have not yet heard, then,’ the Earl replied, ‘of the great honour done to me and to my house?’
Constance shook her head. She knew now that her worst fears were going to be realised.
‘Tell me quickly, Edward.’
‘No less a person than her Grace the Duchess of Dunstanburgh has offered me, through the Chancellor, the support and honour of her hand.’
Constance started. This was the worst, indeed. The Duchess of Dunstanburgh! Sixty-five years of age; already thrice a widow; the Duchess of Dunstanburgh! She could not speak.
‘Have you nothing to say, Constance?’ asked the young man. ‘Do you not envy me my happy lot? My bride is not young to be sure, but she is a Duchess; the old Earldom will be lost in the new Duchy. She has buried three husbands already; one may look forward with joy to lying beside them in her gorgeous mausoleum. Her country house is finer than mine, but it is not so old. She is of rank so exalted that one need not inquire into her temper, which is said to be evil; nor into the little faults, such as jealousy, suspicion, meanness, greed, and avarice, with which the wicked world credits her.’
‘Edward! Edward!’ cried his cousin.
‘Then, again, one’s religion will be so beautifully brought into play. We are required to obey—that is the first thing taught in the Church catechism; all women are set in authority over us. I must therefore obey the Chancellor.’
His hearers were silent.
‘Again, what says the text?—“It is man’s chiefest honour to be chosen: his highest duty to give, wherever bidden, his love, his devotion, and his loyalty.” ’
The Professor nodded her head gravely.
‘What martyrs of religion would ask for a more noble opportunity,’ he asked, ‘than to marry this old woman?’
‘Edward!’ Constance could only warn. She sees no way to advise. ‘Do not scoff.’
‘Let us face the position,’ said the Professor. ‘The Chancellor has gone through the form of asking your consent to this marriage. When?’
‘Last night.’
‘And when do you see her?’
‘I am to see her ladyship this very morning.’
‘To inform her of your acquiescence. Yes; it is the usual form. The time is very short.’
‘My acquiescence?’ asked the Earl. ‘We shall see about that presently.’
‘Patience, my lord!’ The Professor was thinking what to advise for the best. ‘Patience! Let us have no sudden and violent resolves. We may get time. Ay—time will be our best friend. Remember that the Chancellor must be obeyed. She may, for the sake of courtesy, go through the form of proposing a suitable alliance for your consideration, but her proposition is her order, which you must obey. Otherwise it is contempt of court, and the penalty——’
‘I know it,’ said the Earl, ‘already. It is imprisonment.’
‘Such contempt would be punished by imprisonment for life. Imprisonment, hopeless.’
‘Nay,’ he replied. ‘Not hopeless, because one could always hope in the power of friends. Have I not Constance? And then, you see, Professor, I am two-and-twenty, while the Chancellor and the Duchess are both sixty-five. Perhaps they may join the majority.’
The Professor shook her head. Even to speak of the age of so great a lady, even to hint at her death as an event likely to happen soon, was an outrage against propriety—which is religion.
‘My determination is this,’ he went on, ‘whatever the consequence, I will never marry the Duchess. Law or no law, I will never marry a woman unless I love her.’ His eye rested for a moment on his cousin, and he reddened. ‘I may be imprisoned, but I shall carry with me the sympathy of every woman—that is, of every young woman—in the country.’
‘That will not help you, poor boy,’ said the Professor. ‘Hundreds of men are lying in our prisons who would have the sympathies of young women, were their histories known. But they lie there still, and will lie there till they die.’
‘Then I,’ said the Earl proudly, ‘will lie with them.’
There were moments when this young man seemed to forget the lessons of his early training, and the examples of his fellows. The meekness, modesty, submission, and docility which should mark the perfect man sometimes disappeared, and gave place to an assumption of the authority which should only belong to woman. At such times, in his own castle, his servants trembled before him; the stoutest woman’s heart failed for fear: even his guardian, the Dowager Lady Boltons, selected carefully by the Chancellor on account of her inflexible character, and because she had already reduced to complete submission a young heir of the most obstinate disposition, and the rudest and most uncompromising material, quailed before him. He rode over her, so to speak. His will conquered hers. She was ashamed to own it; she did not acquaint the Chancellor with her ward’s masterful character, but she knew, in her own mind, that her guardianship had been a failure. Nay, so strange was the personal influence of the young man, so infectious among the men were such assertions of will, that any husband who happened to witness one of them, would go home and carry on in fashion so masterful, so independent, and so self-willed, even those who had previously been the most submissive, that they were only brought to reason and proper submission by threats, remonstrances, and visits of admonition from the vicar—who, poor woman, was always occupied in the pulpit, owing to the Earl’s bad example, with the disobedience of man and its awful consequences here and hereafter. Sometimes these failed. Then they became acquainted with the inside of a prison and with bread and water.
‘Let us get time,’ said the Professor. ‘My lord, I hope,’—here she sunk her voice to a whisper—‘that you will neither lie in a prison nor marry any but the woman you love.’
Again the young man’s eyes boldly fell upon Constance, who blushed without knowing why.
Then the Professor, without any excuse, left them alone.
‘You have,’ said Lord Chester, ‘something to say to me, Constance.’
She hesitated. What use to say now what should have been said at another time and at a more fitting opportunity?
‘I am no milky, modest, obedient youth, Constance. You know me well. Have you nothing to say to me?’
In the novels, the young man who hears the first word of love generally sinks on his knees, and with downcast eyes and blushing face reverentially kisses the hand so graciously offered to him. In ordinary life they had to wait until they were asked. Yet this young man was actually asking—boldly asking—for the word of love—what else could he mean?—and instead of blushing, was fixedly regarding Constance with fearless eyes.
‘It seems idle now to say it,’ she replied, stammering and hesitating—though in novels the woman always spoke up in a clear, calm, and resolute accents; ‘but, Edward, had the Chancellor not been notoriously the personal friend and creature of the Duchess, I should have gone to her long ago. They were schoolfellows; she owes her promotion to the Duchess; she would most certainly have rewarded her Grace by refusing my request.’
