“Well, Frank, I thought you were lost. Where 266have you been all this time? It is nearly a week since you were here.”
Frank said, rather confusedly, that he had been a good deal engaged.
“Nonsense, engaged! You may be out of an evening, but you could surely manage to run down some time in the day to see us.”
Frank knew that this was one of Captain Bradshaw’s weak points; that he liked attention, and could bear anything better than being neglected; so he said that he was sorry he had let so many days pass without calling, but would come oftener in future.
“That is right, Frank,” Captain Bradshaw said, mollified. “You know we don’t see many visitors here, and you brighten us up. It is not for myself, but for Alice’s sake, that I like you to come down often. You ought to be more attentive there.”
Frank thought that this was a good opportunity to express his opinion upon that point, and he said, rather coldly;—
“I really do not see, uncle, why I should be specially attentive to Alice. I do not think it 267likely that she interests herself in the slightest degree as to my comings and goings.”
Now Captain Bradshaw was just as anxious to have a talk with Frank upon this subject, as Frank was himself. For years this marriage between his nephew and niece had been his pet project. He had so thoroughly settled it in his own mind, that he believed they were equally agreed, and that although no actual love-making might have taken place, it was a sort of tacit engagement. He had often during Frank’s absence joked Alice about him, and the girl’s rising colour and evasive answers more than ever confirmed him in his opinion. Since Frank’s return, however, things had not gone quite as he had anticipated. It was not that he doubted in the least that all was right, for he was a good deal accustomed to have his own way, and had beside an old-fashioned idea that in these matters young people should do as their elders recommend. Still Frank was not so attentive as he ought to have been under the circumstances, and it was Captain Bradshaw’s opinion that now his nephew had had his fling, the sooner he settled down and married Alice Heathcote the better. He had 268therefore quite made up his mind to intimate his wishes to him upon the first opportunity.
“I hardly know what you mean, Frank. If I were a young man in your place, I should think that it would be only right and proper, under the circumstances, that she should take a good deal of interest in what I did.”
“What do you mean, uncle, by ‘under the circumstances?’” Frank asked, shortly.
“Mean, Frank? Damme, I mean, of course, in the relation in which you stand to each other.”
“I am your nephew, uncle Harry, and Alice is your niece; but I imagine that the relationship between us is something very slight.”
“Pooh! nonsense, man!” Captain Bradshaw said, irritably; “you know what I mean; but I will put it plainly for you, if you like. I think it natural that Alice should feel some interest in your goings-on, considering that you are some day going to be man and wife.”
“Man and wife, uncle? What are you thinking about? Alice and I have about as much idea of marrying each other as we have of flying.”
269“Damme, sir!” Captain Bradshaw commenced, fiercely; “but no, I will not get angry;” and then he continued, in a tone of concentrated rage, which showed far more than any gesticulation could have done, how angry he was: “Do you mean to tell me, seriously, Frank Maynard, that you do not intend to marry your cousin, Alice Heathcote?”
“Most distinctly and clearly, uncle, I do not. I like Alice exceedingly. I love her almost as a sister. She is a dear, good girl; but I have not, and never had, the slightest intention of marrying her.”
Captain Bradshaw sat down. He could not trust himself to speak for some time; he knew how passionate he was, and that he should be sure to say something which he would afterwards wish unsaid. At last, after a great struggle with himself, he said, quietly;—
“My dear Frank, you have upset me sadly. I always thought it was an understood thing between you, and I had set my mind on it. For years I have planned and hoped for this. What objection can you have? It would make me very happy. You are like a son to me, Alice like 270a daughter; why can you not come together?”
“My dear uncle,” Frank said, “there is hardly anything that I would not do to give you pleasure, but I can hardly change my present feeling for Alice into the love I should give to a wife. I am sorry, very sorry, that you are disappointed, but I never dreamed of such a thing. If you had spoken about it some years sooner, I might have got to look upon it in that way. But it is too late now.”
“But I always thought you did understand, Frank. I have watched you both closely, and I thought you loved Alice, and I was quite sure Alice——”
Captain Bradshaw did not finish his sentence, for the folding doors opened suddenly, and Alice Heathcote herself stood among them. Had not the light of the winter afternoon faded out,—the room being only lit by the deep red glow of the fire,—they would have seen that her face was very pale, and that her cheeks were still wet with tears. However, she gave them little time to notice this, for she moved hastily forward, and stood between them with her back to the fire, so that 271her face was in deep shadow. Then she said, trying to speak in a playful tone, but in a voice which shook and wavered a little as she began;—
“My dear uncle, if you gentlemen want to talk secrets you should not choose a room with folding doors, through which every word can be heard. Not that I am sorry I heard what you said, in the first place, because I have a right to have a voice in a matter in which I am so much interested; and in the second, because I am able to come in and join my voice to Frank’s in asking you to let us each go our own way. You see, uncle, we make very good cousins, but we have no inclination to exchange that relationship for a nearer one. Let us have our own way, uncle: you cannot make two people love each other who have no natural inclination that way, and we could not love you better if we were married than we do separately.”
Captain Bradshaw was silent for a moment in astonishment, and then broke out;—
“Damme, Alice, if I understand you at all. I always thought——”
Alice stepped forward, and laid her hands upon his shoulder, and murmured very low, so that 272only he could hear her, “Hush, uncle, for pity’s sake!” and then, more loudly, “you see, uncle, unfortunately, we have been playing at cross-purposes; Frank and I have been caring for each other in a brotherly and sisterly sort of way, and you, wanting it to be something else, have all along misinterpreted what you saw. Now, be a dear, kind uncle, as you always are, and let us have our own way.”
“Just so, uncle,” Frank put in; “you see it has all been a mistake, and I am very glad that Alice has overheard us, because she has been able to assure you that she agrees with me.”
Captain Bradshaw was silent for a moment, and then said softly to Alice as he kissed her cheek;—
“You are a darling, Alice; as for you, sir,” he said, turning fiercely upon Frank, “my opinion of you, sir, is, that you are a young fool. Yes, sir, damme, a thorough young fool,” and with this explosion of wrath, Captain Bradshaw strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Frank gave a long whistle.
“Upon my word, Alice, this is too bad; Uncle 273Harry is turning a complete tyrant in his old age. The idea of getting into a passion because you and I, who have known each other for the last ten years, are not going to fall in love with each other all at once to please him. It is too absurd, upon my word.”
“Very absurd, Frank,” Alice said, quietly; “and now I think you had better go, and I will go down and pacify uncle.”
Frank took up his hat, but paused as he went towards the door, and said,—
“I hope I did not say anything rude about you, Alice? You know how much I like you as a sister; but I was obliged to protest against his making us man and wife, when I know that neither of us had such an idea in our heads. You are not vexed, Alice?”
“Not vexed at all, Frank,” she said, quietly; “now, please go.”
Frank went downstairs, and out into the chilly evening air, with a strong feeling of discontent at things in general. The whole thing was, he assured himself, too ridiculous; still, somehow or other, he did not feel as pleased as he had expected now that the affair was settled. By 274the time he reached the Temple, however, he had recovered his usual good temper; and going straight up into Prescott’s room, he sat down and gave his friend an exact account of what had passed. Prescott listened with great attention. When Frank came to the part where Alice appeared upon the scene, Prescott almost held his breath to catch every word, and murmured to himself,—
“Dear Alice; dear, brave girl.”
When Frank had done, he said,—
“Now, Prescott, just give me your opinion of it all; it is too bad, is it not?”
“Do you want my honest opinion, Frank?”
“Of course I do, Prescott.”
“Very well, Frank; then I will give it you. I agree entirely with your uncle. You are a fool, and a thorough fool.”
It would have been a very dangerous proceeding for anyone else than Prescott to have expressed this opinion of Frank to his face. As it was, Frank looked for a moment as if inclined to be exceedingly angry, but glancing at Prescott’s thoughtful face as he looked into the fire, his brow cleared again, and he said,—
275“At any rate, old man, I was a fool to ask your opinion, for I might have known beforehand what it would be. You had as good as said you were in the plot with uncle, and advised me to marry Alice, so you are put out by finding that you are ridiculously mistaken. I can only say, that as you would have doubtless acted so much more wisely in the matter than I have done, I wish you had been in my place.”
“I wish to heaven that I had been, Frank,” Prescott said, with an earnest sadness.
“Upon my word, I wish you had, Prescott, for I do believe that you love Alice; although why, if you do, you should have been urging me on to marry her, is more than I can make out.”
“I wished you to marry her, Frank, because, above all things, 1 should want to see her happy.”
“Then why in the name of fortune don’t you marry her, and make her happy yourself, Prescott?”
“Because she would not let me, Frank.”
“Pooh, nonsense, Prescott! we know very well that she does not care for me, thank goodness; 276and, therefore, it is all the more likely that she may for you.”
Prescott did not care to pursue the subject farther, for he did not wish his friend to see that he felt any serious interest in the matter.
When Frank Maynard had left the house in Lowndes Square, Alice Heathcote did not for some time carry out the intention she had expressed of going downstairs to pacify her uncle. As she sat in her low easy-chair before the fire, not leaning back, but with her figure bowed, her hands listlessly clasping each other, and a look of weary hopelessness upon her face, she needed comfort too much to be able to dispense it. Alice had suffered a severe shock; one of those shocks which cast a shade over the whole life. The pain of a rejection—or, perhaps, more properly speaking, the duration of that pain—is in almost exact proportion to the amount of hope which was previously entertained. Instances are not wanting, indeed, where a perfectly hopeless attachment has embittered a whole existence; but those who so suffered must have been endowed either with a peculiarly sensitive organisation, or an ill-regulated mind.
277It is the same thing in all relations of life. If a man hopes to attain a large fortune by the death of a relation, or by a fortunate speculation, or successful invention, he will form plans for the future, and build greatly upon his expectations. It will be a great shock, then, when he finds that the money is left to another, or the speculation or invention turns out a failure; but it will not rankle in his mind, will not permanently affect his whole career in life as it would do had a banker, with whom he had placed a similar sum of money, failed. It needs certainty, or that strong belief which is the same as certainty, to make the loss of a fortune, or the failure of a love-dream, cast a permanent blight over a life. Had Alice Heathcote doubted Frank’s feelings for her, she might still have loved him truly, she might have dreamed happy dreams, and built fairy castles of love and happiness. But she never would have quite given way to her love; she would have known that her dreams were but visions which might never come true, and that her castles were but baseless fabrics after all. Had she then found out that Frank did not love her, she would have felt it as 278a very great pain; she would have mourned over her vanished dreams, and her ruined castles, but the wound, deep as it might have been, would have healed over in time, and left but a slight scar. But she had believed, believed surely, that her love was returned, and so had given her whole heart, and nursed her love until it had become a part of her very being. Many things had assisted to cause this delusion. For so many years, almost ever since she could remember, she had looked up to him as her protector and adviser. He had always seemed fond of her, and, having no sister of his own, had petted and made very much of her; and Frank had a warm kindly way about his manner and talk which might very well deceive a young girl into the belief that his affection was love. While he was abroad, too, he had written so often and so affectionately, that, judging his feelings by her own, she had believed that he loved her. But most of all she had been deceived by her uncle’s manner and talk. The little hints and innuendos he frequently threw out, the way in which he had seemed to consider that it was a settled thing, had impressed 279her with the idea that Frank had spoken to him upon the subject before he left England, and was only waiting until his return to ask her formally. And so she had given her whole heart, trustingly and confidingly, and it was now a terrible shock to find that she had been mistaken after all. She could not blame him; she knew now that her eyes were opened, that he had never spoken or looked as a cousin, thrown with her as he had been, might not have done. Nor could she blame herself; for she felt that it would, under the circumstances, have been next to impossible for her not to have misinterpreted him. She could only lament her mistake, and feel with grief and bitterness, that her bright hopes and dreams had all faded away, that her castles which had seemed so solid had fallen, and that there was nothing to take their place; that dreaming and hoping were over for her, and the light of her life gone out for ever. So she sat there, and looked with a dull pain into the fire; the slight fingers twined in and out round each other, the lips, folded together to keep in the cry of grief she could hardly repress, yet quivering restlessly, while 280from time to time great tears rolled down from the long lashes. For a long while she sat thus; sometimes quite quiet, at others swaying herself backwards and forwards. At last, when the clock upon the mantel struck six, she roused herself with a weary sigh that was almost a wail, passed her hands slowly across her forehead and back over the hair by her temples, and then, dropping them listlessly by her side, passed out and up to her own room. She did not come downstairs until the dinner was announced; but when she did there were few signs upon her face of the hard struggle she had gone through. Captain Bradshaw, on the other hand, had by no means recovered the equability of his temper. He was throughout dinner in a state of explosion. He swore at the footman in an unusual way, and sent fiery messages to the cook, until she was, as she expressed it, so flustered she did not know what she was doing. Even the footman, accustomed as he was to his master’s outbreaks, felt aggrieved.
“He is just the very image of an Indian tiger, cook. I have been with him a good many years now, but I never did know him so awful cantankerous 281as he is to-day. He ain’t a bad master, the Captain, noways, but flesh and blood can’t put up with him; not white flesh and blood, black might; I shall tell him in the morning he must provide himself elsewhere.”
“Why didn’t you tell him now?” the cook asked sarcastically. “I would, right off.”
“I don’t think you would now, cook; I wouldn’t, no, not if he were to swear ten times wuss at me. He’s a regular old tiger, when his temper’s up, he is; and if any one were to say anything to him it would be a dreadful business; pretty nigh as much as one’s life were worth, I should say. Lor’ bless you, he would think nothing of taking up a poker or a candlestick, or a soup tureen, or anything which happened to come handy to him at the time.”
“And what does Miss Alice say to it all, James?”
“She is a right down good one, she is,” the footman said, admiringly; “she does all she can, but to-day he’s too fierce even for her. She ain’t looking quite herself neither. She did try once or twice to smooth him down a bit, but, 282bless you, when he’s in such a tantrum as he is to-day, nothing short of a strait-waistcoat and a cold bath would smooth him down.”
While this conversation was passing below, Alice Heathcote was having by no means a pleasant time of it upstairs. Captain Bradshaw had taken his usual place by the fire, with his port wine upon a small table beside him, while Alice sat down opposite, with a piece of fancy work in her hands as an excuse for idleness. For a little time after the servant had left the room, there was silence, and then Captain Bradshaw, after drinking off a glass of wine, and pouring himself out another, said, with great deliberation,—
“And now, Alice, I shall be glad if you will give me an explanation of all this; for, damme, if I can make head or tail of it.”
“My dear uncle,” Alice said, cheerfully, “I don’t know that there is anything to explain. You see, Frank and I do not want to marry each other, and although I believe that parents and guardians have a right to put a veto upon marriages of which they do not approve, I confess that I do not think their power extends to the 283point of compelling two strongly objecting parties to marry each other.”
Captain Bradshaw rubbed his forehead with his handkerchief, and then performed the same operation with great violence all over his head, brushing up his short grey hair into a state of the wildest and most aggressive looking confusion. It was not that he was actually hot, but it was a trick he had acquired in India, and was a certain sign, with him, of great irritation.
“But I always looked upon it as a settled thing, Alice; I have set my mind upon it for years, and I always felt sure that you were fond of him. I don’t know what to make of it; but if you do care for him, Alice, by Gad, he shall marry you, or, at any rate, he shall be made most thoroughly to understand that not one penny of my money shall he ever have if he does not.”
“Thank you very much, uncle,” Alice said, smiling quietly; “but you see I should not particularly care about being married to a man who only took me as an incumbrance with my money and yours.”
“But, Alice,” her uncle said impatiently, “I do not understand why you took his part to-day, 284and so rendered all I said of no avail. I was sure you cared for him. You never attempted to deny it when I spoke to you upon the subject, and now you upset all the force of my arguments, and confirm that young jackanapes in his refusal to listen to my wishes, by saying that you are mutually indifferent to each other.”
“My dear uncle,” Alice said, very gravely, “the whole of the unfortunate position has been brought about by your deceiving yourself in the first place; and in the second, by the very unfair and unjustifiable way in which you have deceived me.”
“Upon my word, Alice,” Captain Bradshaw said, astonished at this sudden attack upon himself, and replacing untasted upon the table the wine he was in the act of raising to his lips, “I do not understand what you mean.”
“This is what I mean, uncle. You all along thought and hoped that Frank and I would some day take a fancy to each other. About that I have no reason to complain, nor that you deceived yourself into believing that things were turning out as you wished. What you were wrong in, my dear uncle, was, to have spoken to me as you 285did about Frank. What could I think? I could not suppose it possible that you were doing so merely upon the strength of your hopes upon the subject. I naturally concluded that you were in his confidence, that you had talked the matter over before he left England, and that although he or you might have thought it wrong to ask me to enter upon an engagement at the age of eighteen, and just as he was leaving England for two or three years, still that he perfectly intended to propose for me upon his return. What else could I think, uncle?”
Captain Bradshaw was silent. He felt that he had been wrong, and that without sufficient cause he had led his niece to believe that Frank loved her, and had thus greatly endangered the happiness of his favourite. Once feeling himself to be wrong, no one could be more ready to admit it than Captain Bradshaw.
“Upon my word, Alice,” he said, earnestly, “I never looked upon it in that light. I see that what you say is true, and that I have behaved like an old fool, as I am, in the matter. But even now it may not be too late—even now I may be able to persuade Frank——”
286“My dear uncle, you forget that I could not accept him under such conditions, and beside that, few men are less likely to be persuaded or forced in a matter of this sort than Frank is. It would be folly upon my part to pretend that I do not like him very much. I always believed that he cared for me; and I daresay, had he been very attentive when he returned, and made pretty speeches, and behaved well, I should not have, thrown any serious obstacle in the way of the fulfilment of your pet project. As it is, I find now that I have been mistaken all along as to the whole affair, and all I have to do is, to make myself as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.”
“I am afraid that I have done a great deal of harm,” the old man said, sadly, “and I can only say that I did not do it wilfully, for I certainly deceived myself as much as I did you; but that is a very poor consolation to me when I reflect that my thoughtless folly has made you miserable.”
“Not miserable, uncle,” Alice said, speaking as cheerfully as she could, though she had very hard work to prevent herself from breaking down and going off in a fit of crying. “Not quite so 287bad as that. It has been a little shock for me, but I shall soon get over that. But, please, do not speak about it any more. At any rate, Frank is not to blame in the matter. You could not renew it with him without letting out that we have both been deceiving ourselves about it; and it would, of course, be very painful for me to know that he even guessed that it was so.” So saying, Alice went across and kissed her uncle. “That is settled, then?”
“Ay, ay, Alice. I do not see that I can say no to you. I have made so much mischief that the least I can do is to let you have your own way now. As for Frank, I repeat what I told him to-day—that he is a thorough fool not to have fallen in love with the dearest and best girl in the world.”
Alice was satisfied, for she had gained more than she had anticipated, knowing well how obstinate her uncle was when he had once set his mind upon anything. Indeed, it was only the thought, that the pain he knew Alice must be feeling was caused by his own error, which made Captain Bradshaw, as a sort of reparation, give up his long-cherished plans and hopes.
288And so, as far as taking active measures were concerned, the matter dropped; but not from the thoughts of either. Captain Bradshaw could not forgive Frank all at once, for having thwarted his plans, and made Alice unhappy; nor could he forgive himself for the share he had taken in the affair. For although Alice tried hard to seem cheerful when with her uncle,—though she talked more, and smiled more frequently than had been her wont,—she could not deceive him, now that he was really watching her. Her voice was not always steady and under her command; she spoke in a forced way, very unlike her former merry talk; and above all, the smile never went farther than her lips—never lit up the rest of her face. Over that a cloud had fallen. It was difficult to say what the change was, but it was as if the light had suddenly gone out. Her uncle tried to be very kind to her, but at this time he did not make matters easy for her. The very tone of kindness and commiseration in which he spoke to her was in itself a trial; while with every one else he was so terribly bad tempered that he made the lives of all around him a burden to them.
289Frank called a few days afterwards, and Captain Bradshaw hardly spoke to him; but Frank had made up his mind that his uncle must be allowed time to work off his disappointment, and appeared to take no notice of this, but chatted with Alice as usual.
These first visits of Frank’s were a great trial to Alice, but she had at least the satisfaction of knowing that he did not even guess what the state of her heart was, and was therefore able to get on with him better than she had expected to have done. At first, too, Frank made his calls as short as possible, for with his uncle in a state of extreme irritation, they were by no means pleasant visits. After a fortnight or so Captain Bradshaw began to calm down, and things gradually resumed their old footing, except that Alice still looked pale and wan, and her voice was no longer to be heard singing snatches of old ballads as she moved about the house. But of this Frank knew nothing, and put down her altered looks partly to the annoyances he conceived that she had to bear from his uncle’s temper.
It was after one of these visits he said to Prescott,—
290“I think, Prescott, it would be a great thing if I were to go away for a little while. I have been thinking on my way back, that if I were to write to Teddy Drake, and offer to pay him a visit, it would be very good fun, and would give my uncle time to get into a better temper. As long as I am in town I must call regularly, and that keeps the sore open; whereas, if I go away only for a fortnight it will calm him down a little. I shall be very glad to see Teddy, too, for I have not seen him since I came back.”
“I think it is a very good plan, Frank. Do you know his address?”
“Oh, yes. Teddy and I exchange letters once a year or so. I will write at once, Prescott. I shall be very glad to get away for awhile, for I am heartily sick of this London life.”