The Three Miss Kings

CHAPTER L.
"THY PEOPLE SHALL BE MY PEOPLE."

Patty softened down the terms in which she made her declaration of independence, when she found that it was received in so proper a spirit. She asked them if they had any objection– which, after telling them that it didn't matter whether they had or not, was a graceful act, tending to make things pleasant without committing anybody. But if they had objections (as of course they had) they abandoned them at this crisis. It was no use to fight against Paul Brion, so they accepted him, and made the best of him. The head of the family suddenly and forcibly realised that he should have been disappointed in his little sister-in law if she had acted otherwise; and even Mrs. Duff-Scott, who would always so much rather help than hinder a generous project, no matter how opposed to the ethics of her class, was surprised herself by the readiness with which she turned her back on faded old lords and dissipated young baronets, and gave herself up to the pleasant task of making true lovers happy. Elizabeth repented swiftly of her own disloyalty to plighted love, temporary and shadowy as it was; and, seeing how matters really stood, acquiesced in the situation with a sense of great thankfulness that her Patty was proved so incorruptible by the tests she had gone through. Mrs. Yelverton's only trouble was the fear of separation in the family, which the ratification of the engagement seemed likely to bring about.

But Patty was dissuaded from her daring enterprise, as first proposed; and Paul was written to by her brother and guardian, and adjured to detach himself from his newspaper for a while and come to England for a holiday – which, it was delicately hinted, might take the form of a bridal tour. And in that little sitting-room, sacred to the private interviews of the master and mistress of the house, great schemes were conceived and elaborated for the purpose of seducing Mrs. Brion's husband to remain in England for good and all. They settled his future for him in what seemed to them an irresistibly attractive way. He was to rent a certain picturesque manor-house in the Yelverton neighbourhood, and there, keeping Patty within her sister's reach, take up that wholesome, out-door country life which they were sure would be so good for his health and his temper. He could do a little high farming, and "whiles" write famous books; or, if his tastes and habits unfitted him for such a humdrum career, he could live in the world of London art and intellect, and be a "power" on behalf of those social reforms for which his brother-in-law so ardently laboured. Mr. Brion, senior, who had long ago returned to Seaview Villa, was, of course, to be sent for back again, to shelter himself under the broad Yelverton wing. The plan was all arranged in the most harmonious manner, and Elizabeth's heart grew more light and confident every time she discussed it.

Paul received his pressing invitation – which he understood to mean, as it did, a permission to go and marry Patty from her sister's house – just after having been informed by Mrs. Aarons, "as a positive fact," that Miss Yelverton was shortly to be made a countess. He did not believe this piece of news, though Mrs. Aarons, who had an unaccountably large number of friends in the highest circles of London society, was ready to vouch for its authenticity with her life, if necessary; but, all the same, it made him feel moody, and surly, and ill-used, and miserable. It was his dark hour before the dawn. In Australia the summer was coming on. It was the middle of November. The "Cup" carnival was over for another year. The war in Egypt was also over, and the campaign of Murdoch's cricketers in England – two events which it seemed somehow natural to bracket together. The Honourable Ivo Bligh and his team had just arrived in Melbourne. The Austral had just been sunk in Sydney Harbour. It was early summer with us here, the brightest and gayest time of the whole year. In England the bitter winter was at hand – that dreaded English winter which the Australian shudders to think of, but which the Yelverton family had agreed to spend in their ancestral house, in order to naturalise and acclimatise the sisters, and that duty might be done in respect of those who had to bear the full extent of its bitterness, in hunger, and cold, and want. When Mr. Yelverton wrote to Paul to ask him to visit them, Patty wrote also to suggest that his precious health might suffer by coming over at such a season, and to advise him to wait until February or March. But the moment her lover had read those letters, he put on his hat and went forth to his office to demand leave for six months, and in a few days was on board the returning mail steamer on his way to England. He did not feel like waiting now – after waiting for two years – and she was not in the least afraid that he would accept her advice.

Paul's answers arrived by post, as he was himself speeding through Europe – not so much absorbed in his mission as to neglect note-making by the way, and able to write brilliant articles on Gambetta's death, and other affairs of the moment, while waiting for boat or train to carry him to his beloved; and it was still only the first week in January when they received a telegram at Yelverton announcing his imminent arrival. Mr. Yelverton himself went to London to meet him, and Elizabeth rolled herself in furs and an opossum rug in her snug brougham and drove to the country railway station to meet them both, leaving Patty sitting by the wood fire in the hall. Mrs. Duff-Scott was in town, and Eleanor with her, trying to see Rossetti's pictures through the murky darkness of the winter days, but in reality bent on giving the long-divided lovers as much as possible of their own society for a little while. The carriage went forth early in the afternoon, with its lamps lighted, and it returned when the cold night had settled down on the dreary landscape at five o'clock. Paul, ulstered and comfortered, walked into the dimly-lighted, warm, vast space, hung round with ghostly banners and antlers, and coats of mail, and pictures whereof little was visible but the frames, and marched straight into the ruddy circle of the firelight, where the small figure awaited him by the twinkling tea-table, herself only an outline against the dusk behind her; and the pair stood on the hearthrug and kissed each other silently, while Elizabeth, accompanied by her husband, went to take her bonnet off, and to see how Kingscote junior was getting on.

After that Paul and Patty parted no more. They had a few peaceful weeks at Yelverton, during which the newspaper in Melbourne got nothing whatever from the fertile brain of its brilliant contributor (which, Patty thought, must certainly be a most serious matter for the proprietors); and in which interval they made compensation for all past shortcomings as far as their opportunities, which were profuse and various, allowed. It delighted Paul to cast up at Patty the several slights and snubs that she had inflicted on him in the old Myrtle Street days, and it was her great luxury in life to make atonement for them all – to pay him back a hundredfold for all that he had suffered on her account. The number of "soft things" that she played upon the piano from morning till night would alone have set him up in "Fridays" for the two years that he had been driven to Mrs. Aarons for entertainment; and the abject meekness of the little spitfire that he used to know was enough to provoke him to bully her, if he had had anything of the bully in him. The butter-like consistency to which she melted in this freezing English winter time was such as to disqualify her for ever from sitting in judgment upon Elizabeth's conjugal attitude. She fell so low, indeed, that she became, in her turn, a mark for Eleanor's scoffing criticism.

"Well, I never thought to see you grovel to any living being – let alone a man– as you do to him," said that young lady on one occasion, with an impudent smile. "The citizens of Calais on their knees to Edward the Third were truculent swaggerers by comparison."

"You mind your own business," retorted Patty, with a flash of her ancient spirit.

Whereat Nelly rejoined that she would mind it by keeping her fiancé in his proper place when her time came to have a fiancé. She would not let him put a rope round her neck and tie it to his button-hole like a hat-string. She'd see him farther first.

February came, and Mrs. Duff-Scott returned, and preparations for the wedding were set going. The fairy godmother was determined to make up for the disappointment she had suffered in Elizabeth's case by making a great festival of the second marriage of the family, and they let her have her wish, the result being that the bride of the poor press-writer had a trousseau worthy of that coronet which she had extravagantly thrown away, and presents the list and description of which filled a whole column of the Yelverton Advertiser, and made the hearts of all the local maidens to burn with envy. In March they were married in Yelverton village church. They went to London for a week, and came back for a fortnight; and in April they crossed the sea again, bound for their Melbourne home.

For all the beautiful arrangements that had been planned for them fell through. The Yelvertons had reckoned without their host – as is the incurable habit of sanguine human nature – with the usual result. Paul had no mind to abandon his chosen career and the country that, as a true Australian, he loved and served as he could never love and serve another, because he had married into a great English family; and Patty would not allow him to be persuaded. Though her heart was torn in two at the thought of parting with Elizabeth, and with that precious baby who was Elizabeth's rival in her affections, she promptly and uncomplainingly tore herself from both of them to follow her husband whithersoever it seemed good to him to go.

"One cannot have everything in this world," said Patty philosophically, "and you and I, Elizabeth, have considerably more than our fair share. If we hadn't to pay something for our happiness, how could we expect it to last?"

CHAPTER LI.
PATIENCE REWARDED

Eleanor, like Patty, withstood the seductions of English life and miscellaneous English admirers, and lived to be Miss Yelverton in her turn, unappropriated and independent. And, like both her sisters, though more by accident than of deliberate intention, she remained true to her first love, and, after seeing the world and supping full of pleasure and luxury, returned to Melbourne and married Mr. Westmoreland. That is to say, Mr. Westmoreland followed her to England, and followed her all over Europe – dogging her from place to place with a steadfast persistence that certainly deserved reward – until the major and Mrs. Duff-Scott, returning home almost immediately after Patty's marriage and departure, brought their one ewe lamb, which the Yelvertons had not the conscience to immediately deprive them of, back to Australia with them; when her persevering suitor promptly took his passage in the same ship. All this time Mr. Westmoreland had been as much in love as his capacity for the tender passion – much larger than was generally supposed – permitted. Whether it was that she was the only woman who dared to bully him and trample on him, and thereby won his admiration and respect – or whether his passion required that the object of it should be difficult of attainment – or whether her grace and beauty were literally irresistible to him – or whether he was merely the sport of that unaccountable fate which seems to govern or misgovern these affairs, it is not necessary to conjecture. No one asks for reasons when a man or woman falls a victim to this sort of infatuation. Some said it was because she had become rich and grand, but that was not the case – except in so far as the change in her social circumstances had made her tyrannical and impudent, in which sense wealth and consequence had certainly enhanced her attractions in his eyes. Thirty thousand pounds, though a very respectable marriage portion in England, is not sufficient to make a fortune-hunter of an Australian suitor in his position; and let me do the Australian suitor of all ranks justice and here state that fortune hunting, through the medium of matrimony, is a weakness that his worst enemy cannot accuse him of – whatever his other faults may be. Mr. Westmoreland, being fond of money, as a constitutional and hereditary peculiarity – if you can call that a peculiarity – was tempted to marry it once, when that stout and swarthy person in the satin gown and diamonds exercised her fascinations on him at the club ball, and he could have married it at any time of his bachelor life, the above possessor of it being, like Barkis, "willin'", and even more than "willin'". Her fortune was such that Eleanor's thirty thousand was but a drop in the bucket compared with it, and yet even he did not value it in comparison with the favour of that capricious young lady. So he followed her about from day to day and from place to place, as if he had no other aim in life than to keep her within sight, making himself an insufferable nuisance to her friends very often, but apparently not offending her by his open and inveterate pursuit. She was not kind, but she was not cruel, and yet she was both in turn to a distracting degree. She made his life an ecstasy of miserable longing for her, keeping him by her side like a big dog on a chain, and feeding him with stones (in the prettiest manner) when he asked for bread. But she grew very partial to her big dog in the process of tormenting him and witnessing his touching patience under it. She was "used to him," she said; and when, from some untoward circumstance over which he had no control, he was for a little while absent from her, she felt the gap he left. She sensibly missed him. Moreover, though she trampled on him herself, it hurt her to see others do it; and when Mrs. Duff-Scott and Kingscote Yelverton respectively aired their opinions of his character and conduct, she instantly went over to his side, and protested in her heart, if not in words, against the injustice and opprobrium that he incurred for her sake. So, when Elizabeth became the much-occupied mother of a family, and when Patty was married and gone off into the world with her Paul, Eleanor, left alone in her independence, began to reckon up what it was worth. The spectacle of her sisters' wedded lives gave her pleasant notions of matrimony, and the state of single blessedness, as such, never had any particular charms for her. Was it worth while, she asked herself, to be cruel any more? – and might she not just as well have a house and home of her own as Elizabeth and Patty? Her lover was only a big dog upon a chain, but then why shouldn't he be? Husbands were not required to be all of the same pattern. She didn't want to be domineered over. And she didn't see anybody she liked better. She might go farther and fare worse. And – she was getting older every day.

Mrs. Duff-Scott broke in upon these meditations with the demand that she (Eleanor) should return with her to Melbourne, if only for a year or two, so that she should not be entirely bereft and desolate.

"I must start at once," said the energetic woman, suddenly seized with a paroxysm of home sickness and a sense of the necessity to be doing something now that at Yelverton there seemed nothing more to do, and in order to shake off the depressing effect of the first break in their little circle. "I have been away too long – it is time to be looking after my own business. Besides, I can't allow Patty to remain in that young man's lodgings – full of dusty papers and tobacco smoke, and where, I daresay, she hasn't so much as a peg to hang her dresses on. She must get a house at once, and I must be there to see about it, and to help her to choose the furniture. Elizabeth, my darling, you have your husband and child – I am leaving you happy and comfortable – and I will come and see you again in a year or two, or perhaps you and Kingscote will take a trip over yourselves and spend a winter with us. But I must go now. And do, do – oh, do let me keep Nelly for a little while longer! You know I will take care of her, and I couldn't bear the sight of my house with none of you in it!"

So she went, and of course she took Eleanor, who secretly longed for the land of sunshine after her full dose of "that horrid English climate," and who, with a sister at either end of the world, perhaps missed Patty, who had been her companion by night as well as by day, more than she would miss Elizabeth. The girl was very ready to go. She wept bitterly when the actual parting came, but she got over it in a way that gave great satisfaction to Mrs. Duff-Scott and the major, and relieved them of all fear that they had been selfish about bringing her away. They joined the mail steamer at Venice, and there found Mr. Westmoreland on board. He had been summoned by his agent at home he explained; one of his partners wanted to retire, and he had to be there to sign papers. And since it had so happened that he was obliged to go back by this particular boat, he hoped the ladies would make him useful, and let him look after their luggage and things. Eleanor was properly and conventionally astonished by the curious coincidence, but had known that it would happen just as well as he. The chaperon, for her part, was indignant and annoyed by it – for a little while; afterwards she, too, reflected that Eleanor had spent two unproductive years in England and was growing older every day. Also that she might certainly go farther and fare worse. So Mr. Westmoreland was accepted as a member of the travelling party. All the heavy duties of escort were relegated to him by the major, and Mrs. Duff-Scott sent him hither and thither in a way that he had never been accustomed to. But he was meek and biddable in these days, and did not mind what uses he put his noble self to for his lady's sake. And she was very gracious. The conditions of ship life, at once so favourable and so very unfavourable for the growth of tender relations, suited his requirements in every way. She could not snub him under the ever-watchful eyes of their fellow-passengers. She could not send him away from her. She was even a little tempted, by that ingrained vanity of the female heart, to make a display before the other and less favoured ladies of the subject-like homage which she, queen-like, received. Altogether, things went on in a very promising manner. So that when, no farther than the Red Sea – while life seemed, as it does in that charming locality, reduced to its simple elements, and the pleasure of having a man to fan her was a comparatively strong sensation – when at this propitious juncture, Mr. Westmoreland bewailed his hard fate for the thousandth time, and wondered whether he should ever have the good fortune to find a little favour in her sight, it seemed to her that this sort of thing had gone on long enough, and that she might as well pacify him and have done with it. So she said, looking at him languidly with her sentimental blue eyes – "Well, if you'll promise not to bother me any more, I'll think about it."

He promised faithfully not to bother her any more, and he did not. But he asked her presently, after fanning her in silence for some minutes, what colour she would like her carriage painted, and she answered promptly, "Dark green."

While they were yet upon the sea, a letter – three letters, in fact – were despatched to Yelverton, to ask the consent of the head of the family to the newly-formed engagement, and not long after the party arrived in Melbourne the desired permission was received, Mr. and Mrs. Yelverton having learned the futility of opposition in these matters, and having no serious objection to Nelly's choice. And then again Mrs. Duff-Scott plunged into the delight of preparation for trousseau and wedding festivities – quite willing that the "poor dear fellow," as she now called him (having taken him to her capacious heart), should receive the reward of his devotion without unnecessary delay. The house was already there, a spick and span family mansion in Toorak, built by Mr. Westmoreland's father, and inherited by himself ere the first gloss was off the furniture; there was nothing to do to that but to arrange the chairs and sofas, and scatter Eleanor's wedding presents over the tables. There was nothing more possible. It was "hopeless," Mrs. Duff-Scott said, surveying the bright and shining rooms through her double eye-glass. Unless it were entirely cleared out, and you started afresh from the beginning, she would defy you to make anything of it. So, as the bridegroom was particularly proud of his furniture, which was both new and costly, and would have scouted with indignation any suggestion of replacing it, Mrs. Duff-Scott abandoned Eleanor æsthetically to her fate. There was nothing to wait for, so the pair were made one with great pomp and ceremony not long after their return to Australia. Eleanor had the grandest wedding of them all, and really did wear "woven dew" on the occasion – with any quantity of lace about it of extravagant delicacy and preciousness. And now she has settled herself in her great, gay-coloured, handsome house, and is already a very fashionable and much-admired and much-sought-after lady – so overwhelmed with her social engagements and responsibilities sometimes that she says she doesn't know what she should do if she hadn't Patty's quiet little house to slip into now and then. But she enjoys it. And she enjoys leading her infatuated husband about with her, like a tame bear on a string, to show people how very, very infatuated he is. It is her idea of married happiness – at present.