A PROLOGUE TO NOTHING.
Sir Oliver wrote cheerfully. His lawsuit was
prospering; his prompt invasion of the field had disconcerted
Lady Caroline and her advisers. He had discovered
fresh evidence of the late Sir Thomas’s insanity.
His own lawyers were sanguine. They assured
him that, at the worst, the Courts would set aside
the ’46 will, and fall back for a compromise
on that of ’44, which gave the woman a life-interest
only in the Downton estates. But the case would
not be taken this side of the Long Vacation. . . .
(It was certain, then, that he could not return in
time.)
He had visited Bath and spent some weeks with his
mother. He devoted a page or two to criticism
of that fashionable city. It was clear he had
picked up many threads of his younger days; had renewed
old acquaintances and made a hundred new ones.
Play, he wrote, was a craze in England; the stakes
frightened a home-comer from New England. For
his part, he gamed but moderately.
“As for the women, you have spoilt me for them.
I see none—not one, dearest—who
can hold a taper to you. Their artifices disgust
me; and I watch them, telling myself that my Ruth
has only to enter their balls and assemblies to triumph—nay,
to eclipse them totally. . . . And this reminds
me to say that I have spoken with my mother.
She had heard, of course, from more than one.
Lady Caroline’s account had been merely coarse
and spiteful; but by that lady’s later conduct
she was already prepared to discount it. The
pair encountered in London, at my Lady Newcastle’s;
and my mother (who has spirit) refused her bow.
Diana, to her credit, appears to have done you more
justice; and Mrs. Harry writes reams in your praise.
To be sure my mother, not knowing Mrs. Harry, distrusts
her judgment for a Colonial’s; but I vow she
is the soundest of women. . . . In short, dear
Ruth, we have only to regularise things and we are
forgiven. The good soul dotes on me, and imagines
she has but a few years left to live. This softens
her. . . .
“There is a rumour—credit it, if
you can!—that my Aunt Caroline intends
to espouse a Mr. Adam Rouffignac, a foreigner and a
wine merchant; I suppose (since he is reputed rich)
to arm herself with money to pay her lawyers.
What his object can be, poor man, I am unable
to conjecture. It is a strange world. While
her ugly mother mates at the age of fifty, Diana—who
started with all the advantages of looks—withers
upon the maiden thorn. . . .”
His letters, every one, concluded with protests of
affection. She rejoiced in them. But it
was now certain that he could not return in time.
At length, as her day drew near, she wrote to him,
conceiving this to be her duty. She knew that
he would take a blow from what she had to tell, and
covered it up cleverly, lightly covering all her own
dread. She hoped the child would be a boy. ("But
why do I hope it?” she asked herself as she
penned the words, and thought of Dicky.)
