Cecily returned from London radiant with sisterly congratulation, in a flutter of delight with Mr. Randolf, and intimating a glorious project in the background, devised between herself and Mervyn, then guarding against possible disappointment by declaring it might be all her own fancy.
The meaning of these prognostics appeared the next morning. Mervyn had been much impressed by Humfrey Randolf's keen business-like appearance and sensible conversation, as well as by Mr. Currie's opinion of him; and, always detesting the trouble of his own distillery, it had occurred to him that to secure an active working partner, and throw his sister's fortune into the business, would be a most convenient, generous, and brotherly means of smoothing the course of true love; and Cecily had been so enchanted at the happiness he would thus confer, that he came to the Underwood quite elevated with his own kindness.
Phoebe heard his offer with warm thankfulness, but could not answer for Humfrey.
'He has too much sense not to take a good offer,' said Mervyn, 'otherwise, it is all humbug his pretending to care for you. As to Robert's folly, have not I given up all that any rational being could stick at? I tell you, it is the giving up those houses that makes me in want of capital, so you are bound to make it up to me.'
Mervyn and Phoebe wrote by the same post. 'I will be satisfied with whatever you decide upon as right,' were Phoebe's words; but she refrained from expressing any wish. What was the use of a wise man, if he were not to be let alone to make up his mind? She would trust to him to divine what it would be to her to be thus one with her own family, and to gain him without losing her sisters. The balance must not be weighted by a woman's hand, when ready enough to incline to her side; and why should she add to his pain, if he must refuse?
How ardently she wished, however, can be imagined. She could not hide from herself pictures of herself and Humfrey, sometimes in London, sometimes at the Underwood, working with Robert, and carrying out the projects which Mervyn but half acted on, and a quarter understood.
The letter came, and the first line was decisive. In spite of earnest wishes and great regrets, Humfrey could not reconcile the trade to his sense of right. He knew that as Mervyn conducted it, it was as unobjectionable as was possible, and that the works were admirably regulated; but it was in going over the distillery as a curiosity he had seen enough to perceive that it was a line in which enterprise and exertion could only find scope by extending the demoralizing sale of spirits, and he trusted to Phoebe's agreeing with him, that when he already had a profession fairly free from temptation, it was his duty not to put himself into one that might prove more full of danger to him than to one who had been always used to it. He had not consulted Robert, feeling clear in his own mind, and thinking that he had probably rather not interfere.
Kind Humfrey! That bit of consideration filled Phoebe's heart with grateful relief. It gave her spirits to be comforted by the tender and cheering words with which the edge of the disappointment was softened, and herself thanked for her abstinence from persuasion. 'Oh, better to wait seven years, with such a Humfrey as this in reserve, than to let him warp aside one inch of his sense of duty! As high-minded as dear Robert, without his ruggedness and harshness,' she thought as she read the manly, warm-hearted letter to Mervyn, which he had enclosed, and which she could not help showing to Bertha.
It was lost on Bertha. She thought it dull and poor-spirited not to accept, and manage the distillery just as he pleased. Any one could manage Mervyn, she said, not estimating the difference between a petted sister and a junior partner, and it was a new light to her that the trade-involving so much chemistry and mechanic ingenuity-was not good enough for anybody, unless they were peacocks too stupid to appreciate the dignity of labour! For the first time Phoebe wished her secret known to Miss Charlecote, for the sake of her appreciation of his triumph of principle.
'This is Robert's doing!' was Mervyn's first exclamation, when Phoebe gave him the letter. 'If there be an intolerable plague in the world, it is the having a fanatical fellow like that in the family. Nice requital for all I have thrown away for the sake of his maggots! I declare I'll resume every house I've let him have for his tomfooleries, and have a gin bottle blown as big as an ox as a sign for each of them.'
Phoebe had a certain lurking satisfaction in observing, when his malediction had run itself down, 'He never consulted Robert.'
'Don't tell me that! As if Robert had not run about with his mouth open, reviling his father's trade, and pluming himself on keeping out of it.'
'Mervyn, you know better! Robert had said no word against you! It is the facts that speak for themselves.'
'The facts? You little simpleton, do you imagine that we distil the juices of little babies?'
Phoebe laughed, and he added kindly, 'Come, little one, I know this is no doing of yours. You have stuck by this wicked distiller of vile liquids through thick and thin. Don't let the parson lead you nor Randolf by the nose; he is far too fine a fellow for that; but come up to town with me and Cecily, as soon as Lady Caroline's bear fight is over, and make him hear reason.'
'I should be very glad to go and see him, but I cannot persuade him.'
'Why not?'
'When a man has made up his mind, it would be wrong to try to over-persuade him, even if I believed that I could.'
'You know the alternative?'
'What?'
'Just breaking with him a little.'
She smiled.
'We shall see what Crabbe, and Augusta, and Acton will say to your taking up with a dumpy leveller. We shall have another row. And you'll be broken up again!'
That was by far the most alarming of his threats; but she did not greatly believe that he would bring it to pass, or that an engagement, however imprudent, conducted as hers had been, could be made a plea for accusing Miss Fennimore or depriving her of her sisters. She tried to express her thankfulness for the kindness that had prompted the original proposal, and her sympathy with his natural vexation at finding that a traffic which he had really ameliorated at considerable loss of profit, was still considered objectionable; but he silenced this at once as palaver, and went off to fetch his wife to try her arguments.
This was worse than Phoebe had expected! Cecily was too thorough a wife not to have adopted all her husband's interests, and had totally forgotten all the objections current in her own family against the manufacture of spirits. She knew that great opportunities of gain had been yielded up, and such improvements made as had converted the distillery into a model of its kind; she was very proud of it, wished every one to be happy, and Mervyn to be saved trouble, and thought the scruples injurious and overstrained. Phoebe would not contest them with her. What the daughter had learnt by degrees, might not be forced on the wife; and Phoebe would only protest against trying to shake a fixed purpose, instead of maintaining its grounds. So Cecily continued affectionately hurt, and unnecessarily compassionate, showing that a woman can hardly marry a person of tone inferior to her own without some deterioration of judgment, beneficial and elevating as her influence may be in the main.
Poor Cecily! she did the very thing that those acquainted with the ins and outs of the family had most deprecated! She dragged Robert into the affair, writing a letter, very pretty in wifely and sisterly goodwill, to entreat him to take Mr. Randolf in hand, and persuade him of the desirableness of the spirit manufacture in general, and that of the Fulmort house in particular.
The letter she received in return was intended to be very kind, but was severely grave, in simply observing that what he had not thought fit to do himself, he could not persuade another to do.