He went on repeating much of what he had said before, till he
left the room. Osborne had kept on replying to his unreasonable
grumblings, which had only added to his anger; and as soon as the
Squire was fairly gone, Osborne turned to Roger, and said,--
"Of course you'll go, Roger? ten to one he'll be in another mind
to-morrow."
"No," said Roger, bluntly enough--for he was extremely disappointed;
"I won't run the chance of vexing him. I shall refuse."
"Don't be such a fool!" exclaimed Osborne. "Really, my father is too
unreasonable. You heard how he kept contradicting himself; and such a
man as you to be kept under like a child by--"
"Don't let us talk any more about it, Osborne," said Roger, writing
away fast. When the note was written, and sent off, he came and put
his hand caressingly on Osborne's shoulder, as he sate pretending
to read, but in reality vexed with both his father and his brother,
though on very different grounds.
"How go the poems, old fellow? I hope they're nearly ready to bring
out."
"No, they're not; and if it weren't for the money, I shouldn't care
if they were never published. What's the use of fame, if one mayn't
reap the fruits of it?"
"Come, now, we'll have no more of that; let's talk about the money.
I shall be going up for my Fellowship examination next week, and then
we'll have a purse in common, for they'll never think of not giving
me a Fellowship now I'm senior wrangler. I'm short enough myself at
present, and I don't like to bother my father; but when I'm Fellow,
you shall take me down to Winchester, and introduce me to the little
wife."
"It will be a month next Monday since I left her," said Osborne,
laying down his papers and gazing into the fire, as if by so doing he
could call up her image. "In her letter this morning she bids me give
you such a pretty message. It won't bear translating into English;
you must read it for yourself," continued he, pointing out a line or
two in a letter he drew from his pocket.
Roger suspected that one or two of the words were wrongly spelt;
but their purport was so gentle and loving, and had such a touch of
simple, respectful gratitude in them, that he could not help being
drawn afresh to the little unseen sister-in-law, whose acquaintance
Osborne had made by helping her to look for some missing article of
the children's, whom she was taking for their daily walk in Hyde
Park. For Mrs. Osborne Hamley had been nothing more than a French
_bonne_, very pretty, very graceful, and very much tyrannized over
by the rough little boys and girls she had in charge. She was a
little orphan girl, who had charmed the heads of a travelling English
family, as she had brought madame some articles of lingerie at an
hotel; and she had been hastily engaged by them as _bonne_ to their
children, partly as a pet and plaything herself, partly because it
would be so good for the children to learn French from a native
(of Alsace!). By-and-by her mistress ceased to take any particular
notice of Aimée in the bustle of London and London gaiety; but though
feeling more and more forlorn in a strange land every day, the French
girl strove hard to do her duty. One touch of kindness, however, was
enough to set the fountain gushing; and she and Osborne naturally
fell into an ideal state of love, to be rudely disturbed by the
indignation of the mother, when accident discovered to her the
attachment existing between her children's _bonne_ and a young man
of an entirely different class. Aimée answered truly to all her
mistress's questions; but no worldly wisdom, nor any lesson to be
learnt from another's experience, could in the least disturb her
entire faith in her lover. Perhaps Mrs. Townshend did no more than
her duty in immediately sending Aimée back to Metz, where she had
first met with her, and where such relations as remained to the girl
might be supposed to be residing. But, altogether, she knew so little
of the kind of people or life to which she was consigning her deposed
protégée that Osborne, after listening with impatient indignation to
the lecture which Mrs. Townshend gave him when he insisted on seeing
her in order to learn what had become of his love, that the young man
set off straight for Metz in hot haste, and did not let the grass
grow under his feet until he had made Aimée his wife. All this had
occurred the previous autumn, and Roger did not know of the step his
brother had taken until it was irrevocable. Then came the mother's
death, which, besides the simplicity of its own overwhelming sorrow,
brought with it the loss of the kind, tender mediatrix, who could
always soften and turn his father's heart. It is doubtful, however,
if even she could have succeeded in this, for the Squire looked high,
and over high, for the wife of his heir; he detested all foreigners,
and overmore held all Roman Catholics in dread and abomination
something akin to our ancestors' hatred of witchcraft. All these
prejudices were strengthened by his grief. Argument would always have
glanced harmless away off his shield of utter unreason; but a loving
impulse, in a happy moment, might have softened his heart to what he
most detested in the former days. But the happy moments came not now,
and the loving impulses were trodden down by the bitterness of his
frequent remorse, not less than by his growing irritability; so Aimée
lived solitary in the little cottage near Winchester in which Osborne
had installed her when she first came to England as his wife, and
in the dainty furnishing of which he had run himself so deeply into
debt. For Osborne consulted his own fastidious taste in his purchases
rather than her simple childlike wishes and wants, and looked upon
the little Frenchwoman rather as the future mistress of Hamley Hall
than as the wife of a man who was wholly dependent on others at
present. He had chosen a southern county as being far removed from
those midland shires where the name of Hamley of Hamley was well and
widely known; for he did not wish his wife to assume, if only for a
time, a name which was not justly and legally her own. In all these
arrangements he had willingly striven to do his full duty by her; and
she repaid him with passionate devotion and admiring reverence. If
his vanity had met with a check, or his worthy desires for college
honours had been disappointed, he knew where to go for a comforter;
one who poured out praise till her words were choked in her throat by
the rapidity of her thoughts, and who poured out the small vials of
her indignation on every one who did not acknowledge and bow down to
her husband's merits. If she ever wished to go to the château--that
was his home--and to be introduced to his family, Aimée never hinted
a word of it to him. Only she did yearn, and she did plead, for a
little more of her husband's company; and the good reasons which had
convinced her of the necessity of his being so much away when he was
present to urge them, failed in their efficacy when she tried to
reproduce them to herself in his absence.