There was not one there in the room who did not know that it was the wish of the united families that Arthur Fletcher should marry Emily Wharton, and also that Emily had refused him. To Arthur of course the feeling that it was so could not but be an additional vexation; but the knowledge had grown up and had become common in the two families without any power on his part to prevent so disagreeable a condition of affairs. There was not one in that room, unless it was Mary Wharton, who was not more or less angry with Emily, thinking her to be perverse and unreasonable. Even to Mary her cousin’s strange obstinacy was matter of surprise and sorrow—for to her Arthur Fletcher was one of those demigods, who should never be refused, who are not expected to do more than express a wish and be accepted. Her own heart had not strayed that way because she thought but little of herself, knowing herself to be portionless, and believing from long thought on the subject that it was not her destiny to be the wife of any man. She regarded Arthur Fletcher as being of all men the most lovable—though, knowing her own condition, she did not dream of loving him. It did not become her to be angry with another girl on such a cause;—but she was amazed that Arthur Fletcher should sigh in vain.
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 stubborn, to comply with the wishes of the families. But to love one below herself, a man without a father, a foreigner, a black Portuguese nameless 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 sympathised 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 the perfect contentment of old Lady Wharton, but not equally so to that of her daughter-in-law.
“I’m afraid she is 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 the 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 is 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 I had 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 as for rising to be a swell in the profession, I don’t care about it.”
“You used to care about it—very
