At the second turning, where the path among the trees wound away out of sight of the house, she came suddenly face to face with Magdalen and Frank: they were sauntering towards her, arm-in-arm; their heads close together, their conversation apparently proceeding in whispers. They looked suspiciously handsome and happy. At the sight of Norah, both started, and both stopped. Frank confusedly raised his hat, and turned back in the direction of his father’s cottage. Magdalen advanced to meet her sister, carelessly swinging her closed parasol from side to side, carelessly humming an air from the overture which had preceded the rising of the curtain on the previous night.
‘Luncheon-time already!’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘Surely not?’
‘Have you and Mr Francis Clare been alone in the shrubbery since ten o’clock?’ asked Norah.
‘Mr Francis Clare! How ridiculously formal you are. Why don’t you call him Frank?’
‘I asked you a question, Magdalen.’
‘Dear me, how black you look this morning! I’m in disgrace, I suppose. Haven‘t you forgiven me yet for my acting last night? I couldn’t help it, love; I should have made nothing of Julia, if I hadn’t taken you for my model. It’s quite a question of Art. In your place, I should have felt flattered by the selection.’
‘In your place, Magdalen, I should have thought twice before I mimicked my sister to an audience of strangers.’
‘That’s exactly why I did it – an audience of strangers. How were they to know? Come! come! don’t be angry. You are eight years older than I am – you ought to set me an example of good humour.’
‘I will set you an example of plain-speaking. I am more sorry than I can say, Magdalen, to meet you here as I met you here just now!’
‘What next, I wonder? You meet me in the shrubbery at home, talking over the private theatricals with my old playfellow, whom I knew when I was no taller than this parasol. And that is a glaring impropriety, is it? Honi soit qui mal y pense. You wanted an answer a minute ago – there it is for you, my dear, in the choicest Norman-French.’
‘I am in earnest about this, Magdalen –’
‘Not a doubt of it. Nobody can accuse you of ever making jokes.’
’I am seriously sorry –’
‘Oh dear!’
‘It is quite useless to interrupt me. I have it on my conscience to tell you – and I will tell you – that I am sorry to see how this intimacy is growing. I am sorry to see a secret understanding established already between you and Mr Francis Clare.’
‘Poor Frank! How you do hate him to be sure. What on earth has he done to offend you?’
Norah’s self-control began to show signs of failing her. Her dark cheeks glowed, her delicate lips trembled, before she spoke again. Magdalen paid more attention to her parasol than to her sister. She tossed it high in the air, and caught it. ‘Once!’ she said – and tossed it up again. ‘Twice!’ – and she tossed it higher. ‘Thrice –!’ Before she could catch it for the third time, Norah seized her passionately by the arm, and the parasol dropped to the ground between them.
‘You are treating me heartlessly,’ she said. ‘For shame, Magdalen – for shame!’
The irrespressible outburst of a reserved nature, forced into open self-assertion in its own despite, is of all moral forces the hardest to resist. Magdalen was startled into silence. For a moment, the two sisters – so strangely dissimilar in person and character – faced one another,
without a word passing between them. For a moment, the deep brown eyes of the elder, and the light grey eyes of the younger, looked into each other with steady unyielding scrutiny on either side. Norah’s face was the first to change; Norah’s head was the first to turn away. She dropped her sister’ arm, in silence. Magdalen stooped, and picked up her parasol.
‘I try to keep my temper,’ she said, ‘and you call me heartless for doing it. You always were hard on me, and you always will be.’
Norah clasped her trembling hands fast in each other. ‘Hard on you!’ she said, in low, mournful tones – and sighed bitterly.
Magdalen drew back a little, and mechanically dusted the parasol with the end of her garden cloak.
‘Yes!’ she resumed, doggedly. ‘Hard on me, and hard on Frank.’
‘Frank!’ repeated Norah, advancing on her sister, and turning pale as suddenly as she had turned red. ‘Do you talk of yourself and Frank as if your interests were One already? Magdalen! if I hurt you, do I hurt him? Is he so near and so dear to you as that?’
Magdalen drew farther and farther back. A twig from a tree near caught her cloak; she turned petulantly, broke it off, and threw it on the ground. ‘What right have you to question me?’ she broke out on a sudden. ‘Whether I like Frank, or whether I don’t, what interest is it of yours?’ As she said the words, she abruptly stepped forward to pass her sister, and return to the house.
Norah, turning paler and paler, barred the way to her. ‘If I hold you by main force,’ she said, ‘you shall stop and hear me. I have watched this Francis Clare; I know him better than you do. He is unworthy of a moment’s serious feeling on your part; he is unworthy of our dear, good, kind-hearted father’s interest in him. A man with any principle, any honour, any gratitude, would not have come back as he has come back, disgraced – yes! disgraced by his spiritless neglect of his own duty. I watched his face while the friend who has been better than a father to him, was comforting and forgiving him with a kindness he had not deserved: I watched his face, and I saw no shame, and no distress in it – I saw nothing but a look of thankless, heartless relief. He is selfish, he is ungrateful, he is ungenerous – he is only twenty, and he has the worst failings of a mean old age already. And this is the man I find you meeting in secret – the man who has taken such a place in your favour that you are deaf to the truth about him, even from my lips! Magdalen! this will end ill. For God’s sake, think of what I have said to you, and control yourself before it is too late!’ She stopped, vehement and breathless, and caught her sister anxiously by the hand.
Magdalen looked at her in unconcealed astonishment.
‘You are so violent,’ she said, ‘and so unlike yourself that I hardly know you. The more patient I am, the more hard words I get for my pains. You have taken a perverse hatred to Frank; and you are unreasonably angry with me, because I won’t hate him too. Don’t, Norah! you hurt my hand.’
Norah pushed the hand from her, contemptuously. ‘I shall never hurt your heart,’ she said – and suddenly turned her back on Magdalen as she spoke the words.
There was a momentary pause. Norah kept her position. Magdalen looked at her perplexedly – hesitated – then walked away by herself towards the house.
At the turn in the shrubbery path, she stopped, and looked back uneasily. ‘Oh, dear, dear!’ she thought to herself, ‘why didn’t Frank go when I told him?’ She hesitated, and went back a few steps. ‘There’s Norah standing on her dignity, as obstinate as ever.’ She stopped again. ‘What had I better do? I hate quarrelling: I think I’ll make it up.’ She ventured close to her sister, and touched her on the shoulder. Norah never moved. ‘It’s not often she flies into a passion,’ thought Magdalen, touching her again; ‘but when she does, what a time it lasts her!–Come!’ she said, ‘give me a kiss, Norah, and make it up. Won’t you let me get at any part of you, my dear, but the back of your neck? Well, it’s a very nice neck – it’s better worth kissing than mine – and there the kiss is, in spite of you!’
She caught fast hold of Norah from behind, and suited the action to the word, with a total disregard of all that had just passed, which her sister was far from emulating. Hardly a minute since, the warm outpouring of Norah’s heart had burst through all obstacles. Had the icy reserve frozen her up again already! It was hard to say. She never spoke; she never changed her position – she only searched hurriedly for her handkerchief. As she drew it out, there was a sound of approaching footsteps in the inner recesses of the shrubbery. A Scotch terrier scampered into view; and a cheerful voice
sang the first lines of the glee in As You Like It. ‘It’s papa!’ cried Magdalen. ‘Come, Norah – come and meet him.’
Instead of following her sister, Norah pulled down the veil of her garden-hat; turned in the opposite direction; and hurried back to the house.
She ran up to her room, and locked herself in. She was crying bitterly.
Chapter Eight
When Magdalen and her father met in the shrubbery, Mr Vanstone’s face showed plainly that something had happened to please him, since he had left home in the morning. He answered the question which his daughter’s curiosity at once addressed to him, by informing her that he had just come from Mr Clare’s cottage; and that he had picked up, in that unpromising locality, a startling piece of news for the family at Combe-Raven.
On entering the philosopher’s study, that morning, Mr Vanstone had found him still dawdling over his late breakfast, with an open letter by his side, in place of the book which, on other occasions, lay ready to his hand at meal-times. He held up the letter, the moment his visitor came into the room; and abruptly opened the conversation by asking Mr Vanstone if his nerves were in good order, and if he felt himself strong enough for the shock of an overwhelming surprise.
‘Nerves?’ repeated Mr Vanstone. ‘Thank God, I know nothing about my nerves. If you have got anything to tell me, shock or no shock, out with it on the spot.’
Mr Clare held the letter a little higher, and frowned at his visitor across the breakfast-table. ‘What have I always told you?’ he asked, with his sourest solemnity of look and manner.
‘A great deal more than I could ever keep in my head,’ answered Mr Vanstone.
‘In your presence and out of it,’ continued Mr Clare, ‘I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is – the enormous prosperity of Fools. Show me an individual Fool, and I will show you an aggregate Society which gives that highly-favoured personage nine chances out of ten – and grudges the tenth to the wisest man in existence. Look where you will, in every high place there sits an Ass, settled beyond the reach of all the greatest intellects in this world to pull him down. Over our whole social system, complacent Imbecility rules supreme – snuffs out the searching light of Intelligence, with total impunity – and hoots, owl-like, in answer to every form of protest, “See how well we all do in the dark!” One of these days that audacious assertion will be practically contradicted; and the whole rotten system of modern society will come down with a crash.’
‘God forbid!’ cried Mr Vanstone, looking about him as if the crash was coming already.
‘With a crash!’ repeated Mr Clare. ‘There is my theory, in few words. Now for the remarkable application of it, which this letter suggests. Here is my lout of a boy –’
‘You don’t mean that Frank has got another chance!’ exclaimed Mr Vanstone.
‘Here is this perfectly hopeless booby, Frank,’ pursued the philosopher. ‘He has never done anything in his life to help himself, and as a necessary consequence, Society is in a conspiracy to carry him to the top of the tree. He has hardly had time to throw away that chance you gave him, before this letter comes, and puts the ball at his foot for the second time. My rich cousin (who is intellectually fit to be at the tail of the family, and who is therefore as a matter of course, at the head of it), has been good enough to remember my existence; and has offered his influence to serve my eldest boy. Read his letter, and then observe the sequence of events. My rich cousin is a booby who thrives on landed property; he has done something for another booby who thrives on Politics, who knows a third booby who thrives on Commerce, who can do something for a fourth booby, thriving at present on nothing, whose name is Frank. So the mill goes. So the cream of all human rewards is sipped in endless succession by the Fools. I shall pack Frank off tomorrow. In course of time, he’ll come back again on our hands like a bad shilling: more chances will fall in his way, as a necessary consequence of his meritorious imbecility. Years will go on – I may not live to see it, no more may you – it doesn’t matter; Frank’s future is equally certain either way – put him into the army, the church, politics, what you please, and let him drift: he’ll end in being a general, a bishop, or a minister of state, by dint of the great modern qualification of doing nothing whatever to deserve his place.’ With this summary of his son’s worldly prospects, Mr Clare tossed the letter contemptuously across the table, and poured himself out another cup of tea.
Mr Vanstone read the letter with eager interest and pleasure. It was written in a tone of somewhat elaborate cordiality; but the practical advantages which it placed at Frank’s disposal were beyond all doubt. The writer had the means of using a friend’s interest – interest of no ordinary kind – with a great Mercantile Firm in the City; and he had at once exerted this influence in favour of Mr Clare’s eldest boy. Frank would be received in the office on a very different footing from the footing of an ordinary clerk; he would be ‘pushed on’ at every available opportunity; and the first ‘good thing’ the House had to offer either at home or abroad, would be placed at his disposal. If he possessed fair abilities and showed common diligence in exercising them, his fortune was made; and the sooner he was sent to London to begin, the better for his own interests it would be.
‘Wonderful news!’ cried Mr Vanstone, returning the letter. ‘I’m delighted – I must go back and tell them at home. This is fifty times the chance that mine was. What the deuce do you mean by abusing Society? Society has behaved uncommonly well, in my opinion. Where’s Frank?’
‘Lurking,’ said Mr Clare. ‘It is one of the intolerable peculiarities of louts that they always lurk. I haven’t seen my lout this morning. If you meet with him anywhere, give him a kick, and say I want him.’
Mr Clare’s opinion of his son’s habits might have been expressed more politely as to form; but, as to substance, it happened, on that particular morning, to be perfectly correct. After leaving Magdalen, Frank had waited in the shrubbery, at a safe distance, on the chance that she might detach herself from her sister’s company, and join him again. Mr Vanstone’s appearance immediately on Norah’s departure, instead of encouraging him to show himself, had determined him on returning to the cottage. He walked back discontentedly; and so fell into his father’s clutches, totally unprepared for the pending announcement, in that formidable quarter, of his departure for London.
In the mean time, Mr Vanstone had communicated his news – in the first place, to Magdalen, and afterwards, on getting back to the house, to his wife and Miss Garth. He was too unobservant a man to notice that Magdalen looked unaccountably startled, and Miss Garth unaccountably relieved, by his announcement of Frank’s good fortune. He talked on about it, quite unsuspiciously, until the luncheon-bell rang – and then, for the first time, he noticed Norah’s absence. She sent a message downstairs, after they had assembled at the table, to say that a headache was keeping her in her own room. When Miss Garth went up shortly afterwards to communicate the news about Frank, Norah appeared, strangely enough, to feel very little relieved by hearing it. Mr Francis Clare had gone away on a former occasion (she remarked) and had come back. He might come back again, and sooner than they any of them thought for. She said no more on the subject than this: she made no reference to what had taken place in the shrubbery. Her unconquerable reserve seemed to have strengthened its hold on her since the outburst of the morning. She met Magdalen, later in the day, as if nothing had happened: no formal reconciliation took place between them. It was one of Norah’s peculiarities to shrink from all reconciliations that were openly ratified, and to take her shy refuge in reconciliations that were silently implied. Magdalen saw plainly, in her look and manner, that she had made her first and last protest. Whether the motive was pride, or sullenness, or distrust of herself, or despair of doing good, the result was not to be mistaken – Norah had resolved on remaining passive for the future.
Later in the afternoon, Mr Vanstone suggested a drive to his eldest daughter, as the best remed
y for her headache. She readily consented to accompany her father; who, thereupon, proposed, as usual, that Magdalen should join them. Magdalen was nowhere to be found. For the second time that day, she had wandered into the grounds by herself. On this occasion, Miss Garth – who, after adopting Norah’s opinions, had passed from the one extreme of overlooking Frank altogether, to the other extreme of believing him capable of planning an elopement at five minutes’ notice – volunteered to set forth immediately, and do her best to find the missing young lady. After a prolonged absence, she returned unsuccessful – with the strongest persuasion in her own mind that Magdalen and Frank had secretly met one another somewhere, but without having discovered the smallest fragment of evidence to confirm her suspicions. By this time, the carriage was at the door, and Mr Vanstone was unwilling to wait any longer. He and Norah drove away together; and Mrs Vanstone and Miss Garth sat at home over their work.
In half an hour more, Magdalen composedly walked into the room. She was pale and depressed. She received Miss Garth’s remonstrances with a weary inattention; explained carelessly that she had been wandering in the wood; took up some books, and put them down again; sighed impatiently; and went away upstairs to her own room.
‘I think Magdalen is feeling the reaction, after yesterday,’ said Mrs Vanstone, quietly. ‘It is just as we thought. Now the theatrical amusements are all over, she is fretting for more.’
Here was an opportunity of letting in the light of truth on Mrs Vanstone’s mind, which was too favourable to be missed. Miss Garth questioned her conscience, saw her chance, and took it on the spot.
‘You forget,’ she rejoined, ‘that a certain neighbour of ours is going away to-morrow. Shall I tell you the truth? Magdalen is fretting over the departure of Francis Clare.’
Mrs Vanstone looked up from her work, with a gentle smiling surprise.
‘Surely not?’ she said. ‘It is natural enough that Frank should be attracted by Magdalen – but I can’t think that Magdalen returns the feeling. Frank is so very unlike her; so quiet and undemonstrative; so dull and helpless, poor fellow, in some things. He is handsome, I know; but he is so singularly unlike Magdalen, that I can’t think it possible – I can’t indeed.’