Mrs. Dorriman Volume I Part 21

Lady Lyons, worse than usual in health, was ordered to a watering-place in the South of France, and to winter in Nice.

She knew nothing of the world; and of course Paul, who had never stood upon his own feet anywhere, was equally ignorant. Before he had been many days in the little place he had been taken in hand by the worst possible cla.s.s of men; and at Nice he got into every conceivable sc.r.a.pe, lost money all round at Monaco, was fleeced and put into all sorts of disgraceful positions by those who told him they would make a man of him; and found himself terribly in debt, ill, and threatened with all sorts of penalties before he had been six weeks in the place.

Lady Lyons, gently obtaining the air in a Bath-chair, which, with a strong misgiving about the means of locomotion, she enc.u.mbered herself with, dreamed on in blissful ignorance.

She had given her son "principles," she thought, and she imagined that to be enough.

Paul was forced to get money from her, but he told her very little; indeed, the poor lady always talked of Paul as having been robbed, and in talking of his adventures spoke as though he had been an unblemished knight who had been robbed because his principles were too good to allow him to win, and on these occasions, though the young man would colour, so much grace was left in him, he would make a grimace when she was not looking, expressive of her foolish innocence and belief in him.

This beginning once made, he went down-hill rapidly. Once a young man reared in ignorance of the world conceives sin to be a sign of manliness, his fate is sealed.

Before he was utterly ruined, however, he was pulled up short by a long and terrible fever he was very long of recovering from. Lady Lyons, who, though a feeble, narrow-minded mother, was an affectionate one--the strain of anxiety was too much for her, and his recovery was followed by her having a paralytic stroke.

When poor Lady Lyons recovered she was feebler than before, and her son learnt, almost for the first time, that her income was almost entirely derived from a pension (her husband, a K.C.B., and an Indian General, this was secured to her); and that when she died the little place in c.u.mberland, and a few thousand pounds, upon which he had already given heavy bonds, was all he had to look to.

It was too late to begin a profession; he knew too little to be able to pick up anything. There was but one course open to him, and this was to marry some one with money. He had a tall figure, and was good-looking, though he had a weak face, and he was convinced himself that when he saw some one that "fetched" him, and that he was inclined to throw the handkerchief to, it would be picked up with enthusiasm. There are some men who think in this way.

When Lady Lyons came to Lornbay, hoping to derive benefit from its balmy air, Paul Lyons of course came with her. His best trait was his affection for his mother, though he despised her ignorance of the world, and was openly indignant with her having kept him in leading-strings all his life, and not having given him "a chance with other fellows."

Lady Lyons used to argue feebly with him about this. "See, my dear Paul, how much nicer and better you are than other young men," she would say, with a sigh. "Schools teach boys so much wickedness," and Paul would shrug his shoulders, and say something ambiguous which puzzled her.

This was the young man whom fate and Mrs. Dorriman introduced to Grace and Margaret Rivers. Every day now there was some walk undertaken, or some little expedition made in which Paul Lyons joined.

Lady Lyons had that motherly feeling that Paul, being her son, was such a safe and pleasant companion for every one. She was quite amused that Mrs. Dorriman considered it necessary to act as chaperon. "It is only Paul," she would say, with a little laugh.

"But he is not 'only Paul' to us; he is a young man and no relation. I do not want to be ridiculous, but I have the responsibility, and I want to do what is right."

This little speech about the responsibility forged another link in the chain of events, though Mrs. Dorriman spoke in innocence of making any chain. It is not given to us always to know when we are making history.

"My dear Paul," said Lady Lyons, when the mother and son were yawning through the remains of an evening shortly afterwards, "I think I have made a discovery; those two girls, the Rivers girls, are either rich or going to be very rich. That is why poor dear Mrs. Dorriman makes such a fuss about them, and herds them about so."

"I made that discovery long ago, mother," and Paul laughed. "The difficulty in my mind is, are they going to be even, or is one going to be heiress, and the other have a poor competency."

"My dear Paul, you will have to be careful; how clever you are! I never thought of that." And this new idea made Lady Lyons hold her knitting so carelessly that she dropped some st.i.tches, a fact (as usual) she never discovered till she had done a good bit, when she was intensely surprised to see a very large hole, and could not imagine how it got there.

"I don't know about being clever, mother, the girls make no secret of it to _me_."

"My dear Paul! is it as far on as that?" and Lady Lyons looked up at him from her sofa with a truly admiring maternal look.

"I don't know what you mean by as far as that," said Paul, inserting his first finger with immense difficulty between his tight masher collar and his much hara.s.sed throat; "but they talk in a way I cannot help understanding. Old Sandford is coining money and saving money, that means something like wealth to his heirs or heiresses."

"It does indeed," said Lady Lyons, with sparkling eyes. "Paul, it is so strange, but when you were quite a tiny baby your poor old nurse used always to say you were born to marry a rich lady. How often I laughed at her--and now it will come true. My dear boy!"

"I think you are going too far now, mother; I feel a long way behind you. I cannot find out anything about any definite promise. We do not know anything about Mr. Sandford."

"I know a great deal about him," said Lady Lyons, eagerly. "Mrs.

Dorriman talks so much about him; not that perhaps she has really told me much," she added, with a sense of having held out false hopes; Mrs.

Dorriman's confidences about her brother being, she now remembered, entirely about frivolous matters, his fondness of old-fas.h.i.+oned dishes, and so on, and his dislike to others.

"Of course, mother, I shall be careful not to lead either of the young ladies to fancy I am in earnest till I know something definite."

"Of course not, my dear," said Lady Lyons, absently. Then suddenly a look of intelligence came into her face. "Oh! my dear Paul, how stupid I am. I remember quite distinctly now, Mrs. Dorriman answered some remark I made about Margaret's looks, and said, 'I admire her very much, and I am sure my brother does, he never takes his eyes off her. He says she is the image of his wife, and like her in disposition; that is why he is so devoted to her.' I remember her words so well now; but I can easily talk about it again and get her to tell me something more."

"I think she told you enough," laughed her son, and he walked up to the window humming a tune, and his mother, after trying in vain to get him to talk to her, soon grew sleepy and went to bed.

Long after she left he paced the room; then he lit his candle and prepared to go to bed also. There was a smile upon his face, which lingered till he was fairly in bed. Then he murmured something to himself, "I am glad it is Margaret," he said, and turned round and went to sleep.

In the meantime the girls were happy, though Grace was a little restless. To go out walking, to meet two or three people, to eat and drink and sleep, was not enough for her; she wanted something more, she had a perfect craving for excitement. This was not the life she had dreamed of. But for Paul Lyons it would be worse, but between her and Paul had arisen a kind of perpetual give-and-take in words which satisfied her since it occupied all his time. Margaret was nowhere as regarded this, and Grace was happy in having the one cavalier within reach entirely at her service.

Indeed, Margaret, with the unnecessary frankness of a girl, piqued him by her open and undisguised sentiments of not only indifference, but dislike.

There is an instinct in unspoiled girlhood which is often an unerring guide. Margaret disliked Paul Lyons from the first; the ready change of tone, the slighting observations at every moment about Mrs. Dorriman's tastes, which Grace thought so natural and so witty, displeased her. She thought him worse than he was. His manner to his mother was so careless, and he so openly scoffed at her views, that she did not give him credit for the hours he spent beside her when she was ill, or for the affection he had for her. She thought him hateful. She had a high idea of what a man should be, and her limited experience had not been happy. One great relief was the fact that, save and except that one meeting on the steps of the hotel, Mr. Drayton remained invisible. Indeed when they met in this spasmodic and unpremeditated way he was waiting for a steamer to take him many miles in another direction, and had gone, determined, however, to return at the earliest possible opportunity.

After the conversation with his mother, Paul began to take much greater pains to recommend himself to Margaret. He was like most of us--attracted towards her by seeing her what he would wish to be. She had so much of what he lacked. She was quiet, reserved, singularly fearless on those rare occasions of a.s.serting herself, and so openly disapproved when he said or did anything giving the lie to his professions, that he caught himself feeling ashamed of himself. Under the gaze of her pure and unclouded eyes he felt unworthy, and she awoke in him the desire for something better. He began to look back with disgust and weariness on the portions of his life when he had fancied he had seen life and lived; a better and truer manliness became visible to him.

She was much younger, but so much wiser, he thought; he, by degrees, fell from profound admiration into despair, and then rebounded from despair to hope as she was kind to him, and found himself hopelessly in love, before he well knew what he was about.

The sincerity of his love was proved by its real humility. What had he to offer this young brave who had talked so glibly about throwing his handkerchief? When his mother prattled to him of his perfections he felt bitterly humiliated. The serene grace of Margaret's manner, the limitless indifference as to his presence or his coming or going, was a terrible mortification to him, and he could go nowhere for consolation.

His mother's sole idea of consolation he knew would be flattery, and he had learned to hate it.

Margaret's intense devotion to her sister was to him something beautiful and wonderful, though he could not at times resist enlightening her about her own superiority, only to regret it since his doing so made Margaret cold to him and angry with him.

"You make an idol of your sister," he said to her, one day; "you think her so beautiful. You are much more fair, and far, far more lovely."

"You should not say these things even to me," said Margaret, seriously, "though I know you cannot help trying to flatter me--it is your way of making conversation, I think."

"I wish you only knew how thoroughly in earnest I am," he said, pa.s.sionately. "You cannot realize how much better I feel when with you; what a good influence you have over me. This is not flattery."

"It sounds very much like it," said Margaret, turning her grave young face towards him, and allowing a little smile to light up her eyes.

"Now you are laughing at me," he said, in a hurt tone. "How can I make you believe me?"

"Here comes your mother," said Margaret, much too unconscious of his meaning to be in the least embarra.s.sed. "You have done your best to amuse me, and if you have failed it must be my own fault--not yours."

She turned lightly from him and he watched her with wrathful looks. Why did she always turn his speeches aside, and treat him as of no consequence? What was it that caused him so completely to fail with her?

Why was it she was so different from other girls?

Grace, for instance, accepted his speeches (in which he was conscious of no meaning) as her due, with evident satisfaction. She believed everything he said to her, implicitly; and when, as sometimes happened, he showed something of his real strong devotion for Margaret to appear, she accepted it as if it were an indirect compliment to herself. Her vanity was of the open and undisguised order, and so completely enveloped her, that no sarcasm could wound, no snub hurt her; and he was often sarcastic, and often unintentionally snubbed her, and repented, till he saw that both were equally lost upon her.

What a delightful thing it must be to live encased in an armour of this kind; to be impervious to those friendly and unfriendly hits the world at large thinks good for poor humanity.

Grace had not much acquaintance with the world, but the few people she knew never could touch her, and Mr. Paul Lyons was sometimes astonished and sometimes amused to see how she sailed through her life, delighting in the idea that every one round shared her own supreme belief in her superiority.

How hard he tried to get Margaret to believe in him a little--forced to confess, time after time, that he had failed. She was always the same, sweet, cold, and utterly indifferent.

Lady Lyons' efforts to obtain information from Mrs. Dorriman were equally failures in another direction. What could she tell, being herself in utter ignorance of her brother's position?

A woman who had had any experience of the world must have seen through the mother's transparent efforts to know something tangible. Mrs.

Dorriman did not, in the least, take it in. She talked placidly enough upon the various topics brought forward by her friend; but she was a perfectly truthful person; she could not invent, she had no imagination, and, therefore, she could neither suppose anything or suggest anything.