The lines blurred together, and he read it several times, jumping over words, going back to reread, and still struggling to comprehend it all. Vaughan had taken ill of a violent fever three days ago, and there were no hopes given of saving his life when they realised it was influenza and not a cold. The doctor suspected a pneumonia complication given His Lordship’s history of suffering from asthma, but there were numerous deaths this spring even amongst vigorous people.
There were lines of their mutual loss and grief, but it was hard for Philip to take in her words. At first, it was a sort of stupefaction; but every moment was quickening his perception of the horrible evil. He could not indulge a hope of the paragraphs being false.
Vaughan is dead.
He felt his cheeks bathed in tears, and Vaughan’s man was talking of going up to the house, would he join him, the steward and butler and housekeeper all had to be told. Philip made some indeterminate sound. He was not at all prepared to walk into that house, and the servant left him, with more condolences and the expectation of seeing him at the Hall when he was more composed.
Philip understood why he was being asked to inform Vaughan’s servants, knew he would have to write to Vaughan’s solicitor and ask about his will, but he could not bear to put words to it. The rest of the day passed, and he was aware food was put in front of him and that his housekeeper gently offered condolences. When his parlour got dark, his man suggested he get some rest and asked if he could write to anyone for him, but Philip sent him away.
There was no possibility of rest. The evening passed without a pause of misery; the night was totally sleepless. Philip passed only from feelings of sickness to shudderings of heartache. Grief for his cousin, whom he loved as a brother, mingled with deep distress at now being the Viscount Vaughan.
ChapterFourteen
Eleanor had done her best to avoid her father since last evening after he promised to find her a wealthy husband. She took breakfast in her room, claiming a headache, and then spent the day walking the park, primarily in her mother’s grove. She had often gone there to read her letters or to remember her mother, but now she was no longer allowed to receive any news from her friends, and her own future was more on her mind than her departed mother.
Would it have been better to choose a bad husband for herself rather than suffer the attentions of whatever gentlemen her father selected? She had told Sir Charles her intentions, and he understood her motives. He had not loved her, but what she had done still felt wrong. It was ill-judged to encourage him and then refuse his proposal. But was it not also wrong to marry without affection, without respect?
It was undoubtedly beyond the pale to hurt Philip by courting another man in front of him.
Many might argue that it was wrong to fall in love with Philip in the first place when they had always known that they could never be together. But how was such a thing to be helped? She had loved Philip since they were children, and that earnest love had grown into a deeper and more passionate affection.
When she grew too tired to wander any farther, Eleanor returned to the house to dress for the dinner that her father had ordered as though she were incapable. She could not remember him interfering when her mother had been alive, but perhaps as a child she had not seen. She had one more evening to pass with her father before she had a reprieve of a week while he went to town. Had Henry or even Frederick been at home, it would have been a pleasant time, but now Eleanor was faced with only the absence of unkindness.
Other than her drawing and her books, she had no happy recourse for herself during those moments when her feelings weighed heavier on her in her present lonely situation. She felt her mother’s loss more during moments like that. What would her mother have thought of her father going to town to ask his friends who had money enough to marry his daughter?
Eleanor dressed and then decided, having nothing at all to do until five o’clock and her father not currently demanding her attendance, to look in her mother’s apartments. It was in the newer part of the house that the general’s father had built. It was a large, well-proportioned apartment, with a handsome dimity bed, a bright Bath stove, mahogany wardrobes, and neatly painted chairs.
She had fond memories of sitting in the sunlight of the two sash windows and watching her mother prepare for an evening. The rooms were unchanged, and not as modernised as other parts of Northanger, but still elegant though they were years out of date.
The whole Abbey has everything that money and taste could do, but what paternal affection was granted during the nine years my mother has been dead?
Her father reproached her nearly as often as he spoke to her. Since her mother died, it was Philip who had always been the one to esteem her, to admire and appreciate her. Her brothers—Henry, at least—had been a friend to her, but that was not the same as earning the love and admiration of someone outside one’s immediate family.
Eleanor wandered the room as memories washed over her, and a sigh and a single tear escaped. In one of the dressing closets she found a box of her mother’s jewellery, and she brought it back to her mother’s room, sitting on the bed and laying everything out.
Her mother had received a beautiful set of pearls as a wedding present, and the general had them set by for Eleanor. She had always known that when she married, her father would officially give them to her. It had been years since she had come into her mother’s apartments to try them on with no one noticing.
She sensibly knew that she was too old for such things, but the tangible connexion to a mother was something Eleanor felt no orphaned daughter could truly outgrow.
The woven seed pearls looked like a series of scrolls and flowerhead clusters. There was a necklace accompanied by two bracelets with large clasps, a brooch, and a pair of earrings. The two bracelets could be connected to form a short necklace, and Eleanor remembered her mother placing the pair around her neck as she sat on one of the chairs, swinging her feet and thinking how grown up she must look.
Eleanor ran her fingers across the delicate pearls. Surely a mother would want her only daughter to be happily settled, and not just advantageously settled. Whatever degree of attachment there had been between her parents, her mother must often have had much to bear. The general’s temper must have injured her mother as much as it did her. Would her mother not want to see her daughter married to a man with a disposition more inclined to patience and kindness?
She carefully put on the necklace and stood before the mirror. She did not favour her mother strongly, something in the eyes and hair colour maybe, but Eleanor seemed like her more in manner and bearing rather than appearance.
She would want me to be happy. She would say that it is not irrational or foolish to want to marry for affection.
Her mother would have known that Philip’s want of consequence and fortune would throw difficulties in the way of Eleanor marrying him. The general would, upon this ground alone, independent of the objection that might be raised against his lack of title, oppose the connexion. Eleanor’s own grandeur and wealth was not enough—in his mind—to let her marry with attention to affection.
But her mother would have supported her.
Mrs Tilney would not want General Tilney to send Eleanor to town with Mrs Hughes to find a rich husband, without any care if Eleanor even liked the man. Her mother would have been her advocate, made certain that her only daughter’s wishes were heard.
“I have lacked initiative,” she whispered to her reflection, “and it is time to act.”
Her mother was no longer here to speak for her, so Eleanor would have to tell her father what she wanted. She had almost married that dreadful Sir Charles just to do one thing for herself, to have some independence. The general was going to choose potential husbands for her if she did not speak, and her days at the Abbey were already long, lonely, and hopeless. How worse could her life get?
Philip might still resent what she almost did, but she could not believe that he would be so irritable over what happened at Welland that he would throw away their chance at happiness. If she convinced her father that her mother would have considered the idea, if she reminded him of Philip’s connexions, perhaps in time her father would not be so displeased about Philip’s lack of fortune.
