Works of Ellen Wood, page 1083
Matters were in this state when news spread that the Goldinghams had received notice to quit the Grange: Sir Geoffry, who would be of age the following year, was coming home to it with his mother. Accordingly the Goldinghams departed; and the place was re-embellished and put in order for the rightful owner. He arrived in April with Lady Chavasse: and I’ll copy for you what Duffham says about it. Mr. Layne had then been dead about two years.
[From Mr. Duffham’s Diary.]
April 29th. — The new people — or I suppose I ought to say the old people — reached the Grange yesterday, and I was called in to-day to the lady’s-maid — Wilkins. My lady I don’t like; Sir Geoffry I do. He is a good-looking, slight young man of middle height, with a fair refined face and honest eyes, blue as they tell me Sir Peter’s used to be. An honourable, well-intentioned young fellow I am sure; affable and considerate as his mother is haughty. Poor Layne used to cry her up; he thought great things of her. I do not. It may be that power has made her selfish, and foreign travel imperious; but she’s both selfish and imperious now. She is nice-looking still; and though she wants but a year of forty, and her son is only one-and-twenty, they are almost like brother and sister. Or would be, but for Sir Geoffry’s exceeding consideration for his mother; his love and deference for her are a pattern to the young men of the present day. She has trained him to be obedient, that’s certain, and to love her too: and so I suppose she has done her duty by him well. He came down the broad walk with me from the hall-door, talking of his mother: I had happened to say that the place must seem quite strange to Lady Chavasse. “Yes, it must,” he answered. “She has exiled herself from it for my sake. Mr. Duffham,” he continued warmly, “you cannot imagine what an admirable mother mine has been! She resigned ease, rest, society, to devote herself to me. She gave me a home-tutor, that she might herself watch over and train me; she went to and fro between England and foreign places with me everlastingly; even when I was at Oxford, she took a house a mile or two out, that we might not be quite separated. I pray Heaven constantly that I may never cross her in thought, word, or deed: but live only to repay her love.” Rather Utopian this: but I honour the young fellow for it. I’ve only seen him for an hour at most, and am already wishing there were more like him in the world. If his mother has faults, he does not see them; he will never honour any other woman as he honours her. A contrast, this, to the contempt, ingratitude, and disrespect that some sons think it manly to show their best and truest earthly parent.
My lady is vexed, I can see, at this inopportune illness of her maid’s; for the Grange is all upside down with the preparations for the grand fête to be held on the 20th of next month, when Sir Geoffry will come of age. Wilkins has been in the family for many years: she was originally the boy’s nurse: and is quite the right hand of Lady Chavasse, so far as household management goes. Her illness just now is inopportune.
[End, for the present, of Mr. Duffham’s Diary.]
Nothing was talked of, in the village or out of it, but the grand doings that were to usher in the majority of Sir Geoffry. As to Lady Chavasse, few people had seen her. Her maid’s illness, as was supposed, kept her indoors; and some of the guests were already arriving at the Grange.
One morning, when it wanted about a week to the 20th, Mrs. Layne, making a pillow-case at her parlour window, in her widow’s cap and spectacles, with the Venetian blind open to get all the light she could, was startled by seeing Lady Chavasse’s barouche draw up to her door, and Lady Chavasse preparing to descend from it. Mrs. Layne instinctively rose, as to a superior, and took her glasses off: it has been said she was of a humble turn: and upon Lady Chavasse fixing her eyes upon her in what seemed some surprise, dropped a curtsy, and thought to herself how fortunate it was she happened to have put a clean new cap on. With that, Lady Chavasse said something to the footman, who banged the carriage-door to, and ordered the coachman across the road. Mrs. Layne understood it at once: she had come to the house in mistake for Duffham’s. Of course, with that grand carriage to look at opposite, and the gorgeous servants, and my lady, in a violet velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, alighting and stepping in to Duffham’s, Mrs. Layne let fall her pillow-case, and did no more of it. But she was not prepared, when Lady Chavasse came out again with Mr. Duffham, to see him escort her over the road to her gate. Mrs. Layne had just time to open her parlour-door, and say to the servant, “In the other room: show her ladyship into the other room,” before she went off into complete bewilderment, and ran away with the pillow-case.
The other room was the best room. Mary Layne sat there at the old piano, practising. She had seen and heard nothing of all this; and rose in astonishment when the invasion took place. A beautiful lady, whom Mary did not know or recognize, was holding out a delicately-gloved hand to her, and saying that she resembled her father. It was Mary Layne’s first meeting with Lady Chavasse: she had just come home again from some heavy place of teaching, finding her strength unequal to it.
“I should have known you, I think, for a daughter of Mr. Layne’s had I met you in the street,” said Lady Chavasse, graciously.
Mary was blushing like anything. Lady Chavasse thought her an elegant girl, in spite of the shabby black silk she was dressed in: very pretty too. At least, it was a nice countenance; and my lady quite took to it. Mrs. Layne, having collected her wits, and taken off her apron, came in then: and Mary, who was humble-minded also, though not exactly in the same way that her mother was, modestly retired.
My lady was all graciousness: just as much so that morning as she used to be. Perhaps the sight of Mrs. Layne put her in mind of the old days when she was herself suffering trouble in a widow’s cap, and not knowing how matters would turn out for her, or how they would not. She told Mrs. Layne that she had, unthinkingly, bid her servants that morning drive to Mr. Layne’s! and it was only when she saw Mrs. Layne at the window in her widow’s cap, that she remembered the mistake. She talked of her son Geoffry, praising his worth and his goodness; she bade Mrs. Layne to the fête on the 20th, saying she must come and bring her two daughters, and she would take no denial. And Mrs. Layne, curtsying again — which did not become her, for she was short and stout — opened the front-door to her ladyship with her own hands, and stood there curtsying until the carriage had dashed away.
“We’ll go on the 20th,” she said to her daughters. “I didn’t like to say nay to her ladyship; and I should be glad to see what the young heir’s like. He was as pretty a boy as you’d wish to see. There’ll no doubt be some people there of our own condition that we can mix with, and it will be in the open air: so we shan’t feel strange.”
But when the day arrived, and they had reached the Grange, it seemed that they felt very strange. Whether amidst the crowds they did not find any of their “own condition,” or that none were there, Mrs. Layne did not know. Once, they came near Lady Chavasse. Lady Chavasse, surrounded by a bevy of people that Mrs. Layne took to be lords and ladies — and perhaps she was right — bowed distantly, and waved her hand, as much as to say, “Make yourselves at home, but don’t trouble me:” and Mrs. Layne curtsyed herself to a respectful distance. It was a fine bright day, very warm; and she sat on a bench in the park with her daughters, listening to the band, looking at the company, and wondering which was the heir. Some hours seemed to pass in this way, and gradually the grounds grew deserted. People were eating and drinking in a distant tent — the lords and ladies Mrs. Layne supposed, and she did not presume to venture amongst them. Presently a young man approached, who had observed from a distance the solitary group. A fat old lady in widow’s mourning; and the younger ones in pretty white bonnets and new black silks.
“Will you allow me to take you where you will find some refreshment?” he said, raising his hat, and addressing Mrs. Layne.
She paused before answering, taken aback by his looks, as she described it afterwards, for he put her in mind of Sir Peter. It was as nice a face as Sir Peter’s used to be, clean-shaved, except for the light whiskers: and if those were not Sir Peter’s kindly blue eyes, why, her memory failed her. But the dress puzzled Mrs. Layne: he wore a dark-blue frock-coat and grey trousers, a white waistcoat with a thin gold chain passed across it and a drooping seal: all very nice and gentlemanly certainly, but quite plain. What she had expected to see the heir attired in, Mrs. Layne never afterwards settled with herself: perhaps purple and miniver.
“I beg your pardon sir,” she said, speaking at length, “but I think you must be Sir Geoffry?”
“Yes, I am Sir Geoffry.”
“Lord bless me!” cried Mrs. Layne.
She told him who she was, adding, as an apology for being found there, that her ladyship had invited her and her girls, and wouldn’t take a denial. Geoffry held out his arm cordially to lead her to the tent, and glanced behind at the “girls,” remembering what his mother had said to him of one of them: “a sweet-looking young woman, Geoffry, poor Layne’s daughter, quite an elegant girl.” Yes, she was sweet-looking and elegant also, Geoffry decided. The elder one was like her mother, short, stout, and — Geoffry could not help seeing it — commonplace. He told Mrs. Layne that he could remember her husband still: he spoke of a ride the doctor had taken him, seated before him on his horse; and altogether in that short minute or two won, by his true affability, the heart of the doctor’s widow.
The tent was crowded to confusion. Waiters were running about, and there was much rattle of knives and forks. Sir Geoffry could find only two places anywhere; at which he seated Mrs. Layne and her daughter Elizabeth, according to precedence.
“I will find you a place in the other tent, if you will come with me,” he said to Mary.
She wished to refuse. She had a suspicion that the other tent was the one for the “lords and ladies,” people who were altogether above her. But Sir Geoffry was holding up the canvas for her to pass out, and she was too timid to disobey. He walked by her side almost in silence, speaking a courteous word or two only, to put her at her ease. The band was playing “The Roast Beef of Old England.”
But the other tent seemed in worse confusion as far as crowding went. Some one turned on her seat to accost Sir Geoffry: a slight, upright girl, with finely-carved features of that creamy white rarely seen, and a haughty expression in her very light eyes.
“You are being waited for, Geoffry. Don’t you know that you preside?”
“No; nonsense!” he answered. “There’s to be nothing of that sort, Rachel; no presiding. I am going to walk about and look out for stray people. Some of the strangers will get nothing, if they are not seen after. Could you make room for one by you?”
“Who is it?” she asked.
Sir Geoffry said a word in her ear, and she moved a few inches higher up. He stepped back to Mary Layne. She had been looking at the young lady, who was so richly dressed — in some thin material of shimmering blue and lace — and who was so utterly at her ease as to be sitting without her bonnet, which she had put at her feet.
“We have made a place for you,” said Sir Geoffry. “I fear you will be a little crowded. Miss Layne, Rachel.”
Mary waited to thank him before taking it. Her cheeks were full of blushes, her soft dark eyes went out to his. She felt ashamed that he should take so much trouble for her, and strove to say so. Sir Geoffry held her hand while he answered, his own eyes looking back again.
But Mary sat for some minutes before any one came to wait on her. The young lady whom Sir Geoffry had called Rachel was busy with her own plate, and did not observe. Presently, she looked round.
“Dear me! what are they about? Field!” she imperatively called to the butler, who was passing. He turned at once.
“My lady?”
“Have the goodness to attend here,” said Lady Rachel, indicating the vacant space before Miss Layne. “This young lady has had nothing.”
“So I really am amidst the lords and ladies,” thought Mary, as the butler presented her with a card of the dishes, made out in French, and inquired what she would be pleased to take. She was inexperienced and shy; and did not know where to look or what to say. Lady Rachel spoke to her once or twice, and was civilly distant: and so the half-hour was got over. When Sir Geoffry’s health was proposed by Lord L., the young baronet suddenly appeared in his rightful place at the head of the table. He thanked them all very heartily in a few words; and said he hoped he should live long, as they had all just been wishing him, live that he might repay his dear mother one tithe of the sacrifices she had made, and the love she had lavished on him.
The cheers broke forth as he finished, his eyes wet with the sincerity of his feeling, the music burst out with a crash, “See the conquering hero comes,” and Mary Layne felt every nerve thrill within her; as if she would faint with the excess of unwonted emotion.
[Mr. Duffham’s Diary.]
June 2nd. — The rejoicings are well over, and Sir Geoffry Chavasse is his own master. In law, at any rate; but it strikes me he will never know any will but his mother’s. It’s not that he possesses none of his own — rather the contrary, I fancy; but in his filial love and reverence he merges it in hers. It is, on the one hand, good to see; on the other, one can but fancy his ideal of the fifth commandment is somewhat exaggerated. Lady Chavasse on her part seems bound up in him. To him there is no sign of imperiousness, no assertion of self-will: and, so far as can be seen, she does not exact deference. “Geoffry, would you wish this?” she says. “Geoffry, would you like the other? My darling Geoffry, don’t you think it might be well to do so-and-so?” No. It is a case of genuine filial respect and love; and one can but honour Lady Chavasse for have gained it.
My lady has condescended to be almost confidential with me. The illness of her maid has been a long and serious one, and I have had to be a good deal at the Grange. “Sir Geoffry is engaged to be married, Mr. Duffham,” she said to me yesterday, when our conversation had turned — as it often does turn — on Sir Geoffry. I could not help showing some surprise: and, one word leading to another, I soon grasped the whole case. Not so much by what she directly said, as by the habit I have of putting two-and-two together.
Conspicuous amidst the guests at the fête on the 20th of May, was Lady Rachel Derreston: a cold, self-possessed girl, with strictly classical features, and the palest blue eyes I ever saw. It would be a very handsome face — and indeed is so — but for its cold, proud expression; she is the daughter of one of Lady Chavasse’s sisters, who married the Earl of Derreston, and is now a very slenderly-portioned widow with some expensive daughters. It is to this Lady Rachel that Sir Geoffry is engaged. The engagement is not of his own seeking, or of hers; the two mothers settled it between them when the children were young; they have been brought up to look on each other as future husband and wife, and have done so as a matter-of-course. Neither of them, by what I can gather, has the slightest intention, or wish, to turn aside from fulfilling the contract: they will ratify it in just the same business manner and with the same calm feelings that they would take the lease of a house. It is not their fault: they should not have been led into it. Human nature is cross and contrary as a crab: had the two young people been thrown together now for the first time, and been warned not to fall in love with each other, the chances are they would have tumbled headlong into it before the week was out: as it is, they like each other as cousins, or brother and sister, but they’ll never get beyond that. I can see. The two old sisters have a private understanding with each other — and my young Lady Rachel dutifully falls in with it — that after the marriage Lady Chavasse shall still live and rule at the Grange. Indeed she implied it when she let fall the words, perhaps unthinkingly— “Geoffry would never marry to put me out of my home here, Mr. Duffham.” And I am sure that he never would.
Lady Rachel is here still. I often see her and Sir Geoffry together, indoors or out; but I have never yet seen a symptom of courtship on either side. They call each other “Geoffry” and “Rachel;” and are as indifferently familiar as brother and sister. That they will be sufficiently happy with a quiet, moonlight kind of happiness, is almost sure. I find that I am not at liberty to mention this engagement abroad: and that’s why I say my lady has grown confidential with me.
June 29th. — Wilkins continues very ill; and it puts my lady about amazingly. The maid who has been taking Wilkins’s duties, Hester Picker, is a country girl of the locality, Goody Picker’s daughter; her services being as different from those of the easy, experienced Wilkins, as darkness is from light. “She manages my hair atrociously,” cried my lady to me, one day, in her vexation; “she attempted to write a note for me in answer to inquiries for the character of my late page, and the spelling was so bad it could not be sent.”
Lady Rachel has left. Sir Geoffry escorted her to her home (near Bath), stayed two days there, and came back again. And glad to be back, evidently: he does not care to be long separated from his mother. The more I see of this young fellow, the more I like him. He has no bad habits; does not smoke or swear: reads, rides, drives, loves flowers, and is ever ready to do a good turn for rich or poor. “You appear to have grown up quite strong, Sir Geoffry,” I said to him to-day when we were in the greenhouse, and he leaped on a ledge to do something or other to the broken cord of the window. “Oh, quite,” he answered. “I think I am stronger and heartier than most men: and I owe thanks for it to my mother. It was not only my health of body she cared for and watched over, but of mind. She taught me to love rational pursuits; she showed me how to choose the good, and reject the evil: it is she alone who has made me what I am.”
