterwards was, that
they did get down, Heaven knows how. His memory
was more specific, and the details of that episode—
veracious he solemnly averred them to be—which he
would reveal in the safe sanctuary of his club's smok¬
ing-room, were such as to send many a man off aching
with irrepressible laughter.
Lady Foulisville had a wild idea, which was, of
course, disappointed, that she would find the carriages
at the bridge. She made sure that they would come
round on finding that the punt never returned, and
she could not be made to understand that the coach¬
man must be under the belief that the punt was still
safe. The ladies had effectually parted with all pride
and high-life manners, and Fiennes was afterwards
heard to express his belief that they would not have
disdained the ease of a manure-cart had the driver of
such a vehicle offered to convey them home. But in
that rough, wild country not even a manure-cart pre¬
sented itself, and they had to complete the entire
circuit from the lough to the hall-door of Fontarabia
upon their own feet.
It was not pleasant to the lord and the lady to
find their household in a condition of blank, purpose¬
less, unreasoning puzzlement. No coherent idea of
12—2
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Strictly Tied Up.
-what had become of them had apparently been formu¬
lated, and no scheme of rescue as much as thought of;
nor had the carriages come back so very long before
themselves. It seems that when the time had arrived
for again putting to, the horses were duly harnessed,
and the drivers duly took their seats. Hour after
hour went by, and no punt appeared. Were they to
go home, or to stop ? was the question. To go home
would be palpably to disobey orders, and 'get the
sack,' as the second coachman observed. If the party
were all dead or dying, they could no more bring them
to life by returning to Fontarabia than contribute to
their decease by stopping there. What casuists call
probabilism unanswerably persuaded them to stop.
But how were they to stop, on their boxes, and all the
horses harnessed ; men and beasts alike perishing with
cold % This was preposterous. So the horses were
unharnessed and taken back to the shed, while the
men picked some handfuls of grass wherewith to allay
the hunger of the beasts. For themselves, the aliment
which had been provided from the larder and the beer-
cellar had been so abundant, that out of the leavings
of the mid-day dinner they were able to make a very
substantial supper. Then they shut up the landau,
and got in, four of them sitting on the seats—two
coachmen, the footman, and the driver of the van—
and the groom-boy, stretched along at the bottom, and
so composed themselves to sleep. ' Why keep a
watch V they said ; ' we shall be called fast enough
when " Boozy " comes back.' It is not surprising that
the night's rest of these faithful domestics was long,
and their sleep sound. It was high day when they
A Model Household.
181
roused themselves, and then they felt that they, for
their parts, had sacrificed enough to duty, while the
horses would seriously suffer by a prolonged detention.
Not to return then to Fontarabia would be insanity;
and as the groom observed, ' I believes they's cut from
their debts the back way, and gone to 'Mericky.'
CHAPTER XXYIII.
a model household.
The reader familiar with the methodical, ship-shape
ways of an English country-house will hear the
details which we have just given with incredulity,
and ask why scouts were not immediately sent out to
make for the bridge and explore the mountains in
every direction. In the first place, this country-
house was Irish, and not English; the only English
element among the authorities of the basement who
had been left at home being Ruddock, the butler—a
fat-witted Cockney, whose every thought and idea
was centred in London. The cook and the lady's
maid were French ; while the under-butler and his
aunt, Mrs. Finnegan, the housekeeper, incomparable
in preserves, were true Milesians. But even if
practical English sense had ruled at Fontarabia, there
was an insuperable obstacle to giving effect to the
idea. Since the shooting bad been let, the keepers,
who alone knew the mountains, were no longer the
servants of Lord Foulisville; and no one of the present
establishment, all of them engaged after that event,
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had ever cared to learn who the rough men were,
where they lived, or what were their names.
Stupid as the household had been before the return
of the family, that return, with its mysterious and, as
given by the sufferers, unintelligible story, tended to
make it more stupid. The Irish portion of it, indeed,
appeared hardly glad to see them safe and sound; so
generally had they hugged the conviction that the
fairies must have got them, and that they had gone
down to the submerged palace, with its wicked king,
that it was far from pleasant to see so charming a day¬
dream thoroughly dissipated.
' Sure, an' they're gone to the likes of thimselves,'
grunted a cynical old housemaid ; ' gone to the ould
bad father who starved and oppressed the poor.
Maybe, with the help of the saints and the blessin' of
St. Cormac, the rale lords of Ballybanaghermore will
come back agen, and the McSwinnys reign in glory.
They were the people that cared for the poor.'
' Sure, and I heard the Banshee myself, I did, last
night,' chimed in a pert kitchen-maid, who soon rued
her interference, for ' Hould your clatterin', ye fool!
who ever heard of English rubbish havin' a Banshee V
was the encouragement she got for her officiousness
from the elderly dragoness. Mr. Ruddock, sole
representative of the sister island, had no convictions
at all, and no initiative.
The fact was, that the general household was suffer¬
ing from too much of zeal on the preceding evening.
Anxious and alarmed as they had grown when the
failure of the party to return had become remarkable,
they had sat up so long canvassing the inexplicable
A Model Household.
183
puzzle, and had imbibed so many jugs of whisky
punch to aid their speculation, that when they got up
on the following morning—all of them much after
their appointed time—the symptoms of intellectual
collapse all round were unmistakable. Still, the re¬
turn of the majority of the party safe, though not
altogether sound, gradually galvanised the establish¬
ment into something like rational action. The ladies'
maids all declared that the first thing to be done was
to get their mistresses to bed, after which the un¬
resisting victims were compelled by the zealous
Abigails to swallow successive potions of sal volatile
and water, tea, and water-gruel, seasoned with
peremptory orders to go to sleep, and not presume to
move till dinner-time.
Meanwhile the gentlemen instinctively mustered in
the dining-room, to which Ruddock had, by a sudden
concentration of thought, brought in the apparatus of
whisky punch. Greedily did they gaze upon the
glasses and covet the enticing compound presented to
them, according to custom, in its constituent elements;
but no one had the energy to stretch out a hand and
brew the blessed beverage. For the first time since
a Foulis had reigned at Fontarabia did it devolve
upon the butler to mix the whisky punch. As
successive tumblers were poured out the other men
sipped and nibbled biscuits, but Lord Foulisville wildly
tossed a couple down, with hardly time enough
between them to take his breath. As Ruddock went
on brewing and helping the party, he noticed the
absence of Sir Miles; and he also recollected that
Miss Foulis's maid alone had not been summoned when
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the half-conscious women were hurried up to their
bedrooms. As one thought begat another, he dimly
recollected that the van was back, but that no plate
had appeared ; and that even the Foulis Cup, with
which he somehow connected the tenure of his place,
had not appeared. Yet, he thought again, the van
was really back, and the stablemen were back, and
the vehicles and horses. All, in short, was perfectly
unintelligible ; and his previous questions had elicited
little more than moans from the half-fainting ladies,
and curses from the Earl; while the strange gentle¬
men had been prudently mute. Inquiringly, he half
whispered to the Earl, ' The Cup, my lord V
The muddled peer, turning scarlet, and with eyes
savagely glaring, could only gasp, ' The Cup, by !
gone—at the bottom—ruined !'
This oracular information apprised Ruddock of some
weird calamity, involving the loss of the Foulis Cup,
and probably of the entire family-plate chest, which
was connected with the inexplicable delay and the
pedestrian journey. So, by way of coming at any
information, he ventured, in a sheepish way, further
to inquire when Sir Miles and the young lady might
be expected home.
This question made the Earl furious. In the
imbecility of his fuddled rage, he held them to be the
cause of the Cup being lost.
' They are on Diana's Island, you fool! They drifted
there in that infernal boat before it went down.
They've been all night there, and they'll stop there
till the Day of Judgment, for all I care.'
' Would it not be well, my lord,' meekly interposed
A Lucky Thought.
185
Mr. Euddock, ' to take steps to rescue them, supposing
they are not already dead of cold and hunger V
This state of matters, thus bluntly put, somewhat
recalled Lord Foulisville to decency, though not to
sense.
' By Jove ! I never thought of that. Of course it
would. Send the keepers at once, and order them to
bring them off in the boat; and send the car down to
the strand to fetch them.'
' But, my lord, how is the keepers to take them off
when there is no boat ? I. can't send the keepers,
neither, as they are no longer your lordship's, but
are gone to the gentleman as takes the shooting.'
This difficulty fairly nonplussed Lord Foulisville, as
it might have done a wiser and more sober man. The
emergency was so extreme, and the danger so acute,
that the ordinary rules of etiquette, so jealously
asserted in that high and mighty establishment, were
all forgotten, and the entire household trooped
together to a free conference over the unique and
almost hopeless calamity.
CHAPTER XXIX.
a lucky thought.
The deliberation was lengthily and crossly protracted
At last, when the conclave was on the point of break -
ing up in despair, a bright-eyed, draggle-tailed, wild
filly of a housemaid, vociferated, ' I have it, my lord !
I have it!' The girl was regarded with envy by her
.186
Strictly Tied Up.
fellow-servants, as she had for some time been sus¬
pected of a secret tenderness for a burly, red-haired
miller's man in the next parish. Many eyes accord¬
ingly glared upon her in angry surprise.
Unabashed, the damsel, with a great poke in
Ruddock's ribs, shrieked out that old Mr. McSwinny,
at the big water-mill, some two miles off, kept a punt
on his pond—which, in fact, he did, for the use of
gentlemen who cared for fishing. ' Sure, an' the ould
gintleman would just be proud to lend his boat to the
lord.'
The boat was a recent addition to the stock-in-
trade of that thrifty old gentleman, and it was not
extraordinary, considering the relations between the
two establishments, that its acquisition should have
been unknown at Fontarabia, except to the one
personage who had special and private means of
hearing what went on at the mill.
As the name of the Pope was to the late Mr.
Whalley, or as that of M. Gambetta is to a Breton
Legitimist, so was that of Mr. McSwinny to the Earl
of Foulisville, or of Lord Foulisville to Mr. McSwinny.
In truth, the old miller had few or no friends. But
there are enemies and there are enemies; and the
grounds for the animosity which reigned between him
and the Earl were such as to throw into the shade all
the other minor quarrels of two savage natures, one
of them varnished over. by the conventionalities of
high life, but the other rough with all the grain and
knots of its constituent timber.
The miller lived on his own freehold patch ; so, as
he had never received either kindness or justice from
A Lucky Thought. 187
any landlord, he was able to hate and to abuse with
perfect impartiality and equal ignorance the whole
race of landlords. If he had been poor, he might have
contracted obligations somewhere which would have
hampered his malevolent tongue. On the contrary, he
was very prosperous. His mill was the result of a
natural phenomenon not infrequent in hilly countries
—the presence of a spring which bursts full-sized from
the earth in a strong, clear, irresistible stream. As
nature had left this affluent of the river, it had been
very lovely; as adapted for a mill by McSwinny's
ancestors, it is very hideous. The McSwinnys were
hereditary millers, and had by cunning, shown in
bullying and money-lending, succeeded in mono¬
polizing the custom of a large area of country, giving, it
must be owned, fair satisfaction to their independent
customers. But in the McSwinnys there was, behind
the grasping, thriving tradesman, something much
deeper and stronger, which moulded their characters.
The old line of Irish gentlemen whom the first
Foulis ousted, by devices which hardly bore too close
a scrutiny, from the wide demesnes of Ballybanagher-
more, were named McSwinny, and the millers, with
no solid evidence to confirm the brag, gave themselves
out as being, and believed that they were, the represen¬
tatives of the ancient line. We need run into no
further detail to explain the feeling which existed
between Lord Foulisville and Nicholas McSwinny.
The perfect independence of each other intensified the
hatred. Had the miller held under the lord, there
was, of course, a short and sharp expedient to which
he would not have had the slightest scruple in resort-
188
Strictly Tied Up.
ing; but nowhere was it laid down that one land-owner
was to shoot another, and not even take to revenge
on a Foulis would the man who was to himself the
Lord of Ballybanaghermore abase that exalted per¬
sonage to the low level of an evicted tenant. The
abhorred intruder should live a monument of his
clemency.
In truth, McSwinny was an eccentricity. He was
exceedingly haughty, and possessed as he was of
much humour, it always broke out in some impish
and malicious shape; while, thoroughly Celt as he
was in his prejudices and antipathies, he was yet
unlike many of his countrymen in being not only
cunning, but long-headed and patient in working out
his calculations. He was as avaricious as he was
grasping; and, vehement Roman Catholic as he was,
the priest used to say there was no man from whom
he had so much trouble to extract a shilling for any
good object as from the opulent miller. His habitual
excuse for his greed in getting, and his meanness or
cruelty in hoarding money, was that he was laying up
a treasure which would one day enable the McSwinnys
to outshine and humiliate those dogs, the ' Foolses,' as
he pronounced it. When we add that, in professing
to act for his neighbours in a friendly way as their
banker, he had drawn them all round into his net
of usury, and that every fat beast or ripe ear of
corn over several baronies meant gold in McSwinny's
coffers, we shall have completed the picture of a man
universally feared, but loved by no one. It was,
indeed, generally believed that on one occasion of ex¬
ceptional difficulty the Earl, badgered on every side
A Lucky Thought 189
by lawyers and lenders, made a great gulp of his pride,
and approached McSwinny with suggestions of an
advance. In trouble as he then was, still the security
he had to offer was notably sounder than that of the
many needy farmers whom the miller used to help.
But, yet, with all his hoarding and greed, McSwinny
considered that the loss of a good investment was a
cheap price to pay for the pleasure of mortifying,
inconveniencing, and perhaps indirectly impoverishing
a Foulisville; so he rejected the request in terms of
studied insolence and insult.
This was the man to whom a dirty little minx of a
serving-girl openly proposed that the great Earl
should humble himself. No, by every name supernal
and infernal, never. Let them starve or drown, or
fish up his Cup ; he never would grovel before the
cursed miller. Fortunately, Sant' Onofrio came in,
having with a clean suit of clothes resumed his rSle
of superior man of the world, and, hating Sir Miles as
he did, he yet loved his own reputation better. If the
Baronet and the young lady had perished of hunger
or bog-water, the Count might personally survive the
loss; but he had sense enough to see that it would be
a very ugly blot on the fame of all who were then
collected under the roof of Fontarabia that they had
allowed two guests—one a man of a certain social
standing, the other the host's own niece, and a girl
upon whom so much depended — so miserably to
perish, with no really energetic effort made for their
rescue. Meriel was, at all events, worth keeping alive
in the general behalf of all who were, like himself,
unmarried men of spirit and enterprise. Besides,
190
Strictly Tied Up.
looking at his own particular interests, he was shrewd
enough to realize that, mixed up as he was (however
innocently) by his first unlucky tumble with an
adventure which none of the eye-witnesses could
probably report with accuracy, or garnish with
identical incidents—while all would undoubtedly give
rein to their imaginations, their predilections, and
their piques—the consequent death of a man whom he
was known not to love might bring him under an
ugly cloud of vague suspicion, out of which, consider¬
ing his ambiguous antecedents, he might be puzzled
to emerge.
It would not be agreeable to know that people
talked of him as the man who pushed off the boat
which sank when Brandreth and Miss Foulis died.
Accordingly, prompted by a mixture of motives, some
of them not altogether selfish, he pleaded the impolicy
of recollecting old scores against the one only man who
could give them the needful apparatus of rescue.
Fiennes then entered into the discussion and, with
much tact backing the Count, urged so earnestly and
cogently upon Lord Foulisville that at such an awful
moment, when life and death were no doubt trembling
in the balance, all grievances, however deeply rooted,
and however defensible, just, and aggravating, must
be laid aside in face of the black danger ahead, that
he succeeded in winning his host's unwilling but full
assent to soliciting the loan of the punt from the miller
in language framed so as to make a refusal impossible.
The Count and Fiennes accordingly retired into the
smoking-room with the semi-sober Earl, where they
were closeted for some half-hour. Fiennes volunteered
A Lucky Thought. 191
to beard the dragon; but it was thought that a man
like Ruddock, who could better afford to bear foul
language with impassibility, would be a more service¬
able emissary, while Fiennes could do useful work
in accompanying the carriage which was to take the
captives off. So Ruddock was summoned, and a
letter placed in his hands directed to ' N. McSwinny,
Esq.,' and duly fastened with the big family seal.
The Earl further ordered him to proceed with the
farm waggon, and three or four of the steadiest
labourers, to the mill, for the purpose of carrying off
the boat. Fiennes took care to find the opportunity
of giving Ruddock his cue that, on reaching the mill,
he was to present the letter with all courtesy, while
he was not to mind any abuse either of himself or
of the Foulisvilles, but persist with his entreaties and
his assurances of the good-will of all at Fontarabia,
until the miller should consent to lend the precious
punt. Extortion, too, was probable, and could not be
resisted; so he must be well provided with money.
Ruddock, mindful of propriety, asked Fiennes if he was
speaking with authority from his lordship, and the
young man, considering the procedure covered by his
general commission of guide, answered affirmatively,
and was relieved, on returning to the smoking-room,
to find the footman dragging, more than leading, his
master off to bed. It would be at least two hours—
probably a good deal more—before the waggon could
return with the boat to the lough, and the labourers
be prepared to row it over to Diana's Island; so he
had time for a short nap on the sofa before proceeding
in the car to the water-side, when, with the labourers
192
Strictly Tied Up.
he would row to the Island, and there look for Sir
Miles and Miss Meriel, alive or dead—an alternative
which made him shudder. For what then should be
done, and for bringing back the couple to Fontarabia,
he held himself responsible.
As ill-luck would have it, the farm horses had been
sent on some fatiguing errand, from which they
would not return till mid-day. At that hour, how¬
ever, the cavalcade started for the mill, at a pace
only to be excused by the condition of the horses and
the badness of the roads.
CHAPTER XXX.
the embassy.
On reaching their goal, Mr. Ruddock craved admit-
ance in-to the miller's office, with fear in his heart
and the letter in his hand. The grim old man was
fumbling some dirty papers which he had taken out
of his desk in the desolate room, once whitewashed,
in which he did his business, with a malignant smile
flickering over his face, which showed that he had got
some unhappy debtor into his clutches.
Ruddock was a well-known figure to him, and one
which was detested accordingly, generally as that of
an Englishman, and particularly as that of Lord
Foulisville's factotum. So, almost before the poor
man had well passed the doorway, McSwinny shrieked
out, 'Bedad, and what brings ye here, uninvited,
11
12 /> ^ I 4-1
-
I
14
T -
15
16
17
18
19
TOTAL
ENTER TOTAL ON THE FRONT OF THIS TICKET
A Boot of Safety.
209
was to be done was as yet inscrutable. Meriel would
have to be pumped, but could he rely on her silence
in the meanwhile ? Obloquy hemmed him in on
every side. Success, by its material advantages,
would compensate for the obloquy; but obloquy and
failure would be social extinction.
As in carrying out his evil project he would have
to face a world whose good opinion he had despised,
and had therefore contracted its hatred, conscience,
half awakened for once, had nearly made a coward of
him, and he was seriously facing the necessity of a
retreat while, as a prudent general, he was planning
the advance. The circumstance which would, as he
feared, be his weakness in an onward movement
would come to his aid in a retrograde operation. If he
could hardly depend upon Meriel for sticking to her
promise, he believed, from his silent but searching study
of her character, that he could rely upon her querulous
and suspicious temper for doing anything which she
determined on in the worst conceivable way and with
the least possible grace. So he set himself to consider
how, in the probable case of having to drop the
adventure, he could lead up to being jilted by Meriel
in some way which should ensure her silence no less
than his own. But fortune, in a most unexpected
manner, came to the succour of her beloved adventurer,
and opened for him a door of safety which no schem¬
ing of his own could ever have discovered.
The cold, the wet, the fatigue, the exposure, the
anxiety of that night-long tramp produced its natural
effect on the frame, no longer young nor strong, of
Lady Foulisville. She complained for a day or so of
14
210
Strictly Tied Up.
being sick and lieavy and stnpid ; everything swam
before her eyes ; she could not think, neither could
she eat, although her cook was a man of such genius
that he could have made an appetising dish out of the
Countess's discarded gloves, and she had to leave
dinner abruptly and go to bed. The doctor came on
the following morning, and announced that his noble
patient was unquestionably suffering from brain fever,
adding that, if she was to be pulled through, extreme
quiet for many days was more than imperative.
On this, the other guests departed. Sant' Onofrio
thought himself lucky to get off, after the humiliating
figure which he had cut; the old gentleman and his
wife, none the better for their walk, slunk away
for a long spell of coddling and doctoring; and Fiennes
not only thought it delicate to leave, but forced
Sergood, who could not see that, to accompany him.
Only Meriel, as a near relation, stayed on; and Sir
Miles discovered that his presence would be invaluable
as an established intimate of the family, to cheer up
his dear old friend Foulisville, who must be in sore
want of some companion. That excellent nobleman
was so much overcome that he found himself compelled
to give the sad current of his affectionate thoughts
another turn by a scientific and protracted investiga¬
tion of his historical cellar, visiting, bin by bin, that
matchless and still extensive store of many wines with
which his father and his grandfather, and he too, in
his humble way, had stored Fontarabia. Claret had
to follow claret, burgundy trod on the heels of hock,
and priceless champagne gave place to madeira, more
oily than, attar of roses, or sherry and port delicious
A Door of Safety.
211
enough to turn the current of public taste. This grave
occupation gave the Earl little time for seeing, think¬
ing of, or speaking about other people's business, and
mightily facilitated Brandreth's projects, as, in his
extemporised function of approving taster, he soon
reinstated himself in the Earl's highest favour, and was
commanded not to think of leaving.
Miss Robbins, too, was left, by the natural devolu¬
tion of duties, vicegerent of the family and household ;
for ' Boozy Fou ' was perfectly useless except with the
cellar-book, and in her sudden and solitary responsi¬
bility she was really glad of the company of a man—a
man of title, too, as she said to herself, and one who
knew the world, and who had better be the friend
than the enemy of that disordered family at Fontarabia.
She reckoned on her charms of conversation to keep
Sir Miles in the right line, so that her persuasions were
added to the Earl's injunctions to the Baronet not to
abridge his visit.
Sir Miles Brandreth appreciated the change of front,
and bore with much apparent meekness his sudden
transformation into the cherished and indispensable
friend of the Foulisville family ; while he conceived a
further scheme, equal in audacity to his coup upon the
island, but far transcending it in breadth of conception
and artistic ingenuity of detail, while in no way
inferior in its total want of moral principle.
We have explained how thoroughly Sir Miles, like
everyone else, believed in Meriel's irreversible succes¬
sion to the great and growing inheritance of the Curteis
family ; he also recollected that he and his affianced
were at the time in Ireland, and, without being an
14—2
212
Strictly Tied Up.
accurate lawyer, he was yet well aware that that
country enjoyed a marriage law very different from
that of England, and admirably suited in its differences
for the promotion of all kinds of clandestine, irregular,
and undesirable unions. His imagination had been
much struck by reading the romantic details of a trial
which resulted in declaring that the heroine of the
tale which it disclosed was wife to some clergyman
from the accident of a stranger happening to overlook
from a window of an adjacent house a tete-a-tete
between the reverend gentleman and the lady, which
he employed in reading the marriage service with her.
The Baronet knew, indeed, that subsequent legislation
had forbidden a repetition of this especial form of
marriage, but enough of glorious matrimonial liberty
remained in Ireland to suit the purpose of Sir Miles
Brandreth, and he had means, without raising sus¬
picion, of ascertaining the exact condition of the legal
question.
Sir Miles speedily found out, and without much
difficulty, that no tidings of the eventful picnic had
been posted to Yaxley. Meriel's chief concern was
the dread lest the untoward accident should involve a
recall home, and thus shorten her holiday; so she was
in no hurry to report the incidents of a day which
would so probably bring about that calamity. The
Irish papers, too, and the correspondents of the London
journals were at the time preoccupied by a very sensa¬
tional trial, in which fair ladies and high-sounding
names were involved in disagreeable complications ; so
that the event obtained publicity in a very curt and
unimpressive form, and with no names mentioned, but
Strike Quick, Strike Straight. 213
merely as an accident which had nearly befallen a
picnic party in the West of Ireland. Sir Miles felt
that facts were still his own to marshal as he judged
most expedient.
CHAPTER XXXIII. .
strike quick, strike straight.
Starting from the premisses which we have indicated,
and studying the situation with the eye of an old
campaigner, Brandreth came to the conclusion that if
he struck quick and struck straight, forestalling Lady
Foulisville's recovery, and making the marriage
irrevocable before any active steps could be taken by
Mrs. Foulis, he should only require the help of two
confederates. Of Meriel's ultimate co-operation he
felt certain, in spite of her visible coldness, now that
her aunt's illness and her uncle's toping had left her
practically as solitary as when she was on Diana's
Island; for, as we have seen, he had divined her dread
of him, and used it to keep alive in her mind vague
terrors of breach of promise, and he did not think it
would be very difficult to secure the assistance of Miss
Robbins. He had taken advantage of her advances to
him, and his semi-amorous tone of philandering began
to fall upon a vain heart lacerated by the perfidy of
the cruel Count. In this he had been helped by some
incautious phrase which Miss Robbins had dropped at
the break-up of the party, and of which he took silent
note. At the same time, it was so veiled as not to
214
Strictly Tied Up.
attract the attention of Meriel, the jealousy of whose
nature was happily attempered by abundant stupidity.
The London-bred companion was visibly getting
wearied with a banishment to Ireland, which the
illness of her patroness seemed likely to prolong for an
indefinite period, unless, indeed, the death of the
Countess — which was far from impossible—should
bring this profitable connection with the family to a
sudden close, or throw Robbins on the capricious
favour of the besotted widower. Besides, the strain
of a sick-room was clearly and acknowledgedly irk¬
some and unfamiliar to her, and she was continually
making mistakes in her management of the invalid
which jeopardised a life very valuable to her. On the
other hand, to strike and leave with no other asylum
open for her would be to exchange affluence for
beggary. Taking her in this mood, thought Sir Miles,
and dangling before her eyes the prospect of exchang¬
ing her actual restraint and uncertainty for the
enviable post of principal companion at Yaxley, he
could easily mould her to his will.
His device for making use of Meriel was audacious.
Treating her as his own betrothed in the sight of
heaven and of their consciences, he expatiated on the
miseries of their ambiguous situation and the impro¬
priety of a clandestine engagement, and urged the girl
to terminate so fatal a state of things by a frank and
free confession to a mother to whom she owed so much
gratitude, respect, and love.
Meriel, who had never heard him talk in that strain
before, was somewhat taken aback. In truth, the
girl—who, with all her selfishness, was not hardened'
Strike Quick, Strike Straight
2L5
in evil ways—had felt some rather intrusive qualms
of conscience about the propriety of what she had
been so strangely led to do, and, well fed as she now
was, she was tempted still more than at first to treat
the words and deeds of her frozen, half-starved self
upon Diana's Island as the utterances and actions of
one not in her sane mind. She was sure that, whatever
being in love might mean, she was not in love with
Sir Miles. In short, had she been well counselled at
the moment, she might have taken up a safe and sure
position, and asserted her unforfeited freedom of action,
in spite of the half-delirious language of those ex¬
ceptional hours. She meant to say all this to her
would-be lover, but she had by nature no fluency, and,
at the same time, she was anxious to make her ex¬
planation as courteous as she could to one in whose
power she was, who held himself out to her as her
affianced husband, and to whom she believed that she
owed her life. Added to this perplexity was her
inextinguishable dread, and the constantly recurring
question, ' If I thwart him and make him my enemy,
what will he not do V
The natural result of these conflicting feelings was
not only that the puzzle-headed child totally failed in
shaping in words the sentiments which were dancing
in her brain, but that, on the contrary, she blundered
in confirming, though in other words and from a
different point of view, the very arguments with
which the Baronet was plying her. Both he and she
started from the premiss that she was ' in a mess,' as
she graphically termed the situation. On this he met
her more than half way with agreement, and, after a
216
Strictly Tied Up,
transitory glare in terror cm at those who dared
speak disrespectfully of her, modestly pleaded that
the object of his remarks was to point out to her the
way by which she might escape from the mess which,
with her inbred delicacy of feeling, she felt so keenly.
He, and he alone, could really extricate her from the
annoyances which, situated as she was, her enemies
could always inflict upon her with their slanderous
tongues; while she, feeling precisely as he did, and
with the same real end in view, could in reply only
offer inconsistent and inconclusive lamentations with
not a trace of method about them. She tried to take
up the ravelled thread of her discourse, and only more
completely found herself entangled in his ingenious
arguments, and forced, contrary to her own inner
knowledge of her own mind, to acknowledge that,
with feelings and intentions so very similar to those
of Sir Miles himself, she had no alternative hut to
defer to his superior knowledge of the world in the
choice of her practical action. His advice was
that she should write to her mother, and write
quickly.
' It will be such a difficult letter to write,' she
helplessly whimpered.
' Will you allow me to assist you in its composi¬
tion V
' Yes.'
By wheedling that short 'Yes' from Meriel, Sir
Miles had obtained the advantage which he coveted.
His plan, in the rough, was to transmit, in MeriePs
name, a double-faced letter to Mrs. Foulis, placing the
island adventure before her in lights which would
Strike Quick, Strike Straight. 217
most enhance her own and her daughter's obligations
to him, as the man to whom the girl owed her life.
This would naturally lead Meriel to declare their
consequent engagement in terms which Lucy might
read as only inviting from her some expression of her
general and preliminary good-will, but yet such as
should lure her on to be so incautious in that expres¬
sion as to leave it open to Brandreth and Meriel to
interpret her language as conveying permission for
the marriage itself. Finally, the letter was to contain
a promise from Meriel to introduce Sir Miles to her
mother at Yaxley in terms which Mrs. Foulis would
probably understand as proposing to her the prior in¬
spection of a would-be son-in-law, but which the
conspirators could, without too flagrantly blundering
on purpose, persistently treat as the offer, from them,
of a post-nuptial visit.
Such a letter, written by Meriel's hands, with full
consciousness of its double meaning, and so worded
as to reveal Brandreth's share in the authorship,
would have been no mean evidence of an average
first-class capacity for intrigue. There are several
members of the ' Phly,' recognised professors of the
science, who would have produced artistic specimens
of such a document. Augustus Foulis, too, in his
day would, without doubt, have gained credit for his
performance. But there are heights of the gay
science of deception which Foulis's feet had never
trodden, and labyrinths in which he would have sat
down in bewilderment and perished. He may, in his
boyhood, have greased the floor at Fontarabia to
make priest and parson tumble over each other, but
218
Strictly Tied Up.
he never dreamed of seasoning the turtle soup with
catsup. So the refinement of tactics which Sir Miles
Brandreth put into execution was one which neither
Foulis nor all the remaining ' Phly' in conclave
assembled could have extemporised, with any chance
of success, where the instrument was a Meriel
Foulis.
What are we to say of the genius which planned
making the girl herself an unconscious scribe of
thoughts infinitely transcending her capacity, and
converting her into a conduit-pipe of high diplomacy,
while she thought herself indulging in the silly
duplicity of an undutiful girl to an over-fond mother?
In her own credulous blindness, she imagined that
Sir Miles was only helping her to word her own
commonplace fears and longings. He had, therefore,
not only to think as a silly, inexperienced girl would
do, but write as only an illiterate girl could do. Her
letter had to be worded with a profusion of ungram-
matical expressions, and to be stamped with an
incoherence of style, all effectually masking a crooked
and ruthless purpose; yet neither Mrs. Foulis, nor
anyone else reading it, could be allowed to imagine
that this rambling, blundering scrawl could have
come from any brain but that of such a creature as
Meriel.
Lastly, the mysterious person so to be deceived was
Meriel's own mother, a clever and educated woman
by reputation, and one to whom every form of ex¬
pression in which her child was wont to indulge must
have been familiar since the first days of that child's
infantine lispings, and which he, an acquaintance of
Strike Quick, Strike Straight. 219
days, had to elicit from a suspicious dolt, and then to
assimilate and to embody. The only possible pro¬
cess was the tedious and delicate one of keeping in
front of Meriel in the suggestion of topics, and yet
lagging behind her in embodying them not only in
isolated words but in consecutive sentences. The
letter must be fundamentally and ungrammatically
hers, not only in the phrasing, but in the sequence of
its topics, and yet those topics must owe their origin
to the prompting of Sir Miles.
He was successful, but as, in surplusage of neces¬
sary pains, he had to deal with a girl slow of pen,
barren of imagination, curt of expression, and sullenly
obstinate in sticking to the first clumsy words which
it gave her the least trouble to suggest, it was not a
single hour only which the task cost him, while it
called into play his whole stock of patience and entire
artillery of wheedling and coaxing.
The fractious child's impatient rage reached its
climax when Brandreth insisted on the necessity of
keeping a copy of so important a paper, and yet refused
to be himself the scribe. Only a very rapid movement
and a sharp grip of Meriel's wrist saved the precious
document from premature destruction.
220
Strictly Tied Up.
CHAPTER XXXIY.
a child's letter.
As finally sent to the post, Meriel's letter to her
mother ran as follows:—
'Fontarabia, Monday.
'Dearest dear old Mother,
' I am only just enough myself to tell you
what a dreadful thing had nearly been happening.
How you would have been grieving over your poor
drowned Meriel and never to have kissed darling
mammy again ! For Lord and Lady Foulisville who
are the kindest people that ever was had got up a
delightful picnic at a beautiful place up in the
mountains and you can only get there you know in a
boat for the lake is very deep. And so the rest of
the party had got over safe and our lot was me and
two gentlemen and Miss Robbins. And as Miss
Robbins and a gentleman got out they somehow gave
the boat a push and it went off with I and Sir
Miles Brandreth in and there was a hole in the
bottom and the filthy black water came in and the
boat went on sinking so awfully fast—but Sir Miles
found it out and kept us floating till it bumped
against the desolate island that stands you know in
the middle and I scrambled out and had just gone
to the bottom. But how he saved me and got me
on the rock I never could understand it was so very
dreadful and he was in such great danger in saving
my life. And poor Lord Foulisville to think his
A Child's Letter.
221
precious cup had gone to the bottom and the plate
and all the lunch with them to walk home all night
over the mountain before the boat could be got to
take us off. But I had quite lost all count of time
and the only thing I can remember was how kind
and brave he was. And he was so cheerful telling
me to trust in God and then I would see you again
and without him I must have sunk clean away as I
was so hungry for the lunch had gone down before
we had any of us eat anything and nobody took
much breakfast we were all in such a fidget. When
I lay perishing with cold he took off his own poor
coat and put it on my feet and he scrambled though
he was so tired and got me wild fruit or I should
have died with hunger. Lady Foulisville says she
never knew such a perfect gentleman and poor thing
to think she should have had that long walk over
the mountains when the boat was lost and she never
knew what had become of me and the cup too. And
Lord Foulisville does feel it so. Dear Miles must
not I call him my own when I owe my life to him
and he says he will be a son to you and longs to go
to Yaxley to kiss your dear hand. And you will
love him dearly won't you darling mamma as he will
be your own all his life and strive he says to make
you happy. You must not mind that horrid County
Families says Miles is fifty-eight. He is quite the
youngest man of his age I ever saw so active so
bright so jolly. His wife is dead a long time and he
has only one son who never troubles him for he is a
lawyer and has got a fellowship or something on
which he lives he is so clever. He is a very old
222
Strictly Tied Up.
baronet and his title is a very old one of James I.'s
lot he says and he told me his ancestor was a general
of Marlborough and married Queen Anne's maid of
honour and fought the French.
'Your most loving child,
'Meriel Foulis.'
Those who remember the intentions of the real
author of this letter will see that there were sufficient
reasons, well thought out, not only for everything
which appeared, but for everything which was sup¬
pressed in it. Its one principal end, of course, was to
magnify Sir Miles and to conciliate Mrs. Foulis to him
as her daughter's saviour and a complete gentleman.
The danger to that daughter was to be magnified, and
the reward she felt herself bound to give to her pre¬
server to be taken as a matter of course, and not
ostentatiously hammered at. The kindness of the
Foulisvilles was to be placed in a prominent light, and
by assuming much friendship on their parts for Sir
Miles, he was, as it were, to receive an indirect testi¬
monial of character. This would lead to the suppo¬
sition of their approbation of the match, the inference
of which was to be raised without committing the
writer to a direct falsehood. With this view, it was
necessary to minimise what the hardships of the
adventure proved to be to them, so as to give no pre¬
sumption of Lady Foulisville's illness. That illness
would have been a fatal fact, for an insensible woman
can hardly consent to a match. Above all things,
however, the letter must appear to be the unprompted
effusion of Meriel's affectionate heart and cultured brain
A Child's Letter.
223
The Baronet's own feelings, on the completion of
the memorable epistle, were akin to those of the
painter who at last dispatches to Burlington House
the picture on which heart and hand and mind had so
long been concentrated with the glowing presentiment
that by it he will live. So long as he could make
sure of his material booty, Sir Miles was philosophically
indifferent to any of that discredit which he knew
that he would incur both among men of conscience and
men of honour—the drivellers and the humbugs, as he
used distinctively to call them. Moreover, his instinct
taught him that if he could only succeed, as he felt
sure he would, in extracting anything from Mrs.
Foulis which could be tortured into an assent, her
mouth would be sealed, and he would be master of the
girl, the money, and the story. He had not plied
Meriel all these days without having probed the secret
of her mother's isolation, with no other counsellor than
that well-meaning but borne Featherston and a
lawyer whom she never saw. But he felt keenly that,
if Mrs. Foulis should get on the track of his history
before he had secured his prize, he would be mercilessly
shown the door.
Thus Sir Miles had every counsel of hope on one
side and of fear on the other for striking a bold, quick
blow. Successful, he would become famous, while his
defeat would hardly become notorious, as none would
have more interest in keeping the incident dark than
his chief antagonists. In short, audacious as the game
was, it was in reality not only a promising but a safe
one for a player to whom the judgment of the present
and of the next world were equally matters of pro-
224
Strictly Tied Up.
found indifference, and who could only see pitted
against him, as his possible foe, a lone woman, tongue-
tied by the regard which she owed to her daughter's
reputation. In his exultation, he actually set to per¬
suading himself that the strictness of the entail was
an additional advantage to himself. The fire of youth
and the allurements of dissipation had, as he com¬
placently thought, died out in his mature breast; so
that it was a merciful dispensation which would be
pouring into his lap, year by year, an income far in
excess of what in any one year his ablest machinations
had ever earned for him. To be sure, he would only
fill the place, for the present, of husband of the heiress-
apparent, but with the collieries and the iron-works
extending as they promised to do, and a sufficiently
salaried post of manager-in-chief of the works ready,
as he had determined, to be created on his behalf, even
this secondary position would be a noble acquisition.
One little private gratification did the kind father
also allow himself, as a sort of dessert after the rich
banquet of material good things which Meriel's
husband would enjoy. This was to gloat over the
mortification of his well-hated son at the prospect of
being edged out of social estimation and the sedulous
attentions of emulous dowagers by some enormously
opulent half-brother. ' His would be the bloody hand,'
said the Baronet to himself; ' but the other one will
have the hand in the breeches pocket, and if he does
not pick a coronet out to put Sir Eustace to shame, he
will not be my son, after all.'
Having seen Meriel's letter despatched, the next
care of Sir Miles was to make sure of Miss Bobbins.
A Door of Safety.
209
was to be done was as yet inscrutable. Meriel would
have to be pumped, but could he rely on her silence
in the meanwhile ? Obloquy hemmed him in on
every side. Success, by its material advantages,
would compensate for the obloquy; but obloquy and
failure would be social extinction.
As in carrying out his evil project he would have
to face a world whose good opinion he had despised,
and had therefore contracted its hatred, conscience,
half awakened for once, had nearly made a coward of
him, and he was seriously facing the necessity of a
retreat while, as a prudent general, he was planning
the advance. The circumstance which would, as he
feared, be his weakness in an onward movement
would come to his aid in a retrograde operation. If he
could hardly depend upon Meriel for sticking to her
promise, he believed, from his silent but searching study
of her character, that he could rely upon her querulous
and suspicious temper for doing anything which she
determined on in the worst conceivable way and with
the least possible grace. So he set himself to consider
how, in the probable case of having to drop the
adventure, he could lead up to being jilted by Meriel
in some way which should ensure her silence no less
than his own. But fortune, in a most unexpected
manner, came to the succour of her beloved adventurer,
and opened for him a door of safety which no schem¬
ing of his own could ever have discovered.
The cold, the wet, the fatigue, the exposure, the
anxiety of that night-long tramp produced its natural
effect on the frame, no longer young nor strong, of
Lady Foulisville. She complained for a day or so of
14
210
Strictly Tied Up.
being sick and heavy and stupid ; everything swam
before her eyes ; she could not think, neither could
she eat, although her cook was a man of such genius
that he could have made an appetising dish out of the
Countess's discarded gloves, and she had to leave
dinner abruptly and go to bed. The doctor came on
the following morning, and announced that his noble
patient was unquestionably suffering from brain fever,
adding that, if she was to be pulled through, extreme
quiet for many days was more than imperative.
On this, the other guests departed. Sant' Onofrio
thought himself lucky to get off, after the humiliating
figure which he had cut; the old gentleman and his
wife, none the better for their walk, slunk away
for a long spell of coddling and doctoring; andFiennes
not only thought it delicate to leave, but forced
Sergood, who could not see that, to accompany him.
Only Meriel, as a near relation, stayed on; and Sir
Miles discovered that his presence would be invaluable
as an established intimate of the family, to cheer up
his dear old friend Foulisville, who must be in sore
want of some companion. That excellent nobleman
was so much overcome that he found himself compelled
to give the sad current of his affectionate thoughts
another turn by a scientific and protracted investiga¬
tion of his historical cellar, visiting, bin by bin, that
matchless and still extensive store of many wines with
which his father and his grandfather, and he too, in
his humble way, had stored Fontarabia. Claret had
to follow claret, burgundy trod on the heels of hock,
and priceless champagne gave place to madeira, more
oily than attar of roses, or sherry and port delicious
A Boor of Safety.
211
enough to turn the current of public taste. This grave
occupation gave the Earl little time for seeing, think¬
ing of, or speaking about other people's business, and
mightily facilitated Brandreth's projects, as, in his
extemporised function of approving taster, he soon
reinstated himself in the Earl's highest favour, and was
commanded not to think of leaving.
Miss Bobbins, too, was left, by the natural devolu¬
tion of duties, vicegerent of the family and household ;
for ' Boozy Fou ' was perfectly useless except with the
cellar-book, and in her sudden and solitary responsi¬
bility she was really glad of the company of a man—a
man of title, too, as she said to herself, and one who
knew the world, and who had better be the friend
than the enemy of that disordered family at Fontarabia.
She reckoned on her charms of conversation to keep
Sir Miles in the right line, so that her persuasions were
added to the Earl's injunctions to the Baronet not to
abridge his visit.
Sir Miles Brandreth appreciated the change of front,
and bore with much apparent meekness his sudden
transformation into the cherished and indispensable
friend of the Foulisville family ; while he conceived a
further scheme, equal in audacity to his coup upon the
island, but far transcending it in breadth of conception
and artistic ingenuity of detail, while in no way
inferior in its total want of moral principle.
We have explained how thoroughly Sir Miles, like
everyone else, believed in Meriel's irreversible succes¬
sion to the great and growing inheritance of the Curteis
family ; he also recollected that he and his affianced
were at the time in Ireland, and, without being an
14—2
212
Strictly Tied Up.
accurate lawyer, he was yet well aware that that
country enjoyed a marriage law very different from
that of England, and admirably suited in its differences
for the promotion of all kinds of clandestine, irregular,
and undesirable unions. His imagination had been
much struck by reading the romantic details of a trial
which resulted in declaring that the heroine of the
tale which it disclosed was wife to some clergyman
from the accident of a stranger happening to overlook
from a window of an adjacent house a tete-a-tSte
between the reverend gentleman and the lady, which
he employed in reading the marriage service with her.
The Baronet knew, indeed, that subsequent legislation
had forbidden a repetition of this especial form of
marriage, but enough of glorious matrimonial liberty
remained ir Ireland to suit the purpose of Sir Miles
Brandreth, and he had means, without raising sus¬
picion, of ascertaining the exact condition of the legal
question.
Sir Miles speedily found out, and without much
difficulty, that no tidings of the eventful picnic had
been posted to Yaxley. Meriel's chief concern was
the dread lest the untoward accident should involve a
recall home, and thus shorten her holiday; so she was
in no hurry to report the incidents of a day which
would so probably bring about that calamity. The
Irish papers, too, and the correspondents of the London
journals were at the time preoccupied by a very sensa¬
tional trial, in which fair ladies and high-sounding
names were involved in disagreeable complications * so
that the event obtained publicity in a very curt and
unimpressive form, and with no names mentioned, but
Strike Quick, Strike Straight. 213
merely as an accident which had nearly befallen a
picnic party in the West of Ireland. Sir Miles felt
that facts were still his own to marshal as he judged
most expedient.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
steike quick, steike steaight.
Staeting from the premisses which we have indicated,
and studying the situation with the eye of an old
campaigner, Brandreth came to the conclusion that if
he struck quick and struck straight, forestalling Lady
Foulisville's recovery, and making the marriage
irrevocable before any active steps could be taken by
Mrs. Foulis, he should only require the help of two
confederates. Of Meriel's ultimate co-operation he
felt certain, in spite of her visible coldness, now that
her aunt's illness and her uncle's toping had left her
practically as solitary as when she was on Diana's
Island; for, as we have seen, he had divined her dread
of him, and used it to keep alive in her mind vague
terrors of breach of promise, and he did not think it
would be very difficult to secure the assistance of Miss
Robbins. He had taken advantage of her advances to
him, and his semi-amorous tone of philandering began
to fall upon a vain heart lacerated by the perfidy of
the cruel Count. In this he had been helped by some
incautious phrase which Miss Robbins had dropped at
the break-up of the party, and of which he took silent
note. At the same time, it was so veiled as not to
214
Strictly Tied Up.
attract the attention of Meriel, the jealousy of whose
nature was happily attempered by abundant stupidity.
The London-bred companion was visibly getting
wearied with a banishment to Ireland, which the
illness of her patroness seemed likely to prolong for an
indefinite period, unless, indeed, the death of the
Countess—which was far from impossible—should
bring this profitable connection with the family to a
sudden close, or throw Robbins on the capricious
favour of the besotted widower. Besides, the strain
of a sick-room was clearly and acknowledgedly irk¬
some and unfamiliar to her, and she was continually
making mistakes in her management of the invalid
which jeopardised a life very valuable to her. On the
other hand, to strike and leave with no other asylum
open for her would be to exchange affluence for
beggary. Taking her in this mood, thought Sir Miles,
and dangling before her eyes the prospect of exchang¬
ing her actual restraint and uncertainty for the
enviable post of principal companion at Yaxley, he
could easily mould her to his will.
His device for making use of Meriel was audacious.
Treating her as his own betrothed in the sight of
heaven and of their consciences, he expatiated on the
miseries of their ambiguous situation and the impro¬
priety of a clandestine engagement, and urged the girl
to terminate so fatal a state of things by a frank and
free confession to a mother to whom she owed so much
gratitude, respect, and love.
Meriel, who had never heard him talk in that strain
before, was somewhat taken aback. In truth, the
girl—who, with all her selfishness, was not hardened
Strike Quick, Strike Straight
215
in evil ways—had felt some rather intrusive qualms
of conscience about the propriety of what she had
been so strangely led to do, and, well fed as she now
was, she was tempted still more than at first to treat
the words and deeds of her frozen, half-starved self
upon Diana's Island as the utterances and actions of
one not in her sane mind. She was sure that, whatever
being in love might mean, she was not in love with
Sir Miles. In short, had she been well counselled at
the moment, she might have taken up a safe and sure
position, and asserted her unf'orfeited freedom of action,
in spite of the half-delirious language of those ex¬
ceptional hours. She meant to say all this to her
would-be lover, but she had by nature no fluency, and,
at the same time, she was anxious to make her ex¬
planation as courteous as she could to one in whose
power she was, who held himself out to her as her
affianced husband, and to whom she believed that she
owed her life. Added to this perplexity was her
inextinguishable dread, and the constantly recurring
question, ' If I thwart him and make him my enemy,
what will he not do V
The natural result of these conflicting feelings was
not only that the puzzle-headed child totally failed in
shaping in words the sentiments which were dancing
in her brain, but that, on the contrary, she blundered
in confirming, though in other words and from a
different point of view, the very arguments with
which the Baronet was plying her. Both he and she
started from the premiss that she was ' in a mess,' as
she graphically termed the situation. On this he met
her more than half way with agreement, and, after a
216
Strictly Tied Up,
transitory glare in terrorem at those who dared
speak disrespectfully of her, modestly pleaded that
the object of his remarks was to point out to her the
way by which she might escape from the mess which,
with her inbred delicacy of feeling, she felt so keenly.
He, and he alone, could really extricate her from the
annoyances which, situated as she was, her enemies
could always inflict upon her with their slanderous
tongues; while she, feeling precisely as he did, and
with the same real end in view, could in reply only
offer inconsistent and inconclusive lamentations with
not a trace of method about them. She tried to take
up the ravelled thread of her discourse, and only more
completely found herself entangled in his ingenious
arguments, and forced, contrary to her own inner
knowledge of her own mind, to acknowledge that,
with feelings and intentions so very similar to those
of Sir Miles himself, she had no alternative but to
defer to his superior knowledge of the world in the
choice of her practical action. His advice was
that she should write to her mother, and write
quickly.
' It will be such a difficult letter to write,' she
helplessly whimpered.
' Will you allow me to assist you in its composi¬
tion f
* Yes.'
By wheedling that short 'Yes' from Meriel, Sir
Miles had obtained the advantage which he coveted.
His plan, in the rough, was to transmit, in MeriePs
name, a double-faced letter to Mrs. Foulis, placing the
island adventure before her in lights which would
Strike Quick, Strike Straight. 217
most enhance her own and her daughter's obligations
to him, as the man to whom the girl owed her life.
This would naturally lead Meriel to declare their
consequent engagement in terms which Lucy might
read as only inviting from her some expression of her
general and preliminary good-will, but yet such as
should lure her on to be so incautious in that expres¬
sion as to leave it open to Brandreth and Meriel to
interpret her language as conveying permission for
the marriage itself. Finally, the letter was to contain
a promise from Meriel to introduce Sir Miles to her
mother at Yaxley in terms which Mrs. Foulis would
probably understand as proposing to her the prior in¬
spection of a would-be son-in-law, but which the
conspirators could, without too flagrantly blundering
on purpose, persistently treat as the offer, from them,
of a post-nuptial visit.
Such a letter, written by Meriel's hands, with full
consciousness of its double meaning, and so worded
as to reveal Brandreth's share in the authorship,
would have been no mean evidence of an average
first-class capacity for intrigue. There are several
members of the ' Phly,' recognised professors of the
science, who would have produced artistic specimens
of such a document. Augustus Foulis, too, in his
day would, without doubt, have gained credit for his
performance. But there are heights of the gay
science of deception which Foulis's feet had never
trodden, and labyrinths in which he would have sat
down in bewilderment and perished. He may, in his
boyhood, have greased the floor at Fontarabia to
make priest and parson tumble over each other, but
218
Strictly Tied Up.
he never dreamed of seasoning the turtle soup with
catsup. So the refinement of tactics which Sir Miles
Brandreth put into execution was one which neither
Foulis nor all the remaining £ Phly' in conclave
assembled could have extemporised, with any chance
of success, where the instrument was a Meriel
Foulis.
What are we to say of the genius which planned
making the girl herself an unconscious scribe of
thoughts infinitely transcending her capacity, and
converting her into a conduit-pipe of high diplomacy,
while she thought herself indulging in the silly
duplicity of an undutiful girl to an over-fond mother ?
In her own credulous blindness, she imagined that
Sir Miles was only helping her to word her own
commonplace fears and longings. He had, therefore,
not only to think as a silly, inexperienced girl would
do, but write as only an illiterate girl could do. Her
letter had to be worded with a profusion of ungram-
matical expressions, and to be stamped with an
incoherence of style, all effectually masking a crooked
and ruthless purpose; yet neither Mrs. Foulis, nor
anyone else reading it, could be allowed to imagine
that this rambling, blundering scrawl could have
come from any brain but that of such a creature as
Meriel.
Lastly, the mysterious person so to be deceived was
Meriel's own mother, a clever and educated woman
by reputation, and one to whom every form of ex¬
pression in which her child was wont to indulge must
have been familiar since the first days of that child's
infantine lispings, and which he, an acquaintance of
Strike Quick, Strike Straight. 219
days, had to elicit from a suspicious dolt, and then to
assimilate and to embody. The only possible pro¬
cess was the tedious and delicate one of keeping in
front of Meriel in the suggestion of topics, and yet
lagging behind her in embodying them not only in
isolated words but in consecutive sentences. The
letter must be fundamentally and ungrammatically
hers, not only in the phrasing, but in the sequence of
its topics, and yet those topics must owe their origin
to the prompting of Sir Miles.
He was successful, but as, in surplusage of neces¬
sary pains, be had to deal with a girl slow of pen,
barren of imagination, curt of expression, and sullenly
obstinate in sticking to the first clumsy words which
it gave her the least trouble to suggest, it was not a
single hour only which the task cost him, while it
called into play his whole stock of patience and entire
artillery of wheedling and coaxing.
The fractious child's impatient rage reached its
climax when Brandreth insisted on the necessity of
keeping a copy of so important a paper, and yet refused
to be himself the scribe. Only a very rapid movement
and a sharp grip of Meriel's wrist saved the precious
document from premature destruction.
220
Strictly Tied Up.
CHAPTER XXXIY.
a child's letter.
As finally sent to the post, Meriel's letter to her
mother ran as follows:—
' Fontarabia, Monday.
'Dearest dear old Mother,
' I am only just enough myself to tell you
what a dreadful thing had nearly been happening.
How you would have been grieving over your poor
drowned Meriel and never to have kissed darling
mammy again ! For Lord and Lady Foulisville who
are the kindest people that ever was had got up a
delightful picnic at a beautiful place up in the
mountains and you can only get there you know in a
boat for the lake is very deep. And so the rest of
the party had got over safe and our lot was me and
two gentlemen and Miss Robbins. And as Miss
Robbins and a gentleman got out they somehow gave
the boat a push and it went off with I and Sir
Miles Brandretli in and there was a hole in the
bottom and the filthy black water came in and the
boat went on sinking so awfully fast—but Sir Miles
found it out and kept us floating till it bumped
against the desolate island that stands you know in
the middle and I scrambled out and had just gone
to the bottom. But how he saved me and got me
on the rock I never could understand it was so very
dreadful and he was in such great danger in saving
my life. And poor Lord Foulisville to think his
A Child's Letter.
221
precious cup had gone to the bottom and the plate
and all the lunch with them to walk home all night
over the mountain before the boat could be got to'
take us off. But I had quite lost all count of time
and the only thing I can remember was how kind
and brave he was. And he was so cheerful telling
me to trust in God and then I would see you again
and without him I must have sunk clean away as I
was so hungry for the lunch had gone down before
we had any of us eat anything and nobody took
much breakfast we were all in such a fidget. When
I lay perishing with cold he took off his own poor
coat and put it on my feet and he scrambled though
he was so tired and got me wild fruit or I should
have died with hunger. Lady Foulisville says she
never knew such a perfect gentleman and poor thing
to think she should have had that long walk over
the mountains when the boat was lost and she never
knew what had become of me and the cup too. And
Lord Foulisville does feel it so. Dear Miles must
not I call him my own when I owe my life to him
and he says he will be a son to you and longs to go
to Yaxley to kiss your dear hand. And you will
love him dearly won't you darling mamma as he will
be 3Tour own all his life and strive he says to make
you happy. You must not mind that horrid County
Families says Miles is fifty-eight. He is quite the
youngest man of his age I ever saw so active so
bright so jolly. His wife is dead a long time and he
has only one son who never troubles him for he is a
lawyer and has got a fellowship or something on
which he lives he is so clever. He is a very old
222
Strictly Tied TJp.
baronet and his title is a very old one of James I.'s
lot he says and he told me his ancestor was a general
of Marlborough and married Queen Anne's maid of
honour and fought the French.
'Your most loving child,
'Meriel Foulis.'
Those who remember the intentions of the real
author of this letter will see that there were sufficient
reasons, well thought out, not only for everything
which appeared, but for everything which was sup¬
pressed in it. Its one principal end, of course, was to
magnify Sir Miles and to conciliate Mrs. Foulis to him
as her daughter's saviour and a complete gentleman.
The danger to that daughter was to be magnified, and
the reward she felt herself bound to give to her pre¬
server to be taken as a matter of course, and not
ostentatiously hammered at. The kindness of the
Foulisvilles was to be placed in a prominent light, and
by assuming much friendship on their parts for Sir
Miles, he was, as it were, to receive an indirect testi¬
monial of character. This would lead to the suppo¬
sition of their approbation of the match, the inference
of which was to be raised without committing the
writer to a direct falsehood. With this view, it was
necessary to minimise what the hardships of the
adventure proved to be to them, so as to give no pre¬
sumption of Lady Foulisville's illness. That illness
would have been a fatal fact, for an insensible woman
can hardly consent to a match. Above all things,
however, the letter must appear to be the unprompted
effusion of Meriel's affectionate heart and cultured brain
A Child's Letter.
223
The Baronet's own feelings, on the completion of
the memorable epistle, were akin to those of the
painter who at last dispatches to Burlington House
the picture on which heart and hand and mind had so
long been concentrated with the glowing presentiment
that by it he will live. So long as he could make
sure of his material booty, Sir Miles was philosophically
indifferent to any of that discredit which he knew
that he would incur both among men of conscience and
men of honour—the drivellers and the humbugs, as he
used distinctively to call them. Moreover, his instinct
taught him that if he could only succeed, as he felt
sure he would, in extracting anything from Mrs.
Foulis which could be tortured into an assent, her
mouth would be sealed, and he would be master of the
girl, the money, and the story. He had not plied
Meriel all these days without having probed the secret
of her mother's isolation, with no other counsellor than
that well-meaning but borne Featherston and a
lawyer whom she never saw. But he felt keenly that,
if Mrs. Foulis should get on the track of his history
before he had secured his prize, he would be mercilessly
shown the door.
Thus Sir Miles had every counsel of hope on one
side and of fear on the other for striking a bold, quick
blow. Successful, he would become famous, while his
defeat would hardly become notorious, as none would
have more interest in keeping the incident dark than
his chief antagonists. In short, audacious as the game
was, it was in reality not only a promising but a safe
one for a player to whom the judgment of the present
and of the next world were equally matters of pro-
224
Strictly Tied Up.
found indifference, and who could only see pitted
against him, as his possible foe, a lone woman, tongue-
tied by the regard which she owed to her daughter's
reputation. In his exultation, he actually set to per¬
suading himself that the strictness of the entail was
an additional advantage to himself. The fire of youth
and the allurements of dissipation had, as he com¬
placently thought, died out in his mature breast; so
that it was a merciful dispensation which would be
pouring into his lap, year by year, an income far in
excess of what in any one year his ablest machinations
had ever earned for him. To be sure, he would only
fill the place, for the present, of husband of the heiress-
apparent, but with the collieries and the iron-work3
extending as they promised to do, and a sufficiently
salaried post of manager-in-chief of the works ready,
as he had determined, to be created on his behalf, even
this secondary position would be a noble acquisition.
One little private gratification did the kind father
also allow himself, as a sort of dessert after the rich
banquet of material good things which Meriel's
husband would enjoy. This was to gloat over the
mortification of his well-hated son at the prospect of
being edged out of social estimation and the sedulous
attentions of emulous dowagers by some enormously
opulent half-brother. c His would be the bloody hand,'
said the Baronet to himself; ' but the other one will
have the hand in the breeches pocket, and if he does
not pick a coronet out to put Sir Eustace to shame, he
will not be my son, after all.'
Having seen Meriel's letter despatched, the next
care of Sir Miles was to make sure of Miss Bobbins.
A Child's Letter.
225
In setting to work upon this branch of his campaign
he did not quite show his usual finesse, from under¬
rating the capacities of the woman with whom he
was dealing. The somewhat indelicate exultation
with which she had received advances, which were
on his part intended to test her character, naturally
misled him to her disadvantage. She, too, had not
been at her best as a tactician, for she was both
knocked up mind and body by the terrible night on
the mountains, and still more piqued and disappointed
by Sant' Onofrio's mean duplicity. Sir Miles should
have approached the lady armed with all those re¬
sources of his most exquisite courtesy, with which
only two or three days before he had been plying her;
but, instead of doing this, he opened his game to her
so bluntly, and with so evident a contempt for her
moral sense, as to provoke an outburst of indignant
virtue.
' Did he think her the woman, at the time when
the reason, if not the life, of her dearest friend was
in her hands, to betray and sacrifice a young girl,
the niece and under the protection of her friend's
roof; and for whom, on Lady Foulisville's re¬
covery, she, the humble Dobbins, would be respon¬
sible to that friend no less than to her own con¬
science V
He was puzzled, but not daunted; and, after
resuming the assault in a more guarded way, gradu¬
ally discovered that the adventuress's unexpected
display of virtue was really a cunning little inferior
to his own. He wanted to buy her cheap, and she to
sell herself dear. His idea was to make her his tool,
15
226
Strictly Tied Up.
while she was resolved oil becoming his confidante or
else his betrayer.
At last she made a suggestion which would involve
a consideration excessive even for services such as
she was quite unable to render. Sir Miles demurred,
whereupon she remarked, 'As you please, Sir Miles.
You are beginning to make me think that it is my
duty, as standing in the shoes of my poor dear friend,
so long as she continues incapacitated, to write a
line to Mrs. Foulis, and tell her how matters really
stand with her daughter.'
So Bobbins triumphed, and obtained the promise of
a reward, contingent on matters falling out as both
she and Sir Miles believed they must do, which
would have been lavish even had it involved a breach
with Lady Foulisville. But to break with her
Delicia was the last thing she dreamed of. A town
house in Eaton Place, and a country house at Yaxley,
although with the drawback of an occasional purga¬
tory at Fontarabia, was her day-dream. Sir Miles
and Meriel would be well off the Foulisvilles' hands—
husband and wife irrevocably, before the Countess
could possibly be allowed to listen to business.
On that still uncertain day it would be an easy
task for the ever-present, beloved, confidential Bobbins
homoeopathically to drop into the weakened patient's
ears sugary globules of the story, into the belief of
which the reawakening invalid would be too care¬
fully educated to allow any other, even if more true,
impression to gain later possession of her credulous
mind.
Strange Tidings.
227
' And you may trust Boozy Fou to me,' she added
with a sinister smile.
'Even if your friend die, will your ladyship then
condescend to become my patroness V
A playful box on the ear was the answer rendered
to Brandreth for this sally, and it sent him away
rejoicing, for he made sure from it that the alliance
was sealed between him and his old rival. After
all, he reflected, in great emergencies the wise men
of the earth have recourse to coalition govern¬
ments.
CHAPTER XXXV.
strange tidings.
The arrival of Meriel's letter at Yaxley caused much
searching of heart. The record of a fatal accident
only just avoided has always a strong after-taste of
the bitter. None but the dullest imagination can
resist the fascination of picturing what it would have
been but for the blessed interposition, and of living
through the alternative event, with its grim accom¬
paniments of pain, death, and mourning.
Lucy Foulis, moulded as she had been by her
life-long solitude, was peculiarly susceptible of this
mood of mind. In the solitary rambles of her child¬
hood into the sunlight, and away from Miss Harriett,
day-dreams and self-evolved pictures were her com¬
panions and her consolers. After Featherston had
ridden over, with his pockets stuffed with story-books,
15—2
228
Strictly Tied Up.
she would often see gorgeous, quickly changing fairy
scenes, though the personages who acted for her
amusement had, somehow, strange proclivities for
borrowing the attributes of the few human beings
with whom she had been allowed to come in contact.
The fairy prince, younger no doubt, and of nobler
mien, as he was, oddly recalled Featherston* himself;
and we are ashamed to say that the meddling, spite¬
ful witch more than once bore an unaccountable like¬
ness to Miss Harriett; while the imps of mischief
who capered round borrowed the features of the
nursery-maids whose acrimonious lessons of tidiness
were so sore an affliction to the glorious sloven.
There was one grand scene which she never forgot, in
which the fire-king himself swooped down, with the
lineaments and the voice of Mr. Swettenham.
In the seven months of her miserable pregnancy,
chronic day-dreams became a real source of danger to
her mental organization, of which her medical adviser
bade her very seriously beware; so that, while they
would constantly insist upon recurring in the sequel of
her life, she had what was not only the moral courage,
but the self-denial, to resist, to the best of her power,
the gratification of her facile imagination. Still, the
proclivity was fast rooted in her nature; so that it was
not wonderful that the sudden shock of Meriel's escape
should have let loose the tightly chained tendency.
Meriel, the island, the boat, all rose before her as
if illuminated by some electric light, and in action as
if by exquisite clockwork. There was something
more, too, which rose, although to this one figure she
was puzzled how to assign its appropriate mien. The
Strange Tidings.
229
man of whom, indeed, she had never before heard, but
who, as she could not doubt, had, under Providence,
been the instrument of saving the life most precious to
herself,—he played the first, the noblest part in the
perpetual recurring drama which presented itself to
her inward vision. Still Mrs. Foulis was never false
to her otherwise intensely practical nature. Visionary
she might be, by way of episode, but the main chronicle
of her life told of sense and business. At bottom, she
was not quite satisfied with the whole story as it
came to her in Meriel's uncorroborated narrative. She
made inquiries in her household, and she found that it
had not even been hinted at by any letter of the lady's-
maid to any of her fellow-servants. Meriel had, in
fact, forbidden the woman to write, first in her own
dread of being recalled, and then, under Sir Miles's
prompting, for fear of some of the facts which he
meant to keep dark oozing out. The girl was a Swiss,
hastily taken for the emergency, nearly a stranger to
the family, and unprovided as yet with any followers,
besides her English was queer and came with difficulty,
so the order was one which was readily obeyed;
although, in the absence of such a warning, her natural
passion for having a horrible story to tell might have
made even this illiterate young woman spoil a sheet
of paper.
The anxious mother would puzzle herself for many
hours with asking why Lady Foulisville, who had in¬
sisted on bringing Meriel over to Ireland, and who, in
professing a mother's interest in her, had earned a good
character as aunt, should not have condescended a word
of explanation, of comfort, and of sympathy on so alarm-
230
Strictly Tied Up.
ing an occurrence. This silence was less easy of explana¬
tion, as about a week previously Lady Foulisville had
inflicted a long scrawl upon her about nothing in
particular, and in this, although she had mentioned the
married couples who made up the party at Fontarabia,
she had been reticent over the single gentlemen. Still,
on the other hand, there stood the irrefragable evi¬
dence of Meriel's own letter, slipshod and blundering
as only she could have written it. It had no specific
dates, which made Mrs. Foulis justly angry, for Meriel's
heedless negligence in this respect was a quarrel be¬
tween them of a long standing; but as to the facts,
there they were, marshalled in incoherent language,
but yet hanging on together. Did Meriel really imply
that—unimpressionable girl as her mother knew her
to be—she had given her heart to her preserver ? and
was Mrs. Foulis to understand the letter as placing
Sir Miles's direct suit, no less than Meriel's hopes and
affections, at her feet ? Sometimes she thought that
this was a meaning too precise to be deduced from the
gushing phrases of the scared child, but on careful re-
perusal she came to the conviction that, at all events,
she, the mother and recipient, was bound to affix that
interpretation on the ambiguous words, while it would
be open to Sir Miles, if he pleased, to disavow the
supposition.
What chiefly led Lucy to this conclusion, and in no
small degree tended to give her a favourable impression
of the baronet, was his desire, as conveyed through
Meriel, to pay his respects to her at Yaxley. This, she
thought, was straightforward and considerate. ' He
will not let Meriel commit herself too far till he has
Strange Tidings.
231
given me the direct opportunity of judging. To be
sure, this proves that he has serious intentions, but it
is, I hope, equally conclusive of his good feeling and
good sense in deferring to me as the real authority in
the marriage of such a child. I wonder whether he
knows that all my money is strictly settled upon her ?
If he does, so much more creditable is his deference to
the person of whom, in the long run, he will be inde¬
pendent. Long run! To be sure, he is, on his own
showing, twenty-four years older than me; but I dare
say he has never reflected that my chances of life are
so much better—active old men are always so vain.
Well, I won't think so ill of him.'
Those before whom the personality of Sir Miles
Brandreth can never come except as accompanied by
all the unsavoury associations of his unabashed cyni¬
cism may think poor Lucy weak, but they ought not
to forget that his name conveyed absolutely no idea
to her mind except that of a gentleman of ancient
lineage, and preserver, too, of Meriel's life. He had,
as we have seen, put Mrs. Foulis on a false scent by
his promised visit, and had placed her in the dilemma
of possibly frustrating what would have been, in spite
of the disparity of years, a desirable match for her
daughter, if the answer seemed to imply distrust, sus¬
picion, or even hesitation. The incidental reference to
the antiquity of his patent as baronet, with which
Brandeth prompted Meriel to conclude her letter, was
a master-stroke. No one was less of a tuft-hunter
than Lucy ; but she had the healthy English liking for
established honours and traditionary order. A James
the First baronet is presumably a gentleman, while the
2.32
Strictly Tied Up.
man who risks his own life to save your daughter's is
certainly a hero. But when the man who proves him¬
self a hero in action is in station a presumable gentle¬
man, the prejudice must certainly be strongly in his
favour.
At the bottom of Lucy's perplexity lay that lone-
someness of which Sir Miles had so cunningly taken
stock when he arranged his master-stroke. The entire
country—with the solitary exception of that small
nebulous body of which the nucleus was the Rees-
Turner partnership—were her friends ; but a nutshell
would have held her confidants, and have been empty.
She turned over the same names whom she had can¬
vassed when the original invitation to Fontarabia
reached her, and again rejected them. Featherston
did not deteriorate in goodness as he grew older, but
neither did he improve in finesse and worldly know¬
ledge, and Lucy felt that he would be totally useless
as a counsellor upon so delicate a question. Society
was to Lidyard a sealed book, and it would have been
nothing less than cruel to put such a decision upon
him. Musgrave was, like Shelley's Demogorgon, 'a
tremendous shade;' and although Lucy and her cousin,
the Lord-Lieutenant, had not abandoned the hereditary
practice of accosting each other by their Christian
names, her rejection of his suit was not sweetened by
his consequent second marriage with another lady.
What, then, followed in this case ? Meriel had re¬
ported actions of a man which seemed to denote him
as endowed, in the most true sense, with the qualities
of a gentleman; and she also added that the social
status of that man, according to the system—artificial
Strange Tidings.
233
it might be, but long established, universally re¬
cognised, and working for the best—which existed in
England, was one to which the reputation of gentleman
unquestionably attached. Mrs. Foulis argued with
herself that the inference from these facts must be self-
evident. She could not return a rebuff, in spite of the
dreadful disparity of years, which sorely tried her,
when, as she imagined, all that was asked for was no
definite acceptance, but only leave to pursue his suit,
favoured as that was by her daughter, and with the
precautionary safeguard of a promise to come and be
looked at by herself at Yaxley. Still, she would be
cautious and under-write her own feelings, excitable
as her own consciousness told her that they were. So
the following reply was posted to Miss Foulis at
Fontarabia :
' Yaxley,
< of 18-
' My dearest Meriel,
' Heaven be praised for your deliverance from
such imminent danger, and for your escaping from the
agonies of such a terrible night with so little injury to
your health. Why don't you tell me when it
happened ? Our deepest gratitude is for ever due to
the gallant gentleman to whose kindness and devotion
you tell me that your safety is owing. I cannot be
surprised at your heart being warmed to such a friend.
Tell him, with my love, that I am anxiously looking
forward to the day when I shall have the promised
opportunity of forming his acquaintance in our own
home. When do you return, and when may I expect
234
Strictly Tied Up.
the visit of Sir Miles Brandreth 1 Best love to your
aunt. She must have been dreadfully anxious about
you.
'Your most affectionate Mother,
'Lucy Foulis.'
CHAPTER XXXVI.
honoured mater.
Meriel was alone with Sir Miles when she got her
mother's rejoinder, and at once handed it to him.
' This is what you wish, is it not, dearest Meriel V
he inquired, with even more than usual of his insin¬
uating smoothness.
' It's all very nice, but she don't say I may marry
you ; and she tells me to come home. And you made
me put about our going to Yaxley so clumsily that she
thinks it means no more than a bachelor visit of yours
—to be trotted out, I suppose, like those Yorkshire
horses over which Mater and old Feathers lay their
wise heads together like a couple of grooms. I wish I
had not let you meddle in my letter. There would
have been no mistake about it with Mater if I had
written my own way.'
Sir Miles had, on principle, been chary of personal
endearments. You never know, he thought, when
you may want them. The}7- are such capital ready
money, and it's foolish extravagance to discount and
spend the store on which you may perhaps have to
Honoured Mater.
235
draw in a hurry, and when you least expect it. This
occasion proved the wisdom of his policy, for after he
had taken up MeriePs hand, stretched the fingers as if
he was measuring it for a new pair of gloves, kissed it,
and then softly touched both cheeks with his lips, and
wound up with a more impressive salutation of her
forehead, the wrath of the fro ward miss gradually
smoothed down. He was quick in continuing the
conversation before she could have the opportunity of
resuming it with one of her own unlucky observations.
'That's just like you, love—so innocent and un¬
suspicious. You don't see how sly your honoured
Mater is. No offence, I hope, in talking openly of her,
when you and I are already really one. She won't
say " Yes," y-e-s; but it runs through every word.
Don't you see how ? She more than tolerates me ; she
more than approves me; she gives me her deepest
gratitude for ever; she bids your heart warm to me.
Your heart, dearest Meriel! that's what she gives me.
Not your hand only; your heart as well as your hand.
If she did not mean you to marry me, she would have
said so. But she says nothing of the sort, and she
means not to say it, for she knows that not saying
that is saying the contrary. What she means to say,
and what she means that we should puzzle out of her
letter, is that she hopes to make the acquaintance of
your husband in her own home. She calls me Sir
Miles Brandreth, but you know it is not the husband
who changes his name at the wedding. You would
not have her call me dear Miles before she has seen
me. If she meant to give me the sack, she had twenty
ways of choking me off. Still, love, you know your
236
Strictly Tied Up.
mother as I cannot pretend to do ; and it is not right
that at the most important crisis of your life you
should be guided by my necessarily partial judgment
and imperfect information. Take the opinion of some
one whom you may trust, and who has no personal
interest in the matter. There is, for instance, Miss
Robbins, who is a most sensible person, and loves the
family truly and deeply; or very likely you would
not be willing to open so very delicate a confidence to
so new a friend. Forgive me for suggesting it, and
let me withdraw it. You must soon return home,
with or without me; and if you return without me,
you have other friends whom you can consult besides
the indulgent Mater. There is that fine old chip of
John Bulks block, of whom you are so fond of speak¬
ing — your godfather and Mater's guardian, Bob
Featherston* the great and good. Take him into
counsel, and confront Mater, and she'll pretty soon
confess what was in her clever little head when she
wrote this statesmanlike letter.'
This advice proceeded from a very scientific analysis
of Meriel's foibles. Sir Miles had found out that
the antipathy between her and Robbins, though
masked by every form of punctilious courtesy, was
genuine and entire. He had not, indeed, traced it to
its source, but he knew enough for his own purpose.
It had, in fact, begun on Robbins's part when the first
suggestion of adoption was made, consequent on
Delicia's ill-omened yawn ; while with Meriel it may
be said to have dated from the moment of her intro¬
duction to the companion in Eaton Place, and to her
being consigned to that companion's rather oppres-
Honoured Mater.
237
sive surveillance during the journey from London to
Fontarabia.
An accident that occurred on board the steamer
fomented the young lady's ill-feeling. Meriel, who
had never even seen salt water before, was disgust-
ingly sea-sick, and perpetually calling with indelicate
insistence for help. Bobbins was apprehensive of
being taken for the lady's maid, and feared that her
own strong stomach might be turned. So in direct¬
ing a deaf ear to her charge's pathetic appeals, she
both kept quite well, and, by way of pastime, occu¬
pied herself in a rather noisy flirtation with Captain
Pringle close to, but with her back turned away from,
the sufferer's head. The most angelic nature, when
sea-sick, resents continued prattle on the part even of
husband or wife, parent or child, and Meriel was not
quite an angel. Such behaviour, from a woman to
whom she was looking for deference, towards a per¬
sonage so well endowed with self-appreciation as
Miss Meriel Foulis, confirmed and intensified the
aversion. His knowledge of this state of feeling had
more than once puzzled Brandreth in working the
Robbins side of his great plot. Now, however, it gave
him satisfaction. As to the second suggestion, Brand¬
reth was well aware that to remain, for however short
a time, a spinster was no longer Meriel's intention,
whatever it might have been previously to the adven¬
tures of Diana's Island. So stupid in expedients as
he had found her to be, he was absolutely certain that
she would fall back upon his stronger judgment, and
accept his reading of Lucy's letter.
Meriel did not belie her lover's anticipations by the
238
Strictly Tied Up.
way in which she took the suggestions; the more so
as, in her frivolous heart, she was clinging to the
Irish marriage right off as ' great fun.' Sir Miles,
thus more than master of the situation, was so grave
and yet so urgent, so convincing in his arguments—
he pressed so earnestly upon her the duty of the
highest decorum and of the greatest circumspection
at this, the most solemn moment of her life—that
she was absolutely silenced, and capitulated to that
most fatal argument which had done her such an ill
turn on the island—the false shame of slanderous
tongues.
Still, the difficulty of keeping his promise with
Miss Robbins loomed before Brandreth in all its in¬
tensity. So he took a diversion upon another line,
and urged that, while, as he had anticipated, Meriel
would naturally not consult the companion before
coming to her conclusion, yet she ought, now that
she had decided, out of personal duty and respect,
confide in so trusty a family friend, who happened at
the instant to be representing the disabled aunt and
hostess. If she did not do this, Miss Robbins would
have just cause to complain of some discourtesy, and
even she, if angered, might make representations at
Yaxley, which would be troublesome and unpleasant.
After all, then, the poor girl had to seek out Miss
Robbins, full of misgivings as to the prudent counsels
which that model of cold propriety—for as such, in
spite of the steamboat flirtation, she had palmed her¬
self off—might inflict upon her, merely, as she thought,
with the malicious intention of baffling and disappoint¬
ing an unwelcome interloper.
Honoured Mater.
239
She was infinitely surprised, and still more de¬
lighted, to find that, after a sufficient interval of
judicial hesitation, Miss Robbins fully came to that
view of Mrs. Foulis's letter which Sir Miles had
originally taken.
' Your mother wants you to be married,' she said,
' and she don't want the bother of marrying you off
herself. She knows that if you suit yourself she can
always find fault afterwards.'
Meriel actually forgot the steamer, and kissed
Robbins.
Robbins's clever but unprincipled shot told. She
saw that the leverage by which to move Meriel was
jealousy of Lucy, and she was unscrupulous in using
it. It was a wild and vulgar insinuation against a
woman of Mrs. Foulis's character and position, but
the article was meant for immediate consumption,
and Robbins had not misjudged the credulity of the
girl to whom it was addressed. Meriel was sufficiently
not in love with Sir Miles to leave open one little
cranny into which common-sense and maidenly modesty
might enter. Pique her against her mother, and that
cranny was closed.
So the Baronet and heiress were married. But the
astute Robbins at the last moment found, to her sor¬
row, that she was unable to illuminate the ceremony
with her presence. f Poor dear Delicia is still in so
critical a state that I cannot leave the house for a
few hours, even for this.' No document, not a scrap
of paper, existed as evidence of her complicity in the
transaction.
If Sir Miles, she reflected, was not a scoundrel,
240
Strictly Tied Up.
she had won Yaxley. If he was, she still kept Eaton
Place. She stirred her fire, sank into an armchair, put
her feet upon another seat, and slept a sleep of grati¬
fied self-approbation.
Meriel, of course, insisted upon a honeymoon, and
her husband was all smiles and fondling. Sir Miles
had obtained a provision for making a present appear¬
ance somewhat in proportion to their supposed brilliant
prospects through the prompt kindness of his old
friends, ' Issachar Brothers,' to whom he had, in strict
confidence, imparted his good fortune in having ob¬
tained the affections of a young lady so charming,
and heiress also to so improving a property. These
good brothers had, of course, heard of Miss Foulis,
and hastened to comply with the requisition of their
esteemed correspondent.
Poor Lady Foulisville all the while lay between life
and death, unconscious of Sir Miles's and Meriel's
existence; so their stopping and their leaving were
alike unknown and indifferent to her. As for his
Lordship, though he was told of their wedding, he
simply absorbed it as one of all the events, public
and private, passing about him, as to which he had
ceased to have the will or the capacity to form any
reasonable opinion.
A Fool's Paradise.
241
CHAPTER XXXVII.
a fool's paradise.
For a few days after she had sent her unfortunate
letter to her daughter, Lucy lived on in a fool's para¬
dise of contentment at her own charitable cleverness.
So she wondered when the reply would come, and
whether the Baronet's visit would soon follow on
Meriel's return.
At last Featherston's groom came cantering over on
a steaming hunter with a note, in which the good
gentleman informed his little treasure that he was
suffering under the unusual infliction of a visitor in
the shape of a cousin from town, and prayed her to
take pity and allow him to bring Colonel Mordaunt
over and show him Yaxley. ' Of course,' she sped the
answer back; come to-morrow, both of you ; at least
dine and sleep, if you will not stop longer.' So
charged, the gentlemen came, and Mrs. Foulis found
that the Colonel was an amusing rattle, who had some¬
thing to say about everybody in London, and would
not be baulked of his gossip. It would have been
manifest laches in Lucy to have neglected such an
opportunity of picking up the information for which
she was yearning; so she took a politic occasion of
dropping this question :
'My daughter tells me she has been meeting an
agreeable Sir Miles Brandreth; have you ever heard
of him V
' Brandreth! I should just think so. And all
16
242
Strictly Tied Up.
London too ! Most unscrupulous dodger in England !
and so confoundedly cunning ! No fellow can catch
him out. But his son is a trump; he's one of my
greatest chums. Nobody can understand how such a
fellow can have such a son; and it is a crying shame
that his son's good example don't teach the old scoun¬
drel better. There is Eustace, the jolliest fellow living,
slaving away for his bread as a lawyer, and writing
for the papers, while his father is making and spending
fortunes by his swindling and his extravagance!
Foulisville could tell you a thing or two about him, if
he dared. Why, Skillicome came to the ' Phly' only
two days ago, full of a letter he had got from old
Brandreth, very cock-a-whoop at having caught a rich
girl by pretending he had saved her from drowning,
and ' Here something in Lucy's eye made him
wind up with—' a deal more nonsense, which I don't
believe.'
Featherston—who was, to say the truth, consider¬
ably bored by his cousin's incessant torrent of talk
about men, women, and things, of which he knew
little and cared less—was puzzling over the newspaper,
and neither listened to the words nor scanned the
looks of his companions. Mrs. Foulis abruptly found
out she really did not know it was so late, and moved
off to bed, merely remarking to her guardian that he
knew where the smoking-room was, and that she
hoped he and his cousin would stay there as long as
they liked. Mordaunt had found out by Lucy's look
and quick departure that the conversation had taken
an awkward turn, and a little thinking led him to
appreciate that the coincidence of the heiress of
A Fool's Paradise.
243
Yaxley meeting and liking Brandreth, and of Bran-
dreth's own story of catching a rich girl, involved
something more behind, which stamped the Colonel an
ass for letting his tongue so incontinently wag. How¬
ever, to his great relief, he discovered that Featherston
had heard nothing, so he judged it most prudent to
stifle the claims of his abundant curiosity, to keep his
own counsel, and to forego the coveted cigar.
Lucy had never recollected for many years having
spent so wretched a night. Thinking and tossing,
tossing and thinking, consumed the dreary hours.
Had she, then, in her vain folly and self-sufficiency,
sacrificed her only daughter, her own peace of mind
and respectability, and the magnificent inheritance of
her father, which she held, strictly tied up, as a trust
for that daughter, to an adventurer and a scoundrel ?
Charity demanded the utmost abatements to be made
in the offhand assertions of a chatterbox such as
Featherston's cousin clearly was; but, after all deduc¬
tions, the ugly fact remained that a man who was
neither badly principled, as far as Lucy could judge,
nor ill-tempered had so little hesitation in summing
up in colours so dark the reputation of a man whom
she had gone so far in accepting as her son-in-law.
She never could forgive herself, she thought, for such
imprudence. Sir Miles talked of coming to Yaxley,
and that had thrown her off her guard. But if he
really was the cunning and unscrupulous dodger whom
Mordaunt described, how could she depend upon any
professions of his, and, what was possibly worse, how
could she depend upon herself hereafter ? Her dread¬
ful life-long solitude recurred to her, and she could not
16—2
244
Strictly Tied Up.
hold herself guiltless for acting with a self-reliance
which only intimate converse with the world could
have justified.
Her old evening's musings now rose as pictures, and
she asked herself why she had never done her duty to
her position by making the plunge and bringing men
of intellect and experience to her side. Here she was,
as great a child as her daughter, having to confront a
cunning and audacious man of the world, and not even
her own lawyer her friend! Brandreth would see
through her in a moment, as he had seen through
Meriel.
Then she would ask herself what evidence there was
to support Mordaunt's confident assertions; and the
reply was crushing. There were no means of explain¬
ing away that dreadful letter which Colonel Mordaunt
overheard somebody read at the club, except to
suppose he had told a deliberate falsehood, if not of
jumping at an impossible coincidence. How was Mor¬
daunt or his friend to have conceived so improbable
an incident as that of the old gentleman saving a girl
from drowning ? How could she disbelieve such
positive evidence ? She struggled hard, but it was
too much for her. Sir Miles's exertions in saving her
daughter's life were his one claim—ostentatiously put
forward—upon the regard both of herself and of her
daughter, and here he was himself detected as coarsely
boasting of that obligation as only a pretence for
getting possession of the girl. Could it, she asked
herself again, have been an invention of Colonel Mor¬
daunt ; for Sir Miles was clearly unpopular ? Yet, as
she again answered herself, how was he to have heard
A Fool's Paradise.
245
of the adventure on the lake ? Besides, it was most
unlikely that a gentleman—the cousin, too, of her old
guardian, and so a distant connection of her own, a
gallant officer, distinguished in the Crimean War, of
whom she had often heard, though she had never met
him before—would dare to utter a falsehood which
was sure of speedy detection. Yet the other story
would involve an equal falsehood on Brandreth's part.
There was this difference, however, as she was forced
to admit, between the two suppositions : Sir Miles's
falsehood had the acquisition of Meriel's fortune as a
motive, while that of Colonel Mordaunt would be pur¬
poseless malice. Besides, she knew about one of the
men, and she was quite ignorant about the other.
Then another thought, which made her almost sick,
darted in with lurid distinctness. Never in her life
had she kept any important secret from Featherston
till now, and she had failed in telling him of Meriel's
letter. Would he ever forgive this breach of con¬
fidence ? Yet this reflection led her to a conclusion.
There would be time in the morning to detain her
old guardian; she would send a message to him not
to go till he had seen her. He was not cunning, but
he was loyal, true, and high-principled; and his
acquaintance with Mordaunt would enable him to
say whether, considering his cousin's personal ac¬
quaintance with the Baronet, it would be wise to
bring him into counsel.
Once closeted with him, she felt sure of her influ¬
ence with him to make him appreciate her present
trust in him, and so think lightly of her previous
reticence. Her plea should be that she had been
246
Strictly Tied Up.
thinking too exclusively of the secrecy which a
daughter had the right to expect from her mother.
She had been too delicate towards an unworthy child,
for fear that child might hereafter turn upon her
and allege her mother's breach of confidence for any
act of undutiful retaliation. Featherston was a
bachelor, and he must allow a parent to be the judge
of feelings of which he never had had any personal
experience. There would, of course, be but one
thing which could now be thought of—to put an end
to the possibility of any engagement as quickly and
as completely as possible. She refused, as things
turned out, in her vain snatches at sustaining straws,
to face Meriel's letter as involving anything like a
settled project of marriage, and yet she was for
practically treating the complication as the most
entangling of engagements. But what was to be the
machinery ? A telegram was the quickest, but—as
Lucy, in her old-fashioned way, thought—not the
safest communication; besides which, it was not at all
likely that, with the inexperienced girl in the power
of that bad, dangerous man, she would obey a tele¬
gram. A letter was slower, but safer; but safest of
all would be some human messenger, who could insist
and persist. Who should it be ? Featherston ? But
Featherston had never crossed the sea, so he often
boasted ; and she feared both his temper, if Brandreth
—no doubt an expert duellist—were to call him
out, and his kind-heartedness if Meriel should cry.
Englishwoman as she was to the backbone and well
read in Sir Jonah Barrington, she fancied that the
duel must still survive as a living thing in barbarous
A Fool's Paradise.
247
Ireland along with landlord-shooting, and being a
stranger to Sir Miles she never had had any occasion
to realize his aversion to gunpowder.
As she rolled and tossed, all at once her mental fog
rose, and she beheld her duty with absolute clearness,
which left her in amazement at the time which she
had taken in reaching her conclusion. How could she
be beating about the bush so long, when all along the
only possible course was so plain ? Here she was,
thirty-four in years, twenty-four in constitution, as
strong as a horse, and though a big fool, as she now
esteemed herself, resolute and fearless when once her
pluck was up.
She would go herself, carry off Meriel, and, if need
be, punch Brandreth's head. Anyhow, though, she
would tell all to the dear old man.
Having reached this conclusion, she dozed away
from sheer exhaustion, and was, after an hour or
two of restless sleep, awakened by her maid bringing
her morning tea and letters. One was in a very
familiar hand, and she tore it open to read :
' Bray, near Dublin,
18—.
' My dearest dear Mother,
' My darling Miles was overjoyed a,t your
approbation, and we agreed we could not too soon
do what you had so lovingly sanctioned. We are
man and wife, and I am longing to bring my hus¬
band to obey your summons to Yaxley. You will
love him I know, for you said your heart would warm
to him with gratitude for me. Mine has done so,
248
Strictly Tied Up.
and I rejoice that in loving him I am obeying my
darling Mater.
'Your most affectionate child,
'Meriel Brandreth.'
A violent ringing of the bell startled the servants
at their breakfast, and Mrs. Foulis's maid ran up
with unwonted activity. Lucy was sitting up in bed,
staring round with an expression of agony such as
the girl had never before witnessed on her face. She
collected herself as the maid entered the room, and
bade her have the gentlemen informed, with her kind
regards and sincere regrets, that, owing to a sick
headache which had come on during the night, she
was unable to dress and wish them good-bye. So
she lay musing over the inevitable; and it was not
till near mid-day that she rose and placed herself at
the writing-desk which stood in her bedroom.
Meriel's declaration that Brandreth and she were
man 'and wife was assurance enough to Lucy of the
fact. Disillusioned as she was as to Sir Miles's
estimate of truthfulness, such a statement as this
must stand upon the basis of fact. There might be a
dispute over the share a man had in saving the girl
who was his partner in a common accident, but
marriage was a public action before the world, and
witnesses must be forthcoming. Mrs. Foulis, with a
woman's feelings, never turned her thoughts to legal
questions dealing with considerations of which she
was to a fault ignorant and regardless. Her daughter,
it seemed, was living with Brandreth as his wife, and
they declared that there had been a marriage between
A Fool's Paradise.
249
them. A marriage, to Lucy, was a marriage. She
knew nothing of Irish peculiarities as to such
things.
A daring solicitor from the Liffey would very possibly
have urged upon her that it might still be quite possible,
if means could be taken, to bring the legality of the
ceremony to trial. If Mrs. Foulis, in tears, but not
disfigured by crying, could be put into the box, it was
conceivable that a Dublin jury, directed by a suscept¬
ible judge, might be induced by the influence of a
witness so comely and so attractive to declare the ill-
starred union illegal. This was, however, a con¬
tingency which never for an instant presented itself to
her. Not for a single instant did she contemplate a
course in which her own victory would have been fatal
to the reputation of her child, whom she would there¬
by reduce to a discarded wife, if not also mother; and
in which victory was not quite sure for her side, with
Meriel opposed to her, only seventeen years old, and
the susceptibilities on which she had to depend so
uncertain, when she was herself at best a matter-of-
fact Englishwoman.
All that was left to her was to weep and bear the
blow ; so she sat down, and, with as much speed as
was consistent with repeated bursts of hysterical cry¬
ing, composed the answer to her misguided daughter.
The letter was incoherent in construction, but it
spoke with all the eloquence of deeply lacerated feel¬
ing and the calm logic of a right cause. It passed
from sorrow to indignation as it exposed the flimsy and
palpably hypocritical misinterpretation of the invita¬
tion which she had, at his own instance, given to the
250
Strictly Tied Up.
man to come to Yaxley and be looked at; and it
melted again into tenderness as it pointed out to the
unhappy, misguided girl the misery which she had laid
up in store for her later years in yoking her life to one
so sure to use her for his own selfish ends, and if he
did not fling her away when she was no longer useful,
only tolerate her for her money's value:—
'Was it not enough in one family' (she pleaded) ' to
have had the daughter and heiress of the house throw
herself away in her earliest immature womanhood by
a wretched marriage with a plausible fortune-hunter ?
Why would my daughter emulate her foolish mother in
the one unhappy act of her life, which ought to have been
her child's warning ; because my excuse, such as it was,
was this, that my infatuated aunt, the only woman
whom I ever knew as filling for me the place of a
mother, coaxed, bullied, and coerced me into taking
Captain Foulis ? I have never been so cruel to you,
dearest Meriel. I have always urged on you the
greatest circumspection in making your irrevocable
choice, not sparing to blame myself to you, and humble
myself before my own child, for your own good. I
have never even seen Sir Miles Brandreth, and it is
impossible to suppose that you and he did not very
well understand my letter, though it may have suited
him to misread it, and to pervert your understanding
of it. He knew that I could only have intended it to
convey an invitation to him to come to Yaxley, before
matters had gone any further. The ability which you
tell me he possesses contradicts the supposition that
he could have mistaken my meaning; and I am, there-
A Fool's Paradise.
251
fore, left with that estimate of his character which I
forbear to give you, because, 'unhappily, he is your
husband. I see much to excuse in the stupid pliability
with which you accepted his ingenious misreading of
my expressions ; but I can find no excuse for the want
of confidence, I must add the duplicity, you have
shown to your unhappy mother, whose every thought
and action have always been for your happiness.'
The composition of this appeal was the safety-valve
of Mrs. Foulis's excited feelings. The pretence of
sitting at a luncheon at which she hardly touched a
morsel, and a canter on her pony, brought back an
appearance of external calm; and for the letter to
Lady Foulisville, which Lucy conceived herself bound
to write, in ignorance of the illness which had in¬
capacitated her sister-in-law, she sat down, not at the
desk in her bedroom, but at the table in the library.
To those who knew Mrs. Foulis's domestic ways this
difference would have been significant. This missive
was as concise and balanced in its composition as it
was temperate in its tone. She dwelt upon the confi¬
dence which she had shown in a sister-in-law, with
whom personally she had had small acquaintance, and
of whose country life she was quite ignorant, in leav¬
ing to her, at her own request, what was really nothing
less than the responsibility of introducing into the
world her own only daughter, at a considerably younger
age than that at which she had intended Meriel to have
come out, or would have allowed her to do, but for this
invitation. She appealed to Lady Foulisville's own
sense of justice to say whether she had not put herself
252
Strictly Tied Up.
under very sacred obligation, not merely in accepting,
but in soliciting, this charge; and she invited her as a
mother to answer for it before God, her own conscience,
and her heart-broken correspondent and sister, as to
the manner in which she had fulfilled that trust.
Little did Lucy think that these words, just and
temperate as they were, and well deserved if the case
had been that which was present to her mind, were
really addressed to an invalid, tossing on the sick-bed,
vibrating between life and death, and totally un¬
conscious of the grim comedy which had been enacted
under her roof.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
disillusioned.
During the earlier period of Delicia's illness Miss Rob-
bins took upon herself to open and answer all her
patroness's letters. Some she wrote in her own name,
dwelling on the incapacity of the patient in colours as
strong as the fact, and in others she manufactured
plausible directions from ' my beloved and honoured
chief.' She saw the inconsistency, and was amused at
it, as it was evidence to herself of her own powers.
Had Lucy's letter arrived during this time, it would
no doubt have been answered in the second form and
then destroyed ; and as Robbins would probably have
found it convenient to have forgotten all about it when
the Countess got well, and asked about her letters, a
Disillusioned.
253
crop of complications not less perplexing than those
which really occurred might have resulted.
But at last even Miss Robbins's tough constitution
began to give way under the incessant strain of a
nursing which was the more trying because bestowed
from selfishness, not love; and a sharp bilious attack
compelled her to keep her bed for some days. Just at
this time, somewhat unexpectedly, Lady Foulisville's
malady took a favourable turn, and when Robbins was
next able to glide into her room, she found that the
doctor had allowed the Countess to sit up, eat a little
chicken, potter over the newspaper, and open her own
letters. Still she was weak, nervous, and excitable,
susceptible about the incidents of her sick-room, some¬
times inquisitive, for a few moments, with febrile sus¬
picion, but more generally apathetic as to the whole
world beyond. With difficulty, the diplomatist in¬
duced Lord Foulisville to pay his wife a short visit,
and she hardly noticed him when he came in. She
was told that all the company had left, and she took
that as a matter of course, not seeming to discriminate
between them, or to care for one person more than
another. Robbins's spirits rose as she opined that the
craze of adoption had passed off, and that when it
should suit her to tell, in her own way, the strange
news of a match between Brandreth and Meriel, Delicia
would take it with the same unconcern with which
she now received intelligence of her various acquaint¬
ances.
Convalescent as Robbins was, she was still very
weak, and entered Lady Foulisville's room at uncertain
hours, sometimes before and sometimes after the arrival
254
Strictly Tied Up.
of the post. It happened to be on one of her worse
mornings that Lucy's letter reached Fontarabia, and
schooled as the French maid had been by Robbins to
keep back suspicious correspondence, this particular
epistle, in a lady-like but not remarkable hand, had
failed to attract her attention. Robbins had shown
her the handwriting of Meriel, Brandreth, Sant' Ono-
frio, and one or two others, and warned her to keep
these back for her own delivery, but she had no manu¬
script of Lucy's to show, and, indeed, had never thought
of her writing. So Lucy's letter, just as it was—a
remonstrance, terrible in its calm truthfulness, if written
to one really privy to Brandreth's villany—reached
the poor, nervous, trembling, excitable invalid, hardly
yet in possession of her full consciousness or responsi¬
bility of word and action, with the hideous tale which
it unfolded, of the outrage against honour, truth, and
decorum perpetrated under Lady Foulisville's own
roof, in the case of her own niece, responsibility for
whom she had officiously, unnecessarily, and incon¬
siderately assumed. The perusal of this appeal stimu¬
lated the awakening faculties without bracing in pro¬
portion the nervous powers. Lady Foulisville took it
all in perhaps more keenly than she would have done
in her natural health; she was white with rage, and
trembling with humiliation. The old spirit lived in
her, and she was again Delicia Driscoll; while Lucy,
as she appeared in her weeds at Meriel's christening,
rose clear before her eyes, and scathed her with morti¬
fication. Her pride, her honour, her last forlorn hopes
of an adopted daughter, were all crushed; and, know¬
ing all that she did, the sickening conviction intruded
Disillusioned.
255
itself that it involved the connivance and the duplicity
of her trusted companion.
Bobbins, at the moment, swam in with her stereo¬
typed, 'What letters this morning, dearest Delicia?'
The Countess, not caring to look up, tossed Mrs.
Foulis's communication at her breast, and positively
shrieked, ' What do you think of that ?'
Bobbins, with consummate calmness, read it all,
folded it up, returned it, and then replied, ' I think she
has got hold of some strange version of the affair.'
' Strange version ! And what affair ? You shame¬
less woman ! Can you deny before God and before me
that you hadn't a hand in it ? If you hadn't, and as
you value your soul at the day of judgment, why
have you kept me blind ? You told me the fellow had
gone, and the girl too. Why did you hide their being
married V
'A hand in it, my dearest Delicia !'
' Don't Delicia me; answer, as you are an honest
woman, had you a hand in it ?'
Miss Bobbins had not calculated on the excess of
nervous excitability, consequent on the fever, resulting
as it did in the temporary development of a passion
which simulated moral courage. She played with
the demand as she would have done with one of the
old tiffs in Eaton Place.
Lady Foulisville, shattered as she was by her ill¬
ness, and no longer mistress of herself, gave vent to all
that deep reserve of genuine Munster nature which
had for so many years been kept under by the restraint
of artificial gentility—a burning lump of turf hidden
under a coronet—and she let fly at the unprepared
256
Strictly Tied Up.
Robbins with a volley of abuse, recrimination, objurga¬
tion, and, if we must tell the real truth, highly seasoned
words, more fit for Ballinasloe than Belgravia, barbing
sneers such as can only be dropped from the elevation
of a prosperous worldly position upon a baffled and
exposed subordinate.
Delicia knew she was a countess, and Robbins a
confidante, and she made Robbins feel it to her very
marrow. If Lady Foulisville had only had the self-
restraint to have been short as well as strong, she
might have come off conqueror, but she ran on so long,
and repeated herself so often, that she handed the ad¬
vantage over to her adversary, who checked her rising
choler with a magnificent effort; and as during the
remaining strife, while Lady Foulisville herself burned
with real rage, the passion of the confidante was only
clever acting, Robbins naturally obtained the advan¬
tage in the contest. The insults of the irate lady
might have ruffled a far sweeter temper than hers, but
she took good care not to be disconcerted, and yet to
sustain the part of a provoked and indignant gentle¬
woman. This was the supreme crisis of her career.
Her eyes were opened to the gravity of the incident,
and she had to make her choice in a moment; but a
moment was sufficient for her. Her calculations for
the future, indeed, miscarried, but they were sufficiently
plausible to entitle her to the praise of being a consum¬
mate strategist. Lady Foulisville—with her social
failure, her stupid old house in the wilderness, the
ambiguous condition of his lordship's fortune, and her
own shattered and doubtful health—was, so Miss Rob¬
bins believed, a sucked orange. To become the indis-
Disillusioned.
257
pensable friend and adviser of the young heiress of
delightful Yaxley, with its improving collieries, was to
step, she thought, into a new, more powerful, more
brilliant future. Sir Miles, she was sure, would square
it with his mother-in-law, while she herself, so she
fancied, had it in her power to expose him if he did
not keep his promise.
She acted accordingly. Poor, feeble Lady Foulis-
ville fell into a chair, absolutely collapsing with the
effort of such a burst of passion. A few of the old
fondling words, some pity for her really invalid con¬
dition and evident suffering, might have lulled the
sudden storm. Miss Robbins willed the contrary, in
the conviction that a present reconciliation with the
Countess would embarrass her new great game, on
which she was bending all her energies. Let her go
forth, she thought, driven out, as she would represent,
for standing up for Meriel and Sir Miles, and these
could hardly refuse to take her by the hand, and make
up sevenfold for what she had lost in their cause. So
she drew herself up, and met the vituperations of Lady
Foulisville with sarcasm so cutting, because elaborated
in cold blood, as to leave an incurable sore. At the
same time, like a prudent general, she covered her
retreat. Ill words, even from Lady Foulisville, might
be prejudicial to her prospects, while an explanation
between the Countess and Lucy would be fatal.
Miss Robbins, knowing that she could no longer
rule by love, resolved on doing so by fear; so, with
that look habitual to her when addressing persons of
a lower social station, she answered, ' Very well, my
lady; you are pleased to discard your faithful friend,
17
258
Strictly Tied Up.
who would have sacrificed her life for you, because
she has committed one error of judgment, as you are
pleased to consider, and as perhaps, in the eyes of
worldlings, it may be. Good! but please, my lady,
have a care what you say of me, or how you repre¬
sent my conduct to others. In Ireland, as well as in
England, the most humble is sure of justice, even
against the brother of Augustus Foulis and the
patroness of Sir Miles Brandreth.'
Miss Bobbins had calculated correctly on the coward¬
ice of her former friend, and her shot took effect.
Lady Foulisville was no great lawyer, so her dread
of the consequences of an action for slander was ex-
cessive; and, even if she could be spared such a
calamity, she knew how much she was at the mercy
of her ' dear' Bobbins. A woman of her character
could not have lived in the intimacy of such a toady
without having stripped her moral nature bare before
her, and endowed her with infinite means of retailing
and exaggerating every petty motive and mean or sly
action of her patroness. No doubt, in Lady Foulis-
ville's inward estimate of her own character much
would have been extenuated which, in the hands of
even friendly critics, would have appeared indefensible.
Still, even she—a woman whose conscience never was
of a fine fibre — had ugly suspicions of what the
world would think of her in connection with the
Brandreth affair, as to which she could hardly prove
herself guiltless, without leaving it in her enemies'
power to say she had been blind and stupid.
The upshot of all was to drive her from the most
straightforward and praiseworthy resolution which
Disillusioned.
259
she had ever conceived since the day on which she
first heard herself addressed as ' My lady.' She had
intended to have written a full and clear explanation
to Lucy as to a near relation who had the right to be
satisfied on a matter of such interest and importance.
She would have explained the accident, and dwelt on
its unfortunate result in having so long incapacitated
her, owing to the dangerous illness which supervened,
from even knowing what was going on; she would
have dwelt on the unjustifiable marriage having been
forced on while she was in a condition of incapacity
through the deplorable intervention of one of whose
sense and good feeling she had thought better; and
she would have asked Lucy to forget and forgive.
Terrorised by the cunning insolence of Robbins, and
with the fear of slander before her eyes, Delicia
shrank into a bewildered, cowering, weak woman.
She was not the least softened towards the detected
hypocrite. Rather, she hated her the more from
feeling that she herself was being played with and
humiliated by the upstart Robbins. But as she
hated, so did she also fear; and fear was the ruling
impulse.
Not to mix up Robbins with the business in answer¬
ing Lucy was, she thought, her indispensable pre¬
caution. But she could only not mix up Robbins by
herself swaggering through her letter. So, instead of
the excellent statement on which she had resolved,
she penned a short, stiff, clumsy, arrogant missive,
as unreasonably haughty in its language as it was
grovelling in the spirit which prompted it—asserting,
with no corroborative evidence, her own innocence in
17—2
260
Strictly Tied Up.
the whole affair, and blaming, with an asperity due
to her own insufficient knowledge of the value of
words, Mrs. Foulis's suspicions that she could have
played so unworthy a part.
After every excuse is made for Lady Foulisville's
ill-health and shattered nerves, it must be owned, not
only that she was acting very wrongly, but that she
was conscious of her own misdeed. She was inten¬
tionally behaving in a very cowardly manner, when
she had so nearly trodden with courage the right
way; but she trumped up an excuse in that very
cowardice of her nature, and told herself that, because
she was so weak, she felt herself constrained to do
that which was wrong; and all the while she excused
herself for what she was doing on the score of that
very illness as to which she took care to keep Lucy
in the dark. In short, she acted again—though the
circumstances were more solemn and the results
more disastrous—as when she broke up her parties
to punish Sir Miles for an offence the knowledge of
which she all the time laboured to keep from those
who suffered from her caprice. Then, to be sure,
she only did a foolish thing to satiate a righteous
indignation; now she was consciously doing a
wrong to avoid denouncing an outrage which, in
her eyes, was crying before Heaven for vengeance.
She knew that what she was doing must provoke
a quarrel with Lucy — perhaps the only person
in the world for whom she still felt any lingering
respect—but she flattered herself with the miserable
illusion that she would find means some day of making
it up and explaining all, when Robbins was well out
Discarded.
261
of the way. So she achieved another failure, worse
than all her failures in fashionable life—the failure of
self-respect.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
discarded.
Writing her letter to Lucy, without the assistance
on which she had learned habitually to lean, was to
Lady Foulisville, in her prostrate condition, a lengthy
and fatiguing task. So the morning was far spent
before she had completed it. To Miss Robbins the
time was like weeks, as she awaited the Countess's
summons. In silence, and on tiptoe, she entered the
sick-room at the sound of the summoning bell, and
strove by a hasty glance to ascertain the character
of her patroness's feelings.
She had had time to cool and to think, and the ad¬
vantages of her bold policy no longer seemed incon¬
testable to her. Still, she had gone so far, that,
unassisted, retreat was quite impossible. She believed
that the breach was, as she had so lately intended it to
be, irreparable. At the same time she was graciously
prepared to accord her pardon to the repentant Coun¬
tess, in case the great lady should duly humble her¬
self at the feet of the confidante. She had, indeed,
gone so far as to settle, in her own mind, the pecuniary
and residential conditions of a reconciliation.
Even the words in which she was to accept it had
been conned over and framed in her mind. But no
opening was vouchsafed to the discomfited schemer.
262
Strictly Tied Up.
Lady Foulisville, still quivering with excitement, indi¬
cated silence by a deprecatory gesture, and signed to
her to sit down. Then she cleared up—speaking in
short, cold terms—an account which had long been
running between them, and gave Miss Robbins £50,
nominally as a slight memorial of a friendship un¬
happily interrupted, but not quenched. Her pride for¬
bade her to say that this was really intended as hush-
money, while no honourable feeling stood in the way
of the recipient clutching what was to her the wages
of treachery. She felt that it was incumbent on her
to say something, and she began, ' If a life's devotion,
Lady Foulisville,'—when she was interrupted by a
feeble cry, and, looking round, she saw that the Coun¬
tess had fainted. The maid was near at hand to take
charge of the invalid, and Miss Robbins stepped out.
Nevermore in this life had the two women speech or
sight of each other.
So did Lady Foulisville part with her once-beloved
Robbins, baffled in all her projects of greed and am¬
bition—an exile from Eaton Place and Fontarabia,
and a stranger, as it turned out, to Yaxley. The
woman made her way to London, and then wrote
without delay a joint letter to Sir Miles and Lady
Brandreth, but she received no reply. The fifty pounds
were soon dissipated in clearing small debts, and Miss
Robbins shivered in her cold autumnal lodging, more
destitute and more desperate than upon that memor¬
able morning when she spent an amount which she
could ill spare of her hard-earned pittance in making
herself tidy to present to Lady Foulisville that sonnet
from ' one who had long observed and admired her
Discarded.
263
from her unknown retreat,' which first procured for
her an entrance into the house in Eaton Place. In
her distress the desperate woman actually took a step
from which, under less urgent circumstances, the vanity
which she mistook for pride would have made her
revolt, and she wrote a beseeching letter craving for
an interview with Sant* Onofrio. Her request was
at once granted, and the place named was some coffee¬
house in the neighbourhood of Holborn.
The man had preceded his suppliant, and was
quietly smoking a cigar when Miss Robbins entered.
The jaunty familiarity with which he nodded to her,
and muttered between two puffs, 'Sit down as we
used to do in the jolly old times,' considerably dis¬
concerted Miss Robbins. But a little fanning with
her handkerchief enabled her to collect her thoughts,
and as she had schooled herself well in the part which
she intended to play, she began, in somewhat stilted
but well-chosen English, to objurgate the faithless man
for his cruel demeanour at Fontarabia. But she was
not well through her first sentence before she found a
material obstacle placed upon her oratory in the shape
of the big brown hand of the Irishman placed upon
her mouth, and accompanied by a furtive kiss on her
cheek, as he whispered quite prettily :
' Well, my dear, and did not you see why ? There
were lions in the way, and spies in every cranny.
Brandreth, bad luck to him ! was bent on unearthing
me. Now we are free, my love; and I am here again,
your own true cavalier to command.'
Robbins, astonished and overjoyed at so unexpected
a confession, poured out a voluble tale of a very
264
Strictly Tied Up.
different kind from that which she had been purposing.
With all her crafty selfishness there was a womanly
fibre in her nature, and the schemer had galvanised it.
The Count waited till she had done; then, drawing
her close to himself, whispered in a very subdued
tone:
' There's wealth before us—untold wealth ! A mad
old girl—Baroness von Presterkranz—living at Prague,
believes she can make her fortune on the English turf,
and she trusts your humble servant and some other
friends to make it for her. She has given out she is
coming to England, when she has no more idea of
leaving Bohemia that I of going to Paradise. Any¬
how, she is wanted and expected somewhere to-morrow,
and, with my dear beauty's magnificent knowledge of
foreign languages, I cannot conceive a more efficient
deputy Baroness than a certain fair lady. And
perhaps before you went you would make me the
proud possessor of your autograph on these few scraps
of paper—" Amalia von Presterkranz
Bobbins was an adventuress, alike mendacious and
unscrupulous, but she was, upon calculation, an ad¬
venturess within the limits of the law. She would
cringe, she would fawn, she would equivocate, and she
would lie. An open letter to her was common pro¬
perty, and a keyhole an acoustic instrument of rare
capacity. But forge or personate! No, never! It
was wicked ; so, too, was listening at a keyhole. But
it was something more—it was dangerous, and pos¬
sibly disastrous—that was a very serious consideration-
Wherever she might go, she was determined that the
Old Bailey should not be one of the places.
Discarded.
265
For one instant she vacillated, for the temptation
was very strong—not of wealth easily earned by the
daring confederate and shared with him, hut of the
society of that confederate. The mine which love
sprung in her nature had been so unexpected that it
was almost successful. But the vacillation was only
momentary. The spirit which had captured and
thrown over Lady Foulisville, and met Brandreth on
equal terms, reasserted itself. The voice was firm,
though sorrowful, with which she answered, ' Never.'
Saying no more, she rose and walked away—a
monument of rigid, tearless despair—her latest of love-
dreams shattered and dispersed. The unfortunate
creature is, so it is said, still alive, in much destitution,
hardly scraping together a miserable livelihood as a
daily governess in a large provincial town.
Mrs. Foulis interpreted Lady Foulisville's answer as
any other straightforward person would have taken
such a communication. It left no doubt in her mind
that her treacherous sister-in-law had really been
privy to the designs of Sir Miles, and swaggered
because she could not deny. Self-respect and her
placable indisposition to prolong strife made her
abstain from offering any answer, though not to
answer was, as she well knew, to renounce all future
intimacy with her sister-in-law. It was a great grief
to her to have to drop that one near relation with
whom, though faintly and intermittently, she had
always kept up friendly intercourse, but her duty bade
her make the sacrifice, and she imagined that the last
letters between herself and Lady Foulisville would
now have passed.
266
Strictly Tied Up.
CHAPTER XL.
THE REVISING BARRISTER.
His disreputable father has usurped so much of our
attention since he forced himself upon the party at
Fontarabia, that we have strayed away from the pro¬
ceedings of Eustace Brandreth. Fortune had her gifts
in store for him as well as for Sir Miles this summer.
As the older man got a wife, so the younger one, to
his great delight, found that craving for public
occupation which is apt to come upon a barrister of
ten years' standing, gratified by a revising barrister-
ship, where the work promised to be exciting and
amusing, from the certainty of a sharp fight at the
coming general election which would, in several
counties and in still more boroughs, be much affected
by the state of the register. The young lawyer had
decided politics of his own, but he had the good
fortune, rather than the prudence, to have kept his
occasional connection with party newspapers rather
dark while his reputation as a society writer in
magazines was well known. Had the case been other¬
wise it is probable that he would not have obtained
his present position from the hands which bestowed it.
His father, who had not heard of this stroke of luck,
did him the honour of announcing his marriage in a
letter of elaborate irony, summing up every particular
of the incident in language of old-world courtesy so
framed as to sting his son at each point where the
cunning writer thought him most vulnerable; and
The Revising Barrister.
267
concluding with the gratuitous falsehood that, in all
probability, he never should have thought of domestic
felicity in a second marriage if the offspring of his first
alliance had studied to make his home bright and
cheerful. In that case, he said, his search after an
heiress might have been directed to the advantage of
his successor, who had only lost the chance of meeting
Miss Foulis at Fontarabia by his unkindly absenting
himself from the paternal hearth at the time when the
invitation arrived. ' It is/ the wily cynic added, ' the
catsup in my rich portion of turtle, as I coo to my own
sweet turtle, Meriel, to think she might have fallen to
the lot of one who is not yet double her own age by
an entire year. But she is very kind indeed to her
poor old husband, and she often promises me that when
I am gone she will, for my sake, not forget my learned
but truant boy.'
Eustace was deeply ashamed at his father's esca¬
pade, which his scrupulous nature painted in its
darkest colours. He was conscious of being wholly
guiltless, yet he had not sufficient faith in the justice
of the world to be sure that the verdict of society
might not be that the son of such a father must cer¬
tainly be the object of a suspicion against which he
had no right to complain, for his conscience pricked
him with the recollection of several occasions when
he had himself done a similar injustice to his neigh¬
bour. Still, his new stepmother was a reputable
woman—girl rather—and it was needful, so as not to
lavish the small stock of respectability still left to
the family, to keep alive the knowledge of that fact,
which otherwise might easily have been disputed.
268
Strictly Tied Up.
As to her mother, all that he had heard of Mrs.
Foulis was that she had been quite out of the affair,
and, indeed, highly disapproved of it, although, for
motives similar to his own feelings, she had offered
condonation.
Balancing all things, then, he wrote a coldly civil
reply, in the key of his father's own letter, con¬
gratulating Sir Miles on having found in a closer tie
that domestic felicity which he had himself been
unable to minister, and trusting that he might have
the honour of making Lady Brandreth's acquaint¬
ance. Work comes to a man in Eustace's frame of
mind like a sweet balm, and when, as in his case, it
reaches him accompanied by pay, it is indeed twice
blessed. For a few days after his appointment
shadowy forms in ermine and full-bottomed wigs
danced round the elated junior's chambers. Journal¬
ism was Bohemian, and light literature a flimsy
nothing. He was still in the glow, though perhaps
the cooling glow, of his new professional ambition
when he entered upon the discharge of his somewhat
tiresome duties.
One day, with some amusement but more perplexity,
he found himself seated on the tribunal, a lumpy old
arm-chair, in a stuffy inn parlour, with the agents
round him, very much on the qui vive over the claim
of a tenant farmer whose case had elements of per¬
plexity about it which were likely to reappear in a
good many more, so that the decision in this case
might not improbably turn the scale at the coming
election, besides being pretty certain to come in the
interim before the Court of Common Pleas. It was a
The Revising Barrister.
269
case which the newspapers would get hold of, and
which would make or mar Eustace's reputation for
legal acumen and judicial impartiality. He would not
only have to decide, but to give his reasons for the
decision. So in order to gain a little time, he in¬
quired of the puzzle-headed hero of the embittered
fight: ' Where do you live, sir V
' At Yaxley ; I hold under Madam Foulis.'
'Yaxley, indeed ! Is Yaxley in these parts ?'
' Think it was, sir,' replied the farmer, proud to
know one thing, at all events, of which the bar¬
rister was ignorant. ' Four miles off; leastways,
if '
' Silence, man ! What has the distance of Yaxley
to do with your vote ? What were you saying, Mr.
Pounceby ?'
Mr. Pounceby, to the intense relief of the Revising
Barrister, charged into the enemy's ranks with a
technical irregularity which he had been quietly
nursing, and which effectually put the objection to
the vote, and to all those which were depending upon
it, out of court, without in any way involving the
merits of the tangled case. This sudden collapse of
what everyone expected would have been a protracted
wrangle, left the court without any more work for
the day, and Brandreth found himself in the unex¬
pected enjoyment of a half-holiday. Meditating how
he could most profitably employ it, curiosity whispered
to him to walk over to Yaxley and introduce himself
to its owner.
' Not that the old lady will care to see the trans¬
mitted phiz of the Brandreths. But Madam is step-
270
Strictly Tied Up.
mamma's mamma, so it will be only filial to spoon the
dowager, and see what sort of a parent my good old
dad has got himself. It's funky all the same, though
I want to see the old dragoness.'
It was naughty of Eustace to shape his thoughts
in words partaking of the nature of slang, but he
took care not to speak it; and, indeed, his respectful
deportment when he reached Yaxley could not have
been improved had Lucy been his own mother.
When the servant announced Mr. Eustace Brandreth,
Mrs. Foulis was lolling in her American chair, think¬
ing of nothing in particular, which means chewing
and turning over in a sort of topsy-turvy fashion all
manner of disagreeable topics, as the events of past
years kept crowding in upon her memory. Her first
impulse was to refuse the unwelcome and unexpected
visitor; her second, to obey the laws of courtesy and
bid him be shown in. The conversation which
ensued is not one which is worth preserving in a
verbatim report, for the lady was graceful^ circum¬
spect and reticent, while Eustace was irreproachably
and stupidly commonplace. He could not, as he ex¬
plained, find himself so near Yaxley, in the discharge
of a public duty, without paying his respects to a
lady of whom he had heard on all sides nothing but
good ; particularly as he was now in an indirect way
connected with her. It was not his business to
inquire how far his father's marriage had taken place
with Mrs. Foulis's approbation, but he could well
imagine that she might have desired less disparity of
age between her daughter and her son-in-law, and
she would at least do him the justice to believe that
The Revising Barrister.
271
he had no share in bringing about the match. Now
that the families were so connected, his object would
be to do his duty to all parties, and promote a
harmonious, good understanding. Eustace was quite
sincere in all these statements, for he was an honest,
good fellow, but yet he uttered them with no great
forethought of the effect which they might make
upon his auditor. No sooner was he ushered into
Mrs. Foulis's presence than he felt into how delicate
and difficult a position his curiosity had led him ;
from which he could only make a safe escape by
setting a watch upon his tongue. Fortunately for
him, his mouth spoke out of the abundance of a
good heart, and trivial as he intended his observa¬
tions to be, they were the trivialities of a fine
nature.
Mrs. Foulis, for her part, was surprised and pleased.
She naturally held the Brandreths all round to be a
bad lot. She had never seen Eustace, and although
the little she had been told about him by Mordaunt
was good, it had only left a slight impression, coming
as it did in the middle of his frightful revelation of
Sir Miles's treachery ; so that at first there was little
to lead her to distinguish between the reprobate
father and the respectable son. But his character was
stamped on his face, his words, and his whole deport¬
ment ; and, as the interview went on, Colonel Mor-
daunt's words rose to her mind.
With the recollection of them came the reflection
that, tied for life as she was to the Brandreth family,
she had better make friends with its one white sheep.
So, after a turn upon the lawn, and a gracefully re-
272
Strictly Tied Up.
fused offer of tea and muffins, Mrs. Foulis screwed
herself up to a great effort, and begged Mr. Bran-
dreth, so soon as the registration was closed, to pass a
few days at Yaxley and to arm himself against the
fogs of the Temple, at which he pathetically reported
himself as shortly due, by walking through her covers,
bad as had been—she apologetically added—the breed¬
ing season that spring. Hares and rabbits she had
but few, for as her reason bade her keep the killing of
them in her own hands, so her duty to her tenants
made her spare neither the time of her keepers nor
her own money in keeping them down, and withal
furnishing the tables of her farmers, to whom the
absolute extirpation of their favourite luxury would
have been the most woeful of all consummations.
Eustace, on his side, was equally surprised, both at
his reception and at the juvenility of his receiver. But
for his own stupidity he would have been thoroughly
pleased. He had heard, in various quarters, of Mrs.
Foulis's self-reliance and abundance of resource ; so he
had in his own mind constructed her presentment as
an awful woman, a spectacled dragoon in petticoats, like
the scraggy 'Anglaises,' all teeth and ringlets, with
whom Cham delighted to adorn the Charivari. At
the first moment, indeed, of being ushered into Lucy's
presence, he took for granted that the attractive young
lady by whom he found himself confronted was a com¬
panion or visitor; and all through the interview he
was haunted by an awkward suspicion that he had
said something which had not only betrayed his
blunder, but had revealed the clumsy anticipation
behind it. The peccant speech was something in which
The Revising Barrister.
273
youth and bright companionship, so he fancied, were
referred to with an emphasis which irresistibly led up
to the antithesis of maturity and heavy patronage.
He was right in his shocking surmise, and clever, quiet
Lucy had taken in the entire misapprehension with
much inward amusement. Still, she could not fail to
be pleased with what was an unintentional compliment
to her unexpectedly tolerable person, and as she pitied
the floundering stranger so she set him right with
apparent unconsciousness. So gracious an invitation,
so tactfully put, when he was least expecting any
courtesy, and most particularly after his woeful
blunder, fairly carried the lawyer off his legs; so,
instead of referring to his memorandum-book, as a
man of business ought to have done, and there dis¬
covering that he was hopelessly entangled in a coil of
imperative engagements, Brandreth blundered out,
'You really are too kind—so unexpected—I shall be
so pleased—no, I mean, so honoured,' and took his
leave of the widow.
The turn had now come for Mrs. Foulis to be startled
at the result of her impetuous civility. The conversa¬
tion with her new connection had taken a shape which
seemed at the instant to be imposing this compliment
upon her; so she had propelled an invitation as from
a mental catapult. But that in Eustace's awkward
position towards his father he would accept her bidding
she never for an instant imagined. Otherwise, as she
regretfully recollected when too late, she had visits
which she was much bound, and half intended, to pay,
and to which she could have, with perfect politeness,
referred, as precluding her from offering the otherwise
18
274
Strictly Tied Up.
agreeable invitation for the season. An invitation for
next year, her after-thought told her, would have quite
done the business. She was in for it though, she felt,
and she would make the best of her imprudence. But
she did not dare to think of inviting any neighbour to
meet the stranger, and she particularly dreaded even
to tell Featherston of her impetuosity, and much more
did she shudder at the idea of bringing the two
together, since her guardian, justly irate with Sir
Miles, had protested to her that he would kick even
the puppy-dog of any Brandreth if he happened to
come across the animal.
A little quiet time would have been particularly
acceptable to her, as for other reasons, so because
things were not going comfortably in Yaxley school.
Murgatroyd, poet and schoolmaster, was a conceited
and touchy fool; and, as fools are often wont to do, he
allowed the accounts for which he was officially
responsible to drift into a state of confusion, which
made it impossible for those who felt most indulgently
towards him to say whether his conduct rather showed
imbecility or dishonesty. Miss Larcom, methodical
and good-tempered as she was, and clear-headed in her
narrow way, could not abide to be connected even in¬
directly with so slippery a partner, and never let a day
pass without telling Mrs. Foulis frankly that unless
Murgatroyd were at once got rid of she insisted on
resigning. But this quarrel in her favourite school,
vexatious though it was, was at that time with Mrs.
Foulis only a minor home trouble, let alone the ever-
present gloom, combining apprehension and self-
reproach, which had settled upon Lucy's mind since
her child's infatuated marriage.
The Woes of Taste.
275
CHAPTER XLI.
the woes of taste.
Everyone knows that the close of the registration
nearly corresponds with the commencement of the
planting season, when squires bent upon landscape
improvements most mightily bestir themselves. Mrs.
Foulis was at the time suffering under an acute access
of the disease. She had for years been maturing great
plans, and always delaying their execution, in a
pleasant day-dream of saving up money for a magnifi¬
cent wedding present to Meriel. Now, however, that
the events of the season, which had been far from
comfortable either to her judgment or to her feelings,
and the loss of Meriel's society, such even as it was,
left her very solitary, she craved for some countervail¬
ing excitement. So she drowned thought, and helped
to dispose of her now unappropriated savings by
plunging headlong into the dissipation of her long-
cherished scheme of landscape-gardening. She had a
deep-seated dread of professional improvers, while,
with good natural taste and considerable experience in
small experiments, she was quite strange to the big
engineering exploits which she was meditating. Her
table groaned under the accumulation of patiently
collected books — Rep ton, Gilpin, Uvedale Price,
Loudon, Kempe, Thompson, Robinson; every chair
was littered with plans, sketches, dabs, and daubs.
She wanted to begin in twenty places at once with
fifty things—mounds, ponds, paths, bridges, lawns,
18—2
276
Strictly Tied Up.
shrubberies, holes, hillocks, vistas, clumps—and she
could not settle on any one as her best first start.
Worst of all, she had permanently taken on a power
of extra hands, and, as her bailiff and gardener were
always dinning into her ears that she must give work
to the fellows who were eating off their heads at her
expense, she began to think herself in the condition of
Michael Scott when he sent his unpleasant familiar
devils to make ropes of the sea-sand. ' But then/ as
she regretfully reflected, ' I have no sand and no sea,
and my folks are not devils.'
Eustace happened to arrive at Yaxley on the after¬
noon on which the tohu-bohu with the labourers had
reached its climax, and Miss Larcom had got unmanage¬
able ; while Mrs. Foulis, in her despair at the crisis in
her favourite institution, and at herself being for the
first time consciously and hopelessly out of her depth
in a question of taste within her own special depart¬
ment, was walking up and down the room, muttering
that had it not been for the obligations of hospitality
which she had so recklessly contracted, she would run
off at dead of night, and leave her subordinates to break
each other's heads. Eustace was escorted to his room,
and met his hostess for the first time, just before dinner
—a meal which, as he heard with much dismay, would
be a tete-a-tete. This circumstance was just as embar¬
rassing to the lady ; but to ask Lidyard, and not ask
Featherston, would have been impossible, and to ask
any third person, to the exclusion of both, would, in
her view, have been absolutely outrageous. All through
the meal Lucy, preoccupied with her various troubles,
was grave and silent, or, if she spoke at all, it was
The Woes of Taste.
277
sure to be at cross purposes. The visitor naturally
jumped to the conclusion that Sir Miles's son, in taking
his invitation literally, had committed a social offence;
so he blushed, fidgeted, and became a little more awk¬
ward even than the lady of the house. Fortunately
he had not engaged himself at Yaxley for any definite
period. This was the ' dressed dayto-morrow would
be the ' rest day,' and he felt sure that he would not
be confronted with the offer of the 'pressed day.' After
two nights he would be able to deliver his entertainer
from his oppressive presence, and pick up the threads
of his own imperative occupations, which a longer
truancy would have brought into a condition of hope¬
less entanglement.
At last the servants left the room, and then Mrs.
Foulis, anxious to break a silence which was worrying
her, particularly as its effect on her guest had not
escaped her keen eyes, opened her whole budget of
gardening troubles to the visitor, of whose sympathy
she felt instinctively sure. Eustace, much relieved by
this very unexpected turn in the conversation, was
able to reciprocate not only with sympathy, but with
solid, pertinent advice. It came out that, among the
various desultory pursuits which he allowed to cross
and hamper his steady professional career, both survey¬
ing and the study of the picturesque had asserted their
claims upon his attention. He could draw plans, and
sketching in water-colours was a favourite idleness;
while upon the growth and coloration of trees he had
plenty to say which was well worthy of being listened
to, even by a lady to whom such advice was apt to
imply outlay. As he spoke he warmed with his sub-
278
Strictly Tied Up.
ject, and rattled on more for his own satisfaction than
for the instruction of his auditor.
When he paused, Mrs. Foulis observed, ' Really, Mr.
Brandreth, you are a godsend. Do take pity upon a
poor lone woman, and stop and help me with your
advice in the peck of troubles which I have brought
upon me by my own folly, in attempting works far too
big and complicated for me to carry through with my
want of experience. I am really serious. If I find no
friend to advise me, I must send for some professional,
and I should dread meeting him as I do my dentist.
He would upset all I had done, cut and slash away all
my plantations, and force me to swallow his crude
first thoughts about a place which he would not take
the trouble to walk over—me who know and love
every old tree like a brother, and every young one like
a child.'
There was, of course, but one answer to make to so
genuine an appeal, though the avenging ghosts of out¬
raged engagements rose grim before the eyes of the
reckless barrister. The bailiff and the gardener at
first looked askance at the interfering visitor, but they
soon learned to think themselves lucky at the unlooked-
for arrival of one who showed that he had both the
will and the power to introduce order and method into
their desultory and hitherto lavishly expensive opera¬
tions ; and if the former did not exactly exclaim to his
sister Anna, Lucy's trusty maid,
6 Quis novus hie nostris successit sedibus hospes?'
or complain of being frightened by bad dreams, he
certainly gave a character of Eustace in his racy Mid-
The Woes of Taste.
270
land Doric which even Dido would have accepted as
no inapt description of iEneas. There was but one
voice ever raised in abatement of his merits in the
little parliament which used to debate in the steward's
room at Yaxley. Excellent Mr. Halwell, the old
keeper, would stretch out his legs, and solemnly
say:
' It's all very well a-cryin' up the young fellow, but,
with his trapsin's, and trampin's, and diggin's, and
plantin's, the shootin' is a-goin' to Old Nick. The
birds are gettin' as wild as hawks, and the poachers
are a-loafin' about that owdacious that it's a dozen
snares I've taken up if it's one: and here he's been a
fortnight and more, and only twice out; and what
makes the matter a tarnation shame is that he can
shoot when he likes !
' In fact,' he slowly continued, stroking, as was his
wont, his left legging, and looking round with that
furtive glance which had led Lucy, with whom the
old fellow was a great favourite, to dub him the wild
cat of the forest; ' in fact, I can't help a-suspectin'
there be somethin' between the young chap and the
lady. They be so tender like.'
' Then you'll just keep your suspicions and your
somethings and your tendernesses to yourself, you
will, Mr. Halwell. It is positively disgusting to hear
you talking of an old lady such as Mrs. Foulis is, and
so many years an honest widow, throwing herself
away on a young ne'er-do-well, and the son of the
gallows-bird who's stole Miss Meriel! I'm ashamed
of you, Mr. Halwell; and I'll just ask Mr. Williams
to turn you out if you don't keep your filthy tongae
280
Strictly Tied Up.
a little bit more in order in Mrs. Foulis's own steward's
room.'
This vigorous champion of Mrs. Foulis's freedom of
fancy was Mrs. Kershaw, the cook—' Mrs.' by brevet
rank. She was the latest recruit of the Yaxley esta¬
blishment, and, except for her singular professional
capacity and personal steadiness, the least congenial
member of it. Tall and sour, glib of tongue, and
never losing the opportunity of spitting out something
to the disadvantage of all who might find themselves
within the range of that tongue, Mrs. Kershaw was
feared, not loved, by her fellow-servants, and feared
by no one more than by that good, old-fashioned,
easy-going soul, Williams, whose butlership dated from
the days when his mistress was still Miss Curteis. A
word from him might at any time have rid the family
of its unwelcome member. But that word he never
would speak, for, in truth, with all his fear another
feeling was mixed. Whatever else the cook was, she
was thrifty, and wise in her investments, and rumour
declared her, for her station in life, wealthy. This
Williams, some two years a widower, well knew, and
in his secret heart the expectation flickered of some
day sharing that wealth. Mrs. Kershaw saw through
his game, and, inwardly resolved as she was never to
gratify Williams's ambition, she used the influence
which her discovery had given her, to maintain the
rule of iron with which she dominated the steward's
room. The keeper so insulted began rubbing both
leggings with either hand, and those who knew him
well were aware that this action on his part always
presaged an outburst. So Williams hastily proposed
Detention.
281
a rubber of whist, he and Lucy's maid against Halwell
and Mrs. Kershaw. The ruse succeeded, and, as usual,
the astute capitalist won many penny points.
CHAPTER XLII.
detention.
Dinner at Yaxley was usually a silent meal, for, in
truth, lady and gentleman were equally tired with
the afternoon's employment, and equally shy before
the servants; but once Lucy's darling library was
gained, then study, not play, would be the order of
the day. The table was swept of books and trifles,
and Eustace, ceremoniously ensconced in an arm-chair
would, with a grave frown and squared lips, set to
making and tearing up, and making again, little plans
on sheets of foolscap paper, and dabbing in effects of
light and shade (colour by candlelight being impos¬
sible), in which queer blotches of Indian ink, which
might be clouds and looked more like spills, or the
casual effects of a brush carelessly tossed down, were
said to represent trees.
Whatever he did was piously accepted by the
much-engrossed lady, who would stand by the table
till standing became rather tiring, and then would
perhaps lean on the back of his chair—' because,
sitting down, one can't make one's self high enough to
judge properly.' Drawing plans and sketching effects
is not what, in the general estimation of gay society,
282
Strictly Tied Up.
would be thought a cheerful way of spending the
evenings in a country house; but, somehow, the
occupation is apt to be much enlivened when a pretty
woman is leaning over your chair, gently laughing in
your ear, and interrupting the current of your
thoughts and the course of your pencil by criticisms,
all of which imply some half-expressed compliment to
the amateur artist.
Eustace was always proposing to leave, and some¬
thing would always occur which compelled Mrs.
Foulis to request, as a particular favour, that he
would put himself to the inconvenience of stopping
just a little longer. She would plead at breakfast,
' I know I am very troublesome indeed, and you must
hate the sight of me; but they are just at work on
the new mound by the East Approach, and I can't
help thinking it will want a little more rounding at
the top, and the hollow at the side is surely hardly
scooped enough; it is so formal, and shows like a
trench, and not a natural coomb.' At another time
she was in sore bewilderment whether to place a
group of variegated Wellingtonias on the top of
Bilberry Bank, where they would make a landmark,
or to dispose them at the bottom of the new glade,
in contrast with some copper beeches, ' which I
must, I think, order. Don't you agree, Mr. Bran-
dreth ?'
One morning Mrs. Foulis appeared at breakfast
more distraught than was her usual wont, and before
she had well poured out the tea she said, in a rapid
tone, curiously combining decision and perplexity, and
looking Eustace straight in the face,' I can't palter
Detention.
283
any longer. The decision must be reached now, at
once and irrevocably.'
The young man had not the slightest idea what
the matter was which gave such evident trouble to his
hospitable hostess ; so he could only answer by tender¬
ing his poor assistance if it were acceptable.
' Of course it is. You are the only man who can
help me, and upon whom I rely as a friend who will
not deceive me.'
Eustace felt very odd, and believed that he was
trembling, but contrived to blunder out, 'Am I
really V
' Of course you are. Don't you know the decision
we must come to V
' I have not the slightest idea.'
Lucy bit her lip in vexation, but went on :
' Why, of course, don't you see, then ? I must
decide by return of post, so Weekes tells me, or it will
be too late for the plants next season, whether I
stick a conservatory on to the house; and the choice
is so perplexing. I should have the creepers, and the
bananas, and the palms to go to, wet or dry, and
open after dinner; and Chinese lamps among the
branches would be so lovely. But then I fear the big
new thing would spoil the lines of the dear old
house, and that would kill me with vexation; and it
would be so garish next the brickwork with its
weathering and its lichens. I might, to be sure, paint
it Indian red—certainly not white paint; but even
then V
Eustace was reassured, and plunged into the con¬
troversy. At length the lady was brought cheerfully
284
Strictly Tied Up.
to abandon a project which would have ruined the
antique charms of her picturesque abode. But Messrs.
Weekes had to wait more than one post before the
order was countermanded.
A time at last was reached when even plans had
not always to be made and remade; and the even¬
ings became more and more frequent on which the
good-natured hostess insisted on Eustace giving a
holiday to his overworked fingers. The lawyer at
this began some conventional compliments, concluding
with the commonplace, that he was sure that one so
accomplished as Mrs. Foulis must be equally devoted
to, and accomplished in, music. He had not, indeed,
noticed the piano, but no doubt it was in some room
not usually opened; and then if Lucy, half taken
aback and half amused, burst into a loud laugh, and
confessed that her childish music lessons had so bored
her that she had dropped, and by this time clean
forgotten, the accomplishment. She could, to be sure,
sing hymns without an instrument; and would
Eustace join her in this delightful pastime ?
Choir practice was twice a week at the school, and
the presence of an accomplished critic would give a
wholesome fillip to the boys. It was now his turn to
be abashed, and he did not carry off the exposure
half so well as the lady. Yet the reciprocal confes¬
sion—deficient music—was a comfort to him, as it let
in his favourite foible. With a smirk, meant to be
modest, and called by Lucy shy, the self-conscious
scholar would beg permission to be allowed to read
just a little poetry, merely to send Mrs. Foulis
asleep; the truth being that reading aloud was an
Detention.
285
accomplishment of which he was more vain than of
the more solid gifts with which he was so abundantly
provided.
Lucy would then place herself in her much-loved
rocking-chair on the other side of the table, at which,
with an air and a grace very different from his usual
unconstrained and manly gesture, Eustace would
somewhat ceremoniously arrange himself, the book in
his right hand, while with his left he kept up a
running accompaniment between beating time and
playing the devil's tattoo. The knowing little woman
had entered into the plan with a roguish intention of
provoking Eustace's evident vanity. But, alas ! her
tender heart betrayed her critical soul. She sat down
to tease the reader, and she sat on to be pleased by
the reading.
Eustace laboured like a man who had taken the
assembly-room of a South-Coast watering-place for a
Shakspearian course, and he was rewarded by Mrs.
Foulis declaring that she had never before properly
understood Tennyson's 'Princess.' Nay, his render¬
ing of' Borneo and Juliet' was in the opinion of his
indulgent critic, quite an original version of a piece
which required a poetical insight, such as he possessed,
to unlock its treasure of pathos and diction.
Sometimes, indeed, these more intellectual pursuits
would be varied by a game of backgammon; but
such was the unwonted and inexplicible proclivity of
either player to make blots or mistake the tables,
that the game used imperceptibly to transform itself
into one of those general conversations which most
easily grow up when they are unpremeditated. It
286
Strictly Tied Up.
was by casual hints and half-confidences unintention¬
ally dropped during these chats, and pieced together
by the alert mind of Eustace, that he learned to read
the character of his hostess as he had never done
before.
When at first the shy barrister began his visit at
Yaxley, the widow (as he kept on calling her to him¬
self) was a charming woman; young for her age,
clever and cheery, full alike of good spirits and good
principles. Now she gradually revealed herself as
one who had been much wronged, and nobly bore
herself against those wrongs, without the help of
that sympathy which the world is so stupidly or so
jealously apt to withhold from rich sufferers, under a
sort of heathen prepossession that person who seem to
be prosperous in worldly advantages owe a sacrifice
to Nemesis.
Casual hints which fell from Lucy led the young
man to appreciate that she was a woman who had in
tender years been schooled by a training which would
have spoiled most characters; so that her receiving
benefit, not harm, from it, proved the superiority of
an exceptional nature. Her faults, to which he was
not blind, would have been more and greater in most
people with a training like hers, and her merits far
less genuine. He left off calling her the widow to
himself, as he could no longer bear to think of her in
connection with other and baser natures. She was
now Lucy to his thoughts—a creature standing by
herself, in the paradise of her own high intentions
robed in her own vesture of unequalled purity.
With deepened sympathy for Lucy's character, and
Detention.
287
a more clear insight into its elements, Eustace's tone
naturally grew more grave and intense. She, too,
instinctively felt the change, and in response un¬
consciously and gradually unlocked to him the more
secret chambers of her confidence. Lucy, for the first
time in her life, was led to ask another's pity for her
solitude as a child without playmates, and as a woman
without intellectual companionship; and the scar of
her aunt's tyranny again became livid in her struggle
to excuse it as the unintentional cruelty of an idiot.
At last she found courage to speak openly of the
hideous episode of her ephemeral marriage, as she
never had done to human being before, and even to
drop words about the unutterable anguish of an un¬
grateful child. Eustace, in receiving these confidences,
felt himself almost charged with spiritual responsi¬
bilities towards one whose motive in laying bare the
secrets of her guileless heart was neither vanity nor
discontent, but the unalloyed desire of self-improve¬
ment; and as he offered the conclusions from them which
made for Lucy's comfort, his own moral nature grew
in purity and power.
Mingling with these higher feelings, another, of
which he was half ashamed, and which he was always
endeavouring to stifle, would go on intruding itself into
Eustace's brain, and confounding all his most magnani¬
mous conclusions. He had been so often and so
intimately consulted about the spending and the with¬
holding of large sums of money upon Mrs. Foulis's
property—he had, in fact, so completely drifted, in
reference to what the gardener sententiously desig¬
nated the 'amenities,' into a position, if not of co-
288
Strictly Tied Up.
proprietorship, at least of all the trouble and all the
enjoyment to which improving proprietors are heirs
that he was continually catching himself out as think¬
ing of Yaxley as if it were somehow his own. Mrs.
Foulis stupidly helped on the temptation, as she would
continually accost him upon 'our last improvement,'
'our walk up here,' 'our mound down there,' 'the
effect which I hope we may succeed in enjoying,' and
so forth. Eustace would, when the lively lady had
run on in this strain, interpose—too laughingly, it
must be owned, to secure the serious attention at
which he was aiming.
' You mean, which you will enjoy, my dear Mrs.
Foulis. Next spring you will be revelling in the hills
and dales, the forests and the lakes, which your creative
genius has called into being ; while I, poor wretch!
in my dingy den at the Temple, expect no happier fate
than to pore over briefs, or spin out my wits' work
for greedy editors.'
On this Lucy would smile a silent inscrutable smile,
pitiful and gracious, but secretive and self-reliant; and
Eustace would detect himself twaddling, and perhaps
propose to the already tired lady to make a fresh
pilgrimage to some spot which they had already
visited two or three times that very morning,
Generally speaking, Lucy submitted with much good
humour to the superfluous toil, but upon one occasion
she flatly refused to leave the house again, and said
with some bitterness, for in truth she felt twinges of a
toothache which pride forbade her to confess, ' Really,
Mr. Brandreth, your occupation in life seems walking
with me.'
Adam's Weather-Glass.
289
' Life's walk with such a companion would be indeed
an enviable occupation.'
' What a blind, poor creature you must be not to be
able to walk alone.'
' So saying she speeded to her room, where she
sought and found comfort in a bottle of creosote.
Eustace, thoroughly snubbed, sought the comfort he
could not find in a volume of South's Sermons which
he casually took from the shelves.
CHAPTER XLIII.
adam's weather-glass.
Autumn kept closing in as the days grew shorter and
colder, but the intrepid pair went labouring on, cheer¬
ing or chiding the obedient hands, till the mounds and
the pools had assumed something of their intended
effect of woody banks and half-hidden streamlets. At
last, a November day came, such as the English climate
sometimes produces, intensely calm, hot as summer,
but with a damp close heat, which makes the re¬
collection even of a north-east wind tolerable. No
clouds were visible, nor yet blue sky, but a sort of
compromise between the two, in a grey tansparent
vapour, not soaring upwards like a vault, but hanging
like a canopy over the face of the earth.
In short, the day was so stifling that even Mrs.
Foulis and Mr. Brandreth, with all their activity and
enthusiasm in improving, discovered that it was
impossible to run about in such oppressive air; so
19
290
Strictly Tied Up.
after some abortive attempts at stepping out a pro¬
posed new path, they sought rest in a summer-house
which stood in a spot already so lovely that it had
been specially and emphatically exempted from any
scheme of improvement. Yet its beauty was very
simple, and was perhaps the result of accident, in the
remarkable gracefulness of form and happily con¬
trasted gradations of colour of a little group of trees
bounding the view on one side, with which the eye
was refreshed, in combination with the rounded out¬
lines of an expanse of turf of that softest and most
intense green which can only be found where the
growth is of moss, and not of grass. Some days
earlier the spectacle would have been even more en¬
trancing, for the lime-trees which now stood naked
were arrayed in the bright pale gold into which the
foliage of that provoking tree is transmuted in the few
days of its premature autumn, leaving regrets for its
speedy departure, which is ill compensated for, even
by the rich purple of the buds. But the famous
liquid ambar of Yaxley was in the fullest fire-glow of
its transcendent glory, thrown out as that was by the
contrasted velvet of an adjacent silver fir.
' How hot it is !' gasped Eustace.
' Dreadfully hot!' murmured Lucy.
' The glass, too, was rising this morning,' he con¬
tinued, with the air of a man communicating a valuable
secret.
' The glass is a humbug, I believe.'
'Well, now, you remind me of my old tutor at
college, who used to get quite angry when anybody
talked of the weather-glass.'
Adam's Weather-Glass. 291
' Stupid old man!'
'But you, yourself, have just been calling it a
humbug.'
' Does the weather-glass being a humbug prove your
tutor clever V she asked, with true feminine logic.
' Perhaps not. But it's unnatural to garden without
looking at the weather-glass. I wonder whether Adam
had a weather-glass in Eden.'
' What makes you think of Eden now V
' Your garden, of course.'
Mrs. Foulis was half vexed at the triviality of his
talk, while her conscience told her that her own re¬
marks were no better; so she rather pettishly answered :
' Indeed, Mr. Brandreth, we must leave off bandying
these stupid conjectures about Adam and weather¬
glasses, or we shall begin proving that my untidy
wilderness is Paradise.'
' Without a peradventure, this is Paradise ; and it
can claim its Eve as lawful tenant of its glades,' re¬
sponded Eustace, with a half-ironical intonation, which
aptly set off the grand-seigneur reverence with which
he concluded his sententious compliment.
Mrs. Foulis never could resist a friendly tournament
of wit when she was under the excitement of good
spirits; so, with much precipitancy and conspicuous,
though momentary, confusion as to Biblical facts, she
rejoined, ' An Eve perhaps, but, happily, no Adam to
beguile her.'
The words were hardly past her lips before she felt
how absurdly she had put her foot into it, and she
turned as red as a turkey-cock, and laboured with vain
thoughts after some second sentence which could turn
19—2
292
Strictly Tied Up.
the edge of her own terrible suggestion. Eustace
saved her the trouble by quietly replying, ' I don't see
why that deficiency should go on.'
So saying, with the switch in his left hand, he
llicked the outstanding toe of his boot, and with his
right he grasped the hand of Mrs. Foulis. She let
him take it without a trace of displeasure or resist¬
ance, but neither by word, look, nor responsive squeeze
did she acknowledge his loving advance. After some
moments' delay, Eustace resumed, in a lower and
graver tone:
' What is the use of going on with this purpose¬
less dawdling? Heaven knows that neither of us
ever expected this when you invited me here; but it
has come to pass, and we must face facts. Can't you
say " Yes," and put an end to it ?'
Mrs. Foulis did not say 'Yes,' but still less did she
say ' No.' She did not withdraw her hand, nor did
she by the slightest quiver of a single finger seem to
recognise that it was within Eustace's grasp. Another
silent interval occurred, and then again he spoke :
' Won't you answer me V
' Have not I been answering you all the after¬
noon, and setting right your stupid muddle about the
weather-glass ?'
' Yes; but you have not answered my last ques¬
tion.'
' How could I ? You don't want me to throw my¬
self at your head. We are not on a desert island yet,
and my way home, at least, is quite clear.'
Mrs. Foulis uttered these words with just a little
too much of artificial indignation for success, and
Adam's Weather-Glass. 293
jumping up, strode towards the mansion with so quick
a pace as to leave her lover quite distanced and breath¬
less before they reached the door. Her five o'clock
tea was taken to her bedroom, and she came down to
dinner with unwonted unpunctuality. That evening
hostess and visitor were both seized with a desire to
play backgammon, and for once they were so intent
over their hits, badly played as these were, that con¬
versation was banned.
' Good night,' at last said Eustace, as he handed the
flat candlestick to the lady of the house.
'Better night, I hope, than day,' answered Lucy;
and added, ' Law! how you are spilling the wax and
spoiling everything, and all was so nice with me before
you came.'
This was enigmatical, but said so archly as not to be
crushing.
' Better night than day,' Eustace muttered when he
got up on the following morning. To him the day
before had been the best of days he had ever passed.
It had been one of exquisite happiness; for although
Lucy still kept herself free, he fancied that a little
more persuasion would leave him the affianced hus¬
band of that peerless woman. Next morning all
seemed different. She was cold, shy, awkward, silent;
she avoided speaking, or if she spoke, it was to con¬
tradict, to snub, or to take offence. He asked her at
breakfast in the deferential accents of his earlier days
at Yaxley, what were her plans for the morning, and
she merely jerked out, ' How can I tell V He remarked
in a tone of genuine concern that she was looking pale,
and she caught him up with 'Well, and if I am,
294
Strictly Tied TJp.
what's that to you ? You don't want me to put on
rouge, I suppose.' Eustace talked of leaving, and she
never told him to stay.
A man less deeply in love, or more versed in
woman's character, would have drawn comfort from
these visible struggles of a strong but excitable and
much-tried nature with a late-awakened love, of which
she was beginning to feel the strength more than she
had ever believed herself capable of feeling, or even
thought it right to own. The pride of consistency,
the pride of position, and the pride of solitary power
were all seething in her perturbed mind, and struggling
to stifle the quick growth of her new pure affection.
Had her first husband left her any legacy of regret
or respect, they might have prevailed. But her never
yet satisfied yearning after a marriage of the heart,
of which she was for the first time becoming conscious,
came in aid and turned the scale. Much as she had
gone through, the monotony of her healthy, useful,
occupied pilgrimage had wiped out the count of years,
and left her, for all essential purposes, midway between
twenty and thirty, with the long vista of a fresh life
suddenly open.
Of all this struggle Eustace was blankly ignoranti
and only saw a peevish, capricious woman, who en¬
couraged him one day in order to mortify him on the
morrow; and who would, he felt sure, follow his
departing figure with a mocking laugh. She had, he
said to himself, sucked his brains over her confounded
improvements, and that was all she had ever really
wanted of him. To Eustace, the bachelor, the smiles
which came from her in spite of herself were the
Adam's Weather-Glass.
295
death-warrant of all his yesterday's expectations, for
to his distempered eye they only told of cold-blooded
ridicule. He felt himself like the rash traveller who
had toiled all the night, and through the following
morning, and who in two or three more paces would
have placed his foot on the peak of some glorious and
untrodden Alpine summit, when a single false step
sends him rolling and bounding down black rock and
cruel snow till he lodges, thousands of feet below, in
some dark gully, a gory, shapeless mass of crushed-up
bone and muscle. If he could only turn to the wall
and blubber like a whipped child, he might bear it;
but to sit wearing that false face of calm unconcern
was intolerable. He would rush out of the house;
he would run to the station ; he would quit at once,
and for ever, Yaxley and its heartless mistress.
While Eustace was making up his mind to this
valorous resolve, the servant came in with the second
delivery of letters. The first he opened was from
his clerk, speaking, with all the sharpness of which
their relative positions admitted, of the delay and
inconvenience which his protracted absence from
chambers occasioned. The faithful dependant had
too much reason to believe that a brief after which
Eustace had long been hankering was at last sent by
the solicitor on whom he mainly leaned for advance¬
ment, to that pert son of an enormously rich member
for a Yorkshire borough whose unrestrained chaff
had long been the chief of Eustace's minor miseries.
He opened a second letter in a wild hope of finding
comfort there, and it was from the editor of Tyhurnia,
reminding his truant writer, with that courtesy which
296
Strictly Tied Up.
preludes a rupture, that his contribution to the next
number was long overdue.
Now, indeed, the blackness of darkness had
gathered completely round him. Judico me cremari,
he thought. He had entered Yaxley poor, but a
hero ; this heroism had been sacrificed at the foot of a
widow and a fortune, and she had spurned him so
soon as she had spoiled him of his nobility. Now he
was departing, not only poor, but a pauper; his
pleasurable means of fame-winning livelihood cut
away by his own reckless conceit. So engrossed was
he in his own troubles that he never perceived that
Lucy was bending in tearless amazement over another
letter, as, with her disengaged hand, she twitched her
gown, and with one foot dealt quick continuous
kicks to the footstool. Had he listened, he might
have heard her muttering, ' It can't be hers, it can't be
hers, though the writing is hers ; too clever, too cruel,
too devilish ! Oh, the man into whose hands my poor
child has fallen victim is there in every word of it!
And I let her go—I sent her to Ireland ! Oh, my
folly ! oh, my sin !'
Sir Miles, with all his cunning, had misread the
character of Mrs. Foulis, and fancied, from the prone-
ness with which she ran into the trap baited by him
in the letter palmed by him upon Meriel, that she
was a fond, pliable creature.
' Once we are tied, and can't be untied, she'll be
whistling us back to herself,' was his prophecy; and
although he was somewhat surprised at the tone of
Lucy's reply to Meriel after the marriage—ignorant as
he was of the turn which Mordaunt had so uncon-
Adam's Weather-Glass. 297
sciously done him—he set it down as pout, and,
waiting till 'Mater' should mollify, forbade Meriel to
answer. It is but fair to say that she did not
acquiesce in this heartless advice without a fight, but
it was the last in which filial affection took any part.
After weeks of waiting, Lucy wrote again, more
urgently, more sadly, and more reproachfully ; and
then Sir Miles told his wife that they must make a
stand, and show a little firmness.
Accordingly he proposed for her a letter, framed
by calculation to be cold, hard, and unfeeling, in
which he made her lay down the categorical condi¬
tions on which alone she would condescend for the
future to recognise her mother. The principal features
of this proposal were free quarters at Yaxley for the
couple and any family they might have, and an allow¬
ance upon selves and family, amounting to some
thousands a year, during the lifetime of Mrs. Foulis, to
be irrevocably secured by deed.
Sir Miles thought his way more clear for claiming
these concessions now that he had shaken off Miss
Robbins and repudiated the promises, confiding in
which, that worthless but unhappy woman had for¬
feited all the benefits of her Delicia's patronage. He
was prepared, had she called him to account, to have
justified himself by pleading that his promises to her
had been made in her character of confidante to Lady
Foulisville, and in consideration of the influence which
that position gave her; so that with its loss, which he
must impute to her own misbehaviour, the promise
equally lapsed.
Happily for the honour of human nature, the
298
Strictly Tied Up.
discarded favourite never gave him the opportunity
of urging this base excuse, for she crawled away,
crushed and impotent, from Eontarabia, and slunk
into her own hole, nor ever, after her one letter to the
Baronet, did she attempt to address either Brandreth
or the Foulisvilles.
At last Eustace made a spasmodic effort to shake
off the stupor which he felt growing upon him, and
tear himself away from the ill-omened house and the
fickle coquette who had befooled him. He had for¬
gotten, in his reverie, everything, even where the
door stood; so he glanced round the room for the
means of escape, and then, for the first time, he appre¬
ciated that he was in company of a woman evidently
in deep, silent agony of mind over some unexpected
communication.
Lucy's expression, as she conned over Meriel's
letter, made Eustace pause in his resolution of running
away. Had she been his declared enemy, and not the
frivolous creature who was trifling with his heart,
he could hardly retreat at that moment without some
explanation; so he turned his eye on Lucy as she
read and re-read the fatal writing. She finished
her third or fourth perusal of the hateful words,
and then looking at him, but not in anger, handed
him the epistle and gasped, 'What am I to do after
this V
Preoccupied as he was with his own troubles, he
read it at first somewhat mechanically, but for the
second time with a knitted brow and a scowling face.
Then he looked at Lucy, and perceived that she had
sunk upon a chair quivering in every limb and
Legatus Natus.
299
drinking his expression with a sad intensity which
spoke of love and confidence and longing blended
with an outside sorrow; so he returned the letter to
its owner, and said, in a calm, low, slow voice,
' After this you can say " Yes" to my question of
yesterday/
Mrs. Foulis seized his hand, and gave the squeeze
which he had vainly expected the afternoon before,
and then burst into a long, hearty fit of hysterical
crying. So likewise did Eustace.
CHAPTER XLIY.
legatus natus.
Even lovers, so absurdly doting as Lucy and Eustace
suddenly discovered themselves to be, must talk of
business, particularly when the lady counts thirty-
four years, and the gentleman is only one year
younger, and looking his age, while she would have
been taken to be several summers on the right side of
thirty. All persons who cared to think in any way
upon the matter had formed the opinion that upon
Lucy Curteis's marriage with Captain Foulis she
had acted under some provision of her father's will,
and had tied up her property, exclusively and irre¬
vocably, upon the issue of that marriage ; otherwise
how could she assert that, come what may, it would
be Meriel's ?
There was no one to contradict the report.
Swettenham, who had presumably made the settle-
300
Strictly Tied Up.
ment, was dead; Musgrave kept to himself, and
never gossiped; Featherston was no lawyer, and
hated to talk on legal matters; while to Lucy not
only were any references to her ill-starred marriage
repulsive, but her recollections of its incidents were
permanently blurred and distorted, owing to the
mental and bodily shock of her sudden widowhood
and her daughter's quickly-following birth. So Mrs.
Rees had it all her own way, and was able, to her
heart's content, to abuse Mrs. Foulis, her father,
Featherston, c whom all the world knows to be a hum¬
bug,' and ' that old fool, Swettenham,' for having
allowed the patrimony of the Curteises to fall into the
clutches of a penniless adventurer.
Mrs. Rees's special line of evil-speaking took this
form, as from the day that Featherston's relation, who
afterwards turned out so badly, was named first
incumbent of that new church which made the
quarrel, she vowed supplementary vengeance against
that most inoffensive man. She might have relented
on the downfall of the clergyman, by which Feather¬
ston himself was severely hit, if the partner of his
disgraceful swindle of a sham agency office had not
been a discarded clerk, whose appointment as school¬
master of the old church had been a particular job
of her own, and who was the only man who ever
evaded repaying money borrowed from Mr. Rees.
Miss Turner's position was a different one, as her cen¬
tral wrong had always been old Miss Harriett's banish¬
ment, from which she had really suffered severely in
material comforts ; and, as Captain Foulis had been
that silly woman's spoilt darling, she was bound to
Legatus Natus.
301
think more tenderly of the insinuating scamp than it
suited her robust confederate to do. So, while she
would condemn the settlement as all wrong, she would
add her feeble regrets that Miss Harriett's advice had
not been attended to. When people asked her what
that advice was, she would only answer, ' It was a
burning shame it wasn't taken. Think of my poor
dear friend, hounded to death, when she might have
saved the family!'
Outside of the Yaxley country the same delusion
prevailed. Lady Foulisville had no doubt about the
settlement, and loudly praised it, as due to an over¬
ruling Providence, which had thus poured the wealth
of the Curteises into the lap of a Foulis. Above all
things, to Sir Miles and Meriel it was, as we know, a
foregone conclusion. So Eustace, who had heard the
gossip before it had become a matter of personal
interest, never dreamed of questioning the fact, while,
with his punctilious sense of honour, he dreaded act¬
ing or thinking as a fortune-hunter. Still, it was the
duty of a Revising Barrister to proceed according to
rule and order : so, as soon as Lucy's paroxysm of
laughing and crying was calmed, he led her to serious
conversation, and asked her, in language which he
made intelligible to her non-legal mind, if it were true
that, as Captain Foulis's widow, she had only a life-
interest in her father's patrimony, and that after her
death it would all vest absolutely in Meriel.
' It is quite true,' she answered.
' What an odd fellow your father must have been to
suppose you would only marry once, and to let you
put all your eggs in one basket!'
302
Strictly Tied Up.
' There is only one egg, and that's Meriel.'
' But are you really quite sure V
' More than sure. Have not both Swettenham and
Featherston told me so ?'
' Then there's nothing to settle, for sure I am that
my father has not a brass farthing to give me, and
would not let me have it if he had one.'
' Let's settle ourselves, and be happy,' she responded,
with such a tone and such a smile that his only
possible answer was a kiss, which effectually addled
all further business talk.
'After play comes work,' thought Eustace on the
following morning, as the couple buckled to to arrange
about the marriage. The first question, ' put off, or at
once,' was by acclamation decided in favour of 'at
once.' ' How' followed upon ' when,' and then divided
counsels appeared, and, we are sorry to say, some
inconsistency, in the little senate. Lucy urged
reverential considerations, which are now, happily, as
common as they are laudable. The banns should be
published in the face of the congregation alike for
rich and poor. There should be arches, flowers, music,
clergy in the plural, a breakfast for the rich, and
merry-making for the poor.
Eustace was the last man in the world to gainsay
opinions with which, as a general principle, he heartily
agreed ; but, situated as they two were, he felt it his
duty calmly to point out the peculiar difficulties of
their position. Could she ask those objectionable
Foulisvilles, after their behaviour regarding Meriel, as
to which both Lucy and Eustace were still misled
from their ignorance of Delicia's illness, and confirmed
Legatus Natus.
303
in their displeasure by her infatuated letter ? Was
she, on the other hand, prepared to make open enemies
for life of Meriel's uncle and aunt by leaving them out ?
Again—and that was the most serious consideration—
how could she open her house to Sir Miles and
Lady Brandreth, after her daughter's atrocious letter ?
and if she did, how would she ever get them out
again ?
Lucy felt the force of these objections, but, like a
true woman, still wished to show a little fight before
she openly surrendered. So she began feebly defend¬
ing her position with a series of petty admissions,
inconsistent with the premisses which they claimed to
support. In her innocent craftiness she meant Eustace
to take advantage of her faulty reasoning, so as to
rescue her from her own false position. But the simple
fellow, little versed as yet in women's ways, and
terribly in earnest over his new sensation of love,
instead of appreciating and playing Lucy's game, got
seriously angry at what he thought was her stupidity
and weakness. Actually the man got angry whose
fame as a writer of sparkling romance in no small
degree rested on the success with which he could hit
off womanly caprice. In fact, he had so schooled him¬
self in this accomplishment as to have blunted his
native intuition into character. Instead of analyzing
from the incidents revealed to him, he would build
upon them without recollecting how incomplete and
fragmentary the foundation was. So the demon of
suspicion made a lodgment in his mind, and whispered
to him that Lucy was a fool. To be sure, he was too
much in love to admit the terrible charge himself.
304
Strictly Tied Up.
Still he was rather scared at this peep into his life's
prospect with his chosen yoke-fellow; and, as angry
men will do, he began himself to play the fool, by
turning his back upon his own wise counsels, and
declaiming about shaming their enemies (and somebody
else) by a public and splendid wedding. There must
be this, he argued, and that, and the other, to make it
all worthy of the lady of Yaxley, and a dozen brides¬
maids, even if as many counties had to be beaten up
for them.
At this burst, poor Lucy meekly dropped, ' But I'm
a widow, Eustace dear, and can't have bridesmaids
at all.'
This remark, commonplace as it was, brought the
angry racer sharply up upon its haunches. For brides¬
maids in themselves Eustace cared as little as for wed¬
ding-cake; but it recalled to a memory which was
willingly wandering the real condition of matters.
Captain Foulis, to him, was prehistoric, and he had
never seen Meriel, and she had been, except on special
occasions, virtually out of his recollection ; while Lucy
was in appearance, in deportment, and in freshness of
mind some seven or eight years younger than her
legal age of thirty-four. So in his rambling imagina¬
tion there had grown up a charming picture of a
wedding—all veils and orange-flowers, Brussels lace
and bridesmaids, such as he had seen in Mr. Kempe's
and Mr. Liddell's churches. Suddenly the appalling
fact was revealed that the central object for which all
the arches would be built, the grandees assemble, the
archdeacon assist the vicar, and the organ peal the
Wedding March, would be a lady attired, not in a veil,
Legatus Natus.
305
but in a bonnet, walking in solitude up the church,
with no obsequious corUge of parti-coloured damsels.
f A widow's wedding should be a quiet wedding,' he
said to himself, but to Lucy he put it more gracefully.
' Of all women, of course you least need the fictitious
eclat of any bridesmaids. And while I do not agree
in all you have been saying, there is a good deal in it:
so, on the whole, I have, while we have been talking
over the matter, come to the conclusion that, as we
stand, the more quiet we keep it the better it will be.
You know there are those who would take a malicious
advantage of any contretemps.'
Lucy and Eustace were neither of them persons to
be content with half-measures, and having thus agreed
upon the necessity of keeping the wedding quiet, they
ran a race as to who could suggest the most entire
quietness, and completely cut off display and publicity}
till at last they reached the determination of making
it what Eustace in later days laughingly described as
an experiment in legal clandestinity. Matter-of-fact
people may reasonably think them somewhat silly for
having reached this conclusion, and we fancy that, after
the first enthusiasm of what was to both of them, in
spite of their respective ages, the day-spring of young
love was over, Mr. and Mrs. Brandreth themselves
owned that they had been a little fantastic. But they
were then both of them at a high pressure of excite¬
ment, for each had, for the first time in their respective
lives, an assured prospect of happy home companion¬
ship.
Eustace had never known the meaning of being at
home, except in the coveted days of residence at his
20
306
Strictly Tied Up.
beloved college, where the pleasure of companionship,
though taken genially, was at the bottom a selfish one.
With Lucy the revelation of domesticity in all the
width of its mysterious sweetness was even more over¬
whelming. Now, at last, in her soul and in her heart,
the great clear spring of true, unselfish love, smothered
by Miss Harriett, outraged and dissipated by Augustus
Foulis, reduced to common-place by Featherston, and
frozen by Meriel, was welling up with irresistible
impetuosity. She was longing for a romance—pure,
laudable, lovely in the sight of men and angels—still a
romance; and as the one which had come to her was
essentially so innocent, who could grudge to the
woman whose whole life had been so good, the gratifi¬
cation, before youth had quite passed away, of one
eccentricity ? No one likely to hold communication
with Yaxley; neither servants nor retainers, with one
exception, was to have any inkling of the coming
event, with the indispensable exception of the clergy¬
man ; and no one, except the clergyman and the
witnesses, was to know that the marriage had taken
place until the couple were safely on the road to the
station. Mrs. Foulis, as we have said, entertained at
first strong scruples about banns; there was some¬
thing, she said, ostentatious, irreverential, about a
license. Eustace quite shared in this feeling, but
pointed out that a license was one thing, and a special
license another. What could be so ecclesiastical or so
solemn as the direct permission of the Primate of All
England and Metropolitan, Legatus Natus of the Holy
See, granting that gracious indulgence in direct
exercise of his legatine authority — an indulgence
Consequent Arrangements. 307
which the combination of a thousand Archbishops of
York would be powerless to concede ?
The picture amused and dazzled the good little
woman, and she replied, ' So let it be;' particularly as
Eustace explained that he was absolutely compelled to
run up to London to conciliate his irate clerk and
break with his editor, and that, by actively using a
very short absence in town, he could easily procure
the awful document and bring it back, without a soul
at Yaxley, by any possibility, divining what he had
been after.
'You must not mind the expense, however,' he
added; ' luxuries are never cheap. Archbishops charge
archiepiscopal prices.'
CHAPTER XLY.
consequent arrangements.
Once the great question was solved, consequent ar¬
rangements shaped themselves with inconceivable
precision, subject always—a matter of nervous appre¬
hension to Lucy—to the Vicar's approbation. Mr.
Lidyard was wont on every Wednesday morning to
have an early celebration. The attendance of herself
and of Eustace there could not possibly cause any
surprise, for it was an incident which had already
occurred more than once. Let Wednesday week, then,
be the day. The communicants went quickly away,
and they two could easily linger about till the ground
was quite clear, and then, if only Mr. Lidyard was
propitious, a quarter of an hour more would make
20—2
308
Strictly Tied Up.
them one. They would walk home by the diggings,
as a plausible reason to the servants for the slight
delay in coming back to breakfast; and after that,
Lucy—who would previously have given out that she
was going to London for a few weeks' absence, and
therefore required to take up with her the maid, the
footman, and considerable luggage—would drive to
the station to catch that precious express which was
the pride and solace of the neighbourhood. Eustace,
of course, would have to leave Yaxley, so there would
be nothing odd or indecorous in the lady allowing him
to take advantage of her carriage and luggage-van
down to the station. As for the journey to London,
he charged himself with securing the ' engaged' com¬
partment.
The unknown quantity still was Mr. Lidyard. If
he blabbed, all was up; if he refused, they must seek
for other combinations, as statesmen making ministries
express it. So Lucy asked him to luncheon, and after
the meal called him up to the library, where they were
soon joined by Eustace. First she begged him to pro¬
mise silence as to the communication which she was
about to make.
' Certainly,' he replied, ' provided only it is touching
some matter which is lawful and of good report. But
from you, Mrs. Foulis, I cannot anticipate anything
else.'
Lucy blushed from top to toe, in dread lest a few
minutes might compel him to reconsider his good
opinion of her ; but, with a desperate effort, she col¬
lected herself, and unfolded the story. To their infi¬
nite relief, Mr. Lidyard, with his mild unworldliness,
Consequent Arrangements. 309
saw nothing to object to in the notion. All that he
had seen or heard of Mr. Brandreth had impressed him
with a conviction of his worth; and why should not
Mrs. Foulis and he seek the occasion of that early
celebration which was so dear to him, and the per¬
mission of their Metropolitan, to contract a marriage
so true and laudable in the sight of God and the
Church ? It was, he observed, a much more solemn
way of plighting their troth than a fashionable wed¬
ding, with all its paraphernalia of worldly pomp, its
etiquettes and jealousies, eating, drinking, laughing,
crying, speech-making, old shoes, and grubby rice.
In truth, there was a latent and much unappreciated
spice of humorous romance in the quiet little man's
character. In his heart of hearts, he rejoiced at the
thought of the monotony of his daily existence, per¬
manently saddened as it had been by his own bereave¬
ment, being so unexpectedly varied by this summons
to act as prime agent in an adventure so interesting
and yet so blameless, on behalf of one for whom his
silent affection and respect had gone on year by year
increasing, as the tale of Lucy's deeds of hidden charity
—the days and nights of weary and often dangerous
watcliings by the squalid, the loathsome, and often
the infectious sick-beds of his suffering and dying
parishioners—went rolling up in a bright account of
good works. Moreover, he had a quite personal and
unsuspected reason for rejoicing. It had fallen to him,
as curate in charge of the mother church, between Mr.
Edlin's death and Mr. Rees's induction, to officiate at
the marriage of Augustus Foulis and Lucy Curteis, and
the cold shock which the bridegroom's bearing had
310
Strictly Tied TJ'p.
given to him still haunted his thoughts. 'It never
can be happy,' he then said. It was most unhappy,
and he had been the official instrument of that un-
happiness. Now, by the blessing of God, he saw him¬
self called upon to preside at what he trusted would
be a happy marriage of reparation. No, certainly,
when there could be no objection to the proposed
arrangements beyond some strained prejudices (as he
thought) of conventionality, he would not cut himself
off from so strangely vouchsafed a privilege.
He was now fairly on one of his favourite topics,
and he ran on. ' Second marriages are, without doubt,
not heroic things, and I cannot severely blame the
many pious men who have condemned them, though
often, it must be owned, with intemperate language.
But crass generalisation is always wrong and always
foolish. No one marriage was ever quite like another,
any more than one person can be just like another.
There are second marriages—if I am right, in speaking
of such unions, to profane that sacred word—which
are distinctly, without exception, blameworthy in the
eyes of God and in those of society—marriages such
as those where a widower cannot bring their aunt
home to look after his orphans who are her own
nephews and nieces without hankering after the pos¬
session of that woman, and so, with his eyes open,
making her the stepmother and the rival of her own
charges;—alliances,' he added with growing earnest¬
ness, ' which make my gorge rise when I see those
opulent self-seekers, with all the world to pick wives
out of, and their sisters-in-law—I warrant—willing
enough to stop on with them as sisters-in-law, for the
Consequent Arrangements. 311
sake of the home and the keep, upsetting all established
ideas of right and wrong, and shocking good people
without remorse, merely to gratify their uncontrolled
personal fancy, at what risk they neither think nor
care. Again, there are second marriages which are
neither one thing nor another. But, besides all these,
there are those which are obviously desirable, neither
forbidden by divine law nor repugnant to social de¬
corum, and leading up to some obvious benefit, and we
should therefore declare praiseworthy; and among
them I reckon this present one, as an alliance highly
to be commended, and likely to be of much general
advantage.'
' I suppose,' interposed Lucy, ' you expect I shall
otherwise wax wanton V
' Do not, my dear patron, trifle with Scripture, or I
shall withdraw all my commendations,' replied the
Yicar somewhat gravely. 'You know what I mean.
Your peculiar and great responsibilities, and, if you
will pardon the reference, your history, your oppor¬
tunities, and, on the other side, your peculiar want of
opportunities owing to your solitary state, all indicate
marriage, if undertaken in the fear of God, as your
happiest condition of life. It all depends upon the
choice, and I believe you have made a good choice. If
I should be deceived, I trust to ban Mr. Brandreth
with bell, book, and candle.'
Thereupon Eustace jumped up, took the Yicar by
both hands, nearly shook bis arms out of their sockets,
and shouted, 'I tell you, Mr. Lidyard, if I ever show
myself unworthy of that most dear and excellent
creature who has made me so undeservedly the
312
Strictly Tied Up.
happiest man in the world, that you have my full
leave to curse me with bell, book, and candle, to pull
my nose, and to kick me down the great stairs of
Yaxley, and into the horse-pond. But what about
witnesses?' he continued, 'and how will you tie their
tongues till we are off V
' Make yourself quite easy, my dear sir. I have a
pupil who always comes earty to church on Wednes¬
days—he sha'n't escape out of my sight for half the
morning ; and I will keep the old clerk bothering over
his accounts, which are always in a mess, till I know
his breakfast is as cold as a stone; he will then have
to run home two miles the other way and make his
peace with his shrew of a wife, who will be ready to
break his head with the broomstick for spoiling the
meal; so he will be as safe as the Bank of England
till you are well on your road to town.'
Of course the indoor servants had no more over¬
looked the warm friendship which had sprung up
between their mistress and the pleasant young lawyer
than had the gardener, the bailiff, and the keeper ;
and the circumstance gave rise to many interesting
conversations at dinner and in the evening. But Mrs.
Kershaw had determined that Lucy was to continue
to the end of her days a soured celibate, and with
Williams the edict of Mrs. Kershaw was that of a
supreme tribunal. Bright little Anna, the lady's maid,
would occasionally venture to interpose with some
such meek remark as 'Really, Mrs. Kershaw, do you
see any such great harm V and the answer was, ' Of
course I do, and so would you if you had any sense
of delicacy.' On the whole, however, the cook per-
Consequent Arrangements. 313
formed a useful service in her disagreeable way by
stifling gossip and surmise. When Williams used to
hint that his position with Mrs. Kershaw in the house
was difficult, she would alwaj^s silence him by observing
that Mrs. Foulis and Mr. Brandreth were a difficulty,
and she hoped Williams had not a word to say against
them. By good luck, no chance tattle spread further
than the neighbourhood of the house, for a change of
ownership in the village shop had led to many com¬
plaints as to the quality of the articles and the
punctuality of delivery; so Mrs. Foulis was just
giving a trial to a dealer of higher standing in the
county town, and the great reciprocal channel of gossip
was for the time cut off. Mrs. Rees's and Miss Turner's
attendants had no acquaintance at Yaxley, and the
servants at the Yicarage and Dr. Arlett's had neither
time nor propensity for scandal-mongering. The
verdict of the steward's room, however, had to change
for the last two or three days, as the announcement
of Mrs. Foulis's visit to London had completely thrown
the downstairs party on a false scent. Sounds of an
eager conversation had been heard by deaf Mr. Wil¬
liams, as he passed by the end door of the secluded
library, and on his thickened tympanum they fell as
the accents of quarrelling. This story, coupled with
the unexpected news of the speedy departure of
mistress and of visitor, was sufficient to lead to the
universal supposition that Mr. Brandreth's visit had
come to an unpleasant and sudden ending. Accord¬
ingly, as no effect could be left without a cause, it
was quickly and easily surmised that the agreeable
gentleman was really in partnership with his father,
314
Strictly Tied Up.
and had sought out Yaxley with the intention of
extorting money for his father and his stepmother, and
had been exposed, and his wicked venture frustrated.
Eustace, on his side, was puzzled at the sudden change
to coldness, if not almost rudeness, in the manner to
him of Mr. Williams, with whom he had hitherto been
a favourite. Sometimes he feared that the secret had
been discovered, and that Williams was working up
to giving or taking warning; at other times he com¬
forted himself with the idea that such impolitic
behaviour towards a future master proved the want
of any suspicion. In any case, it was impossible to
remonstrate; for the old man's neglect of personal
service, though highly inconvenient, was quite intan¬
gible to one whose cue was to continue in the ostensible
character of visitor.
CHAPTER XLVI.
only two letters.
But the loving pair were not yet out of their perplex¬
ities, even after they had secured the services of Mr.
Lidyard. As soon as the day was named, there arose
upon their horizon the ugly question of announce¬
ments—that fruitful source of heartburnings—involving
the decision of who the persons might be to whom the
marriage was to be notified, how soon, if ever, and in
what form. After infinite siftings, casuistry worthy
of Escobar, and most ridiculous vacillation, it was
finally settled that only two letters were essential or
Only Two Letters.
315
even desirable—one to the Brandreths and the other
to Featherston.
' Ought you not also to write to Mr. Musgrave V
meekly asked Eustace. ' Old frump !' Then another
difficulty cropped up: was he to write to his father,
or Lucy to her daughter ? Ultimately it was de¬
cided that between conflicting objections the balance
lay on the side of the announcement passing between
the ladies, as a more familiar style and less com¬
promising details were possible than if the Baronet's
heir had to communicate with the Baronet. It was
further settled that the posting of this letter should
be so timed as to ensure its reaching Lady Brandreth
on the Friday morning after the marriage. Writing
to Featherston was a very different matter, and by
no means an easy one. In truth, Lucy felt that she
had been culpably neglectful of her oldest friend of
late. She knew that she ought to have invited him to
Yaxley to meet, and be made known to, Eustace.
She ought to have done so when her impulsive civility
to the Revising Barrister had landed her in his most
embarrassing visit. There were, to be sure, reasons at
the time which persuaded her that it would be wise
to refrain from the duty. But these excuses of
cowardice became continually more weak. She ought
still more to have opened her heart to her guardian
when she found herself every day taking more and
more interest in her self-introduced visitant. It was
useless now to plead that there had been many
obstacles, felt or unfelt, some grave, others merely tire¬
some, which had stood between Lucy and this duty,
till it now seemed too late; the black fact was there,
316
Strictly Tied Up.
that her own sophistry had created a position for her
of painful difficulty.
Her troubles on this score had begun with the
visit which Featherston paid to Yaxley in company
with his cousin, Colonel Mordaunt, on the eve of the
day when Meriel's announcement of her ill-starred
marriage arrived. Lucy had, of course, no alternative
except to send back for him, and, when he reached
Yaxley, to tell him the whole story, as far as she knew
it from her daughter's original beguiling letter; and
as she went on she could see that though the dear,
affectionate old man said nothing, and was as sincerely
considerate in his sympathies as even in the far-off
days of her great trouble, he felt something in which
sorrow and disappointment were blended with a trace
even of pique, at having been taken so late into a
confidence which he felt he had a claim to have shared
all through. It may have been a surface feeling only
—it was certainly one which he had not shaped in
definite words, and which did not, as he took good
care, derogate from his affectionate effusiveness of
consolation. Had it been more pronounced, and led to
an explanation, the cloud would probably have quite
passed away ; as it was, it left him mortified and Lucy
uncomfortable, with these last words of Featherston's
tingling in her ears: 'If ever I meet that scoundrel
Brandreth, or his son, or any of their rascally lot, I'll
insult them ; and if they ask me why, I'll break every
bone in their bodies.'
Even when Eustace was only a name to her, this
state of things gave Lucy genuine distress. Her
sense, indeed, told her that she had nothing then to
Only Two Letters.
317
reproach herself for. A daughter's well-being must
be a mother's first concern, and in the matter of
Meriel's letter this was the only point important to
Mrs. Foulis, and to which she really turned her
thoughts. Now it was certain that on this special
matter Featherston's advice would have been without
value; so she could only have taken it as a formality,
or else with the intention of following it, however
misleading it might prove itself to be. In one case
she would have affronted her friend, and in the other
have wronged her daughter as well as herself. Yet,
after all this was granted, the look-out was dismal;
for to an affectionate heart there is nothing so dis¬
tressful as the conflict between reason and affection.
Such conflicts are more than usually difficult when
one of the parties feels that he has a complete answer,
but that the answer involves some imputation on the
sense of the person whom he has not only to answer,
but to conciliate.
Duty towards her daughter's feelings or interests
could not now avail Lucy as any excuse. Her
reckoning was with Featherston alone, and a sorry
one she felt it likely to be. The practical result of
the Baronet's treachery had been to set up in Feather¬
ston's mind a perfectly outrageous hatred of the very
name of Brandreth in any possible conjunction. Lucy
was so well aware of this, that she had never dared so
much as announce Eustace's visit to Featherston; and
now she had both to declare her marriage with him
and also to construct plausible reasons for her antece¬
dent conduct.
But even on the happy, though very improbable,
318
Strictly Tied Up.
supposition that Featherston could have been brought
to see that Eustace Brandreth was, for all practical
purposes, as unconnected with the Baronet of the same
name as if he had been born and brought up in Ver¬
mont or Arkansas, Lucy had come to the conviction
that a rencontre, however friendly, over her dinner-
table would have bristled with difficulties even during
those earlier days when her love for Eustace Bran¬
dreth was still embryonic, although running through
every vein and mingling in all her thoughts like a
malady which the doctor says has not yet come out.
Featherston was not the man to take a hint readily
and in silence, and she shrank from the anticipation of
his boisterous old-world jokes and the manifesta¬
tions of an affection which she believed to be quasi-
paternal, but which must to Eustace appear somewhat
singular.
Had the secret of Featherston's earlier life ever
been revealed to Mrs. Foulis, her perplexity would
have been much greater. The thought had never
crossed her mind that he had been in love with her in
the days of her budding womanhood, nor that it was
only his very scrupulous interpretation of a guardian's
responsibilities which had held him back from declar¬
ing that love. On and after her marriage with Foulis,
a curious revulsion of feeling took possession of
Featherston. He loved Lucy more rather than less,
for it was a love into which pity entered, and never
once did he blame her. How could he, when, talked
over by silly, tuft-hunting Miss Harriett, he had him¬
self consented to the alliance with the plausible
aristocrat I But, somehow, she was unsexed to him.
Only Two Letters.
319
She was still his very dear child, just as a high-
spirited, affectionate schoolboy might have been the
possible recipient of a man's most exclusive and con¬
stant affections; as a possible wife, however, she no
longer existed to him. But, in the meantime, we are
leaving Mrs. Foulis in the agonies of composing a most
difficult letter.
Lucy, before sitting down to her task, took up the
almanack, and, computing the days which had elapsed
since Featherston had last ridden over to Yaxley, she
discovered that so long an absence had never been
known while both were resident in the country. She
felt sure that her worst fears were not exaggerated.
Her guardian had heard of Eustace's visit. He was
angry to the pitch of silence, and, perhaps, would
never forgive her, never again speak to her. She
was mistaken, however, in her supposition. True, he
was a little angry for her silence about Meriel's letter,
but his absence and silence were more due to a cause
of which she had not the slightest conception. The
fact was, that he had just made his first, but long-
deserved, experience of gout, and he made certain
that Dr. Arlett must have been to Yaxley and re¬
ported to Lucy the extraordinary mishap, not know¬
ing that the doctor's visit to him was on the last morn¬
ing before a short and hardly earned holiday.
So he went on every day expecting a visit, or at least
a message, from her, but, getting none, he worked
himself up into a gouty fury. His only comfort was
to persuade himself that he had discarded Yaxley for
ever, and to tell himself, with much internal emphasis,
' If the young woman cares so little for her worn-out
320
Strictly Tied Up.
old servant in liis day of suffering, the old servant will
let her follow her own fandangles. Women are Jeze¬
bels—all, even Lucy.'
When the colchicum gave him some comfort, he
relented, and resolved to go to Yaxley the next day.
So, on the following morning, he very much astonished
his servant by calling for his boots. On the first im¬
pact of the still swollen feet with the stiff leather,
Lucy became Jezebel again, and the gouty temper
resumed its sway. Worse or better, he continued
haughty and huffy, and absolutely prohibited his
household from holding any communication with
Yaxley.
' Whether she knows it or not, she shall hear it
from me.'
With all her disagreeable surmisings, and her total
ignorance of the real state of matters, Lucy had to
consider not only how to word her letter, but to settle
what that letter should be in substance.
Was it not too late for Lucy Foulis to think of
introducing Eustace Brandreth as her intended to her
old guardian, and must she not wait till the wife could
present her husband to her dearest old friend ?
This course slurred over the present crisis, and
adjourned the most vexatious difficulties; so it was at
first the favourite expedient. But a little fidgeting
and pen-biting led to the conclusion that, easy as it
might be now, it would probably be an affront to, and
life-long coolness with, her father's old friend and the
playfellow of her own childhood, to whom she owed
so much, and whom she loved so dearly. Eustace gave
it its death-blow by remarking, ' As he means to break
Only Two Letters.
321
my bones when he meets me, he had better do it while
it will not cost you anything in mourning, for crape is
very expensive.'
Clearly there was nothing left to her but to plump
the fact that she had fallen in with, had fallen in love
with, and was going to marry, that Eustace Brandreth
whose bones Featherston had so recently promised to
break; and to make the most obstinate old gentle¬
man in the county retract all his prejudices against a
man whom he hated solely and simply for Lucy's
own sake. Yet she had, by way of excuse for so
absurd a request, nothing better to urge than that, in
her infatuation, as he would think it, she had fancied
this particular man for her husband when she had
all the world to choose from, with the certainty (as, in
the little secret vanity of her inmost heart, she made
sure old Bob, at least, would think) that there was
no one so high, so handsome, so clever, or so young,
who would not, provided only he was not burdened
with a living wife already, throw himself at her head,
on her doing the like at his.
This was, of course, not Lucy's estimate of herself,
but what she knew from experience her foolish, old,
loving guardian would think of her. This, then, was
the unlucky standpoint from which she would have
to direct all her artillery of pleading, coaxing, en¬
treating, flattering, admonishing, and coercing, to
recover the man whom, up till now, she could have
sent to the end of the world by lifting up her little
finger.
How many sheets of paper were begun and then
torn up, how wofully the blotting-paper was defiled
21
322
Strictly Tied Up.
with scribblings, how many furlongs paced up and
down the carpet of the long library, are computations
more easily imagined than worked out. The mere
statement of facts was a task of unusual delicacy, and,
after they had been scheduled, the not less delicate
work supervened of saucing them with diffusive ex¬
planation and effusive tenderness, crossing dry details
and streaking every paragraph ; while the entire
story had to be ballasted with vehement and repeated
injunctions to maintain absolute secrecy. After all,
in naming the day to Featherston, she forgot to specify
the hour or to refer to having obtained a special
license.
The topics took their places, not in their hard
chronological order, but as each seemed most likely to
tell upon Featherston's susceptible heart, and the
whole composition went on meandering like Lucy's
conversation in her brightest and most witty mood.
At every turn, she implored and prayed him, above all
things, to come over with the least delay, and make
the acquaintance, the friendship, of the best of men—
son of Sir Miles, indeed, but the direct reverse of Sir
Miles in every conceivable respect. He was, above all
things, himself most desirous to be known to one for
whom, from general report, he had so true and deep a
respect. Let Featherston only ask Mordaunt, and he
would learn what society thought of Eustace. All
this could not, under the most favourable circum¬
stances, have been embodied in the concise phraseology
of a lawyer's bill; while the belief on Lucy's side that
she had put herself in the wrong made her dread
passing over any possible argument which could help
Only Two Letters.
323
to right her. She had, she felt sure, to bring Feather-
ston's eyes back to their own genuine focus, and to
place herself on her own old pedestal, before she could
invite him to judge her in her new attitude.
The task at last was ended, when Eustace observed,
' Of course you are going to keep a copy.'
' 0 dear!' sighed Lucy. So he good-naturedly under¬
took to take it. But as he made her sit by him, and
as at every turn she was asked to decipher some grace¬
fully illegible word, she began to think that the relief
of his clerkship was more formal than real.
At the very last, tired and confused, Lucy folded it
up, placed it in its envelope, and sealed it with that
old family seal, with the big Curteis crest, which it
was the Squiress's rule, in spite of heraldry, to apply
to every letter of superior importance. There was
nothing left but to direct it. But at this last and most
mechanical stage her sorely tried wits fairly collapsed,
and when she ought to have superscribed—
'Robert Featherston, Esq.,
' Warbury Lodge,
' Hinderton,'
she wrote instead,
' Robert Featherston, Esq.,
' Hinderton Lodge,
' Warbury.'
Now Warbury, as all Europe and America know, is
a rich, bustling, dirty manufacturing town in Lanca¬
shire, where the name and fame of Featherston are
utterly unknown. So its intelligent postmaster, after
21—2
324
Strictly Tied Up.
sending the letter travelling over every street of the
place, was forced to open it, and there only learned
that it was written by one Lucy, dating from ' you
know where,' to ' My dear old Magistrate. Mrs.
Foulis, be it explained, had kept up with Featherston,
in deference to his affectionate conservatism of nature,
a foolish style of writing first adopted towards her
guardian when she was painfully working out round-
text letters in her copy-book under Miss Harriett's
snappish superintendence. She asked herself whether
in so important a communication she ought not to
adopt a more sensible style and a distinct signature,
but her instinct answered her that her doing so would
be taken by Featherston to imply cooled affections.
So the letter was perforce sent to the Dead Letter
Office, in St. Martin's-le-Grand. The acute official
into whose hands it came observed that it bore the
post-mark of Hinderton, while reference to the County
Directory revealed the fact that at Warbury Lodge,
nigh that town, dwelt- Hobert Featherston, a magis¬
trate. The clue was thus complete, and the letter was
re-sealed and sent again on its travels, with ' Try
Hinderton' scrawled upon it. Safely it did arrive at
last, but not till the wedding morning itself. So Lucy
had had to dress herself for the early service in a fever
of helpless remorse, penetrated with the idea that she
had really alienated her dear guardian, and that his
previous silence, and then absence, were the just
rebuke and punishment of her heinous misdeeds.
With this exception, all the arrangements prospered.
The special license had been obtained, and the pupil
and the clerk went to church; so that Lucy and
Cleared Up.
325
Eustace Were united, as pre-arranged, upon the
selected Wednesday, walked home by the diggings,
and ate an early breakfast, so as to be in time for the
London express.
CHAPTER XLVII.
cleared up.
After all, the loving pair nearly lost their train.
Lucy was full dressed and ready to start, when she
recollected that she had left her keys in the library,
and ran there to fetch them. The room was in much
confusion, and as she was leaning over the table,
fishing for them among a heap of papers, and Eustace
stood first on one foot and then on the other, as the
man does who has Bradshaw on the brain, they heard
a noise behind them. The door burst tumultuously
open, and in hobbled dear Bob Featherston, helping
himself along with a stick, his face red with excite¬
ment and the winter air, followed by Mr. Musgrave, as
grim as the executioner in a serious opera. 'Try
Hinderton ' had found Featherston that morning just
as he was shaving, and on reading the epistle he
pulled himself up, banned any suggestion of breakfast,
and ordered his groom to bring round the waggonette.
Half shaved, unwashed, and quite untidy, he scrambled
in with much pain and difficult}7-, for the gout was
still about him, and screamed to the lad to drive with
the utmost expedition to Mr. Musgrave's office. Till
he found himself safely there, anger and surprise had
326
Strictly Tied Up.
frozen his thoughts not less than his words, but once
on a wooden chair by the fire, he unthawed, like
Munchausen's horn, with a cataract of complaint.
The wrong that had been done to himself, deeply as he
felt it, was subordinate in his expostulation to his
well-founded solicitude for Lucy's happiness, firmly
convinced as he was that young Brandreth must be
the counterpart of old Brandreth, and that, by some
terrible hereditary doom, the mother had fallen victim
to the wiles of the son, even as the daughter had to
those of the father.
Musgrave was, both by profession and temperament,
cautious and wary, and nothing had ever occurred to
give him a good opinion of Lucy's judgment, but much
to set him against her; and while he had heard many
things of Sir Miles, and all of them evil, the son's
character was quite unknown to him; so he capped
Featherston's alarms with fresh and more soundly
founded apprehensions of his own. They agreed that
it was their duty, without a moment's delay, to drive
to Yaxley and join in an earnest appeal to the lady to
suspend proceedings until titles had been examined
and settlements drafted. At the same time they
resolved to speak in terms which should convey a
politely sharp rebuke for so unwarrantable a neglect
of decent and usual confidence. It was decided that
Featherston should be spokesman, and Musgrave
coached him in his lesson. But when they found
themselves in the library at Yaxley, and the flustered
old Squire was beginning his harangue, a courteous
' Are you addressing my wife or myself V from Eustace,
soon led to the revelation that any plea for delay had,
Cleared Up.
327
through the Archbishop of Canterbury, become an ana¬
chronism.
So nothing was left for the guardian hut to
vent his thoroughly chaotic feelings in a mingled
skein of expostulation and prediction, full of in¬
nuendoes about 'the gentleman there,' which would
have been pathetic had it not been almost grotesque.
Mrs. Brandreth let the alarum run down, and then,
touching Featherston's forehead with her lips, gently
whispered, in the old, soft voice, ' Dear, dear old dar¬
ling guardian ! and have you been ill, and I never knew
of it, and you, naughty old love, never would let me
know T
Demosthenes never won a more complete victory of
eloquence, although his successes involved a much
larger expenditure of words. Musgrave inwardly
cursed his weakness for having given place to the
soft old dolt, who had so thoroughly spoilt the conver¬
sation on which he had relied for righting or else
breaking his professional connection with the wayward
dame.
Still, Lucy felt desperately awkward, and was
proportionately conscious of the duty of seeming at
her ease ; so, with an effort, she exclaimed, ' Poor, dear
Merrie ! I hope she won't hate us for keeping her
out of her inheritance ; for, after all, it will go to her
just as soon, whether I am married or single.'
'Her inheritance!' jerked out Featherston, looking
sideways at Musgrave to see that he did not go astray
in his law. ' I hope she'll get none from you, little as
you deserve the luck.'
' Get no inheritance from me ! What do you mean,
328
Strictly Tied Up.
my dear guardian ? Isn't it strictly tied up upon her,
as you yourself told me when I sent for you just at
that dreadful time to ask the question ? You know
how I asked it, to shape my life upon your answer;
and you know how I have acted on that answer of
yours ever since.'
' Go to the little 'un. Please Heaven, the boy'll come
and settle Merrie's hash for her.'
Angry as Featherston was, these words came from
his heart; for, in truth, Lucy's sudden revelation to
him of his old stupidity and carelessness fell like a
thunderbolt.
' What boy ? What can this have to do with poor
Merrie's succession ? She has not done what she ought
by me, but she is my child ; and I have never forgot¬
ten that the property is strictly tied up, and that
if I would—which God knows I don't—I could not
deprive her of her inheritance.'
' Bless the woman, is she daft ?' yelled out Feather¬
ston ; and then, as if suddenly recollecting that a
gentleman owed social duties of politeness to a lady,
even if she had been a few years previously his ward,
and still more acutely realizing that her blunder was
due to his own old unpardonable trifling with her
question, just from a stupid pique about that Swetten-
ham, he continued, in a slow and measured key, and
with a self-possessed dignity which he very seldom
assumed, still eyeing Musgrave as if his company
brought peace and safety, ' Strictly tied up 1 Yes, to
your eldest son—if you have any sons; failing sons,
and only failing sons, then to your eldest daughter.
Does Mr. Brandreth, then, learned in the law as he is,
Cleared Up.
329
consider his stepmother as so unquestionably your suc¬
cessor ? Ain't I right, Mr. Musgrave V
' Most strictly so/ said the family adviser, with the
tone and manner of an undertaker; ' but you have
forgotten the husband's life interest.'
The effect upon Mrs. Brandreth of this strange
revelation was, in the most literal meaning of the
phrase, crushing. Swettenham's dry-as-dust exposi¬
tion of her father's will had run off her young memory
like water off a duck's back, and, in the first wretched
years of her girlish widowhood, she had, as she
fancied, been told by one whose word was then to her
infallible, that the daughter's succession was irrefrag¬
able and inalienable. The general belief of all around
her had confirmed her in her error; Meriel had
traded on the supposition ; and now Eustace and she
had, like two big boobies, innocently courted and
wedded without ascertaining their legal rights and ex¬
pectations.
These few words of her guardian awakened her
torpid memory, and, without fully grasping the com¬
plications of the situation, she appreciated the main
fact. Even Swettenham's long harangue came back
to her like the distant echo of the far-off chimes. She
could only squeeze Featherston's hand, bow to Mus¬
grave, and rush into the carriage, Eustace following
her with a solemn mien of assumed deference. Of
course, no servant was present during the interview,
which took place, moreover, in the safe seclusion of the
library; and as the gentlemen departed in silence, no
one in the house was the wiser for their intervention,
only that the lawyer's unwonted appearance at the
330
Strictly Tied Up.
instant of the visitor's departure confirmed the idea of
Eustace's exposure and downfall.
As Lucy was stepping into the carriage, she handed
a scrap of paper to Williams, the butler, saying,
'There are the directions for letters till you hear
again.' Mr. Williams knew well that Mrs. Foulis
always stopped at the Grosvenor Hotel, where, in fact,
he had frequently accompanied her, and, indeed, he
had heard her saying that she was now going there.
There was nothing, therefore, about the paper to
provoke curiosity, or, indeed, to require it to be con¬
sulted till there were letters to be posted. Moreover,
Williams's mind was at that time much preoccupied
with a long and difficult job of bottling a hogshead
of madeira which Mrs. Foulis had ordered some time
before at Featherston's earnest entreaty, and which
required to be finished before the cold weather set
in. He had been lazy over it, and now the fruits of
his negligence were staring him in the face. So he
pushed the paper into his pocket, and went to his
bottling; while the coachman, by violent and un¬
wonted whipping of the precious coach-horses, was
just able to gallop to the station as the last scrap of
luggage was put into the van, and the guard, inwardly
fuming at the trouble which fine ladies gave him, was
prepared to sound his whistle.
The confusion at the station was so great, and the
ill-tempered impatience of the guard—a new servant,
not yet educated by Yaxley tips—so emphatic, that
Eustace had to snatch up Lucy, as a nurse might do
with a big child at a crossing when a hansom was
bearing down upon them, and pitch her into the car-
Cleared Up.
331
riage with much indifference whether she alighted on
her head or her feet. There was a witness of this un¬
ceremonious proceeding whom neither of the newly
wedded couple had perceived—a stout woman in rusty
black—no other than Mrs. Rees, who had gone to
enjoy the rare treat of greeting a guest of her own due
by that train.
The expected arrival had failed, and the old lady
was standing upon the platform to blow off her vexa¬
tion before returning homewards, when her prying
eyes descried the woman, who was Mrs. Foulis to her,
in Mr. Brandreth's arms. Bursting with the great
discovery, she waddled homeward in the joy and
pride of having at last established a clear case, on
personal evidence, of open, indelicate levity against
her avowed and prudish enemy. In her preoccupation
she absolutely cannoned against Mr. Lidyard, who was
stepping out of a cottage full of a sad tale of rustic
folly and too-late repentance which had been poured
into his ears.
Without so much as apologizing for her rude clumsi¬
ness the dame exultingly screamed, ' Pretty doings in
your parish ! pretty doings, indeed, Mr. Yicar! I ad¬
vise you to look after your womankind a little sharper
than you do, or there will be scandal, Mr. Lidyard—
there'll be scandal which you won't like to hear!'
The good man had been left by the morning's events
in a rather excited and nervous state, and now he was
completely taken aback, for the words of Mrs. Bees
left no doubt upon his mind that, in some unaccount¬
able manner, and perhaps by the girl's own blabbing,
in spite of her assurance, the ill-natured old busybody
332
Strictly Tied Up.
had got wind of the secret of which he believed he
alone, besides the parties implicated, were cognisant;
and which he had determined should never go beyond
his own breast.
So he was for once completely thrown off his guard,
and blurted out, ' I fear you have too much cause for
your reflection; but you should be forbearing, and
consider how much there is to extenuate the fall,
grievous as I own it to be. She is so young, you
know, and inexperienced, and through the carelessness
of a silly-aunt, by whom she was brought up, she is so
unaccountably ignorant.'
It was now Mrs. Rees's turn to be surprised, both
at Mr. Lid}7ard so readily catching her meaning, and
at the inexplicable line of defence to which he betook
himself.
' But,' she rejoined, without stopping to draw breath,
'really, I did not expect this from you, Mr. Lidyard,
who are, we all know, no respecter of persons. I grant
the ignorance, and I blame the aunt as severely as you
can do, but I never found much inexperience at that
shop; and I never thought of calling a woman, who is
rising forty, young.'
'Jenny Worsfold rising forty ?'
'Jenny Worsfold, man! Why it's Lucy Foulis.
Haven't I just seen with my own eyes the Honourable
Mrs. Foulis allow herself to be jumped up like a baby,
and hugged, and pawed, and hustled into a railway
carriage by a strange man, who tumbled in after her,
—that young dandy, I believe, who has just been
stopping in that odd way at Yaxley ? There was
nobody else in their compartment; that I saw with
Cleared Up.
333
my own eyes, Mr. Lidyard—only Mrs. Foulis and her
beau.'
Lidyard now perceived the situation, and, as his
wits returned to him, the necessity of obliterating his
imprudence about Jenny Worsfold by startling the old
backbiter shone out distinctly as he quietly answered
with a touch of jauntiness not usual in his demeanour,
' Quite right too. I am glad to hear it.'
' Glad to hear it! Glad to hear that your patroness,
the woman you are always cramming down our throats
as Sarah, and Rebekah, and Rachel, and Susanna, and
Dorcas, and, and'—and then making a desperate shot
at some other Scriptural name—'as Delilah, has been
so grossly misconducting herself in a public place!
Mr. Lidyard ! Mr. Lidyard!'
'I said I was glad, and I say still that I am glad.
I am always glad to hear that a woman is not ashamed
of receiving the attentions of her husband, even in the
presence of Mrs. Rees.'
' Woman, husband—who do you mean V
' I mean, Mrs. Rees, that upon this very morning,
empowered to do so by the special license of the Arch¬
bishop of Canterbury, I joined in holy wedlock Eustace
Brandreth and Lucy Foulis. You saw them proceed¬
ing to London to spend their honeymoon, and upon
their return they will, I am sure, be much honoured
to receive your visit of congratulation.'
For, we believe, the first time in her life Mrs. Rees
was absolutely dumfounded. Usually speaking, the
crafty lady expected her faithful drudge, Miss Turner,
to attend upon her and take her lofty pleasure. This
astounding intelligence, however, created an emergency
334
Strictly Tied Up.
such, as was never before recollected to have occurred
since her declaration of war against Yaxley. So she
turned her back upon the Vicar without so much as
the pretence of any good-bye, and hurried off to the
spinster's humble lodging, bursting with her big news.
The two were long closeted together, and when at last
their cabinet broke up the only conclusion which they
could reach was one which was laid down with states¬
manlike decision by Mrs. Bees : ' Well, we must wait
and see.' ' That's very true,' was the response; ' for
so many things will be sure to turn up.' The crones
would have been much comforted had they been told
that they had actually stumbled into the knowledge
of the great event before Mrs. Brandreth's—as we must
now call her—own household in her own home of
Yaxley.
Williams, once at work in the cellar, and forgetting
that it was November, took off his coat, and so caught
cold as he loitered in that drafty place. It was natural
that he should have imperatively required at dinner
to blow his nose, so he pulled out his pocket-handker¬
chief in a hurry, and with it the paper, which fell on
the floor. As he picked it up his eyes fell upon these
words :
' Directions for Letters till further orders.
' Mrs. Brandreth's letters to he sent to the Grosvenor
Hotel.
' Mr. Brandreth's the same.'
' Lor'!' he holloaed ; ' I knew it was coming; but to
think it's come this way ! No breakfast, nor favours,
Cleared Up.
335
nor nothing ! Did they go to the Register's Office, I
wonder V
' More likely going,' snapped Mrs. Kershaw, the
cook. ' And not before it is wanted, too, I warrant.'
Williams, a friendly and loyal soul, was really
shocked at this coarse imputation upon his mistress's
character, hut he had not lost hopes of Mrs. Kershaw's
savings, and could not risk an open breach ; so he had
to content himself with an admonitory, 'Oh, Mrs.
Kershaw, how can you V
' I mean what I say, and I say what I mean, and
I'll not stand your putting me down as you always do,
Mr. Williams. Mrs. Foulis may he Mrs. Foulis, or
Mrs. Thimgimbytight, but I'm an honest woman, you
know I am, Mr. Williams, in spite of all your sneers
and your insolence.'
Williams did not expect such an avalanche of scorn.
One more incautious word, and the Kershaw savings
might be gone beyond recall, so he contented himself
with a half-gasped 'Good gracious !' and broke up the
party with cheese half eaten and the scarcely tasted
beer still creaming in the tumblers.
Thus did the faithful household of Yaxley observe
their lady's wedding-day in fasting and sullen dis¬
content.
336
Strictly Tied Up.
CHAPTER XLYIII.
UNMASKED.
As soon as they were settled in the railway carriage,
Lucy fell upon her husband's neck in a paroxysm of
tears, and sobbed, with much iteration, ' Dear, poor
Meriel! how I have wronged her !'
Eustace let her passion run down, and then an¬
swered, in the tenderest tone, and very calmly :
'No, my dearest love, you have not wronged Meriel
at all. You have only respected your father's inten¬
tions. If we have no son, the inheritance will still be
Meriel's. If we have—please God—a son, it will go
where I am sure your father would best have wished
it to go. It is clear, by what those men said, that he
hoped you would have a son to be his heir, and that
he only put in any possible daughter, failing that son,
as a pis alter. No man of your father's views could
have wished such a break of continuity in the Curteis
line as two successive females.'
' You really think so ?'
' I am perfectly certain: and I say more—you are
to-day fulfilling your father's wishes as you never did
before.'
On this, the excitable woman redoubled her tears,
though now they were tears of joy—tears such as
she had never before shed in all her lifetime—and
sobbed:
'I am so happy, then—so relieved. We can live
happy now, and not think we have wronged my poor
child.'
Unmasked.
337
All things have an end, even crying; and so, when
Mrs. Brandreth got calm, she said, ' Ought not Meriel
to know this ? It will make such a change in all her
prospects.
' Certainly, if my worthy father has not ferreted it
out already. If he has, though, he's not likely to tell
her. He won't trust a woman's tongue, with all the
Jews ready to pounce on him.'
' But, dearest, I told her it was not so in my letter,
which she will have only got this morning.'
' That was very awkward, my love ; but you really
must not mind writing another letter, and putting the
thing straight.'
'But that would be still more awkward, would it
not V
' More awkward, most awkward—awkward in every
degree of comparison, Lucia cava mia, but absolutely
and indispensably necessary. Our characters would
be irretrievably damaged in the eyes of all the
Phlyarium, and Bees and Turner would cut us, if
we were to leave our dutiful Meriel for a single day
longer under the delusion that she had only to bury
you to become Marchioness of Carabas. It is very
disagreeable, I know, and I pity you so much for the
job; but the first amusement of our wedding-day,
when we find ourselves in town, must be for you to
write to Meriel, and explain very prettily how matters
really stand.'
'Well, then, you must compose the beastly letter,
and I'll copy.'
' Convenu.'
The letter was accordingly written at the Grosvenor
22
338
Strictly Tied Up.
Hotel, and, like the former one, directed to the
watering-place on the South Coast of England, whither
Sir Miles and his bride had betaken themselves. But
the footman, a Yaxley lad unversed in London ways,
and much perplexed at suddenly finding himself at
the beck of a master, forgot to put, as ordered, upon
the after-time epistle a second stamp, and so it was
kept back till the morning mail. On the following
day, as the Baronet and Meriel came down to a late
breakfast, she saw a letter lying upon the table, and
called out:
' I declare, here's Mater's answer. She has written
pretty quickly. I wonder what she says.'
' Capitulates at discretion. Invites her dear son to
her bosom, and gives him free quarters at Yaxley for
the rest of his days.'
'Amen I' replied Meriel, and then read :
'Yaxley, of , 18—.
' My dearest Meriel,
' It is due to my great, though little appre¬
ciated, love for you, and it is also due to the connection
now subsisting between Sir Miles Brandreth and my¬
self, that I should inform you that I am about to be
married on Wednesday, the day preceding the one on
which you ought to receive this communication. The
gentleman whom I am going to marry is Mr. Eustace
Brandreth.
' As my property is strictly tied up upon you, this
event can make no difference in yours or in Sir Miles's
future prospects. This is the consideration to which,
Unmasked.
339
as far as I can gather from your last letter, you and he
attach the most importance.
'Your most affectionate Mother,
' Lucy Foulis.'
She stared, and he stared; he stared, and she stared.
Neither of them had heard of Eustace's visit to Yaxley,
and it had never come into either of their heads to
conceive the possibility of an acquaintance between
him and Mrs. Foulis. At last Sir Miles broke silence.
' The last sentence in Mater's letter shows her to be
a woman of the world. The thing in itself cannot
affect our prospects, and with you working on Mater,
and me on Filius, we may do something yet.'
The town at which they were staying was one in
which the second post followed quickly upon the first
delivery, and at this point their conversation was
interrupted by the maid tramping in, and putting
another letter into Lady Brandreth's hand.
' Mater again, I declare ! I wonder whether the
match is off V
So again she read :
'Grosvenor Hotel, London, S.W.,
' of , 18-.
' My dearest Meriel,
' I take the earliest opportunity of correcting a
misapprehension which I make no apology for having
led you into, as I entertained it myself, and as Mr
Brandreth married me under it. After our marriage,
we had an interview with my trustees, Mr. Feather-
ston and Mr. Musgrave, and they have explained to
22—2
340
Strictly Tied Up.
me that the reversion of my property upon 3Tou is
contingent upon my having no son. In case I have
one, it would come to him. Under either alternative,
my husband, supposing him to survive me, will have
a life-interest in the property.
'Your affectionate Mother,
• Lucy Brandreth.'
Meriel fell upon the nearest chair, gasping for some
moments, and then burst into a long, wailing, despair¬
ing cry. Who shall attempt to penetrate the thoughts
of that wretched woman at this moment ? She had
already lived long enough with Sir Miles to see through
the selfish hypocrisy of his pretended love, and though
her feelings were not active enough for hatred, she was
alread}' thoroughly indifferent to him ; and now all
that she had thrown aside, her mother's love and that
delicious home at Yaxley, had passed away—for ever,
probably, passed away—from her. Had she stuck to
her mother, very likely that mother never would have
married again. She was well aware that her husband
had only married her for her expectations, and she
dreaded some brutal revenge for his disappointment.
Sir Miles for some minutes leaned in silence against
the chimney-piece, and then said, ' A nice mess, young
madam, you have brought me into, with your pre¬
tences and your lies, you and your precious Mater !
My curse on the old hag, and on your simpering, snig¬
gering fool's face ! But, my fine madam, you'll have
to work to earn your bread! You can't sing, and
you can't act, and you can't dance, and you're not
strong enough to turn a mangle. I think you had
Unmasked.
341
better sweep a crossing, and I dare say Mr. and
Mrs. Eustace Brandreth will give you a broom, if Mr.
Featherston and Mr. Musgrave assure them it's in old
Curteis's will to do so, and I'll give you a halfpenny
whenever I go by. The crossing by the " Phly" is
just now vacant, and there's plenty of errands there to
run for the young men—to the opera-dancers ; d'ye
understand ? And perhaps you may be taken on at
the opera at last, as candle-snuffer.' There the old
ribald's rage actually choked him, and he paused,
panting, with glaring eyes and burning cheeks finger¬
ing the poker, as if in doubt whether he should not
throw it at the head of the terrified woman.
In dread of personal injury, she stammered :
' Oh, don't be so violent, Sir Miles ; I suffer equally
with you from this cruel deception. And perhaps it
may not be so bad; if there is no son, it will come
back all the same.'
' All the same, my Lady Brandreth ! I am infinitely
obliged to you for your consideration. All the same,
after I am under the sod, and after Sir Eustace
Brandreth has had his enjoyment of it! It will come
back, I dare say, all the same to that venerable
dowager, Meriel, Lady Brandreth, with her false
teeth, and her false front, and her painted cheeks, and
her palsied old head shaking on her shrivelled shoul¬
ders. And Meriel, Lady Brandreth, I dare sajr, will
find some fine young fellow to lead her to the altar,
and then put her in her coffin with the least possible
delay, for the pickings he expects to get when she
lies in the earth by the side of her dearly beloved
and ever-lamented Sir Miles. Lady Brandreth, I
342
Strictly Tied Up.
owe you ray gratitude for your considerate consola¬
tion.'
There are some friends who overwhelm you with
their verbose correspondence when you are in pros¬
perity, but leave you unnoticed in the days of ad¬
versity. 'Issachar Brothers' did not belong to this
unfeeling class. They communicated with Sir Miles
on seeing the announcement of Mr. Brandreth's and
Mrs. Foulis's marriage; and though the experienced
dodger fenced with them awhile, he had at last to
confess to the real state of matters, and ere long the
Baronet, under their guidance, had to tread the way
which leads into the Bankruptcy Court, which he
had for so many years, by so many marvellous escapes,
avoided.
Meriel, now thoroughly crushed, wrote to her
mother a letter of abject remorse, detailing her
wretched situation, not only from her destitution, but
from the unfeeling treatment of her husband, who paid
off the frustration of his scheme upon his less guilty
accomplice—less guilty because she had been more
tool than partner of his roguery.
Mrs. Brandreth was fairly overcome, and Eustace
was touched. So far as her determination went to
help her daughter, he thoroughly sympathized with
her benevolence, but he insisted upon arrangements
which should protect Meriel alike from Sir Miles and
from herself. At last it was settled that the offer
should be made to Meriel that, on the conditions of
her separating from a husband who was only too
anxious to be rid of her so long as she represented no
money value, and of her waiving the claim to return
Unmasked.
343
to Yaxley, which she had rather importunately urged,
she should be allowed a pension of 600Z. a year, paid
quarterly, to her separate use.
The intimation was added, that supposing she con¬
ducted herself for a sufficient time to her mother's
satisfaction, and in the case of the birth of a son, the
borrowing powers which existed might be used in
order to secure to her a capital sum, settled on trusts,
such as Mrs. Brandreth might direct, which should
represent that income.
In consideration of the disagreeable fact that Sir
Miles was her son-in-law, and to buy his consent to
Meriel separating from him, Lucy further insisted on
letting him have three hundred. Eustace heard the
suggestion with little inward pleasure, for his reason
told him that it would be certainly ill spent, but filial
piety forbade him to dissent; only he stipulated that
the gift should be revocable, and conditional on the
Baronet living out of England, and also that the pay¬
ments should be quarterly.
The cringing gratitude with which the wretched old
man received the bounty showed how low he had
fallen. He assured his ' dear boy' that in requesting
him to live abroad, his excellent lady had but fore¬
stalled his own deliberate intention, and that he had
formed plans for earning an honourable subsistence, if
not of retrieving his fortunes, and possibly even re¬
purchasing his patrimony; only the first step was the
difficulty, from the want of the smallest sum to start
with, and that this most seasonable generosity enabled
him to take it. Eustace appreciated his father's ever¬
green assurance, but was silent.
344
Strictly Tied Up.
It is certain that for a short time some of the most
villanous sherry with which public-houses of the
lower grade were able to poison their customers was
supplied by a new Spanish firm of Sant' Onofrio and
Brandreth. Then came a smash, and the discovery,
due to the treachery of the Irish Italian, that Sir
Miles had made such an unjustifiable use of the
names of his son and that son's wife, that the discon¬
tinuance of the pension was very seriously threatened.
Mercy, however, prevailed over justice at Yaxley.
But of the pension the larger part had been, in spite
of all Eustace's precautions, pledged to creditors. The
broken-down adventurer was just able to save enough
to secure what was, according to Spanish notions, a
bare subsistence, and crawling off with this to Majorca,
died at Palma of a fever caught from causes which
would be no mystery to an English physician con¬
versant with sanitary science.
CHAPTER XLIX.
the mighty fallen.
It was not to be expected that the death of Sir Miles
could very deeply afflict her who had now become
Lady Brandreth. But she said to her husband :
' I am sorry that I never once had the opportunity
of seeing your father in all my life, just for curiosity's
sake.'
'You did better than seeing him,' answered Sir
Eustace ; ' you kept him alive by your generosity,
The Mighty Fallen.
345
when I was, I fear, tempted to be harsh and
unfilial.'
'" Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive
mercy." Poor Meriel! what will she do now, I
wonder!'
Separated as they were, Meriel still felt that being
the wife of such a man as Sir Miles Brandreth was
an intolerable burden. A better and a braver woman
would have asserted her personality, and made the
world forget him in remembering her; but such a
being as Meriel could only sulk and blink. At length,
set free as she was by that fierce outbreak of malari¬
ous fever, she resolved, in a fretful, selfish sort of way,
to do something to reinstate herself in the world's
respect. She had been informed that Lady Foulisville,
in her widowhood, had betaken herself to a small
lodging in Bath, where she depended upon the grudging
services of a succession of slatterns whom a stingy
and nagging landlady was always hiring and then
discharging. It was a lodging in which a lady's-maid
who had saved a little money might ensconce herself,
and then very reasonably complain that she was
starved by a grasping curmudgeon, and worried to
death by the insolence and the dirt of a lot of grimy
sluts. Yet the once-magnificent Countess felt that
she had escaped greater calamities when she reached
this squalid asylum.
In fact, by a strange coincidence, the sinking of that
punt and the submergence of the cherished cup in
the black Lough had presaged the downfall, with
ominous rapidity, of all the Foulisville fortunes. Her
scene with Bobbins, and the loss of a companion who
346
Strictly Tied Up.
had been, with all her faults and her treachery, very
useful to Lady Foulisville, threw the nervous invalid
back with a dangerous relapse, and it was many weeks
before she could be moved, and that under the eye of
professional nurses, to Eaton Place. All display, all
gaiety, during the following season was quite pro¬
hibited.
The Earl, crapulous, dyspeptic, objectless, more and
more helplessly abandoned himself to drunkenness.
At last, one evening, he rolled into the Phlyarium, and
there, in spite of the friendly expostulations of Colonel
Mordaunt, who offered to accompany him home, he
insisted on sitting down at an ^cartd-table, at which
he was soon joined by Captain Pringle. The other
members present looked at each other—more they
could not do. At the moment when an unlucky trump
left him loser of a sum which it would have been
inconvenient to advance in his brighter days, he fell
senseless on the table in a fit from which he never
rallied, although he lingered to be carried home, and
to die in Eaton Place. Suddenly and irresistibly the
crash came, both upon that house and upon Fontarabia.
The Countess, in the d^_ys of her splendid folly, had,
as we know, mortgaged the reversion of her jointure,
while of the ready money and extra allowance which
her husband bequeathed to her not one shilling could
be realized. All that she had to keep her alive was a
small annuity purchased by the sale of the trinkets
which the mercy of the creditors left in her possession.
The enterprising brewer, who already rented the
shooting, and was first mortgagee, foreclosed, and is
now sole owner of the Irish property. By his muni-
The Mighty Fallen.
347
ficence, the once wretched town of Foulisville has
become one of the neatest and most comfortable vil¬
lages in all Ireland ; and as he is a man of enlightened
taste, he is working up the remains of the old castle
into a worthy mansion of Ballybanaghermore, at once
archaeological and comfortable. Of Fontarabia, or
Diana's Island, no man speaks, except, in moments
of absence, Mr. Ruddock, who has retired to the village
inn, having married the housemaid who gave such
timely advice about McSwinny's boat. The miller's
man, after all, proved faithless to her charms, and the
kind butler could not bear to see her in such distress.
The 'Foulis Cup' is a very model hostelry, and the
proud brewer boasts that he is certain that if the
Bishop of Peterborough were to see it, he would say
that in providing so respectable a place of refreshment
for high and low, he had done more to promote the
cause of temperance than if he had staved his vats
in, and stumped the country at the back of Sir
Wilfrid.
With Ruddock only one fault can be found, and
that is, a persistent and growing habit of inaccuracy,
which has caused the legend of Sir Miles Brandreth
and the love-lorn damsel to grow in his mouth to
mythical dimensions as he retails it to the tourists, to
whom the island and its comfortable quarters are equal
attractions. The new owner and his family much
affect the Lough, which is now traversed by a fairy¬
like screw steamer, which his lady, famous as the best
amateur steers woman in the United Kingdom, insisted
on naming the Meviel ,* while a tablet, set up at Inis-
cormac, on a spot where it does not spoil the landscape,
348
Strictly Tied Up.
records in a spirited sonnet the protracted trials of
the shipwrecked Baronet and his future wife. Fla¬
voured as these lines are with irony, and intended
for the initiated, they would lead an ignorant and
prosaic stranger to imagine virtues in the couple
with which only poetry could endow them. But
the rhythm is smooth, the style epigrammatic, and
the idea graceful; and, after all, Sir Miles Brandreth
is not the first adventurer whom a sonnet has raised
into a hero. The author is Mr. Fiennes, who happened
to revisit that part of Ireland on one of his sketching
tours, and being invited to Ballybanaghermore, fell in
with, wooed, and won the brewer's pretty second
daughter.
The new Lord Foulisville has to earn his own live¬
lihood, and he does so without complaint. He wrote
to his father-in-law at Bradford to ask if there were
any opening in his business or elsewhere for a clerk,
and compelled the confession that things for the
present were not going on as the old gentleman could
wish. So the brave young man and his trusty wife
retired to America, on the plea of pursuing the study
of natural history in the still wild tracks of the great
' lone land/ but really in the expectation of his being
chosen Principal of that institution which has been
founded at Simcoe, Canada W., in rivalry of Mr.
Cornell's stupendous creation in the neighbouring
Republic. He pressed his mother to accompany him,
but she feared to encounter the Atlantic, and betook
herself to Bath, in a vain search after cheap comfort.
Plausibility had always been with Meriel a cardinal
virtue, and as she believed that the world looked coldly
The Mighty Fallen.
349
upon her, she felt an inward summons to retrieve her¬
self She was now a model of staidness in her deport¬
ment, and, indeed, much inclined to be shocked
indiscriminately, and to moralize without respect
of the society she was in. But the memory of
her escapade haunted her like a household goblin.
Satisfactorily as the story could be explained to anyone
who had the patience to listen, it was a long one, and
the whole affair, coupled with Sir Miles's own reputa¬
tion, had thrown a Bohemian hue over her. Now, as
if by a special interposition, the way seemed open to
her to retrieve herself on the very lines of her
aberration, and by the instrumentality of the one
person who could from authority speak up for her.
The total wreck of the Foulisville fortunes was the
gossip of every club and every dining-table, and in
face of so great a calamity society showed itself good-
natured, and pitied when it might have moralized.
She had also been told that the unhappy dowager,
whose health had never been restored since the dread¬
ful night upon the mountains, and upon whom the
shock of the ruin had come quite unexpectedly, could
not be expected to last more than a few months
longer. It would therefore be, she reasoned, a
remunerative sacrifice of time if, still so very young,
she devoted herself for that short period to earning
the reputation of having been the friend in need, the
generous consoler, the guardian angel of her affection¬
ate aunt, the once-proud Countess of Foulisville, in
this day of her deep distress.
Full of her artful scheme, Meriel went to Bath, and
there put up at the White Lion. Ensconced in that
350
Strictly Tied Up.
well-known hotel, she set to work writing a letter of
hardly less importance than her former letters to her
mother, and with no Sir Miles to help her. It was
ceremoniously directed to Delicia, Countess of Foulis-
ville, and couched in the deferential third person. In
it Meriel, Lady Brandreth, begged to recall herself to
the recollection of her dear and much-injured relative.
She would gladly have paid her respects in person, but
she could not be sure how far her presence would be
acceptable. She felt most deeply her conduct in past
times to her dear aunt—more, however, from weakness
than from intentional ingratitude, but still most
culpable. If her aunt would only forget and forgive,
and allow her penitent niece to constitute herself her
companion and helpmate, it would be her life's duty
to repair the wrong which she had committed. She
scarcely knew how to add what she was going to say,
but her aunt would understand her meaning when she
told her in strict confidence that her dear mother's
generosity had made her more than comfortable in her
solitary condition.
The offer was one which it required much moral
courage in a person brought down like Lady Foulis-
ville to reject. She was very lonely, and a companion
would have been acceptable. She was poor, ailing, and
frequently in want of the commonest comforts, which
her previous habits of life, her age, and her very feeble
health, had made necessaries to her. But she felt
compelled to decline the temptation when it came
before her in the shape of Meriel Brandreth. Meriel's
conduct to her might be, and she felt it was, forgiven;
but—although soft-hearted people are very apt to
The Mighty Fallen.
351
make the mistake—forgiveness is one thing, and com¬
panionship another; while, as Lady Foulisville knew,
the constant presence of Brandreth's widow could not
but bring back recollections which she had neither the
strength to face nor to reject. The old, kindly,
straightforward Delicia Driscoll seemed to come to
life again, after many years, in that feeble, trembling
woman, so prematurely aged. She answered Meriel
very affectionately, but very decidedly, declining the
offer, although she felt sure that it had been made from
the best and kindest of motives.
Shortly after Meriel's advance, Lady Foulisville
received very pressing offers of assistance from Lucy.
The communications were most delicately worded, and
accompanied by the strongest assurance that when she
had written so sharply to her sister-in-law she had
been wholly unaware of her dangerous illness, with
which she had recently and casually become acquainted
—confessed, in fact, by Meriel—and had, therefore,
naturally concluded that Lady Foulisville must have
been privy to Meriel's unjustifiable behaviour, while it
gave infinite pain to be compelled to add that the
tenor of the answer which she received did not clear
up the misunderstanding.
The poor, humiliated lady felt on reading these
kindly, truthful words, that but for Miss Robbins's
terrorising, following on her malign counsels, she would
have written the explanations which the trust which
had been reposed in her by Lucy required from one
woman of honour to another, even if she had not been
her sister-in-law. But her having been weak, cow¬
ardly, and mean was to her startled conscience no
352
Strictly Tied Up.
excuse—rather it made the offence worse. No, Delicia
Driscoll could not take favours from, and owe her
bread to, the sister whom she had so grievously
wronged. ' As I made my bed,' she thought, ' so must
I lie.' So she refused Lucy's assistance as persistently
as she had done that of Meriel, though with very
different feelings.
Her time was drawing near its close. She was a
woman much to be pitied, with many good impulses
and the germs of some fine qualities, marred and dis¬
torted by faults, of which vanity was the chief. She
had been early confronted with characters and events
which she was not clever enough thoroughly to
understand, while just sharp enough to form superfi¬
cial impressions. She was not brave or true enough
to grapple with the difficulties which her husband's
temper, extravagance, and intemperance were always
heaping round her ; and, unpopular as she personally
was, society did her less than justice for her weak,
though well-intended, endeavours for its amusement.
Placed in a less showy position, and married to a man
whom she could have loved and trusted, she might
have led a useful, an honoured, and a happy life. Her
list of failures was now complete, and in the cold,
squalid solitude of her gloomy lodging she found that
time for looking beyond self which she never could
grasp in her giddy days of prosperity. She profited
by her misfortunes, and in the months still vouchsafed
to her she learned to fix her desires on the land
where there is no failure, but life and light and love
ineffable.
Great Grimsby at Last,
353
CHAPTER L.
great grimsby at last.
After all, Meriel did not make her journey to Bath
in vain. The next room to her at the White Lion
was occupied by an hypochondriacal old couple from
North Lincolnshire, who had come for the benefit of
the waters, and who would not be content without
bringing with them their own doctor. An inn stair¬
case is an excellent introducer, and Meriel soon made
acquaintance with this gentleman, Mr. Gilderdale, who
had arranged, so soon as the present engagement was
over, to step into a respectable old practice which he
had just purchased at Great Grimsby, having saved
money for the speculation by a long and laborious
career at Epworth. This practice carried with it a
roomy house, and Mr. Gilderdale had made up his
mind that the house needed a mistress to make it
cheerful. Mr. Gilderdale, a confirmed bachelor, as his
friends at Ep worth used to think him, was a simple,
old-fashioned man, such as can now be only found
undiluted in Lincolnshire, so much of Norfolk as lie3
outside royal influence, Suffolk, and the eastern parts
of Essex, and over considerable portions of Cheshire,
Salop, and Herefordshire. He was kind, but stiff, with
that independent, middle-class English character which,
in the seventeenth century, equally thought itself
conferring a favour on King Charles and on the Lord
General by taking the respective parts on one or the
other side of the Civil War. In a word, he was
intensely aristocratic and he was intensely democratic.
23
354
Strictly Tied Up.
He respected the aristocracy (which, in his eyes, in¬
cluded not only baronets, but knights) with his whole
heart, but he could not love beings who were to him
as the gods of Epicurus (had he even heard of them),
removed far above sympathy with, or knowledge of,
their fellow-mortals. It was, therefore, nothing short
of a revelation to find a real ' My Lady' familiarly
accosting him, inquiring after his health, prosing
about the health of patients, for whom he cared more
than he did for his own, and who never failed to
season her talk with some moral maxims, which,
absolutely commonplace as they were, sounded in the
ears of the pleased practitioner, when falling from
Lady Brandreth, like the words of the Son of Sirach.
He declared, as he sipped his evening tea with his
worthy patrons, that he could not have fancied that a
lady with such high connections as her ladyship could
have been so affable, or could take so real an interest
in all which affected the welfare of her fellow-creatures.
They chuckled benevolently, and observed that, as Mr.
Gilderdale had confided to them that he was on the
look-out for a wife, he might as well try his chance
with her ladyship. At first he was incredulous, and
even shocked at the idea of his addressing one so
highly placed and still in weeds; but after the con¬
versation had been repeated two or three times, he
mustered a desperate courage, and opened his heart
to the young widow. To his great surprise, he was
readily accepted, but upon one condition, over which
there was to be no parleying nor compromise. She
was well aware, she said, that in all legal documents
she would have to sign herself Meriel Gilderdale, and
Great Grimsby at Last.
355
she knew that when she was to be presented at
Court upon her marriage, it must be as Mrs. Gilderdale,
but at all times, and in all places else, she must be,
without cavil or equivocation, Lady Brandreth. Mr.
Gilderdale was proud of his own name, but he thought
that c a lady' would not be a bad professional invest¬
ment, so he consented without demur.
Lucy was on this occasion informed of the coming
marriage without delay, and it gave her an opportu¬
nity of carrying out what had long been a secret
desire of her heart. Badly as Meriel had behaved,
she was still her child, and she believed that Meriel
was as sorry for her misconduct as it was in her nature
to be sorry about anything. So long as Sir Miles
lived, there had been a material objection to the osten¬
sible reconciliation, involving, as it did, visits which
must either have been extended to him or have given
him plausible excuses for complaint and intrigue. If
the mother could receive the daughter, the son should
have received the father. But now he had gone to his
account.
So Lucy wrote, not without inward amusement, to
' dearest Merrie,' to say she hoped she was not too
late on this occasion in asking her to bring her
intended to Yaxley, and that she trusted the sight of
Mr. Gilderdale would induce her to give her assent to
a marriage with the first son-in-law whom it would
ever have been her good fortune to have seen in the
flesh. Meriel jumped at the invitation, which Mr.
Gilderdale declared was exceedingly polite.
Samuel Gilderdale duly reached Yaxley, and for
some weeks the visit was an endless source of quiet
32—2
356
Strictly Tied Up.
amusement to the courtly Eustace and to Lucy, who
could hardly restrain the impetuosity of her spirits
over her happy lot. She felt that she was at last living
a complete existence. The void of which she had all
along been only half conscious was now filled up, and
she appreciated what had been wanting. Now there
was no longer any want; love, all compact of sympathy
and respect, at last was hers. To come to details, she
felt that under Eustace's protection she was on the
highway to repairing the intellectual isolation which
had weighed so heavily on her. The ungrateful
daughter, too, had come home, and could look for¬
ward to at least a quiet and prosperous, though homely
life—a life, in short, of as good a quality as Meriel was
fit for. In such a mood Lucy was predisposed to enjoy
the burlesque of a Gilderdale alliance. Better laugh
than cry over the go-down of the once heiress of
Yaxley subsiding into the apothecary's wife at Great
Grimsby.
Meriel's lover was as respectable as he was priggish,
while the self-complacent denseness with which he
was always blundering out observations most inappro¬
priate to the history of the family with which he was
about to be connected increased as he got more at his
ease with geometrical progression. In vain would
Meriel pout, stamp, frown, wriggle, and mutter. In
measured, quacking tones would he prose about the
excellence of widows who kept their first estate, the
infatuation of engagements on short acquaintance, and
the perils of men who dared, with grey hairs on their
heads, to join themselves to youth and folly. This
solemn repertory of platitudes had so completely
Great Grimsby at Last.
357
become part of the good man's nature, that it would
keep coming out, like water running along a leaky
pipe, in spite of the incongruity between his language
and the time and place of its utterance. Meriel, too,
was a sight to have made the most austere of men
laugh, and the most stolid of women jest, struggling to
be at her ease—light, airy, and irresistible—in the
presence of her mother and of Eustace, and swathed in
crape and bombazine. At last the time arrived when
those whom with a sneer she learned to call 4 the
parents' had to make their decision known.
'Very odd,' quoth Lucy, 4 but we know that every
Jack has his Jill.'
4 And every Jill her Jack,' answered Eustace.
There was nothing more to be said; but Lucy was
fierce and inflexible on one point. Heaven and earth
might come together, but not one farthing of her
money should Meriel see if she dared to commit the
atrocious indecency of marrying before her year's
mourning was out. The bereaved one sulked and
muttered under breath about Mater's ridiculous, old-
fashioned prejudices ; but in such cases the contributor
of six hundred a year has the powers of the master of
forty legions, and all resistance was a transparent sham,
without even the moral support of the bride's beloved,
for in a difference of opinion upon a matter of
etiquette between their two 4 ladyships,' for both of
whom he had such unlimited deference, Mr. Gilderdale
could only hold his tongue. So the half-promised
settlements were finally made; and when the twelve¬
month and a little over had run out, Mr. Lidyard
358
Strictly Tied Up.
officiated for the third time at a family marriage from
Yaxley.
Meriel was, after all, very happy with her grey¬
headed husband. Her house at Great Grimsby was of
red brick, and built in the year of the battle of
Blenheim ; so she painted the outside woodwork white,
and the inside olive green, gave Mr. Morris a large
order for papers, cut her own hair short, very labori¬
ously compelled it to frizzle, put on a sacque, declared
herself artistic, and instituted weekly tea-parties. It
is something, after all, to be Lady Paramount, even of
Great Grimsby.
CHAPTER LI.
eighted.
It may be supposed that the credit of the very
business-like arrangements carried out by Lucy, both
in regard to Meriel and Sir Miles, and then upon her
daughter's marriage with Gilderdale, must have been
exclusively due to the legal acumen of Eustace ; so we
must, in justice to that very quick-witted woman,
explain that the suspicion is baseless. The fact is,
that Lucy took the earliest opportunity after her
return from her wedding trip to invite Mr. Musgrave
to Yaxley to luncheon, or to dine and sleep, as he pre¬
ferred, alleging her desire to speak to him about im¬
portant matters. We have seen how justly affronted
Mr. Musgrave was at Mrs. Eoulis's persistent neglect
of his many years' faithful and successful services. On
Righted.
359
receiving the note he sought his wife in their cosy
little drawing-room, and read it to her in a tone of
concentrated contempt, adding, ' The woman, after
humiliating me for years, and throwing herself away
upon the son of that notorious fellow, finds out her
mistake, and expects me to trot over like a poodle dog,
and pull her out of the mess which she has made for
herself. She shall write her commands, and her
Majesty's post shall bear my reply to her.'
Mrs. Musgrave was a meek hut a courageous woman,
and her husband respected her straightforward
honesty. So she simply answered, ' Then all I can
say, Musgrave, is, that after having been in the right
these many years, you will at last put yourself in the
wrong if jmu send any such message to an employer
who has the right to claim your personal attention. I
should despise you if you broke bread at Yaxley, but
I never could defend you if you refused to go to
Yaxley.'
So, overruled by the court above, the sulky lawyer
had no alternative but to sit down and write a note
in solemn language, expressing no regret, but only
inability for refusing Mrs. Brandreth's hospitality, and
appointing himself for the following Wednesday, at
eleven o'clock.
Musgrave comported himself formally and answered
haughtily at the commencement of the interview, but
Lucy contrived gradually to lead the conversation
into the consideration of her personal position, and
compelled the lawyer to put her upon her own defence,
a task which was not difficult with a man who was
angry, and who looked on the woman before him as a
360
Strictly Tied Up.
fool. Thus mistress of the situation, she apologized so
gracefully, referred with such touching delicacy to
those early misfortunes of education, association, and
unblessed marriage, which had left her exceptionally
unversed in the details of business, but which she
knew now she ought to have mastered, and expressed
with such evident sincerity her high appreciation and
gratitude for his ability, probity, and zeal, so success¬
fully shown in furthering her interests, that the kind
heart which really beat under his stern exterior was
mollified. On reaching home again, he threw himself
into the arm-chair by the fireside of his drawing-room
—a luxury in which he never indulged except upon
some rare occasion of good humour—and actually con¬
fided to Mrs. Musgrave, with many thanks for her
sound advice, that he had never before understood
Mrs. Brandreth. So near an approach to a compliment
Musgrave had on no previous occasion been ever
known to lavish on a client; and from that day his
communications with Yaxley became confidential,
and ultimately ripened into cordiality in proportion
as his fair client showed herself an apt pupil in the law
of real and personal property.
For about two years after Lucy's marriage it seemed
probable that Sir Miles's amiable forecast to his crushed
wife on the morning of the great disillusioning might
come true. At last, however, the arrangements had
to be made for the christening of the child, who was
thenceforward to be Robert Curteis Brandreth. His
first name came from his godfather, Featherston, who
had in the meanwhile become Eustace's nearest and
dearest friend, and who was at the time much elated
Righted.
361
at having been selected to propose the candidate when
he so unexpectedly walked over the course on a chance
vacancy for the county. The other sponsors were the
Lord-Lieutenant and the elderly wife with whom he
had comforted himself after his rebuff by Mrs. Foulis;
in fact, they and Featherston were the only relations
with whom either of the Brandreths had any acquaint¬
ance. Young Lord Foulisville was out of the question,
particularly as the child was born to supplant the
Earl's own cousin in lands and minerals. Sir Miles
had long since quarrelled with his first wife's family,
who were not so much as known by sight to Eustace ;
and Lucy's uncle, the officer of militia who had forced
her father into his marriage, found it convenient
shortly after that event to sail for America, after which
he was lost sight of.
The news of the birth of the heir to Yaxley was
received with universal congratulation through all the
country which lay within the influence of that house.
All persons who were old enough to remember more
than his bare name said, according to their tempera¬
ments that it was so lucky, or so happy, or so pro¬
vidential, that Squire Curteis had time and strength,
during the sufferings of his last short, sharp illness,
to tie up that noble inheritance for his daughter's son.
There were only two dissentients. Miss Turner
trotted about and turned up her eyes, croaking post¬
humous regrets over the wrongs of the long-forgotten
Miss Harriett Curteis. Her poor dear friend would
have felt is so ; she who had always watched with such
tenderness and wisdom over her charge, and who had
been so happy when the marriage with poor Captain
362
Strictly Tied Up.
Foulis was settled. And people would talk so bad of
him when he was gone and could not stand up for
himself. He was a rough diamond perhaps, but he
had a ver}T kind heart, and oh ! so in love with Lucy
Curteis. He was ready to fight every man at a ball
who dared ask her to dance. Miss Harriett would turn
in her grave if she heard how Captain Foulis's daughter
had been disinherited for the son of a briefless barrister
and the grandson of a swindler. The ingratitude
shown to her poor dear old friend had been shameful,
drummed out as she had been, and banished, for having
so faithfully and fearlessly done her duty, and fulfilled
the charge her own brother had put upon her with his
dying lips. Miss Harriett, she was sure, would have
been a living woman now if she had not been hustled
out of her home by, she might say, her own child,
neglected and left to die in misery; and she'd have
prevented what had happened. It was shocking to
think of one so young having been that unnatural to
the dear soul, who had been like a mother to her, and
brought her up from her cradle like her own child !
For her part, she always had said, and she always
would say, that there was more behind it all than
people would see, with the facts staring them in the
face. Why did that Featherston wait till the poor silly
young thing was not herself—as everyone knew she
was off her head when Miss Meriel was born—to spirit
away Miss Harriett, just as if she had been forced into a
post-chaise in the dead of the night, like those ladies in
romances ? And who could tell who was put round her
at C heltenham, where very queer doings went on, as
everybody knew ? Besides, she always had seen, and she
Righted.
363
wondered folks were so blind they never would see,
how odd Mr. Swettenham was, dying just when
he did. Not as she could stand up for Mr.
Swettenham's rudeness and want of common feelings,
but, leastways, he was old Mr. Curteis's friend, and
knew what he meant. And then for that Musgrave to
come in—nobody knew from where, nor what he was.
Nobody had got round him; nobody knew what he
thought or did or meant. He never would even go to
Yaxley—the haughty, ill-conditioned old wretch he
was. She wondered how much fingering of her own
money from the coal-shop and the iron-shop King
Musgrave allowed Madam Eustace Brandreth. A
precious picking of it went, she'd warrant, to that old
viper, Featherston, and to Musgrave's stuck-up wife.
And how much Lidyard fingered anybody could see
with half an eye, with church, and parsonage, and
schools, and hospital, and all that trumpery.
Mrs. Bees was wiser and more circumspect. She
took a simple, statesmanlike view of the situation,
relying on general principles, and keeping clear of
personal insinuations which might lead to awkward
recrimination. She was utterly at a loss, she said, to
justify the proceedings of that over-praised old Squire
on any principles of religion or morality. He had
exhausted his duties to his Maker and his country, as
husband, parent, and citizen, by leaving the world
which he was quitting possessed of a daughter. Mrs.
Bees could defend, indeed—or, rather, she should have
demanded it—the Squire endowing that daughter with
his worldly goods ; but there her approbation ended,
and his subsequent conduct raised in her the strongest
364
Strictly Tied Up.
feelings of aversion and indignation. It was violating
the order of nature, it was transgressing the decrees ot
Providence, it was rebelling against the law of the
Almighty, it was blaspheming the Ten Commandments,
and the Beatitudes, and the Creeds, and the Thirty-
nine Articles, to say that that daughter should not
have the power of using her own according to her own
responsibility, even of wasting Yaxley with riotous
living if she pleased. Heaven frowned on the notion
of there being any excuse for a man who was only a
grandfather to take any steps to prevent his child from
performing a mother's part to her children, even if
that mother's part were leaving them to die on the
dunghill. She would like to know what a man's
grandchildren were to him, compared with their
parents. God never meant a man to care for his
grandchildren more than for the rest of mankind. It
was absurd to say a man had any right to protect the
grandchild, even if that grandchild honoured him, and
kept within his balance, against that middle generation
who were the child's own parents. She said so, for
she knew what principles were, and she meant to stick
to principles even when they were troublesome, al¬
though the man of that middle generation might be
dragging his father to the grave and sending his son to
the workhouse by his debaucheries. Every generation
was meant to cut the one above it off with a wall of
brass. This was a general principle, and not to be
interfered with to meet particular cases. Then, sup¬
posing the grandchildren were the black sheep, and
their father the respectable Christian, how could
principles stand it ? They might spit on their grand-
Righted.
365
sire, and kick their father; or, in the other case, what
principle was there that would be strong enough
to prevent their father or their mother, either or both,
from turning them out of doors, for undutifully and
unfilially loving and respecting their grandfather ?
But, in every alternative, Providence had said that
grandfathers were only created to stand by and see
fair play and no favour for the squabbles on both sides
of the next generation and of their children.
The neighbours were so ill instructed in the prin¬
ciples of political philosophy that they were at first
unable to grasp the scope of the lady's criticisms, and
when some glimmerings of their meaning dawned
upon those rustic minds, more in pity or in boredom
than with any deliberate intention of bringing Mrs.
Bees to a saner mind, they parried, rather than
grappled with, her fantastical assertions. The most
common answer which she received was that if her
principles had unhappily been the law, Captain Foulis
might, during his month of marriage, have smashed
up the Curteis inheritance, and left his poor wife a
beggar; and they were told, in reply, that perhaps it
would have been better if he had been able to do so,
rather than that so monstrous a perversion of the laws
of creation should have taken place as the Brandreth
baby profiting by old Curteis's will.
At last Lidyard had the temerity to suggest that it
seemed to him that a father, in restraining his own
son from doing wrong to his offspring—which was
absolutely the case propounded by Mrs. Rees, only re¬
garded from another point of view—was most com¬
pletely, and for the most practically useful ends,
366
Strictly Tied Up.
exercising that very liberty of a parent over the next
generation to him which was the fundamental prin¬
ciple of her theory.
Nothing could be more meek than his manner, or
more deferential than his words; but his daring not
only to differ from her omniscience, but to offer reasons
for differing, put the Pythoness into an ungovernable
fury, and she declared that the existence of men ap¬
parently religious and honourable, but holding such
opinions as those of Lidyard, was, in her eyes, one of
the most inscrutable mysteries of Providence. The
Yicar beat as hasty a retreat as he could, and the
neighbourhood instinctively took the hint not to add
fuel to the flame by noticing the rhodomontades of one
who was generally supposed to have a twist in her
reasoning powers.
At last, on the Sunday afternoon but one after her
rencontre with the Yicar, Mrs. Pees rushed full cry
at Dr. Arlett as he was walking home from church
with wife and family, chewing the cud of the sermon
by Mr. Lidyard, which had struck him as peculiarly
sensible and well reasoned. In it the preacher had
drawn the lesson of the folly of purposeless change
from the Divine anathema pronounced upon the man
who removed his neighbour's landmark, showing that
the prohibition had a moral no less than a purely legal
application. Serenity was not the most apparent of
Dr. Arlett's virtues, and he was unconventional enough
to lose what little temper he might have then pos¬
sessed at one, lady though as she was, whom he always
detested, thus rudely interrupting his engrossing
thoughts. So he turned round upon the old gossip,
Righted.
367
and called her, without circumlocution, a mischievous,
meddlesome chatterbox, who was ready for any
fandangle of her own to destroy what thousands of
wise heads could never in hundreds of years set up
again.
' That's all very fine of you, Dr. Arlett, whom
everybody knows to be first toady of the grand people
up there. Much you think of us, poor inferior crea¬
tures. We're the dirt of the earth under your feet.
But I tell you what, Dr. Arlett, the people wont stand
this insolence and this tyranny much longer; they'll
show what they're made of. And when England is
really roused, and a policeman or two is shot, and a
prison or two blown up, as I have been told they did
in America when they wanted to put down the
Mormons, your spick-and-span new member of Parlia¬
ment there, who owes his bread to the fancy of
Foulis's widow, and has to pay for every guinea with
a kiss, will have to think a bit more than he now cares
what he's voting for.'
' What is she saying ?' inquired Mrs. Arlett, rather
terrified, as her flagging attention was arrested by the
vehement gestures and strident scream of the infuriated
vixen.
' She is talking, my dear, of killing the policemen
and wrecking the prisons.'
' Good gracious !' gasped the kindly lady, whose
store of available historical references was mainly con¬
fined to a well-thumbed set of the Waverley Novels,
f what can have put her on such horrid thoughts ?
She must be in the thick of the Heart of Midlo¬
thian!
368
Strictly Tied Up.
' Never mind her,' chimed in the Yicar, who joined
the couple as the fuming dame bounced off. ' She
really does not know what she is saying from one day
to the other. The fact is that she likes to be top-
sawyer, and can't abide being left so many years in
opposition. If the gracious lady up there were to
send for her, I'll be bound she would kiss her hand in
gratitude, and declare as vehemently as she now de¬
claims, that she never really meant anything. It was
all said to storm the fortress ; and once inside of it,
Mrs. Eees would forget and forgive all round, and
perhaps write apologies to the persons she had most
insulted.'
Dr. Arlett shook his head, and replied:
' It is very charitable in you, my dear Mr. Lidyard,
to say all this; but, in being so charitable to Mrs.
Rees, you are rather uncharitable to all of us whom
she has been rubbing up the wrong way by her un¬
bridled tongue. The scars of unjust accusations are
not washed away by rosewater, and the world treasures
the injurious imputation which its author might be
too glad, if he could, to obliterate at the sacrifice of
his too little prized consistency. When a man, or a
woman either, has caricatured and misrepresented me,
and then comes smiling to say that she or he never
really meant all those unpleasant reflections, which
were only risked in order to filch from me some stool
of advantage, I am apt to think, in the pride of my
heart, that this confession only makes matters worse
by stripping the injury to myself of even the colour¬
able excuse of sincerity on the part of my adversary.'
The christening of the young heir, partly by accident
Righted.
369
and partly by arrangement, fell on the third anniver¬
sary of the day when Eustace and Lucy talked non¬
sense about Adam and Eve in the old summer-house.
The weather was very fine for the season, and an out¬
door fete was adventured without anyone being the
worse for the indiscretion. Friends and neighbours,
rich and poor, were all bidden, and all entertained
with a hospitality, a tact, and a heartiness which
more than wiped away any residue of sore feelings
which might have survived from the recollections of
the hasty and all but clandestine wedding. Lidyard,
after all, proved a true prophet, for even Mrs. Rees
and Miss Turner were for a moment mollified, as Lucy,
following the happy promptings of a sudden inspiration,
had sent to each a beautiful silk gown, with a charming
note expressing the hope that nothing would deprive
her on so happy an occasion of the company of so old
a friend.
' Well,' said Bob Featherston, as he lazily subsided
on the bench in the memorable summer-house, between
the Vicar and the lawyer, and glanced at Punch per¬
forming under the liquidambar-tree, ' scandalously ill
as the dear little woman treated us about the wedding,
it has all turned out for the best.'
' I agree,' replied the man of law, with a solemn
inclination of his wise head; ' but she did not know
the good she was doing.'
THE END.
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