She had not had even the excitement of flirtations, a few of which fall to the lot of nearly every girl, be she pretty or plain, rich or poor, town or country-bred. The military depots are now so numerous that it is hard, indeed, if at least a couple of subalterns cannot be found to come over any distance in the rumbling dog-cart hired from the inn in the provincial town where they are quartered; and though in Georgie's days there was no croquet,--that best of excuses for social gathering and mild flirtation,--yet there were archery-meetings, horticultural shows, and picnics. Failing the absence of the military, even the most-out-of-the-way country village can produce a curate; and an intending flirt has merely to tone-down certain notions and expand others, to modify her scarlets and work-up her grays, and she will have, if not a very exciting, at all events a very interesting, time in playing her fish. But there were no barracks within miles of Fishbourne, nor any temptations there to have attracted officers from them, if there had been. There were no resident gentry in the place, and the nearest house of any importance--Weston Tower, the seat of old Lady Majoribanks--was twenty miles off, and old Lady Majoribanks kept no company As for the curates, there was one, certainly; but Mr. Lucas had "assisted" Georgie's father for the last eighteen years, was fifty years old, and had a little wife as slow and as gray as the old pony which he used to ride to outlying parts of the parish.
Besides, if there had been eligible men in scores, what had they to do with Georgie Stanfield, or she with them? Was she not engaged to Charles Mitford?--at least, had she not been so affianced until that dreadful business about something wrong that brought poor Charley into disgrace? and was that sufficient to permit her to break her plighted word? Mr. Mitford, Charles's father, had been a banker and brewer at Cullompton, and had had a country cottage at Fishbourne, a charming little place for his family to come to in the summer; and Mr. Stanfield had been Charley's tutor; and when the family were away at Cullompton in the winter, Charley had remained at the vicarage; and what so likely as that Charley should fall in love with Georgie, then a tall slip of a girl in short petticoats and frilled trousers and very thin legs, with her hair in a net; or that Georgie should have reciprocated the attachment? Both the fathers were delighted at the arrangement; and there was no mother on either side to talk of extreme youth, the chance of change, or to interpose other womanly objections. There came a time when Charley, then a tall handsome fellow, was to go up to Oxford; and then Georgie, to whom the outward and visible frill period was long past, and who was a lovely budding girl of sweet seventeen, laid her head on his breast on the night before he went away, and promised never to forget him, but to be his and his alone.
Ah, those promises never to forget--those whispered words of love breathed by lips trembling under the thick cigar-scented moustache into delicate little ears trellised by braids fresh from the fingers of the lady's-maid! They are not much to the Corydons of St. James's Street, or the Phyllises of Belgravia. By how many different lips, and into how many different ears, are the words whispered and the vows breathed in the course of one London season! I declare I never pass through any of the great squares and streets, and see the men enclosing the balconies with striped calico, that I do not wonder to myself whether, amongst all the nonsense that has been talked beneath that well-worn awning-stuff, there has been any that has laid the foundation for, or given the crowning touch to, an honest simple love-match, a marriage undertaken by two people out of sheer regard for each other, and permitted by relatives and friends, without a single thought of money or position to be gained on either side. If there be any, they must be very few in number; and this, be it observed, not on account of that supposed favourite pastime of parents--the disposal of their daughters' hands and happiness to the highest bidder, the outcry against which has been so general, and is really, I believe, so undeserved. The circumstance is, I take it, entirely ascribable to the lax morality of the age, under which a girl engages herself to a man without the slightest forethought, often without the least intention of holding to her word, not unfrequently from the increased opportunities such a state of things affords her for flirting with some other man, and under which she can break her engagement and jilt her lover without compromising herself in the least in the eyes of society. Besides, in the course of a London life these vows and pledges are tendered so often as to be worn almost threadbare from the number of times they have been pledged; and as excess of familiarity always breeds contempt, the repetition of solemn phrases gradually takes from us the due appreciation of their meaning, and we repeat them parrot-wise, without the smallest care for what we are saying.
But that promise of love and truth and remembrance uttered by Georgie Stanfield on the sands at Fishbourne, under the yellow harvest-moon, with her head pillowed on Charles Mitford's breast and her arms clasped round his neck, came from a young heart which had known no guile, and was kept as religiously as was Sir Galahad's vow of chastity. Within a year after Charley's departure for Oxford, his father's affairs, which, as it afterwards appeared, had long been in hopeless confusion, became irretrievably involved. The bank stopped payment, and the old man, unable to face the storm of ignominy by which he imagined he should be assailed, committed suicide. The smash was complete; Charles had to leave the University, and became entirely dependent on his uncle, Sir Percy Mitford, who declined to see him, but offered to purchase for him a commission in a marching regiment, and to allow him fifty pounds a year. The young man accepted the offer; and by the same post wrote to Georgie, telling her all, and giving her the option of freeing herself from the engagement. It Was a gentlemanly act; but a cheap bit of generosity, after all. He might have staked the fifty pounds a year his uncle had promised him, on the fidelity of such a girl as Georgie Stanfield, more especially in the time of trouble. Her father, too, with his old disregard of the future, entirely approved of his daughter's standing by her lover under the circumstances of his altered fortune; and two letters--one breathing a renewal of love and trust, the other full of encouragement and hope--went away from Fishbourne parsonage, and brought tears into the eyes of their recipient, as he sat on the edge of a truckle-bed in a whitewashed room in Canterbury Barracks.
The vow of constancy and its renewal were two little epochs in Georgie's quiet life. Then, not very long after the occurrence of the last,--some six months,--there came a third, destined never to be forgotten. There had been no letter from Charley for some days, and Georgie had been in the habit of walking across the lawn to meet the postman and question him over the garden-wall.
One heavy dun August morning, when the clouds were solemnly gathering up together, the air dead and still, the trees hushed and motionless, Georgie had seen the old man with a letter in his hand, and had hastened, even more eagerly than usual, across the lawn, to be proportionately disappointed when the postman shook his head, and pointing to the letter, said, "For the master, miss." The next minute she heard the sharp clang of the gate-bell, and saw her father take the letter from the postman's hand at his little study-window. Some inward prompting--she knew not what--kept Georgie's eyes on her father. She saw him take out his spectacles, wipe then, and carefully adjust them; then take the letter, and holding it at nearly arm's length, examine its address; then comfortably settling himself in his armchair at the window, prepare to read it. Then Georgie saw the old man fall backward in his chair, his hand dropping powerless by his side, and the letter fluttering from it to the ground. Without uttering a cry, Georgie ran quickly to the house; but when she reached the study, Mr. Stanfield was sitting upright in his chair, and had picked the letter from the floor.
"Papa dearest," said Georgie, "you gave me such a fright. I was watching you from the garden, and I thought I saw you faint. O papa, you are ill! How white and scared you look! What is it, papa darling?--tell me."
But to all this Mr. Stanfield only murmured, gazing up into his daughter's face, "My poor child! my poor darling child!"
"What is it, papa? Oh, I know--it's about Charley! He's not--" and then she blanched dead-white, and said in a scarcely audible voice, "He's not dead, papa?"
"No, Georgie, no. It might be better if he were,--be better if he were."
"He's very ill, then?"
"No, darling,--at least--there; perhaps you'd better read it for yourself; here, read it for yourself;" and the old man, after giving her the letter, covered his face with his hands and sobbed aloud.
Then Georgie read in Sir Percy Mitford's roundest hand and stiffest style, how his nephew Charles, utterly ungrateful for the kindness which he, Sir Percy, had showered upon him, and regardless of the fact that he had no resources of his own nor expectations of any, had plunged into "every kind of vice and debauchery, notably gambling"--(Sir Percy was chairman of Quarter-Sessions, and you might trace the effect of act-of-parliament reading in his style)-how he had lost large sums at cards; and how, with the double object of paying his debts and retrieving his losses, lie had at length forged Sir Percy's signature to a bill for ￡200; and when the document became due had absconded, no one knew where. Sir Percy need scarcely say that all communication between him and this unworthy member of--he grieved to say--his family was at an end for ever; and he took that opportunity, while informing Mr. Stanfield of the circumstance, of congratulating him on having been lucky enough to escape any matrimonial connection with such a rogue and a vagabond.
Mr. Stanfield watched her perusal of the letter; and when she had finished it, and returned it to him calmly, he said:
"Well, my dear! it's a severe blow, is it not?"
"Yes, papa, it is indeed a severe blow. Poor Charley!"
"Poor Charley, my dear! You surely don't feel the least compassion for Charles Mitford; a man who has--who has outraged the laws of his country!"
"Not feel compassion for him, papa? Who could help it? Poor Charley, what a bitter degradation for him!"
"For him! degradation for him! Bless my soul, I can't understand; for us, Georgina,--degradation for us, you mean! However, there's an end of it. We've washed our hands of him from this time forth, and never--"
"Papa, do you know what you're saying? Washed our hands of Charles Mitford! Do you recollect that I have promised to be his wife?"
"Promised to be his wife! Why, the girl's going mad! Promised to be his wife! Do you know that the man has committed forgery?"
"Well, papa."
"Well, papa! Good God! I shall go mad myself! You know he's committed forgery, and you still hold to your engagement to him?"
"Unquestionably. Is it for me, his betrothed wife, to desert him now that he is in misery and disgrace? Is it for you, a Christian clergyman, to turn your back on an old friend who has fallen, and who needs your sympathy and counsel now really for the first time in his life? Would you wish me to give up this engagement, which, perhaps, may be the very means of bringing Charles back to the right?"
"Yes, my dear, yes; that's all very well," said the old gentleman,--"all very--well from a woman's point of view. But you see, for ourselves--"
"Well, papa, what then?"
"Well, my dear, of course we ought not to think so much for ourselves; but still, as your father, I've a right to say that I should not wish to see you married to a--a felon."
"And as a clergyman, papa?-what have you a right to say as a clergyman?"
"I--I: decline to pursue the subject, Georgina; so I'll only say this--that you're my daughter, and you're not of age yet; and I command you to break off this engagement with this--this criminal! That's all."
Georgie simply said, "You know my determination, papa." And there the matter ended.
This was the first quarrel that there had ever been between father and daughter, and both felt it very much indeed. Mr. Stanfield, who had about as much acquaintance with human nature, and as much power of reading character, as if he had been blind and deaf, thought Georgie would certainly give way, and laid all sorts of palpable traps, and gave all sorts of available opportunities for her to throw herself' into his arms, confess how wrong she had been, and promise never to think of Charles Mitford again. But Georgie fell in with none of these ways; she kissed her father's forehead on coming down in the morning, and repeated the process on retiring at night; but she never spoke to him at meal-times, and kept away from home as much as possible during the day, roaming over the country on her chestnut mare Polly, a tremendous favourite, which had been bought and broken for her by Charley in the old days.
During the whole of this time Mr. Stanfield was eminently uncomfortable. He had acted upon the ridiculous principle vulgarly rendered by the phrase, cutting off his nose to spite his face. He had deprived himself of a great many personal comforts without doing one bit of good. For a fortnight the Cullompton Chronicle had remained uncut and unread, though he knew there was an account of a bishop's visitation to the neighbouring diocese which would have interested him highly. For two consecutive Sundays the parishioners of Fishbourne had been regaled with old sermons in consequence of there being no one to transcribe the vicar's notes, which, save to Georgie, were unintelligible to--the world in general and to their writer in particular. He missed Georgie's form in the garden as he was accustomed to see it when looking up from his books or his writing; he missed her sweet voice carolling bird-like through the house, and always reminding him of that dead wife whose memory he so tenderly loved; and notwithstanding the constant horse-exercise, he thought, from sly glances which he had stolen across the table at her during dinner, that she was looking pale and careworn. Worst of all, he was not at all sure that the position he had taken up was entirely defensible on moral grounds. He was differently placed from that celebrated character in the Critic, who "as a father softened, but as a governor was fixed." As a father he might object to the continuance of an engagement between his child and a man who had proved himself a sinner not merely against religious ordinances, but against the laws of his country; but he was very doubtful whether, as a Christian and a clergyman, he was not bound to stretch out the hand of forgiveness, and endeavour to reclaim the penitent. If Mr. Stanfield had lived in these days, and been sufficiently before the world, he would probably have had "ten thousand college councils" to "thunder anathema" at him for daring to promulgate the doctrine that "God is love;" but in the little retired parish where he lived, he taught it because he believed it; and he felt that he had rather fallen away from his standard in endeavouring to coerce his daughter into giving up Charles Mitford.
So one morning, when Georgie came down to breakfast looking flushed and worried, and very little refreshed by her night's sleep, instead of calmly receiving the frontal kiss, as had been his wont during the preceding fortnight, the old man's arms were wound round her, his lips were pressed to hers, while he murmured, "Oh, Georgie! ah, my darling! ah, my child!" and there was a display of grandes eaux on both sides, and the reconciliation was complete. At a later period of that day Mr. Stanfield entered fully upon the subject of Charles Mitford, told Georgie that if the scapegrace could be found, he should be willingly received at the parsonage; and then the old gentleman concocted a mysterious advertisement, to the effect that if C. M., formerly of Fishbourne, Devon, would call on Mr. Stevens of Furnival's Inn, Holborn, London, he would hear something to his advantage, and be received with hearty welcome by friends who had forgiven, but not forgotten, him.
This advertisement, duly inserted through the medium of Mr. Stevens, the lawyer therein named, in the mystic second column of the Times Supplement, appeared regularly every other day during the space of a month; and good old Mr. Stanfield wrote twice a week to Mr. Stevens. inquiring whether "nothing had come of it;" and Mr. Stevens duly replied (at three shillings and sixpence a letter) that nothing had. It must have been two months after the concoction of the advertisement, and one after its last appearance in the columns of the Times, that there came a letter for Georgie, written in the well-known hand, and signed with the well-known initials. It was very short, merely saying that for the second time the writer felt it due to her to leave her unfettered by any past engagement existing between them; that he knew how he had disgraced and placed himself beyond the pale of society; but that he would always cherish her memory, and think of her as some pure and bright star which he might look up to, but to the possession of which he could never aspire.
Poor little Georgie was dreadfully touched by this epistle, and so was Mr. Stanfield, regarding it as a work of art; but as a practical man he thought he saw a chance for again working the disruption of the engagement-question--this time as suggested by Charles himself; and there was little doubt that he would have enunciated these sentiments at length, had he not been abruptly stopped by Georgie on his first giving a hint about it. Despairing of this mode of attack, the old gentleman became diplomatic and machiavelian; and I am inclined to think that it was owing to some secret conspiracy on his part, that young Frank Majoribanks, staying on a desperately-dreary three-weeks' visit with his aunt and patroness, Lady Majoribanks, took occasion to drive one of the old lady's old carriage-horses over to Fishbourne in a ramshackle springless cart belonging to the gardener, and to accept the vicar's offer of luncheon. He had not been five minutes in the house before Georgie found he had been at Oxford with Charley Mitford; and as he had nothing but laudatory remarks to make of his old chum (he had heard nothing of him since he left college), Georgie was very polite to him. But when, after his second or third visit, he completely threw aside Charley as his stalking-horse, and began to make running on his own account, Georgie saw through the whole thing in an instant, and treated him with such marked coldness that, being a man of the world, he took the hint readily, and never came near the place again. And Mr. Stanfield saw with dismay that his diplomacy succeeded no better than his threats, and that his daughter was as much devoted to Charles Mitford as ever.
So the two dwellers in the parsonage fell back into their ordinary course of life, and time went on, and Mr. Stanfield's hair grew gradually more gray, and his shoulders gradually more rounded, and the sweet girl of seventeen became the budding woman of twenty. Then one Thursday evening, in the discharge of her weekly task of reading to her father the Cullompton Chronicle, Georgie suddenly stopped, and although not in the least given to fainting or "nerves," was obliged to put her hand to her side and wait for breath. Then when a little recovered she read out to the wondering old gentleman the paragraph announcing the fatal accident to Sir Percy Mitford and his sons, and the accession of Charles to the title and estates. Like Paolo and Francesca,--though from a very different reason,--"that night they read no more," the newspaper was laid by, and each sat immersed in thought. The old man's simple faith led him to believe that at length the long-wished-for result had arrived, and that all his daughter's patience, long-suffering, and courage would be rewarded. But Georgie, though she smiled at her father's babble, knew that throughout her acquaintance with Charley he had gone through no such trial as that to which the acquisition of wealth and position would now subject him; and she prayed earnestly with all her soul and strength that in this time of temptation her lover might not fall away.
A fortnight passed, and Mr. Stanfield, finding not merely that he had not heard from the new baronet, but that no intelligence of him had been received at Redmoor, at the town house, or by the family lawyers, determined upon renewing his advertisement in the Times. By its side presently appeared another far less reticent, boldly calling on "Charles Mitford, formerly of Cullompton, Devon; then of Brasenose College, Oxford; then of the 26th regiment of the line;" to communicate with Messrs. Moss and Moss, Solicitors, Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, and hear something to his advantage. To this advertisement a line was added, which sent a thrill through the little household at the parsonage: "As the said Charles Mitford has not been heard of for some months, any one capable of legally proving his death should communicate with Messrs. M. and M. above named." Capable of legally proving his death! Could that be the end of all poor Georgie's life-dream? Could he have died without ever learning all her love for him, her truth to him? No! it was not so bad as that; though, but for the shrewdness of Edward Moss and the promptitude of Inspector Stellfox, it might have been. A very few hours more would have done it. As it was, little Dr. Prater, who happened to be dining with Marshal Moss at the Hummums when Mitford was brought there by the inspector, and who immediately undertook the case, scarcely thought he should pull his patient through. When the fierce stage of the disorder was past, there remained a horrible weakness and languor, which the clever little physician attacked in vain. "Nature, my dear sir,--nature and your native air, they must do the rest for you; the virtues of the pharmacopoeia are exhausted."
So one autumn evening, as Mr. Stanfield sat poring over his book, and Georgie, her hope day by day dying away within her, was looking out over the darkening landscape, the noise of wheels was heard at the gate; a grave man in black descended from the box of a postchaise, a worn, thin, haggard face peered out of the window; and the next instant, before Mr. Stanfield at all comprehended what had happened, the carriage door was thrown open, and Georgie was hanging round the neck of the carriage occupant; and kiss, kiss, and bless, bless! and thank God! and safe once more! was all the explanation audible.
Dr. Prater was quite right; nature and the patient's native air effected a complete cure. By the end of a month--such a happy month for Georgie!--Sir Charles was able to drive to Redmoor to see the men of business from London; by the end of two months he stood at the altar of the little Fishbourne church, and received his darling from the hands of her father; the ceremony being performed by the old curate, who had learned to love Georgie as his own child, and who wept plentifully as he bestowed on her his blessing.