The Young Step-Mother Part 45

He turned about, and would have marched out of the room, but she pursued him. 'You must listen to me. It is not fit that you should carry on this silly importunity. It is exceedingly distressing to her, and might lead to very unpleasant and hurtful remarks.' Seeing him look sullen, she took breath, and considered. 'She came to me in great trouble, and begged me to restore your letter, and tell you never to repeat the liberty.'

He struck his hand on his brow, crying vehemently, 'Cruel girl! She little knows me--you little know me, if you think I am to be silenced thus. I tell you I will never cease! I am not bound by your pride, which has sneered down and crushed the loveliest--'

'Not mine,' said Albinia, disconcerted at his unexpected violence.

'Yes!' he exclaimed. 'I know you could patronize! but a step beyond, and it is all the same with you as with the rest--you despise the jewel without the setting.'

'No,' said Albinia, 'so far from depreciating her, I want to convince you that it is an insult to pursue her in this ridiculous underhand way.'

'You do me no justice,' said Gilbert loftily; 'you little understand what you are pleased to make game of,' and with one of his sudden alternations, he dropped into a chair, calling himself the most miserable fellow in the world, unpitied where he would gladly offer his life, and his tenderest feelings derided, and he was so nearly ready to cry, that Albinia pitied him, and said, 'I'll laugh no more if I can help it, Gibbie, but indeed you are too young for all this misery to be real. I don't mean that you are pretending, but only that this is your own fancy.'

'Fancy!' said the boy solemnly. 'The happiness of my life is at stake.

She shall be the sharer of all that is mine, the moment my property is in my own hands.'

'And do you think so high-minded a girl would listen to you, and take advantage of a fancy in a boy so much younger, and of a different cla.s.s?'

'It would be ecstasy to raise her, and lay all at her feet!'

'So it might, if it were worthy of her to accept it. Gilbert, if you knew what love is, you would never wish her to lower herself by encouraging you now. She would be called artful--designing--'

'If she loved me--' he said disconsolately.

'I wish I could bring you to see how unlikely it is that a sensible, superior woman could really attach herself to a mere lad. An unprincipled person might pretend it for the sake of your property--a silly one might like you because you are good-looking and well-mannered; but neither would be Genevieve.'

'There is no use in saying any more,' he said, rising in offended dignity.

'I cannot let you go till you have given me your word never to obtrude your folly on Miss Durant again.'

'Have you anything else to ask me?' cried Gilbert in a melodramatic tone.

'Yes, how would you like your father to know of this? It is her secret, and I shall keep it, unless you are so selfish as to continue the pursuit, and if so, I must have recourse to his authority.'

'Oh! Mrs. Kendal,' he said, actually weeping, 'you have always pitied me hitherto.'

'A man should not ask for pity,' said Albinia; 'but I am sorry for you, for she is an admirable person, and I see you are very unhappy; but I will do all I can to help you, and you will get over it, if you are reasonable. Now understand me, I will and must protect Genevieve, and I shall appeal to your father unless you promise me to desist from this persecution.'

The debate might have been endless, if Mr. Kendal had not been heard coming in. 'You promise?' she said. 'Yes,' was the faint reply, in nervous terror of immediate reference to his father; and they hurried different ways, trying to look unconcerned.

'Never mind,' said Albinia to herself. 'Was not Fred quite as bad about me, and look at him now! Yes, Gilbert must go to India, it will cure him, or if it should not, his affection will be respectable, and worth consideration. If he were but older, and this were the genuine article, I would fight for him, but--'

And she sat down to write a loving note to Genevieve. Her sanguine disposition made her trust that all would blow over, but her experience of the cheerful buoyant Ferrars temperament was no guide to the morbid Kendal disposition, Gilbert lay on the gra.s.s limp and doleful till the fall of the dew, when he betook himself to a sofa; and in the morning turned up his eyes reproachfully at her instead of eating his breakfast.

About eleven o'clock the Fairmead pony-carriage stopped at the door, containing Mr. Ferrars, the Captain, Aunt Gertrude, and little Willie.

Albinia, her husband, and Lucy, were soon in the drawing-room welcoming them; and Lucy fetched her little brother, who had been vociferous for three days about Cousin Fred, the real soldier, but now, struck with awe at the mighty personage, stood by his mamma, profoundly silent, and staring. He was ungracious to his aunt, and still more so to Willie, the latter of whom was despatched under Lucy's charge to find Gilbert, but they came back unsuccessful. Nor did Sophy make her appearance; she was reported to be reading to grandmamma--Mrs. Meadows preferred to Miss Ferrars! there was more in this than Albinia could make out, and she sat uneasily till she could exchange a few words with Lucy. 'My dear, what is become of the other two?'

'I am sure I don't know what is the matter with them,' said Lucy.

'Gilbert is gone out--n.o.body knows where--and when I told Sophy who was here, she said Captain Ferrars was an empty-headed c.o.xcomb, and she did not want to see him!'

'Oh! the geese!' murmured Albinia to herself, till the comical suspicion crossed her mind that Gilbert was jealous, and that Sophy was afraid of falling a victim to the redoubtable lady killer.

Luncheon-time produced Sophy, grave and silent, but no Gilbert, and Mr.

Kendal, receiving no satisfactory account of his absence, said, 'Very strange,' and looked annoyed.

Captain Ferrars seemed to have expected to see his bright little partner of Thursday, for he inquired for her, and Willie imparted the information that Fred had taken her for Sophy all the time! Fred laughed, and owned it, but asked if she were not really the governess?

'A governess,' said Albinia, 'but not ours,' and an explanation followed, during which Sophy blushed violently, and held up her head as if she had an iron bar in her neck.

'A pity,' said the Lancer, when he had heard who she was, and under his moustache he murmured to Albinia, 'She is rather in Emily's style.'

'Oh, Fred,' thought Albinia, 'after all, it may be lucky that you aren't going to stay here!'

When Albinia was alone with her brother, she could not help saying, 'Maurice, you were right to scold me; I reproached you with thinking life made up of predicaments. I think mine is made of blunders!'

'Ah! I saw you were hara.s.sed to-day,' said her brother kindly.

'Whenever one is happy, one does something wrong!'

'I guess--'

'You are generous not to say you warned me months ago. Mind, it is no fault of hers, she is behaving beautifully; but oh! the absurdity, and the worst of it is, I have promised not to tell Edmund.'

'Then don't tell me. You have a judgment quite good enough for use.'

'No, I have not. I have only sense, and that only serves me for what other people ought to do.'

'Then ask Albinia what Mrs. Kendal ought to do.'

Gilbert came in soon after their departure, with an odd, dishevelled, abstracted look, and muttering something inaudible about not knowing the time. His depression absolutely courted notice, but as a slight cough would at any time reduce him to despair, he obtained no particular observation, except from Sophy, who made much of him, flushed at Genevieve's name, and looked reproachful, that it was evident that she was his confidante. Several times did Albinia try to lead her to enter on the subject, but she set up her screen of silence. It was disappointing, for Albinia had believed better things of her sense, and hardly made allowance for the different aspect of the love-sorrows of seventeen, viewed from fifteen or twenty-six--vexatious, too, to be treated with dry reserve, and probably viewed as a rock in the course of true love; and provoking to see perpetual tete-a-tetes that could hardly fail to fill Sophy's romantic head with folly.

At the end of another week, Albinia received the following note:--

'Dear and most kind Madame,

'I would not trouble you again, but this is the third within four days.

I returned the two former ones to himself, but he continues to write.

May I ask your permission to speak to my relatives, for I feel that I ought to hide this no longer from them, and that we must take some measures for ending it. He does me the honour to wait near the house, and I never dare go out, since--for I will confess all to you, madame--he met me by the river on Monday. I am beginning to fear that his a.s.siduities have been observed, and I should be much obliged if you would tell me how to act. Your kind perseverance in your goodness towards me is my greatest comfort, and I hope that you will still continue it, for indeed it is most unwillingly that I am a cause of perplexity and vexation to you. Entreating your pardon,

'Your most faithful and obliged servant, Genevieve Celeste Durant.'

What was to be done? That broken pledge overpowered Albinia with a personal sense of shame, and though it set her free to tell all to her husband, she shrank from provoking his stern displeasure towards his son, and feared he might involve Genevieve in his anger. She dashed off a note to her poor little friend, telling her to do as she thought fit by her aunt and grandmother, and then sought another interview with the reluctant Gilbert, to whom she returned the letter, saying, 'Oh, Gilbert, at least I thought you would keep your word.'

'I think,' he said, angrily, trying for dignity, though bewrayed by his restless eyes and hands--'I think it is too much to accuse me of--of--when I never said--What word did I ever give?'

'You promised never to persecute her again.'

'There may be two opinions as to what persecution means,' said Gilbert.