Hester · Chapter 34 (1/2)

XXXIV

Doubts and Fears

The abruptness with which Edward Vernon retired from the discussion with his partner and agent had a singular effect upon both. Neither accepted it as done in good faith. It surprised and indeed startled them. What they had looked for was a prolonged discussion, ending in all probability in a victory for Edward, who was by far the most tenacious of the three, and least likely to yield to the others. So easy a conclusion of the subject alarmed them more than the most obstinate maintenance of his own views. They were so much surprised indeed that they did not communicate their astonishment to each other on the spot by anything more than an interchange of looks, and parted after a few bewildered remarks about nothing in particular, neither of them venturing to begin upon a subject so delicate. But when they next met reflection had worked upon both. Neither had been able to dismiss the matter from his thoughts. They met indeed in a most inappropriate atmosphere for any such grave discussion, at Ellen Merridew’s house, where they mutually contemplated each other from opposite sides of the room, with an abstraction not usual to either. It had a great effect upon both of them, also, that neither Hester nor Edward appeared. Roland had known beforehand and reconciled himself as well as he could to the former want: and Harry did not know it, and was full of curious and jealous alarm on the subject, unable to refrain from a suspicion that the two who were absent must have somehow met and be spending at least part of the time together free from all inspection⁠—a thing which was really happening, though nothing could be more unlikely, more unprecedented than that it should happen. Roland did not think thus; he knew very well that Edward had not attempted to hold any intercourse with Hester, and felt that as far as this was concerned there was no extra danger in the circumstances: but Harry’s alarm seemed to confirm all his own ideas on the other matter. He missed Hester greatly for his own part⁠—not that he did not do his best to make several of the Redborough young ladies believe that to recall himself to her individual recollection was the special object of his visit⁠—but that was a mere detail of ordinary existence. It was Hester he had looked forward to as the charm of the evening, and everything was insipid to him without her, in the feminine society around him. It was not till after supper, when the fun had become faster and more furious that he found himself standing close to Harry whose countenance in the midst of all this festivity was dull and lowering as a wintry sky. Harry did not dance much; he was a piece of still life more than anything else in his sister’s house: loyally present to stand by her, doing everything she asked him, but otherwise enduring rather than enjoying. This was not at all Roland’s role: but on this special evening when they got together after midnight the one was not much more lively and exhilarating in aspect than the other. They stood up together in a doorway, the privileged retreat of such observers, and made some gloomy remarks to each other. “Gets to look a little absurd, don’t it, this sort of thing, when you have a deal on your mind?” Harry said out of his moustache. And “Yes. Gaiety does get depressing after a while,” Roland remarked. After which they relapsed again into dead silence standing side by side.

“Mr. Ashton, what do you mean by it?” cried Ellen. “I have given up Harry: but you usually do your duty. Good gracious! I see three girls not dancing, though I always have more men on purpose. I don’t know what you boys mean.”

“Let us alone, Ashton and I, Nell⁠—we’ve got something to talk about,” said Harry.

His sister looked up half alarmed in his face.

“I declare since you’ve gone so much into business you’re insupportable, Harry,” she cried. It seemed to bring the two men a little closer to each other when she whisked off again into the crowd.

“It’s quite true,” said Harry, “let’s go into the hall, where there’s a little quiet. I do want awfully to talk to you. What do you think about Ned giving up that business all at once, when we both stood up to him about it? I was awfully grateful to you for standing by me. I scarcely expected it; but as for Ned giving in like that, I can scarcely believe it even now.”

“It was not much like him, it must be confessed,” Roland said.

“Like him! he never did such a thing in his life before; generally he doesn’t even pay much attention to what one says. He has a way of just facing you down however you may argue, with a sort of a smile which makes me fit to dance with rage sometimes. But today he was as meek as Moses⁠—What do you think? I⁠—don’t half like it, for my part.”

“You think after all he was in the right perhaps?”

“No, I don’t. I never could do that. To risk other people in that way is what I never would consent to. But a fellow who is so full of fight and so obstinate, to give in⁠—that’s what I don’t understand.”

“You think perhaps⁠—he has not given in,” Roland said.

Harry gave him a bewildered look, half grateful, half angry. “Now I wonder what I’ve said that has made you think that!”

“Nothing that you have said⁠—perhaps only an uneasy feeling in my own mind that it isn’t natural, and that I don’t understand it any more than you.”

“Well,” said Harry, with a long breath of relief, “that is just what I think. I don’t believe for a moment, you understand, that Ned, who is a real good fellow all through”⁠—here he made a slight pause, and glanced at Roland with a sort of defiance, as if expecting a doubt, which however was not expressed⁠—“means anything underhand, you know. Of course I don’t mean that. But when a man knows that he is cleverer than another fellow, he’ll just shut up sometimes and take his own way, feeling it’s no use to argue⁠—I don’t mean he thinks himself cleverer than you, Ashton; that’s a different affair. But he hasn’t much opinion of me. And in most things no doubt he’s right, and I’ve never set up to have much of an opinion.”

“There you are wrong, Vernon,” said Roland, “you have the better judgment of the two. Edward may be cleverer as you say, but I’d rather throw in my lot with you.”

“Do you really say so?” cried Harry, lighting up; “well, that is very kind of you anyhow. My only principle is we’ve got others to consider besides ourselves.”

“Precisely so,” said Roland, who had heard this statement already, “and you were quite right to stick to it: but I confess I am like you, not quite comfortable about the other matter. Has he means enough of his own to go in for it? If so, I should think that was what he intended.”

Harry shook his head. “We had none of us any means,” he said. “Aunt Catherine took us, as you might say, off the streets. We were not even very near relations. She’s done everything for us: that’s why I say doubly, don’t let us risk a penny of her money or of what she prizes above money. You may think we were not very grateful to her,” Harry continued, “but that’s only Ellen’s way of talking. If there was anything to be done for Aunt Catherine that little thing has got as true a heart as anyone. But we were not wanted, as you may say. Ned was always the favourite, and so Nell set up a little in opposition, but never meaning any harm.”

“I feel sure of that,” said Roland, with a warmer impulse than perhaps Mrs. Ellen in her own person would have moved him to. And then he added, after a pause, “I think I’ll open the subject again. If Edward Vernon means to do anything rash, it’s better he should be in my hands than in some, perhaps, that might be less scrupulous. I’ll see him tomorrow about it. There’s no time lost, at least⁠—”

“That’s capital!” cried Harry, warmly; “that’s exactly what I wanted. I didn’t like to ask you; but that’s acting like a true friend: and if, as a private person, there’s anything I could do to back him up⁠—only not to touch Vernon’s, you know⁠—”

Their privacy was broken in upon by the swarm of dancers pouring into the coolness of the hall as the dance ended; but up to the moment when the assembly broke up Harry continued, by an occasional meaning look now and then across the heads of the others, to convey his cheerful confidence in Roland, and assurance that now all would go well. Ashton, too, had in himself a certain conviction that it must be so. He was not quite so cheerful as Harry, for the kind of operations into which Edward’s proposal might bring him were not to his fancy. But the very solemn charge laid upon him by the old people had never faded from his memory, and Catherine Vernon in herself had made a warm impression upon him. He had been received here as into a new home⁠—he who knew no home at all; everybody had been kind to him. He had met here the one girl whom, if he could ever make up his mind to marry (which was doubtful), he would marry. Everything combined to endear Redborough to him. He had an inclination even (which is saying a great deal) to sacrifice himself in some small degree in order to save a heartbreak, a possible scandal in this cheerful and peaceful place. Edward Vernon, indeed, in himself was neither cheerful nor peaceable; but he was important to the preservation of happiness and comfort here. Therefore Roland’s resolution was taken. He had come on purpose to dissuade and prevent; he made up his mind now to further, and secure the management of this overbold venture, since no better might be. He knew nothing, nor did any but the writer of it know anything, of the letter which Catherine Vernon’s butler had carefully deposited in the postbag, and sent into Redborough an hour or two before this conversation, to be despatched by the night mail. The night express from the north called at Redborough station about midnight, and many people liked to travel by it, arriving in town in the morning for their day’s business, not much the worse if they had good nerves⁠—for there was only one good train in the day.

Next morning, accordingly, just after Hester had returned with Emma from that guilty and agitated walk, which she had taken with the hope of meeting Edward, and hearing something from him about his mysterious communication of the previous night⁠—Roland too set out with much the same purpose, with a grave sense of embarking on an enterprise he did not see the end of. He met the two girls returning, and stopped to speak to them.

“Hester has been at Redborough this morning already,” Emma said. “I tell her she should have been at Mrs. Merridew’s last night, Roland. It was a very nice dance⁠—the very nicest of all, I think; but perhaps that is because I am so soon going away. A regular thing is so nice⁠—always something to look forward to; and you get to know everybody, and who suits your steps best, and all that. I have enjoyed it so very much. It is not like town, to be sure, but it is so friendly and homely. I shall miss it above everything when I go away.”

“It was unkind not to come last night, my only chance,” said Roland. He had no conception that Hester could have the smallest share in the grave business of which his mind was full, and, grave as it was, his mind was never too deeply engaged in anything for this lighter play of eye and voice. She seemed to wake up from a sort of abstraction, which Emma’s prattle had not disturbed, when he spoke, and blushed with evident excitement under his glance. There was in her, too, a sort of consciousness, almost of guilt, which he could not understand. “I hope you were sorry,” he added, “and were not more agreeably occupied: which would be an additional unkindness.”

“I am afraid I can’t say I am sorry.”

Her colour varied; her eyes fell. She was not the same Hester she had been even last night; something had happened to the girl. It flashed across his mind for the moment that Edward had been absent too, which gave a sting of pique and jealousy to his thoughts: but reassured himself, remembering that these two never met except at the Merridews. Where could they meet? Edward, who conformed to all Catherine Vernon’s ways, though with resentment and repugnance, and Hester, who would conform to none of them. He was glad to remind himself of this as he walked on, disturbed by her look, in which there seemed so much that had not been there before. She seemed even to have some insight into his own meaning⁠—some sort of knowledge of his errand, which it was simply impossible she could have. He told himself that his imagination was too lively, that this little society, so brimful of individual interests, with its hidden motives and projects, was getting too much for him. He had not been in the habit of pausing to ask what So-and-So was thinking of, what that look or this meant. In ordinary society it is enough to know what people say and do; when you begin to investigate their motives it is a sign that something is going wrong. The next thing to do would be to settle down among them, and become one of the Redborough coterie, to which suggestion Roland, with a slight shiver, said Heaven forbid! No, he had not come to that point. Town and freedom were more dear to him than anything he could find here. Hester, indeed (if he was sure he could afford it), might be a temptation; but Hester by no means meant Redborough. She would not cling to the place which had not been very gracious to her. But he could not afford it, he said to himself, peremptorily, as he went on. It was not a thing to be thought of. A young man making his way in the world, living, as yet a bachelor life, may have a little house at Kilburn with his sister; but that would not at all please him with a wife. And Hester meant her mother as well. It was out of the question; it was not to be thought of. But why did she look so strangely conscious? why was she so pale, so red, so full of abstraction and agitation today? If anything connected with himself could have caused that agitation, Roland could not answer for it what he might be led to do.

This thought disturbed him considerably from the other and graver thoughts with which he had started; but he walked on steadily all the same to the bank, and knocked at the door of Edward’s room. Edward was seated at his table reading the morning’s letters with all the calm of a reasonable and moderate man of business⁠—a model banker, with the credit and comfort of other men in his hands. He looked up with a smile of sober friendliness, and held out his hand to his visitor. He did not pretend to be delighted to see him. The slightest, the very most minute shadow of a consciousness that this was not an hour for a visitor, was on his tranquil countenance.

“You man of pleasure,” he said, “after your late hours and your dances, how do you manage to find your way into the haunts of business at this time in the morning!” and he glanced almost imperceptibly at his letters as he spoke.

“I am in no hurry,” said Roland. “Read your letters. You know I have nothing particular to do here. I can wait your leisure; but I have something to say to you, Vernon, if you will let me.”

“My letters are not important. Of course I will let you. I am quite at your disposal,” Edward said; but there was still a shade of annoyance⁠—weariness⁠—as at a person importunate who would not take a hint and convey himself away.

“I wanted to speak to you about the subject of our conversation yesterday.”

“Yes, which was that?”

“It was important enough to have remained in my memory,” said Roland, with a little offence, feeling himself put in the wrong from the beginning. “I mean the proposals we were discussing⁠—your ideas on the subject of the⁠—”