now for her rejection of the counsel of manhood and experience, it was right that they should deal with him now, and she would try to bear it. And she also tried as much as possible to soften the blow to Lucilla, who was still abroad with her cousins.
CHAPTER XII
A little grain of conscience made him sour.
TENNYSON
'A penny for your thoughts, Cilly,' said Horatia, sliding in on the slippery boards of a great bare room of a lodging-house at the celebrated Spa of Spitzwasserfitzung.
'My thoughts? I was trying to recollect the third line of
'Sated at home, of wife and children tired,
Sated abroad, all seen and naught admired.''
'Bless me, how grand! Worth twopence. So good how Shakspeare, as the Princess Ottilie would say!'
'Twopence for its sincerity! It is not for your sake that I am not in Old England.'
'Nor for that of the three flaxen-haired princesses, with religious opinions to be accommodated to those of the crowned heads they may marry?'
'I'm sick of the three, and their raptures. I wish I was as ignorant as you, and that Shakspeare had never been read at the Holt.'
'This is a sudden change. I thought Spitzwasserfitzung and its princesses had brought halcyon days.'
'Halcyon days will never come till we get home.'
'Which Lolly will never do. She passes for somebody here, and will never endure Castle Blanch again.'
'I'll make Owen come and take me home.'
'No,' said Rashe, seriously, 'don't bring Owen here. If Lolly likes to keep Charles where gaming is man's sole resource, don't run Owen into that scrape.'
'What a despicable set you are!' sighed Lucilla. 'I wonder why I stay with you.'
'You might almost as well be gone,' said Ratia. 'You aren't half so useful in keeping things going as you were once; and you won't be ornamental long, if you let your spirits be so uncertain.'
'And pray how is that to be helped? No, don't come out with that stupid thing.'
'Commonplace because it is reasonable. You would have plenty of excitement in the engagement, and then no end of change, and settle down into a blooming little matron, with all the business of the world on your hands. You have got him into excellent training by keeping him dangling so long; and it is the only chance of keeping your looks or your temper. By the time I come and stay with you, you'll be so agreeable you won't know yourself-'
'Blessings on that hideous post-horn for stopping your mouth!' cried Lucilla, springing up. 'Not that letters ever come to me.'
Letters and Mr. and Mrs. Charteris all entered together, and Rashe was busy with her own share, when Lucilla came forward with a determined face, unlike her recent listless look, and said, 'I am wanted at home. I shall start by the diligence to-night.'
'How now?' said Charles. 'The old lady wanting you to make her will?'
'No,' said Lucilla, with dignity. 'My brother's wife is very ill. I must go to her.'
'Is she demented?' asked Charles, looking at his sister.
'Raving,' was the answer. 'She has been so the whole morning. I shall cut off her hair, and get ice for her head.'
'I tell simple truth,' returned Cilla. 'Here is a letter from Honor Charlecote, solving the two mysteries of last summer. Owen's companion, who Rashe would have it was Jack Hastings-'
'Ha! married, then! The cool hand! And verily, but that Cilly takes it so easily, I should imagine it was her singing prodigy-eh? It was, then?'
'Absurd idiot!' exclaimed Charles. 'There, he is done for now!'
'Yes,' drawled Eloisa; 'one never could notice a low person like that.'
'She is my sister, remember!' cried Lucilla, with stamping foot and flashing eye.
'Cunning rogue!' continued Horatia. 'How did he manage to give no suspicion? Oh! what fun! No wonder she looked green and yellow when he was flirting with the little Fulmort! Let's hear all, Cilly-how, when, and where?'
'At the Registrar's, at R--, July 14th, 1854,' returned Lucilla, with defiant gravity.
'Last July!' said Charles. 'Ha! the young donkey was under age-hadn't consent of guardian. I don't believe the marriage will hold water. I'll write to Stevens this minute.'
'Well, that would be luck!' exclaimed Rashe.
'Much better than he deserves,' added Charles, 'to be such a fool as to run into the noose and marry the girl.'
Lucilla was trembling from head to foot, and a light gleamed in her eyes; but she spoke so quietly that her cousins did not apprehend her intention in the question-
'You mean what you say?'
'Of course I do,' said Charles. 'I'm not sure of the law, and some of the big-wigs are very cantankerous about declaring an affair of this sort null; but I imagine there is a fair chance of his getting quit for some annual allowance to her; and I'll do my best, even if I had to go to London about it. A man is never ruined till he is married.'
'Thank you,' returned Lucilla, her lips trembling with bitter irony. 'Now I know what you all are made of. We are obliged for your offered exertion, but we are not inclined to become traitors.'
'Cilly! I thought you had more sense! You are no child!'
'I am a woman-I feel for womanhood. I am a sister-I feel for my brother's honour.'
Charles burst into a laugh. Eloisa remonstrated-'My dear, consider the disgrace to the whole family-a village schoolmistress!'
'Our ideas differ as to disgrace,' said Lucilla. 'Let me go, Ratia; I must pack for the diligence.'
The brother and sister threw themselves between her and the door. 'Are you insane, Cilly? What do you mean should become of you? Are you going to join the
'I am going to own my sister while yet there is time,' said Lucilla. 'While you are meditating how to make her a deserted outcast, death is more merciful. Pining under the miseries of an unowned marriage, she is fast dying of pressure on the brain. I am going in the hope of hearing her call me sister. I am going to take charge of her child, and stand by my brother.'
'Dying, poor thing! Why did you not tell us before?' said Horatia, sobered.
'I did not know it was to save Charles so much
'I do believe she is delighted,' said Horatia, releasing her.
In truth, she was inspirited by perceiving any door of escape. Any vivid sensation was welcome in the irksome vacancy that pursued her in the absence of immediate excitement. Devoid of the interest of opposition, and of the bracing changes to the Holt, her intercourse with the Charterises had become a weariness and vexation of spirit. Idle foreign life deteriorated them, and her principle and delicacy suffered frequent offences; but like all living wilfully in temptation, she seemed under a spell, only to be broken by an act of self-humiliation to which she would not bend. Longing for the wholesome atmosphere of Hiltonbury, she could not brook to purchase her entrance there by permitting herself to be pardoned. There was one whom she fully intended should come and entreat her return, and the terms of her capitulation had many a time been arranged with herself; but when he came not, though her heart ached after him, pride still forbade one homeward step, lest it should seem to be in quest of him, or in compliance with his wishes.
Here, then, was a summons to England-nay, into his very parish-without compromising her pride or forcing her to show deference to rejected counsel. Nay, in contrast with her cousins, she felt her sentiments so lofty and generous that she was filled with the gladness of conscious goodness, so like the days of her early childhood, that a happy dew suffused her eyes, and she seemed to hear the voice of old Thames. Her loathing for the views of her cousins had borne down all resentment at her brother's folly and Edna's presumption; and relieved that it was not
