The girl's folly and perverseness on this head were known to them all,--but as yet her greater folly and worse perverseness, her vitiated taste and dreadful partiality for the Portuguese adventurer, were known but to the two old men and to poor Arthur himself.When that sternly magnificent old lady Mrs Fletcher,--whose ancestors had been Welsh kings in the time of the Romans,--when she should hear this story, the roof of the old hall would hardly be able to hold her wrath and her dismay! The old kings had died away, but the Fletchers and the Vaughans,--of whom she had been one,--and the Whartons remained, a peculiar people in an age that was then surrendering itself to quick perdition, and with peculiar duties.Among these duties, the chiefest of them incumbent on females was that of so restraining their affections that they should never damage the good cause by leaving it.They might marry within the pale,--or remain single, as might be their lot.She would not take upon herself to say that Emily Wharton was bound to accept Arthur Fletcher, merely because such a marriage was fitting,--although she did think that there was much perverseness in the girl, who might have taught herself, had she not been so stubborn, to comply with the wishes of the families.But to love one so below herself, a man without a father, a foreigner, a black Portuguese Jew, merely because he had a bright eye, and a hook nose, and a glib tongue,--that a girl from the Whartons should do this,--! It was so unnatural to Mrs Fletcher that it would be hardly possible to her to be civil to the girl after she had heard that her mind and taste were so astray.All this Sir Alured knew and the barrister knew it,--and they feared her indignation the more because they sympathized with the old lady's feelings.
'Emily Wharton doesn't seem to me to be a bit more gracious than she used to be,' Mrs Fletcher said to Lady Wharton that night.
The two old ladies were sitting together upstairs, and Mrs John Fletcher was with them.In such conferences Mrs Fletcher always domineered,--to perfect contentment of old Lady Wharton, but not equally so to that of her daughter-in-law.
'I'm afraid she's not very happy,' said Lady Wharton.
'She has everything that ought to make a girl happy, and I don't know what it is she wants.It makes me quite angry to see her so discontented.She doesn't say a word, but sits there as glum as death.If I were Arthur I would leave her for six months, and never speak to her during that time.'
'I suppose, mother,' said the younger Mrs Fletcher,--who called her husband's mother, mother, and her own mother, mamma,--'a girl needn't marry a man unless she likes him.'
'But she should try to like him if it's suitable in other respects.I don't mean to take any trouble about it.Arthur needn't beg for any favour.Only I wouldn't have come here if Ihad thought that she had intended to sit silent like that always.'
'It makes her unhappy, I suppose,' said Lady Wharton, 'because she can't do what we all want.'
'Fall, lall! She'd have wanted it herself if nobody else had wished it.I'm surprised that Arthur should be so much taken with her.'
'You'd better say nothing more about it, mother.'
'I don't mean to say anything more about it.It's nothing to me.
Arthur can do very well in the world without Emily Wharton.Only a girl like that will sometimes make a disgraceful match; and we should all feel that.'
'I don't think Emily will do anything disgraceful,' said Lady Wharton.And so they parted.
In the meantime the two brothers were smoking their pipes in the housekeeper's room, which, at Wharton, when the Fletchers or Everett were there, was freely used for that purpose.
'Isn't it rather quaint of you,' said the elder brother, 'coming down here in the middle of term time?'
'It doesn't matter much.'
'I should have thought it would matter;--that is, if you mean to go on with it.'
'I'm not going to make a slave of myself about it, if you mean that.I don't suppose I shall ever marry,--and for rising to be a swell in the profession, I don't care about it.'
'You used to care about it,--very much.You used to say that if you didn't get to the top it shouldn't be your own fault.'
'And I have worked;--and I do work.But things get changed somehow.I've half a mind to give it all up,--to raise a lot of money, and to start off with a resolution to see every corner of the world.I suppose a man could do it in about thirty years if he lived so long.It's the kind of thing that would suit me.'
'Exactly.I don't know of any fellow who has been more into society, and therefore you are exactly the man to live alone for the rest of your life.You've always worked hard, I will say that for you;--and therefore you're just the man to be contented with idleness.You've always been ambitious and self-confident, and therefore it will suit you to a T, to be nobody, and to do nothing.' Arthur sat silent, smoking his pipe with all his might, and his brother continued,--'Besides,--you read sometimes, I fancy.'
'I should read all the more.'
'Very likely.But what you have read, in the old plays, for instance, must have taught you that when a man is cut about a woman,--which I suppose is your case just at present,--he never does get over it.He never gets all right after a time,--does he? Such a one had better go and turn monk at once, as the world is over for him altogether;--isn't it? Men don't recover after a month or two, and go on just the same.You've never seen that kind of thing yourself?'
'I'm not going to cut my throat or turn monk either.'
'No.There are so many steamboats and railways now that travelling seems easier.Suppose you go as far as St Petersburg, and see if that does you any good.If it don't, you needn't go on, because it will be hopeless.If it does,--why, you can come back, because the second journey will do the rest.'
'There never was anything, John, that wasn't a matter for chaff with you.'