22 There Came A Laddie Here To Woo
AND she is a pretty girl! He looks at her with those cold, critical eyes of his, and admits that much. She is a pretty girl at eighteen—at eight-and-twenty she will be a most beautiful woman. He might do worse! She will do him honor. And he prefers blondes naturally. All this fair, fresh, young beauty will fittingly adorn Valentine Manor; all men will admire his taste, and envy him his luck. Even if she had been ugly, she would still have been a gilded pill—to be taken with an inward grimace or two, perhaps, but still to be taken. And he and Camilla Routh need not part—quite. Her home is with his sister, as it has nearly always been; they are installed at Manor Valentine now, waiting for the golden age to come. Even if he marries this Dolores, it follows, as a matter of course, that Camilla will still remain as much a part of his home as the ancestral elms, or Dorothy herself. She has no other home, poor girl; it would be brutal to turn her adrift upon the world because the hard chances of fortune have forced him to marry Madam Valentine’s heiress. His sister will manage the housekeeping as she has always done, even after Sir Vane and Lady Valentine return from their wedding tour. This petted beauty knows nothing, naturally, of the manifold duties of house mistress. And Cousin Camilla will remain prime minister. He grows quite complacent as he settles it thus—after all, matters might be worse; it is the consummation that will present itself as most desirable to the mind of Madam Valentine.
It has already done so. The truth is, madame, strong minded though she be, has been a little afraid of the meeting with Sir Vane—her granddaughter by her side. But he has disappointed her agreeably—if there can be such a thing; he is dignified, it is true, and silent, but not sullen, and not more than the situation justifies.
“I do not pretend I was not indignant at first,” he says to her, “and deeply disappointed. You see, I never thought of such a thing as your going to St. Gildas and falling in love after this fashion with the pretty girl there. She is charming enough to make almost any one fall in love with her, I admit, but then that sort of thing did not seem in the least like you. Still it is natural, I suppose,” with a sigh, “and my loss is her gain.”
“It need not be your loss—unless you wish,” says madame. She is seated at a table, playing with a pearl paper-knife, and does not look up.
There is a pause.
“I think I understand,” Sir Vane says, gravely. “Of course, I don’t exactly claim to be disinterested in this matter—it would not be in human nature—and after all these years of waiting. The best of my life is gone—I am fit for nothing now, after yielding up all these years in the expectation of being a rich man in the end. Without wealth to support it, the title must sink; Valentine Manor and park must go. All this you know; compensation is due to me in justice. We might combine our interest, as you say. I might marry Miss Valentine.”
“As you say!” madame retorts, quickly, almost angrily. “I have never said it.”
“No? I thought that was your meaning. Does it not strike you as the simplest—the only way of reconciling the difficulty?”
Another pause.
Sir Vane stands, tall, cold, dark, passionless, by the mantel. Madame sits at the table, and taps with the paper-knife. The thought has struck her before, but it strikes her with a sort of chill now—a presentiment, it may be, as she looks at the man. She shrinks from it with a sudden aversion, for which she cannot account, and his face darkens as he sees it.
“What is your objection?” he coldly asks.
“There is a great disparity,” madame says. “More than twenty years. It is too much.”
“You will be good enough to recollect I have spent those twenty years in your service—by your desire. Do you think it is the life I—any man—would choose, if left to himself?”
There is suppressed passion in his tone, fire in his eyes, anger in his voice. Madame looks up. A spark has been struck from the manhood within him, and she likes him none the less for it.
“I forget nothing, my good Vane,” she answers, not ungently. “Compensation is due you. I admit it. My granddaughter is young—she has seen nothing of the world in one sense, in spite of her fifteen months of travel—nothing of men. She is a child in heart and years—a beautiful and innocent child. Give her time, let her see a little of life before we trouble her with questions of marriage, or fortunes at stake. I love her very dearly; there is nothing so near to my heart now as her happiness. If you can make it, I am willing—after a time—to resign her to you. Indeed, in many ways, for many reasons, I should prefer to see you her husband. I know you. You are of one race—the honor of our name is in your keeping—you two are the last of a very old family. But in spite of this, I shall never force her heart, her inclination. If—in a year from now say—you can win her, do so. I shall favor your suit. ShouId she accept you, all questions of conflicting interests will be at rest forever. Should she refuse you, you shall not have wasted those best years you speak of in vain. But she is to be my heiress—that must be understood. The bulk of her grandfather’s fortune shall go to her. As your wife, it will come to you indirectly, through her, but the income only—the fortune itself shall be settled upon her and her children. She is George’s daughter; her interest must ever be paramount now. Meantime your chances are good; you will be with her; she will see you daily, and learn to care for you—I hope. For you—you remember the words of Shakespeare:
” ‘The man that hath a tongue I say is no man
If with that tongue he cannot win a woman.’ “
She rises with a smile as she says it, and holds out her hands, more gently than he has ever known her before.
“You have my best wishes, my dear Vane,” she says kindly. “I believe it is in you to make a good husband; and my Dolores is a mate for a king!”
“Shall I speak to her, aunt?” he asks, holding the hand she extends, in both his, “or shall I—”
“No,” she interrupts; “not yet—not for a year at least. Let her enjoy this one year of girlhood unfettered and free. Wait this one more year, and woo and win, and wear her there, if you can.”
So the compact is made, and Sir Vane Valentine, with stately and old-time gallantry, lifts the jeweled hand to his lips, and so seals it. Indeed, Sir Vane is stately, and slow, and stiff, and solemn, and somber by nature, and walks through life in full dress, as though it were a perpetual court minuet.
Miss Valentine meets him, and gives him one slim white hand, and looks him over, with the frank impertinence of eighteen.
” Tall, lean, yellow, sourish; little bald spot on the top of his head; eyes like jet beads—don’t think I shall like him,” say the saucy, blue, fearless eyes. “Oh! to have Johnny here—my own ever dearest Johnny!—or even Rene! Life would be too delightful for anything if only it wasn’t quite so prim and ceremonious, and if only I had my two boys.”
“And it seems to me I have seen Sir Vane Valentine somewhere before,” she adds, taking a second survey of the baronet. But she fails to place him. Indeed, she had but barely honored the passing guest of Isle Perdrix with the most careless and casual of glances.
Miss Dolores Valentine has certainly not got her “two boys;” but one cannot have everything. She has her fill of the good and pleasant things of this life. She does not include the professors who still visit her—her music, and German, and drawing masters—in that category, but she does her best to please grandmamma, and takes to dancing and singing by instinct, as a kitten takes to milk. French she is proficient in, of course; German and Italian follow in due order. She is apt and ready, a “quick study,” and bids fair presently to be a very accomplished young woman indeed. Madame instills the habits of good society, the repose of manner becoming in the daughter of a hundred Valentines. She reads a great deal—history, travels, biography, fiction, poetry she is quite ravenous in the matter of books; learns riding, and delights in daily gallops over the hills and far away, with a groom behind her. In a quiet way, she sees gradually a good deal of society; goes out more or less to youthful, innoxious evening parties, the theater, the opera; is admired wherever she goes as a beauty and an heiress, and leads altogether quite a charmed life. It is a very different life in every way from that old one, so far off now that it seems like a dream, but, in its different way, to the full as good.
Every day, every hour, is full to overflowing with bright and pleasant life. She regrets her boys, and writes to them when she has time to think—to Mère Maddelena, too, and her friend Innocente Desereaux, but their memory is a trifle dimmed by time, and absence, and new delights. Even Sir Vane, seen with daily familiar eyes, grows less gruesome, less elderly, becomes indeed rather a favorite cavalier servant, a friend and cousin, without whom the smoothly-oiled wheels of life might jar a little. He so sees to the thousand and one little hourly comforts—the pleasant petits soins that go to make up life, that she finds herself wondering sometimes how she and grandmamma would ever get on without him. When he rides out with her, he is a much more agreeable escort than the groom; he attends them everywhere; half the good things she so much enjoys would be unattainable without him. And he is really not so elderly—and then he has a title, and is treated with deference, and is, taken as a whole, the sort of cavalier one can be rather proud of. And the summing-up of the whole thing is that Miss Valentine decides she likes Sir Vane very much, and that if he leaves them, and goes to England, as he talks of doing, she will miss him exceedingly.
How it comes about that the truth dawns upon her it would be hard to say. He adheres to his contract with the madame, and says nothing directly. But there are other ways of saying than in spoken words. In a hundred ways he makes her see his drift. The blue-bell eyes open very wide at first, in amazed incredulity, and a sort of consternation. Marry! she has not begun to think of it. She has literally had no time—she has seen no one—to be looked at twice at least. She is busy thinking of a hundred other things. Marry Sir Vane! he wishes it, bonne maman wishes it—she has found that out, too. Sir Vane looks upon the Valentine fortune as his right, and bonne maman means to give it to her. That she also learns—who is to say how? If she marries him everything will arrange itself as everybody wishes; if she does not, there promises to be worry and disappointment, and a great deal of bitter feeling. Marry Sir Vane Valentine! Well, why not?
Why not? Miss Dolores Valentine has been brought up, as we know, in all the creeds and traditions that most obtain in French demoisellehood of the haute noblesse. First and foremost among these is the maxim—mademoiselle marries without murmur the parti papa and mamma select. To have a choice of her own, to fall in love could anything be in worse taste, be more vulgar, more glaringly outre and indelicate? Papa and mamma decide the alliance, there is an interview at ten, under maternal surveillance, during which monsieur is supposed to sit, and look, and long, and mademoiselle to be mute and demure, and ready to accept the goods her gods provide. If monsieur be tolerably young, and agreeable, and good to look upon, so much the better; if he be old, sans teeth, sans hair, sans wit, sans everything but money, so much the worse. But appeal there can hardly be any from parental authority. There is always the cloister; yes, but what will you? We all cannot have a vocation for the nun’s veil, and the convent grille. And these very old husbands do not live forever!
She has not thought much in all her bright summer day life, she has never had occasion for anything so tiresome; others have done it for her. She knits her delicate blonde brows, and quite frowns her pretty fore head into wrinkles over this. She even writes, and lays the case—suppositionally—before her infallible oracle, Mère Maddelena. Mère Maddelena has been married herself, and knows all about it. The answer comes. But certainly, my child, says notre mère, it is all right—that. If the so good bonne maman wishes it, and great family interests are involved, and he is worthy as you say, and you esteem him, then why hesitate. A daughter’s first duty is obedience, always obedience; le bon Dieu blesses the “dutiful child,”—and so on through four pages of peaky writing and excellent French advice. Esteem him? Well, yes. But the pretty penciled brows knit closer than ever. How about this love, her poets and novelists make so much of, lay such stress on; positively insist on indeed, as the first and most important ingredient in the matrimonial dish! Is this kindly, friendly feeling she has for Sir Vane, love? Who knows? Notre mère says here, it is not necessary, it may be most foolish and unmaidenly; esteem and obedience are best, and almost always, safe. And then what does it signify? She likes him well enough, better than any other. Since one must be married, better marry a gentleman one knows and likes than a stranger. A strange gentleman would be embarrassing; one would not know what to say to him after marrying him? But one could always talk to Sir Vane. And he is never tiresome, at least hardly ever! Since marriage or convents are states girls are born to choose between, by nature, and as sparks fly upward, why make trouble and vex one’s friends ? Why not accept the inevitable and the bridegroom chosen?
There is her friend la Contessa Paladine, only nineteen, the count nearly sixty, quite fat and gouty, and she does not seem to mind. And la contessa, who was altogether poor and obscure, and a little nobody before her marriage, is a personage of importance now, and sister in-law to a great monsignore, who, in his turn, is a great friend of il Papa-Re. She lives in a big palazzo, and drives on the Corso every day, and says she did not begin to live until she was la contessa.
On the whole one might du worse, a Milordo Valentine, as they call him here, is far better than a Conte Guigi Paladino of sixty, all fat and gout. One need never be ashamed of him at least. Her decision, you perceive, is much the same as the bridegroom’s own; it is not what one would must desire, but it might easily be worse. So the fair brows unbend, and the inconsequent girlish mind is made up. Since it must be to please dearest grandmamma she will marry Sir Vane Valentine!
