Vavasor

“ One afternoon when Vavasor was in his room, writing a letter to his aunt, in which he described in not too glowing terms, for he knew exaggeration would only give her a handle, the loveliness of the retreat among the hills where he was spending his holiday—when her father was in his study, her mother in her own room, and the children out of doors, a gentleman was shown in upon her as she sat alone in the drawing-room at her piano, not playing but looking over some books of old music she had found in the house. ”

“ Thus early did Vavasor conceive the ambition of having a hand in the worldly education of this young woman, such a hand that by his means she should come to shine as she deserved in the only circle in which he thought shining worth any one's while; his reward should be to see her so shine. Through his aunt he could gain her entrance where he pleased. In relation to her and her people he seemed to himself a man of power and influence.
I wonder how Jesus Christ would carry himself in Mayfair. ”

“ When a man has not the slightest intention that the answer shall influence his conduct, why should he inquire whether there be a God or not? Vavasor cared more about the top of his cane than the God whose being he did not take the trouble to deny. He believed a little less than the maiden aunt with whom he lived ”

“ She was startled, but he spoke instantly; it was Vavasor. She was still, and could not answer for a moment.
"I am so sorry I frightened you!" he said.
"It is nothing," she returned. "Why can't one help being silly? I don't see why ladies should ever be frightened more than gentlemen."
"Men are quite as easily startled as ladies," he answered, "though perhaps they come to themselves a little quicker. Nothing is more startling than to find some one near when you thought you were alone."
"Except," said Hester, "finding yourself alone when you thought some one was near. ”

“ Alice thought of her cousin George, and wished that he, instead of herself, was sitting next to the Duke of St. Bungay. "But I'm afraid I never shall be a leading Radical," she said.
"You shall lead me at any rate, if you will," said he.
"As the little dogs lead the blind men," said Lady Glencora.
"No, Lady Glencora, not so. But as the pretty women lead the men who have eyes in their head. There is nothing I want so much, Miss Vavasor, as to become a Radical;—if I only knew how." ”

“ Already the young lady, as masterful as she is capricious, has broken John Grey to harness by ignoring his reasonable feeling that if the two ladies need a cavalier for the conventional, perfectly safe and easy Swiss round, they would find one more appropriate in himself than in a possible rival. The nephew and destined heir of a wealthy Cumbrian squire, George Vavasor has expectations, but not the command of ready money necessary for his parliamentary ambitions and his general habits of life. ”

“ Vavasour's manners, and commended them much to Lucia, who, a shrinking girl of seventeen, was peeping at her first season from under Lady Knockdown's sheltering wing.
"Me dear, let Mr. Vavasour be who he will, he has not only the intellect of a true genius, but what is a great deal better for practical purposes; that is, the manners of one. Give me the man who will let a woman of our rank say what we like to him, without supposing that he may say what he likes in return; and considers one's familiarity as an honour, and not as an excuse for taking liberties. ”

“ It was late in the afternoon before Arthur Vavasour, seizing the opportunity of a sound sleep into which the invalid had fallen, stole from the pretty morning-room adjoining that where his wife lay, stepping softly; for old Duberly—who dearly loved, after the fashion of the aged, to talk—might, had he heard his step upon the stairs, have intercepted his departure, and, slipping his bald head out of the half-opened study-door, have chained him—an unwilling listener—for an hour at least, in the close and stuffy atmosphere of his private sanctum. ”

“ To rush into the fresh air—to throw himself into a passing hansom—to be carried as fast as wheels could bear him to the first emporium of sporting news where he was likely to obtain authentic intelligence regarding the respective fates of Rough Diamond and the Colonel—were the ends that Arthur Vavasour had in view while stepping on tiptoe down the broad stone staircase, with a flushed face, and a heart that beat fast with long-controlled emotion. ”

“ There have been Vavasours at Temple Belwood more than two hundred years, and most of them gentlemen of a public mind, but none more so than our 'solicitor,' Thomas Vavasour. He has lost his patrimony in defending our rights and properties. In all likelihood, he would not have relinquished his estate, but for his belief that his son was dead, and right sure I am that every gentleman in the Isle would have done what in his power lay, to retain the honourable family of Vavasour in its rightful seat. ”

“ As companions on the way she had chosen Lord and Lady Merioneth: a good simple-minded pair, ready and able to be amused, and withal tolerably slow to comprehend (from the circumstance of their own entire want of foolish family pride) the besetting sin of their young companion.
The delicate health of Lady Millicent Vavasour was, to the surprise of the world in general, the alleged motive for her spending the winter abroad. It had been suddenly discovered that the lungs of the heiress were delicate ”

“ Horace—but, like most young men who are born to a “position,” and whom the world has helped to spoil, Arthur Vavasour did not “go in” much for spoiling others. If it did not interfere with his own comfort or convenience, he would be wonderfully kind and civil to a dull old man, or even to a disagreeable old woman; but as a rule, and when he was inclined to be otherwise employed, he forgot, or altogether ignored, the claims of useless people on his notice. His conduct on his departure from the Paddocks was an instance of this not uncommon peculiarity. ”

“ But if, in his yearning for self-comfort, and in the natural longing of cowardly mortals to escape from the sharp stings of conscience, Arthur Vavasour could find consolation in the reflection that he had escaped actual guilt, there was one who, from the hour when he was first prostrated to the earth by the intelligence of poor Sophy’s death to the day when his own sorrows were buried in the grave, could never bring himself to see any mitigation of Arthur Vavasour’s offence, or any plea for mercy on the ground that he had not been, in fact, faithless to his marriage-vows. ”

“ But if Arthur Vavasour thought a good deal during those swiftly passing hours of Honor Beacham, that rather insouciante young woman did not (a fact which, had he known it, would not have greatly improved the temper of her admirer) trouble her pretty little head much about him. That she should not so have done (albeit Mr. Vavasour stood foremost in her mind as the finished type of all that was handsome, agreeable, and accomplished) is very easily to be accounted for. The scene to Honor was so deliciously new, and so untiringly interesting. ”

“ The evil mood that had tried her faith was gone, and in its place had come the nameless Light that shines from the Spirit of Comfort. She was dreaming, not of Gaspard, nor of happy days past or come, but of her Mother-Madeleine and her ‘Psalm of Confidence.’
Yet all about that ruined hut were cruel and violent men, the hired soldiery of the duke. Men little better than brigands, who had been sent expressly upon work of rapine and slaughter, that a ‘strong hand’ might crush the Vaudois now and for ever. ”

“ Old Dub, who formed a component part, and{264} a greatly valued one by his daughter, of Arthur Vavasour’s family, had left the room the moment that the conversation turned, which it often did, on Lady Millicent and her shortcomings. The good old man, conscious of harbouring (a very unwelcome guest) in his inner man a decidedly unchristian dislike to the lady in question, abstained, as far as lay in his power, from the gratification—for such it undoubtedly was—of hearing her abused and ridiculed. ”

“ It was while smarting under the first wounds inflicted by disappointed ambition and frustrated love of power that Lady Millicent discovered the bitter truth that as we sow so we must reap, and{276} that there can be no harvest of affection where the seeds of tenderness have been neglected to be sown. The news—very melancholy intelligence it was to his brother and his sisters—that Arthur Vavasour had, for an indefinite period, bade farewell to home and country, child and kindred, was communicated to Lady Millicent by her son Horace. ”

“ No other country could be ‘home’ to them. They must return, and lift again—if such were God’s good will—the voice of praise and prayer from the glens and the hills which now lay desolate.
Men with the same anxiety in their hearts as Gaspard had might be reckoned by the score. There was scarcely a Vaudois who would not have willingly died rather than have surrendered the hope of getting home to the valleys, somehow, some day. ”

“ In more ways than one is the breath of man poisonous to his fellows. Well did Arthur Vavasour know that while he—the heir-apparent to wealth and honour—he, the strong man, armed at all points for the battle of life—would come unscathed out of the tainted atmosphere of suspicion, she, the tender bird{196} exposed to its baneful influence, would flutter her feeble wings, and fall killed morally by the strong insidious poison. Of this melancholy truth Sophy Duberly’s affianced husband was as cognisant as the oldest sage that lives ”

“ The Vaudois," says he, in another place, "are so called from their residence among the valleys and fastnesses of the Alps, and may well be considered as the remains of the purest primitive Christian church. Nor has it been possible to draw them within the pale of the Roman communion, notwithstanding the horrible persecutions exercised against them. At this time they have churches flourishing, as well in doctrine as in examples of a truly innocent life. I speak particularly of those of the Alpine valleys, of whom some are subjects of the king of France, and others of the Duke of Savoy." ”

“ There they were going round, those invalids that Vava knew so well, strolling about and meeting and [Pg 189] greeting and looking at each other. Vava looked around her and thought that here also there was bustle and music. A chorus of crickets chirped the waltzes; the ants worked on busily and anxiously just like the doctors with their prey or without it.... And the lady-birds, beetles, caterpillars, butterflies and bees were the public. Vava thought it much nicer to be at this music than at the music below. Here she could lie on the grass and she was so happy, so happy! ”

“ In person, this humble heiress to countless thousands was quite sufficiently attractive to have been loved—as all women in her position naturally desire to be—for herself alone. Her{266} features were not regular, nor can her eyes be described as either large or “liquid;” but her figure was fine, her complexion good, her teeth white, and her tout ensemble decidedly effective. She worshipped Arthur Vavasour with a devotion which was alike unmerited and inexpedient. ”

“ UNSTABLE AS WATER. Time was speeding away in the fair grounds of Danescourt; the trotting-match had been trotted, and the rat-tailed horse had won the race. Colonel Norcott was triumphant; and the déjeuner à la fourchette had put everyone—men, women, and children—more or less, into still higher spirits than before. As yet, Honor, not at all, as we know, to her surprise, had seen nothing of Arthur Vavasour. ”

“ Vavasour met with few or none who were capable either of understanding or making allowances for his infirmity; and thus it chanced that, though no man living was more formed by nature to enjoy the blessings of friendship, he passed through life without meeting (of his own degree) a single congenial soul into whose breast he could pour out his sorrows, or ask for sympathy with his joys. ”

“ Like the Quakers, the Vaudois were a quiet, even a timid people. They did not seek the notice or the glory of the world. The life they loved the best was that of their lonely Alpine valleys, the simple days of shepherding among the fairy-haunted hills, the evenings when the head of every house read, in his own dialect, the Bible to his assembled children; the bursting of the flowers in spring (flowers which the Fantines, the Vaudois fairies, watch and water every day until they blow) ; the long days out on the hills in summer, when the cattle are led to the upper meadows ”

“ Vavasour has seen. I am afraid, indeed, that she has more than once regretted the morning when she ran away in a hack-cab from her brother Lord Scoutbush's house in Eaton Square, to be married to Elsley Vavasour, the gifted author of "A Soul's Agonies and other Poems." He was a lion then, with foolish women running after him, and turning his head once and for all; and Lucia St. Just was a wild Irish girl, new to London society, all feeling and romance, and literally all; for there was little real intellect underlying her passionate sensibility. ”

“ Robert Vavasour sighed.
"You are right," he replied. "I myself see the change, but without the power to remedy it now."
"How so?" she asked.
"You say altered since her marriage. It is true; for when Amy married she wilfully shut out from her heart all hopes of happiness."
"You speak in riddles, Mr. Vavasour, which I am totally unable to comprehend." [301]
"I am a rich man, Mrs. Elrington, and that alone might have tempted many a girl, or led her to fancy she loved me." ”