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At His Gates. Volume 2

CHAPTER X

It was natural that there should be nothing talked about that morning throughout Dura except the ball. All the young people were late of getting up, and they were all full of the one subject – how this one and that one looked; how Charlie haunted Clara all the evening; how young Mr Nicholas, the curate, whom decorum kept from waltzing, stood mournfully and gazed at Mary Dalton through all the round dances. Things were getting very serious between Mary and Mr Nicholas; though waltzing was such a temptation to her, poor child, and though she had plenty of partners, she sat still half the evening out of pity for the curate's wistful eyes; and yet he had been ungrateful all the same, and reproachful on the way home. Katie Dalton, to her own great comfort, was still quite loverless and hampered by nobody's looks. 'I would not put up with it,' she said to her sister; 'because a man chooses to make himself disagreeable, can you not be allowed to enjoy yourself? It is not so often we have a dance. I should let him know very plainly, if it were me.'

'Oh, Katie dear,' said her sister, 'you don't know what you would do if it were you.'

'Well, then, I am very glad it isn't me. I hate parsons!' cried Katie. This was but a specimen of the commotion made by the ball. The sudden incursion of quantities of new people into the limited little society in which everybody had appropriated a companion to his or herself was at the first outset as disagreeable as it was bewildering. The Dura boys and girls had each a sore point somewhere. They had each some reproaches to make, if not audibly, yet in their hearts. Norah and Katie, who were quite fancy-free, were the only ones who had received no wound. At the moment when Mr Rivers sat in the drawing-room at the Gatehouse, Ned and Clara Burton were walking down the avenue together, discussing the same subject. They were both of them somewhat sulky; and both with the same person. It was Norah who had affronted both the brother and sister; and to Clara, at least, the affront was doubly bitter, from her consciousness of the fact that, but for the kindness, nay, charity, of the Burtons, Norah never could have come into such a scene of splendour at all. Clara was her father's child, and this was a thing which she never forgot.

'I have never been so fond of Norah Drummond as the rest of you were,' she said. 'I think she is a heartless little thing. I am sure what she and her mother want is to be revenged on us because we are so much better off. I am sure papa thinks so. It is the shabbiest, the most wretched thing in the world, to hate people because they are better off.'

'Trust to you girls for imputing bad motives,' said Ned. He was very sulky, and rather unhappy, and consequently ready to quarrel with his best friend. In his heart he had no such bad opinion of 'girls;' but at this moment he felt that nothing was too disagreeable to be said.

'We girls know better what we are about a great deal than you do,' said Clara. 'We see through things. Now that you begin to have your eyes opened about Norah Drummond, I may speak. She is a dreadful little flirt. I have seen it before, though you never did. Why, I have seen her even with Mr Nicholas; and she asked Charlie Dalton to dance with her last night —asked him! Would any girl do that who had a respect for herself, or cared for what people think?'

'Did Charlie tell you?' said Ned with deeper wrath and wretchedness still. 'She never asked me,' he said to himself; though he would have been ready to dance himself half dead in her service had she but taken the trouble to ask.

'I heard her,' said Clara; 'and then, as soon as something better came, she forgot all about Charlie. She made Cyril Rivers dance with her, claiming acquaintance because she met him once when we were all little. Ned, I would never think of that girl more, if I were you. In the first place, you know it never could come to anything. Papa would not allow it – a girl without a penny, without any position even, and all that dreadful story about her father!'

'The less we say of that dreadful story the better,' said Ned.

'Why? We have nothing to do with it – except that papa has been so very kind. I don't think it is wise to have poor relations near,' said Clara. 'You are obliged to take some notice of them; and they always hate you, and try to come in your way. I know mamma was quite wild to see you, the very first thing – before you had danced with Lady Florizel, or any one – taking Norah out.'

'Mamma is too sensible to think anything about it,' said Ned.

'You may suppose so, but I know to the contrary. Mamma was very anxious you should be attentive to Lady Florizel. We are rich, but we have not any connections to speak of; only rich people, like poor grandpapa. I don't mean to say I am not very fond of grandpapa; but the exhibition he always makes of himself at those meetings and things, and the way he throws his money away – money that he ought to be saving up for us. Papa says so, Ned! Why should you look so fierce at me?'

'Because it is odious to hear you,' said Ned. 'You have no right to repeat what papa says – if papa does say such things. I hope my grandfather will do exactly what he likes with his money. I am sure he has the best right.'

'Oh, that is all very well,' said Clara. 'I never had college debts to be paid. It suits you to be so independent, but it is chiefly you that the rest of us are thinking of. You know we have no connections, Ned. Grandpapa and his Dissenters are enough to make one ill. If he had only been philanthropic, one would not have minded so much; but fancy having, every month or two, Mr Truston from the chapel to dinner! So you are bound to make a high marriage when you marry.'

'I wish, Clara, you would talk of things you understand. I marry – is it likely?' said Ned.

'Very likely – if you ask Lady Florizel. Papa would not ask you to go into the business, or anything. Oh, I know! He does not say much about his plans, but he cannot hide a great deal from me. But you spoil it all, Ned,' said Clara severely. 'You put everything wrong, and make your own people your enemies. Instead of seeing how nice and how sweet and how charming the right young lady is, you go and throw yourself away on Norah Drummond – who leaves you in the lurch the moment she sees some one else better worth her pains.'

'And who might that be?' asked Ned. He tried to laugh, poor fellow, but his laugh and his voice were both unsteady. There was truth in it all; that was what made him so tremulous with anger and suppressed passion.

'As if you could not see for yourself,' said Clara, herself flushing with indignation. 'Why, Cyril Rivers, of course. No doubt they had decided he was the best man to pitch upon. Lord Merewether was too grand; they could not venture upon him – and the Marchioness was there to take care of her son. But poor Cyril had nobody to take care of him. I saw Mrs Drummond look at him in her languid way. She has some magnetism about her, that woman. I have seen her look at people before, and gradually something drew them that they had to go and talk to her. That was how it was last night. Of course, Norah thought no more of you. She had bigger game. She knew very well, if things changed, and Cyril Rivers escaped from her, that, so far as you were concerned, she had only to hold out a finger.'

'You don't seem to make very much of me,' said Ned with an angry blush.

'No, I should not make much of – any boy,' said Clara calmly. 'What could you do? You would fall into the net directly. You are such a simpleton, such a baby, that, of course, Norah would not need even to take any trouble. If she only held up her finger – '

'That is what you mean to do to Charlie, I suppose?' said Ned, with concentrated brotherly malice; and then it was Clara's turn to flash crimson, not so much with shame as with anger. Her complexion was so beautiful, her white so white, and her red so rosy, that the deeper colour which flushed all over her face in a moment seemed to dye the wavy, downy, velvety surface. Her blue eyes flashed out, deepening in colour like the sea under the wind.

'What does it matter to you what I mean to do?' she cried, and turned her back upon him in her wrath, and went back again up the avenue without a word of warning. Ned, in his surprise, stood and looked after her. She was like a Juno, as Mr Rivers had said. She was the youngest of the whole band; but yet the great scale on which she was formed, her imperious manner and looks, gave her a certain command among them. The others were pretty girls; but Clara was splendid, and a woman. She had to be judged on a different standard. Poor Ned's heart was very sore; he was very angry, and wounded, and unhappy; and yet he recognised the difference as he stood and looked after his sister. It was natural that she should make up her mind to marry whosoever pleased her – and break a heart as she would cast away a flower. There was nothing out of character in the superior tone she had taken with her elder brother. On the contrary, it was natural to her; and as for Norah, poor little Norah, what would befall her should she come in the way of this queen? Ned went upon his own way down the village with a hankering in his heart which all Clara's worldly wisdom and all his wounded pride could not quite subdue. Norah had been unkind to him. She had danced with him but twice all that long evening. She had danced with everybody but him. He had seen her – was it a dozen times? – with Rivers – confound him! And then he wondered whether there was any truth in Clara's theory about Rivers. Had Mrs Drummond herself fallen into that way of matchmaking which was natural to mothers? He breathed a little more freely when he presumed that it must be she, and she only, who was to blame, not Norah. He strolled on with his hands in his pockets, thinking if, perhaps, he could meet her, or see her at a window, or persuade Katie Dalton to fetch her; there was always a hundred chances of an accidental meeting in Dura. But he could not with his own sore heart and wounded temper go to the Gatehouse.

Just as Ned reached the lodge going out, Mr Rivers entered the gates coming back. He had a condescending, friendly way of accosting Ned which the young fellow could not bear.

'Ah, going into the village?' he said. 'I am glad to be able to assure you that nobody has suffered from last night.'

'I didn't suppose they had. I am going to the post,' said Ned, surly as a young bear.

'Don't let me detain you, in that case. The post is too important to wait for anything,' Rivers said, stepping aside.

Ned looked at him, and would have liked to knock him down. He thought what an effeminate puppy the fellow was, what a curled darling – the sort of thing that girls admire and think very fine, and all men despise. In short, the feelings with which a washed-out young woman contemplates the creature who is recognised as 'a gentleman's beauty' were a trifle to those which governed Ned. Such feelings, it would appear, must be natural. Ned despised the man for being handsome, and the women for thinking him so, with a virulence which no neglected maiden ever surpassed.

'Do you want me, Burton?' Mr Rivers said pleasantly, seeing that the other did not pass on.

'Oh, good heavens, no! not the least in the world,' cried boorish Ned, and went on without another word.

'Country lout!' the hero said quietly, with a smile to himself. If he could but have heard the comments upon him which were passing through the mind of Ned!

Clara, for her part, went home with her mind full of angry thoughts. She had no personal feeling about Cyril Rivers. If she liked any one it was poor Charlie, who was her slave. But Clara knew with precocious worldly wisdom that that would never come to anything. It might be all very well for the moment. It was pleasant enough to have him hanging about, watching her every look, attentive to her lightest word. But it never could come to anything. The highest prosperity which the future could bring to Charlie would be advancement in the public office where he was now a junior clerk. And that was no lot for her to share: she, Mr Burton's daughter, might (her father said) pick and choose among the most eligible men in England. Mr Burton was in the habit of speaking in this unguarded way. Clara was his favourite in the family, his chosen companion, his almost confidante. He was proud of her beauty and 'style,' and fond of thinking that, in mind at least, she resembled himself. It was he who had settled that Cyril Rivers should be invited to Dura, and should, as a natural consequence, offer all that remained to the Riverses to Clara. The idea of this alliance pleased his mind, though the Riverses were not so rich as they used to be. 'They are still very well off, and the title must be taken into consideration,' he had said to his wife. And when Clara returned home she found her parents sitting together in the library, which was not very common, and discussing their children's prospects, which was less common still. It was October, and there was a fire over which Mrs Burton was sitting. She was a chilly woman at all times. She had not blood enough, nor life enough physically, to keep her warm, and she had been up late, and was tired and not disposed to be on her best company behaviour in the big drawing-room on the chance that the Marchioness might come down-stairs. Mrs Burton was not quite so placid as she once had been. As her children had grown up there had been complications to encounter more trying to the temper than the naughtiness of their childhood; and it sometimes happened that all the advantages to be gained from a succession of fine visitors would be neutralized, or partially neutralized, by the reluctance of the mistress of the house to devote her personal attention to them. Or so, at least, Mr Burton thought. His wife, on the other hand, was of opinion that it was best to leave the visitors sometimes to themselves; and this was what she had done to-day. She had established herself over the library fire with a book after luncheon, leaving the Marchioness and the young ladies to drive or to repose as they pleased. And this piece of self-will had procured her a reprimand, as forcible as Mr Burton dared to deliver, when he came in and found her there.

'You are throwing away our chances, Clara,' he said. 'You are setting the worst example to the children. If the Marchioness had not been resting in her own rooms – '

'The Marchioness is very well, Mr Burton,' said his wife. 'You may be sure I know what I am doing so far as she is concerned. She does not want me to follow her about and make a fuss, as some people do.'

'I have always told you,' said Mr Burton, 'that I wished the utmost civility to be shown to people of her rank in my house. Why, Clara, what can you be thinking of? With all the ambitious ideas you have in your head for Ned – '

'My ambition is very easily satisfied,' she said, 'if you will let the boy follow his own inclinations. He has no turn for business; all that he would do in business would be to lose what you have made.'

'If he makes a good match – if he marries into the Merewether family – I should not say another word about business,' said Mr Burton. Looking at him in daylight, it was still more easy to perceive the change that had come over him. His clothes, those well-made, light-coloured clothes which had once been a model of everything that clothes should be, had begun to look almost shabby, though they were in themselves as glossy and as spotless as ever. Anxiety was written in the lines about his eyes. 'Should the children do well, Clara – should they do as we wish them – I should be tempted myself to get out of the business, when I have an opportunity,' he said. 'It is wearing work, especially when one has nobody to help, nobody to sympathize;' and the man who had been always the incarnation of prosperity, needing no props of external support, puffed out from his bosom a real sigh.

Mrs Burton took no notice; she was perfectly calm and unmoved, either unaware that her husband had displayed anything like emotion, or indifferent to it.

'I cannot say that I have ever been fond of these matchmaking schemes,' she said, 'and Ned is only a boy; but there is one thing that must be taken into consideration, whatever you may do in this matter; that is Norah Drummond. If she thinks differently, you may as well give up the conflict.'

'Norah Drummond!' said Mr Burton, grinding his teeth. 'By Jove! they talk about a man's pleasant sins being against him; but there is nothing so bad in that way as his unpleasant virtues, I can tell you. If all the annoyance I have had through these two women could be reckoned up – '

'I do not know what annoyance you may have had yourself,' said Mrs Burton, in her cold, judicial way. 'I have seen nothing to complain of. But now I confess it begins to be unpleasant. She has more influence over Ned than any of us. He danced with her last night before any one else. He is always there, or meeting her at other places. I have observed it for some time. But you have done nothing to stop it, Mr Burton. Sometimes I have thought you approved, from the way you have allowed things to go on.'

'I approve!' he cried, with something like horror.

'How was I to know? I do not say it is of very much importance. Ned, of course, will follow his own taste, not ours.'

'But, by Jove, he sha'n't!' cried Mr Burton. 'By Jove, he shall take himself out of this, and make his own way, if I hear any more nonsense. What! after all I have done to set them up in the world – after all I have gone through!'

He was affected, whatever was the cause. There was something like agitation about him. He was changed altogether from the confident man of former times. His wife looked at him with a little surprise, and came to this conclusion quite suddenly. She had not noticed it when he was among other people, playing his part of host with an offensive hospitality which often annoyed her, and which the Marchioness, for example, scarcely hesitated to show her contempt of. But now, when there was no one present, when he was free to look as he pleased, Mrs Burton found out all at once that her husband was changed. Was it merely that he was older, tired with last night's dissipation, not so able to defy late hours, and supper and champagne, as he had once done? She was not a woman to rest in so superficial a view of affairs; but for the moment these were the questions she asked herself, as she looked at him with calm yet undeniable surprise.

'You seem to be excited, Mr Burton,' she said.

'Excited!' he cried; 'and good reason, too; with you sitting there as cold as a little fish, never thinking of the interests of your family, talking of Ned thwarting me as if it was nothing! If I were excited it would be little wonder, I think.'

'I have no desire that Ned should thwart you,' she said; 'on the contrary, it is my own wish. He will never make a good man of business. A marriage with one of the Merewethers, or a girl in that position, with your money, Mr Burton, would be the best thing for him. He might get into Parliament, and do all that I once hoped for you; but what I hoped is neither here nor there.'

Mrs Burton was only human, though she was so philosophical; and this was a stroke in her own defence.

'See that Ned does it, then,' he said. 'Perhaps it was what I hoped too; but business has swallowed me up, instead of leaving me more free. You ought to make it your duty to see that Ned does what we both wish. What is there to stand in the way?'

'Not much,' said Mrs Burton, shrugging her shoulders. 'Norah Drummond – not a very large person – that is all.'

'Confound Norah Drummond! A man is always a fool when he thinks of other people. I am finding that out too late. But you may compose yourself about Ned,' added the father, with irony. 'That little thing has other fish to fry. She is poking herself into Clara's way, confound her! That sentimental ass, Rivers, who is unfit to touch my child's hand – '

'I heard of that too,' said Mrs Burton, in a low voice.

'I should think you did hear of it; but you never interfered, so far as I could see. He would have danced with her all night, if I had not taken it into my own hands. The ass! a poor little chit like that, when he might have had Clary! But, however, understand me, Clara, this is a woman's business. I want these children settled and put out in life. Ned may be rather young, but many a young fellow in his position is married at one-and-twenty. And, by Jove, I can't go on bearing this infernal strain! I should give it up if it was not for them.'

'Is there anything going wrong, Mr Burton?' asked his wife.

'What should be going wrong? I am tired of working and never getting any sympathy. I want a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law who will do us credit – but, above all, a son-in-law. And I don't see any obstacle in the way which you cannot overcome, if you choose.'

'I wonder,' said Mrs Burton, 'can I overcome Norah Drummond? – and her mother? They are the obstacles in the way.'

'Thanks to my confounded good-heartedness,' said her husband.

And it was at this moment Clara came in and joined their deliberations. Little more, however, was said, and she was sent away to seek out Lady Florizel, and do her duty to the young visitors as the daughter of the house should. Mr Burton went off himself to see if the Marchioness had made herself visible, and do his best to overwhelm her with fussy hospitality. But Mrs Burton sat still on the library fire and warmed her cold little feet, and set her mind to work out the problem. It was like a game of chess, with two skilfully-arrayed, scientific lines of attack all brought to nothing by a cunning little knight, of double movement-power, in the centre of the board. Either of the schemes on which her husband had set his heart, or both – and one of them was dear to herself also if she would have acknowledged it – might be brought to a satisfactory issue, if this little Norah, this penniless child, this poor little waif, who had grown up at their gates, could but be put out of the way. Was the part of Nemesis, so unlike her childish appearance and character, reserved for Norah? or was the mother using her child as the instrument of a deep, and patient, and long-prepared vengeance? It was the latter view of the question which was most congenial to Mrs Burton's mind; but whether it was that or fate, the greatest combinations which the family at the great house had yet ventured on, the things most concerning their comfort and happiness, were suddenly stopped short by this little figure. It was Norah Drummond, only Norah, who was the lion in the way.