Kitabı oku: «The Young Step-Mother; Or, A Chronicle of Mistakes», sayfa 29
Still Lucy defended herself by the compulsion exercised on her, and she would hear none of the conclusions Albinia drew therefrom; she would not see that the man who drove her to a course of disobedience and subterfuge could be no fit guide, and fired up at a word of censure, declaring that she knew that mamma had always hated him, and that now he was absent, she would not hear him blamed. The one drop of true love made her difficult to deal with, for the heart was really made over to the tyrant, and Albinia did not feel herself sufficiently guiltless of negligence and imprudence to rebuke her with a comfortable conscience.
Mr. Kendal had been obliged to attend to some justice business—better for him, perhaps, than acting as domestic magistrate—and meanwhile the Vicar of Fairmead found himself forgotten. He wanted to be at home, yet did not like to leave his sister in unexplained trouble, though not sure whether he might not be better absent.
Time passed on, he finished the newspaper, and wrote letters, and then, seeing no one, he had gone into the hall to send for a conveyance, when Gilbert, coming in from the militia parade, became the recipient of his farewells, but apparently with so little comprehension, that he broke off, struck by the dejected countenance, and wandering eye.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Gilbert said, passing his hand over his brow, ‘I did not hear.’
‘I was only asking you to tell my sister that I would not disturb her, and leaving my good-byes with you.’
‘You are not going?’
‘Thank you; I think my wife will grow anxious.’
‘I had hoped’—Gilbert sighed and paused—‘I had thought that perhaps—’
The wretchedness of his tone drove away Mr. Ferrars’s purpose of immediate departure, and returning to the drawing-room he said, ‘If there were any way in which I could be of use.’
‘Then you do not know?’ said Gilbert, veiling his face with his hand, as he leant on the mantel-shelf.
‘I know nothing. I could only see that something was amiss. I was wishing to know whether my presence or absence would be best for you all.’
‘Oh! don’t go!’ cried Gilbert. Nobody must go who can be any comfort to Mrs. Kendal.’
A few kind words drew forth the whole piteous history that lay so heavily on his heart. Reserves were all over now; and irregularly and incoherently he laid open his griefs and errors, his gradual absorption into the society with which he had once broken, and the inextricable complication of mischief in which he had been involved by his debt.
‘Yet,’ he said, ‘all the time I longed from my heart to do well. It was the very thing that led me into this scrape. I thought if the man applied to my father, as he threatened, that I should be suspected of having concealed this on purpose, and be sent to India, and I was so happy, and thought myself so safe here. I did believe that home and Mrs. Kendal would have sheltered me, but my destiny must needs hunt me out here, and alienate even her!’
‘The way to find the Devil behind the Cross, is to cower beneath it in weak idolatry, instead of grasping it in courageous faith,’ said Mr. Ferrars. ‘Such faith would have made you trust yourself implicitly to your father. Then you would either have gone forth in humble acceptance of the punishment, or else have stayed at home, free, pardoned, and guarded; but, as it was, no wonder temptation followed you, and you had no force to resist it.’
‘And so all is lost! Even dear little Maurice can never be trusted to me again! And his mother, who would, if she could, be still merciful and pitying as an angel, she cannot forget to what I exposed him! She will never be the same to me again! Yet I could lay down my life for any of them!’
Mr. Ferrars watched the drooping figure, crouching on his chairs, elbows on knees, head bowed on the supporting hands, and face hidden, and, listening to the meek, affectionate hopelessness of the tone, he understood the fond love and compassion that had often surprised him in his sister, but he longed to read whether this were penitence towards God, or remorse towards man.
‘Miserable indeed, Gilbert,’ he said, ‘but if all were irretrievably offended, there still is One who can abundantly pardon, where repentance is true.’
‘I thought’—cried Gilbert—‘I thought it had been true before! If pain, and shame, and abhorrence could so render it, I know it was when I came home. And then it was comparative happiness; I thought I was forgiven, I found joy and peace where they are promised’—the burning tears dropped between his fingers—but it was all delusion; not prayers nor sacraments can shield me—I am doomed, and all I ask is to be out of the way of ruining Maurice!’
‘This is mere despair,’ said Mr. Ferrars. ‘I cannot but believe your contrition was sincere; but steadfast courage was what you needed, and you failed in the one trial that may have been sent you to strengthen and prove you. The effects have been terrible, but there is every hope that you may retrieve your error, and win back the sense of forgiveness.’
‘If I could dare to hope so—but I cannot presume to take home to myself those assurances, when I know that I only resolve, that I may have resolutions to break.’
‘Have you ever laid all this personally before Mr. Dusautoy?’
‘No; I have thought of it, but, mixed up as this is with his nephew and my sister, it is impossible! But you are a clergyman, Mr. Ferrars!’ he added, eagerly.
Mr. Ferrars thought, and then said,
‘If you wish it, Gilbert, I will gladly do what I can for you. I believe that I may rightly do so.’
His face gleamed for a moment with the light of grateful gladness, as if at the first ray of comfort, and then he said, ‘I am sure none was ever more grieved and wearied with the burden of sin—if that be all.’
‘I think,’ said Mr. Ferrars, ‘that it might be better to give time to collect yourself, examine the past, separate the sorrow for the sin from the disgrace of the consequences, and then look earnestly at the sole ground of hope. How would it be to come for a couple of nights to Fairmead, at the end of next week?’
Gilbert gratefully caught at the invitation; and Mr. Ferrars gave him some advice as to his reading and self-discipline, speaking to him as gently and tenderly as Albinia herself. Both lingered in case the other should have more to say, but at last Gilbert stood up, saying,
‘I would thankfully go to Calcutta now, but the situation is filled up, and my father said John Kendal had been enough trifled with. If I saw any fresh opening, where I should be safe from hurting Maurice!’
‘There is no reason you and your brother should not be a blessing to each other.’
‘Yes, there is. Till I lived at home, I did not know how impossible it is to keep clear of old acquaintance. They are good-natured fellows—that Tritton and the like—and after all that has come and gone, one would be a brute to cut them entirely, and Maurice is always after me, and has been more about with them than his mother knows. Even if I were very different, I should be a link, and though it might be no great harm if Maurice were a tame mamma’s boy—you see, being the fellow he is, up to anything for a lark, and frantic about horses—I could never keep him from them. There’s no such great harm in themselves—hearty, good-natured fellows they are—but there’s a worse lot that they meet, and Maurice will go all lengths whenever he begins. Now, so little as he is now, if I were once gone, he would never run into their way, and they would never get a hold of him.’
Mr. Ferrars had unconsciously screwed up his face with dismay, but he relaxed it, and spoke kindly.
‘You are right. It was a mistake to stay at home. Perhaps your regiment may be stationed elsewhere.’
‘I don’t know how long it may be called out. If it were but possible to make a fresh beginning.’
‘Did you hear of my brother’s suggestion?’
‘I wish—but it is useless to talk about that. I could not presume to ask my father for a commission—Heaven knows when I shall dare to speak to him!’
‘You have not personally asked his pardon after full confession.’
‘N-o—Mrs. Kendal knows all.’
‘Did you ever do such a thing in your life?’
‘You don’t know what my father is.’
‘Neither do you, Gilbert. Let that be the first token of sincerity.’
Without leaving space for another word, Mr. Ferrars went through the conservatory into the garden, where, meeting the children, he took the little one in his arms, and sent Maurice to fetch his mamma. Albinia came down, looking so much heated and harassed, that he was grieved to leave her.
‘Oh, Maurice, I am sorry! You always come in for some catastrophe,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘You have had a most forlorn morning.’
‘Gilbert has been with me,’ he said. ‘He has told me all, my dear, and I think it hopeful: I like him better than I ever did before.’
‘Poor feather, the breath of your lips has blown him the other way,’ said Albinia, too unhappy for consolation.
‘Well, it seems to me that you have done more for him than I ever quite believed. I did not expect such sound, genuine religious feeling.’
‘He always had plenty of religious sentiment,’ said Albinia, sadly.
‘I have asked him to come to us next week. Will you tell Edmund so?’
‘Yes. He will be thankful to you for taking him in hand. Poor boy, I know how attractive his penitence is, but I have quite left off building on it.’
Mr. Ferrars defended him no longer. He could not help being much moved by the youth’s self-abasement, but that might be only because it was new to him, and he did not even try to recommend him to her mercy; he knew her own heart might be trusted to relent, and it would not hurt Gilbert in the end to be made to feel the full weight of his offence.
‘I must go,’ he said, ‘though I am sorry to leave you in perplexity. I am afraid I can do nothing for you.’
‘Nothing—but feel kindly to Gilbert,’ said Albinia. ‘I can’t do so yet. I don’t feel as if I ever could again, when I think what he was doing with Maurice. Yes, and how easily he could have brought poor Lucy to her senses, if he had been good for anything! Oh! Maurice, this is sickening work! You should be grateful to me for not scolding you for having taken me from home!’
‘I do not repent,’ said her brother. ‘The explosion is better than the subterranean mining.’
‘It may be,’ said Albinia, ‘and I need not boast of the good I did at home! My poor, poor Lucy! A little discreet kindness and watchfulness on my part would have made all the difference! It was all my running my own way with my eyes shut, but then, I had always lived with trustworthy people. Well, I wont keep you listening to my maundering, when Winifred wants you. Oh! why did that Polysyllable ever come near the place?’
Mr. Ferrars said the kindest and most cheering things he could devise, and drove away, not much afraid of her being unforgiving.
He was disposed to stake all his hopes of the young man on the issue of his advice to make a direct avowal to his father. And Gilbert made the effort, though rather in desperation than resolution, knowing that his condition could not be worse, and seeing no hope save in Mr. Ferrars’ counsel. He was the first to seek Mr. Kendal, and dreadful to him as was the unaltering melancholy displeasure of the fixed look, the steadily penetrating deep dark eyes, and the subdued sternness of the voice, he made his confession fully, without reserve or palliation.
It was more than Mr. Kendal had expected, and more, perhaps, than he absolutely trusted, for Gilbert had not hitherto inspired faith in his protestations that he spoke the whole truth and nothing but the truth, nor had he always the power of doing so when overpowered by fright. The manner in which his father laid hold of any inadvertent discrepancy, treating it as a wilful prevarication, was terror and agony; and well as he knew it to be the meed of past equivocation, he felt it cruel to torture him by implied suspicion. Yet how could it be otherwise, when he had been introducing his little brother to his own corrupters, and conniving at his sister’s clandestine correspondence with a man whom he knew to be worthless?’
The grave words that he obtained at last, scarcely amounted to pardon; they implied that he had done irreparable mischief and acted disgracefully, and such forgiveness as was granted was only made conditional on there being no farther reserves.
Alas! even with all tender love and compassion, no earthly parent can forgive as does the Heavenly Father. None but the Omniscient can test the fulness of the confession, nor the sincerity of ‘Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.’ This interview only sent the son away more crushed and overwhelmed, and yearning towards the more deeply offended, and yet more compassionate Father.
Mr. Kendal, after this interview, so far relaxed his displeasure as to occasionally address Gilbert when they met at luncheon after this deplorable morning, while towards Lucy he observed a complete silence. It was not at first that she perceived this, and even then it struck more deeply on Sophia than it did on her.
Mr. Kendal shrank from inflicting pain on the good vicar, and it was decided that the wives should be the channel through which the information should be imparted. Albinia took the children, sending them to play in the garden while she talked to Mrs. Dusautoy. She found that keen little lady had some shrewd suspicions, but had discovered nothing defined enough to act upon, and was relieved to have the matter opened at last.
As to the ink, no mortal could help laughing over it; even Albinia, who had been feeling as if she could never laugh again, was suddenly struck by the absurdity, and gave way to a paroxysm of merriment.
‘Properly managed, I do think it might put an end to the whole affair,’ said Mrs. Dusautoy. ‘He could not stand being laughed at.’
‘I’m afraid he never will believe that he can be laughed at.’
‘Yes, that is unlucky,’ said Mrs. Dusautoy, gravely; but recollecting that she was not complimentary, she added, ‘You must not think we undervalue Lucy. John is very fond of her, and the only objection is, that it would require a person of more age and weight to deal with Algernon.’
‘Never mind speeches,’ sighed Albinia; ‘we know too well that nothing could be worse for either. Can’t you give him a tutor and send him to travel.’
‘I’ll talk to John; but unluckily he is of age next month, and there’s an end of our power. And John would never keep him away from hence, for he thinks it his only chance.’
‘I suppose we must do something with Lucy. Heigh-ho! People used not to be always falling in love in my time, except Fred, and that was in a rational way; that could be got rid of!’
The effect of the intelligence on the vicar was to make him set out at once to the livery-stables in quest of his nephew, but he found that the young gentleman had that morning started for London, whither he proposed to follow him on the Monday. Lucy cried incessantly, in the fear that the gentle-hearted vicar might have some truculent intentions towards his nephew, and was so languid and unhappy that no one had the heart to scold her; and comforting her was still more impossible.
Mr. Kendal used to stride away from the sight of her swollen eyes, and ask Albinia why she did not tell her that the only good thing that could happen to her would be, that she should never see nor hear of the fellow again.
Why he did not tell her so himself was a different question.
CHAPTER XXIV
‘Well, Albinia,’ said Mr. Kendal, after seeing Mr. Dusautoy on his return from London.
There was such a look of deprecation about him, that she exclaimed, ‘One would really think you had been accepting this charming son-in-law.’
‘Suppose I had,’ he said, rather quaintly; then, as he saw her hands held up, ‘conditionally, you understand, entirely conditionally. What could I do, when Dusautoy entreated me, with tears in his eyes, not to deprive him of the only chance of saving his nephew?’
‘Umph,’ was the most innocent sound Albinia could persuade herself to make.
‘Besides,’ continued Mr. Kendal, ‘it will be better to have the affair open and avowed than to have all this secret plotting going on without being able to prevent it. I can always withhold my consent if he should not improve, and Dusautoy declares nothing would be such an incentive.’
‘May it prove so!’
‘You see,’ he pursued, ‘as his uncle says, nothing can be worse than driving him to these resorts, and when he is once of age, there’s an end of all power over him to hinder his running straight to ruin. Now, when he is living at the Vicarage, we shall have far more opportunity of knowing how he is going on, and putting a check on their intercourse, if he be unsatisfactory.’
‘If we can.’
‘After all, the young man has done nothing that need blight his future life. He has had great disadvantages, and his steady attachment is much in his favour. His uncle tells me he promises to become all that we could wish, and, in that case, I do not see that I have the right to refuse the offer, when things have gone so far—conditionally, of course.’ He dwelt on that saving clause like a salve for his misgivings.
‘And what is to become of Gilbert and Maurice, with him always about the house?’ exclaimed Albinia.
‘We will take care he is not too much here. He will soon be at Oxford. Indeed, my dear, I am sorry you disapprove. I should have been as glad to avoid the connexion as you could be, but I do not think I had any alternative, when Mr. Dusautoy pressed me so warmly, and only asked that he should be taken on probation; and besides, when poor Lucy’s affections are so decidedly involved.’
Albinia perceived that there had been temper in her tone, and could object no further, since it was too late, and as she could not believe that her husband had been weak, she endeavoured to acquiesce in his reasoning, and it was a strong argument that they should see Lucy bright again.
‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that you would prefer that I should announce my decision to her myself!’
It was a more welcome task than spreading gloom over her countenance, but she entered in great trepidation, prepared to sink under some stern mandate, and there was nothing at first to undeceive her, for her father was resolved to atone for his concession by sparing her no preliminary thunders, and began by depicting her indiscretion and deceit, as well as the folly of attaching herself to a man without other recommendations than figure and fortune.
How much Lucy heard was uncertain; she leant on a chair with drooping head and averted face, trembling, and suppressing a sob, apparently too much frightened to attend. Just when the exordium was over, and ‘Therefore I lay my commands on you’ might have been expected, it turned into, ‘However, upon Mr. Dusautoy’s kind representation, I have resolved to give the young man a trial, and provided he convinces me by his conduct that I may safely entrust your happiness to him, I have told his uncle that I will not withhold my sanction.’
With a shriek of irrepressible feeling, Lucy looked from father to mother, and clasped her hands, unable to trust her ears.
‘Yes, Lucy,’ said Albinia, ‘your father consents, on condition that nothing further happens to excite his doubts of Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy. It rests with yourself now, it is not too late. After all that has passed, you would incur much deserved censure if you put an end to the affair; but even that would be better, far better, than entering into an engagement with a man without sound principle.’
‘Your mother is quite right, Lucy,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘This is the only time. Gratified vanity has led you too far, and you have acted as I hoped no child of mine would ever act, but you have not forfeited our tenderest care. You are not engaged to this man, and no word of yours would be broken. If you hesitate to commit yourself to him, you have only to speak, and we would gladly at once do everything that could conduce to make you happy.’
‘You don’t want me to give him up!’ cried Lucy. ‘Oh! mamma, did not he say he had consented?’
‘I said it rested with yourself Lucy. Do not answer me now. Come to me at six o’clock, and tell me, after full reflection, whether I am to consider you as ready to pledge yourself to this young man.’
It was all that could be done. Albinia had a dim hope that the sense of responsibility, and dread of that hard will and selfish temper, might so rise upon Lucy as to startle her, but then, as Mr. Kendal observed, if she should decide against him, she would have used him so extremely ill, that they should feel nothing but shame.
‘Yes,’ said Albinia, ‘but it would be better to be ashamed of a girl’s folly, than to see her made miserable for life. Poor Lucy! if she decide against him, she will become a woman at once, if not, I’m afraid it will be the prediction about Marie Antoinette over again—very gay, and coming right through trial.’
They were obliged to tell Sophy of the state of things. She stood up straight, and said, slowly and clearly, ‘I do not like the world at all.’
‘I don’t quite see what you mean.’
‘Every one does what can’t be helped, and it is not the thing.’
‘Explain yourself, Sophy,’ said her father, amused.
‘I don’t think Lucy ought to be making the decision at all,’ said Sophy. She did that long ago, when first, she attended to what he said to her. If she does not take him now, it will be swearing to her neighbour, and disappointing him, because it is to her own hindrance.’
‘Yes, Sophy; but I believe it is better to incur the sin of breaking a promise, than to go on when the fulfilment involves not only suffering, but mischief. Lucy has repeatedly declared there was no engagement.’
‘I know it could not be helped; but Mr. Dusautoy ought not to have asked papa.’
‘Nor papa to have consented, my Suleiman ben Daood,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘Ah! Sophy, we all have very clear, straightforward views at eighteen of what other people ought to do.’
‘Papa—I never meant—I did not think I was saying anything wrong. I only said I did not like the world.’
‘And I heartily agree with you, Sophy, and if I had lived in it as short a time as you have, perhaps “considerations” would not affect my judgment.’
‘I am always telling Sophy she will be more merciful as she grows older,’ said Albinia.
‘If it were only being more merciful, it would be very well,’ said Mr. Kendal; ‘but one also becomes less thorough-going, because practice is more painful than theory, and one remembers consequences that have made themselves felt. It is just as well that there should be young people to put us in mind what our flights once were.’
Albinia and Sophy left Lucy to herself; they both wished to avoid the useless ‘What shall I do?’ and they thought that, driven back on her own resources, even her own mind might give her better counsel than the seven watchmen aloft in a high tower.
She came down looking exceedingly pale. Mr. Kendal regarded her anxiously, and held his hand out to her kindly.
‘Papa,’ she said, simply, ‘I can’t give it up. I do love him.’
‘Very well, my dear,’ he answered, ‘there is no more to be said than that I trust he will merit your affection and make you happy.’
Good Mr. Dusautoy was as happy as a king; he took Lucy in his arms, and kissed her as if she had been his child, and with her hands folded in his own, he told her how she was to teach his dear Algernon to be everything that was good, and to lead him right by her influence. She answered with caresses and promises, and whoever had watched her eye, would have seen it in a happy day-dream of Algernon’s perfection, and his uncle thanking her for it.
She had expected that grandmamma would have been very happy; but marriage had, with the poor old lady, led to so much separation, that her weakened faculties took the alarm, and she received the tidings by crying bitterly, and declaring that every one was going away and leaving her. Lucy assured her over and over again that she was never going to desert her, and as Mr. Kendal had made it a condition that Algernon should finish his Oxford career respectably, there was little chance that poor Mrs. Meadows would survive until the marriage.
All along Gilbert made no remark. Though he had been left out of the family conclaves, and his opinion not asked, he submitted with the utmost meekness, as one who knew that he had forfeited all right to be treated as son and heir. The more he was concerned at the engagement, the greater stigma he would place on his own connivance; so he said nothing, and only devoted himself to his grandmother, as though the attendance upon her were a refuge and relief. More gentle and patient than ever, he soothed her fretfulness, invented pleasures for her, and rendered her so placid and contented, that her health began to improve.
Not for a moment did he seem to forget his error; and Albinia’s resolution to separate Maurice from him, could not hold when he himself silently assumed the mournful necessity, and put the child from him when clamorous for rides, till there was an appeal to papa and mamma. Mr. Kendal gave one look of inquiry at Albinia, and she began some matter-of-course about Gilbert being so kind—whereupon the brothers were together as before. When Albinia visited her little boy at night, she found that Gilbert had been talking to him of his eldest brother, and she heard more of Edmund’s habits and tastes from the little fellow who had never seen him, than from either the twin-brother or the sister who had loved him so devotedly. It was as if Gilbert knew that he could be doing Maurice no harm when leading him to think of Edmund, and perhaps he felt some intrinsic resemblance in the deep loving strength of the two natures.
The invitation to Fairmead spared him the pain and shame of Algernon Dusautoy’s first reception as Lucy’s accepted lover. He went early on Saturday morning, and young Dusautoy, arriving in the evening, was first ushered into the library; while Albinia did her best to soothe the excited nerves and fluttering spirits of Lucy, who was exceedingly ashamed to meet him again under the eyes of others, after such a course of stolen interviews, and what she had been told of her influence doing him good only alarmed her the more.
Well she might, for if ever character resembled that of the iron pot borne down the stream in company with the earthen one, it was the object of her choice. Poor pipkin that Gilbert was, the contact had cost him a smashing blow, and for all clay of the more fragile mould, the best hope was to give the invulnerable material a wide berth. Talk of influence! Mr. Dusautoy might as well hope that a Wedgwood cream-jug would guide a copper cauldron and keep verdigris aloof.
His attraction for Lucy had always been a mystery to her family, who perhaps hardly did justice to the magnetism of mere force of purpose. Better training might have ennobled into resolution that which was now doggedness and obstinacy, and, even in that shape, the real element of strength had a tendency to work upon softer natures. Thus it had acted in different ways with the Vicar, with Gilbert, and with Lucy; each had fallen under the power of his determination, with more or less of their own consent, and with Lucy the surrender was complete; she no sooner sat beside Algernon than she was completely his possession, and his complacent self-satisfaction was reflected on her face in a manner that told her parents that she was their own no longer, but given up to a stronger master.
Albinia liked neither to see nor to think about it, and kept aloof as much as she could, dividing herself between grandmamma and the children. On Tuesday morning, during Maurice’s lessons, there was a knock at the sitting-room door. She expected Gilbert, but was delighted to see her brother.
‘I thought you were much too busy to come near us?’
‘So I am; I can’t stay; so if Kendal be not forthcoming you must give this fellow a holiday.’
‘He is gone to Hadminster, so—’
‘Where’s Gilbert?’ broke in little Maurice.
‘He went to his room to dress to go up to parade,’ said Mr. Ferrars, and off rushed the boy without waiting for permission.
Albinia sighed, and said, ‘It is a perfect passion.’
‘Don’t mourn over it. Love is too good a thing to be lamented over, and this may turn into a blessing.’
‘I used to be proud of it.’
‘So you shall be still. I am very much pleased with that poor lad.’
She would not raise her eyes, she was weary of hoping for Gilbert, and his last offence had touched her where she had never been touched before.
‘Whatever faults he has,’ Mr. Ferrars said, ‘I am much mistaken if his humility, love, and contrition be not genuine, and what more can the best have?’
‘Sincerity!’ said Albinia, hopelessly. ‘There’s no truth in him!’
‘You should discriminate between deliberate self-interested deception, and failure in truth for want of moral courage. Both are bad enough, but the latter is not “loving a lie,” not such a ruinous taint and evidence of corruption as the former.’
‘It is curious to hear you repeating my old excuses for him,’ said Albinia, ‘now that he has cast his glamour over you.’
‘Not wrongly,’ said her brother. ‘He is in earnest; there is no acting about him.’
‘Yes, that I believe; I know he loves us with all his heart, poor boy, especially Maurice and me, and I think he had rather go right than wrong, if he could only be let alone. But, oh! it is all “unstable as water.” Am I unkind, Maurice? I know how it would be if I let him talk to me for ten minutes, or look at me with those pleading brown eyes of his!’
Mr. Ferrars knew it well, and why she was steeled against him, but he put this aside, saying that he was come to speak of the future, not of the past, and that he wanted Edmund to reconsider William’s advice. He told her what Gilbert had said of the difficulty of breaking off old connexions, and the danger to Maurice from his acquaintance. An exchange into another corps of militia might be for the worse, the occupation was uncertain, and Mr. Ferrars believed that a higher position, companions of a better stamp, and the protection of a man of lively manners, quick sympathy, and sound principle, like their cousin Fred, might be the opening of a new life. He had found Gilbert most desirous of such a step, regarding it as his only hope, but thinking it so offensively presumptuous to propose it to his father under present circumstances, his Oxford terms thrown away, and himself disgraced both there and at home, that the matter would hardly have been brought forward had not Mr. Ferrars undertaken to press it, under the strong conviction that remaining at home would be destruction, above all, with young Dusautoy making part of the family.
