The Dukes Children | Page 3

links! At the first moment of his
bereavement they were felt to be hardly more than burdens. A more
loving father there was not in England, but nature had made him so
undemonstrative that as yet they had hardly known his love. In all their
joys and in all their troubles, in all their desires and all their
disappointments, they had ever gone to their mother. She had been
conversant with everything about them, from the boys' bills and the
girl's gloves to the innermost turn in their heart and the disposition of
each. She had known with the utmost accuracy the nature of the scrapes
into which Lord Silverbridge had precipitated himself, and had known
also how probable it was that Lord Gerald would do the same. The
results of such scrapes she, of course, deplored; and therefore she
would give good counsel, pointing out how imperative it was that such
evil-doings should be avoided; but with the spirit that produced the
scrapes she fully sympathized. The father disliked the spirit almost
worse than the results; and was therefore often irritated and unhappy.

And the difficulties about the girl were almost worse to bear that those
about the boys. She had done nothing wrong. She had given no signs of
extravagance or other juvenile misconduct. But she was beautiful and
young. How was he to bring her out into the world? How was he to
decide whom she should or whom she should not marry? How was he
to guide her through the shoals and rocks which lay in the path of such
a girl before she can achieve matrimony?
It was the fate of the family that, with a world of acquaintance, they
had not many friends. From all close connection with relatives on the
side of the Duchess they had been dissevered by old feelings at first,
and afterwards by want of any similitude in the habits of life. She had,
when young been repressed by male and female guardians with an iron
hand. Such repression had been needed, and had been perhaps salutary,
but it had not left behind it much affection. And then her nearest
relatives were not sympathetic with the Duke. He could obtain no
assistance in the care of his girl from that source. Nor could he even do
it from his own cousins' wives, who were his nearest connections on
the side of the Pallisers. They were women to whom he had ever been
kind, but to whom he had never opened his heart. When, in the midst of
the stunning sorrow of the first week, he tried to think of all this, it
seemed to him that there was nobody.
There had been one lady, a very dear ally, staying in the house with
them when the Duchess died. This was Mrs Finn, the wife of Phineas
Finn, who had been one of the Duke's colleagues when in office. How
it had come to pass that Mrs Finn and the Duchess had become
singularly bound together has been told elsewhere. But there had been
close bonds,--so close that when the Duchess on their return from the
Continent had passed through London on her way to Matching, ill at
the time and very comfortless, it had been almost a thing of course, that
Mrs Finn should go with her. And as she had sunk, and then despaired,
and then died, it was this woman who had always been at her side, who
had ministered to her, and had listened to the fears and the wishes and
hopes that she had expressed respecting the children.
At Matching, amidst the ruins of the old Priory, there is a parish
burying-ground, and there, in accordance with her own wish, almost
within sight of her own bedroom-window, she was buried. On the day
of the funeral a dozen relatives came, Pallisers and McCloskies, who on

such an occasion were bound to show themselves, as members of the
family. With them and his two sons the Duke walked across to the
graveyard, and then walked back; but even to those who stayed the
night at the house he hardly spoke. By noon the following day they had
all left him, and the only stranger in the house was Mrs Finn.
On the afternoon of the day after the funeral the Duke and his guest met,
almost for the first time since the sad event. There had been just a
pressure of the hand, just a glance of compassion, just some murmur of
deep sorrow,--but there had been no real speech between them. Now he
had sent for her, and she went down to him in the room in which he
commonly sat at work. He was seated at his table when she entered, but
there was no book open