Between her son, and her married daughter, and Lucy Morris, poor Lady Fawn’s life had become a burthen to her. Everything was astray, and there was no happiness or tranquillity at Fawn Court. Of all simply human creeds, the strongest existing creed for the present in the minds of the Fawn ladies was that which had reference to the general iniquity of Lizzie Eustace. She had been the cause of all these sorrows, and she was hated so much the more because she had not been proved to be iniquitous before all the world. There had been a time when it seemed to be admitted that she was so wicked in keeping the diamonds in opposition to the continued demands made for them by Mr. Camperdown, that all people would be justified in dropping her, and Lord Fawn among the number. But since the two robberies public opinion had veered round three or four points in Lizzie’s favour and people were beginning to say that she had been ill-used. Then had come Mrs. Hittaway’s evidence as to Lizzie’s wicked doings down in Scotland — the wicked doings which Andy Gowran had described with a vehemence so terribly moral — and that which had been at first, as it were, added to the diamonds, as a supplementary weight thrown into the scale so that Lizzie’s iniquities might bring her absolutely to the ground, had gradually assumed the position of being the first charge against her. Lady Fawn had felt no aversion to discussing the diamonds. When Lizzie was called a “thief,” and a “robber,” and a “swindler,” by one or another of the ladies of the family — who, in using those strong terms, whispered the words as ladies are wont to do when they desire to lessen the impropriety of the strength of their language by the gentleness of the tone in which the words are spoken — when Lizzie was thus described in Lady Fawn’s hearing in her own house, she had felt no repugnance to it. It was well that the fact should be known, so that everybody might be aware that her son was doing right in refusing to marry so wicked a lady. But when the other thing was added to it; when the story was told of what Mr. Gowran had seen among the rocks, and when gradually that became the special crime which was to justify her son in dropping the lady’s acquaintance, then Lady Fawn became very unhappy, and found the subject to be, as Mrs. Hittaway had described it, very distasteful.
And this trouble hit Lucy Morris as hard as it did Lord Fawn. If Lizzie Eustace was unfit to marry Lord Fawn because of these things, then was Frank Greystock not only unfit to marry Lucy, but most unlikely to do so, whether fit or unfit. For a week or two Lady Fawn had allowed herself to share Lucy’s joy, and to believe that Mr. Greystock would prove himself true to the girl whose heart he had made all his own; but she had soon learned to distrust the young member of Parliament who was always behaving insolently to her son, who spent his holidays down with Lizzie Eustace, who never visited and rarely wrote to the girl he had promised to marry, and as to whom all the world agreed in saying that he was far too much in debt to marry any woman who had not means to help him. It was all sorrow and vexation together; and yet when her married daughter would press the subject upon her, and demand her co-operation, she had no power of escaping.
“Mamma,” Mrs. Hittaway had said, “Lady Glencora Palliser has been with her, and everybody is taking her up, and if her conduct down in Scotland isn’t proved, Frederic will be made to marry her.”
“But what can I do, my dear?” Lady Fawn had asked, almost in tears.
“Insist that Frederic shall know the whole truth,” replied Mrs. Hittaway with energy. “Of course it is very disagreeable. Nobody can feel it more than I do. It is horrible to have to talk about such things, and to think of them.”
“Indeed it is, Clara, very horrible.”
“But anything, mamma, is better than that Frederic should be allowed to marry such a woman as that. It must be proved to him — how unfit she is to be his wife.” With the view of carrying out this intention, Mrs. Hittaway had, as we have seen, received Andy Gowran at her own house; and with the same view she took Andy Gowran the following morning down to Richmond.
Mrs. Hittaway, and her mother, and Andy were closeted together for half an hour, and Lady Fawn suffered grievously. Lord Fawn had found that he couldn’t hear the story, and he had not heard it. He had been strong enough to escape, and had, upon the whole, got the best of it in the slight skirmish which had taken place between him and the Scotchman, but poor old Lady Fawn could not escape. Andy was allowed to be eloquent, and the whole story was told to her, though she would almost sooner have been flogged at a cart’s tail than have heard it. Then “rafrashments” were administered to Andy of a nature which made him prefer Fawn Court to Warwick Square, and he was told that he might go back to Portray as soon as he pleased.
When he was gone, Mrs. Hittaway opened her mind to her mother altogether. “The truth is, mamma, that Frederic will marry her.”
“But why? I thought that he had declared that he would give it up. I thought that he had said so to herself.”
“What of that, if he retracts what he said? He is so weak. Lady Glencora Palliser has made him promise to go and see her; and he is to go today. He is there now, probably, at this very moment. If he had been firm, the thing was done. After all that has taken place, nobody would ever have supposed that his engagement need go for anything. But what can he say to her now that he is in with her, except just do the mischief all over again? I call it quite wicked in that woman’s interfering. I do, indeed! She’s a nasty, insolent, impertinent creature; that’s what she is. After all the trouble I’ve taken, she comes and undoes it all with one word.”
“What can we do, Clara?”
“Well; I do believe that if Frederic could be made to act as he ought to do, just for a while, she would marry her cousin, Mr. Greystock, and then there would be an end of it altogether. I really think that she likes him best, and from all that I can hear she would take him now, if Frederic would only keep out of the way. As for him, of course he is doing his very best to get her. He has not one shilling to rub against another, and is over head and ears in debt.”
“Poor Lucy!” ejaculated Lady Fawn.
“Well, yes; but really that is a matter of course. I always thought, mamma, that you and Amelia were a little wrong to coax her up in that belief.”
“But, my dear, the man proposed for her in the plainest possible manner. I saw his letter.”
“No doubt; men do propose. We all know that. I’m sure I don’t know what they get by it, but I suppose it amuses them. There used to be a sort of feeling that if a man behaved badly something would be done to him; but that’s all over now. A man may propose to whom he likes, and if he chooses to say afterwards that it doesn’t mean anything, there’s nothing in the world to bring him to book.”
“That’s very hard,” said the elder lady, of whom everybody said that she did not understand the world as well as her daughter.
“The girls — they all know that it is so, and I suppose it comes to the same thing in the long run. The men have to marry, and what one girl loses another girl gets.”
“It will kill Lucy.”
“Girls ain’t killed so easy, mamma — not now-a-days. Saying that it will kill her won’t change the man’s nature. It wasn’t to be expected that such a man as Frank Greystock, in debt, and in Parliament, and going to all the best houses, should marry your governess. What was he to get by it? That’s what I want to know.”
“I suppose he loved her.”
“Laws, mamma, how antediluvian you are! No doubt he did like her — after his fashion; though what he saw in her, I never could tell. I think Miss Morris would make a very nice wife for a country clergyman who didn’t care how poor things were. But she has no style; and as far as I can see she has no beauty. Why should such a man as Frank Greystock tie himself by the leg for ever to such a girl as that? But, mamma, he doesn’t mean to marry Lucy Morris. Would he have been going on in that way with his cousin down in Scotland had he meant it? He means nothing of the kind. He means to marry Lady Eustace’s income if he can get it; and she would marry him before the summer, if only we could keep Frederic away from her.”
Mrs. Hittaway demanded from her mother that in season and out of season she should be urgent with Lord Fawn, impressing upon him the necessity of waiting, in order that he might see how false Lady Eustace was to him; and also that she should teach Lucy Morris how vain were all her hopes. If Lucy Morris would withdraw her claims altogether the thing might probably be more quickly and more surely managed. If Lucy could be induced to tell Frank that she withdrew her claim, and that she saw how impossible it was that they should ever be man and wife, then — so argued Mrs. Hittaway — Frank would at once throw himself at his cousin’s feet, and all the difficulty would be over. The abominable, unjustifiable, and insolent interference of Lady Glencora just at the present moment would be the means of undoing all the good that had been done, unless it could be neutralised by some such activity as this. The necklace had absolutely faded away into nothing. The sly creature was almost becoming a heroine on the strength of the necklace. The very mystery with which the robberies were pervaded was acting in her favour. Lord Fawn would absolutely be made to marry her — forced into it by Lady Glencora and that set — unless the love affair between her and her cousin, of which Andy Gowran was able to give such sufficient testimony, could in some way be made available to prevent it.
The theory of life and system on which social matters should be managed, as displayed by her married daughter, was very painful to poor old Lady Fawn. When she was told that under the new order of things promises from gentlemen were not to be looked upon as binding, that love was to go for nothing, that girls were to be made contented by being told that when one lover was lost another could be found, she was very unhappy. She could not disbelieve it all, and throw herself back upon her faith in virtue, constancy, and honesty. She rather thought that things had changed for the worse since she was young, and that promises were not now as binding as they used to be. She herself had married into a Liberal family, had a Liberal son, and would have called herself a Liberal; but she could not fail to hear from others, her neighbours, that the English manners, and English principles, and English society were all going to destruction in consequence of the so-called liberality of the age. Gentlemen, she thought, certainly did do things which gentlemen would not have done forty years ago; and as for ladies — they, doubtless, were changed altogether. Most assuredly she could not have brought an Andy Gowran to her mother to tell such tales in their joint presence as this man had told!
Mrs. Hittaway had ridiculed her for saying that poor Lucy would die when forced to give up her lover. Mrs. Hittaway had spoken of the necessity of breaking up that engagement without a word of anger against Frank Greystock. According to Mrs. Hittaway’s views Frank Greystock had amused himself in the most natural way in the world when he asked Lucy to be his wife. A governess like Lucy had been quite foolish to expect that such a man as Greystock was in earnest. Of course she must give up her lover; and if there must be blame she, must blame herself for............