The Eustace Diamonds (13 page)

‘I did not know that Miss Morris was so particularly interested in Mr Greystock,' said Lord Fawn.

‘She has known him since she was a child,' said his mother.

About an hour afterwards Lady Fawn went upstairs and found Lucy sitting all alone in the still so-called schoolroom. She had no candle, and had made no pretence to do anything since she had left the room downstairs. In the interval family prayers had been read, and Lucy's absence was unusual, and contrary to rule. ‘Lucy, my dear, why are you sitting here?' said Lady Fawn.

‘Because I am unhappy.'

‘What makes you unhappy, Lucy?'

‘I don't know. I would rather you didn't ask me. I suppose I behaved badly downstairs.'

‘My son would forgive you in a moment if you asked him.'

‘No; – certainly not. I can beg your pardon, Lady Fawn, but not his. Of course I had no right to talk about speeches, and politics, and this prince in your drawing-room.'

‘Lucy, you astonish me.'

‘But it is so. Dear Lady Fawn, don't look like that. I know how good you are to me. I know you let me do things which other governesses mayn't do: – and say things; but still I am a governess, and I know I misbehaved – to you.' Then Lucy burst into tears.

Lady Fawn, in whose bosom there was no stony corner or morsel of hard iron, was softened at once. ‘My dear, you are more like another daughter to me than anything else.'

‘Dear Lady Fawn!'

‘But it makes me unhappy when I see your mind engaged about Mr Greystock. There is the truth, Lucy. You should not think of Mr Greystock. Mr Greystock is a man who has his way to make in the world, and could not marry you, even if, under other circumstances, he would wish to do so. You know how frank I am with you, giving you credit for honest, sound good sense; To me and to my girls, who know you as a lady, you are as dear a friend as though you were – were anything you may please to think. Lucy Morris is to us our own dear, dear little friend Lucy. But Mr Greystock, who is a Member of Parliament, could not marry a governess.'

‘But I love him so dearly,' said Lucy, getting up from her chair, ‘that his slightest word is to me more than all the words of all the
world beside! It is no use, Lady Fawn. I do love him, and I don't mean to try to give it up!' Lady Fawn stood silent for a moment, and then suggested that it would be better for them both to go to bed. During that minute she had been unable to decide what she had better say or do in the present emergency.

He did not come on the Sunday, but Lord Fawn did come. Immediately after morning church Lord Fawn declared his intention of returning at once from Fawn Court to town. He was very silent at breakfast, and his sisters surmised that he was still angry with poor Lucy. Lucy, too, was unlike herself – was silent, sad, and oppressed. Lady Fawn was serious, and almost solemn; – so that there was little even of holy mirth at Fawn Court on that Sunday morning. The whole family, however, went to church, and immediately on their return Lord Fawn expressed his intention of returning to town. All the sisters felt that an injury had been done to them by Lucy. It was only on Sundays that their dinner-table was graced by the male member of the family, and now he was driven away. ‘I am sorry that you are going to desert us, Frederic,' said Lady Fawn. Lord Fawn muttered something as to absolute necessity, and went. The afternoon was very dreary at Fawn Court. Nothing was said on the subject; but there was still the feeling that Lucy had offended. At four o'Clock on that Sunday afternoon Lord Fawn was closeted with Lady Eustace.

The ‘closeting' consisted simply in the fact that Miss Macnulty was not present. Lizzie fully appreciated the pleasure, and utility, and general convenience of having a companion, but she had no scruple whatever in obtaining absolute freedom for herself when she desired it. ‘My dear,' she would say, ‘the best friends in the world shouldn't always be together; should they? Wouldn't you like to go to the Horticultural?
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Then Miss Macnulty would go to the Horticultural – or else up into her own bedroom. When Lizzie was beginning to wax wrathful again because Frank Greystock did not come Lord Fawn made his appearance. ‘How kind this is,' said Lizzie. ‘I thought you were always at Richmond on Sundays.'

‘I have just come up from my mother's,' said Lord Fawn, twiddling his hat. Then Lizzie, with a pretty eagerness, asked
after Lady Fawn and the girls, and her dear little friend, Lucy Morris, Lizzie could be very prettily eager when she pleased. She leaned forward her face as she asked her questions, and threw back her loose lustrous lock of hair, with her long lithe fingers covered with diamonds – the diamonds, these, which Sir Florian had really given her, or which she had procured from Mr Benjamin in the clever manner described in the opening chapter. ‘They are all quite well, thank you,' said Lord Fawn. ‘I believe Miss Morris is quite well, though she was a little out of sorts last night.'

‘She is not ill, I hope,' said Lizzie, bringing the lustrous lock forward again.

‘In her temper, I mean,' said Lord Fawn.

‘Indeed! I hope Miss Lucy is not forgetting herself. That would be very sad, after the great kindness she has received.' Lord Fawn said that it would be very sad, and then put his hat down upon the floor. It came upon Lizzie at that moment, as by a flash of lightning – by an electric message delivered to her intellect by that movement of the hat – that she might be sure of Lord Fawn if she chose to take him. On Friday she might have been sure of Frank – only that Lady Linlithgow came in the way. But now she did not feel at all sure of Frank. Lord Fawn was at any rate a peer. She had heard that he was a poor peer – but a peer, she thought, can't be altogether poor. And though he was a stupid owl – she did not hesitate to acknowledge to herself that he was as stupid as an owl – he had a position. He was one of the Government, and his wife would, no doubt, be able to go anywhere. It was becoming essential to her that she should marry. Even though her husband should give up the diamonds, she would not in such case incur the disgrace of surrendering them herself. She would have kept them till she had ceased to be a Eustace. Frank had certainly meant it on that Thursday afternoon; – but surely he would have been in Mount Street before this if he had not changed his mind. We all know that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. ‘I have been at Fawn Court once or twice,' said Lizzie, with her sweetest grace, ‘and I always think it a model of real family happiness.'

‘I hope you may be there very often,' said Lord Fawn.

‘Ah, I have no right to intrude myself often on your mother, Lord Fawn.'

There could hardly be a better opening than this for him had he chosen to accept it. But it was not thus that he had arranged it – for he had made his arrangements. There would be no feeling of that kind, I am sure,' he said. And then he was silent. How was he to deploy himself on the ground before him so as to make the strategy which he had prepared answer the occasion of the day? ‘Lady Eustace,' he said, ‘I don't know what your views of life may be.'

‘I have a child, you know, to bring up.'

‘Ah, yes; – that gives a great interest, of course.'

‘He will inherit a very large fortune, Lord Fawn; – too large, I fear, to be of service to a youth of one-and-twenty; and I must endeavour to fit him for the possession of it. That is – and always must be the chief object of my existence.' Then she felt that she had said too much. He was just the man who would be fool enough to believe her. ‘Not but what it is hard to do it. A mother can of course devote herself to her child; – but when a portion of the devotion must be given to the preservation of material interests there is less of tenderness in it. Don't you think so?'

‘No doubt,' said Lord Fawn; – ‘no doubt.' But he had not followed her, and was still thinking of his own strategy. ‘It's a comfort, of course, to know that one's child is provided for.'

‘Oh, yes; – but they tell me the poor little dear will have forty thousand a year when he's of age; and when I look at him in his little bed, and press him in my arms, and think of all that money, I almost wish that his father had been a poor plain gentleman.' Then the handkerchief was put to her eyes, and Lord Fawn had a moment in which to collect himself.

‘Ah – I myself am a poor man; – for my rank I mean.'

‘A man with your position, Lord Fawn, and your talents and genius for business, can never be poor.'

‘My father's property was all Irish, you know.'

‘Was it indeed?'

‘And he was an Irish peer, till Lord Melbourne
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gave him an English peerage.'

‘An Irish peer, was he?' Lizzie understood nothing of this, but presumed that an Irish peer was a peer who had not sufficient money to live upon. Lord Fawn, however, was endeavouring to tell his story in as few words as possible.

‘He was then made Lord Fawn of Richmond, in the peerage of the United Kingdom. The property in Ireland is still mine, but there's no place on it.'

‘Indeed!'

‘There was a house, but my father allowed it to tumble down. It's in Tipperary;
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– not at all a desirable country to live in.'

‘Oh dear no! Don't they murder the people?'

‘It's about five thousand a year, and out of that my mother has half for her life.'

‘What an excellent family arrangement,' said Lizzie. There was so long a pause made between each statement that she was forced to make some reply.

‘You see, for a peer, the fortune is very small indeed.'

‘But then you have a salary; – don't you?'

‘At present I have; – but no one can tell how long that may last.'

‘I'm sure it's for everybody's good that it should go on for ever so many years,' said Lizzie.

‘Thank you,' said Lord Fawn. ‘I'm afraid, however, there are a great many people who don't think so. Your cousin Greystock would do anything on earth to turn us out.'

‘Luckily, my cousin Frank has not much power,' said Lizzie. And in saying it she threw into her tone, and into her countenance, a certain amount of contempt for Frank as a man and as a politician, which was pleasant to Lord Fawn.

‘Now,' said he, ‘I have told you everything about myself which I was bound, as a man of honour, to tell before I – I – I – In short, you know what I mean.'

‘Oh, Lord Fawn!'

‘I have told you everything. I owe no money, but I could not afford to marry a wife without an income. I admire you more than any woman I ever saw. I love you with all my heart.' He was now standing upright before her, with the fingers of his right
hand touching his left breast, and there was something almost of dignity in his gesture and demeanour. ‘It may be that you are determined never to marry again. I can only say that if you will trust yourself to me – yourself and your child – I will do my duty truly by you both, and will make your happiness the chief object of my existence.' When she had listened to him thus far, of course she must accept him; but he was by no means aware of that. She sat silent, with her hands folded on her breast, looking down upon the ground; but he did not as yet attempt to seat himself by her. ‘Lady Eustace,' he continued, ‘may I venture to entertain a hope?'

‘May I not have an hour to think of it?' said Lizzie, just venturing to turn a glance of her eye upon his face.

‘Oh, certainly. I will call again whenever you may bid me.'

Now she was silent for two or three minutes, during which he still stood over her. But he had dropped his hand from his breast, and had stooped, and picked up his hat ready for his departure. Was he to come again on Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday? Let her tell him that and he would go. He doubtless reflected that Wednesday would suit him best, because there would be no House. But Lizzie was too magnanimous for this. ‘Lord Fawn,' she said, rising, ‘you have paid me the greatest compliment that a man can pay a woman. Coming from you it is doubly precious; first, because of your character and secondly –'

‘Why secondly?'

‘Secondly, because I can love you.' This was said in her lowest whisper, and then she moved towards him gently, and almost laid her head upon his breast. Of course he put his arm round her waist – but it was first necessary that he should once more disembarrass himself of his hat – and then her head was upon his breast. ‘Dearest Lizzie!' he said, kissing her forehead.

‘Dearest Frederic!' she murmured.

‘I shall write to my mother tonight,' he said.

‘Do, do; – dear Frederic'

‘And she will come to you at once, I am sure.'

‘I will receive her and love her as a mother,' said Lizzie, with all her energy. Then he kissed her again – her forehead and her
lips – and took his leave, promising to be with her at any rate on Wednesday.

‘Lady Fawn!' she said to herself. The name did not sound so well as that of Lady Eustace. But it is much to be a wife; and more to be a peeress.

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