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Title: The lady's mile
Author: M. E. Braddon
Release date: July 14, 2025 [eBook #76502]
Language: English
Original publication: London: John and Robert Maxwell, 1870
Credits: Peter Becker, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADY'S MILE ***
THE LADY'S MILE
A Novel
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "AURORA FLOYD"
ETC. ETC. ETC.
Stereotyped Edition
LONDON
JOHN AND ROBERT MAXWELL
MILTON HOUSE, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS.
I. "HE IS BUT A LANDSCAPE-PAINTER"
II. LORD ASPENDELL'S DAUGHTER
III. HECTOR
IV. LOVE AND DUTY
V. AT THE FOUNTAINS
VI. WEDDING CARDS
VII. THE GREAT O'BOYNEVILLE
VIII. THE DOWAGER'S LITTLE DINNER
IX. LAURENCE O'BOYNEVILLE'S FIRST HEARING
X. THE RICH MR. LOBYER
XI. AT NASEDALE
XII. MR. O'BOYNEVILLE'S MOTION FOR A NEW TRIAL
XIII. CECIL'S HONEYMOON
XIV. MR. LOBYER'S WOOING
XV. DELILAH
XVI. AT HOME IN BLOOMSBURY
XVII. POOR PHILIP
XVIII. TOO LATE FOR REPENTANCE
XIX. THINGS FROM INDIA
XX. AT PEVENSHALL PLACE
XXI. SIR NUGENT EVERSHED
XXII. MRS. LOBYER'S SKELETON
XXIII. "HOW SHOULD I GREET THEE?"
XXIV. BETWEEN CARTHAGE AND KENSINGTON
XXV. THE EASY DESCENT
XXVI. A MODERN LOVE-CHASE
XXVII. "HE COMES TOO NEAR, WHO COMES TO BE DENIED"
XXVIII. "WERE ALL THY LETTERS SUNS, I COULD NOT SEE"
XXIX. A TIMELY WARNING
XXX. "HE'S SWEETEST FRIEND, OR HARDEST FOE"
XXXI. ON THE BRINK
XXXII. BY THE SEA
XXXIII. A COMMERCIAL EARTHQUAKE
THE EPILOGUE
THE LADY'S MILE.
CHAPTER I.
"HE IS BUT A LANDSCAPE-PAINTER."
It was high tide--spring tide, if you will--at half past-six o'clock
on a warm June evening: not the commonplace ebb and flow of a vulgar
river; but the mighty tide of fashion's wonderful sea, surging
westward, under the dusty elms and lindens of the Lady's Mile. If
you had driven round this very park between four and five on this
very afternoon, you would have been gratified by the sight of some
half-dozen nursemaids with their straggling charges, an occasional girl
and perambulator, a picturesque life guardsman here and there, making a
little spot of crimson amongst the wavering shadows of the trees, a few
hulking idlers in corduroy and bluchers, and a tipsy female sleeping
on the grass. Now the excited policemen have enough to do to keep the
four ranks of carriages in line, and to rescue foot-passengers from
the pawing hoofs of three-hundred-guinea steeds. The walk under the
trees is as crowded as the enclosure at Ascot, and the iron chairs are
as fully occupied as the seats in a fashionable chapel. The pouncing
proprietor, with the leathern pouch at his side, has hard work to
collect his rents, so rapidly do his customers come and go, and is
distracted by vague fears of levanting tenants and bad debts. On all
the length of the rails between Hyde-Park Corner and the Serpentine
there is scarcely room for one lounger more, for the rule of fashion
is so subtile a bondage, that it has compelled millions of people who
never in all their lives have spoken to one another to wear the same
order of garments, and talk the same slang, and ride in the same kind
of carriages, and eat the same class of dinners, and congregate in
the same places, at the same hour, year after year, and century after
century, from the earliest dawn of civilisation until to-day.
The uninitiated lawyer's clerk from Holloway, lounging in the same
attitude, and wearing the same pearl-grey gloves, and the same pattern
of whisker as the initiated young patrician from the crack West-end
clubs, may wonder whether the occupants of the splendid equipages
rolling slowly by him are there by right divine of noble birth and
lofty position, or by virtue of that golden 'open sesame,' that
wonderful _passe partout_, which success bestows so often on the
struggling plebeian. The Uninitiated from Holloway sees that there is
not so much interchange of becks and nods, so friendly greetings, as
might be expected if those elegant barouches and useful landaus, those
dashing mail-phaetons and dainty little broughams, belonged only to
the privileged classes whose highest privilege is the honour of being
known to one another. Perceiving this, the Uninitiated perceives also,
with astonished aspect, certain inhabitants of the Eastern Hemisphere,
known to himself in their form of money-grub, but transformed here
into butterflies of fashion, and driving mail-phaetons. Advertising
agents, money-lending lawyers, professional betting-men, dashing
brewers, popular distillers, pass before him side by side with dukes
and duchesses, and only to be distinguished therefrom by an impalpable
something which has no name. The Uninitiated, growing melancholy,
begins to think that it is a hard thing not to have high-stepping
horses and a mail-phaeton, and turns sadly from so much splendour to
wend his way northwards, while high-born elbows close in upon the
half-yard of railing which he leaves vacant. There are few places more
calculated to inspire discontent that this Lady's Mile. Pale Envy
stalks to and fro under the sheltering trees; Greed of Gain lurks
invisible behind the iron chairs; Disappointed Ambition waits at the
corner, ready to whisper in the poor man's ear, "Time was when you
thought it such an easy thing to win a place amongst those favourites
of fortune. Time was when you thought to see your wife sitting behind
high-stepping horses, and your boy trotting his pony in the Row. Go
home, poor drudge, with your blue-bag on your shoulder, and look at
the slatternly drab leaning over the washtub, and the shabby whelp
gambling for marbles in the gutter. Compare the picture of the present
with the vision you once made for yourself of the future; and then be
an agreeable husband and an indulgent father, and enjoy your domestic
happiness and your penny newspaper, if you can."
We are a wealthy nation, the political economist tells the poor
man, and our superfluous wealth must find employment somehow
or other. Hench the crush of high-stepping horses, the crowd of
three-hundred-guinea barouches; the flutter of costly garments rustling
in the summer air, the glitter and splendour which pervades every
object, until it seems almost as if the superfluous gold were melted
into the atmosphere, and all the female population were so many Miss
Kilmanseggs. The lounger on the rails may for the moment find it almost
difficult to believe that hungry women and gaunt haggard-looking men
can have any place in the world of which this dazzling region is a
part: but he need only look backward, under the shadow of the trees, to
see poverty and crime prowling side by side in their rags. Yet at the
worst, the dazzle and the glitter are good for trade; and it is better
that the tide of wealth should be rolling to and fro along the Lady's
Mile than locked in a miser's coffers or given in alms to professional
beggars at a church-door. Some part of the superfluous gold must pass
through the horny hands of labour before it can be transmuted into
C-springs or patent axles, Honiton lace or Spitalfields silk; and
perhaps the safest of all philosophy is that which accepts the doctrine
that "whatever is, is right."
But amongst the loungers on the rails this summer evening there was
one person stationed with his companion some little distance from
the rest of the idlers, who was very much inclined to quarrel with
this easy-going axiom, or with any other sentiment that involved
contentment. The eyes with which Philip Foley contemplated the world
were young, and rather handsome eyes; but they saw every thing in
a jaundiced light just now. He was a painter, self-contained and
ambitious as a disciple of art should be. But he had not yet learnt
the sublime patience of the faithful disciple; and he was angry with
Fortune because she hid her face; forgetful that if she is a churlish
mother, she can also be an over-indulgent one, and sometimes destroys
her fairest favourites by smiling upon them too soon. Philip Foley
was in love, and the girl he loved was the most capricious little
enchantress who ever studied the prettiest method of breaking her
adorers' hearts. The summer light which should have shone upon the back
of his shabby painting-jacket, as he stood before his easel, dazzled
his eyes as he looked along the Lady's Mile, seeking her carriage among
the crowd.
"I say, Foley, old fellow, when are you coming out of this, eh?"
demanded Sigismund Smythe, the novelist, who had abandoned the penny
public to court the favour of circulating-library subscribers, and had
sublimated the vulgar Smith into the aristocratic Smythe. Mr. Smythe
the author and Mr. Foley the painter were sworn friends; and the placid
Sigismund was recreating himself after a day's hard labour on the
"Testimony" of his latest hero, "Written in the Hulks."
"Out of which?"
"The reflective line. You haven't spoke for the last quarter of an
hour. That's a pretty girl with the strawberry-ice coloured parasol.
I say, though, old fellow, you don't suppose I've written two dozen
three volume, novels without knowing something of the human mind when
contemplated in relation to the tender passion. I know all about it,
you know; and it's not the least use your abandoning yourself to
melancholy meditation on _that_ subject. She's all your fancy painted
her, &c. &c., I allow; but she's the coldest-hearted and most mercenary
little scoundrel in creation, and she never can be yours. Put a clean
sponge over the tablet of your brain, dear boy, and turn your attention
to some body else."
"What new imbecility has afflicted your feeble intellect?" asked the
painter indignantly. "I don't know what you're talking of."
"Oh yes, you do, dear boy, and it's the same thing that you are
thinking of, and its name amongst the vulgar is Florence Crawford; but
it is better known in polite society as 'Flo.'"
The young painter gave a sardonic laugh.
"I should be a fool to trouble my head about _her_," he said
contemptuously.
"So you would be a fool, old fellow; and so you are a fool, for you
do trouble yourself about her. You've been on the watch for her
carriage for the last half-hour, and she has not gone by; for instead
of tormenting creation at large by driving here, I dare say she is
torturing mankind in particular by stopping at home. Don't be an idiot,
Phil, but come to Greenwich and have some dinner."
"No," cried Philip, "I will stop here till she passes me by, with her
insolent little affectation of not seeing me, and all the pretty tricks
that constitute her fascination. You think me a fool, Sigismund; but
you can never think so poorly of me as I think of myself when I find
myself here day after day, while the very light I want is shining into
my wretched painting room at Highbury. Do you remember what Catullus
says?
'Odi et amo; quare id faciam, fortasse requiris:
Nescio, sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.'
Do you know that it is quite possible to love and hate the same person
at the same moment? I love Florence Crawford because she is Florence
Crawford. I hate her for the fatal bondage in which she holds me. I
hate her for her evil influence upon my career. I hate her as the
slave hates his master. Do other men suffer as I do, I wonder? or
has feeling gone out of fashion, and am I behind the time? The most
devoted lover nowadays only calls his betrothed a 'nice little party'
and hopes the 'governor will do the right thing.' The men whom I
meet take pains to advertise their contempt for any thing like real
feeling; and girls of eighteen tell you with a smile that a love-match
is the most preposterous thing in creation. The women of the present
day are as heartless as they are beautiful; as artificial as they are
charming,--the Dead-Sea fruit of civilisation, the----"
"The natural growth of the age of sixty-mile-an-hour locomotives,"
rejoined the placid Sigismund. "Do you forget that man is an imitative
animal, and that the rate at which we travel has become the rate at
which we live? Steam is the ruling principle of our age, and the
pervading influence of our lives. Depend upon it, that ever since
mankind began to exist, every succeeding age has lived faster than its
predecessor. 'Time _was_ that when the brains were out the man would
die,' says Macbeth; 'but _now_,' &c. &c. He isn't a bit surprised
at Banquo's appearance, you see. A ghost more or less is nothing
extraordinary in a fast-going age. And we've been accelerating the
pace ever since Macbeth's day. It used to take a man a week to go
from London to Lyme Regis, and the best part of a lifetime to earn
the few thousands which in his simple notions constituted a fortune.
Nowadays a man goes from London to New York in less than a fortnight;
and he expects to make his half-million or so while the purple bloom
is on his locks, and the light of youth in his eyes. Steam is every
where and in every thing. We educate our children by steam; and our
men and women want to grow rich at the rate of sixty miles an hour.
Every man has the same tastes, the same aspirations. There is no such
person nowadays as the Sir Balaam who thought it a grand thing to have
two puddings for his Sunday dinner. Sir Visto is not the exception,
but the rule; and the poor man ruins himself by blindly following the
rich. Sir Balaam has a man cook, and dines _à la Russe_. Sir Balaam's
cashier has his dinners from the confectioner, and dines _à la Russe_
too. Sir Visto, the Manchester cotton-spinner, is a patron of the arts,
and buys largely at Christie's. His clerks follow in his wake, and
cover the walls of their little suburban dining-rooms with impossible
Cuyps and sham Backhuysens, bought in Wardour Street. Before we die
we may see Sir Balaam and Sir Visto in the _Gazette_, with all their
followers at their heels. Look at the dresses and carriages passing by
us. I know most of the people, more or less; and I can see the wives
and daughters of hard-working professional men vying with the peerage
and the autocracy of the money market. Don't rail against the women, my
dear Philip; the women are--what the men make them. You must have _Lui_
before you can have _Elle_. Aspasia is impossible without Pericles. You
could never have had a Cleopatra unless you had first your Cæsar; or
your Marian de Lorme without Cinq Mars. The lives of the women of the
present day are like this drive which they call the Lady's Mile. They
go as far as they can, and then go back again. See how mechanically the
horses wheel when they reach the prescribed turning-point. If they went
any farther, I suppose they would be lost in some impenetrable forest
depth in Kensington Gardens. In the drive the rule has no exception;
because, you see, the barrier that divides the park from the gardens is
a palpable iron railing, which the stoutest hunter might refuse. But
on the highway of life the boundary line is not so clearly defined.
There are women who lose themselves in some unknown region beyond the
Lady's Mile, and whom we never hear of more. Ah, friend Philip, let us
pity those benighted wanderers whose dismal stories are to be found
amongst the chronicles of the Divorce Court, whose tarnished names
are only whispered by scandal-loving dowagers between the acts of an
opera, or in the pauses of a rubber. On this side, the barrier they
pass seems so slight a one--a hedge of thorns that are half hidden by
the gaudy tropical flowers that hang about them--a few scratches, and
the boundary is passed; but when the desperate wanderer pauses for a
moment on the other side to look backward, behold! the thorny hedgerow
is transformed into a wall of brass that rises to the very skies, and
shuts out earth and heaven."
It was not often that Mr. Smythe indulged in any such rhapsody as this
in ordinary society; but Philip Foley and the novelist were sworn
friends and brothers, united by that pleasant bondage of sympathy which
is a better brotherhood than the commoner bond of kindred. Sigismund
had brothers and sisters in Midlandshire, but there was not one of them
who could be as much to him as Philip the painter.
It is doubtful whether Mr. Foley had heard much of his friend's
oration. He had been leaning on the rails in a moody attitude, watching
the carriages go by. And now, when he spoke, it seemed as if he were
replying to some question that had been brooding in his own mind,
rather than to the observations of his friend.
"Do you think I don't know Florence Crawford?" he said, "and know that
she is no wife for me--if she would have me--and she would as soon
think of marrying me as the carver and gilder who makes her father's
frames. Indeed, I dare say she'd rather marry the frame-maker, for he
earns more money than I do, and could give her finer dresses. She has
told me a hundred times that she will marry for money; that when she
leaves her father's house--a bride, with innocent bridal-flowers upon
her brow--she will bid farewell to her home on the same principle as
that on which her housemaid leaves her--to better herself. Think of her
in my carpetless painting-room at Highbury, looking up from her work to
watch me at my easel, and beguiling me with hopeful speeches when I am
depressed. One reads of that sort of wife in a novel. But can you find
me such a one nowadays, Sigismund? The women of the present day live
only to look beautiful and to be admired. They are pitiless goddesses,
at whose shrines men sacrifice the best gifts of their souls. When I
look at the splendour of these carriages, the glory of the butterfly
creatures who ride in them, I think how many plodding wretches are
toiling in Temple-chambers, or lecturing in the theatres of hospitals,
or pacing to and fro on the dusty floor of the Stock Exchange, racked
by the thought of hazardous time-bargains, in order that these
frivolous divinities may have gorgeous raiment and high-stepping
horses, and plant the arrows of envious rage in one another's tender
bosoms. I think they learn the love of splendour in their cradles. They
are proud of their lace-frocks and gaudy sashes before they can speak:
their dolls are duchesses; or, what is worse, as Hippolyte Rigault has
said, '_poupées aux camélias_.' And then they grow up, and some fine
day a poor man falls in love with one of them, and finds that it would
have been infinitely wiser to have dashed out his brains against a
stone wall than to have been beguiled by the mad hope that a penniless
lover's devotion could have any value in their sight."
"Wait till you have made a name, Phil, and can afford as grand a place
as the Fountains, and then see if Miss Crawford won't be civil to you.
Come, we may as well slope, old fellow; it's nearly seven o'clock. The
enchantress will not appear to-night. Let us go some where and dine, and
forget her."
"Dine by yourself, Sybarite," answered the painter. "A man whose most
laborious picture sells for a ten-pound note has no right to whitebait
and Moselle. I can buy half a pound of damp beef at the cook-shop as I
go home. It will not be the first time that the silk-lining of my coat
has been greased by a parcel from the cook-shop. I dare say I smell of
beef sometimes when I call upon Florence Crawford."
"But, Phil, when you know I'm so glad to stand Sam--" remonstrated Mr.
Smythe.
But he remonstrated in vain. Philip Foley rejoiced in his poverty and
his deprivations as a gladiator might rejoice in the training that
he knew must insure victory. (To suffer and be strong was the young
painter's motto, and he took a boyish pride in his bare rooms and his
scanty dinners, the feat of pedestrianism that saved him a half-crown
in cab-hire, the heroism which enabled him to carry his head loftily
under a hat whose bloom had vanished. He was very young. His faults
were the faults of youth--his graces the graces that perish with
youth. He had all the insolent confidence in his own judgment and
the contempt for other people which seems the peculiar attribute of
five-and-twenty. He would point you out the feeble drawing in a fresco
by Michael Angelo, or the false lights in a Rembrandt, with an utter
unconsciousness that he was making a fool of himself. Hot-headed,
generous-hearted, impulsive, undisciplined, candid, and true, Philip
Foley was the incarnation of ambitious youth before the fiery steel has
been thrice refined in the furnace of disappointment. He had only just
begun the great battle, and as yet he saw in failure the evidence of
the popular error, and not of his own weakness. The vision of his own
future shone before him--only a little distant, and with no hindering
clouds between. He was ready to paraphrase Cæsar's despatch, and cry
aloud to all the world, "I am coming--I shall see--I shall conquer!")
The painter did not turn his head to bid his friend Sigismund adieu;
he was looking along the line of carriages for that one equipage, to
behold which was so thrilling a pleasure that it was worth his while to
waste half a day for the chance of obtaining it.
The fairy chariot came by at last, with the fairy in it, and
all the mortal coaches melted into air. The fairy was a pretty,
coquettish-looking girl, who seemed scarcely eighteen years of age,
and whose dark-grey eyes and black eyelashes were rendered doubly
enchanting by the piquancy of their contrast with her rippling golden
hair. The fair one with the golden locks has become quite a common
young person in these days of cunning hair-washes and Circassian
waters; but Florence Crawford's waving tresses had been tinted only by
the hand of Nature, and she was by no means proud of their sunny hue.
She would have preferred to be a heavy-browed person of the masculine
order, with blue-black hair and an aquiline nose, instead of that dear
little insolent _retroussé_, which seemed perpetually asking questions
of all humanity.
Yes; Miss Crawford's nose was decidedly _retroussé_; but it as little
resembled the vulgar snub, or the lumpy pug, or the uncompromising
turn-up, as a pearl resembles a lump of chalk.
It was the dearest and most delicate little nose that ever inhaled the
odours of a costly bouquet in a box on the grand tier, or buried itself
between the flossy ears of a Maltese terrier. It was an aristocratic
nose, and could be as imperiously disdainful as the stateliest Roman;
but whatever it was, its delicate outline was engraved on Philip
Foley's heart too deeply for his worldly welfare or his bosom's peace.
She was as far away from him as the young June moon that glimmered pale
in the daylight above the Lady's Mile. And yet she was only a painter's
daughter; but then there was all the distance that divides the topmost
pinnacle of Fame's mighty mountain from the lowest depths of obscurity,
between William Crawford, R.A., of the Fountains, Kensington, and
Philip Foley, of Adelgisa Crescent, Highbury.
That he was clever, every body who knew any thing about the art he
loved was ready to acknowledge; that he had something in him that was
of a grander and sterner stuff than cleverness, Philip Foley himself
knew very well. If he had been only clever, success would have been a
much easier thing for him; and he knew this too.
Owen Meredith has very nobly said that "genius does what it must, and
talent does what it can." And Philip Foley obeyed the ungovernable
impulse within him, and flung gloom, and darkness, and meteoric skies,
and raging seas, and all manner of Titanic grandeur upon his canvases,
when he should have been painting inevitable rustic maidens in scarlet
cloaks, trotting meekly across the wooden bridges that span placid
mill-streams, or fishermen's white-sailed craft bobbing up and down
upon bright blue-and-opal seas. If it had not been for the patronage
of two or three north-country magnates, whose boyhood had been spent
on the bleak shores of the German Ocean, and who bought Philip's
rugged cliffs and darksome seas for love of their own vanished youth,
the young painter would have found life's battle a sore and difficult
fight; but with a little income of his own, the grace of these rich
patrons, and the help of considerable employment from Mr. Crawford, for
whom he sometimes painted backgrounds, Philip Foley was rich enough
to have leisure to declaim about his poverty,--and your real poverty
has no time for declamation. He was rich enough to live without care,
to entertain his friends with unlimited bitter-beer from the nearest
tavern, and to keep an unfailing supply of mild tobacco in the French
china jar that adorned his mantelpiece. He could afford to dress like a
gentleman, and to waste a good deal of his life in haunting the places
where Florence Crawford was likely to be met; and, good year or bad
year, he never failed to carry a rich silk dress, or a handsome shawl,
or a wonderfully-inlaid casket, or workbox, or portfolio, or tea-caddy,
to a maiden lady in a sleepy little village deep down in a pastoral
valley some ten or twelve miles from Burkesfield, Bucks,--a valley that
lay out of the track of coach-road or railway, and had made no more
progress within the last forty years than if the inhabitants had been
so many Rip Van Winkles.
The maiden lady was Philip Foley's aunt, and the only near relation he
possessed. That she loved him to distraction was the most natural thing
in the world, for she was a gentle and loving creature, and for the
last five-and-twenty years of her life had concentrated her affection
upon the orphan boy who had come from India a frail nursling to be
committed to her charge by his sickly father, who went back to Bengal
to die, within the year of his return, on a dismal march through a
cholera-haunted district. Whence the child derived his love of art,
no one knew. His father had been an ensign in the Company's service;
his mother, a frivolous young person, with thirteen hundred pounds in
Indian Stock, a tendency to consumption, and not two ideas of her own.
But the divine afflatus that gives life to the nostrils of painters
and poets is no hereditary possession to be handed from father to
son, like so many acres of common earth, or so much money in Consols.
From the hour in which Philip Foley's baby fingers first tightened
round a pencil, he was an artist. He drew houses, and apple-trees, and
straggling reptiles which he meant for horses, before he could speak;
and then when he was old enough to buy his first colour-box, he went
out into the woods and fields, like Constable; and alone, amongst the
beautiful mysteries of nature, his soul and mind expanded, unfettered
and untaught.
The time came, as it almost always does come, sooner or later, in the
lives of gifted creatures, when the appreciative stranger came across
the boy's pathway. An elderly gentleman came suddenly upon young Philip
one day, as he sat on a fallen tree in a clearing, painting the glade
that stretched before him, darkly mysterious in its sombre shadows. The
elderly gentleman asked the boy more questions than he had ever been
asked consecutively in his life before; and as it generally happens
to a lad who is tolerably well connected, it happened in this case.
The elderly gentleman had known a member of Philip's family, and was
inclined to be interested in him on that account.
"But a great deal more so on account of those purple shadows," said the
stranger pleasantly. "One may meet young sprigs of old families any
day in the year; but a lad of fourteen who has such nice ideas about
light and shade is by no means a common person. And your aunt is using
all her interest to get you to Addiscombe, is she? so that you may
follow in your father's footsteps, and die of cholera at sunrise, to be
buried in the sands before sunset. Let your aunt use her interest to
get you into Mr. O'Skuro's academy, and she'll be employing it for some
purpose. Your mother had some money, hadn't she?"
"Fifty pounds a year," answered the boy blushing. He had all the grand
notions which are common to extreme youth, and was almost ashamed to
proclaim the pitiful amount.
"And very nice too," returned the stranger briskly; "I have known men
whom fifty pounds a year--yes, or five-and-twenty--would have saved
from ruin,--clever men who have starved for want of ten shillings
a-week. A man with a pound a-week, secured to him for his lifetime,
need never commit a dishonourable action, or accept an insult. Take me
to see your aunt, Mr. Foley; and if I find her a sensible woman, we'll
have you sitting behind your drawing-board at O'Skuro's Academy before
the year is out."
The elderly gentleman was as good as his word. He turned out to be an
amateur landscape-painter, who united untiring industry to the smallest
amount of ability, and who, with a very limited income, had contrived
to collect a wonderful little gallery of what he called "bits,"
broker's-shop and obscure sale-room acquisitions, which adorned the
walls of a tiny cottage at Dulwich, and which he was wont to exhibit
every Sunday to admiring friends or sceptical connoisseurs.
Before the year was out Miss Foley had consented to a bitter sacrifice,
the sacrifice which she knew must come sooner or later, and had packed
her boy's trunks, and stood on the platform at Burkesfield to watch the
departure of the train that carried him away from her.
Mr. Theophilus Gee, the amateur and connoisseur, had talked her into
the belief that her nephew was an embryo Turner; and she had bidden
the boy go forth upon the first stage on the great highway that leads
to glory, or to disappointment and death. He left the simple elegance
of his aunt's cottage, and the tutorship of the Burkesfield curate, to
plunge into the universal Bohemia of art; and for four years he worked
conscientiously under the fostering care or Mr. O'Skuro. Then came
foreign travel, and then pedestrian wanderings on the wildest shores
of England and Wales, Highland rambles, excursions in Western Ireland,
a long apprenticeship to that grand mistress, Nature, who is a better
teacher than all the masters who ever created academicians. And at last
the young painter established himself in a lodging at Highbury, and
began to paint for his daily bread.
Then it was that his friend Mr. Gee introduced him to William Crawford,
the great painter, who employed the embryo Turner to paint backgrounds
for delicious little sketches that could have been covered half-a-dozen
inches deep by the sovereigns that were given for them.
The young man accepted the employment, but disdained himself for
accepting it, until there came an angel into the painting-room one day
to take the painter's soul captive, and reconcile him to any lot that
brought him near her. The angel was Florence, only child and spoiled
darling of William Crawford, who came to ask her father for a check
for her milliner. She was an angel with a tiny _retroussé_ nose, and
dark-grey eyes, that were generally mistaken for black; an impulsive
angel with a temper that was more capricious than an April day.
For some time after that meeting in the painting-room, Philip believed
that he admired Miss Crawford only as the most beautiful thing he had
ever seen; but he woke one day to the knowledge that he loved her to
distraction, and that the happiness of his life was as utterly at her
mercy as the little golden toys hanging from her chatelaine, which she
had so pretty a trick of trifling with when she talked to him.
Of all men upon earth, perhaps William Crawford was the least tainted
by any odour of snobbishness. No intoxicating sense of triumph
bewildered him on the giddy height to which he had risen. He stood
serene upon the mountain top; for he looked upward to the starry
Valhalla of dead painters--whose glory seemed as high above him as the
stars in which he could fancy them dwelling--and not downward to the
struggling wayfarers he had left behind him.
"If people knew as much about painting as I do, they wouldn't believe
in my pictures," said Mr. Crawford.
He had rivals--rivals whom he envied and adored--against whose giant
hands his own seemed to him so feeble and puny; but their names were
Rembrandt and Velasquez, Rubens and Reynolds, Titian and Correggio,
Guido and Vandyke. To him art seemed a grand republic, a brotherhood
in which success had no power to divide a man from his brethren.
He was rich, and he spent his money royally, for he was as fond of
splendour as Rubens himself; and he had not Peter Paul's affection
for gold. Perhaps no man who was equally successful ever had so few
enemies as William Crawford. Young men adored him, struggling men came
to him for advice, disappointed men poured their wrongs into his ears
and took comfort from his sympathy. He was the ideal painter, and he
ought to have sat in the pillared hall of some old Roman palace, with
a band of faithful followers watching the free sweep of his inspired
hand, and an emperor in attendance to pick up his maulstick. In this
man's house Philip Foley came and went as freely as if he had been a
kinsman of the host; and coming from church on a Sunday evening, the
pious inhabitants of Adelgisa Crescent were apt to be startled by the
apparition of the young painter dressed in evening costume, and bending
his footsteps westward in the dusty summer twilight. Sunday evening at
the "Fountains" was a grand institution. On that evening the painter
was at home to his friends; and as the name of his friends was legion,
very pleasant company was to be met at Kensington between nine and
twelve on every Sabbath in the season. Rank and fashion, literature and
art, war and physic, law and diplomacy, poverty and wealth, jostled one
another in those bright, airy drawing-rooms. The painter's fame was
cosmopolitan, and foreigners from every court and capital brought him
their tribute of admiration; and amidst this elegant crowd Florence
floated hither and thither, radiant in the most dazzling toilettes
that Madame Descou could devise, and inflicting anguish upon the souls
of her adorers by the capricious distribution of her smiles. And
Philip, who could find no phrase too bitter for his denunciation of her
follies, came every Sunday evening to tell her he hated and despised
her, and would henceforth make it his business to forget her existence,
remained to adore her, and went back to Highbury more utterly her slave
than before.
She saw him as he lounged against the rails that bright June
evening, and greeted him with a condescending little gesture of
her head,--adorned with Madame Ode's last madness in the shape of
a bonnet,--and then the barouche rolled by and she was gone. The
carriages were growing thin. It was scarcely likely that she could
return, for it was close upon her father's dinner-hour. Poor Philip
wondered what party she was going to--with whom she would dance. He
fancied her smiling destruction upon the gilded youth of Tyburnia and
Belgravia. He thought of those charmed circles in which she was as
remote from him as if she had gone to parties in the Pleiades; and
then, as he crossed the park on his pilgrimage northwards, he set his
strong white teeth together fiercely, and muttered:
"I _will_ succeed!"
It was not to have his name inscribed upon the mighty roll where blaze
the names of Raffaelle and Correggio that the young man aspired with
such a passionate yearning, but to have an _entrée_ in the West-end
mansions where Florence Crawford was to be met.
CHAPTER II.
LORD ASPENDELL'S DAUGHTER.
When the brilliant stream of carriages had poured out of Apsley Gate;
when the Serpentine blushed redly in the low western sunlight; when
the fashionable world had gone homeward in barouches and landaus,
britzskas and phaetons, to dash through the dusky park two hours hence
in tiny miniature broughams, with lamps that flash like meteors through
the night; when a solemn twilight calm had come down upon the dusky
greensward, and the tinkling of a sheep-bell made a rustic sound in
the stillness; when a town-bred Gray might have sat beside the placid
water meditating an elegy in a West-end park,--a lumbering old chariot
was very often to be seen creeping up and down the Lady's Mile. It
was a shabby old carriage, with a ponderous drab hammer-cloth which
the moths had eaten away in bare patches here and there, a faded old
carriage which might have been bright and splendid long ago, when
lovely Margaret, Countess of Blessington, was to be seen in the Lady's
Mile, and genial Lord Palmerston was called Cupid. But now in the still
gloaming this dismal equipage might have been mistaken for some phantom
chariot haunting the scene of departed glories. The pale face looking
out at the window would have assisted the delusion, so lifeless was its
changeless calm--a beautiful, melancholy, patrician face. You might
have fancied you beheld the unreal image of a forgotten belle, a ghost
of beauty gliding in her shadowy chariot beneath the spreading branches
which had looked down upon her triumphs years and years ago.
You might have thought this if you were prone to sentimental musings
in the tender twilight; but if you were a sober, practical person, you
would most likely have found out who the lady was, and all about her.
She was Lady Cecil Chudleigh, orphan daughter of Lord Aspendell; and
she was the unpaid companion, the unrecompensed dependant upon the
elderly dowager to whom the phantom chariot belonged, and who sat far
back in the vehicle, while her beautiful niece looked sadly out upon
the rosy bosom of the Serpentine.
In all the world Lady Cecil had no other friend or protector than
the dowager, who was the widow of an Anglo-Indian general, and only
surviving sister of the dead Countess of Aspendell. The Anglo-Indian
warrior had distinguished himself at more places ending with "pore"
and "bad" than can be numerated without weariness, had lived a life
of reckless and barbaric extravagance in despite of all feminine
remonstrance, and had died, leaving his widow very little except
his pension and a house-full of Indian shawls, embroidered muslins,
sandal-wood boxes, beetle-baskets, and Trichinopoly jewelry.
After the General's death, Mrs. MacClaverhouse--the warrior was
of Scottish extraction, and claimed kindred with the hero of
Killiecrankie,--after her husband's death the widow had sold the lease
of the great house in Portland Place, in whose pillared dining-room
the General had been wont to entertain all the notabilities of the
three presidencies, and beneath whose sheltering roof he had staggered
half tipsy to bed every night for the last ten years of his life. She
sold the lease, and the furniture, and the very curious old ports,
and constantias, and madeiras; but she kept all the bangles and
sandal-wood, the beetles' wings and gorgeous scarfs, and shawls and
table-covers, and a very nice little selection from the rare old wines,
and a small stock of the plate, and glass, and china, and table-linen,
which the magnificent General had chosen, of such splendid quality; and
with these she retired to furnished apartments on the quietest side
of Dorset Square. She kept the chariot in which she had driven and
visited for the last twenty years of her life, and the fat grey horses
that had drawn it; but she sent the equipage to a livery-stable in the
neighbourhood of her new abode, and she bargained with the proprietor
for a sober coachman at five-and-twenty shillings a week; a coachman
who wore the stable-yard livery, and was sometimes almost disreputable
about the legs and feet.
And then one day she went down to Brighton, where the Earl of Aspendell
and his only daughter had been living for the last tea years, is a tiny
cottage on the Dyke Road, with a little grass-plat before the windows,
and dimity curtains fluttering from the open casements--so poor, so
friendless, so dignified in their unpretending seclusion. There was
very little trouble connected with pecuniary misfortune which Cecil
Chudleigh had not known. The extravagance of a father's youth, repented
of too late; the wild follies of a brother's mad career--never repented
of at all, but cut suddenly short by a fatal false step on a frozen
mountain-side, amidst the desolate grandeur of the Alps; a cheerless
home; a mother's slow decay, half physical, half mental; and the weary
task of beguiling the monotonous days of a ruined and remorseful
spendthrift: sorrows such as these had darkened the young life, and
hushed the silvery laugh, and transformed the girl of seventeen into a
woman drooping under the burden of a woman's heaviest cares.
It was only when the Earl of Aspendell and his folly were buried
together in a corner of the little hill-side churchyard where Captain
Tattersall the loyal, and Phœbe Hessel the daring, sleep so quietly;
it was only when Cecil was quite desolate, and sat with the _Times_
newspaper in her lap, staring hopelessly at the advertisements, and
wondering whether she was clever enough to be a governess,--it was
then only that Marion MacClaverhouse thought fit to trouble herself
about the fate of her dead sister's only surviving child. Her
brother-in-law's death happened "fortunately," as she said herself,
in the Brighton season; and as she had no invitation for the current
month, Mrs. MacClaverhouse decided on paying a brief visit to Brighton.
The widow was of a prudent turn of mind, and contrived to save money
out of her limited income;--for a rainy day, she said. She had been
saving odd pounds and shillings and sixpences for this anticipated wet
weather ever since her marriage, and as yet Jupiter Pluvius had been
pitiful, and had restrained his fury.
She went to the little Dyke-Road cottage to see Cecil Chudleigh--to
inspect her, it may be said, so sharply did she scrutinise, so closely
did she interrogate the girl. But Lady Cecil's mind was too candid to
shrink from questioning; and she thought her aunt most nobly generous
when that lady proposed to adopt her henceforward as companion, reader,
amanuensis, and prop and comfort to her declining years. Lady Cecil
certainly did not happen to know that the widow had been for some time
on the look-out for a suitable person as companion and drudge, and had
only failed to suit herself because, in her own words, "the impertinent
creatures wanted such preposterous salaries, and asked if I allowed
port at luncheon, as their physicians had ordered it. Their physicians,
indeed! a dispensary-surgeon, or the parish apothecary, I should
think!" cried the widow, impatiently; for she was an energetic and
plain-speaking person, who was always proclaiming her want of "common
patience" with the failings and follies of her fellow-creatures.
Lady Cecil went home with the dowager, and ministered very patiently
to her wants and pleasures, and read the newspapers to her, and beat
down the tradespeople, and disputed about stray entries of mutton-chops
and half-pounds of tea that had or had not been supplied, and counted
the glass, and was responsible for the spoons, and trembled when the
widow's own parlour-maid chipped a morsel out of one of the General's
tumblers; for was it not her duty to see that neither glass nor china
was broken, and that the silver _entrèe_-dishes, salvers, butter-boats,
and tea-trays were rubbed with the hand only, and not scratched and
smudged with a greasy, gritty leather? Cecil's own pretty pink palms
helped to clean the dowager's plate sometimes when there was a
festival in Dorset Square.
Mrs. MacClaverhouse was very fond of society, and entertained
innumerable elderly warriors and judges of the Sudder, with their
wives and daughters, in her stuffy little dining-room. The splendid
silver and glass were set forth, the rare old wines were brought out
very often in the London season, and Lady Cecil bowed under the burden
of a new kind of care, and went to sleep oppressed by the terror of a
tablespoon missing from the plate-basket, or a butter-boat that had not
been put away.
Sometimes she felt a sick yearning for the old monotonous days with her
father; for when they were saddest there had been a tender quiet in
their sadness. In the new life there might be no sorrow, but then there
was such continual worry. The burdens laid upon her were very small
ones, but then there were so many of them; and every day it seemed as
if the last straw would be added to the heap, and she must sink down in
the dust and die.
The dowager was not unkind to her niece; for she was too much a woman
of the world not to know when she had a good servant, and to rejoice
in the fact that she possessed that treasure at the cheapest possible
rate. She was not unkind, but she was pitiless. She called Cecil "my
dear," and bought her pretty dresses--pretty dresses that were to be
had cheap after stock-taking at the West-end haberdashers', dainty
gauzes with the bloom off them, and muslins with soiled edges she gave
her good food, and persuaded her to take half-glasses of tawny port,
which the girl, in her secret soul, thought more nasty than physic; but
if Lady Cecil had been dying, Mrs. MacClaverhouse would have come to
her death-bed to demand the inventory of the china, and to ask if it
were six or eight shell-and-thread pattern salt-spoons that had been
intrusted to the parlour-maid for the last dinner-party.
For three years Lady Cecil had lived on the dullest side of Dorset
Square, and counted the glasses and spoons, and battled with the
Marylebone tradesmen, and ridden in the phantom chariot. In all those
three years there had been only one break in the drudgery of her life,
only one glimpse of sunshine; but then it was such a dazzling burst of
light, such a revelation of paradise. Ah, let my pen fall lightly on
the paper as I write the story of that tender dream.
It was the habit of Mrs. MacClaverhouse to spend as much of her time
in visiting as was thoroughly agreeable to her acquaintance. She
liked visiting because it was pleasant and cheap; but she was too
wise a woman to wear out her welcome, and no one had ever uttered
the obnoxious word 'sponge' in conjunction with her name. She was
lively and agreeable--rather vulgar perhaps, but then genteel people
are permitted to be vulgar--clever, well dressed, of high family, and
acknowledged position, and she gave cosy little dinners in the season;
so there were many houses in which she and her niece were favourite
guests in the cheery winter days when an old country-house is such a
paradise. Poor Cecil found herself sometimes looking anxiously after
other people's spoons and forks in these pleasant holiday times, or
taking a mental photograph of a cold sirloin or a raised pie as it was
removed from the breakfast-table; for one of her home duties was to
register the appearances of joints and poultry before they descended
into the territory of the landlady, who might or might not be honest.
Mrs. MacClaverhouse made a point of never quite believing in people's
honesty.
"Don't tell me that I have known them for years and never known them
rob me!" exclaimed the widow. "They may have robbed me without my
knowing it, or they may not have robbed me because I never gave them
the opportunity; and they may begin to rob me to-morrow if they get the
chance. Look at the Bishop of Northlandshire's butler, who had lived
with him thirteen years, and ran away with five hundred pounds' worth
of plate in the fourteenth. Look at Sir Harry Hinchliffe's valet, who
was such a faithful creature that his master left him an annuity of two
hundred a year; which he would have enjoyed very much, no doubt, if he
hadn't stripped the house while his benefactor's corpse was lying in
it, and had not been transported for life in consequence. Don't talk to
me about honesty, Cecil. If Mrs. Krewson is an honest woman, why do her
eyes sparkle so when I order a large joint, and why are two quarts of
Bisque barely enough for six?"
In the autumn Mrs. MacClaverhouse generally retired to some marine
retreat unfrequented by cockneys or fashionables, where lodgings were
to be had on reasonable terms, and where she could recruit herself and
her niece for the winter campaign.
"I really don't see why you shouldn't marry well, Cecil,--though Heaven
knows what will become of the General's diamond-cut glass when you
leave me,--and I sometimes wonder how it is you haven't made a good
match before now," said the widow. "I think it's that cold manner of
yours that keeps the men off; and then you don't talk slang, as some
of the women do nowadays. You're not dashing, you know, my love; but
you are very handsome, and elegant, and accomplished; and if any one of
those flippant minxes can sing Rossini's music or write an inventory of
china as well as you, I'll eat her--pearl-powder and all," added Mrs.
Mac, with a wry face.
It was very true that as yet no pretender of any importance had
appeared for Lady Cecil Chudleigh's hand. It might be that lovers were
kept off by the cold reserve of her manners, the shrinking dislike to
take any prominent part in society which is apt to affect those whom
poverty has always kept more or less at a disadvantage, or it might be
in consequence of that panic in the matrimonial market of which we have
heard so much in these latter days.
The dowager had been quite sincere when she spoke of her niece's
beauty. There were few handsomer faces to be seen in the Lady's Mile
than that which looked wistfully out of the phantom chariot. It
was a pale face--pale with no muddled sickly whiteness, or bilious
yellow, but that beautiful pallor which is so rare a charm,--a pensive
patrician face, with a slender aquiline nose, and dark hazel eyes.
People liked to see Lady Cecil in their rooms, even when she wore her
plainest white muslin, and kept herself most persistently in a shadowy
corner, so unmistakable were her rank and breeding. Young men who
complained that she had so little to say for herself, and lamented the
absence of a mysterious quality called "go" in her manners, confessed
that her profile was more beautiful than the finest cameo in the
Louvre, and her style unexceptionable.
"If polygamy were admissible, I'd marry Lady Cecil to-morrow," remarked
a gentleman of the genus Swell. "She is the woman of women to sit at
the head of a fellow's table and do him credit in society; but if I
were going home half-seas-over after a four-in-hand club-dinner at
Richmond, I'd as soon have Lady Macbeth sitting up for me as Lord
Aspendell's daughter. Not that she'd be coarse or low, like the
Scotchwomen, you know--not a bit of it. She'd receive me with a stately
curtsey, and freeze me to death with her classic profile. Egad! when
you come to think of it, you know, old fellow, there must be a hitch
somewhere in the matrimonial law. Society doesn't confine a man to one
horse; society doesn't compel him to ride his park-hack across country,
or harness his racing stud to his drag; and yet society limits an
unhappy beast to one wife; and if he marries a nice little indulgent
creature who won't look black at him when he goes home late or smokes
in the dining-room, the odds are that she'll freeze his marrow by
dropping her h's and talking of her par--who was something in the
soap-boiling way--at an archbishop's state-dinner."
In the second autumn of Lady Cecil's dependence the dowager carried her
niece and her parlour-maid to a pretty little village on the Hampshire
coast--a sleepy little village, where the fruit was blown off the trees
in farmers' orchards by the fresh breath of ocean breezes--a village
nestling under the shadow of brown, sun-burnt hills, a long, straggling
street of rustic cottages, with here and there a quaint old gabled
dwelling-place of a better class, shut in by moss-grown walls, and
nestling in such gardens as are to be seen on that south-western coast.
Very few cockney visitors ever invaded the drowsy hamlet of Fortinbras,
where the watering-place _habitué_ would have looked in vain for
the cliffs or the jetty, the brazen band and the buff slippers, the
Ethiopian serenaders and the wheel of fortune--so dear to his cockney
soul. At Fortinbras there were only two bathing-machines, and the sole
attraction which the place possessed for sightseers was a grand old
Norman castle, whose mighty keep towered high above the farmyards and
orchards, and within whose walls red-shirted cricketers met on sunny
summer afternoons, and whither village Sunday-school children came now
and then to feast on buns and tea.
The coast of Fortinbras was low and flat and weedy, and sometimes a
faint odour of stale seaweed floated up from the shining sands on
the evening air. Your cockney would have fled aghast from the place
as "un'ealthy;" but for Lady Cecil the rustic village and the weedy
coast had an odour of Longfellow and Tennyson that was delicious to
her soul, and she felt as if she would have been unutterably happy if
she could have bidden an eternal farewell to Dorset Square and Mrs.
MacClaverhouse's plate-chest and china-closet, to take up her abode
under the shelter of the Norman castle and the grassy hills for the
rest of her life.
She wandered alone on the wet sands while her aunt took an after-dinner
nap on the first evening of their arrival. She lingered by the cool
grey sea, and watched the changing glories of the low western sky in a
kind of rapture.
"And there are people who like Dorset Square better than this," she
thought. "Oh, dear, dear lonely place, how I love you!"
Was it only a sensuous delight in the beautiful sky, the cool breezy
atmosphere, the rustic calm? or was it because the happiest days of her
life were to be spent on this weedy shore? If a coming sorrow casts
its ominous shadow on the foredoomed creature who is to suffer it,
should no prophetic sunshine herald the coming of a joy? Lady Cecil was
happier that August evening than she ever remembered having been in her
life, and there was a faint bloom on her cheeks, like the pinky heart
of a wild rose, when she went home to the pretty cottage, half grange,
half villa, which Mrs. MacClaverhouse had hired for the season--"for
a mere song, my dear; and a duck, for which that extortionate Jiffles
would have the audacity to charge me four shillings, I get here for
half-a-crown," wrote the dowager to a friend and confidante.
Cecil found her aunt in very high spirits.
"You've heard me talk a good deal of my husband's nephew, Hector
Gordon, the only son of Andrew Gordon, the great contractor. Yes, I
know that a person who contracts seems something horribly vulgar,
and that's what Margaret MacClaverhouse's grand friends said when
she married him. But Andrew Gordon was as polished a gentleman as
ever sat in parliament--and he did sit there, my dear, and he does to
this day; and Scotchmen, whose pride has a good deal that's noble in
it, don't think it a more degrading thing to make money honestly by
straightforward commerce than to get rich by time-bargains and rigging
the market. I know there are people to this day who are inclined to
look down upon Hector, and when he joined the Eleventh there was one
man--a freckled, flaxen-haired creature with weak eyes, whose father
was a money-lending attorney--who tried to get up a laugh against our
boy by asking some questions about Andrew's business transactions. I
don't know _what_ Hector said or did, Cecil; but I know the young man
never tried to sneer at him again, and sold out shortly afterwards
because his sight was too weak for India. You've heard me talk about
the boy till you are almost tired of his name, I dare say, my dear."
Cecil smiled. She was thinking how many of Mrs. MacClaverhouse's pet
subjects she had grown weary of within the two years of her slavery,
and that this womanly talk of the favourite nephew was the least
obnoxious of them.
"It is only natural that you should be fond of him," she said.
"You'd have some reason to say so, Cecil, if you'd known him when
he was four years old," answered her aunt. "At four I think he was
the loveliest child that ever was created. Such blue eyes! not your
wishy-washy, milk-and-water colour that some parents call blue, but
as deep and dark as that purple convolvulus in the vase yonder." And
then the widow went on to relate to Cecil the very familiar legend of
how poor Margaret went off into a consumption soon after the infant's
birth, and how she, being alone in England at the time, took up her
abode in Andrew Gordon's house, to superintend the rearing of the
child,--"which saved my expenses elsewhere, and was doing a favour to
the poor helpless widower," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse parenthetically;
"and then, you know, my dear, the General, being particularly fond
of children, like most people who have none of their own, took a
tremendous fancy to his poor sister's child; so nothing would do but
that the boy must be continually in Portland Place whenever his uncle
was in England, and I'm sure I wonder that darling child's constitution
was not completely ruined by the mangoes and chutnee and raging hot
curries the General allowed him to eat. And when Hector was at Oxford,
and my husband had settled down after the last Affghan war, it was just
the same. I think the young man spent as much of his time in Portland
Place as at the University; and it was the General who put a military
career into his head, much to his father's annoyance; for Andrew would
have liked him to go into the house and preach about poor-laws, and
national surveys, and main-drainage and such-like. However, whatever
Hector wished was sure to be done sooner or later; for I do believe
there never was a young man so completely spoiled by every body
belonging to him; and the end of it was that his father bought him a
commission in the 11th Plungers, as you know."
Yes, the story was a very old one for Cecil. She had listened with
unfailing patience to her aunt's prosy discourses about Hector Gordon;
and as the dowager was generally in a good temper when she talked
of him, her niece had no unpleasant association with his name. But
familiar as his graces and merits had become to her, through the
praises of his aunt, Cecil felt no special interest in the young
Captain. She knew that he had been a good son and a brave soldier, but
then there are so many good sons and brave soldiers in the world. She
knew that he had distinguished himself in India by doing something
desperate in connection with a fort; but then young men in India are
always doing desperate things in connection with forts. If ever any
image of Hector Gordon presented itself to Lady Cecil's imagination, it
took the shape of a clumsy Scotchman, with high cheekbones and sandy
hair. Mrs. MacClaverhouse called his hair auburn; but then that word
auburn has such a wide signification.
Cecil listened to the old, old story of Hector's childhood to-night as
patiently as she had been wont to listen any time within the last two
years; but even calm queenly Lady Cecil Chudleigh was a little startled
when the dowager exclaimed:
"And now, my dear, I am going to surprise you. Hector Gordon will be
here to breakfast with us to-morrow morning----"
"Auntie!"
"He will arrive with the London papers, at a quarter before twelve
o'clock. We must have fried soles, and mutton cutlets, and Worcester
sauce, and potted game, and all those coarse high-seasoned things that
men like; and you can put a little fruit on the table to make it look
pretty; which, of course, will do for dessert afterwards; and you will
have to give out the tea and coffee service, and half-a-dozen large
forks. I only hope and pray the servants here are honest. If it wasn't
for that tiresome lion prancing upon every atom of silver, one might
persuade servants and people that it was all electro----"
"But, auntie," said Cecil, heedless of the housekeeping details, "I
thought Captain Gordon was in India."
"And so did I, my dear: but it seems he has come home on sick
leave--not ill, he tells me, but only knocked up by climate and hard
work; and he went to Dorset Square yesterday morning unannounced, on
purpose to surprise me--the consequence of which was that he found me
out of the way, as people generally do when they plan those romantic
surprises; and he has brought me an Indian shawl, because I am so fond
of Indian shawls, he says. That's always the way with people. If they
see you suffering from a plethora of any kind of property, they take
it into their heads that you have a passion for that especial class of
property, and rush to buy you more of it. I've no common patience with
such folly."
Perhaps Mrs. MacClaverhouse said this because it was her habit to be
sharp and unsparing, and she found herself too much inclined to melt
into weak motherly tenderness when she spoke of her nephew. Now the
hero of all the old nursery and schoolboy stories was so near at hand,
Cecil Chudleigh began to think of him a little more seriously than ever
she had done before. He was weak and ill, no doubt, his aunt said, in
spite of his assurances to the contrary; and in that case he must be
kept in the sleepy Hampshire village, and nursed till he was strong
again.
"And you must help to nurse him, Cecil," said the widow; "and if by any
chance he should happen to fall in love with you, be sure you remember
that he's a better match than one out of fifty of the young men you
meet in London--and Heaven knows they are scarce enough nowadays. If
you weren't my sister's own child I wouldn't throw you in his way, for
Hector might marry any woman in England; but at the worst it would
sound well for his wife's name to have a handle to it."
Lady Cecil's face was dyed with a hot, indignant blush.
"I am not the sort of person to be fascinated by Captain Gordon's
money, Aunt MacClaverhouse," she said.
"Perhaps not," answered the old lady, coolly; "but you may fall in love
with him."
Cecil was too angry to answer. That the dowager should talk coolly
of Hector Gordon, the contractor's son, as a great catch for the
descendant of Aspendells and Chudleighs who had helped to vanquish his
countrymen at Flodden, stung the Earl's daughter to the very heart.
She had so little but her grand old lineage left her, that it was
scarcely strange she should be proud of it. There came a time, not many
weeks after this August evening, when she looked back thought what a
delicious thing it must have been to have her name coupled with _his_,
and to be ignorant that there was any wrong in the association.
But to-night she was wounded and indignant, and though she went
out into the kitchen-premises by-and-by to give orders about the
cutlets, and the soles, and the potted meats for the Plunger Captain's
breakfast, her heart was not in the duty, and she sent none of those
little messages to the butcher which a woman would have done who loved
the coming cutlet-consumer. She thought how unpleasant it would be to
have a clumsy Scottish invalid lying on the sofa in the cosy little
drawing-room, where she had hoped to read Tennyson and Owen Meredith
all by herself in the warm, drowsy afternoons. And the time came, and
so soon, when no sofa that Gillow could devise would have seemed soft
enough for so dear a visitor; when every glimmer of sunshine or breath
of summer air in that cosy drawing-room was watched and calculated as
closely as if a valuable life had depended upon the adjustment of the
Venetians, or the opening and shutting of the French windows.
Lady Cecil went out upon the seashore after an early cup of tea on the
morning that was to witness Hector Gordon's arrival. She had arranged
a pile of dewy plums nestling in their dark green leaves, and a basket
of hothouse grapes, with her own hands, for she had the magical touch
whereby some women can impart beauty to common things. She had surveyed
the breakfast-table, and had given orders as to the moment at which the
tea and coffee were to be made, and the fish put into the frying-pan;
and she left a message for her aunt to the effect that she was gone for
a long walk, and would not be home to breakfast. It would be so much
better, she fancied, to leave the widow and her nephew _tête-à-tête_
on this first morning of the soldier's arrival. She had done her duty
conscientiously, and having done it, she went out to breathe the sweet
morning air, and shake off the unpleasant idea of the coming Scotchman.
"I have been tolerably comfortable with my aunt so far," she thought,
"in spite of the spoons and forks; but now I shall only interfere with
her enjoyment of this dreadful Scotchman's society. Oh, papa, papa,
how I miss you, and the dreary little house on the Dyke Road, where we
lived so peacefully together, with all the winds of heaven howling
round us, and rattling our windows in the dead of the night!"
She went under the ponderous archway beneath which a portcullis
still hung, and into the grassy enclosure which had once been the
muster-ground of the castle. At this early hour there were neither
Sunday-school children nor exploring visitors among the old grey ruins.
The fresh sea-breezes fluttered the little plume in Lady Cecil's hat,
and blew all thoughts of vexation out of her mind. She mounted the
winding stair of the keep--a dangerous, treacherous stair, which had
been worn by the tread of mailed feet in the days that were gone, and
the buff boots of excursionists from the Isle of Wight in this present
age. She went to the very top of the great Norman tower, high up above
all grievances about Hector Gordon and his breakfast, and emerged upon
the battlements, a fragile, fluttering little figure, amid that massive
mediæval stonework, whose grey ruin was grander than the most elaborate
glories of modern architecture.
She had heard the whistle of the engine as she entered the castle, and
she imagined that at this moment Hector Gordon must be installed at the
breakfast-table; "devouring chops," she thought, with a contemptuous
little grimace. It is so natural for a girl of nineteen to think meanly
of a man who is below her in social status. To Philip Foley, painting
in his Highbury lodging, and dressed in a threadbare shooting-jacket,
Lady Cecil Chudleigh would have been unspeakably gracious; but for a
scion of the Caledonian plutocracy she had nothing but good-natured
contempt.
"He is an invalid, poor fellow," she thought; "I am sure it is very
wicked of me to think his visit a bore."
She settled matters with her conscience by determining to be very
attentive to the physical comforts of her aunt's favourite.
"I dare say he would like some salmon for dinner," she thought; "I'll
call at the fishmonger's as I go home."
And then she took a volume of Victor Hugo's poetry from her pocket, and
began to read.
The noble verse carried her aloft on its mighty pinions, high up
into some mystic region a million miles above the battlements of the
Norman tower. She had an idea that she could not leave her aunt and
Captain Gordon too long undisturbed on this particular morning, and
she abandoned herself altogether to the delight of her book. It was so
seldom that she was able to entirely forget that there were such things
as silver forks and dishonest servants in the world.
Even to-day she was not allowed to be long unconscious of the outer
world, for when she had been reading about twenty minutes she heard a
voice close beside her exclaim:
"I am so glad you like Victor Hugo. Pray forgive me for being so
impertinent as to look over your shoulder; but I have been searching
for you every where, and I am to take you home to breakfast, please; if
you are Lady Cecil Chudleigh, and I am almost sure you are."
She started to her feet, and looked at the speaker. He was the
handsomest man she had ever seen--tall, and grand, and fair, the very
type of a classic hero, she fancied, as he stood before her on the
battlements, with the winds lifting the short auburn curls from his
bare forehead. He was no more like the traditional Scotchman than the
Duke d'Aumâle is like one of Gilray's Frenchmen. There was no more
odour of the parvenu about him than about a Bayard or a Napier. In all
her life she had never seen any one like him. It was not because he was
handsome that she was struck by his appearance; for she had generally
hated handsome men as the most obnoxious of their species. It was
because he was--himself.
For once in her life; Lord Aspendell's daughter, whose calm reserve was
so near akin to _hauteur_, was fairly startled.
"And are you really Captain Gordon?" she asked, amazed.
"I am indeed; and that question tells me that I was right, and you are
Lady Cecil, and we are--at least we ought to be--cousins, since dear
Aunt MacClaverhouse stands in the same relation to both of us."
CHAPTER III.
HECTOR.
The trio in the little breakfast-parlour in Sea-View Cottage,
Fortinbras, was perhaps one of the pleasantest parties that ever met
at so simply furnished a board. The spirit of the immortal Cliquot,
whose vintages have made his widow's name so celebrated, may have
smiled contemptuously at such a breakfast-table, on which the strongest
beverages were tea and coffee; the mighty chiefs of Philippe's and
the Maison Dorée would have held up their hands and shrugged their
shoulders with amazement if told that these benighted insulars could
really enjoy these coarse viands, and feel no national craving for
suicide, or national tendency to spleen, before the barbarous meal
was concluded. And yet there are few _cabinets particuliers_ on the
Boulevards whose gaudily-papered walls have ever echoed to happier
laughter than that of the young Indian hero, as he gave a serio-comic
rendering of his adventures, warding off all praise of great and
gallant deeds by the playful tone which made peril seem a joke, and
desperate valour the most commonplace quality of man.
Mrs. MacClaverhouse would have been pleased to listen all day to the
voice of that charmer of six feet two, but her sharp matronly eye
perceived presently that the stalwart Plunger looked pale and worn,
and was by no means unqualified for the sick-list; so she sent Lady
Cecil to the drawing-room to see to the arrangements of the Venetians,
and then she led her boy to the sofa, which was not nearly long enough
for him, and had to be eked out with chairs. The Captain remonstrated
energetically against this Sybarite treatment, but his aunt was
inflexible; and as he was very familiar with the strength of her will,
he laid himself down at last as meekly as a child.
"And you can read to us, Cecil," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse producing
her knitting-needles, and an uncompromising grey-worsted sock, such
as Robert Burns may have worn when his plough turned up the immortal
daisy. The dowager knitted these worsted instruments of torture for a
Dorcas society, which she honoured with her patronage and a very small
annual subscription.
"Come, Cecil," she said presently, when her niece came softly into the
room after a mysterious visit to the cook. "Hector has been amusing
us all the morning, and the least we can do is to amuse him this
afternoon. Suppose you read him to sleep."
If the Scottish warrior had been any thing like the image she had
made of him in her mind, Cecil Chudleigh would have been very much
disposed to rebel against this command. But there are some people born
to walk upon roses and to inhale the perfumed breath of incense; and
Hector Gordon was one of them. His nurses had idolised him, his father
had worshipped him, his uncle and aunt had spoiled him, his brother
officers of the Plungers loved him, and dressed after him, and talked
after him, and thought after him; and with that feminine admiration,
that subtle and delicious flattery which is the most intoxicating of
all earthly incense, Hector had been almost surfeited. He was very
delightful. The freshness and brightness of an unsullied youth pervaded
every tone of his voice, every thought in his mind, every ringing note
of his genial laugh--so hearty without loudness, so exuberant without
vulgarity. Perhaps his greatest charm lay in the fact that he was
young, and did not consider his youth a thing to be ashamed of. And
there are so few young men nowadays. Much has been said about the
irresistible witchery of a polished Irishman, the delightful vivacity
of a well-born Frenchman. But has any one ever sung the graces of
a high-bred Scotchman? What words can fairly describe the nameless
fascination which has a dash of the Irishman's insidious flattery, a
spice of the Frenchman's brilliant vivacity, but which has a tender
softness possessed by neither, a patrician grace not to be equalled
by any other nationality in the world? In all the history of modern
Europe, the two people who, by manner alone, have exercised the most
powerful influence upon their contemporaries, have been Mary Queen of
Scots, and her great-grandson Charles Stuart. Of all the poets, who has
ever so enthralled the hearts of women as George Gordon, Lord Byron,
whose maternal lineage was Scotch? Of all lovely and fascinating women
whose names will be remembered in the future, is there any fairer or
lovelier than Eugenie Marie de Guzman, Countess of Teba, Empress of the
French, and scion of the Kirkpatricks of Closeburn?
There are flowers that flourish in the sunshine, and flowers that
thrive only in the shade; and as it is in the vegetable, so is it
in the animal kingdom. There are men whom a perpetual atmosphere
of adulation would have transformed into supercilious fops or
selfish profligates. Hector Gordon made no such vile return for the
tenderness which had been so freely lavished upon him. High-minded and
generous-hearted, brave as a Leonidas or a Clyde, he was no bad example
for the young men who formed themselves upon him. It was said that
there was less bill-discounting and card-playing amongst the officers
of the 11th Plungers than in any other cavalry regiment in the service;
for it is your dashing young captain rather than your middle-aged
colonel who gives the tone to the youngsters of a mess. They may obey
their commanding-officer, but they will copy their brilliant companion.
But it must not be supposed that under any circumstance Hector Gordon
could have come under the denomination of "a good young man;" for it
seems an understood thing that the typical good young man must be
nothing but good. Hector was neither evangelical nor Puseyite in his
tendencies; but rather of that good, easy-going broad Church, which
winks good-naturedly at a parson in "pink," and sees no criminality
in a cheerful rubber. He went to church once or twice on a Sunday,
as the case might be; and did his best to join earnestly in the
service, and to listen with sustained attention to the sermon. If
his thoughts wandered now and then to the Highland peaks, amidst
whose lonely grandeurs he had once shot a mighty white eagle, or to
the deer-stalking adventures or grouse-shooting of the last autumn;
if his fancy played him false and brought some bright girlish face
before him, with the memory of one especially delicious waltz, and one
peculiarly intoxicating flirtation--if such small sins as these sullied
his soul now and then when the sermon was duller and longer than it
should have been, it must be remembered that he was very young, and
that the chastening influence of sorrow had not yet shadowed his life,
or lessened his delight in the common pleasures of his age.
Lying on the sofa, in the low-roofed, old-fashioned drawing-room at
Fortinbras, and shrouded by a leopard-skin railway-rug, which Mrs.
MacClaverhouse had insisted on casting over him, the young Captain
looked like an invalid Titan; but a Titan with a nimbus of waving
auburn hair about his head, and the brightest blue eyes that ever
took a fierce light amid the glare of battle, or softened to feminine
tenderness when they looked on a woman's face. Lady Cecil contemplated
her aunt's favourite at her leisure as she sat by an open window, with
her face quite hidden in the shadow of drooping curtains and closed
Venetians. And she had fancied him such a vulgar, clumsy creature--a
freckled, red-haired object,--like a tobacconist's Highlander in modern
costume, a loutish Caledonian Hercules, with a Gaelic sing-song in his
voice, and with no belief in any thing but the grandeur of Princes
Street, Edinburgh, and the immortality of Robert Burns. Cecil Chudleigh
looked at him slily from beneath the shadow of her long lashes, and
smiled at the recollection of her old fancies.
"As if one's idea of a place or person were ever any thing like the
reality," she thought. "I ought to have known that Captain Gordon would
prove the very opposite of the image I had made him."
She took up some books presently from the table near her, and looked at
the titles.
"How can you ask me to read to Captain Gordon, auntie," she demanded,
archly, "when you know we have no books or papers that can interest
him? We have neither _Bell's Life_, nor the _United-Service Gazette_;
nor yet 'Post and Scarlet,' or 'Silk and Paddock,' or whatever those
barbarous books are called that gentlemen are so fond of. I think there
are some odd numbers of _Mr. Sponge's Sporting-Tour_ in a cupboard in
Dorset Square, and I dare say we could get them sent down by post; but
for to-day----"
"Will you read some of Hugo's verses?" asked Captain Gordon. "I mustn't
talk slang to a lady, or I would entreat you not to chaff me while
I'm on the sick-list. I have read as much sporting literature as any
man, I dare say, in my day; and _Post and Paddock_ is a capital book,
I do assure you, Lady Cecil; but I think I know my Tennyson too. I
have recited 'Locksley Hall' from the first line to the last, out
yonder, when we've been dreadfully hard-up for talk. And you should
have seen how scared my _Kitmutghar_ looked! I think he fancied our
great Alfred's masterpiece was a volley of bad language; they're so
unaccustomed to hear any thing _but_ bad language from Englishmen, poor
fellows. If I am really to be treated as an invalid, and dear foolish
auntie here insists upon it, I will exercise my prerogative, and demand
one of Hugo's odes."
Cecil opened the little volume that she had carried to the top of
Fortinbras Keep, and turned the leaves listlessly, with slim white
fingers that sparkled faintly with the gems in quaint old-fashioned
rings.
She paused, with a volume open at those wonderful verses in which the
classic Sybarite bewails the weariness of his felicity; and, pushing
the Venetian shutter a little way open, she began to read, with a
half-smile upon her face. The summer sunlight flooded her face and
figure, and the summer air fluttered one loose tress of her dark-brown
hair, as her head drooped over her book.
"D'implacables faveurs me poursuivent sans cease,
Vous m'avez flétri dans ma fleur,
Dieux! donnez l'espérance à ma froide jeunesse,
Je vous rends tous ces biens pour un pen de bonheur."
When Cecil came to these closing lines of the Sybarite's complaint, the
Scottish Hercules flung off his leopard-skin, and walked across the
little room to the open window by which Lady Cecil was seated.
"It's no use, auntie," he said; "I'm not an invalid. If I loll upon
that sofa, Lady Cecil will take me for a modern Celsus; and, upon
my word, I _have_ felt like that fellow once or twice in my life.
I've never been exactly savage with Providence for giving me so many
blessings; but I have felt as if I should like to have had a little
more of the fun of wishing for things. Look at my position. I'm not
used up, and I don't affect to be used up, like some fellows. I don't
make a howling about having lost the faculty of pleasure, or the
belief in my fellow-men, or any thing of that kind. I'm no disciple
of Alfred de Musset, or Owen Meredith; but I really have run through
the better part of the pleasures that last most men their lifetime.
There's scarcely any thing in the way of adventure that you can propose
to me that I haven't done, from tooling a drag along the Lady's Mile
when the carriages were thickest, to ascending Mont Blanc or scaling a
red-hot brick wall on a fireman's ladder. There's scarcely any route
you can suggest to me for a holiday tour that I'm not as familiar with
as Murray. And yet I'm only seven-and-twenty. So long as we have plenty
to do in India I shall be right enough; but if our fellows should ever
come to be planted in country quarters, without any prospect of work,
what's to become of me? And then I've promised to sell out in a few
years," he added, in a much graver tone.
"Promised to sell out!" screamed Mrs. MacClaverhouse. "That's your
father's doing, I know; but you won't leave the army until you marry, I
suppose?"
"Oh no, not until I marry."
He took up the volume of poems which Cecil had laid down.
"Let me read to you, ladies," he said; "am I not here to minister to
your pleasures and obey your behests? Tell me your favourites, Lady
Cecil."
They discussed the book in his hand, and Cecil discovered that Captain
Gordon was very familiar with the poet. He read well, and good reading
is such a rare accomplishment. His accent was irreproachable; and if
there was a charm in his full rich voice when he spoke English, the
charm was still greater when he spoke French. He spoke French and
German to perfection, for he had been well grounded in both languages,
though not very materially advanced in either at Eton or Oxford; and he
had spent a considerable part of his youth wandering from city to city
with a private tutor, a retired Austrian officer, who was both learned
and accomplished, and who adored his pupil.
When two people, both under the age of thirty, discover that they
admire the same poet, they have gone half-way towards a pleasant
intimacy. After that discussion of Victor Hugo, and the reading
aloud that followed, and the desultory talk about Germany and German
literature, India and Indian politics, London, and common friends and
acquaintances who were to be met there, that succeeded the poetical
lecture, Lady Cecil Chudleigh quite forgot all her old fancies about
Captain Gordon, and resigned herself to the idea of his visit.
And after this they were the best friends in the world, and Mrs.
MacClaverhouse was quite contented to allow Cecil a share in her
boy's society. She was a very sensible woman in her way, and liked
the society of young people when it was to be had cheaply. Hector
and Cecil's animated discussions upon almost all subjects to be
found between earth and heaven amused the widow as she basked in the
sunshine, seated in her pet chair before a window with her favourite
aspect. She astonished the young people very often by the shrewdness
of the remarks with which she cut in upon them, smiting their pretty
fanciful theories into atoms with the sledge-hammer of common-sense.
Altogether she was very well satisfied with the aspect of affairs. If
the motherless lad whom she loved so tenderly, and thought of as a lad
in spite of his seven-and-twenty years--if Hector Gordon had been a
landless younger son, with his fortune to carve out for himself, Mrs.
MacClaverhouse would no doubt have loved him dearly, for the sake of
his blue eyes and his frank handsome face, his generous nature and
gladsome soul; but she would scarcely perhaps have loved him quite so
much, or looked for his coming quite so gladly under such circumstances
as she did now, when all the blessings or pleasures that wealth can
purchase attended his footsteps wherever he went, and created an
atmosphere of luxury around and about the dwelling in which he lived.
A hungry nephew, always hard-up, and in need of pecuniary assistance,
would have been a heavy trial to Mrs. MacClaverhouse.
Nothing could have been more delightful to the dowager than the
Captain's manner of opening the campaign on the morning after his
arrival. They had breakfasted early this time, for Hector insisted that
he was well enough to get up with the birds if necessary, and that
so far as any claim to feminine compassion or to sick-leave went, he
was the veriest impostor in existence. It was after the little party
had dawdled considerably over the breakfast-table, and when Cecil had
departed to hold solemn council with the cook, that Hector addressed
his relative:
"Now, my dear auntie," he said, "it's essentially necessary that
you and I should understand each other. In the first place, I adore
Fortinbras. I think it the most delightful place in the universe; and
if the possessor of that delicious old castle would only be good enough
to conceive an aversion for it, or find himself hopelessly insolvent,
or something of that kind, I'd buy it of him to-morrow--Consols
have risen an eighth since last Tuesday, and it's a good time for
selling out--and restore it. Queen Elizabeth's drawing-room would
make an admirable billiard-room, if it only had those necessary
trifles--a floor and a ceiling. I'd make my hunting-stables out of the
banqueting-hall--imagine a loose box with a wall four feet thick!--and
I'd sleep in the topmost chamber of the great Norman tower, with a
flag-staff swaying close above my head, and a general sensation of
inhabiting a balloon. But all this is beside the question, auntie.
What I want to say is that I have fallen desperately in love with
Fortinbras, and as I am likely to stay here till you become unutterably
weary of my society, I must insist upon your accepting this cheque
which I wrote this morning--for you know of old what an expensive
fellow I am, and I should feel perfectly miserable if I felt myself
sponging on you without the least chance of returning your hospitality."
The Captain crumpled the folded cheque into his aunt's hand. The widow
began some vague protest, but her nephew suffocated her scruples by a
sonorous kiss; and whatever objection she urged against the receipt of
his money were lost in the luxuriance of his beard.
"And now the next question is, how we are to enjoy ourselves?"
exclaimed Hector, while his aunt speculated upon the figures inscribed
on that crumpled scrap of paper, which her fingers so itched to unfold.
"In the first place we must have a carriage; and in an exploration
which I made this morning before you were up, Mrs. MacClaverhouse, I
discovered that the only vehicle we can have is a shabby old fly, which
began life as a britzska, and a shabby old pair of horses, which, in
their early days, I suspect, have been employed in the agricultural
interest; but as the shabby old carriage is clean and roomy, and as
I am told the clumsy old horses are good at going, and as a person
in the position of that proverbial Hobson must not be fastidious, I
have engaged the vehicle for the season. So now, my dearest auntie,
prepare yourself for a chronic state of picnic. I have written to
Fortnum and Mason to send us a cargo of picnic provisions--innumerable
mahogany-coloured hams and tongues, and Strasburg pies, and potted fowl
of all species, and all those wonderful preparations which taste of
grease and pepper so much more than of any thing else. And I have found
the most delightful nurseryman in the world, who will supply us with
hothouse grapes and apricots; and the carriage will be here at twelve,
so pray run away and put on your bonnet, auntie, and let Lady Cecil
know all about our plans."
"You like Cecil?"
"Excessively. I think she is charming."
Mrs. MacClaverhouse shrugged her shoulders.
"You think every thing charming," she said.
She was familiar with his sanguine temperament, and his faculty for
seeing every thing in its sunniest aspect.
"But I think Lady Cecil Chudleigh more charming than most things. I
have seen very few women to compare with her, though she is by no means
a showy beauty. I was struck by her profile as she sat in the sunlight
yesterday. I never saw a more delicate outline, except in the face
of the Empress Eugénie--and she has something of Eugenie's pensive
gravity in her expression,--not pride, but the sort of thing which
common-minded people mistake for pride. I think you have reason to be
proud of such a niece. She ought to marry well."
"I hope she will," answered the widow.
If there was any special significance in her tone, Captain Gordon
was too careless to be conscious of it. He walked to the open window,
humming an Italian air from the last successful opera, and then he
strolled out on the lawn, which was screened from the high road by a
tall old-fashioned privet hedge and a modern bank of showy evergreens,
across which the sea breezes blew fresh and cool. He was very happy,
with an innocent, boyish happiness, as he paced to and fro upon the
elastic turf, which seemed to spring under his light foot. In all
his life he had never known any acute pain, any bitter grief. Of all
possibilities in life the last thing which he could have imagined was
that he had come to meet his first great sorrow here where he was happy
in the planning of such simple pleasures as might have seemed insipid
to a modern schoolboy.
"What an old-fashioned fellow I am!" he thought, as he stopped with his
hand in his pocket, searching for his cigar-case. "If any of my chums
in the Eleventh knew that I was looking forward to a day's ramble in
a rumbling old fly with a couple of women, I think they'd cut me dead
ever afterwards; and yet they're not such a bad lot of fellows, after
all; only there's not one of them has pluck enough to own he can enjoy
himself."
Captain Gordon had smoked out his cigar by the time the fly drove up
to the garden gate. He threw the ash away, and shook the fumes of his
cabana out of his hair and beard, and then went to meet the dowager
and Lady Cecil; the dowager stately in black silk robes, which she
possessed in all stages of splendour and shabbiness, and which she
wore always, because it was "suitable for a person of my age, my dear,
and by far the most economical thing one can wear," as she informed
her confidantes. The Indian shawl--the shawl which the Captain had
brought to Fortinbras in one of his port-manteaus--hung across Mrs.
MacClaverhouse's arm, in compliment to the donor; and behind the widow
came Cecil, in a pale muslin dress and scarf, and looking very lovely
under the shelter of a broad Leghorn hat.
They drove away in the bright summer sunshine, through country-lanes,
where the breath of the sea came to them laden with the perfume of
flowers; where rustic children ran out of cottage-doors to curtsey to
them as they drove by, or even to set up a feeble cheer, as if the fly
had been a triumphal chariot. The drive was a success; as, indeed,
almost all things were on which Hector Gordon set his desire. Mrs.
MacClaverhouse was radiant, for her inspection of the cheque had proved
eminently satisfactory; Hector was delightful, throwing his whole
heart and soul into the task of amusing his companions--gay with the
consciousness of pleasing, and with the _insouciance_ of a man who
has never known trouble; and if Lady Cecil was the most silent of the
little party, it was only because she felt most deeply the delicious
repose of the rustic scenery, the exquisite sweetness of the untainted
atmosphere.
They had many such drives after this, exploring the country for twenty
miles round Fortinbras. They held impromptu picnics on breezy heights
above the level of the sea; picnics in which the rector of Fortinbras
and his two pretty daughters were sometimes invited to join, and which
ended with tea-drinking at Sea-View Villa, and croquet on the lawn; and
then they had lonely drives to distant villages, where there were old
Norman churches to be explored, under convoy of quavery old sextons,
who always had to be fetched from their dinner or their tea; dusky old
churches which Mrs. MacClaverhouse declined to enter, and in whose
solemn gloom Hector and Cecil dawdled together, discussing the dates of
doors and windows, tombs and font, stalls and reading-desk, while the
old sexton hovered respectfully in attendance, and while the dowager
dozed delightfully in her carriage, lulled by the booming of excited
bees. Sometimes Mrs. MacClaverhouse was too lazy to go out at all,
and on those occasions the shabby fly and the shabby horses enjoyed a
holiday, while Hector and Cecil strolled on the sands before the villa,
or dawdled on the lawn.
They were very happy together. All Lady Cecil's proud reserve melted
under the influence of the Scotchman's genial nature.
It was simply impossible not to like him; it was very difficult to
resist his fascination, the indescribable witchery that lurked in
his manner when he wished to please. Lord Aspendell's daughter found
herself forgetting how slight a link bound her to this pleasant
companion, and admitting him to a cousinly intimacy before she had
time to think of what she was doing; and then it was such an easy
brotherly and sisterly friendship, that to draw back from it would
have seemed prudish and ungracious; so Cecil walked and talked with
the young Captain, and read and played to him in the evenings, and
enjoyed to the full that delightful association which can only arise
between two well-bred and highly educated people. If either of them had
been ignorant or shallow, selfish or vain, such close companionship
must have become intolerable at the end of a week. Every body knows
how weary Madame du Doffand and President Heinault grew of themselves
and existence in less than twelve hours, when they met in a friend's
deserted apartment, in order to escape from their visitors for the
enjoyment of each other's society; but then Madame and the President
were middle-aged lovers, and the freshness of youth was wanting to
transform the place of their rendezvous into a paradise.
It was when Hector Gordon had been staying nearly a month at Fortinbras
that the sharp-spoken and worldly dowager suddenly awakened Lady
Cecil from that mental languour which had stolen upon her since his
coming. He seemed to have brought so much sunshine with him, and she
had abandoned herself so entirely to the delight of its warmth and
radiance, lulled by the belief that it was the change from Dorset
Square to Fortinbras that had filled her heart and mind with such
unwonted gladness.
Mrs. MacClaverhouse had a very acute perception of all matters in
which her own interests were in any way implicated, and she had woven
a little scheme in relation to her nephew and niece. The dishonest
steward, who made friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, has many
disciples in our modern day; and the dowager had certain views with
regard to Captain Gordon's settlement in life--views which involved her
enjoyment of a permanent home with the nephew she loved. It was for
the furtherance of this little scheme that she sat at home so often
while Hector and Cecil walked side by side upon the shore, or loitered
in the garden; and this object was in her mind when she let them sing
duets to her in the dusky drawing-room, and sank so often into gentle
slumbers while they sang, or paused to talk in voices that were hushed
in harmony with the still twilight.
"I suppose you will scarcely turn up your nose _now_, Lady Cecil, if
I venture to tell you that my nephew will be a first-rate match,"
exclaimed the dowager one morning, when she found herself alone with
her niece.
Cecil blushed crimson.
"I--I--don't understand you, auntie," she stammered.
"Oh, of course not, Cecil. I hate a sly girl; and I begin to think
you are sly. Do you mean to tell me you don't understand the drift of
Hector's attentions to you?"
"But, dear auntie, he is not attentive; at least, not more attentive
than a man must be to any woman he meets. Pray do not take any absurd
idea into your head. We are almost relations, you know; and we get on
very well together--much better than I ever thought we should; but as
for any thing more than a cousinly kind of friendship----"
"A cousinly kind of fiddlestick!" cried the energetic dowager. "Do you
think I can believe that all that strolling on the beach, and all that
dawdling on the lawn, and all that mumbling by the piano which I hear
in my sleep, means nothing but cousinly friendship?"
"On my honour, auntie, Captain Gordon has never said a word to me which
the most indifferent acquaintance might not have said."
"Then what in Heaven's name does the man mumble about?" demanded Mrs.
MacClaverhouse sharply.
"Oh, we have so much to talk of--our favourite books, and pictures, and
music, places we have both seen, old acquaintances, places that he only
has seen, and people whom he only has known; and then sometimes we get
a little metaphysical--or even mystical. You know how superstitious the
Scotch are, and I really think Captain Gordon is almost inclined to
believe in the spiritualists."
"That will do. Then Hector Gordon has not made you an offer?"
"No, indeed," Cecil answered, blushing more deeply than before; "nor
have I any reason to suppose he has the faintest idea of doing so. Pray
do not mention the subject again, dear aunt. I have such a horror of
any thing at all like husband-hunting."
"As you please, my young lady. It's all very well to ride the high
horse; but I think some day, when you find yourself unpleasantly close
to your thirtieth birthday, and discover some ugly lines under those
beautiful hazel eyes of yours--some day when I am dead and gone, and
your delicate ivory-white complexion has grown as yellow as an old
knife-handle--when you look forward to a dreary life of dependence
upon others, or lonely struggles with a hard, pitiless world--I think
then, Lady Cecil, you'll be inclined to regret that you were so
contemptuously indifferent to Hector Gordon's merits. There, go and
put on your bonnet, child; you may marry whom you please, or remain
unmarried as long as you please, for all I care about it. And yet I
had built quite a castle in the air about you, and I fancied how nice
it would be for you and Hector to settle in Hyde Park Gardens, or
thereabouts, and for me to live with you. I should like to end my days
with my boy; and those second floors in Hyde Park Gardens are very
delightful--especially if you are lucky enough to get a corner house."
Mrs. MacClaverhouse's voice seemed to strike like some sharp instrument
into Cecil Chudleigh's heart as she concluded this tirade. The girl had
listened in proud silence, and retired silently when her aunt came to a
pause. An excursion had been planned for the day; the fly was waiting
before the gate, and Cecil heard Hector's step pacing to and fro on the
gravel-walk below her open window, and smelt the perfume of his cigar
as she put on her hat. But all the girlish joyousness with which she
had been wont to attire herself for such rustic expeditions had fled
from her breast, leaving a heavy dull sense of pain in its stead.
"I dare say Aunt MacClaverhouse is right," she thought sadly; "and I
shall feel a dreary desolate creature when I come to be thirty, and
stand all alone in the world. But it is so horrible to hear her talk
of good matches, just as if every girl must always be on the alert to
entrap a rich husband; when I know too that Captain Gordon does not
care for me----"
She paused, and a vivid blush stole over her thoughtful face--not the
crimson glow of indignation, but the warm brightness which reflects
the roseate hue of a happy thought. Did he not care for her? That
phrase about "caring for her" is the modest euphemism in which a woman
disguises the bold word "love." Was he really so indifferent? Her
protest to Mrs. MacClaverhouse had contained no syllable of untruth or
prevarication. In all their intercourse, throughout all that cousinly
intimacy which had been so sweet a friendship, Hector Gordon had not
uttered a word which the vainest or most conscious coquette could
construe into a confession of any thing warmer than friendship.
"Ah! yet--and yet--and yet!" as Owen Meredith says, there had been
something--yes, surely something! no spoken word, no license of glance,
no daring pressure of a yielding hand--something fifty times less
palpable, and yet a hundred times sweeter than any of these--a lowering
of the voice--a tender tremulous tone now and then, a dreamy softness
in the dark-blue eyes--a silence more eloquent than words--a sudden
break in a sentence, that had a deeper meaning than a hundred sentences.
"Poor auntie!" thought Lady Cecil, "it was silly of me to be so angry
with her; for, after all, I think he does care for me--a little."
Did she think of the contractor's wealth, or remember how high above
poverty and dependence she would be lifted by a marriage with Hector
Gordon? Did any vision of the corner house in Hyde-Park Gardens, the
noble windows overlooking the woods and waters of Kensington, the
elegant equipage and thoroughbred horses, arise before her side by side
with the image of the young soldier? No. Through that most terrible
of ordeals the furnace of genteel poverty--Lady Cecil had passed
unscathed. When the remembrance of Hector Gordon's position flashed
upon her presently, all her pride rose in arms against her weakness.
"I would die rather than he should know that I care for him," she
thought. "He might think me one of those calculating mercenary girls
one reads of."
Thus it was that, when Lady Cecil took her seat in the carriage that
day, there was an air of restraint, a cold reserve in her manner, that
Hector Gordon had never seen before.
He also was changed. He had thrown away his cigar while Cecil
was lingering in her own room, and had gone into the little
breakfast-parlour, where his aunt sat with an unread newspaper in her
hand, brooding over her niece's folly. She looked up as Hector entered,
and began to talk to him. The conversation was a very brief one, and
the Captain had little share in it; but when he went back to the garden
his face was grave and downcast; and when he handed Cecil into the
carriage, she was struck by the gloomy preoccupation of his manner. Of
all the excursions they had enjoyed together, that excursion was the
least agreeable. The September wind was bleak and chilly, penetrating
the warmest folds of Mrs. MacClaverhouse's Indian shawl, and tweaking
the end of her aristocratic nose. The brown moorlands and bare
stubble-fields had a barren look against the cold grey sky; and the
Captain, generally as much _aux petits soins_ with regard to the two
ladies as if he had been the adoring son of the one and the accepted
lover of the other, sat in a gloomy reverie, and seemed to arouse
himself by an effort whenever he uttered some commonplace remark upon
the weather or the scenery. There was very little conversation during
dinner; and Captain Gordon made so poor a pretence of eating that the
dowager became positively alarmed, and declared that her boy was ill.
"It is no use talking, Hector," she exclaimed, though her nephew had
only made a half-articulate murmur to the effect that there was nothing
the matter with him. "You eat no fish, and you only helped yourself to
a wing of that chicken; and you sent your plate away with that almost
untouched--a very extravagant mode of sending your plate away, I should
say, if you were a poor man. You've not been yourself all day, Hector;
so I shall insist on your being nursed this evening. You won't take any
fruit, I know; for fruit is bilious.--Never mind the dessert to-day,
Mowatt," the widow said, addressing her parlour-maid; "and be sure the
fruit is kept in a cool dry place till to-morrow," she added _sotto
voce_, as she cast a sharply-scrutinising glance upon the dishes of
grapes and apricots. The widow insisted that her nephew was ill and
tired; and as the Captain seemed oppressed by a kind of languor which
made him quite unequal to offer any opposition to such an energetic
person as his aunt, he gave way, and suffered himself to be installed
in a reclining attitude on the most comfortable sofa, with an Indian
shawl spread over him like the counterpane of a state bed.
"And now Cecil shall play us both to sleep," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse,
sinking into her own chair.
The piano was as far away from the sofa as it could be in so small a
room; but Cecil heard a faint sigh as she seated herself in the dusk
and laid her hands softly on the keys. How many evenings they two had
sat side by side in the same dusk, talking in hushed voices! how often
she had felt his warm breath admidst her hair as he bent over her while
she sang! But to-day he seemed changed all at once, as he might have
changed on the discovery that the woman in whose companionship he had
been so unrestrainedly happy was only a scheming coquette after all,
and had been spreading an airy net in which to entrap his heart and his
fortune. The thought that some chance word of the dowager's might have
inspired him with such an idea of her was absolute torture to Cecil
Chudleigh.
She felt half inclined to refuse to play or sing for the Captain's
gratification; and yet to do so might be to make a kind of scene which
would seem only a part of her scheme. So after sitting silently for
some minutes she touched the keys softly, and began a little reverie of
Kalkbrenner's; the simplest of melodies, with a flowing movement like
the monotonous plashing of waves rising and falling under the keel of
a boat; and then she wandered into a very sweet arrangement of that
exquisite air of Beethoven's, "Those evening bells," a melody which
Moore has made more exquisite by words whose mournful beauty has never
been surpassed by any lyric in our language.
"Sing the song, Lady Cecil," said Hector, in a low pleading voice. "Let
me hear you sing once more."
There was something in his entreating tone--something that seemed
like humility, and which reassured Cecil as to his opinion of her. It
was not in such a tone that a man would address a woman he had newly
learned to despise. If Hector Gordon had been the suppliant of a queen
his accent could have been no more reverential than it was.
"I am in a very melancholy mood to-night, Lady Cecil," he said, while
she paused with her hands straying listlessly over the keys; "and I
have a fancy for pensive music. Please let me have the song."
"Do you really wish it?"
"Really--and truly."
What common words they were! and yet how thrilling an accent they took
to-night upon _his_ lips!
Cecil sang the tender melancholy words in a voice that conveyed all
their tenderness--she sang that ballad which in the quiet twilight has
so sad a cadence, mournful as the dirge of perished hopes and buried
loves. If her low tremulous voice did not break into tears before the
end of the song, it was only because, in her nervous terror of any
thing like a scene, she exerted all the force of her will to sustain
her tones to the close.
She paused when the song was finished, expecting some acknowledgment
from Captain Gordon; but the silence of the darkening room was only
broken by the slumberous breathing of Mrs. MacClaverhouse. It was a
little ungracious of him to utter no word of thanks, Cecil thought;
and then she began to wonder about the cause of his melancholy of this
evening, and the subject of that moody reverie which had occupied him
all day.
While she was wondering about this, the servant came into the room,
bearing a tea-tray and a monster moderator lamp, that towered like an
obelisk in the centre of the little table on which the dowager was wont
to make tea. That lady was startled from her slumbers by the faint
jingling of the teacups, and looked about her as sharply as if she had
never been asleep at all.
"How quiet you have both been!" she exclaimed, rather impatiently. "I
don't enjoy my nap half so much without the drowsy hum of your voices.
What droning thing was that you were singing just now, Cecil?"
There was no answer. Cecil still bent abstractedly over the piano,
touching the notes softly now and then, but making no sound. Hector
Gordon lay with his face hidden by his folded arms. The fussy dowager
darted across the room and swooped down upon her nephew.
"Hector," she cried, "what in goodness' name has been the matter with
you all day? Why, bless my soul, what's this?--the pillow's wet. You've
been crying!"
Captain Gordon got up from the sofa and laughed pleasantly at his
aunt's scared face.
"It seems very absurd for a man to be nervous or hysterical," he said;
"but I have _not_ been myself to-day, and Lady Cecil's song quite
upset me."
"What, that droning thing?" exclaimed Mrs. MacClaverhouse. "It sounded
to _me_ like Young's _Night-Thoughts_ set to music."
"I think I'll wish you good-night, auntie," said the soldier.
Cecil wondered whether it was the glare of the moderator lamp that made
him look so pale as he bent over his aunt.
"I think you'd better," answered the dowager; "and if you're not
yourself to-night, I only hope you will be yourself to-morrow. I
haven't common patience with such nonsense."
"Good-night, Lady Cecil." He paused by the piano to say this, but he
did not offer Cecil his hand as he had been wont to do at parting, and
he left the room without another word.
CHAPTER IV.
LOVE AND DUTY.
The Captain did not appear at the breakfast table next morning, and it
was some time after breakfast when he came into the drawing-room where
Cecil sat alone writing letters. He entered through one of the open
windows.
"I have been exploring our favourite hills, Lady Cecil," he said; "I
hope you did not wait breakfast for me?"
"No; auntie never waits for any one. Shall I order fresh tea or coffee
to be made for you?"
"No, thanks; I have no appetite for breakfast this morning."
Cecil went on writing.
"I hope you are better to-day," she said presently, the rapid pen
still gliding over the paper, the graceful head still bending over the
desk. There is nothing so charming as the air of indifference with
which a woman inquires about the health of the man she loves; but the
indifference is generally a little overdone.
"I was not ill yesterday," answered Hector. "There are some things more
painful to endure than illness. Lady Cecil, will you do me a favour?
I want your advice about a friend of mine, who finds himself in one
of the most cruel positions that ever a man was placed in. Are those
letters very important?"
"Not at all important."
"In that case I may ask you to put on your hat and come with me for a
stroll--you have no idea how lovely the sea looks this morning--and you
can give me your advice about my friend."
"I don't think I have had enough experience of life to be a good
adviser."
"But you are a lady, and you have a lady's subtile instincts where
honour is at stake; and this is a case in which experience of life is
not wanted."
Cecil put aside her writing materials and took her hat from the sofa,
where it had been lying. They went out together silently, and walked
silently towards the water's edge. The wavelets curled crisply in the
fresh autumn breeze, and the sunlit sea rippled as gaily as if the blue
waters had bounded beneath the dancing tread of invisible sea-nymphs.
"I shall think of this cool, fresh English sea-shore very often when I
am in Bengal," Hector said.
"You will go back to Bengal--soon?"
"Yes, I think very soon. My leave does not expire for some months:
but as I came home on a doctor's certificate, and as the sea-air I
got between Calcutta and Suez set me up before I reached home, I have
no excuse for remaining away from my regiment much longer. I shall be
glad to see all the dear old fellows again;--and--and--a man is always
happiest when he is doing his duty."
"You speak as if you knew what it was to be unhappy," said Cecil; "and
yet you must remember telling us, one day when you first came here,
that you had never known any serious sorrow in your life."
"Did I say so? Ah! but then that was so long ago."
"So long ago! about five weeks, I believe."
"Five æons! a lifetime at the very least. I have been reading Tennyson
on the hills this morning. What a wonderful poet he is! and how much
more wonderful as a philosopher! I scarcely regret my forgotten Greek
as I read him. To my mind he is the greatest teacher and preacher of
our age,--stern and harsh, bitter and cruel sometimes, but always
striking home to the very root of truth with an unerring aim. I grow
better, and braver, and stronger as I read him. He is not an eloquent
wailer of his own woes, like Byron--ah, don't think that I underrate
Byron because he is out of fashion; for amidst all the birds that
ever sang in the bushes of Parnassus, there is no note so sweet as
his to my ear;--and yet Alfred Tennyson has set the stamp of his own
suffering on every page of his poetry. Don't talk to me about inner
consciousness--or mental imitation. A man must have suffered before he
could write 'Locksley Hall;' a man must have been tempted and must have
triumphed before he could write 'Love and Duty.' Do you know the poem,
Lady Cecil? It is only two or three pages of blank verse; but I have
read it half a dozen times this morning, and it seems to me as true as
if it had been written with the heart's blood of a brave man. Shall I
read it to you?"
"If you please."
Upon that solitary coast they had no fear of interruption. On one side
of them lay stubble-fields and low flat meadows, where the cattle
stood to watch them as they passed; on the other, the cool grey sea.
The autumn sunshine had faded a little, and there were clouds gathering
on the horizon--clouds that Hector and Cecil were too preoccupied to
observe. The faint hum of the village died away behind them as they
strolled slowly onward. In a desert they could scarcely have been less
restrained by any fear of interruption.
Hector Gordon read the poem--in a low, earnest voice--in tones whose
deep feeling was entirely free from exaggeration. He read very slowly
when he came to the last paragraph of the fragment:
"Should my shadow cross thy thoughts
Too sadly for their peace, remand it thou
For calmer hours to memory's darkest hold,
If not to be forgotten--not at once--
Not all forgotten."
He closed the book abruptly with these words, and for some minutes
walked on in silence. This time it was Cecil who was ungracious, since
she did not thank her companion for reading the poem.
"And now, Lady Cecil, I will tell you my friend's story," said Captain
Gordon presently. "It is a common story enough, perhaps; for I suppose
there are few lives in which there does not arise the necessity for
some great sacrifice."
He paused once more, and then began again with an evident effort:
"As my life for the last few years has been spent in India among my
brother officers, I need scarcely tell you that the man of whom I
speak is an officer. He is, like myself, the son of a rich man; and
his military career has been unusually successful. When he joined his
regiment he was one of the most thoughtless and impulsive fellows
in the universe. He had been spoiled by indulgent friends, and had
never in his life had occasion to think for himself. You may bring
up a lad in a garden of roses to be a very well-mannered, agreeable
fellow, I dare say; but I doubt if the rose-garden education will
ever make a great or a wise man. That sort of animal must be reared
upon the moorlands, amidst the free winds of heaven. As my friend
was thoughtless and impulsive, it was scarcely strange that, when
he found himself so idle as to want amusement, he should join in
the first tiger-hunt that took place in his neighbourhood, nor was
it strange that he should contrive to get seriously wounded by the
animal. The wonder was that he escaped alive. He owed the life which
his own reckless folly had hazarded to the cool daring of a friend
and comrade; and when he woke from the swoon into which he had fallen
immediately after feeling the tiger's claws planted in his thigh, he
found himself in the coolest and shadiest room of his friend's house
in Calcutta. He still felt the tiger's claws; but it was pleasant to
know that the sensation was only imaginary, and that the animal had
been shot through the head by the brave young civilian--for his friend
was a civilian, and a resident in Calcutta. He had just enough sense to
murmur some inarticulate expression of gratitude--just enough strength
to grasp his preserver's honest hand; and then he grew delirious from
the pain of his wounds, and then he had fever, and altogether a very
hard time of it.
"I think you can guess what is coming now, Lady Cecil. In all the
history of the world there never surely was the record of man's sorrow
or sickness that was not linked with a story of woman's devotion. When
my friend was well enough to know what tender nursing was, he knew that
the hands which had administered his medicine and smoothed his pillow
from the first hour of his delirium belonged to the civilian's sister;
a girl whom he had known only as the best waltzer in Calcutta, but whom
he had reason to know now as an angel of pity and tenderness.
"Her attendance upon him was as quiet and unobtrusive as it was
watchful and untiring; and on the day on which his medical attendants
pronounced him out of danger, she left his room, after a few
half-tearful words of congratulation, never to enter it again. But she
had watched by him long enough to give him ample time for watching her,
and he fancied that he had reason to believe he was beloved for the
first time in his life.
"When he was well enough to leave his room he found that she had left
Calcutta for a visit to some friends at Simlah. She wanted change of
air, her brother said, and it might be some months before she would
return. My friend's impulsive nature would not suffer him to wait so
long. How base a scoundrel he must have been if his heart had not
overflowed with gratitude to the friend who had saved his life, the
tender-hearted girl who had watched him in his danger! You will not
wonder when I tell you that his first impulse was to ask his friend to
become his brother, his gentle nurse to take the sacred name of wife.
What return could he offer for so much devotion, except the devotion of
his own life? And his heart was so free, Lady Cecil, that he offered
it as freely as if it had been a handful of gold which he had no need
of. The civilian acted nobly, declining to accept any pledge in his
sister's name. I say nobly, because the soldier was a richer man by
twenty times than his friend, and had been the first prize in the
Anglo-Indian matrimonial market. The soldier waited only till he was
strong enough to bear the jolting of a palanquin before he went to
Simlah. He found his nurse looking pale and anxious: little improved
by change of air or scene. He came upon her unexpectedly; and the one
look which he saw in her face, as she recognised him, assured him
that he had not made the senseless blunder of a coxcomb when he had
fancied himself beloved. He stayed in the hill country for a fortnight,
and he went back to his regiment the promised husband of as pure and
true-hearted a woman as ever lived. I bear tribute to her goodness,
Lady Cecil, standing by your side, here upon this English shore, so
many hundred miles away. God bless her!"
He lifted his hat as he pronounced the blessing; and looking at him
with sad, earnest eyes, Cecil saw that his were dim with tears.
"Oh, Cecil, Cecil!" he said, "I haven't finished my story yet. Can you
guess what happened when the soldier came home, and chance threw him
into intimate association with another woman? Unhappily, it is such
an old story. Ah! then, and then only, his heart throbbed into sudden
life. Ah! then only he found how wide a difference there is between a
grateful impulse of the mind and an absorbing passion of the heart.
Careless and inconsiderate in all things, he abandoned himself to the
charm of an association whose peril he never calculated; and he awoke
one day, like a man who had been dreaming pleasant dreams upon the edge
of a precipice, to discover his danger. I cannot tell you how bitter
that awakening was. There is an old Greek fancy--too foolish for me to
tell you--which explains a perfect love as the reunion of two beings
who at first were one, but who, separated by an angry deity, have
wandered blindly through the universe in search of one another. But
sometimes it happens, Lady Cecil, that the half-soul finds its other
half too late!
"I have told you my friend's story. How dearly he loves the lady it
was his sorrow to know and love too late, I can find no words to tell
you. He is a soldier, and he calls himself a man of honour; but he is
so weak and helpless in his misery that he has need of counsel from a
mind less troubled than his own. He is willing to do his duty, if he
can be told wherein his duty lies. Should he write to his betrothed,
and confess the truth, trusting in her generosity to set him free?--I
am sure she would do so."
There was a brief pause before Cecil said,--
"I am sure of it too, though I do not know her. But do you think she
would ever be happy again?"
"I cannot answer for that. Ah, Lady Cecil, I know what you think my
friend's duty is."
"There can be no question about it. He must keep his promise," she
answered firmly.
"Even if in so doing he forfeits the happiness of his future life;
if in so doing he ties himself for ever and ever to the dull wheel
of duty; even if he dares to think that his love is not altogether
unreturned by her he loves so truly and so hopelessly? Oh, Cecil, be
merciful! Remember it is the fate of a lifetime you are deciding."
"I cannot advise your friend to be false to his word," replied Cecil.
"I am sorry for his sorrow. But it is a noble thing to do one's duty. I
think he will be happier in the end if he keeps his promise."
She looked up at him with a bright, brave glance as she spoke. Their
eyes met, and her face changed, in spite of the heroic effort she
made to preserve its exalted tranquillity. They stood alone on the
narrow sands, with a mournful wind moaning past them, a drizzling rain
drifting in their faces, as unconscious of any change in the weather as
they were unconscious of all things in the universe--except each other.
"I am going back to London by the mail to-night, Lady Cecil. We shall
be together for the rest of the day, I hope,--my last day; but we are
not likely to be alone again, and I should like to say good-bye to you
here."
He lifted his hat, and the wind and rain drifted his hair away from his
face.
"Cecil, I am going back to India, to do my duty, with God's help. Say,
God bless you, Hector, and goodbye."
"God bless you, Hector, and----"
She looked up at the perfect face, the dark blue eyes, so dim with
tears, and could not finish the sentence. She turned from her companion
with a passionate gesture, ashamed of her own weakness, and walked
homewards rapidly, with Hector walking silently by her side.
They did not speak until they came to the idle boats, lying keel
upwards on the beach, which marked the beginning of the village, and
then Captain Gordon broke the silence by a remark which proved that he
had only that moment discovered the change in the weather.
"If you'll stop under shelter of that yacht, Lady Cecil," he said,
"I'll run on and get a shawl and umbrella."
"Thank you--no--on no account. I don't mind the rain--and we are so
near home," answered Cecil, whose flimsy muslin garments were dripping
wet.
CHAPTER V.
AT THE FOUNTAINS.
Hector Gordon kept his word. He left Fortinbras by the evening train,
in despite of his aunt's lamentations, and in despite of something
which pierced his heart more cruelly than the lamentations of all the
fussy dowagers in Christendom,--the still white look of sorrowful
resignation in Cecil Chudleigh's face.
She loved him. He knew the truth and depth of her affection as well as
he knew the truth and depth of his own. Love would be a poor divinity
indeed, if, as some counterbalance to his physical blindness, he were
not gifted with the power of second-sight. Hector needed no word from
Cecil to tell him how much he resigned in doing his duty. The hour
that had revealed to him the secret of his own heart had laid bare
the mystery of hers. That subtile sympathy, which had seemed so sweet
a friendship, had been only love in disguise, the wolf in sheep's
clothing, the serpent in the semblance of a dove.
Ah, what utter despair possessed those two sad hearts on that chill
September afternoon! what a cold, dreary future lay before those two
helpless wanderers, doomed to bid each other farewell! The day might
come, as it comes so often in the story of a lifetime, when to look
back upon all this trouble and anguish would be to look back upon
something as flimsy as a dream. But then what is more terrible than the
agony of a dream?--ay, even though in the sleeper's breast there lurk a
vague consciousness that he is only the fool of a vision. Brooding over
his hopeless sorrow, as the express whirled London-wards through the
darkness, Hector Gordon thought of the stories of unhappy attachments
and wasted devotion which he had heard told by his seniors over the
mess-table, when the wine went round silently in the summer dusk, and
men, whose faces were in shadow, talked more freely than was their wont
in the broad glare of day.
"Shall I ever come to tell the story of my sorrow to my brother
officers in the gloaming? Will the memory of to-night ever be a subject
for friendly talk after a ponderous dinner, while the sentry's tramp
echoes in the stillness, and the odour of cigar-smoke floats in from
the balcony where the youngsters are lounging? Will they ever call me
a dreary old bore, and try to change the subject when they find the
conversation drifting round to my dismal love-story? Ah, how sad to
be old and a nuisance, and to have profaned the sanctity of my idol's
temple!"
How sad to be old! Hector thought of the dull life of duty, the
joyless, sunless, desert waste that lay between him and the time when
he might begin to care for comet port, and dilate with an elderly
dandy's fatuity on the tender story of his youth. He thought of his
future until he began to fancy how blessed a thing it would be if
his life could end that night in the chill darkness. The engine had
but to swerve a hair's breadth, as it flew along the top of a steep
embankment--and lo, the end of all his sorrows! A crash, a sudden
agony perhaps--unimaginable in its infinity of pain, but brief as
summer lightning,--and the enigma of his existence would be solved, the
troublesome thread of his life dissevered.
"My poor Mary would be sorry for me," he thought, remembering the
gentle betrothed waiting for him in India; "but she would fancy that
I had died adoring her, and in a twelvemonth the memory of me would
be a painless sorrow. Shall I make her happy by doing my duty? I have
seen ruined men, whose ruin began on the day in which they sacrificed
feeling on the shrine of honour. My Cecil, my Cecil, how could you be
so cruel as to drive me away from you?"
The image of the pale, sorrowful face that had looked at him with such
heroic calmness in the moment of parting arose before him now like a
reproach. He knew that she had been right. He knew that her voice had
been the voice of truth and honour, the voice of his own conscience.
"God help me to be worthy of the love that never can be mine, and of
the gentle darling I am bound to shelter!" he thought. And then a
spirit of resignation seemed to exorcise the demon despair, and he took
from his pocket-book a letter written on foreign paper,--a letter in
a pretty womanly hand, not too easy to decipher,--a letter from his
betrothed wife, which he had read hurriedly the day before, too cruelly
preoccupied to know what he was reading.
The tender, trusting words were the most bitter reproaches that could
assail him. His heart melted as he read the long, loving epistle by the
uncertain light of the railway lamp. He could hear the voice, as he
deciphered those simple girlish sentences. He could see her face--not
beautiful, but very sweet and loving.
He was quite alone in the carriage, and when he had replaced the letter
in his pocket-book, he detached a little trinket which hung to his
watch-chain, and pressed the crystal face of it to his lips. Under the
crystal there was a lock of pale flaxen hair, which his own hands had
selected for the shears the day he parted from his love at Simlah.
"Poor Mary!" he murmured softly; "poor Mary! it will be something at
least to make you happy."
The dowager took her nephew's departure very deeply to heart; or it may
be rather that she had set her heart on a suite of spacious apartments
in Tyburnia, and was by no means disposed to return to Dorset Square.
She questioned Cecil very sharply about Hector's proceedings, and
succeeded in driving that young lady into a conversational corner,
whence it was impossible to emerge without a revelation of the truth.
"You tell me you think he's engaged," said the dowager, impatiently,
after forcing Cecil to admit so much. "And why do you think he's
engaged? Did he tell you so?"
"He gave me to understand as much."
"And engaged to whom, pray?"
"A young lady in India."
"A young lady in India. Is that all you know about her?"
"Yes indeed, auntie."
"A nice designing thing, I dare say, and a nobody into the bargain, or
of course he'd have told you who she was," cried Mrs. MacClaverhouse
indignantly. "A stuck-up creature, who will contrive to keep her
husband at a distance from his relations, no doubt, in order that she
may surround him with a pack of harpies of her own kith and kin. And to
think that my boy should never have so much as asked my advice before
he threw himself away! If you knew how I had built upon you and Hector
making a match of it, Cecil, you'd sympathise with my disappointment
a little, instead of sitting looking at me in that provokingly placid
way of yours. I could have ended my days happily under Hector's roof: I
hoped he would have been glad to give his poor old aunt a home; and I
don't think you'd have refused me a shelter in my old age--eh, Cecil?"
"Oh, auntie! auntie!"
Mrs. MacClaverhouse had no need to complain of want of sympathy this
time, for Cecil suddenly fell upon her knees, and buried her face in
her aunt's ample silken skirts, sobbing passionately. The thought of
what might have been was so very bitter; and every word the dowager
uttered sent the arrow deeper into the wounded heart.
"Oh, auntie!" she cried, "never speak to me about him again. Oh, pray,
pray, do not speak of him again! I love him so dearly, so dearly, so
dearly!"
It was the first and last passionate cry of Cecil Chudleigh's heart,
and it quite melted the dowager; but there was a touch of sternness
mingled with her emotion.
"I hope that designing minx will live to repent her artfulness," she
said, spitefully; for it is the peculiar attribute of a woman to empty
the vials of her wrath on the passive and unconscious maiden for
whose sake her plans have been frustrated, rather than on the active
masculine offender who has frustrated them.
The dowager and her niece went back to Dorset Square very soon after
Hector's departure: and then came visits to country houses--a fortnight
in Leicestershire, where poor Cecil had to endure the hunting talk of
horsey men and fast young ladies, the perpetual discussions about dogs
and horses and southerly winds and cloudy skies; a month in an old
Yorkshire grange, where there was a cheerful Christmas gathering, and
where Lady Cecil had to act in charades and take part in duets--the
dear old duets in which his melodious barytone had been so delicious.
She looked round sometimes when she was singing, and almost expected
to see his ghost standing behind her,--so cruel a profanation did it
seem to sing the old familiar words. In all the morning gossip, and
billiard-playing and fancy-work, the reading aloud--often from the very
books which _he_ had read at Fortinbras--in all the music and dancing,
the impromptu charades, and carefully studied _tableaux-vivants_
which enlivened the winter evenings, Cecil had to take her part with
a smiling face. She wondered sometimes whether there were any other
bright smiles which were only masks assumed for the evening with the
evening dress. She wondered whether there was any other woman in all
the crowd who saw athwart the lights and exotics of the dinner-table
the vision of one dear face whose reality was thousands of miles away.
"He may be lying dead while I sit simpering here," she thought. "Yet
that would be too dreadful. Oh! surely, surely I should know it if he
were dead!"
Bravely though she bore her burden, it was a very heavy one. No mother,
pining in the absence of her only son, could have felt more poignant
anxiety about the absent one than Cecil felt for the man who had loved
her and left her to marry another woman. How often--ah, how often,
amidst the hum of joyous voices, and the brilliant tones of a piano
vibrating under masterly hands--how often the lamplight faded, and the
faces of the crowd melted away, and the gorgeous drawing-room changed
itself into that weedy shore at the foot of grim Fortinbras Castle,
while the autumn rain drifted once more into Cecil Chudleigh's face,
and _his_ eyes looked down upon her dim with tears. Of all their gay
and happy hours, their pleasant rambles, Cecil recalled no picture so
vivid as that of her lover, in his sorrow, standing bareheaded in the
drifting rain, looking tenderly down upon her with fond despairing
eyes. And he was gone from her for ever; never, never, never, so long
as she lived, was she to look upon his face again.
But she endured her life, and by-and-by, when cold gleams of February
sunshine lighted the grey sky, the dowager carried her niece back to
Dorset Square, and all the old sordid wearisome care about forks,
spoons, and broken wine-glasses and incorrect butcher's bills, began
again.
But even broken wine-glasses may be a distraction, and a young lady who
has tradesmen's books and the contents of china closets to employ her
mind suffers less than the damsel who has nothing to do but to sit by
her casement, watching the slow changes of the heavens, and thinking
of the absent one. Industrious Charlotte, cutting bread and butter for
the little ones, is not so apt to fall in love with Werter as he is to
be inspired by a fatal passion for her, since, paltry and sordid a task
as Charlotte's may be, it yet requires some thought, or the lady will
cut her fingers. A little wholesome household work would have saved
poor Elaine from many of those long hours of brooding, in which the
lily maid of Astolat contemplated the dark knight's image. Work, the
primeval curse, may have been a blessing in disguise after all.
Lady Cecil bore her life. She went hither and thither to places in
which she felt little interest, amongst people whose companionship
seemed so poor a substitute for that brief, sweet friendship of the
departed autumn. Ah, what could ever bring back to her heart the
thrilling joy of that broken dream?
Yet her life was not altogether joyless. It was only the magical,
mystical gladness, the delight too deep for words, which had gone out
of her existence for ever in the hour of that irrevocable parting on
the wet sea-shore. She had friends and companions, a social status, in
right of her father's name and race, even amongst the vulgar who knew
that she was only a penniless dependant upon the sharp-spoken dowager.
Perhaps the friend with whom Cecil Chudleigh's proud reserve was most
often wont to melt into tender sympathy was Florence Crawford, the
frivolous divinity at whose shrine the young landscape painter had laid
his heart and his ambition.
They had met "in society," as Flo said, with a little air, which
implied that the only society in the civilised world was the circle
wherein Miss Crawford revolved: and they had taken a fancy to each
other, according to Florence, though it must be confessed the fancy
had been chiefly on her own side, as Cecil was not prone to sudden
friendships.
"But there was some one else took a fancy to you before I did,"
exclaimed Flo. "There's not the least occasion to blush, Lady Cecil,
for the some one else was only a middle-aged man, with such a shelf
on his dear old back that I sometimes quite long to set a row of
Carl-Theodore tea-cups on his coat-collar for ornamentation. It was
papa who took a fancy to you. He's the most absurd old thing in the
world, and he says yours is the very face he has been waiting for, for
his new picture. He is going to paint the prison scene in _Faust_,
and he declares that you have the exact expression he wants for his
Gretchen. You have no idea what trouble he will take to get a sitting
from any one whose face has fascinated him. Professional models are all
very well, but you can't get a professional model to read Goethe, or to
imagine that she sees an infant struggling in the water, for a shilling
an hour. What papa wants is expression, and he was struck by your face
the other night when you were singing at Lady Jacynt's; there was an
exalted look about your eyes and forehead, he said, which would be
worth a fortune to him; so I am to exert all my fascinations in order
to induce you to give him a sitting or two; and I'm sure you will,
won't you, Lady Cecil? for he really is a dear good creature."
Cecil assented very readily, flattered and honoured by the painter's
request. She was a far more reverent disciple of art than Florence
Crawford, who spoke flippantly of the greatest master of his age as
a dear old thing, and was wont to frisk hither and thither in her
father's painting-room, criticising his pictures as freely as if they
had been so many Parisian bonnets.
It would have been very strange if Cecil had not been glad to exchange
the sordid atmosphere of Dorset Square for the dreamy splendour of the
Fountains. The hour or two which Mr. Crawford had entreated in the
first place grew into many hours, and Cecil had spent half-a-dozen
pleasant mornings in the great master's painting-room before the vague
shadow which was so unintelligible to common eyes grew out of the
canvas, and became a woman instinct with life and soul. Flo brought
her box of water-colours on these occasions, and perched herself at a
little table in a corner of the spacious chamber; for she made a faint
show of devotion to art now and then as an excuse for intruding into
the painter's sanctum. What place of retreat could be sacred from an
only daughter, and such an only daughter as Florence Crawford?
So the young lady came very often to the noble tapestried
painting-room, into which half the contents of Mr. Woodgate's shop
seemed to have been imported, so rich was the gorgeous chamber in
black oak cabinets and stamped-leather-cushioned chairs, coloured
marbles and mediæval armour majolica vases and Venetian glass. The
painter loved beautiful things, and spent his money as recklessly as
Aladdin or Alexandre Dumas. For how was it possible that a man could be
careful of vulgar pounds and shillings under whose magic-working hand
human grandeur and human beauty developed into being--who knew but two
rivals, Rubens and Nature--and who could afford to stand comparison
with the first?
William Crawford was a painter in the highest and grandest sense of
the word; and he wasted his money and sold his pictures for a song
when the whim seized him, and scattered little water-colour bits in
the scrap-books of beautiful high-born feminine mendicants, which,
collected together, would have realised a small fortune at Christie's.
It was only when judicious friends with business habits stepped in
and insisted upon negotiating affairs for the great painter, that
Mr. Crawford received large prices for his pictures, and found a
satisfactory row of pencil figures under the last pen-and-ink entry
in his banking book. The story of the painter's youth and manhood
was not without a touch of sadness. It was the old, old story of a
brilliant career and a broken life. William Crawford had not sprung
into Fame's ample lap with one daring bound. His progress had been slow
and laborious, and there had been a few silver threads mingled with
his auburn hair before the laurel crown descended on his forehead, or
the nimbus of glory made a light about his earnest face. He had seen
other men pass him by--his companions of the Academy, the students who
had sat by his side,--he had seen them go by him to take their places
amongst the victors, great men in their way, most of them; but how weak
and puny was the greatest compared to him!
He had so much to endure, and he bore it all so meekly! So patient was
he in the sublime resignation of conscious genius, which knows that
it _must_ triumph, that he grew by-and-by to be set down as a dull
plodding fellow, who would never do any thing worth looking at. Year
after year--year after year--his pictures came back upon him from the
Academy, from the British Institution, rejected! rejected! rejected!
Yet he was William Crawford all the time, and knew himself, and the
sovereign power of his hand.
Meek and mighty spirit to wait so long, to labour so patiently,
hoarding thy strength, and adding to thy power day by day, as a miser
swells his pile of vulgar gold!
The day came at last, but not all at once. Pictures were accepted, and
"skyed:" critics talked about coldness, and blackness, and chalkiness:
friends were compassionate, and shoulders were shrugged with polite
despair. The poor man had really no idea of colour!
For a few years things went on like this, and then appeared a gorgeous
Rubens-like canvas, whereon Pericles reclined at the feet of Aspasia:
and in a day, in an hour, the mighty master of all the secrets of
colour revealed himself, and the world knew that William Crawford was a
great painter.
After that day the men who had called Crawford a dull, plodding fellow,
offered him monstrous bribes for the revelation of his "secret." He
smiled at their ignorance. He had no secret except his genius. His
mystic cabala lay in the two virtues that had made the law of his
life--unremitting industry, undeviating temperance. In the chill early
light of morning, in the warm glow or noon, in the deepening shadows of
evening, in the artificial light of the night school at the Academy,
William Crawford had toiled for twenty years, finding no drudgery too
hard, no monotonous repetition of study too wearisome. And now at
eight-and-thirty, he found himself a great man, and he knew that his
hand was to be trusted, and that his feet were surely planted on the
mountain he had climbed so patiently.
Alas, there are so many blessings in this life that come too late! Many
a vessel laden with the gold of Ophir only nears the shore when her
owner lies dead upon the sands. When William Crawford tasted the first
fruits of success, the wife--to have purchased whose happiness he would
have sold his heart's blood--had been dead ten years. She had felt the
cruel hand of poverty, and had withered under that bitter gripe; but
she had never complained. She had borne all meekly for his sake--for
his sake.
Now, when people offered him large prices for his pictures, he felt
half inclined to refuse their commissions in utter bitterness of heart.
"You should have bought my 'Pyramus and Thisbe' twelve years ago," he
would have cried. "A fifty-pound cheque would have done that for me
then which all the kings and princes of this earth could not do now. It
would have brought a smile to the face of my wife."
The young wife whose death had left such a terrible void in the
painter's heart had been of higher rank than himself, and had run away
from a luxurious home to inhabit draughty second-floor lodgings in a
street running out of the Strand. William Crawford had trusted in the
strength of his hand to win a better home for his darling. But the
blackest years of his life were those that immediately succeeded his
marriage, and the poor loving girl had to suffer deprivations that were
unfelt by the Spartan painter, but which fell heavily on the home-bred
damsel who had sacrificed so much for him. She would have held the loss
of position a very light one; but she found that she had lost all her
home-friends as well, for her father shut his door upon her after her
marriage, and she had no mother to plead for her at home, or to visit
her by stealth in her husband's shabby dwelling. The father was a
hard, obstinate man, who plucked his daughter's image out of his heart
as coolly as he erased her name from his will. He begged that Mrs.
Crawford might never be mentioned in his presence; and he threatened to
horsewhip the painter in the rooms of the Royal Academy if ever he met
him there.
Whether he relented suddenly when the young wife died, or whether his
conscience had given him some uneasiness from the beginning, no one
ever knew; but he wrote a civil letter to the widower, declaring his
willingness to adopt and educate the little girl his daughter had left
behind her.
There was some hesitation, a little parley as to how often the father
should be permitted to see his child; a very manly letter from the
painter, setting forth the condition on which he was willing to part
with the little girl, that condition being neither more nor less than
an understanding that she was _his_ child, and his only, committed as
a sacred trust to her mother's family, and to be claimed by him at any
hour he pleased. And then he let his little Florence go. A year later
he would as soon have plucked the heart out of his breast as he would
have parted from her; but at this time he was utterly broken down in
body and mind--so crushed, so desolate, that it seemed as if nothing
could add to his desolation. He was even glad to get rid of the child.
The sound of her young voice saddened him. There were tones in it that
were like her mother's.
"I sat in my room and painted," he said afterwards, when he was able to
talk of this dreadful time, "but I didn't know what I was painting, or
whether it was winter or summer. People would come in and sit down and
talk to me--they came to cheer me up a little, they said. I talked to
them and answered them; and when they went away I didn't know who they
were, or what they had been talking about. As for my work, the right
colours came on my brush somehow; but when the faces looked out at me
from my canvas, I used to wonder who had painted them, and what they
meant. I don't know how long that time lasted. I only know that the
best and dearest friend I ever had took me across the Channel with him,
and on to Italy; and one morning, after landing at some place from a
steamer in the darkness, I opened my window and saw the Bay of Naples
before me. I burst into tears, for the first time since my wife's
death; and after that I learnt to bear my sorrow patiently."
When William Crawford found himself a successful man, he built himself
a house at Kensington from a design of his own. After stating which
latter fact, it is quite unnecessary to say that the Italian façade was
perfection, that the Alhambra-like colonnade at the back was delicious,
that there was a great deal of space wasted in unnecessary passages,
and that there was neither a housemaid's closet nor a dust-bin in the
original plan of the mansion. But then what a charming spot was that on
which Mr. Crawford planted his temple! for he was far too wise a man
to erect his dwelling on one of those patches of arid waste which are
called desirable building-ground. He had discovered an inconvenient old
house in a delicious garden between the old court suburb and Tyburnia,
and had carted away the rambling, low-roofed dwelling, and set up his
dazzling white temple in its stead. The crowning glory of the place
was a pair of marble fountains which the painter had brought from
Rome--fountains whose silver waters had made harmonious accompaniment
to the voices of revellers in Tivoli fifteen hundred years ago.
It was to this pleasant home that William Crawford brought his
beautiful daughter from the fashionable boarding school in which she
had received her education. Her grandfather had died, leaving her the
five thousand pounds that had once been allotted to her mother. Her
aunts and uncles were scattered, and not one of them had been able to
obtain any lasting hold upon the impulsive little heart which beat
in Miss Crawford's breast. She came to the Fountains at her father's
bidding, and her pretty caressing ways were very pleasant to him; but
she did not fill the void in his heart. He looked in her face very
sadly sometimes, for it recalled the vision of another face, with a
tender, loving light in the eyes, which was wanting in Flo's flashing
glances. She was such a frivolous creature compared with her mother.
The difference between them was as wide as the contrast between
a tender cooing dove which nestles in your bosom and a beautiful
butterfly that flits and skims hither and thither in the sunshine. Miss
Crawford was fond of her father, and proud of him after a fashion; but
she had no power to appreciate the sublimity of his art, the grandeur
of his triumphs. She admired him, and was pleased with his success
because it had given him wealth and fashion. Alone in a desert that
_other one_ would have rejoiced with him in the glory of his work,
however unprofitable, however remote from the possibility of reward,
because it was his, and because he loved it.
There were times when Flo's frivolous criticisms jarred on the
painter's ear, for there were tones in her voice which even yet
reminded him too painfully of the lost one. He was an over-indulgent
father, said people, who estimated a father's indulgence by the amount
of a daughter's pocket-money; but it may be that he would have been
less indulgent if he had loved his child better, or rather if she had
been able to reach that inner sanctuary of his soul where the image of
the dead reigned alone.
* * * * *
Lady Cecil felt a thrill of delight when the painter turned his easel
and revealed his finished picture.
Ah, wonderful power, given to a man in such fulness as it had been
given to William Crawford once in two hundred years, rarest of all
earthly gifts, the masterdom of colour, the power which makes the
painter's hand second only to the hand of the Creator who bade Eve come
forth out of the shadow of night, and revealed to awakening Adam the
perfection of womanly loveliness.
In the prison scene the painter had full scope for his wondrous power
of colour. The light in the picture was subdued. Only through the open
door of poor Gretchen's cell one saw a lurid glimmer of the coming day.
In this open doorway lounged Mephistopheles, with a horrible smile upon
his face, and his figure darkly defined against that low lurid glimmer.
The light of the prison-lamp shone full on the faces of the lovers, and
the sickly yellow light made a kind of aureola around Gretchen's golden
head.
While Cecil stood before the picture in rapt admiration, Miss Crawford
laid down her brushes and came to look at her father's labour. The
painter lounged against the wall opposite his easel, gazing dreamily at
his completed work.
Oh, butterflies of fashion, driving mail-phaetons or tooling teams of
four-in-hand in the Lady's Mile, Sybarites and loiterers in pleasant
drawing-rooms, loungers in clubs, and triflers with existence,
lotus-eaters of every species, have any of _you_ ever known a joy
so deep as this--the joy that drove Pygmalion mad, the intoxicating
triumph of the creator who sees his work complete in all its beauty and
perfection?
"H'm, yes, it's very pretty," said Flo, after contemplating the picture
under the shadow of two pretty jewel-twinkling hands arched over her
piquant eyebrows; "but isn't Gretchen's arm a _leetle_ out of drawing?
I'm sure I could never get _my_ arm into that position; but I dare
say people's arms were more flexible in those days. How awfully blue
you've made Mephistopheles; but I'm very glad you haven't allowed him
to cross his legs. _Why_ a diabolical person should always cross his
legs is a mystery that I have never been able to fathom. It's very
nice, papa; but I don't like it so well as 'Pericles and Aspasia.'
Your proclivities are classic, you dear old thing, so you had better
stick to your Lempriere, and let us have rosy gods and goddesses _ad
infinitum_."
"_Ad nauseam_, perhaps," said the painter sadly.
The critics had been very hard upon William Crawford, and there had
been people besotted enough to utter the shameful word "sensualism" in
connection with the purest and simplest creature who ever worshipped
the divinity of beauty. And then there were all the host of funny
little writers who wrote facetious little criticisms upon the great
man's pictures. His Cupid had the mumps, his Psyche was in the last
stage of scarlet fever, his Alcibiades was a butcher's boy, his
Timandra a scorbutic shrew, his Boadicea a prize-fighter disguised in
female raiment. The funny little writers who could not have sketched
the outline of a pump-handle correctly, had fine fun out of William
Crawford. He was happy in spite of all adverse criticism, and had
succeeded in spite of his critics. Of course there were some who knew
what they were writing about; and to such adverse opinion as he felt
to be just William Crawford bowed his head meekly, not too proud to
believe that he could have done better if he had "taken more pains."
Who could be more acutely conscious than he was of his shortcomings?
Whose eyes were keener than his to perceive the weak spots in his work?
There is no finer tonic for the true worker than adverse criticism. The
friend's lavish praise may enervate: the foe's hardest usage braces
and fortifies. Guy Patin, in a criticism on Sir Thomas Brownie, which
in the Christian benevolence of its tone is not altogether unlike some
criticism of the nineteenth century--regrets that "the man is alive,
because he may grow worse." How completely the slashing critics of the
present day seem to forget that so long as the man is alive, it is
possible for him to grow better!
William Crawford was very happy in the painting-room where the greater
part of his life was spent. What man can be so happy as the triumphant
artist?--convinced of the innocence and purity of his triumphs, assured
of being remembered when all other labourers are forgotten, knowing
that his glory will be revealed to posterity by no musty records
written by a stranger, but by his own handiwork, instinct with his own
soul, revealing himself in a language that needs no translation, and is
almost as familiar to the savage as to the _savant_, so nearly does it
copy nature.
Florence thought it a very hard thing that her father would not take
her to perpetual parties, and grumbled sorely at being sent under
convoy of any grumpy old chaperone who might be available; but on this
matter the painter very rarely gave way.
"Do you know how long art is, as compared to a man's life?" he asked.
"Can you guess what Raffaelle might have been if he had lived to be as
old as Titian? If there is any special strength in my hand, Flo, it
is because in twenty years I have worked as hard as most men work in
forty. When I paid fifteen shillings a week for my lodgings my landlord
grumbled because I kept my fire in all night, in order that I might be
at work before daybreak. I don't make any merit of having worked hard,
you know, my dear. I have worked because my work pleased me; and you
would never believe how little I ever thought of the fame or money that
success would bring me. I don't think your real artist ever sets much
value upon the price of his labour; he may want money as much as any
other man, and of course he is glad to get it; but it is the triumph
of his art that he rejoices in, rather than any personal success. The
creation of his work is in itself happiness, and would be though his
picture were foredoomed to melt and vanish under his hand at the moment
of its completion. I would answer for it that Michael Angelo enjoyed
modelling his statue of snow quite as much as if he had been putting
the finishing touches of his chisel to the fairest marble that ever
grew into life under the craftsman's hand, to receive a soul from the
last touch of the master. Don't worry me about parties, Flo. I will
pay as many milliner's bills as you like, and I'll paint you in all
your prettiest dresses, and your most bewitching attitudes, and give
you the price of your beauty for pocket-money; but I won't go to be
crushed to death upon staircases, or martyred in the act of fetching
an ice. I won't go to people who only want to see what the painter of
Aspasia is like, as if I must needs be like something different from my
fellow-men, and who will think me an insignificant-looking fellow, with
very little to say for myself. What should I have to say to people who
don't know the A B C of the language to the study of which I have given
my life?"
So Flo was obliged to be satisfied, and was fain to go into society
under the wing of benevolent matrons who had no daughters of their
own to be crushed by Miss Crawford's beauty. Flo had her maid and her
carriage and was quite a little woman of fashion; while the painter
lived his own life opening his doors every Sunday evening to all who
cared to visit him, and generally hiding himself in some snug little
corner of his spacious drawing-rooms amongst the friends of his soul,
while fashionable visitors who had been received with perfect _aplomb_
by Florence, prowled about in search of him, and stared at the wrong
man through gold-rimmed eyeglasses, or pronounced adverse criticisms
upon his own pictures under his very nose. Of course Florence Crawford
was perfectly aware that her father's _protégé_, the landscape painter,
was desperately in love with her. We live in a fast-going century, and
though Flo was only eighteen, she was fully versed in the diagnostics
of a hopeless passion of which she was the object. She knew poor
Philip's weakness, and laughed undisguisedly at his folly. She was a
very dashing young person, and she declared herself to be an utterly
heartless young person whenever she became expansive and confidential.
Whether the heartlessness were real or affected was an enigma which no
one had yet been able to solve. Whatever were the follies of the age,
Flo went with them at full gallop. She talked slang, and affected a
masculine contempt for all feminine pursuits, had been heard to ask
what bodkins were meant for, and whether shirt-buttons were fastened on
their foundations with glue. She had a tiny, tiny morocco volume, lined
with satin, and emblazoned with gold, and obnoxious with patchouli--a
volume that was called a betting-book, and which had about the same
relation to the greasy volumes kept by the bookmen who gather on the
waste ground in Victoria Road, or meet one another furtively at the
corner of Farringdon Street, as a rosebud has to a red cabbage. Dozens
of Jouvin's or Dent's six-and-a-quarter gloves were the principal
entries in this mystic volume; but Flo had been known to obtain an
actual tip from some aristocratic member of the Jockey Club, by whose
friendly agency real money had been wagered and won. She was very fast,
and had once been seen under the marble colonnade at the Fountains
puffing daintily at a coquettish little cigarette. But it is only fair
to add that the daring exploit resulted in deadly pallor and unpleasant
faintness, and that the experiment was not repeated. She had her horse,
and her own groom,--a steady old fellow who helped in the garden, and
of whose boots and costume poor Flo was inclined to be rather ashamed
when she met her stylish friends in the Row.
Did she ever pause to think that her life was useless, and extravagant
and unwomanly? Well, no, not yet. She was only eighteen, remember, the
age when a woman has not quite ceased to be a kind of refinement upon
a kitten--beautiful, graceful, capricious, mischievous, treacherous.
She was at an age when a woman is apt to take pleasure in treading on
masculine hearts, and if remonstrated with upon her cruelty, would be
quite inclined to echo the question of the poetess, and cry,--
"Why should a heart have been there,
In the way of a fair woman's foot?"
Flo insisted on making a confidante of Cecil.
"I'm the most mercenary of creatures, you know, dear," she said, "and
I made up my mind ever so long ago that I would marry for money, and
nothing but money. All the nicest girls marry for money nowadays, and
live happy ever afterwards. I dare say there was a time when it was
quite nice to be poor, and live in a cottage with the husband of one's
choice. What a musty old Minerva Press phrase that is!" cried Flo,
with a grimace,--"the husband of one's choice! But that was in the
days when women wore cottage-bonnets with a bit of ribbon across the
crown, or hideous gipsy hats tied down with handkerchiefs, and white
muslin dresses with a breadth and a half in the skirt, and when a woman
on horseback was a show to be followed by street boys. I suppose Lady
Godiva and Queen Elizabeth were the only women who ever did ride in
the Middle Ages. _Nous avons change tout cela._ A woman in the present
day must have three or four hundred a-year for pin-money, if she is
not to be a disgrace to her sex in the way of gloves and bonnets;
and she must ride a three hundred guinea hack if she wants to escape
being trampled upon by her dearest friends; and she will find herself
a perfect outcast unless she has a box in a good position at one of
the opera-houses; and she must go in for dogs and china,--not vulgar
modern Dresden abominations, in the way of simpering shepherdesses,
and creatures in hoops drinking chocolate or playing chess; but old
Vienna, or Chelsea, with the gold anchor, or deliciously ugly Wedgwood,
or soft paste. In short, my dearest Cecil, a woman nowadays is a very
expensive creature, and love in a cottage is an impossibility. Why,
there are no cottages for the poor lovers! The tiniest, tiniest villa
on the banks of the Thames costs about two hundred a-year; and if the
poverty-stricken creatures who marry for love want a house, they must
go to some horrible place beyond the Seven Sisters' Road, and be happy
amongst a wilderness of brickfields and railway arches!"
Lady Cecil had seen Florence and Philip together, and had taken it into
her head that they loved each other. Her own sorrowful love-story had
made her very tenderly disposed towards youthful lovers, and she had
ventured to remonstrate with Florence.
"One reads about cruel parents and heart-broken damsels, but I don't
think your papa would set his face against Mr Foley so sternly as you
set yours, Flory," she said. "He was talking of the young painter the
other day, and he told me that your friend Philip has a great career
before him if he works patiently."
"Yes, and when he is as old as papa he will be able to earn two or
three thousand a-year, I suppose!" exclaimed Miss Crawford. "Do you
think that is a brilliant prospect for a girl who cannot live out
of society? People with any thing under five thousand a-year are
paupers--in society. Do you know what it is that is bearing down upon
us, and crushing us all, Cecil, like an avalanche of gold? It is the
wealth of the commercial plutocracy. The triumphant monster, Commerce,
is devouring us all. Ask papa who buys his pictures; ask where the gems
from Christie's go when the great auctions are over; ask why diamonds
are worth twice as much to-day as they were twenty years ago: it is all
because the princes of trade have taken possession of our land, Cecil,
and nowadays a girl must set her cap in the direction of Manchester, if
she wishes to marry well."
"Florence, I can't bear to hear you talk like this."
"I am a woman of the world, dear, and I mean to do the best I can for
myself. It is very dreadful, I know, but at least I am candid with
you. I went to a fashionable school, and you've no idea how we all
worshipped wealth and finery. Papa used to come and see me in horrid
old hansom cabs, that jingled and rattled as if they would have fallen
to pieces when he stepped out of them; but some girls had fathers and
mothers who came in two-hundred-guinea barouches, and oh, what a gulf
there was between us! and then, again, poor mamma's people live in
Russell Square, and there were girls at that school who made me feel
that it was a kind of disgrace to have friends in Russell Square. And
when I spent the holidays with my uncles and aunts, I used to have
mamma's foolish marriage dinned into my ears; and though I always took
her part, and declared that it was better to marry papa than to marry
a prince of the blood royal, I _did_ think, in my secret soul, that it
was very silly to go and live in shabby lodgings near the noisy dirty
Strand. Is it any wonder that I have grown up heartless and mercenary,
and that I want to have a fine house and horses and carriages when
I marry? I hope you will marry a rich man too, Cecil, and give nice
parties. You won't have Thursdays though, will you, dear? I have set my
heart on having Thursday for my own, own evening."
To this effect Miss Crawford would discourse in her own vivacious
fashion; and it was in vain that Cecil appealed to the unawakened heart.
"Philip Foley is a most estimable creature," said Flo; "and if he were
not absurdly self-conscious--all young men are so self-conscious
nowadays; in fact, in a general way, I consider young men perfectly
hateful,--and if he were a marquis with something under a hundred
thousand a year, I should think him quite adorable. But then, you
see, he isn't a marquis, and he will never earn any thing like a
hundred thousand a year by painting those wild skies and dismal rocks
of his. Do you know what the Princess Elizabeth, that dear sweet
darling whom every one so admires, said when she saw one of Mr.
Foley's red-and-yellow sunsets hung next the ceiling in Trafalgar
Square:--'Why, what do the Hanging Committee mean by sticking up
pictures of eggs and bacon?' said the princess; and ever since that,
the poor young man's skies have been called eggs and bacon."
CHAPTER VI.
WEDDING CARDS.
Returning from the Fountains one day after a pleasant morning spent
half in the garden, half in Mr. Crawford's painting-room, Cecil found
the dowager in one of her worst humours.
"Has any thing annoyed you while I have been away, auntie?" she asked,
gently.
"Has any thing annoyed me, indeed, auntie!" echoed Mrs. MacClaverhouse,
with unusual acrimony. "I begin to think that I was only sent into the
world for the purpose of being annoyed. Do you know that the mail from
Marseilles comes in to-day, Lady Cecil?"
Cecil's downcast face grew first crimson and then pale. The Indian
letters? The very mention of the post that brought them set her heart
beating fast and passionately; and she had no right to be interested in
their coming: she had no right to be glad or sorry for any tidings that
the Indian mail could bring.
"You have heard from Captain Gordon, I suppose, auntie?" she said,
falteringly.
"Yes, I have heard from him," answered the dowager in her most snappish
manner.
"I hope he is well?"
"Oh yes, he is _well_ enough, or as well as a man can be who is such a
fool as to become the victim of any designing minx who chooses to set
her cap at him. What do you think of that enclosure, Lady Cecil?"
The dowager tossed an envelope across the table towards the spot where
her niece was standing, downcast and sad. Cecil knew what the enclosure
was; yes, a little shiver went through her as she took up the envelope,
for she knew only too well what it contained.
A glazed envelope with a crest emblazoned in silver was within the
outer covering, and inside the flap of the glazed envelope was
inscribed the name of Mary Chesham. Two limp, slippery cards dropped
from Cecil's hand as she read the name of her rival; the name which
was hers no longer, for on the larger card appeared the more dignified
title of the matron, "Mrs. Hector Gordon." She put the cards back into
the envelope and laid it gently on the table.
"God grant they may be happy!" she murmured softly.
"Yes," answered the dowager; "and we are to live in Dorset Square all
our lives, I suppose. Upon my word, Cecil, you are enough to provoke
the patience of a saint. You might have married Hector Gordon if you
had liked. Yes, child, you might. I watched the man. I've known him
since he eat his first top-and-bottom, and I can see him eating it,
in my mind's eye, at this very moment; so I think I ought to know his
ways. He was over head and ears in love with you; and if it hadn't
been for some highflown nonsense of yours he never would have gone
back to India to marry that designing minx. He was engaged, forsooth!
and if he was, I suppose he could have disengaged himself! He was in
love with you Cecil, and you know that you might have married him as
well as I do. What was he whimpering about that night, I should like
to know, when you sang him your doleful songs, if he wasn't in love!
No man in his proper senses would moon about all day with two women,
reading poetry and listening to doleful songs, unless he was in love.
However, I've no doubt some nonsensical scruples of yours sent him back
to Calcutta to become the prey of a minx called Chesham. Who _are_ the
Cheshams, I should like to know? It sounds a decent name enough; but I
don't know any Cheshams. Give me the first volume of Burke's _Landed
Gentry_, Cecil, and let me see if there are any respectable Cheshams."
Lady Cecil went into an inner room to look for the volume her aunt
required. She found herself standing before the bookshelves, looking
dreamily at the backs of the books, and wondering what it was she had
come to seek. For some few moments she was quite unable to collect
her thoughts. Was she sorry that Hector Gordon had fulfilled his
engagement? Ah, no! ah, no, no! To have wished his promise broken would
have been to wish him something less than he was.
"Oh, I am proud to think him good, and honourable, and true," she
murmured, in a kind of rapture; "I am proud and glad to think that he
has kept his promise."
Ah, reader, can you not imagine that the pale girl in Mr. Millais'
picture was in the depths of her soul almost glad that her Huguenot
lover refused to have the white scarf tied about his arm? His refusal
would cost him his life, perhaps, but oh, how proud she must have been
of him in that moment of supreme agony!
Lady Cecil carried the volume of Burke to her aunt, and Mrs.
MacClaverhouse set herself to discover the antecedents of Mrs. Hector
Gordon, _nèe_ Chesham.
"There's a letter from Mrs. Lochiel on the table there," she said,
without looking up from her book, "with an account of this fine
wedding. You can read it if you like."
The dowager was an inveterate gossip, and kept up a correspondence with
a dozen or two other dowagers, who took a benign interest in all the
births, marriages, and deaths that came to pass within their circle.
Perhaps if Mrs. MacClaverhouse had not been soured by the bitter
disappointment and mortification which had befallen the pleasant castle
she had built in Hyde Park Gardens at her nephew's expense, she might
have been a little more merciful to poor Cecil's wounded heart. But it
must be remembered that she did not know how deeply the girl's heart
was wounded.
Cecil read Mrs. Lochiel's letter. Is it necessary to say that she read
every word of that gossiping epistle more than once, though the reading
of it gave her exquisite pain? There are poisoned arrows for which
some women bare their breast--there are tortures which some women will
suffer unbidden. There never was a woman yet, in Lady Cecil's position,
who was not eager to be told what finery her rival wore, and how she
looked in the wedding splendour.
Mrs. Lochiel was very discursive on the subject of millinery.
"Dear Mary Chesham looked very _sweet_," she wrote. "She is not pretty,
but remarkably _interesting_, fair, with soft blue eyes, and a very
_winning_ expression. I know you will be pleased with her when Captain
Gordon brings her to England, and they _do_ say that his regiment will
be ordered home next year. I am sure you ought to be proud of such a
nephew, for he is one of the most popular young men in Calcutta, and
one meets him at all the best houses. Every one says that Mary Chesham
has made a wonderful match, and of course there are _some_ people who
_insinuate_ that her brother manœuvred very cleverly to bring about the
marriage. But I have met Mr. Chesham, who seems a very superior young
man, and not at all the sort of person to manœuvre.
"The wedding was one of the gayest affairs we have had in Calcutta
this season. Mary had six bridesmaids, some of the nicest girls in the
city; and of course the military and civil service mustered in full
force. The bride wore white glacé, made with a high body and short
sleeves, and trimmed with bouillonnées of _tulle illusion_, and a
large _tulle_ veil, which covered her like a cloud. The dress was very
simple, and certainly _inexpensive_, but _quite Parisian_ in style.
Mary has a very lovely arm,--those pale, insipid girls, with fair
hair, generally have lovely arms,--and she wore a _very superb_ pearl
bracelet, given her by her uncle, Colonel Cudderley, who is, I believe,
expected to _leave her money_. So you see your nephew has not done so
_very badly_ after all, though people here say he might have made a
_much better match_. However, I am told that he is quite devoted to
Mary, and I'm sure his manner when I have seen them together, has been
_most attentive_."
Lady Cecil laid down the letter. Was this jealousy, this cruel pang
which seemed to rend her heart asunder, as she read of her rival's
bliss? Oh, surely not jealousy! Had she not with her own lips bidden
him to fulfil his promise? and was she grieved and wounded now to find
that he had kept the spirit as well as the letter of that promise? Had
she expected that he would marry the girl who loved him, and yet by his
cold indifference bear witness that he loved another? Surely she could
never have thought he could be base enough to do that.
"What did I want?" she thought; "what did I expect? I told him to go
back to her; and yet my heart aches with a new pain when I hear that he
is happy by her side. Could I wish it to be otherwise? Could I wish him
any thing but what he is--good, and true, and noble--a royal lover--a
tender husband?"
Alone in her own room, in Dorset Square, Cecil Chudleigh knelt long and
late that night, praying for resignation and peace of mind. But even
amidst her prayers the face of Hector Gordon, looking down upon her
with melancholy tenderness, came between her and her pious aspirations.
"Oh, I wish that I had never seen him," she cried passionately; "what a
happy thing it would have been for me if I had never seen him!"
The day came when Lady Cecil had need to utter this cry with a wilder
meaning; the day came when she had reason to think that she would have
been a blessed creature if she had died before Hector Gordon came to
Fortinbras.
CHAPTER VII.
THE GREAT O'BOYNEVILLE.
The dowager was of a lively disposition, and by no means inclined to
spend her evenings in the dusky solitude of her drawing-room in Dorset
Square, where the departed General's monster mandarin-jars and Oriental
cabinets loomed dark and grim in the twilight. In the halls and on the
staircases of Tyburnia and Belgravia, in the deliciously-squeezy little
drawing-rooms and ante-chambers of the tortuous by-ways in May Fair,
wherever there was festivity or junketing in which a gentlewoman might
share, Mrs. MacClaverhouse and her black silk and diamonds were to be
seen. She took Cecil with her every where, and she informed the young
lady that it was on her account that the phantom-chariot and the grumpy
coachman with doubtful legs and feet were called into service every
evening.
It was quite in vain that Cecil remonstrated, declaring that she was
happier with her books and piano in the little back drawing-room in
Dorset Square than at the most brilliant assemblage of the season. Was
she happier at home than abroad, in this sad season, when it seemed to
her as if all hope and gladness had utterly vanished out of her life?
Was she happier? She employed the word in her remonstrance with her
aunt; for she would fain have hidden her wounds from the sharp eyes
of that unsentimental protectress. And at home she had at least the
liberty of being unhappy. She could sit alone playing _his_ favourite
music softly to herself in the dusk, while the dowager dozed at ease
in the adjoining chamber. In society, she felt like a slave crowned
with roses, compelled to wear the same company-smile night after night,
to affect an interest in the same frivolous subjects, to hold her own
amongst brilliant young ladies, who would have laughed her girlish
sorrow to scorn could they have penetrated beneath the frozen calm of
her manner. The brilliant young ladies declared that Cecil Chudleigh
was proud. "The Aspendell Chudleighs always have been poor and proud,"
it was said. There were faster spirits who called her "slow," and who
were pleased to ridicule the black robes of the dowager and the pale
face and white-muslin draperies of her niece.
And in the mean time Cecil went wherever the dowager chose to drag
her, with an uncomplaining patience which might have won for her
the crown of martyrdom, if there were any crowns for the martyrs of
every-day life. The slow season dragged itself out. Ah, how long
and how slow it seemed to Cecil Chudleigh, while she heard so many
voices declare how delicious a season it was--how especially gay and
brilliant. It was over at last, and Mrs. MacClaverhouse conveyed
her niece to Brighton, where, on the windy downs so familiar to her
girlhood, Cecil found a pensive kind of pleasure in wandering alone,
with her seal-skin jacket wrapped tightly across her chest, and the
plumes of her little hat fluttering in the autumn blast. The weather
could not be too cold or too dull for Cecil. She went to look at the
little lonely house where so many years of her joyless life had been
passed, and standing in the distance, she looked sadly at the familiar
windows, the patch of lawn, where the salt sea-breezes had blighted
her geraniums, where the cruel breath of the mistral had slain her
pet-blossoms of rose and honeysuckle.
"I did not know _him_ when I lived there," she thought. "What foolish
creatures women must be! It seems to me now as if there could not have
been a time in which I did not know him. Hector Gordon! His name would
have meant nothing if I had heard it then; and now the sound of any
other name at all like his sends a thrill of anguish through my heart."
After the autumn at Brighton, there came the dowager's customary winter
round of visits, the Christmas festivities, the refined hospitality
of a modern country-house, from which only the coarser elements
of old-fashioned joviality have been eliminated. It was all very
cheery and pleasant, and to any one but a young lady with a broken
heart could scarcely have failed to prove delightful. Other people
besides Lady Cecil had their troubles, and contrived to forget them.
Gay young bachelors blotted from their memory the amounts of their
tailors'-bills, and the threatening phraseology of lawyers'-letters,
which had followed them even to that hospitable shelter; match-making
matrons forgot the ages of their daughters and the failures of the
past season, the tendency of dear Maria's nose to get a little red
after dinner, and the alarming sharpness of poor Sophy's shoulders;
Paterfamilias forgot the delinquencies of his favourite son--it almost
always is the favourite son who turns out so badly; and the young
Cantab, who had lately been plucked, lulled himself into a sweet
unconsciousness of his featherless condition. Grim Care found the door
of Annerwold Manor House shut in his face, and was fain to obtain an
entrance to the hospitable mansion by sneaking down the chimney of
Cecil's chamber to haunt the girl with the memory of Hector Gordon's
face as she lay awake in the dead of the night.
She could not forget him--yet. When the first snowdrops peeped pale
and pure from their sheltering leaves, the dowager went back to Dorset
Square, and all the old dreary round of housekeeping detail began
again for Cecil Chudleigh. The spoons and the china, the butcher's
uncertainty as to weight, and the poulterer's extortionate prices,
seemed more than usually wearisome to Cecil this year. Her burden had
been easy to bear before the coming of Hector Gordon--before that
one bright interval in her life, by contrast with which the rest of
her existence was so dull and joyless. He had loved her, and left
her. It was her own decision which had separated them for ever. But
sometimes--in some weak moment of depression, some foolish dreamy
interval of reverie--there arose before her the vision of what might
have been, if the man who loved her had refused to accept her decision;
if love had been stronger than reason; if, in spite of herself, he had
beaten down the barrier that divided them, and had stayed in England to
make her his wife.
"How do I know that this girl loves him as well as I do?" she thought,
bitterly. "My aunt may be right, perhaps, in her worldly wisdom, and
this Miss Chesham may have only cared for him because he was a good
match. Girls are sent out to India on purpose to get married, and how
can it be expected they should be otherwise than mercenary?"
But in the next moment Lady Cecil reproached herself for having thought
so basely of her happy rival. The heart of Lord Aspendell's daughter
was brave and generous, womanly and true; but there are moments of
weakness and uncertainty which overtake the noblest of the vanquished
in the battle of life.
In these weak moments Cecil tried in vain to shut from her mind the
picture of what her life might have been if Hector Gordon had been free
to marry her. She had loved him for himself alone, and would have loved
him as truly if he had been penniless; but in her thought of him she
could not forget the fact of his wealth. That gold which is so sordid
a thing in itself is also the keystone to many things that are not
sordid; and the only man who needs be ashamed of his affection for the
yellow dross is he who loves it with a morbid and diseased passion for
the stuff itself, and not the noble uses that may be made of it.
Cecil remembered the Scotchman's wealth, and all the power that goes
along with wealth, and there rose before her the vision of a spot
in which her childhood had been spent, and which she loved with a
passionate affection; a place she never hoped to see again, except in
her dreams; and the image of it haunted her in them when she was most
sorrowful--most weary of the joyless gaieties of her London life.
The place was a long rambling white house, built under the shelter of
woody hills, and surrounded by the loveliest gardens in North Devon. It
lay hidden in the very heart of a wood, and was called Chudleigh Combe.
You heard the distant roar of the waves breaking on a rocky shore, and
only by that sound knew how near all that luxuriant pastoral beauty
was to the mighty grandeur of the sea. Within a mile of Chudleigh
Combe there was a tiny fishing-village, a steep hilly street almost
inaccessible to any but its wild denizens, a bay of bright yellow sand,
and a ruined fortress on a rock. The place had been invaded lately by
exploring tourists, some of whom found their way to Chudleigh, where
there were a few valueless old pictures, of the most severely-dingy
school; a handsome collection of Oriental china, and a good deal of
quaint old furniture; brass-inlaid chests of drawers, wherein Evelina
and Cecilia might have kept their finery; Indian _secrétaires_,
at which Clarissa Harlowe might have written her famous letters;
high-backed chairs, on which Sir Charles Grandison might have sat,
gentleman-like and unbending.
The exploring tourists of these latter days were told that the
Chudleigh-Combe estate had been bought by the grandfather of the late
Lord Aspendell, and paid for with his wife's fortune; and that the
mansion had been built by the same Earl, and paid for with the same
money. The estate had never been entailed, and had been sold by the
last Earl, Cecil's father, to a wealthy citizen, who, after occupying
the lonely mansion through a rainy summer, repented himself bitterly
of his bargain, and tried to sell the estate; but an estate buried in
Devonian woods, and twenty miles from a railroad, is not every one's
money; and while Chudleigh Combe was yet in the market the merchant
died, leaving a will so badly worded as to occasion a Chancery suit.
This suit had been pending for more than a year, and the house was left
in charge of a superannuated cook, and the grounds in custody of a
couple of gardeners.
It was this place whose image haunted Cecil in her dreams, the scene in
which her childhood had been passed, and the spot which was associated
with the happiest period of her life. She thought how easy a thing it
would have been for Hector Gordon to buy Chudleigh Combe, and to take
her back to the familiar gardens--the dear old-fashioned rooms: how
easy, if there had been no such person as Mary Chesham.
The old life in Dorset Square brought with it all the old
responsibilities. The dowager's health had been very uncertain all
through the winter, and the dowager's temper was something worse than
uncertain. She had founded high hopes on the chance of a marriage
between her nephew and niece, a marriage which should bring Hector
Gordon and Hector Gordon's wealth comfortably under her dominion: and
now that all those fond expectations had been disappointed, she was
inclined to resent her disappointment as a wrong inflicted upon her by
Cecil.
In such peevish lamentations did Mrs. MacClaverhouse bewail her poverty
at this period, that Cecil began to feel herself a burden on her aunt's
slender income, and to taste all the bitterness that poisons the
bread of dependence. She did not know the world well enough to know
that there are people to whom it is delightful to grumble,--mental
voluptuaries, who would be unhappy if they could find no crumpled
rose-leaf for the justification of their discontent. Cecil fancied that
her protectress had substantial cause for her lamentations, and she
began to be ashamed of her useless life and the trifling expenses which
her presence inflicted upon her kinswoman.
"I am as well educated as most of the governesses I have met with,
auntie," she said once; "why shouldn't I go out as a governess, and
earn my living?"
"What!" screamed the dowager; "Lord Aspendell's daughter would be a
nice sort of person to teach a regiment of tiresome brats for twenty
pounds a-year. Upon my word, Cecil, I haven't common patience with you
when I hear you talk such nonsense."
"But I needn't tell people who I am, auntie, if there's any reason why
a nobleman's daughter shouldn't earn her living. I could call myself
Miss Chudleigh--or Miss any thing--and I might earn more than twenty
pounds a-year."
"Nonsense, child; don't let me hear any more of such absurdity. What's
to become of my silver, I should like to know, if you leave me? I
consider it very unkind and heartless of you to talk of deserting me."
"But I wouldn't leave you for the world, auntie, if I really am any use
or any comfort to you," answered Cecil, tenderly; "only--sometimes I
can't help thinking that I am a burden to you."
"Wait till I tell you that you are a burden, Lady Cecil," replied the
dowager severely. "I have been disappointed about you and Hector, and I
don't deny that I have felt the disappointment very deeply; but--well,
that's over, and I suppose I am to end my days in Dorset Square. It
might have been all very different if the General had been tolerably
prudent; however, all I have to say is, that if I were as poor as Job,
no niece of mine should degrade herself by going out as a governess."
Lady Cecil bowed her head to this decision, but she remembered, with
a sigh, how many governesses she had seen in the households of her
friends, who were infinitely less dependent than she was, and whose
lives were infinitely happier than hers. The sordid cares of Dorset
Square were heavier than usual this year, for her aunt's feeble
health threw the weight of financial and housekeeping arrangements
entirely upon Cecil; and to this were added the constant anxiety of
the sick-room, the long summer days spent in the stifling atmosphere
of a sunny drawing-room, whose windows were rarely opened from dawn to
sunset, the tension of the mind kept always on the stretch to amuse
or soothe a peevish invalid; and Lady Cecil bore all her trials with
meek uncomplaining patience. She was very patient; and in the unbroken
round of her daily duties she found very little time to think of her
one great sorrow,--so little time that the shadow of the past grew dim,
and dimmer, until she was able to remember Hector Gordon with perfect
resignation to the fate that had separated her from him, and to hear
his name spoken suddenly without a painful consciousness of the hot
blood rushing to her cheeks.
The season was drawing to a close, and the early glories of the Lady's
Mile had faded, when the dowager was well enough to array herself
in black silk and diamonds, and to go to parties once more. She was
nothing if not a woman of the world, and the chief consolation of
her sick chamber had been the friendly visits of other dowagers and
gossiping maiden-ladies, who brought her the freshest scandals of the
West End. To her the dulness of the Dorset Square drawing-room had been
far more painful than to Cecil; and within a week from the day on which
her medical man pronounced her well enough to take an airing in the
phantom chariot, she buckled on her armour of state, and accompanied
Cecil to a ball at the house of the fashionable physician who had
attended her occasionally during her illness.
It was at this assembly that Cecil Chudleigh met the person who was
destined to exercise a very powerful influence over her fate. Once in
every season Dr. Molyneux's sombre old house in Harley Street burst
into a sudden blaze of splendour and brightness. Once in every season
the marble busts of divers pagan notabilities, more or less connected
with the science of medicine, trembled on their scagliola pedestals as
the light feet of fashionable beauty, and the varnished boots of gilded
youth, trod the physician's stately chambers. The popular medical man
gave many parties--snug dinners, at which the amber wines of the fair
Rhineland, and the violet-scented vintages of Burgundy, were consumed
by connoisseurs who could fix the date of a vintage as easily as an
archæologist decides the period of a frieze or a column. But these
pleasant dinner-parties were given chiefly to learned old fogies of the
doctor's own profession, and were given for the doctor's own pleasure.
It was only once in a year that he flung open his house for the benefit
of polite society in general, and his own patience in particular.
Guntor had _carte blanche_ on these occasions, and sent in a bill some
six months afterwards, which was by no means a _carte blanche_. Groves
of exotics and wagon-loads of evergreens came to Harley Street from
unknown regions beyond the Edgware Road, and the doctor's patients,
calling upon him on the morning before the festival, found the sombre
hall a forest of moderator lamps, and candelabra, and the dining-room
in which they were wont to wait the great physician's summons,
completely abandoned to the possession of the confectioner's minions.
Every one who was worth meeting was to be met at Dr. Molyneux's
parties. Fashionable countesses, and pretty daughters of nameless
citizens from far northern regions of commercial splendour beyond
Islington and Hackney; cabinet ministers and briefless barristers;
a popular actor who had been taken up by the aristocracy; literary
men and African explorers; the very latest celebrity in the musical
world; and the last promoter of the last company for the cultivation
of the art of lace-making by spiders, or the construction of a canal
across the Isthmus of Panama--all these and many more were to be met
in the Harley Street drawing-rooms, or on the Harley Street staircase;
for it was only the more adventurous spirits who penetrated the
drawing-room, or heard any thing but the highest notes of the last
Scandinavian tenor. There were people who preferred the desultory
snatches of conversation, and rapid circulation of new arrivals, on
Dr. Molyneux's staircase to the splendid crush of his rooms. In the
crowded drawing-rooms beauty waxed pale in the glare of lamps and
tapers, but on the staircase wandering breezes from open windows and
doors fluttered the gauzy draperies of youth and the stately plumage of
age; and there was a dash of Bohemianism in the gaiety, which is apt to
be pleasing to modern revellers. For a thorough-going, cross-country
flirtation there was no place like Dr. Molyneux's broad landing.
There were deep window-seats that must surely have been devised by
some designing architect with a special view to the annihilation of
masculine peace, and the triumph of feminine loveliness. There were
stands of exotics whose friendly shade protected Edwin the briefless
and Angelina the beautiful from the awful eye of Angelina's mamma.
There were statuettes of marble and Parian, in pretended contemplation
of which Celadon and Amelia could bask in the light of each other's
eyes, while Amelia's papa was powerless to tear her from the
companionship of her penniless adorer. There were voluminous curtains
falling artistically from the carved cornices of massive doorways,
beneath whose shelter irrevocable engagements were made, only to be
broken by death, or the distracting complications of an ensuing season.
Arriving late at Dr. Molyneux's assembly, the energetic dowager was
fain to content herself with a resting-place in one of the broad
window-seats, where she installed herself very comfortably, but much to
the discomfiture of a young lady in pink _tulle_, spotted and festooned
with innocent white daisies. The damsel in pink had been working the
destruction--in a clubbable point of view--of an aristocratic Guardsman
of six feet two and a half, but the advent of the Scottish widow scared
her covey, and the irrevocable word remained unspoken. The dowager, who
read almost every thing that was to be read, had fallen on a new view
of some important feature in the science of physiology, and insisted
upon discussing her theories with a distinguished surgeon; while Cecil,
very weary and indifferent, found her way to a seat on the broad flight
of stairs leading to an upper floor, and sat there above an animated
group of pretty girls who were eating ices and talking through the
banisters to the gilded youth upon the lower stairs. Sitting here,
enthroned above the rest, as on a daïs, and fanning herself listlessly,
Lady Cecil was seen by the man who was to make himself the master of
her destiny.
Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed since the arrival of Mrs.
MacClaverhouse and her niece, when the gilded youth upon the staircase
were fluttered by the advent of a sturdy stranger, whose broad
shoulders made a passage through the elegant crowd very much as a
blundering collier might cut her way athwart a fleet of prize wherries;
while a massive forehead, and a bush of straight brown hair arose above
all those beautiful partings and ambrosial locks of exactly the same
pattern.
The gilded youth, turning indignantly upon the pushing stranger with
the stalwart shoulders and resolute elbows, beheld a man who was known
to most people by sight, and to all England by the record of his doings
and sayings in the newspapers. The pushing stranger was no other than
Mr. O'Boyneville, Queen's Counsel, one of the most popular men at the
English Bar, and the man whose reckless audacity and ready cleverness
had won more causes than were ever gained by the eloquence of a Berryer
or the splendid declamation of an Erskine.
The loungers on the staircase were almost reconciled to being pushed
when they discovered how popular a man had elbowed them; and several
claimed acquaintance with the great O'Boyneville.
"Read your speech in that breach of promise case," said one; "never
read any thing so jolly."
"I should like to have seen you and Valentine pitching into each other
in the Common Pleas yesterday. It isn't every man who can shut up
Valentine," said another.
Mr. O'Boyneville bestowed a friendly nod upon his admirers. He had
all that easy consciousness of his own abilities, and good-natured
wish not to be proud, which seems a distinguishing characteristic of
the Hibernian mind. He pushed his way upward, nodding right and left,
but his mind was at that moment full of a great case of Vendors and
Purchasers, speedily to be decided in one of the Courts of Equity, in
which some Irish slate-quarries were distractingly involved with the
operations of a gigantic builder, and in which innumerable folios of
affidavits had been filed on both sides. The great barrister was by
no means a party-going man, and the gilded youth made merry upon the
antediluvian cut of his dress-coat, the yellow tinge of his cambric
cravat, and the high shirt-collars which fenced his massive jaws, as he
passed out of their ken. He came to Dr. Molyneux's ball only because
the doctor was his personal friend, and had carried him through a very
sharp attack of brain fever induced by overwork; but he would fain have
taken his red bag with him, and, ensconced in some obscure corner, have
refreshed himself with a dip into the great slate case.
He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with massively cut features, a
mouth and chin that were almost classic in their modelling, strongly
marked eyebrows, and large bright blue eyes--the eyes that are better
adapted to "threaten and command" than to melt with tenderness or
darken with melancholy. Nobody had ever called him handsome, nobody had
ever called him plain. In his face and figure alike there was a daring
that was almost insolence, a manliness that approached nobility. He was
the man of men to wear a barrister's wig and gown, to wind himself into
the innermost souls of irresolute jurymen, and to freeze the heart's
blood of timid witnesses.
When something less than forty, Laurence O'Boyneville had found himself
the most successful man of his age, far higher on the ladder of fortune
than many men who were twenty years his senior and who had worked
well too in their time. But to the Irish lawyer had been given an
indomitable energy, which is so good a substitute for the sacred fire
of genius, that it is very apt to be mistaken for that supernal flame.
Nature had bestowed upon him, and education had sharpened, a rapidity
of perception that was almost like inspiration; and the more desperate
the case he had undertaken, the more brilliant was his handling of its
difficulties, the more daring his defiance of his opponent. He had
the true warrior spirit, and rose with the desperation of anticipated
defeat. His greatest triumphs had been achieved by movements as wildly
hazardous as the charge of the six hundred at Balaclava.
He was a Charles the Twelfth, a Frederick the Great, a Napoleon of
the Bar, and he enjoyed a good fight as only the born warrior can
enjoy it. For seventeen years he had known no interest and found no
pleasure outside his profession. Patiently and uncomplainingly he had
passed through his probationary years of poverty and disappointment.
He had seen his contemporaries--young men who had started with as much
ambition as himself--grow weary of the long waiting, and turn aside to
begin anew in other and easier paths the pursuit of fortune. But he
held on; and from the first insignificant chance that had been flung
in his way, to the full triumphs of his present position, he never
swerved by one hair's-breadth from the line he had drawn for himself,
or neglected the smallest opportunity.
He found himself rapidly growing rich, for he had neither time nor
inclination for the spending of money. He exacted his price, in that
tacit manner peculiar to his profession, but he set little value on the
produce of his labour when the golden stream flowed in upon him. He
neither drank nor smoked. He rarely played at any game of hazard; and
though, while watching the Derby canter with ignorant eyes, his rapid
perception showed him the one horse out of twenty whose build stamped
him a winner, he had only been induced to visit a race-course some
half-dozen times in the twenty years of his London life.
In all those twenty years Laurence O'Boyneville had been a voluntary
exile from feminine society. The successful barrister has no time for
flower-shows or fancy-fairs, morning concerts or archæological-society
meetings, picnics, kettle-drums, or _thès dansantes_. For him the days
are too short for social intercourse, the nights too brief for rest.
And Mr. O'Boyneville loved his profession, and had given all his mind
to the labour of his love.
The years went by him with all their changes of fashion, and left him
unchanged. His brief holidays were scarcely times of rest, for he
carried his work with him wherever he went. Thus it was that at nearly
forty years of age the mighty Laurence was still a bachelor. He had
seen pretty women and had admired them, with an artistic pleasure in
a pretty face; but they had passed him by like the shadows of fair
women in the poet's vision. He had no time for more than transient
admiration--or let it rather be said that as yet the one face which was
to awake his soul from its dull slumber had not dawned upon him.
Mr. O'Boyneville was rich, and was known to be rich; and on those rare
occasions when he did appear in society he found himself received
with extreme courtesy by some members of the gentler sex. There were
mothers with unmarried daughters of five-and-thirty who would have
been quite willing to cultivate Mr. O'Boyneville's acquaintance; but
the Irish luminary appeared only to vanish; and the fair damsels of
five-and-thirty who were so inclined to be interested in his triumphs,
and so ready to talk of his last great success, had little opportunity
of impressing him with their intellectual graces or charming him by
their amiability.
For twenty years from the day in which he had come from the banks of
the Shannon to drop friendless into the wilderness of London, with only
one letter of introduction and one five-pound note in his pocket, until
to-day, when his name was a synonym for daring and success, he had gone
scatheless. Cupid's fatal shadow rarely darkens the sombre thresholds
of the Temple, nor does the god care to penetrate those courts of law
where his name has so often been taken in vain by mercenary damsels
seeking golden ointments for the wounds inflicted by his arrows.
Pretty witnesses had stepped into the box believing their charms
invincible, and had retired weeping after a verbal contest with the
great O'Boyneville, as some tender fawn may fly, mauled and torn by the
mighty boar of the forest. Grecian noses and timid blue eyes, blooming
cheeks rendered more blooming by the coquettish adjustment of a spotted
veil, might exercise a charm of potent power in other regions; but they
availed nothing when Laurence O'Boyneville rose to cross-examine the
witnesses of his opponent.
"Put up your veil, Ma'am, and let us see your face, if you please,"
he said at starting. And then came the torture,--the searching tone
of voice, that seemed to imply an occult knowledge; the see-sawing
of trivial facts, which seemed to transform the moral standpoint of
the witness into a shifting quicksand of uncertainty; the frivolous
questions beside the subject, that seemed so foolish and unmeaning,
till all in a moment they wove themselves into a fatal web in which
the witness was inextricably entangled. In such ordeals Beauty
appealed vainly to the merciless advocate; and, having derived his
chief knowledge of the fair sex from witnesses in _nisi prius_,
breach-of-promise, and divorce cases, it may be that Mr. O'Boyneville's
estimate of womankind was scarcely an elevated one.
Of all living creatures, perhaps Laurence O'Boyneville would have
seemed to a superficial observer the last to fall a victim to a sudden
and unreasoning passion. When a man attains the age of forty without
one pulse of his heart being quickened by any tender emotion, it is
to be expected that he will jog quietly on to fifty; and that if then
he dislikes the prospect of a lonely old age, uncheered except by the
attentions of a housekeeper--who, if she does not poison him with
subtle doses of tartar emetic, will most likely forge a codicil to
his will, and possess herself of his goods and chattels when he is
dead,--he will look out for some wealthy widow of his own age, and
settle quietly down to the enjoyment of ponderous dinners and expensive
wines. And yet, on reflection, it seems very probable that the busy
man--the plodding labourer in the arid fields of life--is the most
likely subject for that sudden love which springs into life vigorous
and perfect as Minerva when she burst armed and helmeted from the
brain of Jove. The man most apt to fall in love with unknown Beauty
in an omnibus, is the man who has least time for the cultivation of
accredited Beauty's society in the drawing-rooms of his friends. Sooner
or later the god claims his prey; and the unbeliever who has gone
scatheless for twenty years has good reason to dread the chances of the
one-and-twentieth. Mr. O'Boyneville pushed his way up Dr. Molyneux's
staircase at half-past eleven a free man; but he descended the same
staircase at a quarter to one as fettered a slave as Samson when
they bore him from the false embraces of Delilah; and yet no artful
enchantress spread her nets for his entanglement, no mercenary Circe
wove her spell for his destruction.
The crowd upon the landing-place grew closer as the night waxed older,
and in the confusion occasioned by one set of people always struggling
to get away, and another set of people always struggling to get into
the drawing-rooms, to say nothing of chivalrous young men for ever
striving to carry ices or other airy refreshments to distressed
damsels, the loungers who did not care about dancing had enough to
do to keep their ground. It was this perpetual motion that drove the
mighty O'Boyneville on to the very flight of stairs where Cecil sat
pensive and silent, while the buzz of voices around her grew every
moment louder.
Having nothing better to do, the barrister lounged with his back
against the wall and looked down at the fair aristocratic face of his
neighbour, while he meditated upon the great slate case. But being
a student of character, he fell to musing on the lady sitting below
him--sitting almost at his feet, as it were, with only the width of the
stair-carpet between them.
"I shouldn't like to drive _her_ too hard," he thought, "if I had her
as a witness on the other side. She's the sort of woman who could keep
her self-possession, and make a man look foolish. I saw Valentine
tackle such a woman once, and he got considerably the worst of it."
"And then, after ruminating for some minutes upon an intricate point in
the slate case, he took courage and addressed Lady Cecil. His Hibernian
daring rarely abandoned him, even in that feminine society to which he
was so unaccustomed; and yet there was a kind of restraint upon him
to-night, and a strange schoolboy feeling took possession of him as he
spoke to Cecil.
"Do you like this sort of thing?" he asked. "Molyneux saved my life
three years ago, or I shouldn't be here: but he can't have saved the
lives of all these people; and yet, if he hasn't, I don't understand
why they come here."
"Dr. Molyneux is very popular," answered Cecil, smiling a little at
the barrister's manner. "I think he almost saved my aunt's life in
the spring; and if every body here has as much reason as I have to be
grateful to him, they may very well endure a little crushing. Besides,
one is crushed quite as much at other houses, where the parties are not
so pleasant."
Mr. O'Boyneville shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, I suppose there are sane people who consider this sort of thing
agreeable," said he; "it is one of the enigmas of social life. I am a
working man, and the mysteries of fashion are a sealed book to me. But
of course, if it is the fashion to be hustled upon a staircase, people
will submit to be hustled on a staircase, just as the Chinese women
pinch their feet, and savages flatten their skulls and elongate their
ears. So Molyneux attended your aunt, did he? Is she with you to-night?"
"Oh yes, she is here."
Cecil glanced unconsciously towards the embrasure between the curtains
where the dowager was seated as she said this; and Mr. O'Boyneville,
accustomed to watch the glances of witnesses and jurymen, was quick to
interpret her look.
"The lady in black is your aunt," he said. "What's her name?"
"MacClaverhouse," answered Cecil, looking with some wonder at this
uncivilised stranger who questioned her so coolly.
"I suppose he is an American," she thought; "and yet he doesn't talk
like one."
"And you are Miss MacClaverhouse, of course?" said the presumptuous
O'Boyneville. He was determined to know who this young lady was--this
aristocratic beauty with the fair classic face and listless manner.
Another man would have left Cecil unmolested, and would have stolen
away to extract the information he wanted from the master of the house;
but the unsophisticated O'Boyneville had no idea of any such diplomacy.
He had been asking questions all his life, and he questioned Cecil
almost as he would have questioned one of his own witnesses, with a
friendly unceremoniousness.
"My name is Chudleigh," said the young lady, very coldly.
"Why, that's the name of the Aspendell family; and you belong to that
family, I suppose, Miss Chudleigh?"
"Yes; the late Lord Aspendell was my father."
"Indeed! Ah! I met the Earl once, ten years ago; and that unfortunate
young man who ran through so much money, and was killed in the Alps?"
"He was my brother," murmured Cecil, rising as if she would have made
her escape from this uncivilised monster.
"I beg your pardon a thousand times. Yes, to be sure, I ought to have
remembered that. Your brother, of course; and I suppose he really _did_
contrive to make away with every acre of the Aspendell property, eh?"
Lady Cecil looked indignantly at her questioner, and the stairs
immediately below her being a little clearer just now, she moved
downwards and made her way towards her aunt. The barrister looked after
her with a bewildered aspect.
"I suppose she didn't like my talking to her about her brother," he
thought. "He was a thorough young scamp, if ever there was one. And
the present Lord Aspendell must be as poor as Job. And this girl's his
niece, I suppose, or his cousin. Poor and proud--that's a pity! and
she's a nice girl too."
He looked after her; she was entering the dancing-room on the arm of
an irreproachable cavalier. Mr. O'Boyneville watched her till she
disappeared, and then tried to take up the thread of his meditations
upon the slate case at the exact point at which he had dropped it.
But for once in his life he found his thoughts wandering away from the
contemplation of his professional duties. The image of the patrician
face on which he had so lately been looking haunted him as no such
image had ever haunted him before.
"I am sorry I offended her," he thought, "for she really seems a nice
girl."
The doctor came out upon the landing in animated conversation with one
of his guests at this very moment, and perceiving Mrs. MacClaverhouse
in the shadow of the window-curtains, stopped to give her cordial
greeting.
"I have seen Lady Cecil, and she told me where to look for you," said
the physician. "Won't you come into the rooms? We're a little crowded,
but I'll find you a comfortable seat; and Herr Kerskratten, the German
bass, is going to sing his great drinking-song."
But before Dr. Molyneux could steer the dowager through the crowd about
the doorway, Mr. O'Boyneville had pushed his way to the elbow of his
physician, whom he saluted in that sonorous voice which was one of
the most useful gifts a liberal nature had bestowed upon him. After a
briefly cordial greeting, the Irishman bent his head to whisper in the
ear of his friend:
"Introduce me to the old lady."
Dr. Molyneux looked at him in some astonishment as he complied.
"I know you are a hunter of lions, Mrs. MacClaverhouse," he said, "so I
don't think it would be fair if I didn't introduce you to a gentleman
whose name must be tolerably familiar to you in the law reports that
enliven your morning papers. Mr O'Boyneville--Mrs. MacClaverhouse."
The barrister, who had found so little to say to Lady Cecil, recovered
the natural flow of his eloquence in the society of the dowager, and
made himself eminently agreeable to that lady. He took her quite off
the hands of her host, and contrived to find her a corner on a sofa
near the piano, where some ladies of the wallflower species were primly
seated. He talked with more animation than was pleasant to the German
bass during that gentleman's great song; but Mrs. MacClaverhouse was
one of those people who make a point of chattering throughout the
progress of a musical performance, and praising it loudly when it is
concluded. She was delighted with the Irish barrister, and from her
he obtained all the information he wanted about Lady Cecil Chudleigh.
Perhaps the wily dowager perceived that this uncivilised Hercules of
the law courts was smitten by her niece's tranquil beauty, and knew
that he was rich, and speculated upon the possibility of his being
able to support that corner house in Hyde Park Gardens, for whose
lofty chambers her spirit languished. However it might be, she was
monstrously civil to the great O'Boyneville; and before her niece came
to seek her she had invited him to dine in Dorset Square at an early
date, to meet a distinguished luminary of the Sudder Dewanee.
Cecil did not condescend to honour the Irishman by one glance as she
talked to her aunt.
"Shall we go now, auntie? The rooms are very warm, and I am sure you
must be tired."
"I suppose that means that _you_ are tired," answered Mrs.
MacClaverhouse. "However, I'm quite ready to take my departure."
"Shall I go and look for your carriage?" asked Mr O'Boyneville.
"No, thanks," Cecil replied, very coldly. "Captain Norris has been kind
enough to go in search of it. He will not fetch us till it is really at
the door, auntie."
"I hope not," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse. "But I sometimes fancy Dr.
Molyneux sows the seeds of his winter bronchitis cases while his
visitors are waiting for their carriages in that windy vestibule of
his. Perhaps you will be good enough to get me through the middle
passage, Mr. O'Boyneville, while Captain Norris looks after my niece."
Captain Norris, the irreproachable gentleman who had walked the solemn
measures of a quadrille with Cecil, arrived at this moment, flushed,
but triumphant.
"The carriage is there, Mrs. MacClaverhouse. May I offer you my arm?"
But the dowager slipped her hand over Mr. O'Boyneville's sleeve, and
the Captain took possession of Cecil. There were a good many pauses on
the way, pleasant salutations, and friendly greetings; but in due time
the ladies were safely installed in their chariot; and looking out into
the summer night, Cecil was obliged to bow to Mr. O'Boyneville, who
stood bare-headed upon the pavement.
"What a horrible man, auntie!" she exclaimed, with something like a
shudder; "and how could you be so friendly with him?"
And Mr. O'Boyneville, on his way to a big house in Bloomsbury, where
he ate his hurried meals and took his brief night's rest, and which
was popularly supposed to be his home, abandoned himself to musings of
quite a different fashion.
"If ever I were to marry," he thought--"and Heaven knows it's a remote
contingency--I would marry such a woman as Lady Cecil Chudleigh."
Many men have pronounced such resolutions as this, and have lived to
ally themselves to the most vulgar opposite of their chosen ideal; but
then Laurence O'Boyneville was a man with whom will was power.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DOWAGER'S LITTLE DINNER.
Lady Cecil was both surprised and annoyed when the dowager announced
Mr. O'Boyneville as one of the guests at her next little dinner.
"How could you ask that dreadful man, auntie?" she said.
"Because the dreadful man is a very distinguished person--in the law;
and as Mr. Horley, the Indian judge, dines with us next Wednesday, I
thought I could not do better than ask this Irish barrister. I know
those lawyer people like to meet one another; though goodness knows,
with salmon at half-a-crown a pound, and ducklings at eight shillings a
pair, I ought not to involve myself in the expense of dinner parties."
Cecil shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly as she seated herself
at her piano after this little discussion. It mattered so little to
her who came to her aunt's dinner parties. Imagine the indifference of
Lucy Ashton as to the guests who partook of the Lord Keeper's ponderous
banquets during that dreary interval in which Ravenswood was away. But
poor Cecil obeyed her aunt's orders, and did battle with the poulterer
for a reduction in the price of his ducklings, and went through all
manner of intricate calculations as to the difference between the
expense of lobster cutlets and fricandeau, or oyster patties and
chicken rissoles.
"I think Spickson makes his lobster cutlets smaller than ever this
year," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse, as she looked over the confectioner's
list of made-dishes; "and as to his fricandeaus, I am always on tenter
hooks for fear they shouldn't go decently round the table, and I can't
get that man Peters to calculate his spoonfuls; and if he's weak enough
to let people help themselves there's sure to be unfairness about the
truffles; though what any one can admire in truffles is one of the
mysteries I have never been able to fathom. As to dessert, Cecil, I
shall take the carriage into the City to-morrow morning, and get what I
want; for I've no notion of paying eightpence apiece in Covent Garden
for peaches that I can get in Thames Street for threepence."
On the appointed evening Cecil was the first to enter the drawing-room;
for the dowager had taken a siesta after luncheon, and was late at
her toilette. Dressed in some transparent fabric of pale-blue, with a
fluttering knot of ribbon here and there, and a turquoise cross upon
her neck, Lady Cecil looked very elegant, very pretty, with that
delicate loveliness which so rarely kindled into brilliancy, with that
patrician calm which so seldom warmed into animation. She looked at
the clock on the chimney-piece as she took a book from a cabinet where
a few of her aunt's choicest volumes were ranged on alternate shelves
with china teacups and quaint old Oriental monsters. "Only seven; and
the people are asked for half-past, which always means eight," she
thought, as she sank listlessly into a low chair near the open window.
She opened her book and tried to read. It was a volume of Shelley; and
the dreamy mysticism of the verse soothed her with its magic harmony.
The shadows of her life had been fading gradually away from her within
the last few months, but no sunshine had succeeded the darkness. She
was too gentle and womanly to be cynical; but an indifference to every
thing on earth--an indifference almost as profound as the dreary
_ennui_ of Hamlet--had come down upon her.
And yet she went to parties and danced quadrilles, and even waltzed
on occasions. To dance and to make merry while the ruthless serpent
gnaws at the heart is no new pastime. There is something pathetic in
the simplicity with which Lucy Aikin tells us how the great Elizabeth
went to a festival while her favourite--her Benjamin of favourites--the
brilliant Essex, languished under the burden of her dread displeasure;
while the imperious spirit of the Ruler was at war with the woman's
doting heart, and the most terrible struggle of her life was going
forward. There was dancing at my Lord Cobham's that night, and a masque
performed by women, and one of these ladies wooed the Queen to dance.
"Who are you?" asked the Sovereign. "My name is Affection," returned
the masquer. "_Affection_," said the Queen, "_is false!_" And _yet_ she
danced, remarks the historian with unconscious pathos.
It was only ten minutes after seven, and Cecil was quite absorbed in
the pages of Alastor, when the door was flung open with the stately
swing peculiar to the accomplished dairyman who did duty as butler on
the dowager's reception days, and the accomplished dairyman announced
with perfect distinctness, "Mr. O'Boyneville."
Accomplished as the dairyman was, he might have made a mess of any
other name; but the great barrister's appellation was "familiar in
his ear as household words;" and he had many "household words" with
his better half when the propensity for strong drinks, contracted in
the riotous days of his butlerhood, beguiled him from the domestic
shelter. He knew Mr. O'Boyneville, and had sat on juries in the courts
where that gentleman was mighty, and had been cajoled by the Irishman's
insidious eloquence and slap-dash mode of argument. He had laughed
over Mr. O'Boyneville's speeches and cross-examinations recorded in the
newspapers; and he ushered the barrister into the little drawing-room
in Dorset Square with all the respect due to so brilliant a luminary.
Cecil was very much annoyed by the Irishman's early arrival; but he was
her aunt's guest, and she was bound to receive him courteously. She
laid aside her book, and made the barrister a curtsy.
And the brilliant O'Boyneville--the man with whom cool impudence often
rose to the level of genius--that luminary before whom the lesser
lights of the bar waxed faint and pale, how did his familiarity with
feminine psychology, as exhibited in the witness box, serve him in the
dowager's drawing-room? Alas for Hibernian wit and Hibernian audacity!
for Mr. O'Boyneville could think of no more interesting subject of
remark at this moment than the fact that the day had been warm: and a
warm day in the last week of June is not exactly a notable phenomenon.
Lady Cecil agreed to the barrister's statement with regard to the
weather, and then went on to say that town was not so full as it had
been: and this is again not exactly a phenomenon in the last week of
June.
"I don't know about that, Lady Cecil," replied Mr. O'Boyneville. "If
you'd been in the Court of Common Pleas this morning you'd not have
thought London empty." And then there was a pause; for the barrister,
being more accustomed to browbeat and terrify the fair sex than to make
small-talk for their amusement, found himself brought to a standstill;
and Cecil did not like her aunt's guest well enough to make any
desperate conversational plunge.
He sat looking at her in silence; not with the bold stare of admiration
with which he was wont to take a feminine witness off her guard before
entrapping her into prevarication or perjury, but with a more earnest
gaze than he had ever fixed on any woman's face before.
"She reminds me of my mother," he thought; "and yet it's only a pale
shadow I can remember when I think of my mother. I was such a child
when she died."
Lady Cecil glanced at her aunt's new acquaintance as he sat opposite
to her. He was quite different from any one she ever had seen before;
and to her eyes--so accustomed to look upon the graceful perfection,
the harmonious elegance of high-bred youth, there was something almost
uncivilised in his aspect. He wore the high shirt-collars in which she
had seen him at the doctor's ball, the tight-fitting dress coat of a
departed age, a rusty black cravat, and boots of dubious symmetry. His
brown hair was thick and long; but the massive head had something
leonine in its character; the aquiline nose and large bright blue eyes
had that stamp of power which is so near akin to beauty. That brief
contemplation of Laurence O'Boyneville awakened Cecil Chudleigh to the
consciousness that the "dreadful man" to whom she so much objected was
not quite the kind of person to be despised.
"I dare say he is clever--in his own way," she thought; "but what could
have induced my aunt to ask him to dinner?"
She was spared the trouble of finding some new subject wherewith to
bridge the gulf of silence yawning so blankly between her and the
barrister, for the all-accomplished cow-keeper announced Mr. and Miss
Crawford; and wherever Flo went she put to flight the dull horror of
silence. The Crawfords had been invited to please Lady Cecil; "and
because Mr. Crawford is a nice sort of person to have, you know, my
dear," the dowager said to one of her confidantes; "for there is such
a rage about these painter people just now, and I assure you his place
at Kensington is a perfect palace, with marble pillars in the hall, and
old stained-glass windows, and carved oak panels, that he has picked
up at Antwerp; and I hear the prices he gets for his pictures are
_something fabulous_; but he's the dearest unaffected creature you ever
met; and if you like to come on Wednesday night between nine and ten,
you shall see him."
Flo greeted her dearest Cecil with enthusiasm, and saluted Mr.
O'Boyneville with the faintest indication of a curtsey as she swept
her silken skirts past him; and then, when she had shaken hands
with her dearest friend, she turned to look at the barrister with a
charming insolent little look, which seemed to express, "And what
outlandish creature are _you_, I wonder?" Of course Mr. Crawford knew
the great Q. C. Almost every male inhabitant of London was familiar
with that ponderous figure and defiant face. Few were the dwellers in
the mighty City who had not seen those big white hands waved in the
face of an opponent, or lifted in the denunciatory periods of virtuous
indignation. The painter began to talk to the barrister, and in a
moment the great Laurence was at his ease. He knew how to talk--with
men,--and there was no question within the regions of heaven or earth
too mighty for his audacity, too small for his powers of argument. He
would have talked to Herschel about the last discovery in the starry
system; and it is ten to one but in a mixed company he would have made
Herschel look foolish: he would have demonstrated before the face
of Newton that his theory of gravitation was a false one; he would
have offered for Mr. Paul Bedford's consideration new views upon the
subject of "Jolly Nose;" or if a question of tailoring had arisen in
an assembly of tailors, he would have proved to the satisfaction of
the company that he alone amongst them all had fully mastered the
science of cutting out a coat. Was it not his business to know every
thing, or to seem to know every thing? If any mad-brained counsel on
the opposite side had been pleased to set a flute or "recorder" before
him, would it not have been his duty to play a tune thereupon for the
edification of the court? There was no subject that he had not been
called upon to handle in the course of his legal career. He had pleaded
the cause of a musician whose copyright in a ballad had been assailed
on the ground of plagiarism, and--ignorant of a note of music--had
talked the jury into idiocy with a farrago of sounding nonsense such as
"the syncopated passage in the second bar of my client's composition,
gentlemen, is said to resemble the third bar of Mozart's sonato in C
minor; but to any one who is familiar with the first principles of
harmony, gentlemen, the introduction of the supertonic in place of
the subdominant must be a convincing proof of the falsehood of this
assertion: and if any thing were required to demonstrate the puerility
of the argument adopted by my learned friend on the other side, it
would be the group of semiquavers which concludes the phrase." He had
carried a French milliner triumphantly through all the intricacies
of an action against an aristocratic customer for the recovery of a
disputed account, and had demonstrated with crushing force the meanness
of the lady defendant, and the honesty of his client's charges. To the
lookers-on from the outer world his triumphs may have appeared easy. It
seemed as if he had only to elevate his voice with a certain emphasis,
and to look round the court with a certain self-assured smile, and lo,
his audience rejoiced and were merry. "The great question at issue,
gentlemen of the jury, is the question of '_trimmings_.' (Laughter.)
You have all of you heard, no doubt, of a leg of mutton and trimmings
(renewed laughter); but the trimmings in question are of far greater
value than the turnips of a Cincinnatus, or the potatoes of a Raleigh.
The question in point, gentlemen, if I may venture upon that play of
words which the great Samuel Johnson held in such detestation, is
a question _of_ point. The point-lace flounce, for which my client
charges one hundred and thirty-nine pounds fourteen and sixpence,
was, I am told, one of the rarest specimens of the workmanship of the
Beguines of Flanders. And who and what are these Beguines, gentlemen
of the jury, by whose patient fingers this delicate fabric was
manufactured? Were they common workwomen, to be recompensed at a common
rate? No, gentlemen of the jury, they were ladies--ladies of honourable
lineage and independent means, who of their own free will retired into
a Beguinage--a religious house, which was yet not a convent; and
there, free from the bondage of any formal vow, they devoted themselves
to the consolation of the poor and afflicted, and the manufacture
of that rare old lace which is now the proudest boast of our female
aristocracy. Why, gentlemen, the price demanded by my client is
something pitiful when we remember the circumstances under which that
point-lace was made--the taper fingers that have toiled to fashion
those intricate arabesques--the solitary tears that have bedewed the
fairy fabric."
And here it may be that the great O'Boyneville himself produced a
palpable tear on the end of his finger, and gazed at it for a moment
in absence of mind, as wondering what it was,--or seemed so to gaze,
while in reality his piercing eye shot towards the jury to see whether
they were laughing at him, or whether his rhodomontade had told. This
was the man who had found himself so ill at ease in the society of one
beautiful woman.
The dowager appeared presently.
"Oh, you too-punctual people!" exclaimed the lively Mrs.
MacClaverhouse. "You come to see an old woman who lives in lodgings,
and I dare say you expect every thing as well _réglé_ as if you were
going to dine at Mr. Horborough's palace in Park Lane. How do you do,
Florence my dear?--How d'ye do, Crawford? So you and Mr. O'Boyneville
are old friends? That's very nice; but I hope you're not going to talk
about texture and modelling _all_ the evening. Do you know we had a
couple of musical celebrities once at one of the General's dinners
in Portland Place, and they talked about harmony and composition all
dinner-time; and as they sat on opposite sides of the table, it was
_so_ agreeable for the rest of the company. 'Do you know what that
fellow Simpkins will do?' says Brown. 'Why, he'll use consecutive
fifths,--he's got them more than once in that last sonata of his.'
'God bless my soul!' cried Smith, 'I never thought much of him, but
I did not suppose he was capable of _that_.' And that's the way they
went on the whole evening. So, you dear Crawford, tell us as many nice
stories about your artist friends as you can--about their having their
furniture seized by sheriffs' officers, and taking their pig pictures
wet to that stupid pawnbroker, who rubs out a pig with his thumb; and
dying in sponging-houses; and stabbing their models in order to get the
proper contraction of the muscles; but please _don't_ be technical."
The Indian notability made his appearance presently, with a very
stately wife in brown velvet and carbuncles; a costume which Flo
declared reminded her of haunch-of-mutton and currant-jelly. To Mr.
O'Boyneville's escort this stately matron was intrusted; an elegant
young Belgian diplomatist, who spoke very little English, took charge
of Florence, while Mr. Crawford devoted himself to Cecil, and the
Judge of the Sudder Dewanee offered his arm to Mrs. MacClaverhouse,
whose brain was racked by doubts as to whether the salmon would go
comfortably round, or whether those two ninepenny lobsters ordered for
the sauce were equal to the eighteenpenny one which she had rejected,
suspecting sinister motives lurking in the mind of the fishmonger who
had recommended it. The dinner _à la Russe_ is a splendid institution
for the economical housekeeper, and might on some occasions be called a
dinner _à la ruse_; so artful are the manœuvres by which half-a-dozen
oyster-patties, or a few ounces of chicken and a handful of asparagus
tops, can be made to do duty for a course; so inexpensive are the
desserts, which consist chiefly of fossilised conserves and uneatable
bonbons, and which are of so indestructible a nature that they will
last a managing hostess as long as a chancery-suit.
The dinner went off well. Mrs. MacClaverhouse's little dinners were
almost always successful, in spite of those conflicting emotions which
agitated the heart of the hostess.
The Indian judge and the Irish barrister talked _shop_; and there
was a very animated discussion of a great international-law case,
the details of which had filled the columns of the _Times_ for the
last three weeks--a case in which masculine intelligence perceived
a thrilling interest, but which to the female mind appeared only a
hopeless complication of politics and ship-building. In so small a
party the conversation was tolerably general. Mr. Crawford entered
heartily into the ship-building case; and only Florence and the
elegant young diplomatist were confidential, chattering gaily in that
exquisite language which seems to have been invented in the interests
of coquetry. The gentlemen came to the drawing-room very soon after the
ladies had settled themselves in opposite corners: Florence and Cecil
on a cosy little sofa by the open window--a sofa just large enough to
accommodate their ample skirts; the dowager and the judge's wife on
easy-chairs near a ground-glass screen which concealed the empty grate.
Florence had so much intelligence of a peculiarly confidential nature
to impart to her friend, that she looked almost coldly on the elegant
young Belgian when he presented himself before her. It is very nice
for a young lady, whose French is undoubtedly Parisian, to discuss
Lamartine and De Vigny, Hugo and Chateaubriand--and such other Gallic
luminaries whose works a young lady may discuss--with an agreeable
companion; but Florence Crawford had made a conquest within the last
week, and was bright with all the radiance of a new triumph, and
unutterably eager to impart the tidings of her last success to Cecil.
"He has called on papa twice within the week, dear," said the animated
Flo in that confidential undertone which is the next thing to
whispering; "and papa says it is the most absurd thing in the world
to hear him ordering pictures: he has asked papa to paint him two.
And when he was asked if he had any special idea of his own about the
subject, he said no, but he wanted them to fit the recesses between
the windows of his billiard-room at Pevenshall--he has a place called
Pevenshall somewhere in that dreadful north; for he is rich--_à
millions_, you know--_tout ce qu'il y a de plus Manchester_. His father
and grandfather made all the money, and he is to spend it. I am sure
he would never have made any for himself. But papa has declined the
unfortunate young man's commission. Fancy one of papa's Cleopatras
stinging herself to death between the windows of a Manchester man's
billiard-room. There are men in Manchester who know art thoroughly,
papa says; and it is utterly absurd for a painter to turn up his nose
at the patronage of traders; for if you go into the galleries of those
dear old sleepy towns in Belgium, you'll find that the noblest works
of your Van Eycks and Hans what's-his-names were paid for by wealthy
citizens; and what a blessing the modern patrons don't insist on having
themselves painted, looking through cupboards, or riding on horseback,
in the corner of a picture. Imagine a Manchester man's head poking
through a hole in the sky in Mr. Millais' 'Vale of Rest,' or peering
out of a cupboard in a corner of Mr. Frith's 'Derby Day!' However, papa
has declined to paint anything for Mr. Lobyer; so the unfortunate young
man will have no excuse for calling on unorthodox occasions."
"But he must be a very stupid person, Florence. I cannot imagine your
taking any interest in him."
"Nor can I imagine myself tolerating his society for half-an-hour, if
he were not what he is," answered Flo blithely. "Don't I tell you that
he is the rich Mr. Lobyer? Even his name is horrible, you see--Lobyer!
He might make it a little better by tacking on some aristocratic
_prénom_. Vavasor Lobyer, or Plantagenet Lobyer, or something of that
kind, might sound almost tolerable. Yes, he is very stupid, Cecil;
but he seems rather a good young fellow; he laughs good-naturedly
when other people are laughing, and he gets on wonderfully with my
cockatoos. There seems to be an instinctive kind of sympathy between
him and cockatoos, and they allow him to rumple their feathers and
scratch their foreheads in the most amiable manner. You know what a
place the Fountains is, and how often _I_ sit in the conservatory that
leads to the painting-room, or else just outside papa's bay-window; so
of course when Mr. Lobyer came to talk about the pictures, he loitered
and hung about playing with the birds, and sniffing at the flowers in
that horrible fidgety manner peculiar to some young men, until papa
came out of the painting-room to tell me I had better go for a drive,
which meant that Mr. Lobyer was to take his departure. And I really
think, Cecil, that if I had not kept him at bay that unfortunate young
man would have made me an offer that very morning, after meeting me
rather less than half-a-dozen times."
"But, Florence, you surely would never marry such a person?"
"For goodness' sake, Cecil, don't call him a person! Haven't I always
told you that I meant to marry for money, and don't I tell you that
Mr. Lobyer is preposterously rich? I acknowledge that he is stupid and
ignorant--more Manchester than Manchester itself; but are there not
guardsmen with long pedigrees who are as boorish and ignorant as Mr.
Lobyer? I am not like those absurd girls who look in the glass and
fancy they are like the two beautiful Miss Gunnings, and have only to
show themselves in the park in order to captivate marquises and royal
dukes."
"And you would really marry for money, Flory?" said Cecil very sadly.
"Is there any thing so well worth marrying for? Who was that stupid old
legal person who said that knowledge is power? Why did he take bribes
and sell public offices if he thought that? Depend upon it, Cecil, that
money is power, and the only power worth wielding. Money is power,
and beauty, and grace, and fascination. Do you think Anne of Austria
fell in love with plain George Villiers? No, Cecil; she fell in love
with the Duke of Buckingham, and his white uncut velvet suit, and his
diamonds, and the jewels he dropped among her maids-of-honour, and all
the pageantry and splendour around and about him."
Was it of any use to reason with a young lady who talked like this?
Miss Crawford had enjoyed all those advantages of education which
fall to the share of middle-class damsels of the present day, and
the possession of which a century ago would have made a young lady a
phenomenon. She spoke French perfectly; she knew a little Italian, and
had read the _Promessi Sposi_, and could quote little bits of Dante
and Petrarch; she could read German, and quoted Goethe and Schiller on
occasions; she played brilliantly, and painted tolerably, and waltzed
exquisitely; but of that moral education which some mothers and fathers
bestow upon their children, Florence Crawford was utterly destitute.
She had brought herself up; and she prided herself on that high-bred
heartlessness, or affectation of heartlessness, which seemed one of the
most fashionable graces of her day. She had founded herself, as she
fancied, on the best models.
"Better to be Becky Sharpe than Amelia Sedley," she said "and the world
is full of Beckys and Amelias."
She could find a very tolerable excuse for herself and her companions.
"The men complain that we are fast and mercenary; that we talk slang,
and try to make rich marriages; and there are articles about us in the
fashionable newspapers, just as if we were a new variety in animal
creation, on view in Regent's Park. Do they ever stop to consider who
taught us to be what we are? Can the gentlemen, whose highest praise
of a woman is to say that she is jolly, and has no nonsense about her,
and sits square on her horse, wonder very much if we cultivate the only
accomplishments they admire?"
Cecil had often tried to remonstrate with her volatile friend, and
had as often found her efforts utterly thrown away. So to-night she
allowed Flo to devote herself to the Belgian _attaché_, and abandoned
herself to her own thoughts, only making a little pretence of joining
in the conversation now and then. Sometimes, while she listlessly
turned the leaves of an album, whose every leaf she knew by heart, Lady
Cecil glanced upward to the angle of the mantelpiece by which Laurence
O'Boyneville stood, in conversation with the judge and the painter;
for, however charming the society of lovely and accomplished woman may
be, men have an attraction for one another, in comparison with which
all feminine witchery is weak and futile.
Looking at the little group by the chimney-piece, Cecil saw that the
barrister had by far the largest share in the conversation. He was
very animated, and those large white hands, which were so eminently
useful to him in court, were considerably employed to illustrate his
discourse. That he was talking well she could see in the attentive
faces of his listeners, for Indian judges and popular painters do not
listen with any show of interest to a man who talks nonsense. Lady
Cecil began to think that after all there must be something a little
out of the common in this dreadful man.
The evening came to a close presently, and as he bent over Cecil to say
good-night, Mr. O'Boyneville's manner was very much out of the common.
"I have been talking to your aunt, Lady Cecil," he said, "and she tells
me you leave town early next week. I have asked permission to call on
you to-morrow, and Mrs. MacClaverhouse has given it. So it is not
good-bye, you see, but _au revoir_."
This was about the coolest speech which Cecil Chudleigh had ever had
addressed to her. She looked at Mr. O'Boyneville with an expression of
unmitigated astonishment, but he gave her hand a gripe that wounded the
slender fingers with the rings which adorned them, and departed.
"I've three hours' work to get through before I go to bed to-night,"
he said, as he went down stairs with the painter and his daughter; and
so he had. The first hansom that he encountered conveyed him to that
sepulchral mansion in Brunswick Square which he had chosen for his
habitation; not because he particularly liked Brunswick Square, but
because it was necessary for him to live somewhere.
He let himself into the gaunt stone hall with his latch-key, and
walked straight to the library at the back of this spacious mansion--a
gloomy chamber lined with law-books, and provided with that species
of furniture which may be seen exhibited by the merchants of Queen
Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. This dismal apartment was the retreat
in which Mr. O'Boyneville spent the greater part of his home-life. He
very frequently took his dinner on the library table, with his plate
surrounded by papers, and an open brief propped up against his decanter
of Manzanilla.
To-night he found the red bag, which his clerk had brought from the
Temple, waiting for him on the table. He did not open it quite at
once. He did not pounce upon its contents as he had been wont to
do. He sat for some minutes leaning back in his chair, with a smile
upon his face--a dreamy smile, which was new to that eager, resolute
countenance, so well known to the legal world for its hawk-like glances
and insolent defiance.
"My own sweet darling!" he thought; "and I shall have a wife and a
home! Good Heavens! how many years of my life have I spent without ever
dreaming of any such happiness! And now--now--I wonder that I could
have lived so long as I have; I wonder that I could have lived without
_her_."
And then, after abandoning himself a little longer to this delicious
reverie, he roused himself with an effort, and opened his bag.
But as he took out the first handful of papers, he exclaimed with a
sigh,
"And yet, God knows, I wish I had never seen her. I went on so well
before, and my mind was free for my work; and now----"
He began to read, and in five minutes' time was as deeply absorbed in
his papers as if no such person as Cecil Chudleigh had existed. And
yet he loved her--with that foolish and unreasoning passion called love
at sight--with that love which, coming for the first time to a man of
his age, comes as surely for the last.
CHAPTER IX.
LAURENCE O'BOYNEVILLE'S FIRST HEARING.
To the dowager Mr. O'Boyneville had been very confidential. He was
as frank and ingenuous as some lovesick schoolboy in his revelation
of that sudden affection with which Cecil Chudleigh's pensive face
had inspired him. The unconscious audacity which was one of the chief
attributes of his character supported him in a position in which
another man of his age and habits would have suffered an agony of
self-consciousness, a torturing sense of his own foolishness. He was
close upon forty years of age. His childhood had been spent on the
greensward of Irish hills and valleys, among the wildest of Hibernian
agriculturists; his boyhood had been passed in an Irish city, far south
of the brilliant capital; his manhood had been a long, scrambling,
helter-skelter journey upon one of the dustiest and most toilsome
roads of modern life. His habits were not the habits of the men who
were to be met in Cecil Chudleigh's world; his cleverness was not
their cleverness; and those graces and accomplishments which, in their
education, had been the first consideration, were just the very points
which in his rough schooling had been neglected or ignored.
Another man, under such circumstances--and even another Irishman--might
have regarded Lady Cecil from afar with fond admiring glances, and
returned to his law-library in Bloomsbury, or his dusty chambers in
the Temple, not scatheless, but hopeless: and despair being a fever of
but brief duration--it is your intermittent sickness of alternate hope
and fear that hangs so long about the sufferer--the victim might have
speedily recovered the wound inflicted by a flying Cupid's random shot.
But it was not thus with Laurence O'Boyneville. He knew that he was
eight-and-thirty, and that he looked five years older; nor was it long
since the tailor, who made those garments which the barrister insisted
should be constructed after the fashion of his youth, had sighed as
he look his patron's measure, murmuring plaintively, "Another inch
round the waist, Mr. O'Boyneville! and, bless my heart, it seems only
yesterday when twenty-five inches was your figure!"
The barrister, contemplating himself in the glass during the process of
shaving, and scowling--not at himself, but at the visionary countenance
of the sarcastic Valentine or the unctuous O'Smea, with whom he was to
do battle before the day was done--might have perceived, had he chosen
to consider the matter, that he was by no means the sort of person whom
women call handsome. The strongly-marked eyebrows, so quick to contract
above the cold blue eyes; the aquiline nose, the firmly-set lips, the
massive chin, and the broad square brow, with its prominent range of
perceptive organs overshadowing the eyes--these were not the component
parts of a countenance on which women care to dwell with admiring
glances.
But that which would most likely have discomfited other men had
no power to abash or to disturb the resolute spirit of Laurence
O'Boyneville. Perhaps the secret of his audacity was that he had never
failed in any thing. From the boyish days when he had breasted the
falls of the Shannon and done battle with the power of the waters,
his career had been one long hand-to-hand struggle with difficulties.
Penniless, he had succeeded where other men's money had been powerless
to win them success. Friendless, he had trampled upon the fallen hopes
of rivals who could boast of kindred and friendship with the mighty
ones of the earth. A stranger and an alien, he had won for himself
wealth and renown in a country in which vulgar prejudice had made the
very name of his people a byword and a reproach.
Was this a man to be turned aside from his purpose because the woman
with whom he had fallen in love happened to be above him in rank, and
the daughter of a world with which his world had nothing in common? No.
After seeing Cecil Chudleigh for the first time, Laurence O'Boyneville
decided that he would never marry any other woman. On seeing her for
the second time, he determined to marry _her_. The most presuming of
coxcombs could scarcely have been more sublimely assured of his own
invincibility. And yet the barrister had nothing in common with a
coxcomb. He was only accustomed to succeed. If he wanted to do any
thing, he did it; and opposition or difficulty only gave a keener zest
to the process of achievement. He wanted to marry Lady Cecil Chudleigh,
and he meant to marry her. She might object at first, of course. People
almost always did object to his doing what he wanted to do; but he
always did it. Had not his professional rivals objected to his success,
and banded themselves together to keep him down, and had he not
succeeded in spite of them?
In his native wilds Mr. O'Boyneville might have twirled his shillalah
and screamed horoo! so light were his spirits as he set forth to call
on the lady of his love. In civilised and crowded London he could only
swing his stick loosely in his hand as he strode triumphantly from the
hall of the wasted footsteps; whereby he drew down upon himself the
maledictions of an elderly gentleman whose shins the weapon had smitten
in descending. That the pavements of the metropolis had _not_ been laid
down for his sole accommodation was a side of the question which Mr.
O'Boyneville had never taken the trouble to contemplate.
He had been to Westminster, had heard the opening of a case in which he
was concerned, and had given his brief and whispered his instructions
to Hodger, a painstaking junior, who was very glad to do suit and
service to the great O'Boyneville. The great O'Boyneville's client--a
soap-boiler in Lambeth, who was at war with his parish upon the
question of whether he did or did not consume his own smoke--was by
no means gratified by the substitution, and looked as black as if he
had indeed, in his own proper person, consumed all the smoke of his
furnaces. But the distinguished Irishman strode away from Westminster
heedless of his client's rage. It was very rarely that Laurence
O'Boyneville gave his work to another man. The solicitors who swore by
him told their clients that if O'Boyneville undertook a case, he would
see it through to the very end.
"There never was such a resolute beggar," said a fast young attorney,
who had witnessed one of the Q.C.'s triumphs; "the more desperate a
case is, the sweeter O'Boyneville is upon it. He has all the Hibernian
love of fighting; and if any body says 'Pease,' he's ready to spill his
blood in the cause of 'Beans.' Egad! if there were a Victoria Cross for
desperate valour exhibited in the law courts, Larry O'Boyneville's silk
gown ought to be decorated with it."
But to-day, for the first time in his life, the barrister neglected
his work for his own pleasure. That solemn crisis, which for some
butterfly creatures comes once or twice in every London season, came
to this man for the first time after twenty years of manhood. He was
in love, and he was going to ask the woman he loved to be his wife. He
was going to ask her to marry him--and he had met her on Dr. Molyneux's
staircase--and he had watched her at a dinner-party as she talked to
her aunt's guests! He knew her so little, and yet was eager to win her
for his wife. "Good Heavens!" exclaims Common Sense, "what a fool the
man must be!" And yet for once, dear, simple, straightforward Common
Sense is out of her reckoning; for Laurence O'Boyneville knew Cecil
Chudleigh better than she was known by her most intimate friends. It
was a gift with him, this intuitive knowledge of human character, this
rapid perception of human motive; and it was by the possession of this
gift, quite as much as by his cool audacity of showy eloquence, that
the Irish barrister had made for himself a name and a position. Before
a witness had kissed the Book and answered a preliminary question
or two, Laurence O'Boyneville knew what manner of man the witness
was. Show him the most trumpery photograph that was ever bought for
eighteenpence, and he would penetrate the inmost depths of that man's
mind whose face was dimly shadowed in the smudgy portrait. It was
doubtful if he had ever read Lavater--and yet more doubtful if he had
waded through the big volumes of George Combe; and yet he was in his
own person an unconscious Lavater, and to him the teaching of the
great Combe could have imparted no new wisdom. A man's eyes are not
overshadowed by a bumpy ridge for nothing; and to Laurence O'Boyneville
had been given in excess that wondrous faculty called perception.
He had scrutinised Lady Cecil with eyes that were experienced in
the reading of every expression the human countenance is capable of
assuming. He knew that she was pure, and true, and generous, and
high-minded. A little proud, perhaps, but only just as proud as a good
woman has need to be in a bad world. He knew that she was a prize worth
winning, and he meant to win her. No apprehension of failure troubled
the serenity of his mind. He did not expect to win her all at once. Had
it not cost him fifteen years of hard labour to obtain his silk gown?
and could he expect that Providence would give him this far higher
prize without inflicting on him some interval for the exercise of his
patience--some manner of probationary ordeal for the trial of his faith
and devotion? Mr. O'Boyneville did not believe in that French proverb
which asserts that happiness comes to the sleeper.
"I will serve my seven years' apprenticeship--and my seven years after
that, if necessary--but she shall be my wife before I die," thought
Laurence. But it may be that Mr. O'Boyneville's fourteen years was only
a figurative expression, for he said to himself presently:
"If I play my cards well, we may be married in the long vacation: and
then I'll take my wife to Ireland, and get a glimpse of the Shannon for
the first time these twenty years."
Arrived in Dorset Square, Mr. O'Boyneville did not endanger his
prospects by any untimely modesty. He told the servant who opened the
door that he came by appointment; and when the dowager's own maid
emerged from some dusky back-parlour, whence issued that odour of
heated iron and singed blanket which attends the getting-up of feminine
muslins and laces, he brushed unceremoniously by that prim young
person, and made his way up stairs. Fortune favoured him. She seems but
a craven-spirited divinity, after all, and always places herself on the
side of the audacious. Cecil Chudleigh was sitting at the piano, not
playing, but leaning over the keyboard in a thoughtful attitude, with
her head resting on one hand while the listless fingers of the other
trifled with the leaves of her music-book.
She looked up as the door opened, and her face betrayed any thing but
pleasure as she recognised her visitor. He had prepared her to expect
such an intrusion, but she had not expected him so early, and had
engaged an ally in the person of Florence Crawford, who had promised
to come to her dearest Cecil directly after breakfast. Unfortunately,
Flo's "directly after breakfast" meant any time between ten and two;
and as the dowager rarely made her appearance before luncheon, poor
Cecil had to encounter the great O'Boyneville alone.
But in spite of the special manner in which the popular barrister
had announced his coming, Cecil had no suspicion that the visit
itself was to be of any special nature. No eccentricity could have
surprised her in the wearer of that tight-sleeved frock-coat and those
exploded shirt-collars, in which Mr. O'Boyneville exhibited himself
for the edification of modern society. His solemn announcement of
course only referred to the conventional morning call of the grateful
diner-out--the stamped receipt for an agreeable entertainment. Lady
Cecil was prepared to be a little bored by the eccentric Irishman's
visit, and "there an end."
"I wish Flo had been here to talk to him," she thought wearily; "Flo
could receive a deputation of aldermen, or a Church-commission,
whatever that is."
Mr. O'Boyneville murmured some feeble truism in reference to the
weather. In spite of his audacity--in spite of his calm assurance and
unfaltering faith in ultimate victory--his ease of manner, his popular
swagger, and his ready flow of language abandoned him for the moment
when he found himself in the presence of that unconscious enchantress
who had awakened the soul of a middle-aged barrister from its twenty
years' torpor.
But the paralysis called bashfulness was a very temporary affliction
with Mr. O'Boyneville. Before he had been talking ten minutes to Lady
Cecil, he had drawn his chair close to the piano by which she was
still seated; before he had been talking to her twenty minutes, he had
asked her to be his wife.
She looked at him with a smile of utter incredulity.
"Mr. O'Boyneville," she exclaimed, "you must surely intend this for a
jest! and believe me it is a very foolish one."
"A jest, Lady Cecil! What, don't you know sincerity when you meet with
it? Well, I confess it was foolish of me to come to you like this, and
to tell you I'd fallen over head and ears in love with you, before a
fine gentleman of the modern school would presume to ask you how you
are. But you see, Lady Cecil, I'm not a fine gentleman. For the first
seventeen years of my life I lived amongst people almost as simple and
primitive as those happy savages Columbus found in Hispaniola. For the
last twenty years I have been too hard a worker in my own world to
have any leisure in which to acquire the thoughts and ways of yours.
I never thought that any break would come in the rapid current of my
busy life, but--I suppose there is one fateful hour in every man's
existence. I, who so seldom go to parties, went to Molyneux's ball; I,
who so seldom talk to young ladies, talked to you; and before I turned
the corner of Harley Street that night, my destiny was a settled thing.
'She has come,' said I, 'and she brings my fate in her hand.' To my
mind, Lady Cecil, that which your romance-writer and your poet call
love at sight--'if not an Adam at his birth, he is no love at all;'
and so on--is rather an intuitive consciousness, which a man has in
the hour that brings him face to face with the woman who is to be the
happiness or the misery of his life. I am not going to use high-flown
language, Lady Cecil. Eloquence is my stock-in-trade elsewhere. The
words cannot be too plain in which I tell you that I love you. There is
very little to be said in my favour. I am what people call well off;
but you might reasonably expect to marry a much richer man. I come of
a good old Irish family; but proscription has diminished its lands to
a single farm, and the taint of treason has blotted its name. I am
nearly twenty years your senior, and I have few of the accomplishments
which distinguish the young men of the present day. It is the cause of
the leaden casket which I am pleading, Lady Cecil; and against all the
outward splendour of gold and silver which my rivals can boast, I can
set nothing except the unselfishness of my love, the strength of my
devotion."
Cecil had listened very patiently to this address. She could not
doubt the depth of feeling which was breathed in every accent of the
barrister's voice, subdued and grave in tone, and altogether different
from the sonorous thunder which so often awoke the echoes of the
law-courts. She was touched by his appeal, though it stirred no warmer
feeling than a gentle thrill of womanly pity. It is not in the nature
of a woman to feel unkindly to the lowest of human beings who reveals
to her a pure and noble affection. A Miranda will pardon and pity a
Caliban if his devotion is instinct with the divinity of innocent love.
"Are you really in earnest, Mr. O'Boyneville?" asked Lady Cecil.
"I was never more in earnest in my life."
"I am very sorry for it--I am very sorry," answered Cecil, gently. "I
am sure I need not tell you that I am touched and flattered by your
preference for me, eccentric as it may be; but you must be indeed a
stranger to the society of women if you can imagine that any woman,
knowing as little of you as I do, could reply otherwise than in the
negative to such an offer as you have made me."
"Yes, I dare say it's very absurd," murmured Mr. O'Boyneville,
despondingly; "it's my headlong way of doing things--a national
characteristic, I suppose, Lady Cecil. I ought to have waited a week
or two--till we knew each other--intimately--and then----Would there
have been any hope for me if I had waited a week or two?" asked the
barrister, in that soft insinuating tone to which he had been known
to drop after a burst of loud and lofty declamation, with a sudden
transition of style that had often proved irresistible with an
impressionable jury.
Cecil Chudleigh shook her head gently.
"I might have been less surprised by your flattering proposal, Mr.
O'Boyneville," she said; "but no circumstances could possibly arise
under which I could give you any other answer than that I have given
you to-day.
"And that answer is 'No'?"
"It is, Mr. O'Boyneville."
"Irrevocably no?"
"Irrevocably."
"Lady Cecil, forgive me if I ask you a question. Is there any one--any
one who occupies the place in your heart that it would be my dearest
hope to win for myself? Ah, you don't know how patiently I would bide
my time if there were ever so distant a gleam of sunshine to lure me
on! Is there any one else, Lady Cecil?"
"No, there is no one else."
"Ah, then that's bad indeed," said the Irishman, with a sigh; "if
there'd been any one else, I might have hoped--" Mr. O'Boyneville's
habit of subduing the stolidity of a jury by a happy colloquialism,
when all grandiloquence of language had failed to produce an effect,
very nearly betrayed him into saying, "to punch his head." He pulled
himself up with an effort, and concluded, "I might have hoped to prove
myself the worthier man of the two. But if there is no one, Lady Cecil,
and you say the answer is irrevocable, my doom is sealed. I will
not tell you that I shall die broken-hearted; for in this bustling
nineteenth century men have no time to break their hearts in the
old-fashioned way. They can only overwork their brains and die of some
commonplace heart-disease. The effect of your rejection will be that I
shall work, if any thing, harder than I have been accustomed to work,
and go down to my grave a single man. And now I'll not bore you any
longer, Lady Cecil, and I hope you'll forget that I've talked about any
thing that isn't appropriate conversation for an ordinary morning call."
He held out his hand as frankly as if he had shaken off all sense of
mortification or disappointment. Lady Cecil had received her due share
of matrimonial proposals, and had been accustomed to see a rejected
swain depart with an air of dignified sulkiness. There seemed to be
something almost magnanimous in the Irishman's simple heartiness of
manner. It appeared as if he were rather anxious to relieve Cecil
from any natural embarrassment, than oppressed by a sense of his own
humiliation. She shook hands with him very cordially, and thought
better of him in this moment of parting than she had thought yet. But
she did not make him any conventional speech about her desire to retain
his friendship, or her anxiety respecting his ultimate happiness. She
fancied that his sudden passion was only the folly of an overgrown
schoolboy, and she had little fear of the consequences of her rejection.
"I dare say he falls in love with some one every week of his life, and
passes his existence in making offers that are refused," she thought,
as she sat down to the piano after he had left her.
But even after thinking thus of her departed admirer, Cecil could
not altogether dismiss him from her mind. She might smile at the
remembrance of his folly, but she could not question his sincerity. For
the moment, at least, he had been in earnest. But then it is the nature
of an Irishman to be desperately in earnest about trifles. The arrival
of a bloom-coloured coat from Mr. Filby the tailor seems as great an
event to Goldsmith as the grant of a pension can appear to the calmer
mind of Johnson.
Mr. O'Boyneville walked away from Dorset Square vanquished, but not
disheartened. He had been prepared for a rejection of his suit; but for
him Cecil's irrevocable no was not entirely appalling. His experience
had shown him many a verdict set aside, many a decision appealed
against. And are there not courts of appeal in the kingdom of lovers,
as well as in the vulgar every-day world of lawyers? In spite of what
the barrister had said to Lady Cecil, he had been much relieved by
her assurance that her heart and hand were alike disengaged. He had
affected the resignation of despair, while a glow of hope had gently
warmed his breast; and as he swaggered along the pavement of Baker
Street on the watch for a passing hansom, he had by no means the
appearance of a rejected and desponding lover.
"I dare say she'll think me a fool for my pains, but at any rate she
_will_ think of me, and that's something," mused Mr. O'Boyneville.
"How prettily her eyelids drooped when she gave me her irrevocable
answer--just as if she shrank from seeing the disappointment in my
face! And how good and true and pure she is! There'd be little need
for divorce-courts, and less work for the lawyers, if all women were
like her; and I don't despair of calling her Lady Cecil O'Boyneville
yet. There never was a good woman who wasn't to be won by the love
of an honest man, provided there's no mistake about his love or his
honesty. There's not a day of one's life but one hears of oddly-matched
couples. What could pretty Mrs. Green have seen in that awkward lout
Green? says Gossip. Why, what should she see except that he loved her
better than any other man in creation? And then, if Fate is the master
of men, Circumstance is the tyrant of women. A man may marry the woman
he wishes to marry: a woman can only marry the man who wishes to marry
her."
And at this point the barrister espied an approaching hansom, and
beckoned to the driver.
"I may be in time to see the soap-boiler through his troubles yet," he
thought, as he sprang into the vehicle. "Westminster Hall, cabby, and
lose no time about it."
CHAPTER X.
THE RICH MR. LOBYER.
Before the season was over, Lady Cecil enjoyed the honour of an
introduction to Florence Crawford's wealthy admirer. Mr. Thomas Lobyer,
of Pevenshall Place, Yorkshire, and of the Lobyer Mills in the cotton
country. The dowager and her niece were amongst the Sunday-evening
droppers-in at the Fountains within a week of Mr. O'Boyneville's
declaration; and it was on that occasion that Cecil beheld her friend's
admirer for the first time. The deeply smitten Lobyer had made good
use of the Sunday-evening privilege, and every Sabbath found him
lounging with a lumbering gait and creaking footsteps in the painter's
pretty drawing-rooms, or lurking darkly in the dimmer light of the
conservatories, where he held mysterious converse with the cockatoos.
It was not that he so especially affected the society of cockatoos; but
he was a young man who always seemed restless and uneasy if deprived
of the companionship of some animal. He carried a toy-terrier in his
pocket when he made morning calls, and caressed the miniature brute
stealthily in the frequent pauses of the conversation. He was dull and
embarrassed in the presence of an accomplished young lady, but he got
on admirably with a ferret or a weasel; and there were people who said
he could have made himself at home with a boa-constrictor. The cry of
"Rats!" stirred him with as profound a thrill of emotion as that which
vibrates through the frame of a thoroughbred Dandy Dinmont, or agitates
the bosom of a sharp young bull-terrier.
He was fond of his horses, and still more fond of his dogs; but the
animals he affected were not the mighty natives of Newfoundland or
the noble denizens of Mount St. Bernard. The dogs which Mr. Lobyer
purchased at high prices from crack dog-fanciers were generally
accomplished ratters, and miniature specimens of the bull-dog tribe,
renowned for their tendency to attach themselves to the calves of
unoffending legs, and their high-bred objection to being severed from
their prey.
As the uncertain temper and occasional restlessness of his favourite
terriers rendered it rather dangerous to take them to evening parties,
Mr. Lobyer was always glad to fall back upon the society of any
animal attached to the household in which he visited. He would retire
into a dusky corner, and stir up the inhabitants of an aquarium with
the point of his gold pencil, in the apparent hope of getting up
intimate relations with a jelly-fish. He would beguile the golden
inmates of a crystal globe by tearing up minute fragments of one of
his visiting-cards, and passing them off for such edible morsels as
unwise benevolence offers to gold-fish. His intercourse with the
inferior animals was not necessarily of a friendly order. His hands
were disfigured by the teeth of his dogs, goaded into desperation by
his playful sallies; for it was sometimes his humour to worry the
distinguished ratters very much as the distinguished ratters worried
the rats.
In sorrowful earnest, Mr. Lobyer was not a nice young man. He was
rich; and there were many people who would have been very glad to
think him nice, but who were fain to abandon the attempt, and to
demand tribute of admiration for their favourite on other and loftier
grounds. And this was very easily done. There is no cub so brutish,
no lout so clumsy, uncouth, and insolent, who cannot be made to pass
for a rough diamond. Society--especially represented by matrons with
marriageable daughters--decided that Mr. Lobyer was a rough diamond,
a dear good candid creature, who blurted out every thing he thought.
He was an original character; and his unpolished manners were quite
a relief after the _fade_ graces and courtesies of over-educated
young diplomatists and amateur _littérateurs_. This was what people
said of Mr. Lobyer during the two seasons in which he exhibited
his clumsy figure and his bullet head in the assemblies of second
rate fashion--not the _crême de la crême_, but that excellent milk
from whose surface a very decent layer of cream may be gathered in
a second skimming--and society smiled upon the wealthiest bachelor
from Cottonopolis. He was neither handsome nor clever; he was neither
amiable nor well-bred; but he was the wealthiest available bachelor in
the circles which he adorned.
The gold-worshippers, who saw in Mr. Lobyer the genius of commercial
prosperity, were anxious to make the best of their idol. He had
feminine admirers who called him handsome; he had masculine allies who
declared that he was clever. His features were regular, but cast in
that heavy mould which seems better adapted to a good-looking animal
than a handsome man. He had big brown eyes; but so has a Newfoundland
dog; and the eyes of an intelligent dog possess a beauty of expression
which was utterly wanting in the round Vandyke-brown orbs of Thomas
Lobyer. His complexion was dark and sallow--pale always--but capable
of assuming an unpleasant livid whiteness when he was very angry.
The physiognomists were tolerably unanimous as to the character of
his thick red lips and sloping chin; but the fair denizens of the
western suburbs were equally unanimous in their admiration of his
carefully-trained moustache, and the luxuriant beard amidst which he
was wont to entangle his fingers when temporarily excluded from animal
society.
He dressed well, for he had just sufficient good taste to know that
his taste was bad, and he delivered himself an unreasoning block of
humanity into the hand of the most expensive West-end tailor.
"_I_ don't pretend to know much about the build of the thing," he said,
when complimented on the fashion of a new overcoat; "but my fellow
charges me what he likes, and he gets a cheque for his account by
return of post. So I suppose I'm a good customer."
Mr. Lobyer had a lodging in Jermyn Street--a _pied-à-terre_, he called
it. And it is to be set down to his credit that his French would have
inflicted no outrage on ears accustomed to the pure accents of the
Français. The days are past in which commercial wealth and ignorance
have gone hand in hand.
The _parvenu_ of to-day is generally an elegant and highly-accomplished
gentleman, who has seen every thing that is to be seen, and been
taught every thing that an expensive course of education can teach.
Mr. Lobyer had played cricket with young lordlings on the meads of
Eaton--he had been plucked at Oxford--he had scampered over Europe, and
improved his mind in the society of the crocodiles of the Nile--he had
steeped himself to the lips in the worst dissipations of Paris, and had
given as much pain and anxiety to a very worthy father as can well be
concentrated in the declining years of a parent's life.
There were scandal-mongers in the cotton country who said that Thomas
Lobyer junior had broken the heart of Thomas Lobyer senior. He was an
only son--an only child; and the wealthy manufacturer had beguiled
the dull routine of his business life by a splendid dream during the
years of his son's boyhood. If the boy had been a prince his education
could scarcely have been more carefully supervised, or paid for with
a more lavish hand. But conscientious tutors washed their hands of
the profitable pupil when they found that he was stupid and arrogant,
profligate and hypocritical, and that he was gifted with a bull-dog
obstinacy which rendered all efforts at correction hopeless.
The time came before the death of his father, when there was no
alternative but to let him go his own way.
"I might disinherit you, and leave my money to an hospital," wrote the
old man in the last letter he ever addressed to his son; "and God knows
you have given me enough provocation to do so. But if I could forget
that you are the child of the wife I loved, I should still be deterred
from such a step by the fear of its consequences. If you have done
so badly with all the advantages of wealth, what would become of you
exposed to the temptations of poverty? Your grandfather began life as a
workhouse apprentice--there are plenty of people in Manchester who know
all about him; but there wasn't a man in his native city who wasn't
proud to shake him by the hand, or a woman who didn't point to him as
an example to her sons."
Thomas Lobyer the elder died within a few weeks after the writing of
this epistle; and his son who was giving a charming little dinner to
some distinguished friends in the pavilion of the Hôtel Henri Quatre at
St. Germains, while his father lay dying at Pevenshall, was summoned
homeward by a telegram, and arrived to find himself sole master of
the accumulated fruits of two industrious lives. The young man's
acquaintances and neighbours, his agents and advisers, were loud in his
praises during his brief residence at Pevenshall. It seemed as if the
old story of Prince Henry's reform were going to be acted over again.
Mr. Lobyer detained the lawyer who had made his father's will, and with
that gentleman's assistance he entered into a searching investigation
of his possessions. He, so dull to learn any thing appertaining to the
graces of life,--he, so slow of intellect where the wisdom of sages or
the harmonious numbers of poets were the subject of his study, proved
himself a match for the keenest in all that affected his interests or
touched his pocket. He, who had been so reckless in his extravagance
while drawing on the resources of a generous father, astonished the
family solicitor by the minuteness of his calculations, the sharp
economy which prompted all the changes he made in his dead father's
household, and the calm determination with which he announced that he
should make a rule of only spending a third of his income during his
bachelorhood.
"I don't wonder my father was always growling about _my_ extravagance,
considering the amount of money he contrived to get rid of here,"
said the amiable young man. "Two of the housemaids may go, and two
of the grooms may go. One man will look after half-a-dozen horses in
a livery-stable in London, and keep them in better condition than my
horses are in; and one man can look after half-a-dozen here. I shall
only come down in the hunting-season; and I don't want to pay lazy
hulking fellows for gorging themselves with meat and making themselves
dropsical with beer at my expense; and I don't want to pay young women
for looking out of the windows and talking to them. In the gardens I
shall not make any changes; but I must have an arrangement made with
the fruiterers in the market-town by which the forcing houses may be
made to pay their own expenses. When I marry and come to live here, I
shall double the household, and build a new wing to the stables, for
I like to see plenty of fellows, and horses and dogs, and that kind
of thing, about a place; but for the present we must retrench, Mr.
Gibson,--we must retrench."
Such was Mr. Lobyer. He came to London, and took his place in a
certain circle of London society, with nothing to recommend him but a
reputation for enormous wealth. There were those who remembered him in
Paris, and who knew the manner in which he had completed his education
in that brilliant capital. But if there went abroad the rumour that
the millionaire's youth had been wild and foolish, feminine compassion
and masculine generosity conspired to forget and ignore his early
follies.
From a crowd of beautiful and intellectual women the Manchester man
might have chosen the loveliest, and would have incurred small hazard
of a refusal. There were women who scorned his money as utterly as they
despised himself; but in the drawing-rooms of Tyburnia and Kensingtonia
those women were few and far between. The value of wealth increases
with the growing refinement of taste. The purest attributes of the
human mind--the love of art, the worship of beauty, the keen sense
of grace--combine to render intellectual man the slave of material
prosperity. The gems of ancient art, the work of modern artists, the
thoroughbred hack on which Beauty prances in the Row, the villa on
Streatham Common or the cottage by Strawberry Hill, for whose shelter
the soul of the retiring citizen yearns as the refuge of his declining
age,--all command a higher price every year; and every year the steady
march of intellect advances, and there are more connoisseurs to sigh
for old pictures, more would-be patrons of modern art, more citizens
whose cultivated sense of the beautiful inspires a yearning for villas
on Streatham Common or cottages by Strawberry Hill, more ambitious
middle-class belles who have seen from afar off the prancing of
patrician Beauty's steeds, and who sigh for thoroughbred saddle-horses
of their own.
Mr. Lobyer himself was unattractive; but in Mr. Lobyer's wealth there
lurked the elements of all those costly treasures and refinements that
make life beautiful. He was known to be stupid; and mercenary Beauty,
jumping at a conclusion, decided that he was just the sort of person
to submit himself unresistingly to the management of a wife. Under the
wand of that enchantress, the dull figures in his banking-book might
be transformed into the art-treasures of a second Grosvenor House, the
gardens of a new Chatsworth, the stables of a Lord Stamford, a fairy
boudoir which even the Empress Eugénie might approve, and jewels which
the Duchess of Newcastle might admire and the Duke of Brunswick envy.
This was what portionless Beauty had in her mind when she smiled on Mr.
Lobyer. Rich as he really was, the amount of his riches was doubled
and trebled by the tongue of rumour. And there is really something
interesting in boundless wealth, for its own sake. It is a kind of
power; and there seems to be some slavish attribute inherent in the
breast of man, which prompts him to fawn upon every species of power,
from the physical force of a Ben Caunt to the intellectual supremacy
of a Voltaire. A flavour of Monte Christo hovered about the person
of Thomas Lobyer; and though he had never been known to say any
thing worth listening to, or to do any thing worth recording, he was
interesting nevertheless. The men who had borrowed money from him, or
who thought they might some day have occasion to borrow money of him,
said that there was "a stamp of power about the fellow, you know;" and
there was "something racy even in his cubbishness, you know, for it
isn't every fellow would have the pluck to be such a thoroughbred cub."
There were people who called Mr. Lobyer generous; and there always
will be people who will call the giver of sumptuous dinners a noble
and generous creature. The man who keeps a drag for his own pleasure,
and allows his friends to ride upon the roof of it, is likely to be
considered more or less their patron and benefactor, though their
companionship is as indispensable to his triumph as the slaves who
attend the chariot-wheels of an emperor are necessary to complete the
glory of their master. Mr. Lobyer was as generous as the man who never
stints the cost of his own pleasure; as mean as the man who grudges the
outlay of a sixpence that is not spent for his own gratification.
This was the individual who, after inspiring alternate hope and despair
in unnumbered breasts by the fickleness of his clumsy attentions,
succumbed at last to the piquant charm of Florence Crawford's bright
hair and tiny _retrouseé_ nose.
She was insolent to him, and her insolence charmed him, for it
surprised him, and stirred the dull stagnation of his brain with a
sensation that was like pleasure. She laughed at him; and he, so keen
in his perception of the weaknesses of better men than himself, was
weak enough to think that she alone, of all the women he knew, was
uninfluenced by any consideration of his wealth.
"The girls I meet make as much of me as if I were a sultan, and seem
to be waiting for me to throw my handkerchief amongst 'em," said Mr.
Lobyer. "I like that painter-fellow's girl, because she laughs in my
face, and treats me as if I were a government clerk with a hundred and
fifty pounds a-year. That's the sort of girl I call jolly."
The Sunday-evening visitors at the Fountains were not slow to perceive
Florence Crawford's conquest. She was a coquette of the first water,
and encouraged her loutish admirer by a persistent avoidance of him. If
he hung over her piano, she rattled brilliantly through the shortest of
_valses du salon_, or sang the briefest and crispest of her ballads,
and had risen from the instrument and flitted away before Mr. Lobyer
had made up his mind as to what he should say to her. If he worked
his way to the sofa on which she was seated, or the open window by
which she was standing, the lively Florence immediately became absorbed
in confidential discourse with a feminine visitor, and intensely
unconscious of Mr. Lobyer.
If Florence Crawford--anxious to marry this man for the sake of his
money--had acted on the most profound knowledge of his character,
she could scarcely have played her cards better. A dogged obstinacy
of purpose was the ruling attribute of Thomas Lobyer's mind; and
the coquettish trifling of a schoolgirl aroused that bull-dog
characteristic as it had seldom been aroused before.
Miss Crawford was eager to know what Cecil Chudleigh thought of her
new conquest. She was childish enough to be proud of having made such
a conquest. She was weak enough to be flattered by the admiration of
a man whose sole title to respect was summed up in the figures in his
banking-book.
"What do you think of him, Cecil?" she asked her friend.
"You mean Mr. Lobyer?"
"Yes, of course."
"I don't think he is particularly agreeable, Flory. He seems to me to
be rather stupid and awkward."
"Oh, but he's not stupid. I hear that he has a great deal of
common-sense. He's rather good-looking, isn't he, Cecil?"
"I suppose he would be called so; but I don't admire his face. Oh,
Flory, you surely cannot be interested in my opinion of him?"
"Why shouldn't I be interested in your opinion of him?" Flo echoed,
peevishly. "He is good-looking, and well dressed, and--by no means
stupid. He may be a little clumsy, perhaps; but I have seen heavy
cavalry officers quite as clumsy, and in them clumsiness is considered
_distinguè_. However, I won't talk to you about him any more, Cecil.
You are as romantic as a girl in a novel."
Amongst the witnesses of Miss Crawford's triumph was one in whom the
spectacle inspired despair. Philip Foley, the landscape-painter,
privileged to join the miscellaneous crowd at the Fountains, looked on
from the shadowy corner where he sat unnoticed and little known, and
ground his strong white teeth as he watched the tactics of the coquette
and the hopeless entanglement of the cub. His old friend Sigismund was
near him; but Sigismund Smythe the novelist was better known to fame
than Philip Foley the unsuccessful landscape-painter; and some people
were eager to be introduced to Mr. Smythe, and liked to talk to him for
five minutes or so, after which they were apt to retire disappointed.
"It's no use disguising the fact," the young man said plaintively; "I
do not meet their views, and they don't hesitate to let me know that
I'm a failure. I ought to be dark and swarthy, like Dumas; or tall, and
thin, and wiry, and hook-nosed, and satanic. What would I not give to
Madame Rachel if she would make me diabolical for ever! What recompense
should I think too much for my tailor if he could build me a coat that
would make me look like Mephistopheles! I know a literary man who _is_
like Mephistopheles, and a very handsome fellow he is too; but he
writes essays on political economy, and his demoniac appearance is of
no use to him."
In spite of Mr. Lobyer, poor Philip contrived to speak to Florence
before he left the Fountains.
"So you are going to be married, Miss Crawford?" he said.
"Who told you any thing so absurd?" cried Flo, with a disdainful little
laugh.
"Every body tells me so."
"Then every body is wrong," she answered, with an airy toss of her
head; "and even if every body were not as utterly absurd and incorrect
as a stupid gossiping every body generally is, I don't see what right
you have to catechise me, Mr. Foley."
"No; I forgot my place. I forgot that I was only here on sufferance.
What has an unsuccessful painter in common with the daughter of the
most popular of modern artists? And yet I have heard your father talk
of his probation. I have heard him speak of the day when he went to
Trafalgar Square, in a fever of hope and expectation, to find the
picture he believed in, glimmering through the darkness of the octagon
room, an unmeaning daub of red, and blue, and yellow."
"It is very good of you to remind me that papa was once a pauper,"
answered Florence haughtily; and before Philip could say any thing
more, she had turned away from him to shake hands with some of her
departing guests.
After this the young man watched in vain for any opportunity of
addressing Florence Crawford. He saw the rooms grow empty, and waited
with the dogged determination of outstaying the cub; but the cub made
no sign of departure, though the last of the other guests had vanished,
and though Flo, who sat in a listless attitude beside a stand of
engravings, and yawned audibly more than once. The prince of the cotton
country stood by her side, stolid and unabashed, pretending to be
interested in the engravings, which she turned with careless hands, and
glaring at Mr. Foley in the intervals of his conversation.
Florence yawned for the third time, and more audibly than before. Mr.
Crawford, who had been walking up and down the room, with his hands
in his pockets, staring absently at the pictures, and stopping before
one of them every now and then to meditate, with bent head and moody
brow roused himself suddenly from his reverie, and looked from the
little group by the open portfolio to the spot where Philip Foley stood
leaning against a low marble chimneypiece, glum and dejected of aspect.
"Come, young men," said the painter; "my daughter seems tired, so
you had better bid her good-night, and come and smoke a cigar in my
painting-room."
Florence rose and made a curtsey, which included both her admirers; but
she did not seem to perceive Mr. Lobyer's out-stretched hand, nor did
she deign to reward Philip for the _empressement_ with which he flew
to open the door for her as she passed out of the room. But when she
was alone in her own room, sitting before her pretty dressing-table,
and looking at herself dreamily in the glass as she removed the slender
golden necklace and glittering locket from her neck, it was of Philip
and not of Mr. Lobyer that she thought.
"What a nice fellow he would be if he were rich!" she said to herself.
"How frank and brave he is! I never like him so much as when he is
uncivil to me. And if I were quite a different sort of girl, I can
fancy that it would be very nice to marry him, and live in lodgings,
and take an interest in his painting. But what would become of me
if I were to marry such a man?--I, who haven't the faintest idea of
a pudding, and never could sew a button on one of my muslin sleeves
without spoiling half-a-dozen needles, and making myself like a
murderer with blood. I never could marry a poor man after the things
I've said. I can fancy how Lucy Chamberlayne, and those Verner girls,
and Mary Masters, and all the girls who know me, would laugh. No, the
day is past for that sort of thing: and as my heart is so free that
I don't even know whether I've got a heart, and as Mr. Lobyer is by
no means bad-looking, and as papa seems to like him--or, at any rate,
doesn't seem to dislike him,--I suppose it is my fate to be mistress of
Pevenshall."
CHAPTER XI.
AT NASEDALE.
Mr. Horatio Mountjoy, the Anglo-Indian judge for whom Mrs.
MacClaverhouse had made her little dinner, had been one of the departed
general's most intimate friends, and having now returned to England to
pass the rest of his days in peaceful retirement, was anxious to show
all possible kindness to the general's widow.
He had bought an estate in Surrey since his return,--a charming old
mansion of the Queen Anne period, with prim gardens of the Dutch
school, a noble park, and a home-farm large enough to admit all the
experiments of an amateur agriculturist, but not so extensive as to
swamp the experimentalist's fortune. It was to this pleasant retreat
that Mr. Mountjoy invited his old friend's widow and her niece.
"We are to have a very nice party," wrote the judge's wife; "and
Horatio begs me to tell you that we shall expect _you_ and dear Lady
Cecil to stay till Christmas--even if our other friends grow tired of
us, and run away before then. I thought your niece was looking pale and
ill; but the breezes from the Surrey hills will set her up for next
season."
"Now that's what I call hospitality!" exclaimed Mrs. MacClaverhouse;
"but Mr. Mountjoy always was so magnificent in his way of doing things.
'That man has a regal mind,' I used to say to my husband, after one of
the Mountjoys' Calcutta dinner-parties. And she's a good warm-hearted
soul, though there's not much in her. There's nothing pays so well
as a long visit, Cecil; and if the Mountjoys press us to stay till
Christmas, I shall stay; for skipping about from one house to another
eats into so much money in the way of travelling-expenses and servants'
fees, that you might almost as well stop at home."
Cecil could only acquiesce in her aunt's arrangement. What was she
but the handmaiden of her kindly protectress, bound to go wherever
the lively dowager chose to take her, and to be pleased and merry at
the will of others? She was very tired of her life. Driving through
pleasant suburbs in the phantom chariot, she looked with sad yearning
eyes at tiny cottages, enshrined in tiny gardens, and thought how
simple and placid existence might be in such modest habitations.
"What happiness to be one's own mistress!" she thought, "never to be
obliged to smile when one is sad, or talk and laugh for the pleasure of
other people. If my poor father had left me a hundred a-year I might
have lived in such a cottage, with my books and piano, and a few birds
and flowers. I might have been good to the poor, even; for it is so
easy for poor people to help one another. I envy the dowdiest old maid
who ever eked out her tiny income. I envy any one and every one who can
live their own lives."
But after indulging in such thoughts as these Cecil felt ashamed of
the ingratitude involved in her mute repinings. Was not her kinswoman
good and affectionate after her own sharp fashion? and was it not
the dependant's duty to be pleased and satisfied with the home that
sheltered her? Even if there was some sacrifice of freedom demanded
from her, Cecil could have made that sacrifice without complaining,
if the dowager would only have let her alone. But to refrain from
interference with the business of other people was just one of those
things which Mrs. MacClaverhouse could not do. She had set her heart
upon her niece making a good marriage, and to that end she kept watch
upon every eligible bachelor who came within her ken.
It was in vain that Cecil protested against any thing like matrimonial
scheming in her behalf. The dowager did not hesitate to remind her of
the dull dead level of poverty that lay before her in the future.
"Do you happen to remember that my pension dies with me Lady Cecil,"
she demanded angrily, "and that I have only a wretched pittance and a
collection of obsolete Indian trumpery to leave you? So long as I live
you will be able to keep afloat somehow in society; but I should like
to know what will become of you when I am gone? You turn up your nose
at my managing ways; but it is only by management that I have contrived
to keep my head above water, and have my own carriage to ride in, and
my own maid to travel with me. As for you, you are no more of a manager
than one of those Indian idols; and a landlady who wouldn't dare to
take half a glass of wine out of the cellaret or a spoonful of tea
out of the caddy while I am alive, would pilfer you out of house and
home before I'd been in my grave a month. It's all very well to talk
about not wishing to marry, and being happy alone with your books and
piano, and so forth; but you're not the stuff old maids are made of,
Lady Cecil. The girls of the present day are not brought up to make old
maids. They are like the houses that the cheap builders run up, that
are made to sell, and not to last. The girls of the present day are
delightful creatures, but they are brought up to marry rich men and
live in fine houses, and be imposed upon by their servants. I pity the
children of the rising generation, for they will have no maiden aunts
to spoil them."
Mrs. MacClaverhouse had been shrewd enough to perceive the impression
made on Mr. O'Boyneville by her niece's attractions. She knew that the
barrister was rich--and, indeed, had sounded Mr. Crawford as to his
probable income, which was of course exaggerated by the painter, who
accepted the popular report of the lawyer's gains without that grain
of salt with which all such reports should be taken. On questioning
Cecil very closely respecting Mr. O'Boyneville's call, the dowager had
speedily perceived that something special had distinguished it from
common visits.
"He asked my permission to call," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse; "and he
said quite enough to convince me that he had fallen over head and ears
in love with you. It's my opinion he came to make you an offer of
marriage; and that's why I kept out of the way. But, bless my heart and
soul! I needn't have taken the trouble--for of course you refused him;
though I am told his income is little short of four thousand a-year.
You are bent upon dying a homeless pauper, and all I hope is that
they'll have improved the casual wards of the unions before your time."
Cecil tried to parry Mrs. MacClaverhouse's attack, but the elder lady
was past mistress of the polite art of conversational fencing, and she
did not abandon the assault until her niece had unwillingly confessed
the secret of Mr. O'Boyneville's visit.
"And you refused him!" shrieked the indignant dowager. "That's what I
call flying in the face of Providence. This is the second chance you've
had within two years, Lady Cecil Chudleigh, and I hope I may live to
wish you joy of the third; but I freely confess I don't expect to do
so."
This sort of expostulation is by no means pleasant to hear, and poor
Cecil had to listen patiently to much harping on the same string. She
was familiar with every variation which such a theme can undergo in the
hands of a skilful composer,--the minor wailings and lamentations, the
brilliant crescendos of feminine mockery, the bass grumblings and sharp
forte passages of anger, the peevish rallentandos and diminuendos. The
unhappy girl bore it all, but she suffered acutely.
The change to Nasedale did not set her free from her aunt's lectures;
for considerate Mrs. Mountjoy allotted two charming bed-rooms, with a
pretty sitting-room between them, to the two ladies; and here, on rainy
days, Cecil enjoyed a great deal of her aunt's society.
"I don't want to detain you here if you'd rather be in the
billiard-room, or making yourself sticky with _décalcomanie_ amongst
those frivolous girls in the drawing-room. What regiments of girls
there are in the world! and what in goodness' name is to become of them
all, I wonder!" exclaimed the dowager, parenthetically. "As to the
men the Mountjoys have collected, I never saw so many married fogies
gathered together in one house; and the way they stuff themselves at
luncheon is something dreadful. Tiffin, indeed! I'd tiffin them if
they were my visitors. A glass of dry sherry at thirty-five shillings
a dozen and a picnic biscuit is all they'd get between breakfast and
dinner from me."
But Nasedale was a very pleasant place, in spite of the elderly fogies
who over-ate themselves at luncheon, and the frivolous young ladies who
devoted themselves to the decoration of cups and saucers that wouldn't
bear washing, and dessert plates the painted splendours of which rarely
survived the ordeal of preserved ginger or guava jelly.
Hospitality reigned supreme in the comfortable mansion. People did as
they liked. The scenery for twenty miles round was superb; and if Mr.
Mountjoy was not quite so magnificent as the nabob who ordered "more
curricles," the Nasedale stables supplied plenty of horses, and the
Nasedale coach-houses contained every variety of modern vehicle for the
accommodation of the visitors, from the omnibus which took the servants
to church or the ladies to a county ball, to the miniature Croydon
basket-chaise and the deliciously stumpy little pony, which the most
timid of the décalcomaniacs was scarcely afraid to drive.
After returning from a hurried run up to town, the judge astonished
the dowager, and considerably disconcerted Cecil, by exclaiming in the
middle of dinner:
"Oh, by-the-bye, Mrs. MacClaverhouse, I met your friend O'Boyneville in
Lincoln's Inn to-day, and I asked him if he could run down for a day or
two. He seems to be full of business; but when he heard you were down
here, he evidently felt inclined to come. Not very flattering to me,
you'll say. I told him of our archery-meeting on the twentieth, and he
said, 'If it's possible, I'll be down in time for the archery-meeting;
but it's about as nearly impossible as any thing human can be.'"
Lady Cecil breathed more freely. She dreaded the appearance of her
rejected suitor, and the friendly persecution to which his coming would
inevitably expose her. But when the two ladies retired to their room
that night, the dowager cried triumphantly:
"If Mr. O'Boyneville is as much in earnest as I think he is, he'll come
to the archery-meeting, Cecil; and I do hope, if he renews his offer,
you'll be wise enough to accept it."
The archery-meeting of which the judge had spoken was to be a very
grand affair, and the young ladies at Nasedale had made their fingers
sore and their shoulders weary with the twanging of bows. The meeting
was to take place on a noble plateau, at the top of the noblest range
of hills in all Surrey; and all the fun of a picnic was to be combined
with the excitement of a toxophilite contest.
"We might have had our archery-meeting in the park," said the judge,
when he explained to his guests the arrangements he had made for
their pleasure; "but to my mind half the fun of these things is in
the going and returning. The officers of the 14th are to drive over
from Burtonslowe to meet us; and I've invited all sorts of people from
town. I won't say any thing about the two prizes I selected at Hunt and
Roskell's this morning; but I hope my taste will please the ladies who
win them."
Cecil did not affect the twanging of bows, and was content to remain
amongst the young ladies who, after vainly endeavouring to hit the
bull's-eye, and losing their arrows in distant brushwood, without
having so much as grazed the outermost edge of the target, retired from
the contest, and declared that there was nothing so very exciting in
archery after all, and that croquet was twenty times better. Amongst
these milder spirits Cecil beguiled the fine summer afternoons with
that gentle tapping of wooden-balls, and liberal display of high-heeled
boots, which is the favourite dissipation of modern damsels; and thus,
amid quiet pleasures, with a good deal of riding and driving, and
novel-reading and billiard-playing, and much good eating and drinking,
time glided by at Nasedale until the nineteenth, and as yet there were
no signs of the Queen's Counsel.
"If O'Boyneville had meant to be amongst us to-morrow he'd have made
his appearance by this time," said the judge in the course of dinner.
"He knows we start early to-morrow morning."
"I can't fancy O'Boyneville at a picnic," said a listless young
gentleman who was amongst the new arrivals. "I can't fancy him any
where except in the law courts. One sometimes meets him at men's
dinners, but he never seems to enjoy himself unless he can talk _shop_,
and he looks at the other fellows as if he'd like to cross-examine
them."
The usual meanderings on the terrace outside the drawing-room windows,
with which the younger members of the Nasedale party were wont to
beguile the warm summer evenings, were impossible to-night, for at
nine o'clock a violent clap of thunder shook the roofs and chimneys of
the old mansion, and pretty little feminine shriekings and screechings
fluttered the tranquillity of the party. The young ladies who were not
afraid of the lightning made a merit of not being afraid; and the young
ladies who were afraid made a merit of being horribly frightened, and
shivered and started in the most bewitching manner at sight of every
flash. And one young lady who had written a volume of poetry, in which
a weak solution of L. E. L. was artfully intermingled with a still
weaker solution of Mrs. Browning, stood before a window and exclaimed
about the grandeur and sublimity of the spectacle.
Cecil, sitting quietly at work under a reading-lamp, was rather
rejoiced when she heard the violent downpour of rain which succeeded
the storm.
"Mr. O'Boyneville will scarcely come to-night, at any rate," she
thought.
There was a great deal of lamentation about the rain, and considerable
discussion as to whether it augured ill or well for the morrow. It was
a blessing to get the storm over. But then the grass would be damp,
most likely, and so on. The young ladies thought of their delicate
boots, their dainty dresses.
"My hat cost two guineas and a half," murmured one damsel to a
sympathising confidante. "A ruche of peacock's feathers, you know,
dear; and the sweetest mother-of-pearl butterfly, and a tiny, tiny
green-chenille bird's-nest, with three gold eggs in it, at the
side--and one shower of rain would utterly spoil it."
The rain came thicker and faster. Nothing short of a hurricane would
serve to dry the grass after such a storm. But Cecil did not think of
the picnic; she only congratulated herself upon the improbability that
Mr. O'Boyneville would care to travel in such weather.
"No chance of O'Boyneville," said Mr. Mountjoy, as he stood before
the fire which he had ordered to be lighted since the advent of the
rain. "I told him to write and announce his coming, so that I might
send a vehicle over to the station to meet him. It's a ten-mile drive,
you know, and there's very seldom so much as a fly to be had at that
miserable little station. However, the last London post is in, and
there's no letter from O'Boyneville."
The pattering of the rain against the windows made itself heard in
every pause of the conversation, and the noise of the pelting drops
grew louder every moment. Cecil was still bending quietly over her work
in a cosy corner near the angle of the wide velvet-covered mantelpiece,
and the judge's guests had gathered in a circle about the cheery fire,
when the bell of the great hall-door rang loudly.
"Who the deuce can that be, at this time of night, and at this time of
such a night?" cried Mr. Mountjoy.
"Whoever he is, he is the owner of a tolerably strong arm, and he knows
how to make his arrival public," said one of the listless visitors.
The drawing-room opened out of the hall; and in the silence that
followed the clamour of the bell, Mr. Mountjoy and his visitors heard
the opening of the ponderous door, the rapid accents of a sonorous
bass voice asking questions, and a fluttering sound which resembled
the noise made by an enormous Newfoundland-dog who shakes himself dry
after emerging from the water.
There was a pause of some ten minutes, and then the drawing-room door
was thrown open, and the servant announced:
"Mr. O'Boyneville."
"I thought as much," said the dowager in an undertone, which was
intended only for the ear of her niece.
The barrister made his appearance, a little damp and weather-stained,
in spite of the hurried toilet he had made since entering the house,
but with the freshness of the open air upon him, and the aspect of a
man whose heart is aglow with triumph. He received the cordial welcome
of his host, shook hands with the people he knew, offered a big cold
paw to Cecil as coolly as if there had been nothing out of the common
in their last parting, showed his white teeth, laughed at nothing
particular till every crystal drop in the old-fashioned chandelier
shivered and trembled, and, in short, made more noise in five minutes
than the rest of the party had made in the whole of the evening.
"Yes, it certainly isn't the nicest weather for travelling," he said,
in reply to his host's eager inquiries; but you see I said I'd come
if it was possible; and here I am. I was on a committee in Victoria
Street at half-past five; took a hansom, and told the man to drive to
Brunswick Square like wildfire; packed my portmanteau and put on my
dress-coat while the man waited; drove to the Oriental Club, and left
my portmanteau with the porter while I dined with the Governor-General
of Seringapatam; rose from the table at a quarter before nine, borrowed
a railway rug from one of the waiters, and caught the nine-o'clock
train at Waterloo; found myself an hour after at a little station where
there was one deaf porter, and no vehicle of any description whatever;
held considerable difficulty in getting any thing at all out of the
deaf porter; but finally extracted the pleasing intelligence that
Nasedale was a good ten miles, and that, barring John Cole's own bay
mare at the Pig and Whistle, there wasn't an animal of any kind to be
had within a mile and a half. Of course, after hearing this, the best
thing was to get John Cole's bay mare; and fine work I had with John
Cole before he would let me have the beast, which he keeps for his own
pleasure and convenience, and which has never been ridden or driven
by man or boy except himself since he bought her at Barnet Fair, six
years come next October. However, when he saw that I meant to have
the animal whether he liked it or not, and when he heard where I was
coming, he made a virtue of necessity, and brought her out--and here
I am: and I think, my dear Mountjoy, of all the Lanes I ever had the
pleasure of beholding, the lanes between this place and the station
are the muddiest; and of all the rain that ever reduced the civilised
universe to pulp and slop, the rain I came through to-night has been the
heaviest."
After this Mr. O'Boyneville took possession of the company, as it was
his wont to take possession of any assemblage in which he happened to
find himself. He went into society very rarely, and the laws of society
had very little restraint for him. He could talk well, and he knew
that he could talk well. The necessities of his professional career
had obliged him to possess himself of a superficial knowledge of every
subject, and some smattering of almost every science. A native audacity
did the rest; and a frank _bonhomie_ of manner, a slap-dash mode of
expression, which was too original to be vulgar, won the suffrages of
people who would have tabooed a smaller man for lesser sins against
conventionality than those which were permitted in Mr. O'Boyneville.
He talked well, and like most good talkers, he very often talked
nonsense; for the man who weighs his sentences before he utters them,
who pauses to consider the force of an argument before he launches
it, is rarely a brilliant conversationalist. And sometimes it seems
as if the brightest creatures of the brain are those ephemeral and
unconsidered trifles which a man utters haphazard in the heat of
argument or the abandonment of purposeless small-talk. Posterity values
Samuel Johnson rather for the happy sayings of a convivial evening
than for the ponderous polysyllables of his most carefully considered
compositions.
A silver salver, bearing a monster tankard of mulled claret, was
brought into the drawing-room before the assembly dispersed; and in the
diversion afforded by the handing about of the wine, Mr. O'Boyneville
contrived to seat himself between Cecil and her aunt; and after
artfully conciliating the elder lady, he drew his chair near to the
little table by which the younger sat absorbed in her work.
"You don't know what difficulty I had to get here to-night, Lady
Cecil," he said; "and it was only because you are here that I came."
"Then I am very sorry you should have come," answered Cecil gravely.
"Are you still so hard-hearted?"
"Mr. O'Boyneville! Is it a gentlemanly act to follow me here, where I
have no power to avoid you, and to talk to me in this manner? If you
come here for your own pleasure, to make one of an agreeable party, I
am as happy to see you as any one else in this house can be. But if you
come here to persecute me by attentions which are as ungentlemanly as
they are foolish, I shall beg my aunt to take me away from this house
to-morrow morning."
The barrister looked at her pale proud face with an expression of
profound sorrow.
"That will do, Lady Cecil," he said; "that is quite enough. I thought
what you said the other day might mean only a lady's negative. I
thought I was too abrupt--that I surprised and offended you by my way
of plunging into the subject, and so on. But I see now that I was
mistaken. Good-night, Lady Cecil; I shall never offend you again."
He held out his hand, but he scarcely clasped her slender fingers as
they rested for one brief moment in his expansive palm. The sadness in
his voice, the sorrowful expression of his face had touched her, and
she felt the natural womanly desire to heal the wounds she herself had
inflicted. But before she could think of any thing to say which should
in some degree console the Irishman's wounded feelings, yet in no
manner embolden him to renew his attack, Mr. O'Boyneville had left her,
and was bidding his host good-night.
Lady Cecil had to endure a lecture from her aunt before she shut
herself in her own room that night; and when she went to bed it was to
think compassionately of the Irish barrister's sorrow.
And while she pitied him, Mr. O'Boyneville settled himself complacently
to his placid slumber, and mused upon the evening's adventures as he
fell asleep.
"You are very haughty and you're very resolute; but you'll marry me
sooner or later, for all that, my bright Cecil, my beautiful Cecil. It
isn't possible for a man to be as much in earnest as I am, and yet wind
up by making a failure."
CHAPTER XII.
MR. O'BOYNEVILLE'S MOTION FOR A NEW TRIAL.
The Nasedale picnic, or the Nasedale archery-meeting, was a success;
but it may be that the noble supply of sparkling wines, the gorgeous
banquet of delicate viands, set forth under a spacious marquee,
contributed as much as the excitement of the toxophilite contest to the
gaiety of the day. Mr. O'Boyneville forgot his profession, and behaved
as if he had spent the greater part of his existence at toxophilite
meetings and picnics. Cecil heard more than one young lady declare
that the Irishman was the life of the party, and she had reason to be
grateful to him for his delicate avoidance of her; even though her good
taste might compel her to condemn his too obvious flirtation with more
than one fair damsel in Lincoln green.
But if Cecil was glad to be released from the attentions of the
Queen's Counsel, Cecil's aunt was by no means pleased with the altered
aspect of affairs. She glowered upon the unconscious O'Boyneville from
the distance whence she watched his proceedings, and was snappishly
disposed towards the young ladies with whom he had flirted whenever
they happened to cross her path. Once only in the course of the day had
she any opportunity of addressing her niece confidentially, and then
her manner assumed its bitterest shade.
"I hope you are satisfied _now_, Lady Cecil Chudleigh," she said.
And at night, when the long day's festivity and flirtation, and archery
and croquet, and dust and sunshine, had at length come to a close, Mrs.
MacClaverhouse was eager to attack her dependant. But Cecil stopped her
at the first word.
"Pray do not say any more about this business, auntie," she said, in a
quiet resolute tone. "If you are angry with me because I am unwilling
to marry Mr. O'Boyneville, whom you wish me to marry only because he
is rich, I must submit to your anger, and leave you. I will not stop
with you to be persecuted upon such a subject; and if I have displeased
you, I can only thank you for all your past goodness to me and bid you
good-bye."
If people ever said "Hoity-toity!" Mrs. MacClaverhouse was just in
the humour to have indulged in such an ejaculation. But she contented
herself with exclaiming,
"Well, I'm sure! The young women of the present day fly in a passion if
you venture to say an unpleasant word to them. The world is moving on
at a nice pace, upon my word. I wonder what the children of the rising
generation will be like, and how _they'll_ treat their mothers and
aunts. I suppose they'll take the story of the Grecian daughter out of
_those_ children's story-books, and supply its place with 'The Obedient
Father,' or 'The Dutiful Grandmother,' or 'Parental Submission,' or
something of that kind. You may go to bed, Lady Cecil; and since you
are bent upon ending your days as an indoor pauper, you must go your
own way, and I wash my hands of all responsibility."
The dowager carried matters with a high hand, but Cecil had vanquished
her nevertheless; and though Mr. O'Boyneville had left Nasedale before
the family met at the breakfast-table, Mrs. MacClaverhouse forbore to
bewail his departure in her niece's presence. He had gone; but when his
circuit work was over he came back again, and made himself a favourite
with all the household. He had his own little study, and he had some
of the judge's law-books carried thither for his use. He spent three
or four hours every morning in hard work; and for the rest of the
day was the life of the party, talking, arguing, disputing, putting
down listless visitors, and laughing his great haw-haw laugh at their
discomfiture; cross-examining pretentious talkers, and bringing them
to shame; flattering frivolous matrons, expounding great political
theories with much flourishing of his white hands, delighting the
Anglo-Indian judge by respectful attention to his anecdotes, offending
and pleasing people a hundred times a day, and making himself the
principal figure in every group, his voice the ruling voice in every
discussion.
And in all this time Lady Cecil had no reason to complain of his
presence. He was true to the quiet tone of resignation with which he
had received her reproof on the first night of his coming to Nasedale.
If he addressed her now, it was as nearly in the ordinary tone of
polite society as was possible to this rough diamond of the British
law-courts. Nor did he in any special manner seek her society. Mrs.
MacClaverhouse sniffed ominously as she watched the eligible bachelor's
attentions to other young ladies, while Cecil sat unnoticed and
apparently forgotten by her late admirer. But the dowager refrained
from remonstrance, and only allowed stray allusions to the horrors of
genteel pauperism, and the miserable destiny of the unprotected female,
to crop up now and then in her confidential talk with her niece.
And Cecil was satisfied. She had subdued her aunt, and had freed
herself from the unwelcome attentions of an audacious adorer. She was
inclined to feel kindly disposed towards Mr. O'Boyneville now that he
no longer presented himself before her in the absurd position of a
lover. She was able to appreciate his cleverness now that her aunt no
longer harped upon the amount of his income. She owned to herself that
many a girl in her position would have been glad to accept the hand and
heart of this stalwart, good-looking, loud-voiced Irishman. She grew
accustomed to his noisy laugh, his boisterous gaiety, his energetic
declamation. His animal spirits in this rare holiday time made him as
boisterous as an overgrown schoolboy; and there is always something
pleasant in the fresh joyousness of a schoolboy in the abstract,
however obnoxious that member of society may make himself in the
concrete. Lady Cecil, who had begun by thinking Lauren O'Boyneville
the most unpleasant of men, came to consider him as a person whose
friendship at least was worth possessing.
He had spent a week at Nasedale, talking every morning of leaving
before night, and lingering day after day until the week was out! But
at last he announced his departure so positively, that to have changed
his mind after such an announcement would have been a weakness unworthy
a man of business. A vacancy had arisen in a certain northern borough,
and some of Mr. O'Boyneville's friends had persuaded him to allow
himself to be put in nomination. To linger longer in that garden of
Armida called Nasedale would be to endanger this new ambition. Every
body was loud in lamentation of his departure, with the exception of
those younger and more superciliously indifferent gentlemen whom he
had made a point of annihilating once or twice in the course of every
evening.
The feminine portion of the community was not behind-hand in the
expression of regret. The young ladies declared they should miss
Mr. O'Boyneville "terribly," "awfully;" one rather fast young lady
went so far as to say "disgustingly." Had he not appointed himself
the umpire of their toxophilite matches? Had he not learned the
whole art of croquet in half an hour, and then insisted on playing
after a fashion of his own, whereby he had split a dozen or so of
walnut-wood balls in a week? Had he not thrown them into convulsions
of laughter one evening by conducting a mock trial of a case of breach
of promise,--the broken pledge being that of a botanically-disposed
young gentleman who had promised to go out for a woodland ramble
with three botanically-disposed young ladies, and had gone partridge
shooting instead? Was he not the most delightful middle-aged creature
in existence?--and not so dreadfully middle-aged either, for he could
scarcely be forty--and what is forty, but the prime of life, the
meridian of intellectual splendour?
To such discourse as this Cecil had to listen during the rainy morning
which succeeded Mr. O'Boyneville's departure. The feminine assembly in
the pretty old-fashioned painted drawing-room enlivened the labours of
_décalcomanie_ and Berlin wool-work with their praises of the departed
barrister.
The matrons were as enthusiastic as their daughters. Of all partners
at whist there was no one they had ever met so invincible as Mr.
O'Boyneville, although he had declared that he had not handled a card
since his boyhood; and then he was so unlike the young men who call a
middle-aged lady "a venerable party," and a sober married man a "dozy
old bird." And then--and then--and then--there seemed no end to the
feminine laudation of Laurence O'Boyneville. Only two ladies in that
assembly were silent, and those two were Cecil Chudleigh and Mrs.
MacClaverhouse. But an occasional impatient sniff from the dowager gave
evidence of her state of mind.
He was gone, and every one was loud in his praise. He was gone; and
though Cecil Chudleigh had only been accustomed to his presence within
the last six or seven days, the place seemed to her just a little dull
and empty without him, and she was fain to confess to herself that
she as well as the others missed the sound of his sonorous voice, the
gaiety of his boisterous laugh.
And from thinking of the departed Queen's Counsel, she went on, by some
indefinable train of thought, to pondering upon the dull blank life of
spinsterhood and poverty that lay before her; to muse a little sadly
upon the text of all her aunt's sermons--her lonely helplessness, her
penniless dependence. The present was well enough so long as it lasted.
She was happy, or at any rate, content, even though the dowager's
temper grew sharper, and the dowager's tongue more bitter, every day.
She was resigned to the prospect of alternating between Dorset Square
and watering-places and other people's houses for the rest of her life.
But there were times when her pride revolted against the whole scheme
of her existence, and a vision of the future arose before her, blank
and terrible. She was such an unnecessary creature, such a mere waif
and stray, to be drifted hither and thither on every tide which carried
her kinswoman; a lady's-maid without a lady's-maid's wages; a slave
without a slave's apathy.
"Perhaps my aunt is right after all," she thought, bitterly, "and I
have been foolish to throw away any chance that would have given me
release from such an existence."
The day was wet, and dull, and miserable; the sort of day so
harmoniously described in Mr. Longfellow's poem. The dead leaves fell
from the dripping trees in the park, and the splash of the rain upon
the terrace made a monotonous accompaniment to conversation. The
gentlemen of the household had defied Jupiter Pluvius, and had set off
at early morning, provided with water-proof garments and the clumpiest
of shooting-boots, to wage war upon innocent young partridges in
stubble and turnip-field. But they came home at three; and after a
tremendous luncheon and a careful toilet, presented themselves in the
drawing-room, where they proposed an immediate adjournment for a game
of billiards.
The young ladies were delighted to accept the invitation. Two or three
good-natured matrons consented to join the party; while less vivacious
dames discovered suddenly that they had important letters to write
in their own rooms, which important correspondence was popularly
supposed to be the ladylike excuse for an after-luncheon nap. Mrs.
MacClaverhouse was among the matrons who retired to her apartment.
"I suppose you'll come up stairs to have some tea at six, Lady Cecil,"
she said to her niece, whom she had addressed in this ceremonious
manner throughout the visit of Mr. O'Boyneville.
"But you'll come and play, Lady Cecil?" cried one of the young ladies.
"No, thank you, dear; I, too, have got some letters to write."
"I don't believe a bit in people's letters!" exclaimed the impetuous
young damsel. "Letter-writing in country-houses is nothing but an
excuse for being unsociable;--isn't it, dear Mrs. Mountjoy? If I were
you I'd put up an inscription over my hall-door: 'No letters to be
written on any pretence whatever.' I would do away with the post-bag,
and oblige my visitors to correspond with friends at a distance by
electric telegraph.'"
After which the lively damsel skipped off with her arm encircling
her dear Mrs. Mountjoy's waist, and Cecil found herself alone in the
drawing-room.
Of course she had letters to write--if she found herself equal to the
labour of writing them. Where is the civilised being who can honestly
declare that he or she has wronged no man in the matter of neglected
correspondence? Cecil was deeply in debt to half-a-dozen lively friends
who wrote her long descriptions of the places where they were staying,
and were eager to receive her account of the place where she was
staying, and the people whom she met there. She was in debt to Flo, who
sent her voluminous epistles from Brighton, with pen-and-ink sketches
of eccentric costumes to be seen on the King's Road, and caricatures
of Mr. Lobyer in divers attitudes. He passed the greater part of his
existence on the Brighton Railway, Flo told her friend. "And if the
Brighton line were not the best in England, the unhappy being would be
reduced to a state of imbecility by the effects of railway-travelling,"
added Miss Crawford.
Cecil meant to write her letters before the first dinner-bell rang;
but when the billiard-players had left her, she sank into a luxurious
easy-chair by the fire, and sat looking dreamily at the red coals. She
was in one of those melancholy moods which come upon a woman sometimes
without any tangible reason, but which are not the less sad because
their sadness is vague and intangible. For the moment she abandoned
herself utterly to sorrowful musings. The past--that shadowy past
which always comes back to the gayest of us with a sorrowful aspect,
returned to Cecil as she brooded over the low, neglected fire. Her
father, her mother--the loved and lost--whose faces had once made
the sole brightness of her life, looked at her once more out of the
shadows. She thought of what her life might have been if her father's
fortune had never been wasted. Before her sad eyes arose the picture
of the home that might have been hers if her only brother had lived to
mend his wild ways and hold his own among honest men.
"I should never have felt this bitter sense of loneliness if my brother
had been my protector," she thought. "There is something in my aunt's
kindness--even when she is most kind--that reminds me how little right
I have to her love or protection."
Abandoned to such melancholy thoughts as these, Cecil kept little note
of the progress of time. A servant came into the room to replenish
the fire, but his coming and going did not arouse her from her sombre
reverie. The dull afternoon sky grew duller, and her thoughts grew
sadder as the sky darkened. A bell rang, but she took no heed of its
ringing. What was it to her who came or went? In the utter solitude of
her life there was no room for care, for there was no one upon earth
except her aunt whose fate was in any way involved with her own. She
heard a rapid footstep in the hall, a hand turning the handle of the
door, and she shrugged her shoulders impatiently, knowing that she
would have to put aside her sorrowful thoughts, to smile upon the
intruder.
She looked up as the door opened, and it was with unmitigated
astonishment that she beheld Laurence O'Boyneville.
"Mr. O'Boyneville! I thought you had left us for good?"
"And so I had, Lady Cecil, as I thought. But there are some places, or
rather some people, whom it is very difficult to leave. I have been to
London, got through a gigantic day's business, made arrangements for
starting on my parliamentary work to-morrow instead of to-day, and have
come back here--for an hour."
"For an hour?" echoed Cecil.
"Yes," answered the barrister, taking out his watch, and comparing it
with the clock on the mantelpiece. "It's now half-past five by me;
though it's only a quarter-past by my friend Mephistopheles and the
ivy-leaves. At 7.36 the up-train leaves that miserable shed called
Desborough station. I was lucky enough to get a fly this time, and the
antiquated vehicle is waiting for me."
"I fear Mr. Mountjoy has gone out," said Cecil, who imagined that her
late admirer must needs have some important business to transact with
his host, since only some affair of importance could have brought
him back so hurriedly. "But you will find almost every body in the
billiard-room, and no doubt some one there will be able to tell you
where he is."
"You are very good; but I don't want to see Mr. Mountjoy."
"You don't?"
"Not----" Mr. O'Boyneville was on the verge of saying "Not a ha'porth,"
but he substituted, "not in the least. In fact, I'm very grateful to
the dear old fellow for being out of the way. I have come back to see
you, Lady Cecil."
There was a little pause. Cecil could find nothing to say. The sense
of Mr. O'Boyneville's power subjugated her as she had never before
been subjugated. She was like the weakest of little birds who was ever
spell-bound by the gaze of a monster serpent.
Whether it was animal magnetism, whether it was the intellectual force
of a dominant will, she never knew. From first to last, she knew only
that Laurence O'Boyneville exercised an influence over her which no
other living creature had ever exercised, and that she was powerless to
resist his dominion.
The Irishman seated himself, and drew his chair close to hers.
"Cecil," he said, "why should we trifle with our destiny? In the first
hour in which I saw you, something told me that you were to be my
wife, and in pursuing you I have only obeyed the voice of my fate. I
am not a romantic man, and the current of my life has taken its course
between the most arid and blossomless shores that border the great
river: but some remnant of my national superstition clings to me still;
and from the first moment in which I looked upon you, I felt that you
were something more to me than the crowds of pretty women whose faces
have floated past me like the faces of a dream. You have thought me
insolent, presumptuous! Believe me, Lady Cecil, I have been neither.
It has been no confidence in my own merits that has made me so bold. I
have been bold only because I believed in my fate. When I came here,
I came at peril of hopes that had once been the brightest part of my
life. The man whose dinner-table I left unceremoniously to come to this
house is a man who can raise me to the bench. I, to whom social life is
almost as strange as it would be to an Ojibbeway, have wasted a week in
knocking about wooden balls and holding bad hands at long whist. And I
have done this because I wanted to be near you, Lady Cecil. I knew from
the first that you were intended to be my wife, and that it rested with
me alone to win you. Cecil, dear Cecil, are you going to fly in the
face of your destiny?"
These were the tenderest words he had ever addressed to her. His voice,
practised in every transition, sank to its most melodious tones as he
uttered these last words. Perhaps there is some magnetic power in such
a voice. Cecil, looking up at the earnest face that was bent towards
hers, felt herself subdued by some wondrous fascination, and knew that
she had found her master. Had he wooed her at any other moment it might
have been different; but he came to her in an interval of depression,
which had subdued her courage and crushed her pride. Never had the dull
stagnation of her life seemed to her so dull and hopeless as it had
seemed to-day. Never had the prospect of the future appeared so utterly
blank and empty. Her aunt's sermonising, her sense of loneliness, her
yearning desire for some change in the routine of her profitless life,
all conspired to strengthen the cause of Mr. O'Boyneville.
"Cecil, are you going to send me away again?"
"Suppose I do not believe in your fatalistic theory?" she asked, with a
faint attempt at a laugh.
"Your incredulity will not help you. What is it the Turks say?
'Kismet'--It is written. You are to be my wife, Lady Cecil. It is
only a question of time, and why should we waste time in discussion?
Sooner or later the hour of victory will come. Cecil, you thought me an
impertinent fool when I first told you of my love; you know me better
now, and you must know that I am in earnest. I have kept myself aloof
from you during the last week in order to show you that I can obey you.
If I disobey you in coming back to-day, it is because I obey my fate,
which is stronger than you."
Mr. O'Boyneville had composed this little speech during his downward
journey, and was rather inclined to be proud of it.
"Cecil, what is to be my answer?"
For some moments Lady Cecil was silent, her head averted from Mr.
O'Boyneville, her eyes looking dreamily at the fire. She was so
lonely, so unprotected; and here was this man, whose intellectual
power impressed her with a sense of protection and support; here was
this man, whom she had scorned and rejected, once more at her side,
too faithful to accept repulse, still eager to give her shelter and
affection, to lift her from the dreary uncertainty of her position into
woman's most fitting sphere. An hour ago, and she had felt herself
so utterly friendless; and now here were the love and devotion of a
lifetime lying at her feet, to be again rejected if she pleased. It
seemed almost as if Providence, taking compassion upon her loneliness,
had thrown this one last chance in her way.
Her voice trembled a little as she answered her lover.
"I do not know what I have done to deserve your love," she said; "but I
suppose love never yet was measured by desert. I do know that I cannot
give you what the world calls love in return. The only person I ever
loved left me to marry another woman. He left me because it was his
duty to do so; and I was proud of him because he was so good and true.
He is married now, and I have every reason to believe he is happy.
There is little chance that he and I will ever meet again; but if we
do, we shall meet as strangers. It was my bounden duty to tell you
this, Mr. O'Boyneville, before I answered your last question. Has my
confession altered your sentiments towards me?"
"No, Lady Cecil; it has only made me admire you a little more than I
did before. Do you think I expected to win the whole heart of such a
woman as you, all at once? No, Cecil; when a man loves the woman he
marries as truly as I love you, it must be his own fault if he does not
teach her to love him before the end of the chapter, always provided
she is a good woman."
"And you still offer me your affection?"
"I do. As heartily and as unreservedly as I offered it to you in the
first instance."
"And you will be my friend, my protector, my counsellor, all the wide
world to me--for I am very friendless--and will be contented with such
gratitude and such affection as a woman gives to the best and dearest
friend she has on earth?"
"More than content! unutterably happy!" cried Laurence O'Boyneville;
"and by Jove it's a quarter to six, and it's as much as I shall do to
catch the up-train," he added, in his most business-like manner, as he
started to his feet. He only lingered long enough to take Lady Cecil
in his arms, as if she had been a baby, to imprint one resounding kiss
upon her forehead, and to exclaim, "God bless you, and good-bye, my
darling!" and lo, he was gone.
"And I shall have a friend--a husband and protector--a home," thought
Cecil, with a thrill of happiness, such as she would a few hours
before have been slow to believe could have been inspired by Laurence
O'Boyneville.
She was glad to be bound to some one, to have some one bound to her;
glad to be the promised wife of this Irish barrister, whom she had so
lately spoken of shudderingly as a dreadful man.
CHAPTER XIII.
CECIL'S HONEYMOON.
Before the end of the year Cecil Chudleigh had become Cecil
O'Boyneville. The barrister was not a man to lose time in making
himself master of the citadel that had capitulated, and having once
obtained Cecil's consent to be his wife, he moved heaven and earth to
bring about a speedy marriage. The powers that be were in this instance
represented by Mrs. MacClaverhouse and the Mountjoys. The dowager was
delighted to marry her penniless niece to a man who confessed that
his professional income was over two thousand a-year, and that he had
invested between ten and fifteen thousand in certain very profitable
railway shares, the interest of which he was prepared to settle upon
Lady Cecil during his lifetime, while the principal would be hers at
his death. The Mountjoys and all the Nasedale visitors were delighted
by the idea of a wedding, and young ladies who had heard of Cecil's
engagement from Mrs. Mountjoy, and were anxious to disport themselves
as bridesmaids, besieged the poor girl with entreaties, and bewildered
her with their praises of Mr. O'Boyneville.
Against so much friendly persuasion, with the mighty O'Boyneville
swooping down upon her suddenly by all manner of express trains, and by
every complication of loop-line and junction, Cecil was powerless to
make any successful resistance. She had promised to be his wife. She
was grateful for his affection, and she looked forward with a sense
of relief to the marriage which was at least to be the end of her
dependence. And then Laurence O'Boyneville's influence was not without
its weight. From the hour in which Cecil had promised to be his wife,
his power over her had grown stronger with every moment she spent in
his society. The strength of will which had carried him triumphantly
over all the obstacles in his path sustained him here; the singleness
of his purpose, the depth of his feeling, invested him with a kind of
dignity. That combined force of a strong will and brilliant intellect
had an almost magnetic influence over Cecil. If she did not love her
future husband, she at least felt that it was something to be loved by
such a man, and the strong current of his will drifted her along with
it. Walking in the avenue of Nasedale, under a dull October sky, with
her hand under Laurence O'Boyneville's arm, and inspired with some
vague sense of protection by the stalwart figure that sheltered her
from the autumn wind, Cecil consented that the wedding should take
place early in November. She could not oppose her lover's wishes. From
the moment in which she had accepted his devotion, Mr. O'Boyneville
had in a manner taken possession of her judgment and her will; and it
mattered little when he claimed her entirely for his own.
"You are so good, Laurence," she said once, "and I have such a sense of
protection in your presence, that I sometimes fancy you are like a new
father to me. Indeed, you have more influence over me than my father
had, though I loved him very, very dearly. I suppose it is because your
will is so much stronger than his."
Mr. O'Boyneville nodded, and pressed the little hand resting on his
arm. Another man of forty engaged to a woman of twenty-two might have
been slightly disconcerted by Cecil's speech; but Laurence had implicit
faith in the divine right of honest love, and in his thoughts there was
no shadow of fear for the future.
"I must be a fool indeed if I can't teach her to love me, loving her as
I do," he thought.
Backwards and forwards, by loop-line and junction, by midnight express
and morning mail, rushing through the chill mists and fogs of autumnal
dawn, sped Mr. O'Boyneville, all through that bleak October. He
took his rest in snug corners of railway carriages, and lived upon
sandwiches, peppery soups, and adulterated coffee. His electioneering
business went on as smoothly as his love-suit, and provincial electors
yielded readily to the beguiling accents of the Hibernian candidate.
But the candidate's heart was at Nasedale, and he sacrificed his
parliamentary ambition to his love for Cecil. He made light of two or
three hundred miles of cross-country travelling, if thereby he could
obtain a quiet day with his future wife. To walk with her in the long
avenue; to stand with his back to the fire, talking to her as she bent
over her work; to drive her in a mail-phaeton, with a couple of merry
girls in the back seat, and a pair of the most unmanageable horses
in the judge's stables devouring the road before him,--these things
delighted the man who had spent the best years of his life amidst the
clamour of law courts, and in the dull quiet of dingy chambers. There
was very little in common between himself and the woman he loved. But
he had that dash of romance which the hardest friction of a practical
existence cannot entirely obliterate from the composition of an
Irishman; and he was really and truly in love.
So one misty morning in November the bells pealed gaily from the
village church, whose Norman tower loomed dark above the leafless woods
of Nasedale Park; and the Nasedale servants were gay and busy. It was
to be a quiet wedding. Cecil had been earnest in her entreaties that
there might be no unnecessary trouble incurred by her cordial friends;
but the childless Mountjoys were as pleased as if they had been
arranging a daughter's marriage ceremonial.
"I shall be quite angry if you talk about trouble, my dear Cecil,"
said the kind-hearted hostess. "Here have Horatio and I been puzzling
our brains to find out something or other to enliven the house in this
wretched weather; and just at the very time when we were most at a loss
for amusement and occupation, this marriage of yours happens to afford
us both. You don't know what it is, my dear, to have nine marriageable
girls in a house, with only three unmarried men, and those three more
listless, and lazy, and stupid than words can describe, or you wouldn't
talk of giving trouble. All I dread is the reaction which we shall
suffer when it's all over, and you and Mr. O'Boyneville have gone to
Ireland."
Thus it happened, that although it had been promised that the wedding
should be a private one, the programme of the day grew to an alarming
extent before the day arrived. The officers who had assisted at the
archery meeting were invited to the breakfast, much to the delight
of the nine young ladies, and much to the aggravation of the three
listless young gentlemen, who gave utterance to the most crushing
sarcasms when the martial visitors were alluded to, and affected to
consider the profession of arms entirely incompatible with the faintest
scintillation of intelligence, or the smallest modicum of education.
"Yes," drawled the most listless of the listless ones, "Captain
Harduppe is a remarkably fine fellow. Of course it's a great merit in a
man to be six foot two and three-quarters, and a merit which society is
bound to recognise. But did any body ever hear the captain read? or did
any body ever see the captain write? It's my belief that the greatest
pull the Jew-bill-discounters have over their military customers lies
in the fact that they witness the agonies which the martial mind
experiences in the process of signing its name; and it's also my belief
that when a cavalry officer takes up the _Times_ and throws it down
again, exclaiming, 'Haw! nothing in the papaws to-day, I s'ppose,' he
does so simply because he can't read."
Of course Mr. O'Boyneville, happening to overhear some such speech as
this, arose in his might and crushed the scorner, proving that from the
days of Cæsar, whom in the excitement of argument he called "Sayzer,"
to the time of the conqueror of Waterloo, soldiers had been even more
renowned for the power of their intellect than for the prowess of their
arms, and that the helmet and buckler of Minerva were only typical of
the fact that from the earliest period of history, wisdom and valour
had gone hand-in-hand.
Through the misty November morning went the train of carriages to the
little church where Mr. O'Boyneville awaited his bride, after spending
the night on loop-line and at junction, and after making a hurried
toilet at the village inn.
There was no rain, only a soft autumnal mist, which took the fresh
crispness out of tulle bonnets, and the artificial undulations out
of feminine _bandeaux_. But the wedding was a success in spite of
the weather. There was no weeping during the ceremonial, and it
was only when the dowager kissed her niece in the vestry that one
solitary teardrop glittered in each of that matron's piercing eyes.
The bridegroom was in the highest spirits, though in the midst of his
gaiety a very close observer--if such people ever were to be found in a
wedding-party--might have detected an under current of deeper feeling
near akin to tears.
There was the usual monument of crystallised sugar, and silver foliage,
and artificial orange-blossom; the usual combination of the savoury
solidity of Fortnum and Mason, with the airy frivolity and bilious
sweetness of Gunter; the usual popping of corks, and pleasant sound
of frozen liquids trickling into cool, fragile glasses; the usual
protestations from young ladies who infinitely preferred tea or
coffee to sparkling hock or moselle, but who, overcome by masculine
persuasion, generally ended by drinking the latter; the usual open
renunciation of her sex from the one fast young lady generally to be
found in every party, who always happens to sit next an officer, and
who tells him confidentially that she likes sparkling moselle, and
doesn't believe in the girls who pretend not to like it.
Nor could the breakfast reasonably be expected to come to an end
without a little speechifying. The judge, in a few appropriate,
well-rounded sentences, invoked for his guests all those impossible
blessings which it is the fashion to pray for at a wedding-breakfast;
while, in the heat of returning thanks for these good wishes, Mr.
O'Boyneville was betrayed into speaking of his host as "his ludship,"
and on more than one occasion addressed his audience as "ladies and
gentlemen of the jury." And by-and-by appeared the traditional chariot
and post-horses, driven by that blue and antique postillion who seems
to emerge from the shadows of the past only on such occasions. And
then there was a little animated flirtation in the hall among the nine
unmarried young ladies and the cavalry officers; while the listless
young gentlemen looked on with countenances expressive of unutterable
scorn; and elderly Anglo-Indian merchants and lawyers, and red-faced
Anglo-Indian colonels and majors gathered comfortably round their
host at one end of the long table in the dining-room, telling old
Anglo-Indian stories, and laughing at old Anglo-Indian jokes.
In due time Lady Cecil came down the broad old-fashioned staircase,
dressed in pale-grey silk, and wearing an airy bonnet that seemed
constructed soley with a grey feather and a large full-blown
blush-rose, while the handsomest of her aunt's Indian shawls draped
her slender figure like a classic mantle of scarlet and gold. Mrs.
MacClaverhouse had insisted upon her niece wearing this shawl and no
other.
"It's the last but one that stupid extravagant Hector sent me, and if
I know _any thing_ about Indian shawls, I know that this one must have
cost him something like a hundred guineas; and as I'm not rich enough
to buy you a wedding-present, you must take this, Cecil,--though why
the fact of a person being married should oblige other people to half
ruin themselves in the purchase of bracelets and dressing-cases is
more than I can understand. However, that has nothing to do with you
and me, Cecil. I'm your aunt, and your nearest living relative, so
it would be hard indeed if I couldn't give you something; and if you
don't take Hector's shawl I shall be very much offended: and mind you
don't go wasting your husband's money on trumpery Dresden china; for
when I'm dead and gone you'll have more mandarin jars, and carved ivory
chessmen, and inlaid caskets, and envelope-boxes, than you'll know what
to do with."
Whereupon Mrs. MacClaverhouse kissed her niece, shed one more solitary
tear, which she brushed away sharply, and followed the bride down the
staircase. And so it happened that Cecil went to her husband wrapped in
the shawl which Hector Gordon had chosen in Calcutta three years before.
The traditionary chariot and post-horses drove away amidst a volley
of cheers; and the very fast young lady, who was rather proud of
her foot, launched a fairy bronze boot into the air as the bridal
chariot departed, the heel of which fairy boot coming in contact with
the eyebrow of one of the listless gentlemen, inflicted a blow that
ultimately resulted in that vulgar appearance of mingled blues and
greens which is popularly described as a black eye.
The last which the Nasedale party saw of the bride and bridegroom
was Mr. O'Boyneville's radiant face at the carriage-window, and Mr.
O'Boyneville's big white hand waving a parting salutation. And then the
Irishman realised the fondest desire of his later years. He went back
to the land of his youth, and with his young wife by his side trod once
more the country of his birth. He had consulted Cecil's wishes as to
that honeymoon tour; but as he had previously revealed his own yearning
for a glimpse of his native town, the river and mountains so familiar
to his childhood, she set aside all thought of her own inclination.
"Let us go to Ireland," she said; "I know you wish to see your own
country once more, and it will be all new ground to me."
"You really wish to see Ireland?"
"Really."
"Then we will go there--but only on one condition. There is a place in
Devonshire I have heard you talk of--the place where your childhood was
spent. We will get across country somehow or other from Holyhead, and
we will visit it together, Cecil."
She looked up at her lover, and smiled. Of all pleasures that he could
have offered to her this was the sweetest. The thought was one of the
inspirations of love.
So Mr. O'Boyneville took his wife to Ireland in the dull November
weather. There are autumnal seasons in which "the rain it raineth every
day" in this green isle encircled by the sea; and it seemed to Cecil as
if a new deluge were about to blot fair Hibernia from the universe. It
was no fitting season, nor had the barrister sufficient leisure for the
ordinary pleasure-seeker's tour. The newly-wedded pair spent a few wet
days in Dublin, driving in the Phœnix Park, where the autumn sunsets
were very beautiful to behold in the brief intervals of the rain;
and then one bleak early morning an express train bore Cecil and her
husband southward to Shannonville, and under the cloudy November skies
Laurence O'Boyneville once more beheld the city of his youth. He had
looked forward with such a fond yearning to the day in which he should
tread those familiar streets once more; and now the day had come, and
the long dreamed-of pleasure was a very sad sensation after all. The
glory of Shannonville had fled since the Irishman last had looked
upon it, and the sight of its decay smote him to the heart. Modern
civilisation and the mighty steam demon who makes naught of distance,
and but little of time, had left Shannonville far behind. Commerce had
no longer need of that far southern port; and where rich granaries had
stored the wealth of southern Ireland, empty storehouses looked blankly
on a deserted quay. There, where the vessels of many traders had
jostled one another in the crowded docks, a fisherman's _Briccawn_ was
slackly moored by a rotting rope. The broad streets were standing yet,
but the crowd that had once made them gay had vanished. The club-house
was still called a club-house; but where were the noisy revellers who
had once made its walls resonant with their boisterous laughter? And
the dashing young men, and the lovely blue-eyed maidens, whoso presence
had rendered the chief thoroughfare of Shannonville so delightful a
promenade--where were they? Gone--gone! Only pinched faces looked up
at the hotel-windows where Cecil gazed sadly out upon her husband's
native city. Only squalor and misery, ruin and decay, greeted Laurence
O'Boyneville as he walked slowly along the deserted quays, looking for
the vanished brightness of his youth. He went back to his wife sick at
heart.
"The place is as dreary as a city of the dead, Cecil," he said. "I
have brought you to desolation and ruin, my darling. We'll leave
Shannonville by the first train to-morrow morning. The sight of the old
place cuts me to the heart."
But Mr. O'Boyneville grew tolerably cheerful by-and-by, and took his
wife to dine with the oldest friends he had--the oldest surviving
friends, for there was a sad list of the dead whom he had known and
loved in Shannonville. Lady Cecil was pleased with the kind simple
people, who received her with open arms, and were unceasing in their
praises of her husband's youthful virtues. The twenty years of his
professional career seemed to melt away like a dream as he sat in that
Shannonville drawing-room, where tall young ladies whom he had dandled
in his strong arms looked at him wonderingly, and where youthful
matrons, whom he remembered as tiny toddling children, brought their
tiny toddling children to his middle-aged knees.
People talked as if events of a quarter of a century back had been
the events of yesterday. "And don't you remember the picnic at
Nikdeilslootheram, Laurence?" "And I'm sure you've not forgotten the
dance at Mr. O'Hennesy's, when Patrick MacShindy proposed to Flora
Machrae in the little back-parlour, and old Mr. O'Kelly caught him on
his knees?" "And don't you remember the murder at Castle Sloggerom,
and Major O'Wokes riding fifty miles across country on his chestnut
mare, Devil's-hoof, to take the scoundrel that did it? Ah, Laurence,
Shannonville's but a quiet place now, and you'd scarcely know it if you
came back amongst us again."
But even that genial evening amongst old friends could not quite
restore Mr. O'Boyneville's spirits.
"I'm sure you won't care to stay here, Cecil," he said, as they drove
home to the hotel; "and I think my heart would break if I spent a week
in the place."
So in the bleak November, under another cloudy sky, and with another
day's ceaseless rain pattering against the windows of the railway
carriage, Cecil and her husband went back to Dublin, and from Dublin
to Holyhead, and thence across country to Exeter, and then to
Chudleigh Combe. Here there was no sign of decay, save the beautiful
decay of nature. Commercial civilisation had never approached within
twenty miles of the secluded old mansion half buried in the woods;
and the eternal loveliness of nature is subject to no changes, save
those gradual transitions through which she passes for ever and ever,
serenely beautiful in every phase.
The old woman who had charge of the deserted mansion was very glad to
admit Mr. O'Boyneville and his wife; for the portly presence of the
barrister, and the carriage and pair that had brought them from the
nearest post-town, augured a handsome recompense for her trouble. She
led the visitors through the empty rooms, where the atmosphere was
chill and musty, and where the mice behind the wainscot scampered away
at the sound of the intruders' footfall. The old-fashioned furniture
had a wasted, half-starved look to modern eyes. It seemed as if the
chairs and tables had been sentient things, and were slowly perishing
from inanition. As the aspect of Shannonville had depressed Mr.
O'Boyneville, so the cold dampness of this untenanted mansion depressed
Cecil.
"I can't bear to see the dear old rooms looking so cold and cheerless,"
she said. "I can show you the very chair in which grandmamma used to
sit; the little table on which I used to write."
She opened an old-fashioned square piano, and ran her fingers gently
along the keys; but, tenderly as she touched the notes, the instrument
gave out a shrill discordant wail that was almost like the shriek of
a banshee. But if the aspect of the place saddened Mr. O'Boyneville's
young wife, her sadness was not all pain: there was a tender pleasure
mingled with her regret.
"You could never guess how often I have seen the old place in
my dreams, Laurence," she said, "amidst all the confusion, and
contradiction, and absurdity that make dreams so bewildering. I have
seen dead people restored to life, and have felt no surprise in seeing
them. In a dream one always seems to forget that there is any such
thing as death. I thank you a thousand times for bringing me here,
Laurence. You could never believe how much I have wished to see the
dear old home again."
"And now you see it in the hands of a stranger, and going to ruin,
Cecil," said Mr. O'Boyneville. "The water comes through all the
ceilings up stairs; and if the man who owns the place doesn't take care
what he's about, there'll be a new roof wanted before very long."
But the old woman hereupon explained that the ownership was at present
vested in the Court of Chancery. A suit was in progress, and had been
in progress for the last three years, on settlement of which the entire
property was to be realised for the benefit of the disputants.
"And if the place is to be worth any body's buying, it had need be sold
soon," said the old woman, "for the rain do come in here and the rain
do come in there, and the wind do come in everywhere, and the rats gnaw
holes in the wainscot, and eat their way through the flooring, and the
windows rattle of a winter's night to that degree, that the house isn't
fit for a Christian to live in."
"A few hundreds laid out upon it would make it comfortable enough,"
said the practical Mr. O'Boyneville; "but I don't see how the place
could ever be worth more than a hundred a-year at this distance from
London; and it must sell as cheap as rags to give you five per cent.
for your money."
Oh, if I had only been rich enough to buy it! she thought. She did not
know any thing about percentages or profitable investments; but if she
had been free to do her own will, she would have given every sixpence
she possessed in the world to be owner of Chudleigh Combe.
And yet she never thought of asking Mr. O'Boyneville to purchase the
dwelling-place she loved with some portion of the money he had settled
upon her. She had tried with all her might to prevent the making of
that settlement, and had told her lover that under no circumstances
could she ever bring herself to look upon the money as her own.
"I have very little use for what people call pin-money," she said,
"for you know, Laurence, that I have been accustomed all my life to be
economical. Let me have fifty or sixty pounds a-year for my clothes if
you like, and I will dress as well as I have ever been used to dress.
But I don't want to be extravagant because you are generous."
The barrister kissed his affianced bride, and told her that she was
an angel, and that she dressed exquisitely; but the settlement was
made nevertheless, and Mrs. MacClaverhouse declared that Laurence
O'Boyneville had acted nobly.
And during the visit to Chudleigh Combe he was very kind and very
patient; though he examined the window-sashes, and sounded the
partitions, and rattled the locks, and poked the ceilings, and peered
up the chimneys, and jumped upon the floors with a view to testing the
strength of the timbers, and altogether behaved in a more practical
way than quite harmonised with Cecil's pensive spirit: but he gave her
plenty of time for tender meditations while he prowled amongst stables
and offices, tasted the water from a couple of pumps in a long stone
courtyard, and measured the length and breadth of the grounds with a
surveyor's accurate three-foot stride It was only when the autumn
afternoon was deepening into evening that he swooped down upon Cecil,
as she stood on the lawn by a rustic basket--that had once held such a
wealth of geraniums, and in which now only a few straggling sprigs of
mignonette lingered amid a wilderness of weeds--and asked her sharply
if she was ready to go away.
"Yes, Laurence," she said, "quite ready."
And then, as they walked back to the carriage, she said, rather to
herself than to her husband:
"I wonder who will buy Chudleigh Combe?"
"Ah, so do I," cried Mr. O'Boyneville, swinging his stick, "he'll have
to spend something like a thousand pounds upon the place before he
makes it habitable, whoever he is."
CHAPTER XIV.
MR. LOBYER'S WOOING.
Another season had commenced. The carriages in the Lady's Mile were
gathering thicker every day, though as yet there was not a leaflet on
the trees in Hyde Park, nor a ray of warm sunshine on the Serpentine.
January the bitter had given place to February the uncertain, when
Florence Crawford tore herself away from the blusterous delights of the
Brighton Esplanade, in obedience to her father's summons. She had been
staying with some stylish friends, who had taken a house on the East
Cliff; while William Crawford made the best of the dark short days,
working steadily at a picture which was to be one of the glories of the
Academy in the coming season.
Florence Crawford had not exaggerated her wealthy admirer's devotion.
Mr. Lobyer had spent the winter in perpetual rushing to and fro
between London and Brighton. Another man, as deeply smitten as
Mr. Lobyer, would have been content to have taken up his abode at
Piccadiily-super-Mare, and to have devoted himself entirely to the
society of his enchantress. But Miss Crawford's admirer could not
altogether tear himself away from the companions of his bachelor life.
There were winter races, and mysterious pugilistic meetings, and secret
cock-fightings, and divers other entertainments connected with the
animal creation, from the delights of which beauty was powerless to
beguile Mr. Lobyer.
He wanted to marry Florence Crawford, and he meant to marry her. The
more completely she held him at bay, and defied him by her coquetry
and insolence, the more dogged he became in his determination to win
her for his wife. He admired her beauty, her grace, her piquancy; and
he thought it would be a fine thing to have such a woman seated at the
head of his table, or sitting by his side in his mail-phaeton, with
the most thoroughbred of bull-terriers on her lap, and a forty-guinea
tiger-skin over her knees. He admired every thing that was gorgeous and
expensive, and out of the reach of that large class of humanity whose
members did not possess bankers' books, and whom he contemptuously
generalised as "cads." He admired Florence Crawford because, in his own
phraseology, she was the best thing he had seen in the way of girls.
But he had carefully considered the prudence of the step before he
committed himself by any deliberate avowal of his admiration.
"I might marry a woman with plenty of money," he thought; "but then I
shouldn't have much of a choice. I like to choose my horses and dogs,
and I should like to choose my wife. Florence Crawford must have _some_
money, for she's an only child, and those painter-fellows make no
end of money nowadays; and as Crawford has been a widower sixteen or
seventeen years, I don't suppose there's much chance of his making an
idiot of himself by marrying again."
After regarding the matter with extreme deliberation, Mr. Lobyer
arrived at the conclusion that he might as well gratify his own
inclination and marry the painter's daughter, whose bewitchingly
disdainful airs gave a zest to his courtship.
So when Florence went back to the Fountains, she returned as the
affianced wife of Thomas Lobyer; and she carried in one of her
portmanteaus a casket of jewels which winked and twinkled in the cold
winter sunshine when she lifted the lid to peep at her treasures.
She had left the East Cliff radiant with feminine vanity, bright with
the golden halo of success; for her friends knew that before the year
was out she would be mistress of Pevenshall Place and a West-end
mansion; and she knew that they envied her good fortune. Mr. Lobyer's
society was not eminently delightful; but Mr. Lobyer's mail-phaeton
and thoroughbred steppers were absolute perfection. Mr. Lobyer's
conversational powers were very limited; but the establishments of
Brighton jewellers are more fascinating than any other jewel-shops in
England, and are scarcely to be surpassed by the glories of the Rue de
la Paix. And Mr. Lobyer had been a liberal customer in Castle Square.
William Crawford had heard of his daughter's conquest, and had been
congratulated upon the brilliancy of her prospects; but he had not
taken upon himself to interfere with her arrangements. The manners
and ideas of modern young ladies were something past the pure-minded
artist's powers of comprehension. He remembered his wife with her
primitive notions and womanly tenderness, so fond, so clinging, so
loving, so girlishly sentimental, so quick to be pleased with any
simple pleasure, so ready to be frightened by a harsh word, or moved
to tears by a tender thought; and remembering her, he was utterly
bewildered by the daughter, who was so like and yet so unlike that
lost darling. Whether the sentiments which Florence openly professed
were the expression of her real feelings or only the fashionable cant
of her sex, Mr. Crawford was at a loss to imagine; but the tone of her
conversation gave him unspeakable pain. This daughter, who spoke of
him as "a dear old party," and who pronounced his best picture to be
"awfully jolly," was so unlike the daughter he had dreamed of welcoming
to the home of his prosperity.
He knew that she was charming; that slang from her lips took a new
accent, and assumed a pretty quaintness in place of its native
vulgarity. He had seen that her heart needed only to be awakened by
some piteous appeal, some sorrowful spectacle, to reveal itself rich in
all womanly tenderness and compassion. But she was not the daughter of
his dreams.
"I am punished for my cowardice," he thought. "I was afraid to face
the struggles of poverty with my child in my arms. I gave her into the
hands of strangers, and I am fool enough to wonder now that she is
strange to me."
Miss Crawford tripped into the painting-room immediately after her
arrival at the Fountains, and elevated herself on tiptoe in order to
embrace her father.
"You dear old darling, how you do smell of varnish!" she cried, after
bestowing a kiss upon each of his cheeks. "Are you using copal for your
new picture?--dreadfully stiff stuff to work with, isn't it? And what
is the new picture? You didn't tell me that in any of your letters, and
I've been dying to know. I suppose I may look?"
Before the painter could reply, his daughter had planted herself before
the easel, and was contemplating his unfinished work.
"As long as it's nothing about Marie Antoinette, Mary Queen of Scots,
Don Quixote, Gil Bias, or the Vicar of Wakefield, I'm satisfied," she
said.
She stood looking at the picture for some minutes, and then shrugged
her shoulders impatiently as she turned to the painter:
"I must give it up, papa," she exclaimed. "It's rather nice; but you
must have half a page of description in the catalogue if you want
people to know what it all means."
It was the picture of a page holding a horse in a woody landscape. The
page wore the costume of Charles the Second's court; but the loose
tumbled hair falling about the fair neck, the small jewelled hand that
grasped the bridle, the delicate curves of the figure, the disorder of
a dress that seemed to have been arranged by unaccustomed hands, and
the shrinking terror of the pose, betrayed the sex of the pretended
page. The attitude of the horse expressed as intense a terror as
that which agitated the woman. The bright chestnut of his sides was
darkened with sweat, the distended nostrils were flecked with foam,
the eyes were dilated. The woman's face was exquisitely beautiful;
but its loveliness was of the diabolical rather than the angelic
order. The eyes of the disguised beauty were turned with a look of
unspeakable horror towards a woodland glade, which stretched away in
the background, and her disengaged hand was pressed convulsively upon
her breast, as if to control the beating of her heart. On the grass,
near the horse's feet, there lay an embroidered glove, and a cavalier's
cloak, whose rich purple velvet and gold embroidery made a mass of
colour in the foreground.
"Who is she, papa?" asked Flo. "Her dress is unutterably jolly, and
her hair looks as if you had painted it with a patent tube of liquid
sunshine. What a wonderful old thing you are! But allow me to inquire
for the second time what it all means. A pretty woman doesn't dress
herself in a ruby-velvet doublet, and hold a horse in a wood without a
motive."
"The woman is the Countess of Shrewsbury, who disguised herself as a
page, and held the Duke of Buckingham's horse while he fought a duel
with her husband. It's not a very moral story, and I doubt if I shall
exhibit it."
"But you needn't tell people what it means, papa, and I'm sure they'd
never find out. Call it Lady Rachel Russell. You can invent a story
about an attempted escape of her husband, or something of that kind,
you know. But if you've any difficulty about the picture Mr. Lobyer
shall buy it off you, papa," added Florence, with a tone that sounded
rather like patronage. She was quite capable of patronising her father.
"Thank you, my dear; the picture is sold already to a person who
understands pictures," answered Mr. Crawford gravely. He was standing
with his back to his daughter, washing his hands in a basin that formed
part of the paraphernalia of a stand on which he kept the implements
of his art. The winter twilight was thickening, and the light of the
low fire was hidden by a crimson screen. Flo stood in the bay window,
looking out into the garden with a meditative air.
"You speak of Mr. Lobyer as if he were quite your own property,
Florence," said the painter, as he walked to the fireplace and pushed
away the screen. The firelight showed him his daughter's profile--her
head bent, her eyes downcast, the small gloved hands trifling with her
bonnet-strings.
She did not make any reply to her father's remark, and yet he could
scarcely doubt that she had heard him.
"Do you really mean to marry this Mr. Lobyer?" William Crawford asked
presently.
"I wish you wouldn't call him _this_ Mr. Lobyer, papa," cried Flo
impatiently. "What has he done that he should have a relative pronoun
tacked on to his name, as if he were some new kind of wild animal. He
has asked me to marry him ever so many times, and--and I suppose I do
mean to marry him, papa--if you have no objection," added Florence
dutifully.
"If I have no objection!" exclaimed the painter. "What influence
have the fathers of the present day over their children that their
opinion should be asked or their wishes consulted? Don't look at
me so imploringly. I am not angry with you, my dear. I am only an
old-fashioned fellow, and there are many things I see nowadays that
mystify me. If you like Mr. Lobyer, and Mr. Lobyer is, as he seems to
be, very much in love with you, I cannot make any objection to your
marrying him, though I will tell you frankly----"
"Oh, pray don't, papa," cried Florence,--"pray don't tell me any thing
frankly; when people talk about being frank, they are always going to
say something disagreeable. It's very odd that the truth always should
be so unpleasant. I know what you were going to say, papa, almost as
well as if you had said it. You were going to tell me that I may marry
Mr. Lobyer if I please, but that you don't like him, and that you never
have liked him, and so on. The moment a girl is engaged to be married
to a man, people seem to think they are privileged to abuse him."
"I don't wish to abuse Mr. Lobyer, my dear. If you are really attached
to him"--Flo shrugged her shoulders impatiently--"and if you really
think you can be happy as his wife, I have nothing to say against the
marriage. I suppose if I were a very prudent man, I ought to rejoice at
the idea that my little girl can never know what worldly misfortune is;
but----"
"But what, papa?" cried Flo. She had untied her bonnet-strings, and
had thrown the fragile structure of velvet and feathers aside in her
impatience. The fact is, Miss Crawford had not returned from Brighton
in the best possible humour, and her father's grave manner annoyed her.
"The Hinchliffe girls were never tired of congratulating me, papa,"
she said; "and Mrs. Hinchliffe declared I was the luckiest creature in
Christendom. And Aunt Jane called--she has taken a house in Marine
Square for the children--and the Hinchliffes asked her to dinner,
and of course they would tell her all about Mr. Lobyer, and she was
delighted, and went away in such spirits, declaring that if I have a
town-house she will make my uncle move from Russell Square to Tyburnia.
But now I come home you snub me and throw cold water upon me, and make
me feel as if I were a kind of criminal. It's very cruel of you, papa."
"My dear child, I have no wish to be cruel. And so the Hinchliffes are
delighted, and Aunt Jane is delighted, because you are going to marry
Mr. Lobyer. It is not because he is handsome, I suppose, for I have
seen much handsomer men; and it can't be because he is clever, for I
must confess that to me he seems rather stupid. Why is it such a grand
thing to marry Mr. Lobyer, Flo? and why are the Hinchliffes envious,
and Aunt Jane in spirits? Is it because he is rich? Ah, to be sure,
that's what it is, of course. He is rich, and we are a wealthy nation;
and to marry the wealthiest bachelor of the season is the supremest
felicity to which a young lady can attain. I begin to understand it all
now; but I am such an old-fashioned man, Flo, that I like the old idea
of love in a cottage best."
"Papa," said Florence, after a pause, "mamma's marriage was a
love-match, and she loved you very dearly--as you deserve to be loved,
you dear disagreeable old darling--and I know that she never repented
having married you; but when you were very, very poor, did you never
feel sorry for having taken her from the comfortable home in Russell
Square, and the carriage, and the servants, and the friends, and all
that she lost when she became your wife?"
"Yes, Flo," answered the painter sadly; "God knows I had my hours of
remorse and bitterness."
"But you had no need to be remorseful, papa," cried Flo, who perceived
that she had touched too sad a memory, "for mamma loved you dearly, and
she was happier with you than she would have been in a palace--even
if people were generally happy in palaces, which, as far as I can
ascertain, they are not. But I'm not like mamma. I have been brought
up among rich people, and the thought of poverty frightens me. I look
at houses sometimes in which people exist, and are tolerably happy,
I suppose, in their own miserable way, and I think that I _couldn't_
live in such a house or in such a neighbourhood. Do you remember
taking me up to some place near Islington to see one of Mr. Foley's
pictures? Islington seemed like a new world to me, and I felt that
I should commit suicide if I lived there a week. To be out of reach
of the parks, to have no horse to ride, no pretty dresses to wear,
no nice fashionable friends to visit, to ride in omnibuses, and
wear old-fashioned bonnets, and go through life shabby and dowdy and
neglected--oh, what utter misery it all seems! I know all this sounds
selfish and horrible, papa; but I have been brought up to be selfish
and horrible."
"I dare say your feelings are perfectly natural, my dear," replied
Mr. Crawford, "but I don't understand them. I don't understand you. I
understand nothing about the age in which I live. All I can say to you
is to implore you to think seriously before you take so serious a step
as that you talk of so lightly. It seems the fashion to talk lightly
of solemn things nowadays; and no one would imagine from the manner
in which people discuss a marriage that it was to be the affair of a
lifetime. You are very young, Flory, and you can afford to wait. If you
feel that you can be happy with Mr. Lobyer, marry him: but if you have
the slightest doubt upon that point, let no inducement upon earth tempt
you to become his wife. The unhappy marriages of the present day end in
the divorce court. But, as I said before, you can afford to wait."
"Oh, yes, papa," cried Miss Crawford, "and while I am waiting and
deliberating, some designing minx will pounce upon Mr. Lobyer and marry
him before I know where I am. What a dear, unsophisticated thing you
are, and what a dreadful worldly wretch I am, papa! But you see I am
not so much worse than other people. There is your model Gretchen,
your favourite Cecil Chudleigh, who was always lecturing me about my
mercenary sentiments; yet you see, after all, she has married a great
lumbering Irish barrister, only because he has two or three thousand
a-year."
"But Lady Cecil may be very much attached to Mr. O'Boyneville."
"Yes, papa," answered Flo pertly, "she may; but then, on the other
hand, she mayn't. Attached to him, indeed!--a man whose coats and
collars were made in the year one, and must have been old-fashioned
then, I should think, if Adam had decent taste in dress."
"But he can change his coats and collars. And really O'Boyneville is a
very good fellow, and a very clever one."
"Yes, papa, but what woman ever cared about such cleverness as that? A
man whose greatest achievement is to cross-examine some stupid witness,
and set a stupid jury laughing at his stupid jokes. No, you dear
innocent parent, Cecil did not care two straws about that uncultivated
Queen's Counsel; but she married him because he is well off, and can
give her what people call a good home. A good home in Brunswick Square!
Poor Cecil, I am dying to call upon her, and hear how she endures her
existence in Bloomsbury!"
After this Miss Crawford contrived to turn the conversation. She talked
of her father's pictures,--the Countess of Shrewsbury, the larger
classical subject which he was going to finish before the first of
May,--any thing and every thing except Mr. Lobyer: and after dining
_tête-à-tête_ with Mr. Crawford, Florence retired to array herself
in blue gauze, and returned to the drawing-room to await a friendly
dowager, who was to call for her at ten o'clock, and beneath whose
sheltering wing she was to appear at a party to which Mr. Lobyer had
also been bidden.
The master of Pevenshall Place and the Lobyer mills called on the
painter next day, and made a formal demand for the hand of his daughter.
"You won't find me illiberal in the matter of settlements, Mr.
Crawford," said the rich man, as the painter deliberated with a clouded
brow and a thoughtful aspect. "Let your lawyer name his own terms,
and fight the business out with my fellow. When I fall in love with
a beautiful woman I'm not the sort of man to spoil my chance by a
niggardly policy," said Mr. Lobyer, whose tone was rather calculated
to convey the idea that Florence Crawford was not the first beautiful
woman with whom he had fallen in love.
But the painter was too much struck by the first part of the young
man's speech to pay much attention to the latter portion.
"My dear Sir," he exclaimed, "I dare say what you have just been saying
is very generously intended; but you must remember that we are not
making a bargain. My daughter is not one of my pictures, to be disposed
of to the highest bidder; and I assure you I have my fancies even
about the disposal of them, and don't always care to sell them to the
person who offers me most money. If I consider your proposal at all,
I must consider it as it affects my daughter's future happiness, not
her purse. I suppose a settlement is a usual thing with a man of your
wealth; and in that case I am willing that you should do what is fair
and just, if you marry my daughter. But I cannot for a moment allow you
to put forward your money as an inducement to me, when you propose to
become the husband of my only child."
Mr. Lobyer, for once in his life, was thoroughly astounded. Here was "a
painter-fellow, who would sell you a picture, by Ged, Sir, and thank
you humbly for your patronage, ridin' the high horse and givin' himself
the airs of a dook!"
This was what the great Lobyer said afterwards to his chief toady and
confidant; but he was completely subdued at the time, and was fain to
sue most humbly for permission to make Florence Crawford his wife.
"I do not see very well how I can withhold my consent," returned
the painter, with a sigh, when he responded to Mr. Lobyer's very
meekly-worded appeal. "You have already proposed to my daughter, and
she has accepted your proposal--subject to my approval, she tells me
very dutifully. I think it is rather too late for me to interfere,
Mr. Lobyer, especially as there seems no particular reason why I
should interfere. If my daughter loves you, and if you love her as
truly and purely as a man ought to love the woman he marries, I cannot
say no. All I ask is that you will not be in a hurry, that you will
wait--a year at the least. I want to know you better before I trust my
daughter's happiness to your keeping."
But Mr. Lobyer protested that a year under such circumstances would
be an eternity, or something to that effect; and after considerable
supplication on the part of Miss Crawford's lover, who talked of
himself in a dejected way,--as "the most devoted fellow that ever was,
you know;" and as "a fellow who wanted to settle down in his own home,
and all that sort of thing, you know,"--the painter consented that the
year of probation should be reduced by one-half, and that at the end of
six months Mr. Lobyer might claim his bride, always provided that his
future father-in-law had reason to think well of him in the mean time.
After this the young man departed triumphant, but with a certain air of
sulky discomfiture about him in the midst of his triumph.
"If a fellow were a pauper there couldn't be more row about the
business," he muttered, as he stepped into that unapproachable phaeton
which had been such a success on the West Cliff. "I never knew before
to-day that fellows with half-a-million of money were so plentiful that
people, whose daughters they want to marry, need turn up their noses at
'em."
Mr. Crawford went back to his painting-room, after the interview
with his future son-in-law, very grave of aspect. He went to his
painting-room for comfort as a devotee might go into a church.
His largest easel occupied the centre of the room, with a great
blank canvas upon it, while the Countess of Shrewsbury was turned
ignominiously to the wall.
He took some dingy brownish tint from his pallet, and sketched the
outline of a woman's form upon the fair white canvas. No map of
confused and wavy lines preceded the perfect outline, but every stroke
was sharp, precise, and permanent. Where other men indulged in a chalky
network of vague curves and undulations, William Crawford drew a firm
and lasting outline with his brush. The long labours of years had made
him the first of modern draughtsmen, as well as the greatest of modern
colourists.
But to-day Mr. Crawford's work did not afford him that serene pleasure
which it was his wont to feel when he stood before his easel. His brush
was less rapid than usual; and after standing for some moments staring
at his canvas without seeing it, he turned with an impatient sigh, and
began to walk up and down the room.
"I do not like thee, Dr. Fell," he muttered, with his hands plunged
deep in the pockets of his velvet morning-coat. "I'm not at all clear
about the reason, but I do _not_ like thee; and I wish--I wish--my
pretty little impertinent Florence were going to marry any one else
in this world rather than you, my worthy Fell. But the girls of the
present day are past my comprehension--and the women too, for the
matter of that. Yes, Mrs. Champernowne, the women too!"
The painter sighed more heavily than before as he said this. He took
a little note from his waistcoat-pocket presently, and from the
half-listless, half unwilling manner in which he unfolded the miniature
sheet and glanced at the half-dozen lines inscribed thereon, it was
evident that he had read the note before.
And yet it was no very important document. It was only a woman's
epistle--half of remonstrance, half of invitation. But the tiny sheet
of paper was a marvel of delicate emblazonry in the way of crest and
arms, monogram and address, and the paper exhaled a rare and subtile
perfume, as of myosotis or orange-blossom.
"What are you doing, Mr. Crawford," began the painter's
correspondent, in a hand which was firm without being masculine,
bold and yet neat; a hand which had an originality and character
of its own, and which once seen was rarely forgotten or confounded
with any other caligraphy,--"what are you doing, and why have I
seen neither you nor Florence since my return to town? I am anxious
to hear all about your pictures for this season, or to see them;
but I shall not come to your painting-room uninvited. And in the
mean time you and your daughter know where to find me.
"Always truly yours,
"GEORGINA CHAMPERNOWNE."
"Shall I go to her?" thought the painter. "I made up my mind to keep
clear of her for this year at least, and already I am tempted to waver.
She won't leave me alone; she won't let me work in peace, and forget
her if I can. What is it to her that I have worked and waited for
twenty years to win the place I hold? What is it to her? She likes to
see me in her drawing-room, and to exhibit me to the people amongst
whom she lives. I suppose I am a kind of lion in my way, and that
she likes to show me in my cage. What does it matter to her if she
distracts me from my work? It pleases her to keep me in an intermittent
fever of perplexity and despair. What am I to her amongst a hundred
admirers? I am only something different from the rest of them. She has
her museum of lovers, as she has her cabinets of china, her collection
of antique silver, her orchids, her Angora cats: and I am a curious
specimen of the genus painter--very hopeless. Shall I go to her to
be fooled, as I have been fooled, year after year, ever since I have
been worth a place in her exhibition? No, no, Mrs. Champernowne.
_Nenni_, as the citizens of Ghent said to Philip van Artevelde. One
might do something with Van Artevelde, by-the-bye, and the quaint old
costumes, and the queer peaked roofs of the houses, and the infuriated
_burghers_, clamorous for their leader's blood, _Nenni_. Mrs.
Champernowne, I will not go near you. I have my great picture to paint
between this and the 28th of April, and I have to hold my own against
the critics; so I will send you my daughter with a pretty message,
and I will invite you to my painting-room on the last day in April,
with the connoisseurs and the amateurs, and the art-critics on the
newspapers, and the unknown strangers who come to stare at the painter,
under pretence of looking at his pictures."
But when Mr. Crawford had spent about three hours at his easel, he
laid down his pallet and brushes, and looked at the clock upon the
mantelpiece--the infallible clock upon which weary models cast furtive
glances as the day wore on, to see when another hour had expired, and
another shilling had been earned.
"I can't go on any longer without a young person, as Flo calls my
professional model," said Mr. Crawford; "and I think I should like to
show _her_ my sketch before I go seriously to work at the picture. Her
taste is perfect, and she might suggest something; besides which it's
getting too dark for work," added the painter, rather irrelevantly.
The "she" of whom he spoke so vaguely was Mrs. Champernowne, and he
wanted to find an excuse for going to her. He took a small canvas
from amongst others leaning against the wall, and slipped it into a
green-baize cover. He rang the bell, told the servant to fetch a cab,
and then retired into a dressing-room that adjoined the larger chamber,
where he exchanged his velvet painting-coat for the broadcloth of
everyday life.
CHAPTER XV.
DELILAH.
After driving about half-a-mile Mr. Crawford halted in a little lane
leading out of the high road, and within five minutes' walk of Hyde
Park,--an obscure corner, in which one would scarcely expect to find a
decent house, but which was, nevertheless, one of the choicest spots
at the West-end. It was close to the park; and the maximum of earthly
bliss seems to be involved in that fact. The painter alighted before
a stout wooden door, set deep in a wall, above which appeared the
branches of leafless sycamores. The garden within that circling wall
was rather less than half-an-acre in extent: the house that nestled
amid those leafless trees was only a cottage; but the rent which Mrs.
Champernowne paid for this retreat was something like seven hundred
a-year.
It was a retreat--a little hermitage half hidden amidst a dreary
wilderness of stucco--a pearl of price amongst the meretricious
splendours of Birmingham jewellers' ware--a place, whose parallel
was not to be found within the charmed circle in which alone Mrs.
Champernowne could exist--and Mrs. Champernowne's landlord knew the
value of his treasure. Such a cottage and such a garden at Highgate, or
Kew, or Ealing, or Isleworth, might have been worth a hundred and fifty
pounds a-year: but such a cottage, within ear-shot of the sparrows of
Hyde Park, was worth almost any thing its owner chose to ask for it.
Mrs. Champernowne was elegant, Mrs. Champernowne was fashionable. She
was a widow--the widow of an elderly man, who had left her what was
supposed to be an inexhaustible fortune. But it may be that this idea
had arisen in the public mind rather from the reckless expenditure of
the widow than from any exact knowledge of the late Mr. Champernowne's
resources. With this gentleman had expired one unutterably ancient
lineage, and in the person of his widow was represented another.
Backward, through the misty regions of the past, Mrs. Champernowne
traced the currents of her own and her husband's blood, winding,
by separate ways, into the remote darkness of a legendary age. The
history of modern Europe had a personal interest for the elegant widow,
and Froissart was a family record. But she rarely spoke of these
past glories. Only now and then, when the name of some aristocratic
conspirator or court-poet, some distinguished politician, or general,
or admiral of a mediæval age arose in a discussion, Mrs. Champernowne
might be heard to murmur softly, as to herself, "His great grandson
married my mother's great aunt;" or, "Poor fellow, how fond my ancestor
Ralph Hyde's youngest daughter was of him! I have the ring he gave her
the night before his execution,--a posy ring with the motto, _Memoria
in æterna_."
If Georgina Champernowne had secured for herself a certain position in
the fashionable world, she had secured it entirely without effort. She
had pleased others by pleasing herself. During her husband's lifetime
she had been buried alive in a gloomy old Northumbrian castle that
rose black and bare above a great expanse of hill and dale, sparsely
wooded here and there, and dignified with the name of park. Those who
knew most about her--and even they seemed to know very little--declared
that the elegant Georgina had known the bitter gripe of poverty's stern
hand before she married Mohun Champernowne, of Champernowne Castle. Her
father, Ambrose Arscott Pomeroy, was the last representative of a grand
old Cornish family, and had carried his three sons and five daughters
to a sleepy Belgian town, where the grass grew in the deserted
highways, and where the halls in which mediæval commerce had displayed
her richest treasures amidst clamorous crowds of buyers and sellers,
served for the storehouses of petty manufacturers or the habitations
of lonely old women. Georgina had been educated in a convent within
a few miles of Brussels, at a cost of about forty pounds a year, and
had emerged therefrom more accomplished than one out of twenty of the
damsels who leave a fashionable finishing-school, where the annual
stipend is something over three hundred. An accidental meeting between
Ambrose Pomeroy and his old friend Mohun Champernowne had brought
about the marriage of Georgina; and after performing the duties of
a devoted wife, and enduring the humours of an invalid husband and
the unspeakable dulness of a Northumbrian mansion for ten years, Mr.
Pomeroy's daughter found herself mistress alike of her own destiny and
of every shilling that her husband had to leave. Her father had died
within the last few years; her brothers and sisters had scattered far
and wide, some doing badly, some doing well, but none of them holding
their own in the sphere to which Mohun Champernowne's widow belonged.
She was quite alone in the world. There was no one who had any right to
question her actions or interfere with her caprices. She was thirty-two
years of age, and in the dull period of her seclusion her taste had
refined itself, and her intellect had ripened.
Then it was that Mrs. Champernowne came to London, and began to live
her own life. For her, who had been so long an exile from society, the
laws of society had little weight. She took a house in a fashionable
neighbourhood because the neighbourhood was pleasant, rather than
because it was fashionable. She sent for one of her nieces, and made
the girl a permanent inmate of her house, not because she feared to
face society without the protection of a female companion, but because
she wished to benefit her sister's child. She rarely went into society.
She was never seen at horticultural _fêtes_, or fancy-fairs, races, or
lawn-parties; but at the private view of every exhibition of pictures,
at the opera, on the first night of a new piece at a fashionable
theatre, at a few of the choicer morning concerts in Hanover Square,
the initiated recognised Mrs. Champernowne, and pointed her out to
uninitiated friends as one of the most elegant women in fashionable
London. She was not a dashing woman; no flutter of lace or rustle of
silk, no musical tingling of bracelets or bangles, or perfume of jockey
club attended her entrance into any public resort. Country cousins,
staring at the patrician beauty of West-end belles and the splendour
of West-end millinery, were apt to overlook Mrs. Champernowne; but if
a connoisseur in the trifles of life had been told to look for the
woman whose toilette most successfully combined the extremity of rigid
simplicity with the perfection of elegance, he would inevitably have
selected the widow.
This was the woman who had been one of the first to recognise the
genius of William Crawford, who had given him a high price for one of
his earliest successes, and who had been pleased to set him down upon
the list of her intimates. And this last boon was no small privilege,
for Mrs. Champernowne did not crowd her drawing-room with acquaintances
of a season's standing. She lived her own life, and she chose her own
friends.
The chosen few who had at first constituted her circle grew into
many; but there was none amongst the many who had not some claim to
distinction. If the door of the Hermitage had been freely opened to
every comer, Mrs. Champernowne might have found it difficult to sustain
the tone of distinction which she had so unconsciously acquired. But
in shutting her door upon people whose acquaintance another woman in
her position might have courted, the widow invested her receptions
with a piquancy which fascinated the privileged ones who were free to
come and go as they pleased. To be free of the Hermitage was _d'être
de Marly_ over again; for, once admitted within those walls, all
ceremony was done with. No invitation-cards ever issued from Georgina's
fair hands. She was an inveterate tea-drinker; and to linger by her
side as she dispensed fragile cups of egg-shell china that held about
a table-spoonful, was to be carried back to the days of patch and
hoop, and to be subjugated by the charms of a new Belinda--a Belinda
of five-and-thirty years, well sounded, but the most bewildering of
enchantresses nevertheless.
In the evening Mrs. Champernowne was at home to her intimates, and from
ten until twelve the little lane leading out of the Kensington Road was
luminous with the lamps of broughams.
"I reserve no particular evening for my intimates, for I know so few
people," said the widow--she always made a strong point of her limited
circle--"and I so rarely go out. People know they can find me whenever
they choose to come, and that I like to see them come in and out of my
rooms as they please."
Placed on this easy footing, Mrs. Champernowne's friends found the
Hermitage one of the most agreeable houses in London. The best music to
be heard at the West-end was to be heard at Mrs. Champernowne's; the
freshest photographs of new pictures, that had been the gems of the
season in continental exhibitions; the last political pamphlet that
had aroused the indignation of the Parisian police; the last comedy by
Sardou or Augier, that had succeeded at the Française or Gymnase,--were
to be found scattered on her table; and all the lions and lionesses of
London roared their mildest roar for the pleasure of their accomplished
hostess. Some delicate instinct of her own enabled her to discover nice
people. She developed talents that had never been brought to light
before. The ice of a reserved nature melted under her genial influence;
the most afflicted of bashful men found courage in her presence.
People who were utterly subjugated by her fascination sought in vain
to define its nature, and were content at last to declare her the most
charming of women. Her intimates were pestered by the supplications of
outsiders, who wanted to penetrate the magic circle: but that circle
was not to be entered easily.
People pleaded hard to be allowed to introduce such and such a friend
who was dying to make Mrs. Champernowne's acquaintance, but she was
seldom charitable enough to say with Rogers, "Let him live." "Come to
see me whenever you like," she said; "but don't bring me any strangers;
I detest strangers. The only people I care to know are people I can
know before I see them. I read a book or see a picture, or hear a
sonata on the violin; and I know in a moment whether I shall like the
man or woman who writes, or paints, or plays. I knew by the turn of his
Iphigenia's head that I should like Mr. Glendower the sculptor, and
now he is one of my best friends. And there is Mr. Crawford," added
the widow, smiling sweetly as she turned to the painter; "I knew
him intimately from the moment in which I stood riveted before that
wonderful Aspasia."
It was at the call of this enchantress that Mr. Crawford had left his
painting-room in the bleak February afternoon. He rang the bell, which
tinkled with a subdued sound in the distance, for the genius of noise
was banished from the Hermitage. Once within those sheltering walls,
the visitor recognised an atmosphere which had nothing in common with
the vulgar air without. A solemn hush reigned as in a cathedral. No
shrieking birds, no yelping lapdogs broke the serene stillness. A
man admitted Mr. Crawford into a long glazed corridor, where there
were hothouse flowers, the frailest of exotics, whose waxen petals
glimmered whitely amidst foliage of dark shining green; and at the
extreme end two marble figures seemed to keep guard over a pair of
dark-green-velvet doors; which divided the corridor from the inner
sanctuary. One of the statues was the Genius of Night, with starry
veil and extinguished torch; the other, a Silence, with lifted finger
pressed upon closed lips. The subdued tone of the vestibule, the dark
foliage and colourless petals of the exotics, the chill whiteness of
marble against a background of sombre green, possessed a harmony of
their own; and the visitor who entered the Hermitage for the first time
felt, before he reached the end of the vestibule, that he was in no
common abode. For the painter, acutely alive to the sense of external
beauty, the surroundings of Mrs. Champernowne had an irresistible
intoxication.
"Why do I come here?" he asked himself, as he followed the servant to
the end of the vestibule. "There is an odour in the very atmosphere
that stupifies and bewilders me. Take away a wall here and there, and
open barbaric colonnades to the glare of an Eastern sun, and I can
fancy Samson coming to visit Delilah in this house. I have half a mind
to leave my card, and go away without seeing her."
The servant looked back at this moment, as wondering why the visitor
did not follow him; and after a little movement of hesitation, Mr.
Crawford passed into the hall. Need it be said that Mrs. Champernowne's
man-servant was not a common man-servant? He was a most gentlemanly
creature, upon whom a livery would have been as much out of place as
upon a bishop. A little powder in his hair was the sole badge of his
servitude, and became him admirably. For the rest, his costume was
such as might have been worn by the ideal curate or the poetic doctor
of a young lady's novel. The grave dignity of his manner was more
impressive than the concentrated insolence of twenty over-fed Jeameses.
As you looked at him you were overpowered by a sense of your own
inferiority. You felt instinctively that he had been intended for a
higher sphere; that he, too, could number conspirators and court-poets
amongst his ancestors; that his tastes were as refined as his manners
and appearance; that he devoted his Sabbath leisure to the perusal of
the _Saturday Review_, and would have fainted at the sight of a _Daily
Telegraph_.
The entrance-hall of the Hermitage was by no means spacious. A Persian
carpet of moderate dimensions covered the centre of the floor, and
protected the unwary stranger from the slipperiness of a tesselated
pavement. The same subdued colour which pervaded the vestibule reigned
in the hall, where there were yet more pale exotics and antique bronzes
looming duskily through the shade. Curtains of soft grey silk shrouded
a doorway, through which Mr. Crawford passed into the drawing-room,
where there were again dark foliage and starry-white blossoms in the
dim shade of grey-silk curtains lined with a pale rose colour, that
faintly tinted the subdued light, and where two white Angora cats were
sleeping peacefully amidst the fleecy fur of a huge polar-bearskin
spread upon the hearth. It might have been the chamber of the Sleeping
Beauty which Mr. Crawford had penetrated; and to support the delusion,
a lady with closed eyes sat half-buried in the softest and deepest of
easy-chairs. But she lifted her eyelids as the gentlemanly servant
announced Mr. Crawford, and rose to receive him. She was tall and
slender--a stern critic would have called her thin. She was dark and
pale, with thick bands of black hair carried behind her ears, and
gathered in a compact knot at the back of her head. If she had not
been Mrs. Champernowne she would scarcely have been called handsome;
but a plainer woman than she might have appeared beautiful amidst her
surroundings. Whatever charm there was in her face was not to be traced
to any perfection of feature; but in the shape of her small head, the
perfect grace of her throat, the varying expression of her countenance,
the refinement of her appearance, there lurked a charm rarely to be
found in the splendour of perfect loveliness.
This was the woman who had enslaved many men, but for whom independence
was too dear a treasure to be bartered lightly. She had been the
slave of an old man's caprices, and had endured her slavery with all
womanly patience and gentleness; but having won her freedom, she was
not inclined to accept any new bondage. Her friends declared that she
had refused more than one brilliant proposal within the few years of
her widowhood, and she had already acquired the reputation of a widow
who would never choose a second husband. This was the woman whose
fascinations were acknowledged by all who came within her influence,
but amongst whose victims there were very few so utterly helpless, so
entirely hopeless, as William Crawford.
He had begun by being grateful to her for that early recognition of his
genius which had borne witness to her taste. He had allowed himself to
be beguiled into a friendship for her, which speedily became the chief
delight of his life. He had wondered at her; he had admired her; he
had ended by adoring her. Whether she was fully aware of his weakness,
or utterly ignorant of it, was one of the great perplexities of his
existence. No word of his had ever declared his passion. He was content
to be her friend and guest on sufferance. A word, and he might have
been expelled from her presence for ever. There were times when he
grew desperate, and was inclined to make the declaration which, as he
thought, must inevitably banish him from the smiles of his enchantress,
and thus make an end of his love and his despair. There were times
when he made a solemn vow that he would abstain from her society, as a
drunkard vows that he will abstain from the fiery spirit that destroys
him, and, like the drunkard, broke his pledge, before it was many days
old.
The idea that any other result than disgrace and banishment could
follow the declaration of his love for Mrs. Champernowne never entered
the painter's mind. Her grace, her fashion, her wealth, constituted
a kind of royalty, which separated her from William Crawford as
completely as if she had been a queen. Sometimes, as he worked alone
in his painting-room, he thought of all the men who had been bewitched
by the light of royal beauty's glances, and had suffered the penalty
of their presumption. He thought of the legendary knight who loved
Queen Guinevere, of Rizzio and Chastelard, wild Buckingham and fated
Konigsmark, foolish Rohan and devoted Fersen.
Fanciful, as the man who lives by the cultivation of his fancy
must naturally be, the painter tried in vain to shut the image of
his enchantress from his thoughts. The simplicity of his life, the
singleness of his ambition, had preserved the freshness of his youth.
He was as romantic as a lad fresh from college, and his worship of his
divinity was pure and unselfish as the love of sentimental youth.
Mrs. Champernowne smiled her sweetest smile as she gave her hand to
William Crawford. She was not a vivacious enchantress. Her feminine
detractors had been heard to wonder what gentlemen could see in Mrs.
Champernowne, who had really no animation, and gave herself the languid
airs and graces of a person who was in the last stage of consumption.
But the devotees who worshipped at the Hermitage found a charm in
the widow's repose of manner which infinitely surpassed the frisky
fascinations of livelier belles. The touch of her soft cool hand had
a kind of mesmeric influence. The harmonious tones of her low voice
were like the dropping of water in some sylvan fountain. She excelled
rather as a sympathetic listener than as a brilliant talker; but as
she talked little, and never talked at random, she had a reputation
for sound judgment and refined taste rarely accorded to a brilliant
talker. For her adorers she was always charming; and though she was
alike to all, there was so subtle a fascination in her manner, that
there was scarcely one among her band of worshippers who did not fondly
cherish the delusion that he was the most favoured, and that there were
specially melodious accents and particularly delicious smiles reserved
for him alone.
Accustomed, in the ten years of her wifehood, to study the whims and
gratify the peevish fancies of an elderly invalid, Mrs. Champernowne
had acquired the power of pleasing people who were hard to please.
Never since she had reigned in her little world had she wounded the
self-love of one of her subjects. People left her presence delighted
with themselves, as well as charmed with her, and eagerly returned to
renew the impressions that were only to be experienced in her society.
"I thought you were never coming to see me again," she said, as the
painter seated himself opposite to her; "and yet you must know how
anxious I always am to hear about your new pictures, and to see you,"
she added, in a softer voice; and then there was a pause, during which
one of the Angora cats had crept to her knee to be caressed. There were
disappointed worshippers at the Hermitage, who, in the peevishness of
despair, declared that Mrs. Champernowne cherished her Angora cats
with a view to the aggravation of mankind; and that she knew she never
looked prettier than when one of her favourites was perched upon her
shoulder, making itself into a fleecy-white background for the jet
blackness of her shining hair and the pale olive of her complexion.
"I believe in the transmigration of souls, and that Mrs. Champernowne
is Cleopatra," said a young poet whom the widow had admitted into
the innermost circle of her intimates. "It's not to be supposed that
such a woman as that is only meant to last half a century. There
must be a principle of economy in nature by which the souls of the
mighty are utilised. I know where to put my hand upon all the great
men of the past. I have dined at the Garrick with Shakespeare, and I
can show you Snyders's house in St. John's Wood; and I have smoked a
pipe with Murillo at Kensington, and have seen John van Eyck putting
the last touches to his draperies on the Sunday before he sent his
picture to the Academy. I used to lift my hat to poor Harry Fielding,
who now lies buried at Kensal Green; and I have bought a cigar-case
of genial-hearted Peg Woffington at a fancy fair. Mrs. Champernowne
is Cleopatra. You can see the Egyptian tint in her complexion after
eighteen centuries; and her cats are lineal descendants from the sacred
animal of Memphis. She sits in her easy-chair in the very attitude
in which she sat in her galley when she went to meet Antony; and
sometimes, when she is _distrait_, I fancy she is thinking of Actium."
In the presence of his divinity for the first time after some months,
William Crawford strove in vain to suppress all semblance of emotion.
She was dearer to him than he had ever dared to confess to himself. He
tried to beguile himself with the belief that he was only fascinated
by her, that the admiration which he felt for her arose only from his
artistic sense of her grace. But in her presence all reasoning was
vain, and he knew that he loved her. To be near her was so deep a joy
that he feared to speak, lest in some wild impulse of rapture he should
reveal his secret. He sat opposite to her in silence, with the faint
glow of the fire upon his face.
"I hope you have not been working too hard," she said presently, when
the cat had clambered upon her shoulder, and she had leant her head
against the soft white fur.
It was very little to say, and it was an expression of sympathy that
William Crawford was in the habit of hearing from all manner of people;
but from this woman it seemed so much.
"No, indeed," he answered, almost sadly; "the error of my life is that
I don't work enough. Do you know, Mrs. Champernowne, that since my
good fortune I have sometimes wished myself back in my second-floor
lodging in Buckingham Street, in the blankest and dreariest interval
of my life, only because then at least my mind was free for my work?
I fancy that a painter ought to live on the top of a column, like St.
Simon Stylites; or if he is a sybarite, and must have shelter from the
sun and rain, let him beg a lodging in the octagon tower in Windsor
Forest, and spend his life there, with the keeper's children and the
deer for his only society. I think the old painters must surely have
lived lonely lives, and that the secret of their superiority to us must
lie in the fact of their seclusion. We live too much in the world,
and have too many distractions. The gleam of sunshine in a landscape,
or the smile upon a face which we have been trying vainly to produce
for weeks, is just beginning to beam upon our canvas, when a servant
opens the door of our painting-room and tells us that Mr. Smith has
called, and wants to see us most particularly, and will not detain us
a moment. We groan, and go to Mr. Smith, who detains us a quarter of
an hour; and when we return to our easel the power is gone out of our
brush, the divine light has vanished from our canvas."
In speaking of his art the painter had for the moment forgotten
his enchantress, but all the old weakness came back to him as Mrs.
Champernowne responded, with the low voice that seemed made to express
sympathy:
"I can fancy how annoyed you must be when commonplace people intrude
upon you. I hope you are going to do something great this year. You
have brought me a sketch to look at: that is indeed kind. I feel such
a privileged person when I see the germ of the masterpiece that is to
delight the world."
The painter looked at the speaker half incredulously; but the gentle
gravity of her manner gave evidence that she had no consciousness of
uttering an exaggerated compliment.
"My masterpieces are very poor achievements, Mrs. Champernowne," he
said; "and I shall begin to doubt the infallibility of your judgment if
you show too much indulgence for my shortcomings."
"I believe implicitly in the genius of my friends, and I will cherish
my faith as long as I live," answered the widow; and then she extended
her hand with an impatient gesture. "Let me see your sketch, if you
please, Mr. Crawford; and when you have told me all about it, I will
make you some tea."
There was considerable discussion about the future picture. The
subject was Cybele and the infant Jupiter, and the idea was taken
from an old play of Thomas Heywood's. Relentless Saturn had commanded
the destruction of the child, but the bright smile of the young god
disarmed the hand that would have slain him.
Mrs. Champernowne was not a "gushing" person. She gave utterance to no
rapturous praises of the sketch; but every word she said went to prove
how deeply she was interested in the painter's workmanship. An inner
door was opened while she was still bending over the canvas, and a
bright-looking, blooming young lady appeared, and greeted the painter
with frank cordiality. Some women might have feared the rivalry of
such a blooming niece as Miss Helen Vicary, but Mrs. Champernowne had
no mere terror of her niece's fresh young beauty than Mary Queen of
Scots felt when she contemplated the charms of her four fair namesakes.
She liked to have a pretty niece about her, just as she liked the
sleek beauty of her Angora cats, the delicate tints of her grey-silk
draperies, the turquoise blue of her Sèvres china.
"Tell them to send us some tea, Helen," she said; "I am going to give
Mr. Crawford an old woman's entertainment;--and you know this is not
the fashionable tea before dinner," she added, turning to the painter.
"The rest of the world may eat supper at eight and call it dinner, if
they like; but Helen and I dine at four, and doze by the fire till
six, and then we drink tea for the rest of the evening. I know that a
modern Brummel would be unutterably shocked if he heard our degraded
mode of life; but my tea keeps me awake, and I am always ready to
enjoy the society of my friends. I have no doubt that modern hours are
very wisely chosen; for of course every thing we do in the present is
incontestably right, and every thing that was done in the past was
supremely wrong; but I don't think the Hôtel de Rambouillet would have
been quite so celebrated as it was, if people in those days had dined
at half-past eight."
The Belinda tea-service was brought: a clumsy guest had once contrived
to break one of the Belinda saucers, but not by the faintest
contraction of Mrs. Champernowne's brow could the delinquent have
divined the value of the fragile soft paste which he had shattered.
The widow was never more charming than when presiding over her tiny
tea-table. There was no hissing urn, no glittering kettle simmering
noisily above a spirit-lamp; for urns and kettles are by nature fussy,
and fuss and bustle were unspeakably obnoxious to Mrs. Champernowne.
The gentlemanly man-servant brought a fresh teapot every ten minutes
when his mistress had many visitors, and Helen, seated by her aunt,
dispensed the cups to the tea-drinkers. Every one of the teapots was a
gem in its way, and had an individuality of its own. Mrs. Champernowne
had a mania for teapots, and had christened her favourites by the names
of illustrious tea-drinkers. There were Pope and Addison, Elizabeth
Steele and Lady Mary Montague, Molly Lepel and Horace Walpole. No
muscle of the gentlemanly servant's countenance relaxed when he was
told that there was to be gunpowder in Lady Mary, and orange-pekoe in
Mr. Pope.
The gentlemanly creature lighted a cluster of wax-candles and a
moderator-lamp, and stirred the fire as softly as if the poker had
been sheathed in velvet. No vulgar glare of gas ever illuminated the
Hermitage. Moderator-lamps, burning beneath Parian shades, cast their
chastened light upon the sombre green of the velvet pile, and waxen
tapers twinkled dimly as in a chapel.
Mrs. Champernowne glanced at the clock on the chimney-piece.
"What time do you dine, Mr. Crawford?" she asked. "I mustn't detain you
here while Florence is waiting for you at the Fountains."
"Florence dines in Bloomsbury this evening, and I--I dined between
three and four," said the painter, who had eaten three biscuits and
drunk a glass of pale sherry at that hour. Was there any such thing as
dinner for privileged creatures who were permitted to enter the sacred
chambers of the Hermitage?
"I wonder whether she thinks I would leave her for the sake of the best
dinner the united _chefs_ of all the London clubs could devise?" he
thought.
He stayed at the Hermitage, and drank innumerable cups of tea, and
forgot that he had ever sworn to abjure the society of Georgina
Champernowne. After tea there were new photographs to be looked at, and
pleasant talk about the celebrities of the Parisian _salons_, and then
the widow played the softest little bits of Mozart for the painter's
edification. Peculiar in every thing, she had her peculiarity with
regard to music, and played Mozart, and Mozart only.
"Other composers are very grand," she said, "but Mozart is grand enough
and good enough for me. I find every thing that I care for in his
music, and don't care to go further. You know I am wicked enough to
hate strangers."
Rossini and Auber, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, were amongst Mrs.
Champernowne's strangers. The room filled in the course of the evening,
and the painter stayed till eleven o'clock. He went very little into
society, and Mrs. Champernowne was pleased to exhibit him to her
friends. He knew that he was a slave amongst other slaves, who smiled
as they contemplated one another's fetters. But in the siren's presence
he gave himself up to the sweet intoxication of her influence. To-night
she was especially gracious to him, though even when most gracious she
contrived to avoid any thing like exclusiveness.
"You are my prodigal son," she said. "I began to think that I was never
to see you again."
Throughout all the evening she said nothing worth recording. She sat
in the midst of handsomer women than herself, and gave place while
cleverer women talked their best; but those who left her presence
remembered her and her only; and there were many who would have
sympathised with William Crawford as he walked slowly homeward through
the highways and byways of Kensington, pondering upon his enchantress.
"Why should I avoid her if it is such happiness to me to be near her?"
he thought. "I have no foolish hope that she will ever be more to me
than she is now. It ought to be enough for me to see her now and then,
to spend such an evening as I have spent to-night, and to go back to
my work all the better for so bright an interval of happiness. What
can I want more than that, or what could be more delightful--while
it lasts? But when I am old and grey and purblind, and have painted
half-a-dozen bad pictures, and the public are tired of me, and the
critics call my colour flimsy, and insolent young painters begin to
talk of poor old William Crawford, who was once such a great card, will
Mrs. Champernowne let me spend my evenings at the Hermitage _then_?"
CHAPTER XVI.
AT HOME IN BLOOMSBURY.
The slow days, the long weeks, the interminable months dragged
themselves out, and Cecil lived alone with her husband in the stately
solitude of the northern side of Brunswick Square.
The celebrated pea-green Hayne was wont to declare that his horses
grew restive when he attempted to take them eastward of Temple Bar;
and there are many people nowadays inferior in status to the elegant
West-Indian millionaire, who shudder at the mention of Bloomsbury, and
affect a serio-comic horror of the unknown latitudes on the northern
side of Holborn.
Mr. O'Boyneville had no fashionable aversion to an unfashionable
locality. He liked his house in Brunswick Square, because it was big
and stoutly built, like himself; and, as the belief that any thing
appertaining to himself must necessarily be the very best thing of its
kind in existence was deeply implanted in his tranquil breast, he was
serenely unconscious of any brighter region than the comfortable square
in which he had taken up his abode when he first found himself able to
support a household of his own.
If he had known that there were fairer places than Bloomsbury within
reach of the courts of law; if he had fancied that there was any spot
in or near London which would have been more pleasant for Cecil, he
would have been quick to move his goods and chattels. He loved his wife
honestly and truly, and would have made a heavier sacrifice to give her
pleasure; but he knew about as much of a woman's tastes and prejudices
as he knew of the habitudes and requirements of a white elephant;
and he took Lady Cecil calmly home to the dreary, scantily-furnished
Bloomsbury mansion, and left her to be happy after her own fashion in
the spacious empty rooms while he went back to his work.
While he went back to his work! In those few words might have been told
the dismal history of two lives. The husband went to his work, and gave
his heart and soul to breaches of contract and actions for damages,
to libel and divorce cases, to actions in debt, trespass, assumpsit,
trover, and ejectment; and the wife saw him go out and come in, heard
his tired sigh, as he sank half-exhausted into his easy chair, but
remained utterly ignorant and unsympathising.
She had just at first tried to understand her husband's career, and
had questioned him upon the subject of his laborious days and studious
nights; but when he tried to explain some interesting case--a great
will case--in which the issue of a tedious suit depended on the
signification of the words "then" and "forthwith,"--whether the former
was meant to specify a particular time, or had reference to some other
antecedent time; and whether the latter meant "immediately" or within a
convenient time after a certain event,--her mind lost itself among the
complications of the law, and she was fain to confess herself mystified
rather than enlightened by her husband's explanation.
He kissed her, and told her he would never plague her again with such
dry details; and from that hour he very rarely talked of business in
his wife's presence.
But he thought of it, and that, for Cecil, was a great deal worse.
At breakfast, at dinner, when his young wife was talking to him in
her brightest and most animated manner, she would stop suddenly,
chilled and discouraged by the discovery that the great barrister
had not heard a word of her discourse. After telling him about a new
book--a fresh view of Mary Queen of Scots, by a French historian; an
anti-Carlyleian essay on Frederick of Prussia; a passionate, classic
tragedy, by a new poet--Cecil would look hopefully for some answering
ray of interest in her husband's face, and would behold his eyes fixed
and staring, and hear his lips murmuring faintly to himself, "The
defendant seems to me to have no case, and the plaintiffs will be
entitled to recover if Giddles and Giddles can show that the letter
was posted on the twenty-first; the defendant must be held in law to
be the purchaser, and therefore responsible for every bale of the
cotton. The cases Slattery _v._ Spindleshanks, 30th Law Digest, Q.B.,
page 102, and Capers _v._ Pepper, in the Weekly Reports, are almost
in point--humph!--yes, yes; but old Giddles must be kept out of the
witness-box, and Giddles junior pinned to the date and postmark of that
letter; and--yes, yes----"
After breakfast Mr. O'Boyneville kissed his wife, and hurried out of
the house. At half-past six he came home, washed his hands in a little
dressing-room at the back of his study, and sat down to dinner in the
dress he had worn all day, with the dust of the law-courts in his hair,
and all the dreariness of the law in his brain. Sometimes he talked a
little to his wife during dinner, telling her some scrap of public news
in which she did not feel the faintest interest, or reciting some legal
witticism, which to her uninitiated mind appeared unspeakably stupid.
After dinner he read his papers for a quarter of an hour, and then laid
himself down upon a gigantic crimson-morocco-covered sofa, which looked
like the relic of a departed era, a fossilised mammoth in the way of
upholsterer's work, and slept peacefully until nine, when a modest and
almost furtive double knock announced the advent of his clerk, who
brought the evening's batch of letters and papers.
Then the popular barrister arose like a giant refreshed, took a cup of
tea from Cecil's attentive hands, and sipped the revivifying beverage
in a dreamy manner, staring thoughtfully at his wife without seeing
her, and still revolving the case of Giddles and Giddles, Liverpool
brokers, and the three thousand bales of cotton. After tea he went to
his study, which darksome sanctorum he rarely left until the smallest
of the small hours had sounded from the clocks of St. Pancras and the
Foundling.
Laurence O'Boyneville had won his position by honest hard work, and by
divine right of an intellect not easily matched amongst the ranks of
hard-working man. But such a man is apt to make a terrible mistake when
he brings a fair young wife to his joyless home. Incessant work had
become the normal state of the barrister. He did not know that his home
was dreary. His life seemed pleasant enough to him; and he did not know
that to a woman such a mode of existence must be simply intolerable. He
gave his wife a comfortable house, and the unlimited command of money;
and he fancied he had done all that was necessary. He had no time for
any thing more. When his day's work was finished he was too tired to
change his dress, too tired to talk without effort, too tired to go
from one room to another after his dinner; and when he had recovered
from the fatigue of his day's work his night's work began.
And such a life as this was the realisation of his brightest dream.
For these days of unrest and excitement, for these studious nights had
the young man from Shannonville toiled and struggled. He had attained
a high position in his profession, and he loved his profession. What
more could the heart of man desire? Venus Anadyomene divinely smiling
amidst a cloud of silvery spray, radiant with vermilion and carmine,
ultramarine and Naples yellow, could be no more delightful to the mind
of William Crawford, the painter, than were the cases of Giddles and
Giddles _v._ Clithery, Shavington _v._ The Estremadura Soap-boiling
Company (limited), and many others, to Laurence O'Boyneville, Q.C.
What reason have the painter and the poet, the sculptor and the
musician, to be thankful that the arts for which they slave, the
labours to which they devote their lives, are beautiful for all the
world as well as for the labourers! If Cecil's husband had been a
painter she would have been content to stand beside his easel while
his bright fancies grew into life upon the canvas. Every new picture
would have been an era in her existence as well as in his. No curve of
an arm or wrist, no pose of a head, no undulation of a drapery that
would not have made subject for pleasant talk and spirited discussion.
The painter and his wife may go lovingly hand-in-hand upon the great
highway to Fame's starry temple; and if she has been his model now and
then, and if she has suggested the subject of a picture, or devised
some happy alteration of an attitude, she seems to have had a part in
her husband's work. To all time the wives of Rubens will be associated
with his genius; so long as the work of Raffaelle endures, the world
will remember the woman he loved and painted.
But what part can the barrister's wife have in his triumphs? Except
amongst certain sets the world does not talk much of popular
barristers; and the wife of a legal luminary hears little praise of
her husband from the lips of strangers. A woman must be strong-minded
indeed who can interest herself in the technicalities of a dispute
arising out of the purchase of sundry bales of cotton, or the
winding-up of the affairs of a bubble company. There is something in
the very paraphernalia of the legal profession which, on the threshold,
repels all feminine sympathy. The crimson bag, the red tape, the green
ferret; the slippery blue paper, which to the unprofessional pen is
utterly impracticable for all literary use,--every thing seems alike
symbolical of a hopeless dryness and arid barrenness, amidst which no
solitary blossoms, no lonely, accidental prison-flower can put forth
its tender shoots.
As the dull days crept on, so miserably alike one another, Cecil felt
it was her duty to be interested in her husband's career. She read the
law-reports in the _Times_, the pale shadows of bad puns, whereat there
had been laughter, but which could bring no smile to her pensive face.
She could not be interested in those dreary lawsuits, those endless
disputations about sordid things. So at last she abandoned the effort,
and fell back upon her own thoughts, which were sad enough sometimes.
As Lord Aspendell's daughter and as Laurence O'Boyneville's wife, Lady
Cecil might have had enough of dinner-parties and evening-parties,
kettledrums and _déjeûners_; but she had grown weary of all parties
long before her marriage, and was glad to escape from the set in
which she had lived, and to hide herself in the remote fastnesses of
Bloomsbury.
"My husband has no time for going out," she said, when her old friends
asked her to their houses.
"But you can come, Cecil, and Mr. O'Boyneville can look in during the
evening."
Cecil shook her head.
"He is so tired after his day's work that it would be a cruelty to ask
him to go out," she said.
"And you are going to lead this dull life always, Cecil?"
"I don't care for society. I was accustomed to a solitary life with
poor papa, and it suits me better than any thing else."
But Cecil, looking back upon that old life, remembered with a sigh
how dear a companion her father had been. There was nothing in
heaven and earth that they had not talked of; no book read by one,
and not by the other; no subject so barren that it had not served
for pleasant discourse, when the shabby old curtains were drawn, and
the lamp lighted in the drawing-room of that dear old tumble-down
cottage on the Dyke Road. Cecil did not consider what it was that
constituted the grand difference between her father and her husband.
She had lived amongst poor people before her marriage, but she had
never lived amongst hard-working people. It was very strange to her
to have to do with a person who had no leisure for the refinements
and amenities of life; who gave short answers, for lack of time to be
deliberate and polite; who told her "not to bother," when she asked
some womanly question about his health, or his fatigues, in the midst
of professional meditations. A woman has acquired sublime patience when
she can meekly endure to be bidden not to "bother" her husband, and
still love on.
Never until her marriage had Cecil been familiar with the people who
do the work of this world; and it was scarcely strange if her husband,
in workday clothes and with his workday manners, seemed to her a being
of a different race from that to which belonged the high-bred idlers
she had been accustomed to encounter. She knew that he loved her; she
knew that he was generous, and good, and true: but this knowledge was
not enough. She knew that he was clever; but her lonely days were never
brightened by any ray of his intellect, her desolate evenings were
never enlivened by his wit. Was he _her_ husband? Was he not rather
wedded to that inexorable tyrant which he called his profession? He
loved his wife, and was anxious to please her, but not if her pleasure
involved the neglect of his professional duties. If Cecil knew that
she was beloved, she knew also that Giddles and Giddles and the
subtle niceties of the law were nearer and dearer to her husband than
she could ever be. It was the name of Giddles, mingled with scraps
of an address to the court and jury, that he muttered in his fitful
sleep,--it was how to avail himself of the weak points in Clithery's
defence, or Shavington's, or Jones and Smith's cases, that he pondered
as he brooded by the domestic hearth.
"Why did he marry me?" she thought sometimes sadly; "I am of no use
to him. I am no companion for him. A home for him is only a place in
which he can eat and drink and sleep, and keep some of his law-books.
If I speak to him at breakfast or dinner-time, I may disturb a train
of thought by some idle word; and when he is asleep on the sofa, how
is he the better off for my sitting on the opposite side of the fire
yawning behind my book? The man who comes to him every evening with the
red bag is more to him than I am, for the man and the bag belong to his
profession."
It is not to be supposed that even so busy a man as Mr. O'Boyneville
lived in entire exclusion from all social intercourse with his
fellow-men. There were stately dinner-parties to which he conducted his
elegant young wife, and on rare occasions he gave a stately dinner at
home. And then, once more, Lady Cecil was called upon to give her mind
to the _menu_ of the feast; only in these latter days there were no
harassing calculations of ways and means, no balancing of _fricandeau_
against calves' head _en tortue_, no weighing of lobster-cutlets
against eels _à la tartare_. All Mr. O'Boyneville's ideas were large
and liberal. His household was well organised, his servants few
and efficient, his cellar richly furnished; and if the comfortable
kitchen-wenches of Bloomsbury are behind the _chefs_ and _cordons
bleus_ of Belgravia, the Bloomsbury confectioner is like "Todgers's,"
and can do the thing handsomely when he pleases.
But when all was done those rare and solemn entertainments were very
dreary to Cecil. She tried to be interested in her husband's friends;
but the legal magnates with whom the great O'Boyneville chiefly
associated were not interesting to his young wife; and the wives of the
legal magnates seemed to have lost all the freshness and brightness
of their youth under the all-pervading influence of such cases as
Giddles and Giddles _v._ Clithery, and Shavington _v._ The Estremadura
Soap-boiling Company (limited).
If Mr. O'Boyneville could have purchased his wife pleasure at any cost
save that of his legal position, he would gladly have done so. He saw
a pile of Cecil's music-books, heaped on a side-table in the bare,
bleak drawing-rooms, and half an hour afterwards bade his clerk convey
to Messrs. Broadwood his desire that one of the finest grand pianos
that firm could supply, should be delivered without delay in Brunswick
Square. Cecil felt a kind of rapture as she ran her fingers over the
new keys, and heard the silvery tones of that perfect instrument; for
the dowager's cottage, on which she had been wont to perform in Dorset
Square, gave forth only feeble tinklings for its treble, and woolly
confusion for its bass. After the pleasant surprise occasioned by the
arrival of the splendid grand, after a happy day spent in desultory
ramblings amongst old music-books, Cecil tripped lightly down to the
hall when the banging of doors announced the arrival of her husband's
hansom-cab, eager to bid him welcome.
She met him, and went with him into the dressing-room, where he was
wont to make his brief toilet.
"I want to thank you a thousand, thousand times!" she said.
"Thank me, my dear! What for?" asked the barrister, washing his hands.
"The piano--the beautiful Broadwood!"
"What piano?"
The great O'Boyneville's mind was either with Giddles _v._ Clithery or
the Spanish Soap-boiling Company. Cecil sighed. It seemed as if half
the value of the gift was taken away by the indifference of the giver.
"I thank you very, very much," she said presently, but all the girlish
animation had gone from her manner. "There is nothing in the world you
could have given me so welcome as that delightful piano."
"I'm very glad you like it, dear; I told them to send you a good one.
I caught sight of your music-books on the table in the drawing-room
through the open door as I came down to breakfast yesterday morning,
and I remembered that music-books couldn't be of any use to you without
a piano."
After this Cecil tried to make herself happy in her husband's house.
She tried to reconcile herself to his long absences, his gloomy
preoccupation, his profound slumbers on the mammoth sofa. She tried
to be in all things a good and dutiful wife, and to lead her own life
peacefully and happily, thanking Providence for having given her so
kind a protector, so honest a friend, in the person of the husband who
could never be her companion. She arranged her favourite books in a
little old-fashioned bookcase in the back drawing-room; she decorated
the two gaunt rooms with birds and flowers, and scattered pretty
inexpensive nicknacks on the ponderous rosewood tables. Whatever
elegance can be imparted to two great dreary apartments, furnished by
general order on an upholsterer with all that is most solid in carved
rosewood, and all that is most darksome in green damask, Lady Cecil
imparted to the Bloomsbury drawing-rooms. But when all was done they
were too large for her loneliness, and the days and nights seemed
very long in them. She had piles of new books from a mighty emporium
in the neighbourhood, and she read herself almost blind sometimes
before the day was done. She had a neat little brougham in which
to pay visits or drive in the park, but she did not care to retain
fashionable acquaintances whose ways were no longer her ways. The
delights for which she pined were not the frivolous joys of Belgravian
drawing-rooms, nor the glare and glitter of Tyburnian festivals. When
her fancies wandered away from the Bloomsbury realities into the world
of visions, they carried her to fair cities in distant lands, to sombre
German forests and snow-clad Swiss mountains, towering upward in an
atmosphere whose breath is like the breath of a new life revivifying
a worn-out body. She thought how peaceful, how very nearly happy, the
quiet autumn days spent in Devonshire with her husband had seemed to
her.
Mr. O'Boyneville was not a man to do things by halves, and when he
divorced himself from business the separation was always a complete
one. During the brief honeymoon he had been the most devoted and
submissive of husbands, the tenderest of friends, the most sympathetic
of companions; but once within a shilling cab-fare of the law-courts,
the husband and the lover froze into the man of business, and Giddles
_v._ Clithery, or Jones _v._ Robinson, or Smith against Brown and
others, reigned paramount.
Mrs. MacClaverhouse honoured her niece by dining with her now and then,
and was received with stately ceremony, and treated with all courteous
attention by her nephew-in-law, for whom she seemed to entertain a
profound esteem. The dowager was pleased to express her approval of
Mr. O'Boyneville's wines, and her commendation of her niece's cook,
"though she robs you, my dear, I have no doubt, up hill and down dale,"
said the experienced housekeeper; "those good cooks always do. And that
husband of yours is such a generous creature, that I think he must
have been created to be robbed. I do hope you keep some check upon
the housekeeping, and go down to the kitchen at least _once_ a-day. I
know it requires moral courage to do it, just at first; but a woman
who has no moral courage is not fit to have a house of her own, or to
live in lodgings either; for, long as my experience has been, I'm not
able to say whether a cook's or a landlady's audacity goes furthest
in such matters as lard and gravy-beef, while the amount of port and
sherry such women will make away with, under pretence of hare-soup and
cabinet-puddings, is something awful."
But though the dowager had every reason to be satisfied with her
reception whenever she visited Brunswick Square, she did not care to go
there often, for her lively spirit revolted against the dulness of Mr.
O'Boyneville's mansion.
"I don't know how it is, Cecil," she exclaimed one day, "but from the
first moment I entered your dining-room its effect upon me has been
equally depressing. There's a something. I don't know whether it's
the dark-brown curtains or that dreadful mahogany cellaret--and, oh,
why do they make cellarets like sarcophaguses?--under that gigantic
sideboard; but there is a something in your house that preys upon my
spirits. Of course it needn't have that effect upon you, my dear, for
you're accustomed to it, and habit always attaches one to things; but
I'm a whimsical old woman, and this end of the town always did depress
me; while if you take me up towards Islington, past all those cheap
photographers and dusty little gardens, you take me to despair."
Miss Crawford was a frequent visitor at her old friend's house, though
Cecil did not encourage her visits, as her coming very often involved
the escort of Mr. Lobyer, who worried the birds stealthily while
the two ladies were engaged in conversation, and who was generally
accompanied by a diminutive terrier, or a fawn-coloured pug of
unamiable disposition. Even when Florence Crawford came alone, her
presence was not altogether welcome to Cecil. She was oppressively
lively, and seemed to grow more and more volatile as the time appointed
for her marriage with the young millionaire grew nearer. She talked
of nothing but carriages and horses, Tyburnian mansions, and county
splendours; and she was never weary of upbraiding Cecil upon the folly
of her residence in Brunswick Square.
"If I were you I wouldn't allow my husband an hour's peace till he
removed to the West-end," she said; "I hear he earns heaps of money,
and it's really shameful of him to keep you here."
"My dear Florence, if I were to ask Mr. O'Boyneville to take a house at
the West-end, I'm sure he would do so immediately."
"Then why in goodness' name don't you ask him?"
"Because he would be so ready to grant my request, and I don't wish to
impose upon his kindness."
"Impose upon his fiddlesticks! Really, Cecil, you provoke me into being
vulgar: and I wonder how it is, by-the-bye, that all great emotions
have a tendency to make one vulgar. I shall lose all common patience if
you insist upon talking like the good young woman in a novel. What did
you marry Mr. O'Boyneville for unless it was for a handsome house and a
fashionable carriage?"
"I married him because I loved him," Cecil answered gravely, "and
because I hoped to make him a good wife."
Flo's piquant eyebrows elevated themselves to their utmost extent as
her friend said this.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "of course that alters the case: but you really
_are_ like the young woman in a novel, Cecil; and I could never quite
bring myself to believe in that young woman."
And then the impulsive Florence pounced upon her friend, and embraced
her with effusion, declaring that she loved her dearest Cecil to
distraction, and that she would not for worlds say any thing to wound
or distress her. "I'm such a mercenary wretch myself, dear," she
said, "that I fancy every body must be made of the same contemptible
stuff. The girls I meet are so like me, and all our ideas seem to run
in the same groove. Do you know, Cecil, I sometimes think that if we
are unbelieving and mercenary--if we worship nothing but the pomps
and vanities of society--our wickedness is only the natural effect
of the precepts instilled into the youthful mind by those dreadful
grandmothers and maiden aunts of the old school, who were always
preaching against all that is romantic and poetical, and whose dearest
delight was to bray their children's brains in the stony mortar of
common-sense."
Once, and once only, did Cecil venture to speak earnestly to Florence
Crawford on the subject of her approaching marriage. All those vague
allusions to the mercenary sentiments of modern damsels, which Miss
Crawford was so fond of uttering, seemed to Cecil like so many excuses
for her union with the rich young Manchester man. She had not the heart
to ask direct questions, but she spoke very seriously--as she would
have spoken to a sister.
"Remember the long, long life, dear," she said earnestly,--"the long
years that are to come after the wedding-day. Women never could talk
so lightly of marriage if they had any thought of the future. Think,
Florence dear, it is a union that can only be broken by death--or shame
and misery ten times worse than death. I can only repeat the stalest
truisms; these things have been said a hundred times before to-day far
better than I can say them; and yet day after day, year after year,
there are wedding-favours worn, and wedding-bells rung, in honour of
marriages that are only the beginning of life-long misery."
"Cecil," cried Flo impatiently, "if you talk like that I shall begin to
think you repent having married Mr. O'Boyneville."
"No, no, dear, I don't repent; but I know now that I did not think
seriously enough of the step I was taking."
Miss Crawford had been beating the point of her pretty little boot upon
the floor, and twisting the fringe of her elegant parasol into all
manner of knots and entanglements during Cecil's lecture. The piquant
eyebrows were contracted into a frown, and the pretty grey eyes were
filled with tears, and it was not easy to discover whether anger or
sorrow were the stronger in the breast of Florence Crawford.
"I don't think I should have accepted Thomas," she said presently--and
she had not yet brought herself to pronounce her lover's Christian name
without making a wry face--"in fact, I'm sure I shouldn't have accepted
him if I had known what being engaged would bring upon me. Every
creature upon earth seems to make it his or her business to lecture me.
People talk about hasty marriages and life-long misery just as if they
had some occult power of knowing that Mr. Lobyer was predoomed to half
murder me with a poker, like the men one reads of at the police-courts,
within a week of our marriage. And yet what did I see before I was
engaged? Every girl I knew eager to please the man I am going to marry,
and every mother trying to beguile him into marrying her daughter. But
now every thing is changed. People shake their heads when they talk of
Mr. Lobyer, and my particular friends sigh and groan about my prospects
as dismally as if I had set my heart upon marrying a chimney-sweep.
If I was going to be sacrificed upon an altar to-morrow, like that
young woman in Racine's tragedy, people couldn't go on about me worse
than they do. Of course I don't pretend to say that I am romantically
attached to Mr. Lobyer--first and foremost because I don't believe
there are any romantic attachments in these days; and secondly, because
if there are, I'm not at all the sort of person to be the subject of
one."
And then, after a little pause, Miss Crawford would continue the
discussion.
"I like him very well, I'm sure," she said rather thoughtfully, and
somewhat as if she had not quite decided the question in her own mind,
"and I don't care a straw for any one else; and I dare say I shall
behave pretty well to him, though I fear it's not in my nature to
behave too well to any one. So, on the whole, I really can't see that
people have any right to lecture me about the unfortunate young man I'm
going to marry."
After this tirade the impetuous Florence again embraced her friend, and
declared herself for the twentieth time to be a frivolous mercenary
creature, unworthy alike of love and friendship. But henceforward
Cecil felt that it was useless to interfere with Miss Crawford's
arrangements. If sorrow lay before the painter's daughter on the road
that she was treading, she was too obstinately bent on going her own
way to be drawn back by any friendly hand, let it hold her never so
gently.
Mr. Lobyer dined in Brunswick Square one evening to meet his betrothed;
on which occasion the barrister subjected him to rather a severe
cross-examination. Cecil ventured next morning to ask her husband what
he thought of her friend's suitor.
"It's rather fortunate for your friend and for the gentleman himself
that he was born rich," answered Mr. O'Boyneville; "there are some men
who seem created to distinguish themselves at the Old Bailey, and I'm
afraid Mr. Lobyer is one of them. But as he is the owner of a million
or two, it doesn't much matter. If he had been a poor man, he would
have run through all the crimes in the statute-book; but as he has
unlimited wealth, he can indulge himself by breaking four-fifths of the
ten commandments without putting himself in the power of the law."
CHAPTER XVII.
POOR PHILIP.
There were other men besides Laurence O'Boyneville who found it
pleasant to pitch their tents and kindle their household fires within
the limits of Bloomsbury. Sigismund Smythe, the novelist, believed in
the neighbourhood of Russell Square as the most delightful spot on
earth.
"I had an over-dose of the country when I was young, and I'm not
given to babble of green fields and pastures new," said Mr. Smythe,
whose quotations were apt to be more appropriate than correct.
"People may talk as they like about the dulness of Rachel Street, and
Sidney Crescent. I only wish they'd had a taste of the High Street
of my native town on a hot summer's evening between eight and nine
o'clock. That would cure them. Dull, quotha! haven't we the cabs and
the tradesmen's carts, and the great vans from King's Cross Station,
and coals always being delivered at one's next-door neighbour's. In
my native town there wasn't a tradesman kept any conveyance above a
wheelbarrow; and as to cabs, there was only one dilapidated old fly
in the place. Oh, I should like the people who turn up their noses
at Bloomsbury to try Wareham, when the townspeople have gone to a
cricket-match in the Castle-Meads, and when the only thing alive in the
High Street is one solitary cat stalking upon the tops of the houses.
Dull, indeed! why, on such a summer evening as I'm thinking of, I've
heard a man yawn three doors off, and I'm sure a hearty sneeze would
have startled the whole town."
Mr. Smythe had taken to himself a pretty country-bred young wife, the
orphan niece of his old friend Charles Raymond, with whom he lived in
perfect harmony, and who never read a line of his novels. This was a
point upon which the novelist insisted.
"If you read my books you'll make suggestions, and if you make
suggestions I shall hate you, and the better your suggestions are the
more I shall hate you," said Sigismund. "Nor do I care about your
knowing the depths of infamy which the human mind, for an adequate
consideration, can fathom. The critics inform me that my fictions are
demoralising. As a writer and a ratepayer I believe in my fictions;
but as a husband I defer to the critics, and forbid my wife to read my
novels."
Sigismund's house was comfortably furnished; and in no habitation
within sound of the bells of St. Pancras were to be seen so many
nicknacks, such quaint old black oak book-cases and cabinets, such
wonderful morsels of majolica and Palissy, such Liliputian silver
tea-services and watering-pots and coal-scuttles, such marvels in the
art of photography, such delicious book-binding in white vellum and
many-coloured calf, as in the dwelling of the romancer. Mr. Smythe
possessed that love of colour and brightness, that childlike yearning
for prettiness, which seems the attribute of most men who live by the
cultivation of their fancy. To keep these household gods in order was
Mrs. Smythe's chief occupation and delight; and to her mind the little
inner room lined with books and furnished with a wonderful office-table
on which there were inexhaustible bundles of quill-pens and innumerable
reams of smooth shining foreign note-paper, was the most sacred chamber
ever tenanted by mortal man. For in this apartment did the industrious
Sigismund compose his romances, beguiled by the yelping and howling
of his favourite dog, who inhabited an open stone-vault below the
novelist's windows,--a vault which the boldest of house-agents faltered
in designating a back-garden.
Perhaps there was no pleasanter house with a mile radius of Russell
Square than the modest dwelling inhabited by Mr. and Mrs. Smythe.
Here, when the moderator lamp was lighted and the curtains drawn,
some of the brightest luminaries of modern literature assembled round
the hospitable hearth. Here were always to be found dry sherry and
unlimited soda-water, the palest brandy and the most genuine Seltzer
and Vichy. Here little wicker covered bottles of liqueur, and cherry
cordials that had come straight from Copenhagen by convoy of friendly
hands, were found lurking in corners of sideboards. Here better things
were said than ever found their way to the compositor. Here the mighty
chief of the "Bond-Street Blagueur" laid aside the murderous pen of the
critic and expanded in genial friendship--that delicious friendship
of the _coterie_, which is another name for enmity to all the rest of
the world. And here poor Philip Foley came to seek consolation--or at
least friendly listeners into whose ears he could pour the unsuccessful
man's bitter railing--when the British Institution and the Academy had
been unanimous in rejecting his pictures, and when the Sunday evenings
at the Fountains had been particularly dispiriting. Of late Mr. Foley
had abandoned himself to a sullen despair--the outward and visible
tokens whereof were to be observed in the length of his hair and the
carelessness of his attire. He had taken to immoderate tobacco, and
laughed a strident laugh at the caustic witticisms of the "Bond-Street"
chief. He had grown fitful in his habits, and would sometimes drink
himself into an intellectual frenzy with innumerable tumblers of brandy
and Seltzer, while on other occasions he would sit apart glowering
moodily on the company, and refusing to taste any thing stronger than
water.
Sigismund was very good to this stricken deer. Sometimes, when Philip
had taken a homely dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Smythe, and when the
novelist had been working hard all day, the two young men paced the
streets and squares of the Bloomsbury district together in gloaming and
gaslight, and discoursed with brotherly confidence and freedom.
"I tell you she isn't worth the howling you make about her--_le jeu ne
vaut pas_--the what's-its-name," said the practical Sigismund. "What
is she but a little fair-haired chit, with dark eyebrows and big grey
eyes, and the insolent turned-up nose of a Palais-Royal _soubrette_?
What is she but a mercenary little adventuress? Yes, though she lives
under her father's roof, and shelters her innocence under the wing of
a chaperone when she ventures abroad, the woman who angles for a rich
husband is no better than an adventuress, whatever and whoever she may
be. And you let yourself run to seed, and neglect your work, and take
to cynical declamation against things in general, when you have good
reason to be thankful for a blessed escape from misery. Do you think
such a wife as William Crawford's daughter could fail to make you
wretched? Why, she would spend your annual earnings on her gloves; and
the day that brought you back your unhung pictures from the Academy
would in all probability bring you a county-court summons from your
wife's milliner. No, no, Phil; the lovely Florence would have been
no wife for you, and she has shown herself wise in her generation.
You want a dear homely little creature--say an orphan,--there's an
extraordinary advantage in marrying an orphan,--a poor desolate young
thing who has spent her girlhood as half-boarder, or governess-pupil
in a cheap boarding-school, and who will think Islington a paradise,
and esteem herself fortunate if she gets a new gown once a year, and
a clean bonnet-cap at Christmas and Easter. That's the only kind of
wife for a rising man--the dear good uncomplaining helpmate, who will
devote all the strength of her intellect to make both ends meet, and
will, while sitting by your side in the parlour, have an instinctive
consciousness that the maid-of-all-work is burning a tallow-candle to
waste in the back-kitchen,--the model housewife of the Dutch painters,
who goes down to her kitchen with a candle in the dead of night, to
prevent waste and riot. You want a dear little girl with a genius for
mending and contriving, who will sit by your fireside darning your
socks, and singing 'Wapping old stairs' or 'The last rose of summer'
while you work at your easel, and who will believe in you, in spite
of the world, as the greatest genius that ever handled a brush. In
point of fact, you want such a wife as my wife!" exclaimed Sigismund
triumphantly. "And as for Florence Crawford, let her make merry or
go hang herself, as the bard observes. Good gracious me!" cried the
romancer, suddenly bursting into song:
"'Should I, wasting in despai-air,
Die-ie becau-ause a woman's fai-air?'
By which, of course, I mean shall _you_," he added, in explanation.
"Besides, haven't you your art to fall back upon? If life goes wrong
with you, can't you take it out in violent reds and yellows, as I take
it out in murder and villany? When the critics fall foul of me, I buy
an extra ream of paper and a gallon of ink, and go at my work with a
will. All the world lies before you, dear old Phil; and the day may
come when Mrs. Lobyer will be obliged to expend her shilling for a
peep at your great picture reigning in solitary glory in some West-end
gallery; which isn't by any means a new dodge by-the-bye, for didn't
the Athenians pay an entrance-fee for seeing the 'Helen' which Zeuxis
painted for their city?"
Thus consoled by the voice of friendship, Mr. Foley only grew more
bitter. But he took his friend's advice nevertheless. Expended his last
ten-pound note in the purchase of a new easel, and set up a monster
canvas. He was almost like poor Haydon, who, in the piteous record of
his wasted life, declares that without "a new large picture to lean
upon," he felt "as if deserted by the world."
In all the course of his acquaintance with William Crawford's
fascinating daughter, the young painter had made no direct avowal of
his passion. He loved her--he had told her so, indirectly, a thousand
times--and he knew that she was conscious of his devotion.
For some time after hearing Florence Crawford's engagement discussed
as an established fact, Mr. Foley kept aloof from the Sunday-evening
gatherings at the Fountains. Ah, how he hated the dreary Sabbath
twilights after he had forsworn the delight of Flo's society; the wind
and dust upon the Islington highways; the smartly-dressed church-goers
decorously moving homewards; the smarter servant-maids hurrying away
from hot little chapels, where they had been enduring semi-suffocation
in the glare of the gas! Those bright, windy, spring evenings were
terrible to the struggling painter. The decorous Islingtonians stared
at him wonderingly as he passed them by, with his haggard face and
streaming hair, his meerschaum-pipe and paint-stained coat. He lit
his pipe when he was clear of the crowd, and with that faithful
companion walked the suburban highways till midnight. On such evenings
the atmosphere of his painting-room stifled him; the prim little
sitting-room, in which his landlord's family kept their Sabbath state,
was odious to him.
"I feel as if I couldn't breathe on those wretched Sunday nights,"
said Philip to his faithful Sigismund. "It is all very well while I
can see to paint--for I have grown a heathen since--since--_she_ threw
me over--and I stick to my easel on Sundays as well as week days; but
when the light goes my pluck goes with it. I light my pipe, but the
tobacco chokes me. I fold my arms upon the window-sill; and try to
think out some difficulty in the composition of my picture; but it's
no use. I find myself thinking of _her_, and wondering whether she is
arraying herself in one of those gauzy white muslins, with floating
turquoise-coloured ribbons, in which she looks the incarnation of
freshness and innocence. And then I light my lamp and open my box of
water-colours, and make a little sketch of her in the cloudy muslin,
and the sky-blue ribbons, with sunshine upon her hair, and sunshine
upon her dress, and the tenderest shadows hovering about and around
her. Ah, Sigismund, if you are ever desperately in love, thank
Providence that you can't paint. That's a fatal power. To conjure
out of a few paltry pigments the beloved face in all its dangerous
beauty, instinct with looks of love that never will illumine it for
you; to be for ever calling into life and brightness the same lovely
shadow, and to know that it is only a beautiful phantasm; to kiss the
lips that are nothing but a patch of colour wet from your own brush;
to pore upon eyes that owe their sole light to artful touches of the
pencil,--ah, dear friend, _that_ way madness lies! If St. Anthony had
been as good a draughtsman as William Crawford, he wouldn't have been
_Saint_ Anthony; for he could never have rid himself of the sirens.
When I have finished my sketch, and have admired it, and have got into
a passion with it, and have torn it into a hundred fragments, I put on
my hat and go out. But even out of doors the atmosphere seems close and
stifling, and I can scarcely breathe till I get beyond Holloway, to the
crown of Highgate Hill; and then I stand on the bridge and look down
upon London, and think what a vast Babylon it is, and how many girls
there are within its boundaries ready, like Florence Crawford, to sell
themselves to the highest bidder--slaves who only lack the badge of
slavery. I shall go to Switzerland in the autumn, Sigismund, and paint
from nature, and try if I can't walk down my disappointments amongst
the mountains."
As the time when Miss Crawford was likely to become Mrs. Lobyer drew
nearer, poor Philip found his Sabbath evenings more difficult of
endurance.
That passionate yearning to see the adored object once more--for the
last, last time--to which all despairing lovers are liable, took
complete possession of the young painter. For three consecutive Sundays
he fought against the temptation, calling up his pride to assist him
in the struggle. But pride is very weak when bidden to do battle with
love. On the third occasion Mr. Foley snatched up his hat, hurried to
a barber in a poor neighbourhood, in which a barber's business was at
its best on a Sunday, and sacrificed the luxuriance of his hair and
beard to the man's inartistic scissors. Then, after a walk, in which
he fought the tempter for the last time, changing his mind every five
minutes, the painter went back to his lodgings and made a careful
toilet. There was a feverish kind of pleasure in what he was doing--the
desperate sense of delight which a despairing wretch is apt to feel
when his woes have come to a climax, and he is about to snatch the one
chance of a fleeting joy that remains to him amidst his misery.
It was a balmy evening in May, and the stars were shining in a tender
blue sky, when Philip descended from the heights of Islington. He
had sold no picture for the last six months, and had exhausted the
quarterly instalments of his modest income, so he was fain to make
his way on foot along the interminable New Road and across the park
to Kensington. He brushed the dust from his boots with his cambric
handkerchief as he stood before Mr. Crawford's gates, and while doing
so, he had the pleasure of beholding the arrival of a pair of high
stepping cobs, and the smallest of miniature broughams, furnished with
the biggest and most ferociously flaming of lamps, whose demoniac
glare might have been easily dispensed with under the silvery spring
starlight. A contemptuous groom with a tight waist descended from the
box of this vehicle and opened the door with a bang, thereby releasing
Mr. Lobyer, who emerged something after the fashion of a badly-fitting
jack-in-the-box, and who looked a great deal too big and clumsy for
his brougham. The two men looked at each other as they passed through
the gateway together, pretending not to know each other, and with an
unquenchable hatred visible in the faces which they fondly imagined
expressed nothing but a contemptuous indifference.
The rich man was free of the place, and contrived to push his way
to the drawing-room before Philip; and the young painter, following
close upon his heels, had the opportunity of beholding Miss Crawford's
coquettishly disdainful welcome of her affianced suitor.
Poor Philip saw her face grow pale as she looked across her lover's
shoulder and recognised her old admirer; but the colour came back to
the delicate cheeks very quickly, and she gave Philip her hand with her
airiest manner.
"Where have you been hiding yourself all the season, Mr. Foley?" she
exclaimed. "We never see you now. I hope you are devoting yourself to
some great picture that is to astonish us all. Do tell me what you have
been doing in all these ages."
Miss Crawford drew her airy dress away from one side of the capacious
triangular ottoman, which had been almost hidden under her voluminous
draperies, and Philip seated himself in the vacant place. Yes, there
are decidedly some joys left even for the desperate man, and Philip
experienced a keen sense of delight in defying Mr. Lobyer.
That gentleman stood beside his betrothed, looking down upon her with
an expression which might have in some degree justified the dismal
forebodings of the people who foresaw only melancholy results from Miss
Crawford's brilliant match. But Flo was not a person to be alarmed by
the scowls of a jealous swain, scowl he never so savagely. She looked
up at Mr. Lobyer with her sweetest smile, and murmured gently:
"Surely, Thomas, you know Mr. Foley? you must have met him here again
and again."
The two men uttered unintelligible growls without looking at each
other, and Florence continued her conversation with her unhappy admirer.
"I hope you have been working very hard," she said, "and painting from
nature. Papa is always talking about the necessity of painting from
nature. Have you been abroad, or in Scotland, or Wales? Pray let us
hear what you have been doing."
"Very little so far, Miss Crawford," answered the landscape-painter
gravely, "but I am beginning to work in savage earnest. 'Men must work,
and women must weep.' I think that's what Mr. Kingsley says. Heaven
knows the men work hard enough nowadays, but I fancy the race of women
who weep has passed away."
Miss Crawford looked at her victim with the most charming expression of
bewilderment; and then after a brief pause she said sweetly:
"I looked for something of yours at the British Institution and the
Academy, and was so disappointed to find nothing. How did it happen?"
"My pictures were rejected. It is my destiny to be rejected," said
Philip, with tragical intensity.
Mr. Lobyer at this moment gave utterance to a suppressed growl, and
might possibly have testified his indignation by some overt act of
discourtesy towards Philip, if a little deputation had not approached
the ottoman to entreat a song from Miss Crawford. That young lady,
rising promptly to comply with the desire of her friends, left her two
lovers scowling at each other.
A young German, of a musical turn of mind, conducted Flo to the piano,
and made himself busy in arranging the music and placing the candles.
Mr. Lobyer, glaring at this gentleman, and addressing Philip Foley
under cover of this gentleman, gave utterance to his sentiments.
"I should have thought when a fellow was engaged to be married to a
girl, other fellows would have sense enough to know that the girl
doesn't want their attentions," said the amiable Thomas; and then he
stalked to the piano, and stood behind his liege lady, staring moodily
at the parting of her hair as she played and sang. Mr. Lobyer was not
an enthusiast in the musical art, nor indeed in the pictorial, nor in
any art which demands the possession of refined tastes in the man who
loves it.
Philip held himself aloof from the group around the piano. He heard
Flo's clear soprano voice ring out the airiest of ballads, all about
Switzerland and "chamois bounding free," and mountain maids, who sing
tra-la-la-la from morn till dewy eve. He heard her, and fancied that
such silvery notes could only belong to a singer unencumbered with
anything in the way of a heart.
"She could never sing like that if she had a spark of real feeling," he
thought. "How charming she was just now! how sweetly she smiled at me!
how graciously she invited me to sit by her side! And yet she has no
more consciousness of my suffering than if she were a mermaid. She is
going to marry a rich man, and she is so pleased with her good fortune
that she is ready to be amiable to all the world. But for pity, or
compunction, or womanly tenderness--bah! she does not know what such
things mean."
The young painter turned his back upon the crowd--the fashionable
people who came to the Fountains because they wanted to see what
William Crawford was like, and the artists and professional people,
who came because they liked him--poor Philip turned his back upon
society, and went into a little inner room where there were stands of
engravings and photographs, and where flirtations were often carried
on pleasantly under cover of art. The little room happened to be empty
just now, and Philip threw himself into a chair by the open window,
and abandoned himself to melancholy meditation. Mr. Crawford's garden
looked very pretty in the starlight. There were trees that had been
growing there for centuries--a noble old cedar, which had sheltered the
powdered beaux and belles of the Hanoverian dynasty, under which Harley
or Bolingbroke may have paced with meditative steps; a tree that had
flourished in the days of the court suburb's grandest glory, and which
flourished still for the delight of William Crawford the painter, who
had given something like a guinea an inch for his old-fashioned garden.
Philip had been sitting alone for some time; he had been so long
undisturbed that he had forgotten the nature of the place he was in,
and the meaning of that gentle buzzing and humming of voices in the
adjoining apartment. So profound were the young man's meditations that
the sound of footsteps close behind him did not break the spell of his
reverie. It was only when a friendly hand was laid upon his shoulder
that he looked up and saw his host standing by his side.
"Florence told me you were here, but I couldn't find you till this
moment," said the great painter, giving his cordial hand to the moody
struggler. "What have you been doing with yourself all these months? I
wanted your help for the background of my Jupiter; but perhaps you are
growing too big a man to paint backgrounds."
"Not too big a man, Mr. Crawford, but too proud a man. I think the
unsuccessful men are always the proudest. Failure is like poverty, it
sets a man against his fortunate fellow-creatures. I've been painting
seven years; and though I've worked fitfully, I've not been idle. If I
don't do any thing to make my name known amongst painters in the next
three years, I'll make a bonfire of my easel and all the rubbish of my
studio, and take to my father's trade."
"What was that?"
"He was a lieutenant in the 82nd foot, and died of cholera on a forced
march in the hottest month of the East-Indian summer. There was a fuss
made at the Home Office about that march, and it turned out to have
been one of those official blunders by which lives are so often wasted.
I dare say my father had rather a hard time of it altogether in his
brief military career, but his life wasn't _all_ disappointment and
failure. He didn't know what it was to give his heart and soul to the
work he loved--to think of it by day and to dream of it by night, until
he woke from his bright dreams to find it all so much wasted labour. He
never knew that."
"No, Philip," answered William Crawford gravely, "but I have known
that; and you know as well as I do that I have gone through the
struggles, and endured the disappointments, that seem so hard to you
now. Do you remember that mystical story of Bulwer Lytton's, in which
the student, who would fain have made himself master of a mighty
science, was arrested at the outset by a hideous spectre that haunted
the threshold of the shadowy temple? At the portal of every temple you
will meet the same forbidding spirit. I have faced the Dweller on the
Threshold, Philip, and have wrestled with and vanquished him. For me
he has borne the shape of toil and poverty, failure and humiliation.
He has dressed himself in the clothes of the hanging-committee, and
has rejected my pictures; he has made himself an art-critic, and
has demolished me in a malevolent criticism. In every form I have
encountered him, and have mastered him--only because I loved my art
better than I loved myself, and worshipped my art as something apart
from myself. There was some method in poor Haydon's madness when he
said, 'In me the solitary sublimity of high art is not gone.' With
an execution in his house, and a cook dunning him for her wages, the
poor enthusiast was able to rejoice that there was one person left in
the world to paint big classic unsaleable pictures. I believe that
poor fellow was a real artist. There are men who paint great pictures
who are not true artists; and there are true artists who never paint
great pictures. Your ideal artist is above envy and above despair.
Haydon committed suicide because he couldn't pay his butcher and
baker, not because his big canvases were unsuccessful. He would have
gone on painting, and hoping against hope, if he could have afforded
to live; it was the sordid every-day necessity that vanquished him.
You will never be a great painter, Foley, while you think of your
own disappointments, your own failures: you must learn to merge your
identity into the mighty abstraction. If they refuse your picture at
the Academy to-day, go home and begin a better to-morrow; and before
the month is out you will rejoice that your rejected canvas was unhung.
The story of Lot's wife has a moral for painters. Never look back. What
are the failures of the past and the present? A little wasted canvas,
a few tubes of colour more or less; and it is across the failures of
the present that brave men march to the triumphs of the future. What
hot-headed fellows the young men of the present day are! I was five and
thirty before I got a decent price for a picture; and here is a lad of
twenty-seven talking of going out to India to die, because he is not
acknowledged as the new Turner."
William Crawford had been the kindly friend and adviser of many young
painters; but it was not often that he spoke as earnestly as he had
spoken to Philip Foley to-night. The young man grasped his counsellor's
hand with feverish ardour.
"You are right," he said. "I am a weak, egotistical fool; and it is
of myself I am always thinking, and not of my art. A painter ought to
divorce himself from the common weaknesses and to wean himself from
the common pleasures of mankind; and yet Rubens was happy with his
beautiful young wives, and had his home as well as his painting-room.
I gathered some ivy-leaves in his garden last autumn, and, standing
in the little pavilion where he used to sit sketching on summer
mornings, I thought what a blessed existence it must have been, the
sweet home-life in that quaint old city of Antwerp. But it is not in
every man to be Rubens, nor is it in every man to win the woman he
loves; and--you are right, Mr. Crawford. The painter who wants to be
great must forget himself and his own troubles. I dare say there were
family jars even in the Antwerp household, and that glorious Peter Paul
has gone to his work with a sore heart on some of those bright summer
mornings."
There was a pause, during which both men stood looking out at the
starlit garden, thinking of the women they loved. Mrs. Champernowne had
promised to "look in" at the Fountains on that special Sunday evening,
and had not done so.
"It was like her to delude me by a promise, on purpose to disappoint me
by breaking it," thought Mr. Crawford bitterly.
"Come, Foley," he said at last, "let's hear what you have been doing. I
hope you are working honestly."
"I am working honestly just now; but I have wasted more of my life
lately than I can afford to waste, and I have only just awakened to the
sense of my folly."
"Then you are lucky," answered William Crawford. "The man who awakes
to a sense of his folly at twenty-seven is a happy fellow. There are
some of us who are fools for the best part of our lives. But answer my
question plainly: What are you doing now?"
"Mountain-scenery--an evening-storm."
"And you paint your mountain-storm at Islington, with no better light
than you get across London chimney-pots! That is not the way Collins
painted. You must go straight to nature, my dear boy, and paint your
storm amongst the mountains."
"A man whose pictures won't sell, and who has only a hundred a-year to
fall back upon, can't afford to go to nature. I did think of spending
the summer on the Yorkshire coast, roughing it among fishermen and
coast-guardsmen; but I have outrun the constable, and must stop in my
Islington lodging and paint 'pot-boilers.' I can't afford to travel
this year."
"Yes, you can, Philip, if I lend you a couple of hundred pounds."
"You, Mr. Crawford?"
"Who can better afford to do so than I, who know your power to do great
things in the future? However, on reflection, I won't lend you the
money. Borrowed money is supposed to exercise a demoralising influence
on the artistic mind. I'll give you a commission, and pay you in
advance. There's a little bit of scenery on the Danube that I fell in
love with a few years ago. I'll find you the description of the spot
in Murray, and I'll write you a cheque for the two hundred before you
leave the house to-night. Spend your summer and autumn on the Rhine and
Danube, and bring me back my pet spot on a small canvas."
"But--but this is too generous," stammered the landscape painter.
"There's not a spark of generosity involved in the transaction. If I
were a Manchester man you would take my commission without thanks or
parley. But since you insist upon treating the matter as a favour, I
will attach a condition to my offer."
"And that is----"
"That you leave England at once. These long May-days are too good to
waste in lodgings at Islington."
"I think I know why you do me this great kindness," said Philip.
"First and foremost, because I believe in your genius."
"Secondly, because you don't wish me to come to this house just now. I
understand the delicacy of your kindness. I appreciate your goodness,
and----"
"And you accept my commission----"
"As heartily as it is given. I shall start for Rotterdam by the next
steamer; and when I come back----"
"You will bring home a picture which the Academy will not reject. I may
be on the hanging-committee myself next year, in which case I promise
you your landscape shall not be skied. Be sure there's human interest
in your picture, by-the-bye. You paint the figure better than any
landscape-painter I know; and mind you make good use of your power.
That barefooted girl with the pitcher would not have crossed the brook
so often if your crack landscape-painters didn't know the value of
human interest. Let us have something fresher and stronger than the
barefooted girl for Trafalgar Square next May."
There was a walnut-wood davenport in the room, before which the painter
seated himself. He took a cheque-book from one of the drawers, and
wrote his cheque while he talked to Philip.
"If you take that to my bankers they'll give you circular notes," he
said; "and now good-night and good-bye. Start by the next boat, work
your hardest, and look forward to next May. I mean you to be a great
man."
For the second time Philip grasped the great painter's hand, and that
hearty pressure of palm to palm was the only expression which he gave
to his gratitude. Nor did William Crawford give him any opportunity for
grateful protestations. Before the young man had put the cheque into
his pocket, his benefactor had returned to the drawing-room, where his
guests were perpetually being surprised, and delighted, and unspeakably
obliged by instrumental and vocal performances, during the progress of
which they had appeared agreeably occupied by animated conversation.
After putting the painter's cheque into his pocket, Philip went out
into the garden, and paced slowly up and down a broad gravel-walk that
led away from the house, and was over-shadowed by trellis-work and
creeping plants. He wanted to linger just for a few minutes within the
precincts of his paradise before he turned his back upon it for ever.
"When I come back here _she_ will be married to that cub, and the
mistress of some fine bran-new house in South Kensington or Tyburnia.
And I can remember her walking by my side in this shaded alley, looking
up in my face with grave earnest eyes, and pretending to be interested
in my art. As if _she_ cared for art, or for any thing upon this earth
except fine dresses and diamonds, and a three-hundred-guinea barouche
in which to display herself when she drives in the park. If I painted a
good picture, and made a success, would she be sorry then, I wonder?"
After two or three rapid turns up and down this dark alley, where the
sound of voices and music came to him through the open windows of Mr.
Crawford's drawing-room, Philip went back to the house, and made his
way through the crowded apartment. He would have left the Fountains
without seeing Florence, but that young lady happened to be standing in
his way to the door. She looked at him with a bright surprised face.
"Why, Mr. Foley, where have you been hiding yourself for this
last half-hour? You only appear to make yourself invisible. Baron
Meiffenheim has been singing the most enchanting little German ballad,
and I so much wished you to hear it. I know you like that kind of
music."
"I like it so well that I am going up the Danube on purpose to hear
it," answered Philip bravely. "Good-night, Miss Crawford; good-night
and--good-bye."
He laid a solemn emphasis on the last two syllables, and suffered the
little hand he had taken to fall suddenly from his loose grasp. Flo had
been an accomplished coquette from the date of her thirteenth birthday,
and was accustomed to heart-rending farewells; and yet she felt just
one little pang as those solemn syllables fell upon her ear. It would
have been so much more pleasant if the landscape-painter had waited to
witness her triumphs, and to be excruciated by her fascinations, when
she had entered the lists of bewitching matrons as Mrs. Thomas Lobyer.
The steamer left St. Katharine's Dock for Rotterdam at noon on the
following day, and on Monday night Philip Foley sat on the raised
deck of the vessel smoking a cigar, and looking dreamily down at
the phosphoric light upon the waves dashing past him with an eager
palpitating motion, as if--or so it seemed to Philip--each silvery
wavelet had been hurrying madly towards the English shore to kiss the
feet of Florence Crawford.
"There's not a boat goes by us but seems to my mind to be sailing
towards her, while I am going away," thought the despondent lover.
He was sorry that he had accepted the painter's kindness. He was sorry
that he had pledged himself to become an exile from the land in which
he had enjoyed the privilege of making himself supremely miserable for
love of Florence Crawford.
CHAPTER XVIII.
TOO LATE FOR REPENTANCE.
After considerable parley, and much supplication on the part of
the devotee Mr. Lobyer, it had been arranged that Miss Crawford's
marriage should take place on the last day of June; and for a period
of six weeks prior to that date the painter found his home a place of
confusion and his life a conflict.
Of course it was quite impossible that Florence should herself arrange
and superintend the preparations necessary for her bridal. Matronly
aid was here indispensable; and in order to give that aid efficiently,
Mrs. Frederick Bushby, otherwise Aunt Jane, abandoned the care of
her household to a useful maiden sister, and established herself _en
permanence_ at the Fountains. At her bidding came two estimable young
persons in the dress-making line, and an estimable elderly person
renowned for plain needlework; and the scrooping and snipping of these
worthy people's scissors set William Crawford's teeth on edge whenever
he passed the open door of the apartment in which their labours were
carried on. At Mrs. Bushby's bidding came also, at all seasonable
and unseasonable hours, gentlemanly-looking individuals carrying
pasteboard-boxes, who were generally announced as "the young man from
Regent Street," or "the young man from Wigmore Street," or a "young
person with some lace from South-Audley Street, if you please," or "the
white-satin boots from Oxford Street, Ma'am."
Poor William Crawford lifted his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders in
utter despair when such announcements broke, time after time, upon the
quiet of his meditative evening hours.
"Is there any social law which forbids a woman buying clothes after
she is married?" asked the painter; "or how is it that a bride finds
it necessary to stock her trunks with garments that might serve for a
lifetime? Don't imagine I wince at the amount of the cheques, my dear.
You may have as much money as you like, Flo; but all this business
about white-satin boots and old point-lace seems such unnecessary
frivolity."
Of course, on this Mrs. Bushby swooped down upon her brother-in-law,
and annihilated him with feminine argumentation.
"When _I_ was married, Madame Devy had _carte blanche_," said the
matron, "though I was not an only daughter, and though I was going to
marry a hard-working solicitor. Such a marriage as Florence is about to
make is an event in society, and her _trousseau_ will be a subject of
conversation. The Wigmore-Street people have already asked permission
to exhibit the cambric and Valenciennes _peignoirs_ they are making for
her; and the Oxford-Street people are going to introduce quite a new
style for the Wellington boots we have ordered for riding."
William Crawford groaned aloud.
"And my daughter rides in Wellington boots!" he exclaimed. "Don't tell
me any thing more about the _trousseau_ if you please, Aunt Jane. Ask
me to sign as many cheques as you like, but don't let me know the
particulars. Isn't it Owen Meredith who says, 'There are some things
hard to understand?' surely a young lady's _corbeille de mariage_ is
one of them."
Mrs. Bushby did not trouble herself to notice these ribald remarks.
She regarded her distinguished brother-in-law with placid contempt.
It is not alone my Lord Dundreary who sets down every man who differs
from him as a lunatic. In Aunt Jane's opinion the royal academician
was an eccentric creature, who made more money than one could suppose
by painting scantily-draped young women, and who in the affairs of
every-day life was little better than a fool. She suffered him to
rail as he pleased against the frivolity of modern young ladies;
and she revenged herself upon his cheque-book. The little people in
Russell Square profited considerably by Miss Crawford's wedding; for
Mrs. Bushby's calculations as to material for dresses that were to be
made by the two estimable young persons were apt to err on the side
of liberality; and if a few yards of silk or velvet were left, dear
extravagant Flo was always the first to propose that the fabric should
be converted into a frock for Fanny, or a pelisse for Lilly, or a tunic
for Johnny, as the case might be.
And was the painter's daughter of so shallow and frivolous a nature as
to find perfect happiness in days spent in milliners' show-rooms and
before the counters of haberdashers? Was the society of Thomas Lobyer,
who hung about the Fountains after his own loutish fashion at all hours
of the day and evening, all-sufficient to satisfy the desires of her
heart and mind? She seemed happy, for a young lady who laughs a great
deal, and talks almost unceasingly, and pirouettes round the room
on the points of her pretty little feet, with the smallest possible
provocation, is generally supposed to enjoy a plethora of happiness.
But that very close observer--who, like the typical policeman, is never
in the way when he is wanted--might have perceived a shade of fever and
hurry in Miss Crawford's gaiety which rarely goes along with unalloyed
content. Perfect happiness is apt to be very quiet. There is a solemn
hush, a delicious repose in real joy, a delight too deep for words:
and such delight had no place in the heart of Florence Crawford. She
was pleased with her fine clothes; she was pleased with her jewels.
She had more diamond hearts and crosses and crescents than she could
count. She had an eagle newly alighted on a monster carbuncle, that
looked like a block of translucent red-currant jelly. She had been
satiated with suites of turquoise and opal, and had learned to discover
a "feather" in a fifty-guinea emerald ring. She was pleased with the
carriages which Mr. Lobyer showed her at the makers' in Long Acre,
and the horses that had been selected at one of Tattersall's crack
sales, for her especial benefit. She was pleased with her visits to the
upholsterer who was making new furniture for her rooms at Pevenshall,
and who submitted his designs for her approval with as deferential
an air as if she had been affianced to a prince of the blood-royal.
There are some follies to which womanhood on the sunny side of twenty
is prone to stoop, and Miss Crawford was weak enough to be just a
little intoxicated by the homage she received in the character of
Thomas Lobyer's plighted wife and a little inclined to forget that the
enjoyment of all the glories and grandeurs derived from Mr. Lobyer's
wealth involved a life-long alliance with Mr. Lobyer himself. And if
the modern Iphigenia is so base a creature as to immolate herself of
her own free will before the hymeneal altar, she is rarely without some
kind female relation to urge her to the fatal step, and to push her
forward with relentless hand, should she shrink from the consummation
of the sacrifice. Aunt Jane lost no opportunity of vaunting her niece's
good fortune, or of praising Mr. Lobyer--who, for his part, was barely
civil to the obliging matron, and was apt to lapse into a state of
despondent sulkiness when he found her in constant attendance upon her
niece.
No, for the modern Iphigenia there is no such thing as turning back.
The days hurried by the plighted bride with relentless haste. The
obsequious upholsterer bade his men work night and day, in order
that the Pevenshall splendour should be completed in due time. The
coachmaker of Hatton Garden would have immolated himself on the floor
of his workshop rather than have disappointed such a customer as Mr.
Lobyer. The inestimable young women worked as if for a wager. The
French milliner who made Miss Crawford's gala-dresses declared that
she had broken faith with duchesses in order to keep her promises
to the future Mrs. Lobyer. Flo tried to count the days that yet
remained of her unfettered girlhood, but they seemed to slip away
from her with a rapidity that defied all powers of calculation.
Aunt Jane grew busier and busier as the days grew fewer; and the
servants' bell at the Fountains had little rest from the hands of
tradesmen's boys. Flo's pretty bed-chamber was transformed into a chaos
of parcels and bonnet-boxes, trunks and packing-cases. Glittering
caskets of perfumery, mother-of-pearl glove-boxes, and enamelled
handkerchief-boxes, wonderful boudoir inkstands in lapis-lazuli and
ormolu, embroidered sachets, and perfumed pincushions,--all the
feminine delights of M. Rimmel's emporium,--were scattered upon
dressing-tables and writing-tables, waiting to be packed. Every day
the industrious females at work in the spare bed-room brought some
newly-finished garment to swell the heap of silk and moire, muslin
and cashmere, that was piled upon the sofa. Flo contemplated all
these treasures with a bewildered face sometimes when she was quite
alone; and there was some shadow of sadness in the bewilderment of her
countenance.
"I wonder whether I am much better or wiser than the savages who are so
fond of beads and feathers," she thought.
The modern Iphigenia has very little time for reflection. Poor Flo's
life was a perpetual fever during those last days which were so
difficult to count. Aunt Jane was never weary of discussing the bridal
grandeurs, the bridesmaids' toilettes, the breakfast, the continental
tour, the arrangements at Pevenshall. The only person whose equable
spirits seemed entirely undisturbed by the excitement of this period
was the bridegroom himself, who took matters as coolly as if he had
gone through the same important crisis twenty times before, and had
become thoroughly _blasé_ as to the emotions involved therein. He paid
daily visits to the Fountains with laudable devotion, and he conversed
with his future wife as much as it was in him to converse with any one,
which was not very much; but he still clung fondly to the companionship
of miniature bull-terriers and fawn-coloured pugs, and might be seen
seated in the brougham that was too small for him, taking his airing in
the park with a fawn-coloured pug on his knee.
The time came very speedily when Flo found it easier to count the
remaining hours of her unfettered girlhood than it had been to count
the days. On the last day Mrs. Bushby went back to Russell Square to
see to the finishing touches of her two elder girls' toilette, and to
secure the Bloomsbury hair-dresser for the arrangement of their tresses
on the all-important morning. These juvenile cousins were to swell the
train of Miss Crawford's bridesmaids, and were to exhibit themselves in
marvellous costumes of pale-blue glacé silk and tulle.
But if Aunt Jane had deserted her post upon this last day, she was not
the person to leave disorder or confusion behind her. Every arrangement
had been completed before the matron's departure. The formidable deed
of settlement, which secured Miss Crawford a yearly income that might
have satisfied a countess's requirements as to pin-money, had been
executed with all due ceremony. The handsome trunks for the continental
tour, the gigantic packing-cases that were to be sent straight to
Pevenshall, were labelled, and Florence looked with a vague sense of
confusion at the addresses in which she was entitled "Mrs. Lobyer." The
smallest details had been carefully supervised by the indefatigable
matron before she departed to spend a busy day in the bosom of her own
house-hold.
"I am going away quite easy in my mind, dear," said Aunt Jane, when
Florence escorted her to the porch; "for I don't think there has been
an iota forgotten. You will see me again at nine o'clock to-morrow
morning, with the children. And now, my love, be sure you take plenty
of rest, for I want you to look your best and brightest to-morrow."
There was nothing left to be done,--no more shopping, no more solemn
interviews with the French milliner, no more excitement of any kind
whatever, but a dead, sullen calm. No sooner had Aunt Jane's hired
brougham driven away from the gates of the Fountains, than Florence
Crawford's spirits sank as suddenly as the wind drops sometimes on a
sultry summer's day. She went up stairs to her room, and on her way
thither had occasion to pass those boxes whose primly-written labels
had become obnoxious to her.
"It is such an ugly name," she thought; "_nobody_ could like to be
called Mrs. Lobyer."
In the bed-room Miss Crawford found the new maid who had been engaged
to attend her in her altered estate; and if, in such moments of
unreasonable depression, one individual can be more antipathetic than
another, that individual is a new maid. The young person was busying
herself with the arrangements of the dressing-table, and Florence fled
from her as from a pestilence; but not before she had caught a glimpse
of the wedding-dress laid out on the sofa like a shroud, and looking
almost as ghastly in its spotless whiteness.
"She'd want to talk to me if I stayed," thought Flo, as she hurried
from her abigail's presence; "and I should have to hear all about her
last place, and her anxiety to please me and understand my ways, and so
on: as if I had any particular ways, except always losing my things and
leaving my keys about."
Miss Crawford wandered into the drawing-room, and thence into an
apartment which served as a library. The windows were all open,
the birds were singing in the conservatory-passage that led to the
painter's sacred chamber, the warm June sunlight shone upon dazzling
flower-beds, and sparkled amid the waters of those marble basins which
gave a name to William Crawford's abode. All things were looking their
gayest and brightest; but poor Flo's heart sank amid this summer
radiance. She closed the venetian-shutters, and seated herself in the
darkest corner of the shadowy room.
She was quite alone. Mr. Lobyer had pleaded some especially important
engagement of a business character as an excuse for his absence on this
day, and Flo had told her father's servant that she would be at home
to no one. She had the long summer hours to herself, and her aunt had
entreated her to rest. If repose consists in sitting motionless in an
easy-chair, with fixed eyes and idle hands, Flo certainly obeyed Mrs.
Bushby's injunction; for the little clock on the chimneypiece recorded
the passage of more than one hour while the bride-elect sat in the same
attitude, with sad eyes fixed on one spot in the carpet, and listless
hands loosely intertwined in her lap.
She aroused herself at length from this melancholy meditation; but she
sighed more heavily than a millionaire's bride-elect has any right to
sigh as she lifted her head and looked dreamily round the room.
"I don't know what is the matter with me to-day," she thought. "I seem
to have grown sick of my life all at once; and if I am ever so tired, I
must go on living just the same. It is not every body who can die at a
moment's notice, like Shelley's Ginevra."
Miss Crawford sighed heavily for the second time, and turned to the
book-shelves near her with an impatient gesture.
"I don't suppose there is a creature in this world whose life will bear
thinking about," she said. "What is it that dreadful person in the play
says? 'These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will
make us mad!' I'm sure _my_ life has been all hurry and excitement ever
since I left school--one perpetual contest with other girls, as to
which of us should wear the best dresses, and know the nicest people,
and go to most parties. I sometimes think things might have happened
differently if I had had time to think and had been less influenced by
other girls."
She took a book from one of the shelves haphazard; but there is a
Nemesis who governs and pervades the trifles of every-day life. The
book on which Miss Crawford's careless hand happened to fall was a
volume of the Waverley novels, containing _The Bride of Lammermoor_;
and in the mind of a young lady who is about to make a mercenary
marriage that sad story is likely to awaken painful ideas. Poor old
George III. had a fancy to read Shakespeare's _Lear_ at that time
when he, like the legendary monarch, was old and distraught; and his
physicians ordered that the pitiful tragedy should be kept from his
hands; but the king was wiser than his medical attendants, and knew
where to find the play in spite of them. He asked for Colman's Dramatic
Works, which his unsuspecting servants willingly gave him, and amongst
which he knew there was the modern playwright's adaptation of the grand
old play. He read the tragedy, and was found by his daughters weeping.
"I am like poor Lear," he said piteously; "but I have no Goneril and
Regan--only two Cordelias." One can fancy the scene a touching one, and
the king's daughters melted into tears that were not entirely bitter as
they bent over the sorrowful old man, amidst whose madness there was so
much wisdom.
Flo turned the leaves of Sir Walter's masterpiece listlessly at first;
but who can read half-a-dozen pages of that wondrous story and not be
interested? The sweet romance was very familiar to her; but she read
on, charmed anew by the sad tender record of an "o'er true tale."
She read on till her tears fell fast, and a vague sense of her own
disquietudes seemed strangely blended with the sorrows of Lucy Ashton.
She sat reading till her father's step on the tiled floor of the
conservatory startled her from her abstraction.
"Are you all alone, my darling?" asked the painter tenderly, as his
daughter laid aside her book, and rose to greet him.
"Yes, papa; I have been alone all day."
"But where is Aunt Jane?"
"She has gone to the Square to see to the children's dresses for
to-morrow," answered Flo with a sigh.
The thought of that bridal finery carried her back from Lucy Ashton's
omen-haunted courtship to all the frivolous splendours of her own
wedding.
"Why didn't you come to me, dear?" asked the painter: "I should have
liked to have had you with me on this last day."
"I thought you were working hard, papa, and I didn't like to interrupt
you. And--and--I felt rather melancholy to-day. This house seems such
a dear old place now I'm going to leave it: and I love you so dearly,
papa, though I have never given you any proof of my love."
She clung to him as she spoke, and hid her face upon his breast. There
were a few tears upon the collar of Mr. Crawford's coat when Flo lifted
her head and slipped her hand through his arm, to lead him towards the
dining-room.
"Tell me that I have not been a _very_ wicked daughter, papa," said Flo
pleadingly. "I'm sure I feel as if I were Goneril and Regan and those
two dreadful sisters in Balzac's _Père Goriot_ all in one."
"My pet, you have been a charming daughter," answered the painter,
smiling.
"Yes, papa, but not a good one."
"As good as you have been charming, my darling, though just a little
bewildering sometimes in the way of slang phrases and Wellington boots.
There, there, let me see my own bright Flo again. I suppose it's only
natural that this last day should make you a little melancholy; but a
lady of fashion ought not to be melancholy, even on the last day of her
girlhood. I have always had a vague idea that nobody ever cried on the
Piccadilly side of Oxford-Street. Of course people must die everywhere,
and there are grand funerals, and hatchments on house-fronts, and
court-mourning at the West-end; but I did not think fashionable people
were ever sorry. They seem to me like actors and pantomimists, obliged
to put private griefs aside in order to comply with the exigencies of
public life. Come, darling, we are to dine _tête-à-tête_ to-day. You
must imagine yourself a woman of fashion, who has taken a fancy for
entertaining a popular painter."
"I had rather be your loving daughter, papa, and forget all about
fashion," Flo answered sadly.
All the feverish gaiety of the last few weeks had departed, leaving
a very real sadness in its place. But Miss Crawford was not the sort
of person to abandon herself weakly to any morbid feelings. She saw
her father's eyes fixed upon her in earnest watchfulness, and shook
off her despondency with one of those heroic efforts of which even
frivolous women are capable. She talked gaily all through the cosy
little _tête-à-tête_ dinner, which the painter found very agreeable
after that surfeit of Aunt Jane's society, from which he had suffered
of late. Throughout that pleasant dinner there was a tacit avoidance
of all allusion to the grand event so near at hand. Flo talked of any
thing and every thing except Mr. Lobyer and the future.
"Papa," she cried suddenly, as they sat listlessly trifling with
some strawberries after the table had been cleared, "let us spend the
evening in your painting-room. I know it is your pet retreat, and I
want to be a dutiful daughter for once in my life."
She crept behind the painter's chair, encircled his head with her arms,
and kissed him on the forehead. So had his young wife stolen behind
him sometimes, to administer consolation, during those dreary days
in Buckingham Street, when he had seated himself before his easel to
stare blankly at his hopeless work, prostrate in body and mind. His
daughter's touch recalled those departed days with all their mournful
associations. He took one of the little caressing hands, and pressed it
gently to his lips.
"My darling," he said very softly, "you remind me of your mother."
It was the first time he had ever said this in all his intercourse with
his daughter.
They went together to the painting-room, and sat in the great
bay-window, through which the soft evening air crept towards them, like
a soothing influence. The painter sat in his favourite easy-chair,
looking dreamily towards the western sunlight, warm and golden behind a
foreground of sombre green. Flo brought a low ottoman to her father's
feet and seated herself upon it, with her folded arms resting on his
knee, and her head drooping a little upon those round white arms. Not
very far away from them, rapid broughams were hurrying to and fro
in the shadowy park, bearing airily-attired beauty to the elegant
solemnity of patrician dinner-tables, but in the painter's garden the
faint sighing of summer winds among the leaves and the twitter of one
belated bird alone broke the stillness.
Within the twilit painting-room neither William Crawford nor his
daughter seemed inclined to break the spell of that summer silence.
Amid the brightest and happiest surroundings there is always some touch
of melancholy in the atmosphere of a summer evening, and to-night
Florence Crawford was not especially happy.
"Papa," she said at last, after they had both abandoned themselves for
some time to a thoughtful silence, "if I were going to live with you
two more years, I think I should be a very different kind of daughter
from the creature I have been."
She laid a contemptuous emphasis on the word creature, as in the
extremity of self-humiliation.
"But why, why, darling?"
She did not reply to his question, but went on with her
self-upbraiding.
"I would never call a picture of yours 'jolly' again. Had Rubens any
daughters, I wonder?--surely with two or three wives he could scarcely
escape daughters; and were they hateful, pert creatures like me, and
did they call that wonderful picture he painted for the Arquebusiers
'jolly,' if there was any Flemish equivalent for that horrid word? I
know how horrible it is now, since"--"since I've heard Mr. Lobyer use
it," Miss Crawford had been about to say; but she pulled herself up
suddenly, and continued, "since I've heard it worn threadbare by all
kinds of people. Oh, papa," she cried with sudden enthusiasm, "I know
what a great man you are, and how proud I ought to be of being able to
call myself your daughter! I do know that, though I seem so vain and
frivolous: and I know that your 'Aspasia' is the greatest picture that
ever was painted--'bar none,' as Mr. Lobyer would say."
The little bit of slang escaped poor Flo's lips in the midst of her
sentiment; but the painter was too deeply moved to be cognizant of the
vile phrase which concluded his daughter's exordium. He took her up in
his arms and kissed her tenderly.
"My dearest girl," he said, with an assumed gaiety, "we do not expect
to find the wisdom of all the sages under these crinkled golden locks;
and if you have called my pictures 'jolly,' I am sure the epithet
is infinitely more civil than many my critics have applied to them.
Besides, you are to be as much my daughter in the future as you have
been in the past, and I shall expect Mrs. Lobyer to be as deeply
interested in my work as Miss Crawford has been. And now, dear, come
into the drawing-room and sing to me. We must not prove ourselves
unworthy of the blessing of Aunt Jane's absence by lapsing into
melancholy."
Upon this Florence embraced her father, and protested vehemently that
he was the best and dearest of created beings. And then before he had
time to recover himself, she buried her face in his breast, and sobbed
aloud.
"Papa, tell me that you don't think me a wicked mercenary creature,"
she cried; "pray, pray tell me that you don't think I'm that."
* * * * *
Who shall find words wherewith to set down the glory of that ceremonial
which was performed on the following day at a fashionable temple?
a temple the priests of which were broadly accused of Puseyite
tendencies, and on whose communion-table there glittered brazen
candlesticks. All the nursemaids of the neighbourhood dragged their
charges to behold the splendour of Miss Crawford's bridal train; and
the fashionable reporters were more than usually grandiloquent in their
descriptions of the wedding.
Nevertheless it was very much like other weddings, except in the one
grand fact that the bride shed no tears.
"I didn't cry, you see, papa," she said, when she found herself for a
few moments alone with her father after the ceremony. "I feel myself
quite a woman of fashion."
The brilliant Florence did not inform her father that she had been
crying all through the previous night, and that copious applications of
cold water and _eau-de-Cologne_ had alone prevented her appearing at
the fashionable altar with swollen red circles surrounding her pretty
grey eyes.
The express-train that bore Mr. Lobyer and his bride to Dover on the
first stage of their continental tour rushed past many a pleasant
rustic dwelling, nestling deep amid summer verdure: and, looking
down at humble homesteads and cottage-gardens, warmly tinted by the
westering sun, the millionaire's wife thought sadly:
"I wonder whether the people who live in cottages marry for love?"
CHAPTER XIX.
TIDINGS FROM INDIA.
For Lady Cecil the summer months in Bloomsbury were very dreary. And it
may be here confessed that Bloomsbury is rather dreary in the summer
evenings, when the rifleman's "little drum has beat to bed" in the
quadrangle before the Foundling Hospital, and vagrant children hawk
pitiful bunches of flowers in the squares and streets. But are not the
endless terraces and oblong squares of Tyburnia, and even the broad
highways of Belgravia, apt to seem not a little dismal in the fading
light, when the sickly gas-lamps struggle faintly with the last glimmer
of day, and shabby wanderers prowl the pavements and look enviously at
the rolling chariots of wealth?
Cecil O'Boyneville abandoned herself entirely to the unbroken monotony
of her life. She had yet to learn to find her own society and her own
occupations, in common with the wives of other busy men. She accepted
the lot that fell into her lap, and did not attempt to change or modify
it. Her husband was kind to her, generous, affectionate, confiding, and
she wished to do her duty. If Laurence O'Boyneville made no change in
his bachelor-habits, if he devoted his nights to study and his evenings
to sleep, he had perhaps some excuse for his devotion to the profession
he loved, in the fact that his wife made no attempt to alter the
scheme of his existence. No salaried housekeeper could have been more
submissive than the Earl of Aspendell's daughter showed herself to the
sovereign will of her lord: so Mr. O'Boyneville told his old friends
and familiars that he was the happiest fellow in existence, and that
his wife was an angel.
He was happy, for the woman he loved received him with a tranquil smile
when he went home to his dinner, and was content to sit opposite to him
while he ate his hasty breakfast behind the _Times_ newspaper. Even in
his post-prandial slumbers he had a dim consciousness of that beloved
presence. But he did not very frequently take the trouble to tell his
young wife how dear she was to him. Having once won her to be the pride
and delight of his quiet home, he took things for granted, and forgot
that a man's real courtship only begins upon his wedding-day. If Cecil
had complained of her life, Laurence O'Boyneville would have speedily
set about adapting his existence to her pleasure; but she did not
complain. She had married him because he loved her, and not because she
loved him; and she shrank from indulging in the caprices which a wife
who truly loved her husband would have exhibited without scruple.
A profound weariness of spirit took possession of the barrister's wife
in the bright June weather, when the days were too brief for the glory
of western London, and the midsummer evenings too long for tranquil
Bloomsbury. For some time before her marriage it had seemed to Cecil
Chudleigh as if the serious business of her life had been done with.
She was not unhappy. She was not discontented. But she had finished
with all the eager hopes and desires of existence. She wished for
nothing, she expected nothing. One only yearning--and that no ardent or
passionate desire--had remained to her after the one great sorrow of
her life,--she had wished for a home; she had wished to be something
more than a waif and stray in other people's houses. This wish had been
realised, and henceforward there was nothing left for her to hope or
fear.
She had married without love; and yet no base or mercenary motive
had influenced her conduct. Truly and unreservedly had she given
her faith to Laurence O'Boyneville. It is for the man who marries
such a woman to win or lose the heart which is not--and yet is so
nearly--his. Unhappily, Mr. O'Boyneville, with all honesty of purpose
and generosity of heart, took the very way to lose the prize which, of
all earthly treasures, he most desired to obtain. If the barrister's
wife had dissolved into tears at the breakfast-table or disturbed his
digestive organs by a storm of hysterics after dinner, Mr. O'Boyneville
would have perceived that there was something out of gear amidst the
machinery of his home, and would have done his uttermost to remedy
the defect. But the disease which was undermining Lady Cecil's moral
constitution was not sorrow; it was only the absence of joy. Of what
could she complain, who desired nothing upon earth except a little
rest after the weariness of her youth? She rested to her heart's
content in the tranquil solitude of Brunswick Square, withdrawing
herself day by day more completely from all old associations. If the
days were joyless, they were at least without cares or troubles; the
sordid perplexities of the past were done with--that slow torture
called genteel poverty was hers no longer. An atmosphere of commonplace
comfort pervaded the great O'Boyneville's household; and even in Dorset
Square his presence seemed to carry with it an odour of prosperity--for
Cecil was surprised to find that her aunt no longer bewailed the
hardness of a dowager's lot, and the thievish propensities of
landladies. Poor Cecil, who was so painfully familiar with every note
in the gamut of Mrs. MacClaverhouse's domestic economy, was astonished
to behold those expensive and unprofitable dishes, which of old had
been excluded from the Dorset Square _menus_, now figuring frequently
in the little banquets which the dowager provided for Mr. O'Boyneville
and his wife.
"I ought to be happy," Cecil said to herself sometimes; and sometimes
even in saying those words the faint odour of the sea came back to
her like a breath of the past, and she saw the low grey shore below
Fortinbras Castle, and Hector Gordon's face bent over her in passionate
sadness.
"My fate was in my hand that day," she thought. "What would my life
have been now if I had chosen otherwise than I did?"
It was not often that such thoughts as these disturbed the dull
tranquillity of Cecil O'Boyneville's mind. She had learned to think
very calmly of Hector Gordon, and the unknown future that might have
been hers, long before she had plighted her faith to the barrister;
and it was only now and then that the picture of the past flashed for
a moment upon her mental vision, evoked into life and brightness by
some mystic power of association. She had learned long ago to think of
the Scottish captain almost as we think of the dead; and in counting
the years that had passed since that delicious autumn holiday, she
marvelled to find how few they were. It seemed so long since she had
seen that quiet Hampshire coast--so long since she had sat in the
shadowy drawing-room listening to the low music of her lover's voice.
The season came to a close, Trinity Term ended, and the long vacation
began. Laurence O'Boyneville implored his wife to take up her abode at
some pleasant watering-place while he went on circuit.
"You can ask your aunt to go with you, Cecil," he said; "and in that
case you'll have the use of her maid, if you don't care about taking
one of your own. Suppose we say Ryde; that's as nice a place as you can
go to. I'll run across and take lodgings for you, and I'll get you a
basket-chaise and a stout pony, that you can drive about the island to
your heart's content. I want to see the sweet wild-rose tint come back
to your cheeks, darling. You've been looking very pale lately."
It was not often that the speech of Laurence O'Boyneville the husband
assimilated so nearly to that of Laurence O'Boyneville the lover, and
Cecil rewarded him with a grateful smile.
"You are very kind, Laurence," she said; "but I know my aunt has made
all manner of arrangements for the autumn and winter. She told me a few
days ago that she has not a week disengaged. And I really don't care at
all about going to the sea-side. I would just as soon remain in town
while you are away."
"My darling girl," exclaimed the barrister, "if you stay in London all
the summer you'll be ill."
But again and again Lady Cecil protested that she would be contented to
spend her summer in Bloomsbury. If she could have gone to some quiet
sea-coast village alone, with no companions except her books and music,
she would have been very well pleased to escape from the wilderness
of streets and squares. But a two-months' sojourn at a fashionable
watering-place with a vivacious matron was something more than Cecil
felt herself able to endure; and Mr. O'Boyneville seemed to take it for
granted that his young wife must be protected by a chaperon when she
left his sheltering wing.
"If you _won't_ go to the sea-side," he said, "you might at least spend
a few weeks with the Mountjoys. I know they'd be delighted to have you."
"But indeed, Laurence, I shall be happier at home," Cecil pleaded; "I
had so much visiting in country-houses, you know, before our marriage."
The barrister shrugged his shoulders. He had no leisure for further
argument. His circuit work was very heavy, and his brain was already
occupied by the claims and the counterclaims of Snooks _versus_ Jones;
of Simpkins against the Mayor and Corporation of Guzzleton (involving
knotty questions under the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act); an action
for nuisance by Tittlebat against The Cesspool-Utilising Association,
for allowing their reservoirs to drain into his fishponds; and by a
variety of other cases in which sundry crooked and troublesome bits
of evidence were, with the aid of his juniors, to be made smooth and
straight for the benefit of those provincial litigants and delinquents
whose rights, wrongs, interests, and defences had been intrusted
to the popular O'Boyneville. Thus, in this, as in all other cases,
the claims of business were stronger than the call of marital duty.
Cecil had her own way, and spent the long July afternoons alone in
the Brunswick-Square drawing-room, while her husband won fame and
money abroad, and courted the laughter of hawbucks and clodhoppers in
stifling provincial town-halls and courthouses.
But before Laurence O'Boyneville departed for his circuit-duties an
event occurred which was to exercise an evil influence on Cecil's
lonely reveries during those long summer days, those solitary evenings
spent in the dim twilight of a dreary chamber.
Before winging her way to a Sussex manor-house, in which she was to
begin her autumn round of visits, Mrs MacClaverhouse came to take a
farewell dinner in Brunswick Square. Some unwonted trepidation, some
touch of unusual tenderness in the dowager's manner, impressed Cecil in
the first few moments of that lady's arrival; but on asking her aunt
if any thing was amiss, any direct reply to her question was artfully
evaded by the dowager, who became suddenly interested in the state of
Mr. O'Boyneville's health.
Before Cecil could repeat her inquiry, the barrister made his
appearance, accompanied by another legal celebrity, whose cheering
presence often illumined the dulness of Brunswick Square. Mr.
O'Boyneville welcomed the dowager with his accustomed cordiality,
and made an especial descent to the cellar to procure a particular
brand of sparkling Moselle for that lady's consumption. The two legal
celebrities made some faint pretence of general conversation while the
soup was on the table; but with the appearance of the fish plunged at
once into a discussion of the numerous points, which bristled over the
celebrated case of Blunderbuss against Saddlebags, lately decided in
the Court of Exchequer; and then, by an easy transition, they floated
into a debate upon the arguments of the respondent's counsel in that
interesting appeal before the Lords-Justices. On ordinary occasions the
dowager--who was always well posted in her _Times_--was apt to join in
these legal disquisitions, and would give her opinion with sprightly
intelligence and feminine decisiveness. But to-day Mrs. MacClaverhouse
was evidently preoccupied. She allowed the gentlemen to express their
sentiments without interruption or contradiction from her, and forgot
to compliment Mr. O'Boyneville on the delicate aroma of his Moselle, or
to whisper any little reproving speech to Cecil regarding the wasteful
character of the banquet.
The dusk was deepening when the ladies went up stairs to the
drawing-room; but when the barrister's inestimable man-of-all-work
would have lighted the candles, Mrs. MacClaverhouse entreated that the
operation might be postponed.
"I know you like mooning in the dark, Cecil," exclaimed the dowager,
with some of her native sharpness, "and for once in a way I feel
inclined for this half-light.--Come in half an hour, Pupkin; that will
be plenty of time for the candles.--There's light enough for you to
play to me, I suppose, Cecil?"
"Quite enough, dear aunt. Would you like me to play?"
"Yes, most decidedly. It's a treat to hear a decent piano after
that old rattle-trap of mine. And your Broadwood is a magnificent
instrument--something like a present from a husband. Ah, what a husband
yours is, Cecil!" exclaimed the dowager, with sudden enthusiasm; "and
I dare say you think no more of him than if he was one of those men
with red-hot pokers and hob-nailed boots that one reads of in the
police-reports."
"But, auntie, I am very grateful----"
"Grateful!" cried Mrs. MacClaverhouse, impatiently; "gratitude has
nothing to do with it. I tell you, child, you are utterly incapable of
appreciating Laurence O'Boyneville."
Cecil had seated herself at the piano by this time. Her fingers
wandered absently over the keys, and her head was bent in a pensive
attitude. Mrs. MacClaverhouse watched her niece sharply as she bent
over the instrument. The slender figure draped in white looked very
fragile and phantom-like in the dusk.
"What would you like me to play, auntie?" Cecil asked presently.
"Oh, let me have one of your favourite reveries: your 'Gondola,'
or your 'Femme du Marin,' or your 'Source,' or some of that dreamy
nonsense you are so fond of. Play something of Mendelssohn's, if you
like--those doleful 'Songs without Words'--funeral dirges without the
funeral, _I_ should call them--which you were so fond of playing to
Hector at Fortinbras."
Watching the frail white figure relentlessly athwart the dusk, Mrs.
MacClaverhouse perceived a faint shiver disturb its repose as she said
this. But in the next moment Cecil struck a few chords and began to
play. Her aunt rose from the chair in which she had seated herself, and
came nearer the piano.
Cecil's music to-night was of the softest and tenderest character.
Her fingers glided over the keys in a dreamy _legato_ movement, and
as the dowager watched and listened, two actual tears arose in those
sharp worldly eyes, and blotted the picture of the slender white-robed
figure, and graceful drooping head.
While Cecil was lingering fondly over a _piano_ passage, the dowager
startled her by a profound sigh. Any thing in the way of sentiment
was so foreign to the habits of Mrs. MacClaverhouse's mind that Cecil
looked up from her piano in unmitigated surprise.
"Ah, by-the-bye," said the dowager, "talking of Hector Gordon, I had
some news from India to-day."
"Indeed, auntie!"
The same faint shiver that had stirred the white-robed figure before
stirred it again. There are some things that can never be forgotten.
"Yes, I had a letter _viâ_ Marseilles. Of course, when people are
wallowing in gold they have no occasion to think of sixpence more or
less for postage. _My_ letters have to go by Southampton. Bad news, of
course, Cecil; who ever receives good news nowadays? I shall have to
go into mourning; poor people's relations are always dying. I am really
almost inclined to think they do it on purpose to involve one in the
expense of mourning."
Cecil's heart gave a great leap, and then, seemed to stand still. The
human heart has a faculty of transforming itself into a lump of ice at
such moments.
"What do you mean?" she cried, with a vehemence that startled the
dowager; "is Hector Gordon dead?"
She rose from before the piano, trembling from head to foot. Mrs.
MacClaverhouse caught her niece in her arms.
"My darling!" she exclaimed,--and perhaps it was the first time in
her life that the strong-minded matron had ever employed so tender
an epithet,--"do you think I should talk so coolly about going into
mourning for my boy?--who has been more than a son to me, bless his
generous heart. Don't tremble so, Cecil; it is Hector's wife, poor
young thing, who is dead."
"You--you frightened me, auntie," murmured Cecil, as she sank
helplessly into the chair from which she had risen in her sudden
terror. "You know how little Hector Gordon and I have ever been to each
other--what utter strangers we are and must always be to one another
now. But to be told all at once, that a person you have known and been
familiar with is dead, the shock--the----"
The words died on her lips. The sudden terror that had taken
possession of her had given place to a new fear. She was alarmed by the
intensity of her own feelings.
"If he were really dead," she thought, "what right should I have to
feel like that?"
She recovered herself with an effort, and after a brief pause addressed
the agitated dowager very calmly.
"Tell me all about it, auntie," she said; "it is very shocking--so
young--so happy."
In the moment after having said these words, a pang of envy shot
through Cecil's heart. Ah, what an enviable fate it seemed, this
destiny which commonplace people are so apt to bemoan! To have one
brief year of perfect bliss, and then to die; to live the life of the
roses and butterflies; to be indeed the favoured of the gods.
"It seems there was a baby," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse, "though _I_
had not been told there was any thing of that sort expected; and of
course, if the poor child had lived, they would have looked for their
godmothers elsewhere. The infant was a son, and Hector was delighted,
and every body else was delighted. But things took a bad turn; the baby
died, and the poor young mother fretted, and then there came a fever,
and in three weeks' time my poor boy was a widower. I have had no
letter from him yet, but they tell me he is dreadfully broken-hearted."
"It is very dreadful for him," murmured Cecil.
"And worse for her, I should think, poor thing," said the
matter-of-fact dowager.
"I tell you, my dear Sir, if Bamper goes in for specific performance of
contract, the defendant hasn't a leg to stand on," said the sonorous
voice of Mr. O'Boyneville, who entered the room at this moment in hot
argument with his friend. "Good gracious me, Mrs. Mac.!" he exclaimed,
on entering the dusky chamber, "how is it they have left you in the
dark all this time?--Cecil, what have you been thinking of? Where's
that fellow Pupkin?"
The valuable Pupkin appeared with lights at this moment. The
barrister's powerful will vanquished his household as it conquered all
other opponents. The man-of-all-work had entered his service ten years
before, a rough and unkempt lad, with no ideas beyond blacking-brushes
and a knifeboard, to become in due time the very pink and model of
indoor domestics.
Pupkin placed a moderator-lamp on the centre table, and lighted candles
on the cheffonier and mantelpiece. He brought the tea-equipage, and
attended on his mistress while she poured out the tea. Mr. O'Boyneville
relapsed into profound meditation, as it was his habit to do while
taking tea. He was thinking fondly of the red bag which was waiting
for him on the study-table below, and wishing that his brother luminary
might be inspired to take his departure. But that gentleman was pleased
to snatch an opportunity of making himself agreeable to his learned
friend's aristocratic and elegant young wife, and was relating a
facetious but strictly correct trial, which had convulsed one of the
law-courts during the late term. Poor Cecil smiled faintly at the
feeble witticisms, and tried her uttermost to be civil to her husband's
guest. But she was very glad when Mr. O'Boyneville, after a protracted
fit of staring, which was the next thing to epilepsy, started suddenly
from his seat, and exclaimed:
"And now, my dear Sleghammer, I'll wish you good-night. I've got some
very important papers to look through before I go to bed, and----"
"My dear Boyneville, don't use the least ceremony. I know how you work!
and, bless my soul! it's past ten o'clock. But really I had spent
such a delightful evening, that, upon my word, I----" murmured Mr.
Sleghammer, looking at Lady Cecil, whose society he had enjoyed for
about twenty minutes since dinner.
When Mr. O'Boyneville's guest had walked away in the summer night, and
when Mr. O'Boyneville had gone to his nightly labours, the dowager
embraced her niece very affectionately before taking her departure in
the phantom chariot, which had been prowling slowly to and fro in the
square for the last half hour, to the admiration of the boys of the
district who associated the equipage vaguely with the Lord Mayor.
"What a dear creature your husband is!" cried the dowager; "and how
entertaining it is to hear all the little secrets of the law-courts!
You ought to be happy, Cecil; you ought indeed. But you girls don't
know what real happiness is. And yet _you_ ought to know the value of a
good home, and a generous husband; for you have known what it is to be
poor."
"Do you think that I do not appreciate my husband's goodness?" said
Cecil earnestly. "Indeed--indeed, auntie----"
"Oh yes," answered the dowager promptly, "you appreciate his goodness
perhaps; but you don't appreciate _him_. You just tolerate him because
he is good and kind to you, and works like a galley-slave to insure
your welfare in the future; but if he could read 'Victor Hugo' like a
play-actor, and make an idiot of himself about Mendelssohn, you'd adore
him."
This was the last Cecil saw of her aunt for some time, for on the
morrow the dowager departed to the Sussex manor-house. Before the week
was out Mr. O'Boyneville had also taken wing, and Cecil was quite
alone in the big empty Brunswick Square mansion. She had been allowed
to have her own way. She had escaped the weariness of a sea-side
excursion--the familiar gaieties of country-house visiting. She was
alone with her books and her music, as she had wished to be. She was
alone, and she found the autumn days too long for her, the Bloomsbury
mansion too big and empty.
Mr. O'Boyneville had no idea of being an inattentive husband. He
sent his wife hasty lines scrawled on the flaps of envelopes in the
intervals of his professional labours, and the hasty lines were full
of kindness and anxiety for her welfare. But a couple of sentences
written on the flap of an envelope are not calculated to "speak the
soft intercourse from soul to soul;" and the barrister's brief scrawls
afforded his wife very little food for reflection during her lonely
hours. She wrote her husband long dutiful letters, two and three
times a week; but she found this letter-writing rather a weary labour
sometimes. What subjects were there on which she could be expansive?
She took so little interest in his professional triumphs. He cared so
little for her books and music. She shrank from putting her thoughts
into words: but one conviction was slowly and surely taking root in her
mind, and that conviction was that her marriage had been a mistake.
"He ought to have married some good comfortable creature, who would
have found occupation enough in household duties," she thought
sometimes. "I read too much, and think too much, until I begin to feel
that there is something wanting in my life."
She had never dared to acknowledge to herself that the something
wanting was a more genial companion than Laurence O'Boyneville.
"He is so good to me, and I ought to love him so dearly," she thought
in those moments of self-reproach which came very often in her lonely
days. "I know that he is good, and honourable, and clever; what more
can I wish him to be? Surely I ought to be proud of such a husband when
I remember the fate of other women. What would become of me if I had
married such a man as Mr. Lobyer?"
There is a little story by Alfred de Musset, in which the heroine
is married to a man whom she has passionately loved. She finds, too
late, that there is little sympathy between them, and her life is very
lonely. One night she is at the opera--alone, as she almost always is;
and when the music, which she adores, fills her with uncontrollable
emotion, she stretches out her hand involuntarily to clasp the
sympathetic hand of a friend. The poor little hand falls upon the arm
of an empty chair. The husband is no amateur of Mozart, and falls
asleep on those rare occasions when he accompanies his wife to the
opera.
There were times when Cecil felt a vague yearning for the touch of
that sympathetic hand; there were times when a chilling sense of
intellectual loneliness oppressed her spirits, and when she felt that
it would have been better for her if the daily cares about plate and
china, and all the little sordid duties of her Dorset-Square life, had
still demanded her thought and attention.
Did she ever think of the young widower far away in his time of
mourning? Did the picture of that which might have been arise more
vividly before her vision now that the cold hand of death had loosened
Hector Gordon's bondage? Alas! yes; struggle as she might against the
tempter, there were times when she felt herself weak, and wicked;
there were times when the face that had looked down upon her under the
sunless autumn sky looked at her again out of the shadows of her lonely
room, instinct with the same melancholy tenderness--the same passionate
devotion.
"I ought to be content to remember that for one moment in my life I
was loved like that," she thought. "I am as foolish as I am wicked
when I let his image come back to me. What could I be to him if we met
now, and I were as free as he is? Can I suppose that he remembers me,
after all the domestic sweetness of his brief married life--after the
terrible sorrow in which it has come to an end? Ah, no, thank God for
that; the past has made a gulf between us which nothing in the present
can bridge over. If we met to-morrow, we should meet as strangers. I
can almost fancy the look of indifference I should see in his face."
If Cecil was a lonely wife, she was at least not a neglected
or forgotten one. All things that can contribute to a woman's
happiness--when considered from a prosaic and common-sense point of
view--were freely furnished by Laurence O'Boyneville for the woman
he had wooed so boldly and won so easily. A dainty little brougham,
and a stout strong-built steed, had been provided for the barrister's
wife. She had a coachman renowned for his sobriety, and she had no
occasion to suffer the ignominy of opening her carriage-door, or the
martyrdom involved in the dangerous attentions of street-boys; for the
inestimable Pupkin accompanied her in her drives, and marshalled her
solemnly to her chariot after her calls or shopping. She had unlimited
supplies of new music, and first-class subscriptions at more than
one library. She had _carte blanche_ at Howell and James's, and had
she chosen to be extravagant, might have indulged her folly to the
uttermost. She had a well-appointed although somewhat dingily-furnished
house, and servants who gave her very little trouble; and if amidst
all this substantial commonplace comfort the sympathetic hand and the
congenial companionship which make the lives of some few women happy
were wanting, she had surely little right to complain. That perfect
circle which is the emblem of eternity is not to be found embodied upon
earth, and there is always some missing link in the golden chain of
sublunary bliss.
When all the brightness of summer had vanished before the pelting rains
and dull leaden skies of a stormy October, the barrister returned to
his wife and his London engagements. She was really glad to welcome
him back; even though he did seem a little bigger and louder, and more
overpowering altogether, now that she had been separated from him for
some months. Business of a special nature had kept him away from home
after his circuit-work had been finished, and it was not till the
middle of October that he was free to return. He came back to the old
round of perpetual labour, and his work in the ensuing term threatened
to be even heavier than usual; but he had time to see that his wife was
looking pale and ill, and the discovery grieved and distressed him.
"I did wrong in letting you have your own way, Cecil," he said; "this
autumn in London has done you harm. You are looking pale and ill. If
you'll tell Pupkin to put a couple of shirts in my portmanteau, I'll
take you down to Brighton to-morrow afternoon by the five o'clock
express."
It was in vain that Cecil protested that there was no occasion for
Mr. O'Boyneville to put himself out of the way on her account. The
barrister insisted on the visit to Brighton; and on the following
day, which was the last of the week, and the only one on which Mr.
O'Boyneville could have turned his back upon the neighbourhood of the
law-courts, Cecil found herself whirled seawards through the evening
fog by the most delightful express-train in Christendom. The cool
sea-breezes blew into her chamber at the Albion, and she saw the lights
of the chain-pier burning brightly below her window as she arranged her
hair before the glass. She found her husband comfortably established
before a blazing fire in the sitting-room when she went down stairs;
and in less than half an hour a little _chef-d'œuvre_ in the way of
dinners was served by the gravest and most attentive of waiters. After
dinner Mr. O'Boyneville enjoyed his accustomed nap; while Cecil stood
at the window, looking out at the moonlit sky and sea. Ah, who shall
say what a treat the sea is after Brunswick Square--what refreshment to
the eye in these big rolling waves--what music in the sonorous roar of
the sea after the fifes and drums of the Foundling!
After tea Mr. O'Boyneville looked at his watch, and then rang for the
waiter.
"I expect a parcel by the 9.45 train," he said. "Will you be good
enough to inquire about it; and let me have a pair of candles on that
table?"
The waiter bowed and departed. He returned in ten minutes, carrying a
bundle, at which Cecil gazed wonderingly.
It was the barrister's crimson bag.
"My work follows me, you see, Cecil," said Mr. O'Boyneville. "I was
anxious about to-night's letters and papers; so I told Jarvis to send
the bag after me."
The attentive waiter placed candles on the side-table; and the great
O'Boyneville seated himself before his papers. He worked indefatigably
for the remainder of the evening. Cecil heard the stiff law-stationer's
paper crackle as the barrister read his briefs, only pausing now and
then to scrawl some note upon the margin, or to meditate profoundly,
with a thoughtful scowl upon his face. She had no books with her; so
she drew back the curtain from before the window that commanded the
sea, and sat by it, looking out at the moonlit waves and the lamps
of the cliff and pier; and but for the roaring of the sea and the
moonlight on the waters, Brighton would have been as dull as Bloomsbury.
On Sunday afternoon Mr. O'Boyneville drove his wife up and down the
cliff in the clear cold October weather. He recognised several of his
brother luminaries, who were taking the air on the King's Road, all
more or less thoughtful and preoccupied of aspect, and all meditating
Smith _versus_ Brown, or Jones _versus_ Robinson, or some other cases
in which their rhetorical abilities were to be displayed. The barrister
entertained his wife by pointing out these distinguished individuals.
"Do you see that tall stout man, Cecil? No, not that one; the man
nearest the lamp-post--the man who is blowing his nose? That's Bobbin,
the great chancery-barrister--the man who----"
And then, when Cecil had confronted the east wind, and strained her
eyes to the uttermost, and ultimately had gazed reverentially on the
wrong person, Mr. O'Boyneville went on to sing the praises of Bobbin;
and a quarter of an hour afterwards poor Cecil had to twist her head in
all manner of unpleasant positions, in order to behold a man in grey
trousers and a brown overcoat, who turned out to be no other than the
mighty Valentine, but who in outward aspect differed in no essential
way from other men.
Lady Cecil was not interested in Bobbin or Valentine. If Laurence
O'Boyneville could have shown her Victor Hugo or Alfred Tennyson
taking their constitutional on that pleasant sea-shore, she would have
thought it no trouble to twist her head or strain her eyes in order to
look upon them; though even then there is some probability that she
would have been disappointed in the mortal habitations of those mighty
souls. Was not Lavater disappointed in Goethe, and almost inclined to
disbelieve that the handsome young stranger presented to him was indeed
the author of _Werter_?
After the conventional drive up and down the King's Road, Mr.
O'Boyneville took his wife into bleak solitudes beyond Rottendean.
They drove between bare hills, through a bit of lonely country,
where there were little homesteads scattered far apart, with lights
twinkling feebly in the twilight--a lonely barren bit of country, whose
atmosphere on an October afternoon has a soothing influence on the
mind. The dim grey downs, and the sheep feeding high up in the clear
air, seem so very far away from all London care and turmoil.
Both the barrister and his wife abandoned themselves to a contemplative
mood during the long country drive; but after dinner they talked very
pleasantly by the cheery fire, and Laurence forgot his red bag for once
in a way, and became the man he had been during the brief holiday-time
before his marriage--not very sentimental or metaphysical, but an
agreeable companion nevertheless.
"I think the holiday has done us both good," he said to his wife, as
an early express bore them away from Brighton on Monday morning. Mr.
O'Boyneville had persuaded Cecil to stay a few days longer at the
Albion, promising to return and fetch her; but she did not care to stay
at Brighton alone, with neither books nor music.
"I wish we could oftener be away from Brunswick Square and your
professional work, Laurence," she said, with her hand in her husband's
big palm. She felt drawn nearer to him by that one day's holiday than
by all the domestic routine of their Bloomsbury life.
"Ah, my dear, that isn't possible," said the barrister, with a sigh of
resignation.
Had the great O'Boyneville's fate been in his own hands, would he
have had his professional labour less, his leisure for home-duties
and home-pleasures greater? Alas! it is very much to be feared that
he would not have so chosen. He was but mortal man; and the triumphs
of the law-courts, the compliments from the bench, and the "roars of
laughter" reported in the newspapers, are very sweet to the forensic
mind.
A fortnight after the Brighton excursion there came a letter from
Flo--a letter the contents of which Mr. O'Boyneville, who was
sufficiently inquisitive upon occasions, begged to hear. As Mrs.
Lobyer's epistle, though intensely affectionate, was by no means
confidential, Cecil complied with her husband's request. The letter
announced Mr. and Mrs. Lobyer's return from the Continent, and
establishment at Pevenshall; and the writer entreated her dearest
Cecil, and her dearest Cecil's husband, if possible, to spend Christmas
at that country mansion.
"You like Mrs. Lobyer, don't you, Cecil?" the barrister asked, when the
perusal of the letter was finished.
"Oh yes, I like her very much indeed."
"Then why shouldn't you accept her invitation?"
"But can you go, Laurence?"
"Well, I rather fear not. I might run down for Christmas-day perhaps,
and a few days after, while the courts are up; but that would all
depend upon circumstances. In any case you ought to go, Cecil; the
change of air and scene will do you good: you've not been looking well
since my return from circuit."
There was some discussion. Cecil did not care for gaiety; Cecil did not
wish to leave her husband at Christmas time; but the barrister's strong
will triumphed.
"I let you have your own way in the summer, and I found you looking
as pale as a ghost when I came home. You must let me have my way this
time, Cecil," he said decisively.
So it was decided that Lady Cecil should accept Mrs. Lobyer's
invitation, and should go to Pevenshall on the fifteenth of December,
where Mr. O'Boyneville would join her, if possible, during the
Christmas week.
A few days before she left Brunswick Square Cecil received a voluminous
epistle from the dowager, who retailed all the gossip of the house
in which she was staying for her niece's amusement, and furnished
the barrister's wife with a brief chronicle of births, deaths, and
marriages, pending or otherwise.
The letter was written closely on two sheets of paper, both crossed,
and in an obscure corner Cecil found a postscript.
"I have heard from Hector Gordon. His regiment is ordered home, and he
comes with it. Indeed, for all I know, he is in England at this moment."
"He is as far away from me in England as he was in India," Cecil
thought, as she folded the missive. "My aunt must know that he and I
would never wish to meet, and hers is the only house in which I should
be likely to see him."
She showed Mr. O'Boyneville her aunt's letter; and even the obscure
little postscript did not escape the searching eye of the barrister. He
asked who the Hector Gordon was who was expected home; and Cecil had to
explain her aunt's relationship to the Plunger captain, and to tell
the story of the young man's marriage and widowhood, for her husband's
edification.
CHAPTER XX.
AT PEVENSHALL PLACE.
Pevenshall Place was a noble modern mansion, which Thomas Lobyer
the elder had built for himself in the days when he still hoped to
find a worthy successor to his commercial glory in the person of the
lad who was spending his juvenile leisure among lords and commoners
on the grassy meads of Eton. The great millowner's wealth had been
lavished freely on the solid grandeur and decorative splendours of
Pevenshall. The house was in the Italian style,--a noble square white
mansion, with a balustraded roof, surmounted by airy turrets, and a
broad terrace-walk, that commanded one of the loveliest prospects in
Yorkshire. No vulgar architect had designed the Manchester trader's
dwelling. The millionaire of to-day begins life with gigantic
advantages. He has the benefit of two thousand years of civilisation,
and may profit by the experience of emperors. Before the plans for
Pevenshall were completed and approved, Mr. Lobyer had been made
familiar with all the masterpieces of domestic architecture still
existing in the present, or known to have existed in the past. He
had disdained Stowe, and had rejected Fonthill; he had pooh-poohed
Adrian's Villa, and turned up his nose at the abode of Lucullus. He had
remarked that the apartments of Sallust, at Pompeii, might be eminently
adapted for a gentleman's wine-cellars, but were utterly unfit for
a gentleman's residence. After going through innumerable folios of
drawings and engravings which his architect--happy in the expectation
of five per cent. on some fifty thousand pounds--had brought to him,
Mr. Lobyer made his choice with that promptitude and decision which had
regulated his conduct in all the most important affairs of life.
"If I can't have that," he said, laying the end of his square
forefinger on an engraving of Warwick Castle,--"and of course I can't,
for I never saw any thing in the way of a castle built nowadays that
didn't look like a workhouse or a gaol--I'll have that;" and he
transferred his finger to a water-colour sketch of a modern Italian
villa in the suburbs of Florence; "or at any rate I'll have that kind
of place--light, and bright, and cheerful-looking outside; but as warm
and comfortable inside as an old-fashioned farmhouse, and from garret
to collar as solid as the Tower of London. Give me a drawing-room forty
feet by twenty five, an entrance-hall thirty feet square; and take
care there's no such thing as a dark corner or a narrow passage in the
house, and I shall be satisfied."
After having said this, Thomas Lobyer the elder declined all further
discussion upon the subject of the house that was to be built for him.
In the space of a few months the lordly mansion arose on the slope of
a wooded hill-side, and all the district wondered at its grandeur.
The architect had _carte blanche_. There were chambers panelled
with oak and cedar, sandal and maple-wood. There was a staircase of
Carrara marble, with balustrades of carved bronze, and lamps copied
from antique Roman models. Julius Cæsar might have ascended such a
staircase, and would have found nothing to criticise in the perfection
of its appointments. Thomas Lobyer the elder approved of the mansion
because it was large and handsome, and was very slightly affected by
the odour of classicality that pervaded it. He freely paid the amounts
which the great builder demanded of him, and it was only when he
looked over his banker's-book at the close of the transaction, that he
knew how dearly his fancy had cost. He sent the architect to London
to give the necessary orders to upholsterers; and Pevenshall Place
was furnished in perfect harmony with its architecture, but with very
little reference to the peculiar taste of its proprietor.
The architect had an especial tenderness for the classical; and the
great millowner, eating his frugal meal alone in his vast dining-room,
illumined by candles in oxidised silver branches that might have
appropriately adorned the banquet table in the Apollo chamber,
was inclined to think his new mansion somewhat cold and cheerless
of aspect. It may have been that the millionaire was prone to be
dispirited on that first day of his occupation, for the morning's post
had brought him a letter from the dame in whose house his son and heir
was lodged, and the terms of the epistle were very uncomplimentary to
Thomas the younger; and this feminine complaint about Master Lobyer's
delinquencies--his cruelty to smaller and weaker boys--his falsehood
and cunning--his obstinate resistance of authority--was only the
beginning of the evil to come. From the day in which the millowner
took possession of his splendid dwelling, until the hour in which
he exchanged it for a very mean and narrow habitation, his life was
poisoned by corroding cares--embittered by perpetual disappointments,
and all his cares and all his disappointments had one common cause in
the person of his son.
He took a disgust for the gorgeous mansion whose erection had cost
him so much money. His troubles weighed very heavily upon him in those
spacious rooms, amidst whose chilly splendour there was no occupation
for him. At Pevenshall the rich man found too much leisure in which to
brood upon his cares and disappointments, and he was always glad to
return to Manchester, where he had a comfortable dwelling attached to
his great warehouses, and where he could steep his brain in the small
vexations and perplexities of commerce, to the oblivion of the prodigal
who was so slow to return.
Pevenshall Place, with innumerable lighted windows flashing on the
darkness of the night, looked a very noble mansion as Cecil approached
it in the luxurious brougham that had been sent to meet her at the
Farnleigh-Heath station. No enchanted palace of fairy story could
have shone more brilliantly upon the belated wanderer than did this
substantial modern dwelling. Within, splendour and comfort fought for
the mastery. A gigantic fire of sea-coal, surmounted by a monster log,
warmed and brightened the great Italian hall, a desecration which would
have excruciated the classic architect--who had devised an appropriate
bronze stove, of antique design, for the heating of the vast chamber.
Curtains of crimson cloth hung before all the doors, and the skins of
wild animals lay side by side with Persian carpets and the snow-white
fleece of peaceful sheep. The pair of matched footmen who were the
chief glory of Mrs. Lobyer's establishment advanced to receive Lady
Cecil's morocco travelling-bag, and to relieve her of her shawl. The
splendid creatures knew that she was an earl's daughter; but they could
not entirely conceal some faint tokens of that gentlemanly contempt
which a high-bred footman must always entertain for a lady who travels
without her maid.
"Which her connection with the peerage makes it wuss," said one of the
gentlemen, when he discussed the matter at the social supper-table;
"it's bringing the very horder she belongs to into contempt."
The gorgeous creatures relinquished Lady Cecil's burden to meaner hands
immediately after taking them. They were attended by _aides-de-camp_ in
the shape of an under-footman and a boy page; and their reception of
the traveller's parcel had been a purely ceremonial act. One of these
Corsican brothers of the servants'-hall drew aside a crimson curtain,
and revealed a broad lighted corridor, with many doors, some of which
were open, and along which echoed the sound of voices and the resonant
music of laughter.
Before Cecil could follow the majestic footman, that individual drew
suddenly aside, and a light fluttering figure, brightly attired in
trailing garments of pink silk, half hidden under airy puffings of
blonde, came hurrying towards the visitor.
It was Flo, brighter and more bewitching even than of old, with her
golden hair tortured into an edifice of puffs, _à la Pompadour_, and
sprinkled with glittering particles that sparkled in the lights.
"You darling, how good of you to come!" she cried eagerly. "I should
have driven over to the station myself to meet you, but the house is so
full of people, and I couldn't leave them. They are drinking tea in the
blue room; will you come and plunge into the midst of us at once, or
shall I take you to your rooms? We have nearly an hour between this and
dinner, and you see I am dressed, so for that time I am quite your own.
Do come and see all my new friends, Cecil. You look charming after your
journey--not a hair turned, as our sporting-visitors say; your little
blue-velvet bonnet is delicious, and that grey-cloth travelling-dress
becomes you admirably. Come, dear, let me show these provincial
grandees that there is at least one woman in the world who does not
talk slang, and is not the living, breathing image of every other woman."
Cecil pleaded for a retreat to her own apartments; but the vivacious
Florence half led, half dragged her to the room whence had issued the
sounds of revelry. It was an apartment which was small in comparison
with most of the Pevenshall chambers, and which had that air of
extreme cosiness and comfort with which very spacious rooms are not
easily invested. Here the classic architect had been superseded by
Florence and the bric-à-brac shops of the West-end. Bright-blue
hangings contrasted vividly with the cedar-panelling; tiny gems by
modern masters, set in deep frames of ebony and gold, adorned the
walls; and these gems were of the first water, having been chosen by
William Crawford as bridal gifts for his only child. All that is most
comfortable in the way of easy-chairs and most eccentric in the shape
of tiny tables had been provided for this chamber; and here a party of
vivacious ladies and agreeable gentlemen were grouped about the fire
drinking tea, and talking with that pleasant abandonment which pervades
unceremonious meetings between luncheon and dinner in an hospitable
country-house. Cecil found the usual elements of such gatherings--two
or three country squires, or heirs-presumptive, or younger sons of
country squires; some military men from the barracks at Chiverley,
the principal town within twenty miles of Pevenshall; a sprinkling of
the London element, as represented by some elegant young members of
the clubs; a German diplomatist; and a bevy of pretty girls, whose
maiden insipidity was relieved by a handsome widow and a coquettish
matron renowned for an especial genius for the cultivation of Platonic
attachments. Of course, every body was delighted to see Lady Cecil
O'Boyneville. The one or two people who knew her were enchanted to
meet her again, and the people who didn't know her were inexpressibly
anxious to make her acquaintance. The new-comer was ensconced in the
warmest corner of the pretty chamber, and country squires disputed
for the honour of bringing her strong tea. The novelty of the scene
was refreshing to her after the dull solitude of Brunswick Square;
for let the jaded traveller be never so weary and heartsick, there is
some faint sense of pleasure involved in the mere fact of being in an
utterly strange place. In this cosy morning-room at Pevenshall all was
brightness and colour. Every body was prettily dressed and smiling,
animated and happy--as it seemed; and amongst them all there was no one
gayer or brighter than Florence--that mercenary Florence for whom Cecil
had felt such profound compassion.
"And she really is happy," thought the barrister's wife, as Mrs. Lobyer
stood in the centre of the little throng beaming upon her guests.
Florence insisted upon accompanying her friend to the rooms that had
been prepared for her. They were very luxurious apartments, pervaded
by that atmosphere of wealth which reigned in almost every chamber of
Pevenshall Place. The marble mantelpieces were enriched with garlands
of flowers; the grates were marvels of glittering elegance, the china
was luminous gold and colour, the chintz draperies were as delicate
and lustrous as satin, the boudoir was a nest for a lotus-eating
visitor; the low Arabian bed looked like a throne, the pure white rugs
were soft and stainless as new-fallen snow; and, seen through the
bed-chamber, the lighted dressing-room looked as fresh and bright as a
chromo-lithograph. Fires burned cheerily in the three apartments. Wax
candles in blue Sèvres candlesticks lighted tables and mantelpieces;
and that traveller must have been indeed dead to the influence of
externals who had failed to rejoice in such a luxurious shelter.
"What charming rooms!" cried Cecil.
"I am so glad you like them," Flo answered, cordially. "These rooms are
close to my own, and I thought of you, dear, when I had them furnished;
for though you have always lectured me, I think I like you better than
any one else in the world, except papa." This was not a very promising
speech from a wife of six months. Cecil was sincerely anxious about her
friend's happiness, and was on the watch for faint indications tending
to reveal the real state of things. Mrs. Lobyer had as yet made no
allusion to her husband, and Cecil found it incumbent on herself to
inquire after the wellbeing of the master of Pevenshall.
"I hope Mr. Lobyer is well," she said.
"Oh dear me, yes; he is very well," Flo answered, with supreme
indifference. "I have not seen him for the last day or two. I suppose
he is at Manchester. He is subject to periodical disappearances, and
when he disappears people tell me he is at Manchester. It's very
likely he will reappear at dinner-time; he generally does reappear
at dinner-time; and whether he has been out on the terrace to smoke
a cigar, or a week away at Manchester, his manner is pretty much the
same. I have heard people say that Mr. Lobyer is not gentlemanly; but
I am sure that if it is correct not to admire any thing, and not to be
surprised at any thing, and not to care about any thing,--except the
rise and fall of that horrible, unsteady money-market, which fluctuates
to such a degree that it makes me dizzy to think of it,--Mr. Lobyer is
the prince of gentlemen."
"You talk of things as lightly as ever, Flo," Cecil said, wonderingly.
"Heaven help me when I begin to talk of things seriously!" answered
Mrs. Lobyer, more earnestly than she was wont to speak. "And now,
darling, I must run away. You have only half an hour between this and
eight o'clock, and I want you to look your best, in order to astonish
my Yorkshire grandees, who go to London once in ten years, and who, in
the interim, fondly believe that the civilised world comes to an end
somewhere beyond the city of York."
The Pevenshall dining-room, enriched by that splendid tribute which
modern painters and modern sculptors offer to the golden calf of
Manchester, was a very superb apartment. The Pevenshall drawing-room
would not have shown meanly when contrasted with one of the saloons
of Windsor; and in the drawing-room, leaning in a meditative attitude
against one of the low mantelpieces, and worrying a Skye terrier
with the toe of his boot, Cecil found Mr. Lobyer, who gave her a
gentlemanly, but by no means rapturous, welcome to Pevenshall. "I hope
my wife will make you comfortable, Lady Cecil," he said. "I'm sure she
ought to do so, for she's been talking enough about you for the last
fortnight, whether you would come, or whether you wouldn't come, and so
on."
Mr. Lobyer's conversational powers were not taxed further just at
present, for a ponderous butler announced dinner, and the host offered
his arm to Lady Cecil, to the aggravation of a county matron who
considered herself the leading personage at Pevenshall. He said very
little during dinner, and that little related chiefly to the aspect of
commercial affairs in America, the tightness of the money-market, the
drain of gold from the Bank of England, and other equally entertaining
topics for general conversation. Two or three men at Mr. Lobyer's end
of the table listened reverentially to any words that fell from his
lips, and discoursed with much gusto upon his favourite subjects; but
the rest of the party divided themselves into little clusters and a
buzz of animated chatter filled the room. In the course of a commercial
discussion it transpired, incidentally, that Mr. Lobyer had spent the
last few days in Manchester, and that things were looking dull there,
and this was all that he said about his absence from home.
The evening glided by very rapidly in the great drawing-room, where
there was room for a carpet-dance without disarrangement of furniture,
and where there were all manner of delightful nooks and corners for
confidential conversation. A social tragedy might have been enacted in
one corner of that spacious apartment, while the general occupants of
the chamber were laughing and talking in supreme unconsciousness of
domestic storm or trouble. The evening passed very pleasantly. When a
large party is assembled in a country-house there are generally to be
found some nice people, and at Pevenshall the nice people were in the
majority. There were musical people, and people who were madly devoted
to amateur theatricals; and there was one gentleman who was great
in the performance of spirit-rapping and table-turning; and another
gentleman who shone as an _improvisatore_, and who sang extempore
buffo-songs, which every body thought delightfully clever, but which
would have seemed atrociously stupid if people had had sufficient time
or presence of mind to grasp the full meaning of the words, or if the
singer had not been artful enough to cover his worst puns and his most
excruciating rhymes by a volley of common chords.
Altogether the evenings at Pevenshall were successful; the more so
perhaps because the master of the house was apt to withdraw himself to
the smoking-room or the billiard-room, with a few chosen companions.
When bidding Flo good-night on this first evening of her visit, Cecil
declared that she had enjoyed herself very much.
"I have been leading such a quiet life lately, that I did not think it
was in me to enjoy society so much as I have done to-night. What nice
people some of your new friends are, Flo!"
"Do you think so?" Mrs. Lobyer said, elevating her shoulders with
a little gesture, which was the last thing in fashion in the best
Parisian circles. "Perhaps you have not seen the nicest of them yet."
CHAPTER XXI.
SIR NUGENT EVERSHED.
If Cecil had sighed for a life which should be a complete change from
the dull round of existence in Brunswick Square, she could not have
found any where a more perfect realisation of her desire than was to
be found at Pevenshall Place. Here, from the ten-o'clock breakfast
to the abnormally late hour at which the last lingerers in the big
drawing-room took their reluctant departure, the order of the day was
gaiety. Florence devoted herself to one incessant round of amusement,
and her visitors seemed nothing loth to follow her example. Amidst the
pleasant frivolities of Pevenshall, it was almost difficult to remember
that there was any portion of this universe in which "men must work
and women must weep," and that reasonable beings were created for any
graver purpose than the playing of billiards, the acting of charades,
and the composition of _bouts rimés_.
Cecil would fain have seen a little more of her old friend, and in some
manner renewed the confidential intimacy that had existed between them
before Flo's marriage, but Mrs. Lobyer gave her visitor no opportunity
for confidential conversation. She was very affectionate; she was full
of anxiety for her friend's comfort and enjoyment, but she avoided all
chances of a _tête-à-tête_, and seemed to have a nervous terror of
being questioned about herself. Perceiving this, Cecil began to fear
that Florence Lobyer's life was not entirely happy, in spite of its
incessant gaiety.
"You had a pleasant tour, I hope, Flory," she said one day when they
were alone for a few minutes.
"Oh yes, we tore about Europe as fast as express-trains and post-horses
could take us, and we spent a few weeks in Paris on our way home. Paris
is a nice place for shopping. I believe I wasted a small fortune on the
boulevards and in the Rue de la Paix; for Mr. Lobyer made quite a wry
face when he saw my bills. We drove in the Bois a great deal, and went
to a few nice parties, and ate a good many expensive dinners, and went
several times to the opera; where Mr. Lobyer slept very comfortably,
and where I amused myself by looking at the diamonds, and mentally
comparing them with my own. I only saw two people whose jewelry was
worth mentioning, and they were a Russian princess and a French
actress. Yes, on the whole, I think we had a very pleasant tour. And
now tell me about Mr. O'Boyneville. Are you happy with him?"
"Yes, dear, I have every reason to be happy, for he is very kind to me."
"And you really like him?"
"I really like him very much indeed."
This was the nearest approach to a confidential conversation that
occurred between Florence and her friend during the first week of
Cecil's visit.
The days passed very quickly, the evenings were delightful, and it was
not often that even the most transient cloud obscured the brightness
of Mrs. Lobyer's countenance. The master of Pevenshall inflicted very
little of his society upon the guests who enjoyed themselves in his
mansion. There were two or three horsey-looking men and two or three
commercial magnates with whom he chiefly consorted. His mornings were
spent in hunting when the weather was favourable, or in lounging
about the great quadrangle, surrounded by outbuildings and stables,
examining his horses, presiding over a rat-hunt, or worrying his dogs,
when the hounds and huntsmen were fain to be idle. His evenings were
devoted to the society of his own particular friends in the billiard
or smoking-rooms; and except at dinner-time, he rarely intruded on his
wife's circle.
After observing her friend for some time with affectionate anxiety,
Cecil began to think that perhaps the life which the painter's daughter
had chosen for herself was very well suited to her.
"Why do I wonder about her?" Cecil thought, as she saw Mrs. Lobyer the
gayest and most animated of all the Pevenshall party; "she possesses
every thing which most women sigh for from the hour in which they leave
the nursery, and it would be strange indeed if she were not happy."
But then came the thought of the future. Must not the time come when
the pleasures of a fine house and agreeable society must pall upon
the mistress of Pevenshall? Four or five years hence, when custom had
robbed these joys of their bloom and freshness, was it not terribly
probable that Mr. Lobyer's wife would awaken to nobler aspirations,
only to find that she had awakened too late? Then how commonplace and
monotonous the unvarying round of country-house gaieties, the turmoil
of London dissipations, must seem to the woman who had made it the
business of her life to win them!
"She is younger than I am, and she does not know how soon one grows
tired of these things," thought Cecil. "I have sometimes thought, when
driving up and down by the Serpentine with my aunt, that the treadmill
could scarcely be worse than the Lady's Mile must be to women who have
lived ten or fifteen years in society, and have gone through the same
routine year after year."
On the twenty-fourth of December a letter came from Mr. O'Boyneville,
announcing his inability to spend Christmas at Pevenshall.
"I have made a great effort to come to you, but I find my work for
Hilary Term so heavy that I dare not turn my back upon my study. You
would scarcely like to see my crimson bag in the Pevenshall library,
and if I came I should be obliged to bring my bag with me. So enjoy
yourself without me, my dear, and forget that there is such a person as
Laurence O'Boyneville in existence."
"He is not jealous, at any rate," said Flo, after hearing this part
of the letter: "what a blessing it is to have a husband who is not
afflicted with a jealous disposition! If Mr. Lobyer were to see me
flirting with half-a-dozen people at once, I don't think the spectacle
would disturb the serenity of his mind."
"You speak as if you wished to make him jealous, Flo."
"Well, I don't know about that. Sometimes, perhaps, I really do wish to
make him--something. You don't know how provoking those husbands who
are not jealous can be. If Mr. Lobyer only watched me as closely as he
watches the money-market, he would be a perfect Othello."
"But you cannot be displeased with him for devoting himself very much
to business, Flo," argued Cecil; "for all the luxury and splendour of
this house are the fruits of his commercial successes."
"Now you're going to lecture me," exclaimed Florence impatiently.
"While I was engaged to Mr. Lobyer, every body seemed to take a delight
in abusing him; but now I'm married to him, people preach about him as
if he were a saint. Even papa, who was so much against my marriage,
never writes to me without some little bit of preachment about my
duties as a wife. I don't set up for being a model wife; and if Mr.
Lobyer is satisfied with me, I really can't see what right other people
have to interfere."
After this Florence apologised for her impatience, and embraced her
dearest Cecil after her wont.
"And now, darling, I want you to come and walk on the terrace with me.
It's a delightful morning, more like October than December; and we'll
leave all those worsted-working and piano-strumming people in the
drawing-room to amuse themselves. Run and put on your warmest shawl.
I'll wait for you here."
This conversation had taken place in the morning-room, where Cecil had
found Mrs. Lobyer alone for once in a way an hour after breakfast. Flo
was already dressed for walking in a coquettish black-velvet jacket,
trimmed with chinchilla, and a bewitching little hat, adorned with a
peacock's breast.
Mrs. Lobyer was dressed more carefully than she was wont to attire
herself for a walk on the terrace. Her dark-grey poplin dress was
looped up on each side, revealing a glimpse of a scarlet-cloth
petticoat, a pair of miraculous boots, and the faintest scintillation
of grey-silk stockings. Her little gauntlet-shaped gloves were the
prettiest that ever came from the hands of a glovemaker, and fitted
to perfection. Her hair was tied in a clustering knot, which was the
perfection of artistic carelessness, and one little bit of turquoise
blue ribbon peeped from amidst the gold-coloured tresses.
"I think even papa would confess I had some idea of colour if he saw
me to-day," said Mrs. Lobyer, as she mounted a little ottoman and
surveyed herself in a Venetian mirror framed in the cedar-panelling. "I
discovered the value of greys and scarlets from one of his pictures.
I'm sure I don't know why I should have taken pains with my dress this
morning: but one must amuse oneself somehow or other."
Mrs. Lobyer smothered a little yawn with the fingers of her pearl-grey
gloves, and went to one of the windows whence there was to be seen a
sunlit winter landscape, with all the varying beauties of light and
shadow playing upon hill and dale, and wood and water, which made the
prospect from the south front of Pevenshall Place one of the finest
views in the North Riding.
Cecil joined her friend a few minutes afterwards, and the two ladies
went out upon the terrace, where they met Mr. Lobyer, who was hurrying
towards the steps leading to the carriage-drive with a railway rug on
his arm.
"You are going away?" asked Flo, politely.
"Yes. I find I must run to Manchester this morning. I shall be back in
time for dinner to-morrow."
"You will travel on Christmas-day?" exclaimed Flo, with a slight
elevation of her eyebrows.
"Why not on that day as well as any other?" said Mr. Lobyer coolly. "Do
you think I am to stop my business because people choose to over-eat
themselves with beef and pudding on the twenty-fifth of December?
Good-bye, Flo: I've only half an hour for the drive."
The millionaire brushed his wife's forehead with his bushy moustache,
and then ran down the steps, where an American gig with a high-stepping
horse and a miniature tiger were in attendance upon him. In this airy
equipage Mr. Lobyer was borne along the avenue as on the wings of the
winter wind; and, seen from a distance, presented an appearance of
high-stepping horse, man, and high wheels, without any superfluous
encumbrance in the way of vehicle.
"And now let us enjoy ourselves and have some nice talk," said Flo,
when she had stood for a few moments watching her vanishing lord and
master with eyes which did not ever express that spurious kind of
interest called curiosity. "Your bonnet is very pretty. How do you like
my hat?"
After this lively commencement the conversation flagged a little. When
people deliberately set themselves to talk, they are apt to be seized
with a kind of mental paralysis, which deprives them, for the time
being, of the faculty of intelligent speech. The two ladies walked
briskly up and down the long stone-terrace, and a delicate flush
deepened in Mrs. Lobyer's cheeks, and heightened the brilliancy of her
eyes. The great clock in the quadrangle had struck twelve as Mr. Lobyer
departed; but that gentleman had scarcely been absent ten minutes
when Florence produced her watch, and consulted it as carefully as if
she had been one of the Manchester men in whose society Mr. Lobyer
delighted.
The two ladies walked several times up and down the terrace; but in
spite of Cecil's efforts the conversation still flagged. When Cecil
admired the view, Mrs. Lobyer owned that it was charming--while the
magic of novelty lasted.
"One gets used to it," Flo said indifferently. "I dare say if people
could live on the summit of the Matterhorn, they would get used to
that, and think very little of it. When first I came here I used to
look out of my dressing-room window and admire the prospect while
Carstairs was dressing my hair; and now I take no more notice of the
view than if I were living in Russell Square."
After this Mrs. Lobyer relapsed into silence; and perceiving that she
was preoccupied, Cecil abandoned herself to her own meditations, though
not without some wonderment as to why Flo had made such a point of
bringing her out on the terrace when she had nothing particular to say
to her.
They had walked for some time in silence, when the sound of horses'
hoofs upon the hard carriage-drive made them both look up. The pretty
pink flush deepened ever so little on Mrs. Lobyer's cheeks as a
horseman, followed by his groom, rode rapidly towards the terrace steps.
"It is Sir Nugent Evershed," said Flo; "now, Cecil, you are going to
see one of the best men of the country--enormous wealth, without the
faintest association with the money-market,--and oh, how delightful
money without the market must be!--and an interminable line of
ancestors; though, if ancestors didn't generally reveal themselves in
high insteps, aquiline noses, and taper fingers, I shouldn't set any
particular value upon _them_."
All this was said very rapidly, very gaily, very lightly; but lightly
as it was said, Lady Cecil wondered a little at the warmth of Mrs.
Lobyer's complexion and the new brightness in Mrs. Lobyer's eyes.
Sir Nugent Evershed surrendered his horse to the groom at the bottom
of the terrace-steps, and came on foot to greet the ladies. He was
one of those rare exotics--those hothouse flowers in the garden of
youth--which, so long as grace and beauty are worshipped upon the
earth, will always find tender cherishers, even though some drops of
subtile poison mingle with the perfume,--even though a base of clay
sustain the torso of the god.
He was the very pink and pattern of the _jeunesse dorée_, the type
of man that has appeared with but little variation of form in every
century; the Alcibiades, the Essex, the Cinq Mars, the George Villiers,
the handsome Lord Hervey, the butterfly whose gilded wings excite the
indignation of wiser men, but who laughs at their wisdom and defies
their scorn, serene in the enjoyment of his butterfly triumphs.
Sir Nugent was fair, with blue eyes and pale-amber moustache and
whiskers. The Alcibiades of the present day is generally of a fair
complexion, and our friends on the other side of the Channel may talk
now of the _blonde meesters_ as well as the _blonde meess_ of the
_brumeuse Angleterre_.
Florence introduced Cecil to the elegant young Baronet, who seemed
on very familiar terms with Mrs. Lobyer. He entreated the ladies to
continue their walk, and strolled up and down the terrace with them.
"I will go and look for Lobyer presently," he said. "I suppose I shall
find him somewhere about the house or stable, as it is scarcely a
hunting morning."
"You will not find Mr. Lobyer till to-morrow," answered Flo; "he has
gone to Manchester."
"Again! What an extraordinary attachment he has for Manchester! I never
cared much myself for the Cottonopolis; it seems to me London without
the West-end."
After this Sir Nugent made himself eminently agreeable. The butterfly
of the nineteenth century must not be altogether a foolish butterfly;
for the gentler sex, whose suffrages he courts, are very far in advance
of the Belindas and Saccharissas of the past. Sir Nugent had been to
every place that was worth a gentleman's visiting, and seen every
thing worth seeing, and read almost every book worth reading. He was
a proficient in all gentlemanly sports; at nine years of age he had
"passed" as a swimmer at Eton, and at nineteen had been stroke-oar
in one of the Oxford boats. He was as much at home deer-stalking and
eagle-shooting in the Highlands as he was in the West-end clubs, and
his only effeminacy consisted in the whiteness of his hands and the
careful tastes of his costume.
The two ladies and the baronet went into the house presently, and
made their way to the drawing-room, where Sir Nugent was welcomed
with universal cordiality. He had a cousin staying in the house, a
fast young lady with out-of-door propensities,--a young lady who wore
clump-soles to her boots, defied wet weather, and unblushingly consumed
a whole grouse at the breakfast-table before the face of mankind.
A young lady whose mother is a county heiress, and whose paternal
ancestors have been drawn and quartered in the dark ages, may venture
to take life after her own fashion.
Sir Nugent stayed to luncheon, and Sir Nugent lingered in the great
drawing-room all through the winter afternoon. In the twilight Florence
asked her friend for a little Mendelssohn; and while Cecil played the
tender music the baronet and Mrs. Lobyer stood in a bay-window near
the piano, talking in hushed voices attuned to the pensive melody.
There were a good many people in the room; but it was a dangerously
spacious apartment, in which conversation was apt to degenerate into
_tête-à-tête_. When lamps were brought, the party of ladies, with Sir
Nugent and two or three other gentlemen amongst them, adjourned to the
morning-room to take tea; and still the Baronet lingered, assisting in
the dispensing of the cups and making himself eminently useful to Mrs.
Lobyer.
"Thank Heaven, we are drifting back into the cosy ways of our
ancestors," he said, as he leant against the corner of the mantelpiece
nearest Flo's chair. "This ante-prandial tea is the most delightful
invention, and if we could only bring ourselves to dispense with the
dinner, how very agreeable our lives would be! Do you expect to see Mr.
Lobyer this evening?" he asked Florence.
"I think not. He talked about coming back to-morrow."
"On Christmas-day! Ah, well, I suppose there is no Christmas for
millionaires. Imagine the Marquis of Westminster eating turkey, and
calling it Christmas! He could have turkeys all the year round. He
might have a dish made of the tongues of a thousand turkeys on his
breakfast-table every morning if he liked. There can be no such thing
as change of season for the millionaire. His house is warmed from roof
to basement with hot-air pipes, and he has peaches all the year round.
I should like to have seen Lobyer to-day, and I have inflicted myself
upon you most shamefully in the hope of seeing him."
"I don't believe Nugent ever thought himself an infliction in the
whole course of his life," cried the fast young lady cousin. "He is the
vainest of men, and thinks that we ought all to be intensely grateful
for having enjoyed the privilege of his society. All the girls in the
North Riding spoil him, because he happens to be the most eligible
bachelor on hand now that Lord Loncesvalle has married. I remember
Lord Loncesvalle--such an elegant young fellow, when he was canvassing
the Conservative interest for Chiverley. And I really think I wrote
poetical squibs against his opponents. Pray run away, Nugent. It's no
use your staying, for Mrs. Lobyer can't ask you to dinner in that coat;
and it is time for us all to dress. Don't forget to write to Jeffs for
the comedy we want to play on the 16th of January. Remember, you are to
be the Marquis, and we must form a committee for the discussion of the
costumes early next week."
"I will ride over the day after to-morrow," answered Sir Nugent; "and I
will bring the piece with me."
He bent over Florence to shake hands and say good-bye, and there was
in that adieu just the faintest suspicion of a something beyond the
routine of ordinary acquaintance. He shook hands with his cousin, and
went through a little fernery that opened from the morning-room and led
out upon the terrace, below which his groom had been pacing up and down
for the last half-hour leading the two horses.
It was a clear moonlight night, and Miss Grace Evershed went to one of
the windows to watch her cousin's departure.
"Nugent must find our society amazingly delightful, or he would never
have allowed Pyramus to wait half-an-hour in the cold," cried the young
lady. "He is generally so absurdly particular about his horses--and
Pyramus is a recent acquisition. I think Nugent gave something between
four and five hundred for him."
Cecil and Florence went up to their rooms together that night, and Flo
followed her friend into the pretty little boudoir, where a red fire
was burning with a frosty brightness.
"You are not sleepy, are you, Cecil!"
"No, dear, not in the least."
"Then if you've no objection I'll stop for a few minutes," said Flo,
seating herself in one of the pretty chintz-cushioned easy-chairs, and
playing with a Chinese hand-screen. "For my own part I never feel so
thoroughly awake as at this time of night. I think if people sat up for
eight-and-forty hours at a stretch, they would go on getting brighter
and brighter. As it is, we chop our lives up into such little bits,
and are seldom either quite awake or quite asleep. How do you like Sir
Nugent Evershed?"
The question was asked very carelessly, and the questioner's eyes were
fixed upon the fire.
"I really don't know him well enough either to like or dislike him,"
Cecil answered.
"Nonsense, Cecil! that's a lawyer's answer. Women always jump at
conclusions, and I have no doubt you have jumped at yours in this case.
You couldn't be half-a-dozen hours in Sir Nugent's society without
forming some opinion about him."
"Well, dear, I think he is very handsome."
"Do you?" said Flo, lifting her eyebrows, and shrugging her shoulders.
"Well, yes, I suppose he is what most people would call handsome."
"But you don't call him so?"
"Well, no; I have seen handsomer men. But what do you think of
_him_--his manners--himself, in short?" Flo asked rather impatiently.
"I think he is exactly like a great many other young men I have
seen----"
"Good gracious me!" cried Flo, this time very impatiently, "do you
mean to tell me that the generality of young men are as elegant and
accomplished as Sir Nugent Evershed?"
"No, I don't mean to say that exactly. But I think the generality of
young men in the present day are very accomplished. They all travel a
great deal; they all read, they----"
"Cecil, if you're going to talk like a blue-book, or a statistical
paper, I shall go away. I see you don't like Sir Nugent."
"My dear girl, I never said any thing of the kind. I only say that
he seems to me like a great many young men I have seen. Rather more
handsome, and rather more accomplished, and rather more elegant than
the generality of them perhaps, but only differing from them in degree.
Is he a great friend of Mr. Lobyer's?"
"Yes," Flo answered, still looking at the fire; "they are very
intimate. Are not those pretty tiles, Cecil?" she asked, suddenly
turning her eyes on the encaustic tiles that surrounded the grate. "I
chose the design myself. The architect had put a bronze stove into
this room, and it was to be heated with hot-air pipes! Imagine a
boudoir heated with hot-air pipes! I think when one feels particularly
miserable there is nothing so consoling as a cosy fire. A soothing
influence seems to creep over one as one sits in the twilight, looking
into red coals. And how, in goodness' name, could one sit and stare at
pipes? I suppose architects never are unhappy."
This speech seemed to imply that unhappiness was not altogether a
stranger to Mrs. Lobyer. But Cecil did not take any notice of the
remark. When a young lady chooses to marry as Florence Crawford
had married, the wisest course for her friends is to ignore the
peculiarities of her lot, and to take it for granted that she is happy.
"Yes," Flo said, after a pause, "Sir Nugent and Mr. Lobyer are very
intimate; and there is something almost romantic in the circumstances
of their friendship. They were at Eton together; they were of the same
age, in the same class, and they lived in the same house; but they
were the most bitter foes. There was quite a Corsican vendetta between
them. Sir Nugent represented the aristocratic party, Mr. Lobyer the
commercial faction. They were the Guelphs and Ghibellines of the form.
Of course, under these circumstances, they were perpetually fighting,
for it really seems that the chief business of Eton boys is to fight
and play cricket. One day, however, they had a desperate battle in a
place called Sixpenny, though why Sixpenny is more than I can tell
you. The fight was going against Mr. Lobyer--for I believe Sir Nugent
is enormously strong, though he looks so slender--and the backers were
persuading him to take a licking--that's the Eton term, I believe, for
giving in; but he wouldn't give in: and while they were wrestling, he
took a knife from his trousers-pocket, and stabbed Sir Nugent in the
arm. It wasn't much of a stab, I believe, but the backers informed the
masters of the business, and there was a tremendous outcry about it,
and Mr. Lobyer was expelled the school. Of course he was very young at
the time," added Flo, rather nervously; "and I suppose boys of that age
scarcely know that it is wrong to use a knife when the fight is going
against them."
Cecil did not answer immediately. She had never liked the gentleman
whose hospitality she was enjoying, and this little episode from the
history of his school-days was not calculated to improve her estimate
of him.
"And yet Sir Nugent and Mr. Lobyer are now quite intimate," she said
presently, feeling that she was called upon to say something.
"Yes, that is the most singular part of the story. After that Eton
_fracas_ they saw nothing of each other for years and years. They went
to different universities, and Mr. Lobyer, as you know, finished his
education on the Continent. When the Pevenshall estate was bought, Mr.
Lobyer senior discovered that the country-seat of his son's old enemy
was within ten miles of the place. The country people received Mr.
Lobyer the elder with open arms; but he didn't care for society, and as
he went out very little, he never happened to meet Sir Nugent. And as
my husband was very seldom here, _he_ never happened to see Sir Nugent,
and I suppose the old Guelph and Ghibelline feeling still existed in
a modified degree, and might have gone on existing from generation
to generation, if it had not come to an end like a romance. When we
were travelling in Switzerland in the autumn, we went on one mountain
expedition to see the sun rise from some particularly romantic and
unapproachable peak, with rather a large party, almost all of whom were
strangers to us. By some accident I and my guide were separated from
Mr. Lobyer and his guide; and as the guide could only speak some vile
jargon of his own, and couldn't understand any language I tried him
with, I found myself wandering farther away from my own party, on the
track of a party of deserters who had started off at a tangent to see
some other prospect, and to whom the guide imagined I belonged.
"I was very much annoyed at not being able to make myself understood,
for I was very tired of the snow, and the slipperiness, and the grand
scenery, and was unromantically anxious to get back to the hotel, which
I don't think I ever should have done if one of the deserters had not
espied me following wearily in their track, and benevolently come to
my assistance. He was an Englishman, but he could speak the guide's
jargon, and he told the stupid creature what I wanted. Not content
with this, he insisted on escorting me himself to meet my own party,
and would not leave me till he had placed me in Mr. Lobyer's care. I
suppose when poor shipwrecked creatures are picked up by a passing
vessel, they are very likely to think that vessel the queen of ships;
and I know that I thought my deliverer a most agreeable person. Of
course Mr. Lobyer asked to whom he was indebted, and so on, and the
two gentlemen exchanged cards, whereupon it appeared that my deliverer
was no other than Sir Nugent Evershed. After this we met in the public
rooms of the hotel. Sir Nugent was delightful, did not ignore the Eton
business, but talked of it as a boyish folly, and said the old fogies
who made a fuss about it had no right to have interfered in the matter,
and made himself altogether so agreeable that it would have been quite
impossible for Mr. Lobyer or any one else to reject the olive-branch so
gracefully offered. Beyond this, we found our pre-arranged routes were
the same,--it was quite a romantic coincidence, Sir Nugent declared.
We were fellow-travellers for some weeks: climbed mountains together,
explored cathedrals together, inspected picture-galleries, dined
together, stopped in the same hotels, until Mr. Lobyer and Sir Nugent
became like brothers. We met again in Paris, where Sir Nugent, who is
very musical, was a delightful companion at the opera. Of course, when
we came here the intimacy continued, and now we have no more frequent
visitor than Sir Nugent."
"And you think that Mr. Lobyer really likes him?"
"Don't I tell you they are like brothers? How solemnly you look at me,
Cecil! Have you any objection to offer to the reconciliation effected
through accident and _me_? Would you prefer a continuation of the
Guelph and Ghibelline feud?"
"No, indeed, Flory. Nothing can be better than this reconciliation if
it is really quite sincere on both sides. But I fancy that the law of
society sometimes obliges men to appear friendly who never can really
be friends. Boyish quarrels are not very serious affairs, perhaps; but
I should think it was difficult to forget a schoolboy enmity of the
kind you have described. In plain words, Flo, I would strongly advise
you not to encourage any intimacy with Sir Nugent Evershed. I may
advise you, mayn't I, dear? I am older than you, Flory, you know."
"Every body in the universe is older than me, I think," answered the
impetuous Mrs. Lobyer, "for every body seems to think that his or her
special business in the world is to give me good advice. I think if
ever I do any thing desperately wicked, and am taken prisoner and tried
by a jury and written about in the newspapers, and all that sort of
thing, I shall get my counsel to plead insanity, on the ground that my
brain had been softened by the perpetual pressure of good advice. Now
don't be angry with me, Cecil," cried the wilful Florence, melting,
after her own particular fashion, into sudden penitence; "I know you
are the best and dearest friend I have in the world except papa, and I
would do any thing to please you. But as to Sir Nugent Evershed, I have
nothing to do with his intimacy with my husband. He comes here to see
Mr. Lobyer, and I can't order him not to come."
"But these private theatricals, Flo. I suppose you invited Sir Nugent
to take a part in them?"
"Oh yes; that was my doing, of course. When one has an elegant young
man hanging about the house, one likes to make use of him."
"But you have so many elegant young men about the house."
"Very likely. But there is not one of them so clever as Sir Nugent.
You see, I had set my heart on our doing a comedy of Scribe's. There
is such a rage for private theatricals just now, and I knew that the
only chance of our distinguishing ourselves was by doing something
French. The whole county will be pervaded by _The Lady of Lyons_ and
_Still Waters Run Deep_; but a comedy by Scribe in the original will
be a little out of the common. I know that Sir Nugent's accent is
irreproachable, and he is the only man I can trust with the character
of the Marquis."
"Is the Marquis a very important character?"
"Yes, he is the leading personage in the piece. Every thing depends
upon him."
"Is Mr. Lobyer to take any part in your comedy?"
"Oh no. He calls all that kind of thing nonsense. There are quite
enough people in the world ready to make fools of themselves without
his assistance, he says. Polite, is it not? But Mr. Lobyer's mind is
given up to the money-market. I think he has made a new commandment for
himself; 'Thou shalt love the Royal Exchange with all thy mind, and
soul, and----'"
"Flo!"
"Oh, of course it's very wicked of me to say that; but sometimes I feel
as if the money-market were too much for my brain. It is so dreadful
to have a husband whose temper is dependent on the state of trade, and
who is sometimes sulky for a whole day because grey shirtings have been
dull. However, I suppose, on the other hand, it is a blessing to have
a husband who sometimes makes four or five thousand pounds by a single
stroke of business. I scarcely wonder that such men as Mr. Lobyer look
down upon art, for art is really a paltry business compared to trade,
in these days, when every thing is estimated by its money value. Papa
is supposed to be at the top of the tree; but he gives a year's labour
and thought to a picture for which he gets less than Mr. Lobyer can
earn in a day, by some lucky transaction with America. Oh, Cecil, how I
detest trade, and all that appertains to it!"
This was not a very promising remark from the wife of a wealthy
trader, and it was a remark which Cecil thought it safer to leave
unnoticed. Flo's spirits seemed to have left her for the moment under
the influence of the money-market. She gave a prolonged yawn, which was
half a sigh, and then bade her friend good-night.
Cecil sat by the fire for some time that night, thinking rather sadly
of the brilliant Mrs. Lobyer's fate. For the present it seemed bright
and fair enough, but what of the years to come? Very gloomy forebodings
filled Cecil's mind as she thought of the unknown future which lay
before the careless footsteps of that frivolous young matron.
CHAPTER XXII.
MRS. LOBYER'S SKELETON.
Christmas-day at Pevenshall was very much like every other day.
There was perhaps a little more eating and drinking than usual in
the servants' hall, where the male portion of the assembly seemed
to consider the inordinate consumption of strong drinks and warm
spiced beverages indispensable to the due celebration of the season.
A friendly rubber and a tankard of mulled port beguiled the cheerful
evening in the housekeeper's room, while the mirth of the occasion
was promoted by the witticisms of a linen-draper's assistant who was
paying his addresses to Miss Evershed's maid, and had come from the
market-town to spend his Christmas evening in the society of his
betrothed. In these inferior regions the monster plum-pudding of the
traditional Christmas appeared in a blaze of spirituous splendour at
the three o'clock dinner, and reappeared in cold substantiality upon
the loaded supper-table. Here there were glistening holly-berries, and
the frail waxen mistletoe, with all the giggling and scuffling provoked
by the magic bough; here, among Mr. Lobyer's well-fed retainers,
jolly King Christmas deigned to show his honest rubicund visage in
all its legendary geniality. But at Mr. Lobyer's dinner-table jolly
King Christmas was a poor creature, represented in one of the later
courses by a turkey that was ignominiously carved by an under butler
upon the great oak sideboard, and which was handed about in small
modicums, to be contemptuously rejected by surfeited diners who had
just been regaled with a course of spring ducklings and early green
peas at half a guinea a spoonful, and introducing himself furtively
at the fag end of the banquet under cover of a small mould of some
black compound, which the attendant offering it explained in a low
voice as "plum-pudding." In Mr. Lobyer's drawing-room it might have
been midsummer; for the fires at each end of the spacious chamber were
hidden by great Parian screens, through which the red blaze shed only
a rosy glow, like the low sunlight in a summer evening sky; and the
atmosphere was odorous with the scent of roses and myrtles, hyacinth
and myosotis, blooming in _jardinières_ of ormolu and buhl, or fading
in tall slender vases of fragile glass. The possessor of a million of
money is the earthly incarnation of Zeus. At his bidding the summer
fruits ripen at Christmas time; for his pleasure the nipping winter
becomes a "time of roses." It is not to be expected, therefore, that
the millionaire should put himself out of the way, because the common
herd choose to be joyful; or that he should embrace dowagers under
a vulgar mistletoe bough, and burn his fingers in the extraction of
indigestible raisins from a dish of blazing spirits.
Nothing in Mr. Lobyer's manner on this particular twenty-fifth of
December betrayed the faintest sympathy with those genial emotions
common to the vulgar at this season of the year. He appeared in the
drawing-room about five minutes before dinner, faultlessly attired in
evening costume, and carrying his familiar--a fawn-coloured pug--in one
of his big strong hands. Cecil found her host leaning against one of
the mantelpieces, in his accustomed attitude, and caressing this brute,
with a moody countenance, when she entered the drawing-room. He did the
honours of the dinner-table in his usually graceful manner; and those
amiable people who were never weary of sounding their host's praises
in his character of a rough diamond, found him peculiarly delightful
this evening; he was so quaint, so original, they said to each other
confidentially, as the millionaire let fall some cynical remark now and
then in the course of the banquet.
He seemed very glad to get back to the fawn-coloured familiar, which
was snoring peacefully, half-buried in a fleecy rug, when the gentlemen
returned to the drawing-room. He lifted the animal by one ear, and
retired with it into the depths of an easy-chair, whence might be heard
occasional growlings and snappings as the evening proceeded.
"I am afraid that grey shirtings were not lively," Florence whispered
to Cecil, as the two ladies were preparing themselves for a duet.
At ten o'clock those splendid creatures, the matched footmen, were
summoned to wheel the _jardinières_ and _étagères_ away from the centre
of the room, while Lady Cecil and a young masculine pianist seated
themselves at the instrument to play quadrilles and waltzes for a
carpet-dance. It was at the same hour that Mr. Lobyer emerged from the
depths of his easy-chair, flung the fawn-coloured animal into a corner,
and walked towards one of the doors.
"Come and have a smoke in the billiard-room, Chapman," he said to one
of his commercial friends, a bald-headed, warm-looking man, of whom
the county people never took the faintest notice. Departing with this
gentleman in his wake, Mr. Lobyer was seen no more among his guests
that evening; and the carpet-dance went merrily; and a million stars
shone brightly over Pevenshall out of a frosty blue sky, while midnight
melted into morning; and the belle of the great drawing-room was
bright, fair-haired, coquettish little Mrs. Lobyer. But the Christmas
night came and went, and the bride of six months had no loving husband
to take her hands in his and say, "God bless you, my darling, on this
night above all nights of the year, and in all the days and nights to
come!"
* * * * *
Sir Nugent Evershed made his appearance before luncheon on the
twenty-sixth of December, with Scribe's comedy in his hand, much to the
astonishment of his Cousin Grace.
"Jeffs must have been very rapid," she said. "He generally keeps me
longer when I send for any thing."
"I didn't depend upon Jeffs," answered the Baronet; "I rode over to
Chiverley after leaving here the night before last, and telegraphed to
the Rue Vivienne. It was as easy to telegraph to Levy as to write to
Jeffs, and I had set my heart on bringing the comedy to-day." He looked
at Mrs. Lobyer rather than his cousin as he said this; but the two
ladies were standing side by side, and a man's eyes may take the wrong
direction unconsciously.
After luncheon, the party interested in the amateur theatricals
adjourned to the morning-room, where Sir Nugent read the comedy, and
where the arrangement of the characters was decided. Mrs. Lobyer was to
play the heroine, the most bewitching of young widows; and Sir Nugent
was to be the Marquis, poor, and reckless, and proud, but passionately
attached to the bewitching young widow. Miss Grace Evershed consented
to perform a malicious dowager, who made mischief between the
spendthrift Marquis and the bewitching widow; and the rest of the cast
was made up by a county squire, who had finished his education at
Bonn, and spoke the French language as taught by German masters; and
two of Mr. Lobyer's London friends, of the fast and flippant school,
who appeared to be proficient in every modern language, and skilled
in every art except that of keeping out of debt. One of the officers
from Chiverley, who was known to be strong in the Thespian art, was
requested to take a part in the piece, but he declined with a regretful
sigh.
"I shall be in the wilds of Kerry when your performance comes off,"
he said; "our fellows are ordered off to Tralee on the tenth, and the
11th Plungers come into our quarters. I've often growled about the
dreariness of Chiverley, but how I shall envy those fellows,--the queer
old English town, and Pevenshall Place within an hour's ride! Do people
LIVE in such a place as Tralee? I have a sort of idea that we shall be
surrounded by savage natives, and scalped on the night of our arrival.
What luck the 11th have had in India! That young Gordon, whose father
has such mints of money, has won a step within the last few months.
That skirmish at Burradalchoodah made a major of him."
Cecil felt the blood rush to her face for a moment, and then a sick
faintness came over her; and the brightly-furnished room spun round
before her eyes, until it seemed as if she had been sitting amidst
a whirlpool of light and colour. The low-toned voices and the light
laughter clashed upon her ears like the noise of cymbals; but it was
only for a moment. Womanly dignity came to her rescue after the first
brief shock of surprise; and when Grace Evershed appealed to her
presently upon some frivolous question, she was able to answer with
unfaltering tones.
"What is he to me," she thought, "or what can he ever be to me? And why
should I be startled by hearing that he is likely to be within a few
miles of the house in which I am staying?"
And then she began to consider whether her visit at Pevenshall could
not reasonably come to an end very speedily. Florence had asked her
friend to come to her for a long time, and as yet Cecil had been little
more than ten days in Yorkshire; but then, as Mr. O'Boyneville was
unable to leave London, his wife had a very good reason for returning
thither.
While Cecil was thinking of this, the talk was going on round her, and
presently she heard Sir Nugent Evershed talking of Hector Gordon.
"He is a splendid fellow," said the Baronet; "I met him in Germany six
years ago, and we saw a great deal of each other. He is the kind of man
we want in India; the real Napier breed; the man who doesn't know when
he is beaten. I was with him in a revolutionary row at Heidelberg. Gad!
how he fought! The students wanted to chair him after the squabble;
but he wouldn't stand any nonsense of that kind! What a night we made
of it afterwards! There was a mad-brained fellow who fancied himself a
poet, a brace of transcendentalists, and Gordon and I. I remember our
sitting in the balcony of the hotel, drinking Rhine wine and talking
meta-physics long after midnight, when the last twinkling light in the
queer old city had been extinguished and every roof and steeple stood
out clear and sharp in the moonlight. Gordon must be a glorious fellow,
if he hasn't degenerated since then. We used to call him the Scottish
lion in those days. The girls and old women came to their windows to
stare at him as he strode along the miserable pavements, with his long
auburn hair flying loose about his neck. I shall be very glad if he
comes my way this winter; though I'm sorry they're going to send you
fellows to Tralee, Foster."
The Pevenshall party were more interested in the costumes they were to
wear for the comedy than in the merits of Major Gordon; so no more was
said about that gentleman. Sir Nugent was intrusted with the duty of
writing to a London costumier who would provide the masculine attire,
and he further engaged himself to procure a set of coloured lithographs
from which the ladies might choose their dresses. Having accepted these
commissions, he departed: but not before he had received an invitation
to dinner for the following day from Mr. Lobyer, who came into the
morning-room before the party broke up, and who seemed, so far as in
him lay, to be amiably disposed towards his visitors and the world in
general.
Cecil left the drawing-room early that evening, in order to write some
letters in her own apartment. She wrote a long gossiping epistle to her
husband, telling him of the Pevenshall gaieties, the pending amateur
theatricals, any thing and every thing which she thought likely to
interest him, just for the few minutes during which he read her letter.
It was not because the great barrister was busy and could only write
brief scrawls to his wife that she should therefore curtail her letters
to him. She was so earnestly anxious to do her duty--even if duty was
now and then a little tiresome.
"And yet I doubt whether he will be able to take his mind away from
all that horrible law-business, even while he reads my letter," she
thought, as she concluded her missive.
In the course of the letter she had expressed her desire to return to
London.
"I am amongst very pleasant people here, but do not like to stay so
long away from home," she wrote, and she gave a faint sigh as she
wrote the word "home;" "and as you find it impossible to join me here,
I think I had better return to Brunswick Square early next week. You
wished me to have change of air and scene; and any benefit I am likely
to receive from them I have already secured. You know how little I care
for gaiety, and how very comfortable I am with my books and piano. Let
me have a line please, dear Laurence, by return of post, to say I may
come back at the beginning of the week."
Florence peeped into her friend's room before retiring for the night,
and Cecil told her of the letter she had been writing.
"I think if Mr. O'Boyneville cannot come down, I must go back to London
next week, dear," she said.
But Florence declared such an arrangement utterly impossible.
"You have come to me, and I mean to keep you," she said. "You come here
for change of scene, and then you talk of running back to that hideous
Bloomsbury after a fortnight, and you even talk of going before our
comedy. It is positively preposterous. Ah, I ought to have insisted on
your taking a part in it. But I shall write to Mr. O'Boyneville myself
if you are rebellious, and ask him to put his veto against your return."
"But, my dear Florence, you must know that I ought not to be so long
away from home."
"I know nothing of the kind. In the last letter you showed me, Mr.
O'Boyneville said he was delighted to think you were enjoying yourself
here, and that he was up to his eyes in business. What can a man who is
up to his eyes in business want with a wife?"
After this there were many discussions upon the same subject, and
Cecil found that it was not at all easy to get away from Pevenshall,
especially as she received a letter from Mr. O'Boyneville begging
her to stay as long as she liked with her friends, and promising to
run down for a day or two and escort her back to town if she stayed
until the beginning of February. So there was nothing for her to do
but to stay; and, after all, what substantial reason was there for
her hurried departure? What was it to her if Hector Gordon came to
Chiverley with his regiment? Was his coming to be a reason for her
running away from the county? It was just possible that the officers of
the coming regiment might be visitors at Pevenshall, as the officers of
the departing regiment had been; but what did it matter to Lady Cecil
O'Boyneville where or when she met her old acquaintance of the little
Hampshire watering-place?
Such was the tenor of Cecil's thoughts when she thought at all of
Major Gordon; but after once having resolved to remain at Pevenshall
until the natural termination of her visit, she tried to banish all
thought of Hector and his possible coming from her mind. She abandoned
herself to the frivolities of Mrs. Lobyer's circle, and found those
frivolities very pleasant in their way. If it was a useless life--and
in a manner sinful by reason of its utter uselessness--it was at least
very agreeable while the freshness of youth lasted; and Cecil had seen
in the person of her aunt, that such frivolities may be tolerably
agreeable to age. But in spite of all the brightness and gaiety of
Mrs. Lobyer's life, Cecil found herself pitying her friend rather than
envying her.
"Surely the day must come when she will be tired of it all," thought
the barrister's wife, when Flo had been delighting every body by her
vivacity. "She has too many pleasures, and too much splendour and
luxury. She seems to me like a feminine Xerxes, and sooner or later
she must grow tired of every mortal enjoyment, and cry out wearily for
some new pleasure. How tired Cleopatra must have been of every thing
upon earth when she drank that melted pearl!--surely only a little
less tired than when she made an end of her life with the asp. And
Solomon--what unutterable weariness there is in every line of that
wonderful book in which he laments the emptiness and barrenness of his
life! I cannot help thinking of these things when I see Flo hurrying
from one amusement to another; from a hunting breakfast at home to a
morning concert at Chiverley; and then for an hour's shopping in which
she spends a small fortune upon things she doesn't want; and then home
to meet fresh visitors at dinner; and then charades, or _tableaux
vivants_, or a carpet-dance. She must grow tired of all this at last;
but before that time this perpetual excitement will have become a
habit, and society will be necessary to her, as it is to my aunt. I
remember that line of Pope's:
'And round and round the ghosts of beauty glide.'
What a picture it conjures up! Who would not prefer a home and home
duties to that perpetual round of pleasures which so soon cease to
please?"
And then Lady Cecil thought of the big dingy house in Bloomsbury, and
wondered whether the serenity and quiet cheerfulness of the ideal
home would ever pervade that dismal mansion. She had hung birds in
the southern windows, and had bought rustic baskets of flowers,
and perfumed caskets and workboxes, for the adornment of the dingy
drawing-rooms; but she had not been able as yet to impart that homelike
aspect to Mr. O'Boyneville's dwelling for which her soul yearned.
The Pevenshall visitors were busy with the preparations for the comedy.
The billiard-room was given up to rehearsals; the billiard-table was
pushed into a dark corner, much to the annoyance of Mr. Lobyer, who
fled in despair to Manchester. There was a rehearsal every day during
the fortnight preceding the eventful evening; for it is astonishing how
much rehearsing one of Scribe's comedies requires when the performers
are pretty girls and elegant young men. The business might have
been managed in less time, perhaps, had there not been considerable
hindrance of one kind and another to the steady progress of the affair.
There was one day upon which the arrival of a box of powdered wigs from
London interrupted the course of rehearsal, and ultimately put a stop
to it, for Mrs. Lobyer having run away to try on her wig, the other
ladies followed her example, and then the gentlemen were seized with
a like curiosity as to the effect of powder; and there was a general
trying on of wigs, all of which were pronounced by the wearers to be
hideously ugly and cruelly disappointing; for the effect of a powdered
wig, combined with modern costume, in the chill winter sunlight, is
by no means agreeable. Other rehearsals were interrupted by little
squabbles about stage arrangements: for Sir Nugent Evershed and the
West-end club-men were at variance upon many points; while one of the
latter gentlemen was inclined to give himself airs upon the strength
of having assisted at the getting up of the _School for Scandal_ at
the Countess of Warlinghame's place at Twickenham; and then there was
time lost by reason of feminine gigglings; and particular people were
missing at important moments; and there was a great deal of trying
back, and perpetual disputations as to entrances and exits. But it
was altogether very delightful, and every one seemed to enjoy him or
herself amazingly. Mr. Lobyer, looking into the billiard-room sometimes
in the course of the morning, was wont to make some contemptuous remark
upon the occupation of his wife and her guests, before taking his
flight to Manchester. And so the days went by, until the last rehearsal
took place on the evening prior to the performance, and every body was
pronounced perfect in the words of the airiest and most delightful
of modern dramatists. The dresses had arrived, after the prospective
wearers had endured unspeakable tortures from the fear of their
non-arrival. The stage was erected in the billiard-room, and never was
temporary theatre more complete in its arrangements. Mrs. Lobyer's
spirits rose with the prospect of her triumph; and Mr. Lobyer grew more
disdainfully indifferent to his wife's folly as the important moment
drew near.
The sixteenth of January was to be altogether a very grand day at
Pevenshall. There was to be a hunt-breakfast in the morning, a
dinner-party in the evening; after the dinner the private theatricals;
and after that display of amateur talent a ball, at which the
performers in the comedy were to appear in their stage-dresses. So far
as Mr. Lobyer could be interested in any thing but the money-market, he
was interested in the hunt-breakfast and the dinner, at both of which
entertainments the men of his own set were to muster in full force.
The master of Pevenshall had the chance of pleasure at a very early
period of his existence, and not being gifted with a very large stock
of vivacity, had speedily exhausted the effervescence of his nature.
For the last few years of his life all the force of his mind, all the
energy of his character, had been directed towards the one end and aim
of the successful trader. To make twenty per cent. where other men
were making fifteen; to anticipate the future of the money market; to
foreshadow the influence of coming events, and to enrich himself by
such foresight,--for this Mr. Lobyer spent his days in meditation, and
his sleepless nights in care and anguish. But he was still capable,
in his own stolid way, of taking some kind of pleasure out of the
splendour of his surroundings, the skill of his cook, the perfection
of his wines, and the homage which he received from the minions of
the money-market. He felt a grim satisfaction in the knowledge that
his wife was beautiful, and that other men admired her and envied him
because he was her husband. If he had been an Oriental potentate, he
would have taken to himself a hundred wives--not so much for his own
happiness as in the hope that other potentates who could boast only
fifty wives would envy him the delights of his harem. Not being an
Oriental potentate, he had done the best he could in uniting himself to
the prettiest woman and the most insolent coquette he had encountered.
He had gratified himself, to the annoyance and mortification of other
people. From his childhood he had been fully alive to the advantage of
being the son of a millionaire, of having been in a manner born in the
commercial purple; and the desire of his life had been that all his
belongings should be infinitely superior to the belongings of other
people. If another millionaire had arisen in the county, and had built
for himself a larger place than Pevenshall, Mr. Lobyer would have
commissioned Messrs. Foster to dispose of Pevenshall to the highest
bidder, and would have erected a nobler and bigger mansion than the
palace of the new millionaire. It is just possible that Thomas Lobyer
had some vague consciousness that, considered apart from his money, he
was a paltry and detestable creature; and that he was therefore eager
to make the most of the glamour which splendid surroundings can impart
to the meanest object. Aladdin playing in the streets and by-ways of
the city is only the idle waif and stray of a defunct tailor; but
Aladdin with the command of an orchard whose fruits are rubies and
diamonds--Aladdin the tenant of the enchanted palace, and owner of
the roc's egg,--is altogether another person. One fancies him arrayed
in shining tissues of gold and silver, blazing with jewels, handsome,
dashing, elegant, delightful--or, in one word, SUCCESSFUL; and
the vulgar antecedents of the tailor's son are utterly forgotten.
Mr. Lobyer was neither an exacting nor a tyrannical husband. He had
secured for himself the best thing in wives, as he had the best thing
in horses and modern pictures and dogs. If he held her a little lower
than his short-legged hunter, a little less dear than his fawn-coloured
pug, he at least gave her as much as she had any right to expect from
him. She had married him for his money, and he gave her his money.
She spent as much as she pleased; she amused herself after her own
fashion. If now and then, moved by some short-lived conscientious
scruple, she made an attempt to consult him or to defer to his
pleasure, Mr. Lobyer took good care to show his wife that his pleasure
was in no way concerned in hers, and that to be consulted by her was to
be inexpressibly bored. He let her see very plainly that she was only
a part of his pomp and splendour, and that she had nothing to do but
to dress herself to perfection, and excite the envy of his toadies and
familiars. If he gave her costly jewels, it was in order that she might
be an advertisement of his own wealth and importance; and he scowled
at her if she came down to dinner in some simple girlish dress when he
wanted her to swell his magnificence.
"What the doose made you stick those dam' rosebuds in your hair when
Brownjohn the drysalter was over here?" he asked savagely. "What's
the good of a fellow givin' you five or six thousand pounds worth of
diamonds, if you lock 'em up in your jewel-case, and dress yourself up
in white muslin and blue ribbon, like a boardin' school miss tricked
out for a dancin' lesson. Brownjohn's fat old wife had a breastplate of
diamonds that would have looked as yellow as barleysugar beside your
tiara; and Brownjohn is just the sort of man to notice those things."
"But what does it matter how I am dressed?" Flo would inquire; "Mr.
Brownjohn knows how rich you are."
"Perhaps he does, and perhaps he does not. You don't know those
Manchester fellows; they believe in nothing except what they see; and
Brownjohn knows that I have been struck rather heavily within the last
six months."
Mrs. Lobyer in her own secret soul rejoiced that she was not more
intimately acquainted with the idiosyncrasies of Mr. Brownjohn and
other men of his class. She had a faint idea that to be "struck rather
heavily" meant something unpleasant; but as her husband did not invite
her sympathy, she did not consider herself in anyway bound to be uneasy
because of such unpleasantness. If ever she thought about Mr. Lobyer's
financial position, she thought of him as the owner of wealth so
enormous that no mistaken adventure could exhaust or even diminish it
in any palpable manner.
"I don't know why he worries himself about the money-market," she said
to Cecil. "He couldn't spend any more money than he does if his income
were trebled; but I suppose, after reaching a certain point, a man
takes pleasure in the magnitude of his wealth without any reference to
the use he can make of it. I dare say Mr. Lobyer is tired of being a
millionaire--there are so many millionaires nowadays--and a man must be
a millionaire if he wants to be any thing out of the common."
The sixteenth of January began very pleasantly. The breakfast went
off delightfully. The gentlemen mounted their covert hacks at eleven
o'clock, and rode off to the meet, accompanied by a party of blooming
equestrians, with Miss Evershed for their leader, and followed by a
landau filled with older and less adventurous ladies. These ladies
were only to witness the meet, for there were no Diana Vernons at
Pevenshall. Miss Evershed rode superbly, but professed a supreme
contempt for hunting.
"I believe there was a time when a lady could hunt," she said, when the
subject was discussed at the breakfast-table, "and when she knew whom
she was likely to meet at covert. But that is all changed now, and we
leave the sport to people who seem to enjoy it amazingly, and who can
better afford to shake a valuable hunter once or twice in the season
than we could."
Miss Evershed happened to be looking at her host as she gave utterance
to these remarks, and over that gentleman's swarthy complexion there
came a dusky tinge of crimson as he evaded the young lady's fearless
gaze.
"It would be rather hard if the hunting-field wasn't free to good
riders," he muttered. "I'm sure one meets plenty of bad ones there
every day!"
Neither Mrs. Lobyer nor Lady Cecil were among the ladies who rode to
covert; for Florence wanted to read one particular scene in the comedy
for the last time, and she begged her dear Cecil to stay at home until
the afternoon, when they could drive out together.
"They've made me a new set of harness for the grey ponies," Flo said;
"harness with bells. In frosty weather it quite gives one the idea of
a sledge. If it were not for the hunting people, I should wish it were
frosty. We can go out directly after luncheon, Cecil; and I dare say
we shall meet those hunting people somewhere or other in the course of
our drive. In the mean time I shall go and inflict solitary confinement
upon myself while I read over that long scene with the Marquis. I
wonder whether Sir Nugent will be nervous. I'm sure I shall; and if we
are both nervous, the scene will be a failure."
Mrs. Lobyer retired to her own apartments, and Cecil spent her morning
in writing letters. She had heard no mention of Hector Gordon's name
since the afternoon on which the comedy had been read by Sir Nugent
Evershed; and she had done her uttermost to exclude all thought of him
from her mind. But she knew that on the 10th the Fusiliers had left for
Tralee, and that on the same day the Plungers had taken possession of
Chiverley Barracks. There had been some talk about these Indian heroes
amongst callers at Pevenshall, but no special mention of Major Gordon.
She knew that he was near her; that although it was quite possible
that she might leave Yorkshire without having seen him, it was equally
possible that at any moment he might appear before her--a guest in the
house which sheltered her. She had been so accustomed to think of him
as utterly divided from her--the inhabitant of another world--that the
knowledge of his near neighbourhood affected her with a feeling that
was nearly akin to terror.
"What reason have I to be afraid of him?" she asked herself again
and again; but in spite of all reason she was oppressed by some kind
of fear when she thought of the many chances that might bring Hector
Gordon across her path.
Mrs. Lobyer was in her highest spirits at luncheon. The gentlemen were
all away in the hunting-field except Sir Nugent, who had arrived at
Pevenshall an hour or two after breakfast, and had been supervising
the upholsterer's men as they put the finishing touches to the theatre
and dressing rooms. He was to dine and spend the night in Mr. Lobyer's
mansion. After luncheon he escorted the two ladies to their carriage,
patted and admired the pretty grey ponies, and placed the reins in Mrs.
Lobyer's hands.
"You'll not drive far," he said; "remember that as stage-manager I have
some kind of authority; and I must beg that you don't fatigue yourself.
You have your dinner to go through, you know. It will be nine o'clock
before you leave the dining-room; and our performance must commence at
ten. An hour is a very short time for a Pompadour toilette."
"The dinner is a horrible bore," answered Flo; "those Manchester
friends of Mr. Lobyer's care for nothing but dinners; and Manchester
is paramount in this house. Why can't one put one's housekeeper at
the head of the table on such occasions? I'm sure Mrs. Prowen is a
very ladylike person, and I could lend her some of my diamonds. You
don't know how I hate those wearisome banquets, Sir Nugent, with
the eternal Palestine soup, and turbot, and haunches of mutton, and
sparkling moselle, and crystallised fruit, and forced pineapples, and
wax-candles, and that stifling odour peculiar to all dining-rooms,
which seems like a combination of roast meat and rose-water. But give
the ponies their heads, if you please. How long am I to drive?"
She asked the question in her most charming manner, with that
half-coquettish air of submission which is so delightful when evinced
by a very pretty woman towards a man to whom she has no right to defer.
"An hour and a half at the uttermost," answered the Baronet, looking
at his watch. "I shall be on the look-out for your return; and if
you outstay your leave of absence, I shall exercise my authority as
stage-manager, and condemn you to the most awful penance I can imagine.
You shall play Léonie de Presles without your wig."
"That would be a very small penance; I am sure the wig is hideously
ugly, and that I shall look a perfect object in it."
"And I am sure you think no such thing, Mrs. Lobyer. I know you tried
the effect of the wig last night by candlelight, and were charmed with
it; yes, your blushes convict you; and Lady Cecil knows I am right."
Flo shook her head in coquettish protestation, and drove away; the
bells jingling gaily in the frosty air as she went.
"Isn't he nice, Cecil?" she asked presently.
"Who, dear?"
"Sir Nugent, of course."
"Yes, he is very agreeable. But I think----"
"You think what, Cecil? Pray speak out. I can't bear people to begin
sentences they can't finish."
"Perhaps you'll be offended if I speak frankly."
"Oh dear, no, say just what you like. It is my normal state to be
lectured. People never hesitate to say what they please about me and my
goings on."
"I think, dear, you are a little too much inclined to talk to him in
a manner, or to let him talk to you in a manner that is almost like
flirting. I know how difficult it is to draw the line between what is
and what is not flirting; and I dare say you will think me very absurd,
dear----"
"I don't think you at all absurd. I know that I flirt with Sir Nugent
Evershed."
"Flo!"
"Do you think that I am going to pretend about it, or to dispute as to
the exact shade of my iniquity? I talk to Sir Nugent, and I let him
pay me compliments--of course they are the airiest and most elegant
compliments, like the little epigrammatic speeches in a comedy--and I
sing the songs he recommends me to sing, and I read the books he begs
me to read, and I have allowed him to bring me ferns from the fernery
at Howden Park; and I suppose all that constitutes a flirtation of a
very abominable character. But after all, Cecil, why shouldn't I flirt,
if it amuses me to do so?"
"But, Florence----"
"But, Cecil, who cares about my flirtations? Mr. Lobyer does not; and
I suppose if he is satisfied, other people may let me go my own way.
Mr. Lobyer likes to see Sir Nugent dancing attendance upon me, because
Sir Nugent is one of the best men in the county, and his hanging about
Pevenshall improves Mr. Lobyer's position _auprès de_ Manchester.
I know I am a very worthless creature, Cecil; but I am not utterly
iniquitous; and I try to do my duty to my husband after a fashion. If
I saw that my flirting annoyed him, I would turn district-visitor,
and never open my lips except to talk of charity-schools and new iron
churches."
"But how do you know that Mr. Lobyer is not annoyed? Some men are so
reserved upon such points."
"I know that he is almost always at Manchester; and that when he is at
home he is generally in the billiard or smoking-room. Please, Cecil,
don't say any more about it. There are some things that won't bear
talking of. Tell me how you like the bells; they do give you the idea
of a sledge, don't they?"
Nothing could be more charming than the vivacity of Mrs. Lobyer's
manner as she turned to her friend with this frivolous question; and
yet only a moment before she had been very much in earnest, and the
face half averted from Cecil had been a very sad one.
They drove for some miles along a pleasant country road, and then
turned into a lane.
"I think we had better go home by Gorsemoor," said Flo; "I know you
like that wild bleak open country."
They had emerged from the lane on to the wide hard road which skirted
the broad stretch of common land called Gorsemoor, where Flo espied
a little group of country people clustered at a spot where two roads
crossed, and where there was a little wayside inn.
"You may depend they are waiting for some of the hunting-party,"
exclaimed Mrs. Lobyer. "Look out, Cecil; do you see any signs of pink
in the distance?"
"Yes, I see two or three red coats coming across the common, and a
lady."
"A lady? Yes, it is a lady! Who can it be? I know no lady about here
who hunts. It must be a stranger; shall we stop and indulge our
curiosity, Cecil?"
"If you like."
They had reached the cross roads and the little cluster of country
people by this time; and Flo's ponies, which had been driven at a good
pace by that young lady, were by no means disinclined to draw breath.
The country people within a few paces of the carriage looked at the two
ladies. One old gaffer touched his hat, and a woman dropped a curtsey;
but this was only the ordinary deferential greeting given to unknown
"quality." The lady in the pony carriage was not recognised as the
mistress of Pevenshall Place. Gorse Common was just a little outside
the radius within which the influence of Pevenshall reigned supreme.
The red-coats were riding at a leisurely pace, and their horses gave
evidence of having done a good day's work. Flo had not drawn up her
ponies three minutes when the huntsmen and the lady reached the
cross-roads. There were four hunts-men--two stout middle-aged men,
whose tired horses straggled in the rear, and a young man who rode
abreast with the lady by his side. It was upon this lady that the
little cluster of villagers and the two friends in the pony carriage,
as if by common consent, concentrated their attention. She was a very
handsome lady--of the red-and-white school; very red and very white--in
spite of a little blowsiness incidental to a hard day's hunting; she
had a great deal of hair; and if some of the voluminous tresses, which
had escaped from a chenille net and had fallen loose on her shoulders,
did not quite correspond in shade, it was the fault of her hairdresser.
She had bold black eyebrows, and a bush of frizzled ringlets plastered
very low upon her forehead; so low, indeed, that there was scarcely
any thing between the eyebrows and the frizzy hair. Her habit fitted
her exquisitely--if possible, just a little too exquisitely--and there
was more braid about it than is compatible with the strictest pureism
in the ethics of costume. She wore a white chimney-pot hat, with a
black veil, and a stand-up collar of the most masculine type, and the
stand-up collar was fastened with one very large diamond--a diamond
which Florence remembered as the fastening of Mr. Lobyer's collar when
he had first attended the Sunday evenings at the Fountains.
The lady was talking very loudly to the gentleman who rode by her side
as they passed the pony carriage, and neither the gentleman nor the
lady appeared to observe the grey ponies or their owner. This was,
perhaps, fortunate, inasmuch as the gentleman was Mr. Lobyer. He was
laughing quite heartily at something his companion was saying, and had
half turned in his saddle to speak to the two men behind.
"Did you hear her?" he cried triumphantly. "Say what you will, she'll
put a topper on it."
In all Cecil's acquaintance with the master of Pevenshall, she had
never heard him laugh so heartily, or give any such evidence of high
spirits. She had just time enough to see what manner of person the
lady was when the two riders had passed and were gone. The stout men
on the tired horses followed. They were two of the Pevenshall visitors
who talked "money-market" with Mr. Lobyer, and one of them espied
Florence. He lifted his hat, and saluted her as he passed, with abject
confusion visible in every line of his countenance. Young ladies
who put "toppers" upon conversation may be very agreeable, but a man
who devotes himself to their society is apt to expose himself to the
chances of rather awkward encounters.
"Doant yon lassie make Tom Lobyer's money spin?" said the gaffer. "Dick
Stanner tould me as young Lobyer bought yon mare in York after t' last
soommer reaces, and gave close upon fower hundred pound for her. And
they say as the bay hoonter she staked at the early part of the winter
cost nigh upon as mooch. I think t' ould gentleman would turn in his
grave if he could know th' dooks and drakes th' yoong'un is making of
his brass."
"Is that lady in the white hat Mrs. Lobyer?" asked a country woman.
"Loard bless ye heart, no, missis--no more than you be. But I'll tell
you what she is. She's Mr. Lobyer's master. Dick Stanner, one of the
grooms at Howden, he tould me all about her. She lives at Manchester,
she does, most of her time. Miss de Raymond they call her; but she
comes over to Chiverley in the hoonting season. She's got a house they
call a willer, outside Manchester, and keeps her brougham. Dick Stanner
had a friend as lived coachman with her, but he said she was such a
wild cat in her tantrums, he wouldn't have stayed in her service for
ten pound a-week. She'd been a regular out and outer up in London, Dick
says, and had helped to ruin as rich a man as young Lobyer. He picked
her up in town, and Dick says he's more afraid of a black look from her
than----"
Florence whipped her ponies sharply, and they started off at a pace
which startled the little group of country people. She had heard quite
enough in those three minutes during which she had listened almost
involuntarily to the gaffer's discourse. Cecil had laid her hand upon
her friend's arm entreatingly when the old man mentioned Mr. Lobyer's
name, but Flo sat quite still with her eyes fixed on the speaker, and
was not to be aroused from the kind of stupor that had seized her at
sight of the bold red-and-white-faced woman riding by her husband's
side.
They drove some distance on their way homeward before either of the
ladies spoke. To Cecil the situation was cruelly painful. Her heart
bled for the frivolous girl who had sold herself for wealth and
splendour, and of whose future she thought with absolute terror.
What was to become of her? So young, so reckless, so much admired;
surrounded by every species of temptation, and exposed to neglect and
outrage from the husband who should have protected her.
"Perhaps they can be separated on account of this horrible woman,"
Cecil thought as she pondered the matter during the silent drive. "If
Mr. Crawford could only know his son-in-law's conduct, I am sure he
would interfere."
And then she determined, whenever a fitting opportunity arose, to
implore Flo to intrust her father with the story of her wrongs. In the
mean time she looked anxiously at the fair young face half averted
from her, and she saw that although Mrs. Lobyer was very pale, her
countenance wore a look of quiet resolution scarcely to be expected
from so frivolous a person.
"You can understand now, Cecil, how little my flirting with Sir Nugent
can matter to Mr. Lobyer," she said, as they passed the gates of
Pevenshall, speaking for the first time since she had stopped to listen
to the country people's talk.
"Did you know any thing about this before to-day, Flo?"
"I did not know any thing about Miss de Raymond, if that is what you
mean; but I have known that my husband does not care about me ever
since we came back to England. I dare say Miss de Raymond is a very
agreeable person; she seemed to be making them laugh very much. Don't
you think her handsome? I do. And I suppose that white hat with the
black veil is the sort of thing you call _chic_."
"Flory, for Heaven's sake, don't talk like that."
"How should I talk? I mean to be wise in my generation, and take life
lightly. If Mr. Lobyer buys four-hundred-guinea mares for Miss de
Raymond, I suppose Sir Nugent Evershed may bring me maiden's hair from
the Howden fernery. I'm afraid you don't understand modern philosophy,
Cecil. I do; and I mean to be profoundly philosophical. There is Sir
Nugent waiting for us on the terrace. Wasn't it fortunate I insisted on
going out without a groom? Though, for the matter of that, I dare say
they know all about Miss de Raymond in the servants' hall."
The Baronet came down the steps to assist the ladies in dismounting,
while a clanging bell rang in the cupola above the stables, and two
eager grooms ran out to receive the vehicle.
"You have been away two hours, Mrs. Lobyer," said Sir Nugent. "Am I to
blame you or Lady Cecil for this disobedience to managerial orders?"
His airy gaiety jarred upon Cecil; but Flo answered him vivaciously in
her clear ringing voice, and looked at him with a bright smile, though
her face was still colourless.
"How pale you are looking!" he said, with some alarm. "The air has been
too cold for you."
"It is rather cold--a dull, damp, penetrating cold," said Flo, with a
piteous little shiver; "and now I am going for my own reasons to take a
siesta, and I shall forbid any body to come near me."
She glanced at Cecil as she spoke, and ran away, as if she would fain
have avoided the possibility of any further discussion. Cecil and Sir
Nugent went into the house together.
"All the theatrical party are possessed by a kind of fever this
afternoon," said the Baronet. "My Cousin Grace has been walking up and
down the terrace muttering to herself like a sibyl, and George Miniver
has been pacing the picture-gallery in a dramatic frenzy. How little
this evening's visitors will appreciate the agonies we have undergone
for their amusement! As for me, I feel a kind of despairing resignation
to the ordeal that awaits me, such as one can fancy a man may feel
the night before his execution. I have been playing billiards all the
afternoon with some officers from Chiverley, in order to get rid of the
time."
"Some officers from Chiverley." The phrase set Cecil's heart beating
at an abnormal pace. The only officers now at Chiverley were the
Plungers. And yet Lady Cecil O'Boyneville had no right to be affected
by any intelligence relating to the Plungers. She thought of poor Flo's
miserable circumstances, and remembered how much happier her own life
was, even in Bloomsbury. It may be a hard thing to have a husband who
gives his best thoughts to the interests of a soap-boiling company; but
it is infinitely harder to have a husband who devotes his leisure to
the society of a Miss de Raymond.
Cecil went to her own pretty sitting-room, where the candles were
lighted and the fire burning brightly. She took a book, and tried to
read until it was time to dress for dinner; but the thought of Flo's
and her own domestic circumstances came between her and the page. She
was glad when the little clock on the chimney-piece struck half-past
six, and there was some excuse for beginning her toilette for the
eight-o'clock dinner. It was about half-past seven when she went down
stairs, dressed for the evening, and looking very elegant and very
girlish in a fresh toilette of white tulle, with wreath and bouquets of
snowdrops--a costume which had been ordered from a French milliner for
this especial evening, in accordance with a suggestion of Mrs. Lobyer's.
The great drawing-room was blazing with light, and bright with
assembled guests, when Cecil entered it--so bright that its first
effect was eminently bewildering, and the newcomer was glad to gain
the sanctuary of a triangular ottoman on which Clara Evershed and the
sentimental widow were talking scandal under a pyramid of exotics.
"We have been amusing ourselves by the study of Mr. Lobyer's friends,"
said Miss Evershed. "What delightful people they are, and what a
privilege it is to meet them! They have begun to talk about American
finance and the drain of gold already. However, we are not entirely
given over to Manchester. The military element is strong among us.
There are three or four of the Plungers, and amongst them that Major
Gordon, who distinguished himself at Burradalchoodah."
The room, bright and confused before, span round before Cecil's eyes
for a moment, a chaos of light and splendour.
"Is Major Gordon here?" she asked.
"Yes. Do you know him? He is over there by the fireplace, talking to
Nugent and Mr. Lobyer. Don't you think him very handsome? I do; much
handsomer than Nugent; grander and more distinguished; not such a dash
of _petit-maître_ about him; but then no civilian is ever quite equal
to a high-bred military man. I suppose the girls here will allow poor
Nugent a _relâche_, and devote their attention to the Major, who is a
widower, and enormously rich, I am told."
"Yes," Cecil answered quietly; "he is very rich; he is my aunt's
nephew, and a kind of distant connection of my own, I suppose."
Miss Evershed's volubility had given Cecil time to recover her
composure, and to read herself one of those little lectures with which
she had been accustomed of late to school herself. What reason had
she to be agitated? What was it to her that chance had brought Hector
Gordon to Pevenshall? Could there be any one in the room more utterly
a stranger to her than he must be for evermore? She remembered this,
and tried to think of her absent husband-brooding over the details of
Snooks _versus_ Tomkins by his lonely hearth, while she affected to
listen to Miss Evershed's vivacious chatter.
Across the crowd she saw the proud head that had bent over her on the
misty sands. They were strangers--such utter strangers now and for
evermore; but even in that lighted room, amidst the odour of exotics,
the buzz and hum of many voices, the breath of the ocean came back to
her, and like a rushing wind from that unforgotten sea returned the
memory of the past, with all its sorrow and passion, its silent anguish
and despair.
CHAPTER XXIII.
"HOW SHOULD I GREET THEE?"
The German diplomatist took Cecil in to dinner, and she found herself
seated a very long way from Major Gordon, who was quite hidden from her
by a barrier of hothouse flowers, crystallised fruits, and oxydised
silver candelabra. There was a little interval in the drawing-room
after the long elaborate banquet, during which Flo and the rest of the
amateur performers disappeared from the horizon. There were constant
arrivals of people who came from short distances to assist at the
private theatricals, and the room filled rapidly in this interregnum.
And in all the time Major Gordon and Cecil O'Boyneville happened to be
at different ends of the long room, almost as far apart as they had
been with the Overland journey between them, Cecil thought, as she
caught glimpses of the familiar figure now and then at the end of a
long vista.
There was rather a longer interval than had been anticipated, and
Mr. Lobyer, lounging in his favourite attitude against one of the
mantelpieces, looked at his watch more than once with a disagreeable
sneer upon his face.
"Half-past ten," he said, "and these amateurs were to have begun at
ten. I suppose Evershed has lost his boots--or his memory--at the last
moment; or my wife has set fire to her wig, or the machinery of the
curtains is found to be unmanageable, or there is something agreeable
of that kind in the wind. I never knew people make fools of themselves
in this way that they didn't come to grief in some manner."
But Mr. Lobyer's forebodings were not realised. The door was flung open
presently, and a solemn butler announced that the performance was about
to commence; whereupon there was considerable rejoicing and some little
bustle.
The German diplomatist again presented himself to Cecil, and escorted
by that gentleman, she made her way to the billiard-room, where, in the
confusion attendant on the placing of some fifty or sixty people, she
had little time to notice who occupied the seat next her. It was only
when the rustling of silk and fluttering of tulle, the whispering and
exclaiming, the questioning and answering, and entreating and refusing,
and all the polite squabbling was over, and every one fairly settled,
that Cecil glanced towards the person on her right hand. Her heart had
been beating at an abnormal pace all the evening; but perhaps it beat
a little faster when she perceived that her right-hand neighbour was
Major Gordon.
They were to be seated side by side during the performance of a
five-act comedy--for two hours at least--so near that when he moved his
arm in unfolding his perfumed programme he stirred the airy puffings
of her dress. As yet he was--or appeared to be unconscious of her
presence, and was listening deferentially to Miss Evershed's animated
discourse; for though that young lady was apt to express herself very
strongly in reprobation of the husband-hunting propensities of other
girls, she was renowned as one of the most desperate flirts in the
county.
Cecil found herself wondering that Hector Gordon should be there,
listening to the foolish talk of a lighthearted coquette, when it
was only nine or ten months since the current of his life had been
overshadowed by sorrow and death. His manner was graver and more
subdued than of old, it is true; but still he was there, amidst that
scene of foolish gaiety, while his young wife's grave was not yet a
year old.
The band-master waved his baton while Cecil was thinking this, and the
band began the overture to the _Bronze Horse_. It was in the midst of
this lively music that Hector Gordon turned and met the eyes of the
woman he had once asked to be his wife. They saluted each other as
ceremoniously as if they faintly remembered having met once before
at a ball, or a morning concert, or somewhere. Cecil had been paler
than usual from the early part of that evening, and on first seeing
the Scotchman she had observed that the old warm glow of colour had
vanished from his bearded face. If she fancied for a moment that he
grew paler as he looked at her, it was only a foolish fancy, which she
dismissed in the next instant.
"How do you do, Lady Cecil O'Boyneville?" he said, with just the
faintest emphasis on the surname.
"How do you do, Major Gordon?"
Cecil would have been terribly perplexed had she been called upon to
say any thing more; but amidst the brazen prancings of the _Bronze
Horse_ this was about as much as could be said.
The band-master flourished his baton in a kind of frenzy as he urged
his men to the climax; the cornets and trombones blew themselves into
convulsions, and with a brilliant volley of chords, short and sharp as
file-firing, the crimson velvet curtains swept apart, revealing a bijou
chamber which Vestris herself might have envied.
It was a boudoir hung with white satin, and furnished with chairs and
sofas and tiny fragile tables of white wood, that were miracles of the
upholsterer's art. On tables and cabinets there were vases of Sèvres
biscuit filled with white exotics. Every thing in the gem-like chamber
was white. It was the virginal nest of a Parisian _aristocrate_ of the
old _régime;_ such a nest as one might find nowadays in the _Champs
Elysées_ or the _Rue Taibout_, occupied by a different tenant. The
comedy was called _On accorde à qui persévère_, and was one of those
airy fabrics which can only be constructed by the light hand of a
Gallic workman.
The Comtesse de Presles is lovely, rich, aristocratic, a widow,
and two-and-twenty. For her the universe is the sunniest and most
delightful affair. She revels in her beauty, her wealth, her youth, her
freedom: but so many charms are accompanied with certain penalties.
The Countess is persecuted by the crowd of her adorers; and at last,
in order to escape their importunities, in very despair she accepts
the addresses of the Duc d'Auberive, a gentleman of forty years, _bien
sonnées_, stiff, grand, all that there is of the most patrician--a man
whose ancestors have made their own terms with the Kings of France--a
man whose great-grandfather's arrogance would have defied the throne,
had it not been strangled by the iron hand of a Richelieu.
Affianced to this gentleman, whom she respects but does not love,
Léonie de Presles is tranquil. Her lovers can no longer molest her. The
name of the Duc d'Auberive will serve as an ægis, before which the most
presumptuous of these _soupirants_ must retire abashed.
No, not the most presumptuous. There is the Marquis, the most utter
scapegrace amongst them all. The man whose case was of all others most
hopeless--_le dernier des derniers_; the rejected of the rejected;
poor, out-at-elbows--morally, not actually, for he makes his creditors
dress him handsomely in spite of themselves--dissipated, reckless; a
man who has squandered an enormous fortune at _lansquenet_, and has
lampooned the Pompadour; a man who at any moment may be consigned to
the darkest underground cell in the Bastille, to finish his worthless
life in the society of rats and spiders. And this man dares to pursue
the lovely Countess with his insolent importunities. He dares even
more. He tells her that she shall marry him. Yes; though he is poor
and worthless and a scapegrace--though he has lost all his money at
_lansquenet_--though she has affianced herself to that respectable
idiot the Duke. He loves her. Is not that enough? As to the fortune he
has lost--a bagatelle! For her sake he will win another fortune. As for
the fury of the Pompadour--he defies the Pompadour. For Léonie's sake
he will do any thing that is desperate--save the King's life when it
has not been in peril; discover the details of a great political plot
that has never existed; do something to win the favour of the monarch
himself, in spite of the Pompadour.
It is in vain that the Countess would banish this insolent. She denies
him her door--he comes in at the window. She gives her servants the
most severe orders--instant dismissal for the renegade who admits the
Marquis. But in spite of her the rejected wretch is perpetually at
her feet. She triumphs in the thought of having outwitted him, and
the next moment he is there--by her side. She sends for her milliner,
and lo, her milliner is the Marquis. She orders a cup of chocolate,
and the lackey who brings it is the Marquis. She summonses one of her
gardeners to complain of the poverty of her exotics, and the gardener
is transformed into the Marquis.
And in all this there are involved those exquisite complications,
that delicious _èquivoque_ of which Scribe was so great a master.
Every moment there is some fresh situation, some new and delightful
perplexity. Now the Marquis is hiding behind a screen--now dipping
his powered head up and down behind an ottoman. The Duke is always
being fooled more or less, and the Countess is forced into deceptions
she abhors by the artifices of her impertinent suitor. And with the
fabulous good luck of all these fascinating scapegraces of the Parisian
drama, the Marquis triumphs over every difficulty. All that he has
promised to do in jest, he is able to achieve in earnest: without
effort, for the trump-cards of fortune drop into his hands. He _does_
save the King's life, in a hunting party, almost by accident. He _does_
discover a real political conspiracy, and again almost by accident. The
King is delighted with him, the Pompadour forgives him, the forfeited
lands of an ancestor are restored to him. A Jew miser who has begged
of him, and whom he has assisted, dies and leaves him millions. And
at last, tormented beyond all measure, the Countess yields; the Duke
retires, glad to be out of a contest which is altogether unfamiliar to
his stateliness, and the Marquis triumphs.
Such a piece as this seems written to be acted in a drawing-room.
There is no declamation, there are no heroics. Nothing is wanted but
coquettish grace in the women, ease and assurance in the men. And
who can imagine any thing more delightful than Florence Lobyer in
the _rôle_ of the persecuted Countess? Such bewitching insolence of
the grand dame; such fascinating hauteur; such delicious grace in
refusing; such lovely tenderness in the moment of relenting. And the
Pompadour dress--that most perfect of all fashions ever invented to
render loveliness irresistible--that costume in which plebeian beauty
loses its alloy of vulgar clay, and is sublimated into the ideal--that
bewildering and bewitching attire which imparts to the snub-nose of a
Dunbarry a grace unsurpassed by the classic profile of a Phryne--what
of Florence Lobyer in blue brocade and old point, powder and diamonds,
patches and hoop, high-heeled shoes with glittering buckles and
gold-embroidered stockings? If Mr. Lobyer had chosen his wife because
she was the best thing to be had in the way of wives, he had good
reason to be proud of her to-night, when she flashed her beauty and her
diamonds upon the dazzled eyes of his guests.
He was proud of her--after his own sullen fashion--and angry with
her too; for another man shared the applause which she won, and made
himself the central feature in the night's triumph. It was not of Mr.
Lobyer's wealth, or the glories of Pevenshall--the oxydised silver
candelabra and epergnes--the looking-glass plateau, with its border of
silver bulrushes and silver stags drinking in the placid stream; it
was not of the splendour of Mr. Lobyer's dinner-table, or the cost of
Mr. Lobyer's modern pictures, that these people would talk when they
went home. The event of the evening was the amateur acting, which the
master of Pevenshall stigmatised as tomfoolery; and the triumphs of the
evening belonged to Florence and Sir Nugent.
Lolling in his luxurious chair, and staring at the brilliant little
stage with a moody countenance, Mr. Lobyer reflected upon many things,
the thought of which was scarcely adapted to the scene in which he
found himself. Ah, if at some delightful assembly where every one is
looking so pleased and happy, one could take the roofs off people's
brains, as Asmodeus lifted the tiles and timbers of Madrid, what
strange subjects we should find our friends pondering! There would be
Smith thinking of that iniquitous lawsuit, in which the villany of some
pettifogging attorney has involved him; Brown calculating the amounts
of renewed accommodation-bills, which must so soon be renewed again;
Mrs. Jones thinking what a brute Jones has been for the last week,
and how shamefully he is flirting with that brazen-faced Mrs. Smith;
Thomson brooding over the gloom of the Stock Exchange, and the amount
of capital he has squandered on "contango." And yet "the dalliance
and the wit" go on all the while. Mrs. Brown sings one of her pretty
sentimental songs--"Robin Adair," or "John Anderson my Jo"--while
her feelings towards Brown are almost murderous; Smith warbles his
little French _chanson_--all about _laissons rire-er_, and _un beau
sourire-er_--and is thinking of what he should like to do to the lawyer
even as he warbles. Oh sublime hypocrisies of social intercourse! Is
sadde-of-mutton very often cold; salmon, whose attendant cucumber
comes too late; ice-pudding, dissolving languidly on the napkin that
envelopes it; are the cates and confections of a modern dinner worth
so much deception? Instead of the stereotyped invitation prepared by
a fashionable stationer, why do not our friends write to us, saying,
"Come, let us weep and howl together; for sorrows are many, and life is
bitter?"
Leaning back in his chair, and looking at the stage, where the
Marquis in violet velvet and gold was coquetting with the Countess in
blue brocade and diamonds, Thomas Lobyer's thoughts went back to an
unforgotten time, and he saw a grassy angle, shut in by ivy-covered
walls, and heard the clamorous voices of a crowd of boys. He felt a
shower of blows sent home by a practised arm, the hot breath of an
antagonist upon his cheek, a handsome face pressing closer and closer
to his own. He felt all this; and the vengeful fury of that moment came
back to him, intensified by certain feelings that had influenced him of
late.
"He makes himself at home in my house," thought the millionaire. "_He_
gives his orders to the upholsterers, I'll warrant, though they'll send
their bills to me. _He_ chooses the piece that is to be played; _he_
secures the services of the band. And I know that he hates me, and he
knows that I hate him; and yet we smirk and grin at each other, like
a couple of clowns at a fair. If that knife had struck nearer home,
and had done for him altogether, it couldn't have been much worse for
me than it was. I dare say I should only have had a twelvemonth's
imprisonment or so, and I shouldn't have had him turning up on my
wedding tour, and taking possession of my house."
The comedy came to an end at last. It had seemed _very_ long to Cecil.
The German diplomatist had talked to her between the acts, and Major
Gordon had talked to Miss Evershed.
After the comedy there was an adjournment to the dining-room, for a
stand-up supper,--one of those suppers which admit of such ravages
in stealthy middle-aged devourers, who prowl from table to table and
from sideboard to buffet, sipping of one sweet and then flying to the
rest; consuming unknown quantities of white soup and lobster-salad;
taking now a seven-and-sixpenny peach, now a plate of plovers' eggs
embedded in savoury jelly; pausing here to quaff sparkling hock, and
lingering there to imbibe dry champagne. Such a supper-room affords a
superb platform for flirtation; and the young ladies staying in the
house, and the young lady-visitors of the evening, did considerable
execution among the Plungers, recently returned from the pale beauties
of Hindostan, and ready to fall victims to the rosy brightness of fresh
young British belles.
Cecil saw that Hector Gordon was graver and more subdued than his
brother officers; but she saw also that he talked to Miss Evershed
very much as he had talked to herself in the first days of their
acquaintance at Fortinbras, and that he was undisturbed by any memory
of the past. She felt that she had reason to be very glad of this.
Any apparent consciousness of that brief romance by the sea-shore on
his part must have been unspeakably painful to her now; and yet--and
yet--she felt, at the same time, that Hector Gordon's calm indifference
did not give her so much pleasure as it should have done.
The close of the evening was very brilliant. The band of the Plungers
adjourned to the great conservatory opening out of the drawing-room,
after having supped luxuriously--so luxuriously indeed, that one of
the cornet-players bungled considerably in the process of changing his
keys, and was severely reprimanded by his chief. But the Pevenshall
guests were too deep in flirtation and pleasure to be aware of any
transient hitch in the harmony of that delicious Plunger band, which
played waltzes and galops to perfection; and the effect of the red
coats and glittering brazen instruments seen athwart the dusky foliage
of palm and orange, citron and cactus, was picturesque in the extreme.
Foremost among the waltzers were Florence in her Pompadour dress, and
Sir Nugent in his violet-velvet coat and diamond-hilted rapier; and the
German diplomatist watching them observed to Cecil that it was evident
the baronet had learned to waltz upon the other side of the Alps.
Conspicuous on account of her position as mistress of the house, doubly
conspicuous because of her beauty and brilliant costume, Mrs. Lobyer
could not indulge in the mildest flirtation without incurring a certain
degree of observation; and her flirtation with Sir Nugent to-night was
not of the mildest order. It seemed as if he could not quite put off
his character of the scapegrace adorer while he still wore the dress.
As he had pursued the lovely Countess in the comedy, so he pursued
the bewitching Mrs. Lobyer now that the comedy was over. As Flo had
coquetted in her _rôle_ of the Countess, so she coquetted now.
Fast young squires remarked to their intimates that the pretty little
woman was "going the pace." Dowagers regarded Mrs. Lobyer curiously
through double eye-glasses. Even Miss Evershed shrugged her shoulders,
and told her confidante of the moment that the flirtation was really
becoming a little too glaring.
"I shall speak to Nugent about it to-morrow," she said; "for I think he
minds me as much as he does any one; and as I know she is a good little
thing, with no real harm in her, I don't like to see her make a fool of
herself."
It was nearly four o'clock when the last carriage rolled away from
beneath the Italian portico. It was quite four o'clock when Florence
went up stairs with Cecil.
"Now half to the setting moon are gone,
And half to the rising day:
Low on the sand, and loud on the stone,
The last wheel echoes away,"
exclaimed Mrs. Lobyer, whose gaiety throughout the evening had been of
a very feverish order. "Let me come to your room, Cecil. We'll have
some strong tea, and talk over our evening. Do you think it has been
successful?"
The two ladies were on the threshold of Cecil's room as Florence asked
this question. They went into the luxurious little retreat, where the
fire and candles were always burning as brightly as if they had been
watched by some genius of comfort rather than by an ordinary attendant.
Mrs. Lobyer rang for tea; and then, after flinging herself into one of
the low chairs, pulled off her powdered wig with its superstructure of
plumes and diamonds.
"Oh, how my head aches!" she exclaimed as she loosened her hair and
let it fall in a shower upon her shoulders. "I wonder whether real
actresses ever feel as I have felt to-night. Do you know that I had a
splitting headache before dinner, and that my brain has been throbbing
like a steam-engine all the evening. Just put your hand upon my head."
Cecil laid her fingers gently upon the fair young head, which was
burning with fever. She brought eau-de-cologne from the adjoining room,
and bathed her friend's forehead. Mrs. Lobyer's maid appeared while
Cecil was doing this.
"Let us have some strong green-tea, Martin," said Flo; "and bring me a
dressing-gown. I want to get rid of this horrible dress."
The maid retired to give her order, and returned almost immediately
with a loose garment of white cashmere and quilted satin. She took
to pieces the brilliant Pompadour toilette, the diamonds and lace
and bouquets and plumes, and removed the useless litter, leaving her
mistress wrapped in the dressing-gown, with her fair hair falling about
her face and neck.
She lay back in her luxurious chair in a listless attitude, looking
dreamily at the fire, and did not speak until some little time after
the tea-service had been brought.
"You are sure that you are not sleepy, Cecil, and that I am not making
myself a nuisance?" she said at last.
"Quite sure, dear. Shall I pour you out some tea?"
"If you please: only it isn't fair that you should wait upon me."
"You have so much more reason to be tired than I have."
"But I am not in the least tired," exclaimed Flo; "I am only
preternaturally awake. And now tell me, Cecil, do you think my evening
has been a success?"
"I think people enjoyed themselves extremely."
"That is no answer, Cecil."
"And I think you acted charmingly; indeed every one thought so; but----"
"Ah, there it is! I expected the 'but.' What is it, Cecil?"
"Am I to be candid, Flory? You know I love you very sincerely, dear;
and I want our friendship to be something more than the conventional
friendliness of women who praise each other's dresses and bonnets. Am I
to speak without reserve?"
"Oh yes, if you please," answered Flo, with a sigh of resignation. "I
have been doing something dreadful, I suppose?"
"I think you know what I am going to say as well as I do, Florence."
"Perhaps I do; but you shall say it notwithstanding. What is it?"
"You remember what we talked of this afternoon. I told you that I
thought your manner with Sir Nugent Evershed was a little different
from your manner with other people, and apt to invite observation on
that account. I tell you frankly, Florence, that your manner and his
manner to-night _did_ attract observation, and that some of your guests
spoke of you as they had no right to speak. People are very incautious
in a crowded room, and one hears things that are not intended to be
heard."
To Cecil's surprise her friend burst into a laugh--a clear silvery peal
of laughter, which would have been charming if it had not been in such
strange discord with the occasion.
"And so people have begun to talk of me?" she said. "I dare say they
have talked enough of Mr. Lobyer and Miss de Raymond; and now I suppose
they will talk of me and Sir Nugent Evershed."
"Florence, for Heaven's sake don't talk like that!"
"How would you have me talk? Am I to submit tamely to my wrongs? If my
husband outrages me, I will outrage him. Why, those ignorant country
people could give me the clue to Mr. Lobyer's indifference. They know
that my husband devotes his life to another woman--and has only married
me because he wants some one to sit at the head of his table who
does not smoke or swear or paint herself red and white, like Miss de
Raymond. He likes the smoking and the swearing and the red and white
paint, you know; and I have no doubt he thinks me a horribly insipid
creature; but society is not yet so advanced that he can afford to
place a Miss de Raymond at the head of his table. That will come in due
course."
"Florence, you must not speak of things in this way. I know, dear, that
your position is a most painful one, and I can only think of one thing
that you can do to lessen its misery."
"And what is that?"
"Write to your father, telling him every thing, or beg him to come to
you. He is the only person you can safely trust with the secret you
have so unhappily discovered."
"Secret!" cried Flo, bitterly; "a secret that is known to all the
country side. No, Cecil; your advice is very good, I dare say; but it
is advice that I can never act upon. I have made a mistake, but I made
it with my eyes open; and I will never tell my father how miserably
my folly has come home to me. He gave his consent to my marriage with
such reluctance; he knew that I was selling myself for fine clothes
and a splendid establishment. But I tried to deceive him--I tried to
deceive myself. Modern London is a kind of Maelstrom, Cecil, and my
poor foolish head was giddy with all that confusion of carriages and
horses, and bric-à-brac and jewelry. Every body is so rich nowadays,
and one is stifled with the wealth of other people. I had begun to
think that life was intolerable without a million of money, some time
before I met Mr. Lobyer. He was the first millionaire who crossed my
path, and I accepted him blindly. But I thought that he asked me to be
his wife because he loved me, Cecil--honestly, after his own unromantic
fashion--and I meant to do my duty to him; I did indeed, Cecil."
"I believe it, darling; and you may still do your duty," answered
Cecil, bending tenderly over the slight figure. Mrs. Lobyer had slipped
from the low chair to the ground, and was half-sitting, half-kneeling,
at her friend's feet.
"What, with a Miss de Raymond in the background? Never, Cecil! Besides,
I had long given over that idea of doing my duty. Within a week of my
marriage I discovered how mistaken I had been in thinking Mr. Lobyer
cared for me. It was for his own glorification, the gratification of
his own vanity that he married me; and I am not so much to him as
his horses or his dogs, for he takes some pleasure in their society.
He swore at me before our honeymoon was over, because I ventured to
remonstrate with him for his brutality to a waiter who had made
some mistake about the arrangements of the dinner. From that time
all thought of doing my duty honestly and conscientiously, as I had
meant to do it, was over. Our marriage was reduced to the level of a
bargain, and I resolved to perform my part of the bargain as fairly
as I could. So I dress to the best of my ability, and I receive my
husband's friends, and am civil even to those Manchester people; and
I fill up invitation-cards, and give the housekeeper her orders, and
discuss the arrangements of the house--who is to have the blue-room,
and who is to have the chintz-room, and who we may venture to put
upon the second-floor, and so on. With regard to Sir Nugent Evershed,
I will frankly confess that he is an unutterable relief to me after
Manchester; and if I flirt with him a little now and then, I consider
myself quite at liberty to do so. To-night my nerves were irritated
by the rencontre of the afternoon, and I dare say I behaved very
foolishly. I wanted to demonstrate my defiance of my husband. I wished
to show these people--who, no doubt, know all about Miss de Raymond--I
wished them to see that I was no sentimental wife devoted to an
unfaithful husband."
"But, my dearest Florence, was it wise to sacrifice your own
self-respect in order to gratify your pride?"
"I have no self-respect. I have never respected myself since I married
Mr. Lobyer. Oh Cecil, there is nothing that has ever been written
about such marriages too strong or too bitter for their iniquity. We
sell ourselves like slaves, and when the bargain is completed, we hate
the master who has bought us. Don't kiss me, Cecil. I am not worthy
that any good woman's lips should touch mine. I have sold myself to a
man whom I despised before I hated him; and now that it is too late I
repent of my wickedness."
"But if Mr. Lobyer outrages you by association with such a woman as
that person we saw to-day, you may be released from this unhappy union.
You have only to appeal to your father, Florence; surely he can help
you."
"Yes, he can take me back to the Fountains, to be the laughing-stock of
every body who ever knew me before my marriage. Ah, how the manœuvring
mothers and husband-hunting daughters would triumph if they could
discover that my brilliant match had ended in failure and misery! No,
Cecil, I must abide by the bargain I have made for myself; and, after
all, I cannot complain that I am cheated. I sold myself for diamonds,
and carriages, and horses, and servants; and Mr. Lobyer has given them
to me. I told you it would be a bad thing for me when I came to talk
seriously of things. I must take life lightly, Cecil, like other women
who marry for money And now _parlons toilette_; tell me how you like
my dress to-night. Is that blue a good candle-light colour? I had awful
doubts on the subject. If there were any green tinges in it, I must
have looked hideous."
After this Cecil tried in vain to bring her friend back to any thing
like serious conversation. Mrs. Lobyer chattered as gaily as if
no sorrow had ever shadowed her life, and the dim winter daylight
glimmered coldly behind the rose-tinted curtains before Cecil could
induce her to retire. They separated at last, however, after kissing
each other affectionately: and Florence Lobyer's grand field-night came
to a close.
* * * * *
After the amateur theatricals, there was a little lull at Pevenshall.
Mrs. Lobyer kept her room for a day or two, attended constantly by
Lady Cecil O'Boyneville. Medical wisdom pronounced that she had over
fatigued herself, and ordered extreme quiet. But to endure such a
regimen as the doctor prescribed for more than eight and forty hours
was quite beyond Florence's patience. On the evening of the second day
she reappeared in the drawing-room, paler than usual, and all the more
fascinating by reason of that delicate pallor.
Pevenshall was besieged by callers during that particular week--people
who had been so delighted, and so charmed, and so surprised by the
amateur comedy, and who were eager to testify their gratification and
their delight to the mistress of the mansion. Amongst these callers
were the officers of the Plungers, and amongst the officers came Major
Gordon.
He came one bright frosty morning, when a bevy of ladies, headed by
Miss Evershed, had sailed off to the billiard-room, and when the group
in the drawing-room was a very small one. The sentimental widow sat by
the fire reading a new French novel--the philosophy of which she took
the trouble to expound now and then for the benefit of her companions;
an elderly dowager dozed over the morning paper; Mrs. Lobyer sat at a
little table by one of the windows, trifling with her brushes, before
a half-finished water-colour sketch of a group of camellia japonicas
that had been brought from the conservatory for the gratification of
a sudden artistic impulse on the part of the mistress of Pevenshall;
and Cecil bent over an elaborately embroidered slipper which she was
preparing for the great O'Boyneville.
"I think it would be rather nice if I could only get a bird's-nest,"
said Flo, after a lengthened contemplation of her sketch; "'Camellia
Japonicas and a Bird's Nest--Mrs. Lobyer.' That would look very well in
a catalogue, wouldn't it? But I suppose bird's-nests are out of season
in January. People talk about money being able to buy any thing, and
yet I dare say my picture will be a failure for want of a bird's-nest.
Camellia japonicas by themselves are so uninteresting; and I did so
want to astonish papa by sending something to the British Institution,
just to show him that I hadn't neglected my painting. What do you think
of a cut lemon, Cecil? one of those big clumsy lemons one sees in old
pictures, with the rind trailing from it. Or what would you say to
a silver salver, or one of Mr. Lobyer's great chased tankards, or a
Sèvres vase? I positively must have something to relieve the insipidity
of my camellia japonicas."
While Mrs. Lobyer was debating this important subject, Major Gordon
was announced. Cecil and Florence were seated very near each other;
and after shaking hands with both ladies, the soldier took the chair
nearest his hostess.
Then for the first time Cecil felt the extreme embarrassment of her
position. The man who had once loved her approached her as a stranger,
and yet, in spite of her prayers--in spite of her struggles to hold
firmly to the right, the vision of the past came back to her; and
she thought of him, not as she saw him now, courteously indifferent,
conventionally polite--but as she had seen him on that last day at
Fortinbras, with his head bent, and his eyes dim with tears.
But with him it was otherwise, thought Cecil. Surely if any
recollection of that time had been present to his mind, he could not
have seemed so entirely at his ease. He inquired about his aunt. He
had not seen her since his return to England, and he was very anxious
to see her, dear soul, he said. She was visiting, of course, always
visiting at this time of year. He had received delightful letters from
her, and invitations to some of the houses at which she was staying.
"If I can get away from Chiverley for a week, I shall run over to
Thornley Grange, in Leicestershire, where she is to be in March," he
said; "but at the worst I shall see her in town I suppose early in the
spring."
This last remark seemed to require an answer, so Cecil replied that she
had no doubt Mrs. MacClaverhouse would return to Dorset Square in the
spring.
And after this the conversation became general. Florence told Major
Gordon her difficulties with regard to the camellia japonicas.
"They will come out so stiffly," she said despondingly; "no one but a
Miss Mutrie or a Van Huysum could make any thing out of them."
Mr. Lobyer came in from a morning's ride while the Scotchman was
talking to the two ladies, and on this particular occasion Mr. Lobyer
happened to be in very good humour with himself and the world in
general. The Chili Island loan, in which he was vitally interested, was
beginning to look up in the market, after having been for some time
in bad odour; and the influence of a rapid advance of seven-eighths
brightened the millionaire's countenance. He made himself as agreeable
as it was in him to be, and invited the Major to dinner the next day,
when some "other fellows" were coming from Manchester.
The Major hesitated just a little before he accepted the invitation,
and it seemed to Mrs. Lobyer that he glanced towards Cecil in that
moment of hesitation; but he did accept it.
"Why, Cecil, you never told me that Major Gordon was related to you,"
said Flo when that gentleman had departed.
"He is not related to me. My aunt, Mrs. MacClaverhouse, is only his
aunt-in-law; there is no real relationship even between Major Gordon
and her whatever; there is no relationship between him and me."
"Indeed! But you did not even tell me that you knew him. How very nice
he is--and a young widower! I think there is nothing so interesting as
a young widower. One generally associates a widower with baldness, and
stoutness, and half-a-dozen children in rusty mourning: but a young
widower is delightful: and he is, or is to be, very rich, is he not?
Mr. Lobyer says so, and he keeps a kind of mental register of other
people's banking accounts. I wish there were no such person as Mr.
O'Boyneville."
"Florence!"
"Oh, I don't mean any unkindness towards him. But if you were only
single, it would be so nice to make a match between you and the Major.
Match-making is the natural occupation of a married woman, and I want
an eligible couple to operate upon. Depend upon it, Mrs. Vancourt will
set her cap at our Major."
This was said _sotto voce_, for Mrs. Vancourt was the sentimental widow.
The lady in question looked up from her book five minutes afterwards to
expatiate upon a passage thereof.
"Is not this true?" she said. "How well this man knows the human heart!
'Il n'y a jamais d'oubli où il y a eu de l'amour. Durant l'absence on
croit toujours oublier, et on se trompe toujours. Mais lorsqu'on revoit
celle qu'on a aimée, les années passées s'envolent comme le songe d'une
nuit d'été, et on s'aperçoit qu'on n'a jamais cessé d'aimer.'"
A faint blush spread itself over Cecil O'Boyneville's face as the
widow finished her lecture; for there seemed to her some grain of truth
amidst the French romancer's flimsy sentimentality.
CHAPTER XXIV.
BETWEEN CARTHAGE AND KENSINGTON.
While the splendours and gaieties of Mr. Lobyer's household afforded
conversation for the neighbourhood of Pevenshall, William Crawford the
painter worked his hardest at a picture which he fondly hoped would be
one of his best achievements. It was for this that he had declined his
daughter's invitations,--for this, and perhaps just a little because
the society of Mr. Lobyer was distasteful to him, and the gorgeousness
of the Lobyer _menagé_ stifling and oppressive.
He had refreshed himself with a month's holiday during the past autumn,
and had spent his holiday in Venice, the city of his love,--the city to
which he had taken flight after his first success,--to rest for a while
amid the dreamy beauty of the Adriatic, the poetic glories of the past.
After his holiday he had returned to the Fountains with a sketch for
his new picture in his portfolio--a sketch that had been thought out
and dreamed over as he lay back in his gondola, or basked, at full
length, in some woody island, with pine-trees murmuring above his head,
and blue and emerald-tinted wavelets creeping to his feet.
The union between the painter and his only child had never been a very
close one; and although pretty, frivolous Florence was very dear to his
heart, her marriage had not made any great break in his life. He looked
forward to seeing her early in the spring, when a Tyburnian mansion
which Mr. Lobyer had hired at a rental of something between five and
six hundred per annum, was to be furnished and fitted for the reception
of its occupants; and in the mean time he was very happy alone in his
painting-room, with the grand old cedars making a solemn shade in his
garden, and his big canvas on the monster easel under the north-west
light.
He was very happy, with ample leisure for his art; and, alas for the
weakness of earth's grandest spirit! there was one other passion
besides his worship of art which absorbed the painter's mind in these
quiet January days.
Mrs. Champernowne had returned to the Hermitage before Christmas, and
had been pleased to write a little note of inquiry about Mr. Crawford's
labours, and had been pleased to welcome him graciously when he called
in response to her note, and to bestow her sweetest smiles upon him
whenever he chose to visit her.
His visits to the Hermitage had been very frequent of late, and it
seemed as if the fascinating Georgina could not see him too often. She
talked of his art and of his own special triumphs that had been and
were yet to be, with as much appearance of interest as if she had been
his sister or his wife; for sisters are not always given to enthusiasm
upon the subject of a brother's successes. She made him strong tea;
she played Mozart to him; she ordered her niece to sing pretty little
ballads for his pleasure; she spent a small fortune in the purchase of
French and German photographs in order to have something new to show
him whenever he came to the Hermitage; but in the presence of other
people she always carefully avoided any thing like _empressement_ in
her manner to the great painter.
"She is very cautious," he thought bitterly. "It amuses her to indulge
me as she indulges her cats; but if I were to tell her that I adore
her, and that she has rendered my life a burden to me without her, she
would elevate her eyebrows with the most innocent air of surprise, and
demand what justification she had given me for my presumption."
But in spite of this conviction the painter was a constant visitor in
that tranquil abode, where there was always a faint odour of hyacinth
and myosotis, and a delicious atmosphere of repose not to be found
elsewhere. Ah, if the lively matrons, the brilliant rattles, only
knew the profound charm which a wise man finds in the companionship
of a quiet woman! Mr. Crawford dined sometimes with the widow, who
altered her old-fashioned hours, and took her dinner at seven to
serve his convenience. The little dining-room at the Hermitage was
very delightful to the painter, with its sombre colouring of grey and
green, its few perfect bronzes, and three or four rare pictures, and
instead of the glare of gas, the subdued light of half-a-dozen yellow
wax candles in antique silver candlesticks. The widow's dinners were
perfection on a small scale; her wines were of the rarest and best;
and above and beyond all this, she possessed the talent of bringing
together people who suited one another.
William Crawford abandoned himself entirely to the dangerous delights
of this acquaintance. The cup which the siren's hand offered his
thirsty lips contained a beverage which he knew to be poisonous; but
he drank nevertheless, and grasped the fatal chalice with a feverish
eagerness.
He was in love--as entirely engulphed in the terrible ocean as the most
ignorant plunger who ever leapt blindly to his doom in the stormy
waves. He had allowed himself to drift imperceptibly down the stream;
and it was only when the current had grown too strong for him that
he discovered whither the cruel tide was hurrying him. And when the
discovery came it was too late--too late to recede--too late to be wise.
"At the worst she can only break my heart," thought the painter. And
having a good deal of the _laissez-aller_ in his composition, he gave
himself up to the delights of the Hermitage, and shut his eyes upon the
darksome vision of the future.
He worked hard; but not so indefatigably as he would have worked if
there had been no such person as Mrs. Champernowne in existence; not
as he had worked in the Buckingham-Street lodging in the days of his
obscurity. The real artist should care for nothing but his art. This
is the doctrine which William Crawford had preached and practised for
fifteen years of his life; but in these latter days he was false to his
own teaching, and tried to serve two masters. The great canvas on his
easel progressed slowly, and he began to look at it hopelessly as he
thought how soon the fitful sunshines of April would steal upon him.
"A year sooner or later can make little difference to me," he thought,
"and yet I should like to have made my mark in the Academy this season.
There are new men springing up, and--and I want the critics to see
that my colour has not lost all its brilliancy since the days of the
Aspasia."
Throughout the progress of his picture Mrs. Champernowne was his
sympathising and encouraging friend. She entered heart and soul into
every subject connected with his work--all his ambitious hopes--his
depressing fears. He trusted her entirely--laying bare all the
weaknesses of genius, and confiding himself wholly to her mercy. He
talked to her as he had never talked to man or woman in his life
before; and perhaps she in all the world was the only creature who knew
that Mr. William Crawford believed in his own genius.
"I know how small I am, if you weigh me in the balance with the men
of the past," he said. "Good Heavens! where did they get their power,
those demi-gods of art? There is a head of Christ by Quentin Matsys, in
the Museum at Antwerp, and the eyes that look at you out of the canvas
are human eyes, dim with tears. There is a _chasse_ in the hospital
at Bruges, painted by Hemling, which you could look at for a year,
and find new wonders in it every year. And you remember Van Eyck's
Adoration of the Lamb--the crimsons and purples, all the brightness of
summer in the green trees and winding blue rivers. The power to paint
like that seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. And yet
we love our art, and work hard, and do good things, too, in our way. I
wonder whether the men of the future will measure themselves against
us, centuries after we are dead and gone, and talk despairingly of our
power. I suppose every work of genius is sanctified by time, and that
if Rubens lived in the next street, we should have plenty to say about
the violence of his colour and the audacity of his foreshortening. What
should we think of the Pyramids if they had been built yesterday? We
go into raptures about those great piles of stone because it is some
thousands of years more or less since they were erected; but who ever
talks of the monster hotels? And yet I think the monster hotels are
quite as wonderful as the Pyramids, and I should just as soon expect
domestic comfort in the one as in the other. Depend upon it, Mrs.
Champernowne, we are all just a little fooled by the past. If a man
sent the Venus de Milo to Trafalgar Square to-morrow, there would be
plenty of Art-critics ready to declare that her head was too large for
her body, or that her knees were afflicted with white swelling."
Many times during that early spring did the siren plead for a glimpse
of the picture; but on this point William Crawford was resolute--even
to her.
"What would you have thought of my Aspasia, if you had seen her a month
before she was finished?" he said, when the widow entreated for one
peep at the Dido. The inexhaustible _Æneid_ had furnished the subject
for the new picture. "I assure you there was a period in which she
appeared in the last stage of intoxication. My model is a figurante
at Drury Lane. Don't shrug your shoulders so contemptuously, Mrs.
Champernowne. She is a very good little girl, though she does dance
behind a row of footlights for a guinea a week--a girl with the face of
an angel, and the figure of a Dutch doll. I have to find my Dido her
arms and shoulders between this and May; but if you will come to my
painting-room during the first week in April----"
"If I will come!" cried the widow impatiently; "I have a good mind to
make my way into your painting-room some night like a burglar, and look
at Dido and your Æneas by the light of a bull's-eye lantern, as they
say Mr. Morlais painted his 'Queen of Lydia unrobing.' I hope Æneas is
handsome."
"Oh, poor fellow, he is a professional model, who has been handsome
in his day, but whose beauty has succumbed beneath the influence of
gin-and-water. My Æneas shall take after his mother. I have been
studying all the types of the Greek Aphrodite in order to find the head
I want."
"I heartily despise that poor stupid Dido, and I have always detested
Æneas," said the widow; "it is my belief that his piety was of the
Pecksniffian order, and that he only carried his father in order that
he might have an excuse for losing his wife. But I am dying to see
your picture nevertheless, and I shall count the days between this and
April."
The days passed quickly enough in spite of Mrs. Champernowne's
impatience; and early in that capricious month the painter stood before
his finished picture, waiting the widow's visit. He had been putting
the last touches to the canvas during that very morning; and even now
he had his palette in his hand, and hovered restlessly before his easel
every now and then, as if he would fain have made some new attack upon
Dido or her cruel lover.
"If Mrs. Champernowne doesn't come directly, I shall do something
dreadful to the Trojan's nose," he muttered, looking at the big
clock. "His nostrils are a thought too red, as it is: another touch
of vermilion, and he would look as if his nose had been bleeding. You
are a lovely creature, Dido; though perhaps I have no right to say
so. There are the wheels, and the bell,--'She is coming, my love, my
sweet.' I hope they have arranged a nice luncheon. I'll go out and meet
her."
The painter laid down his palette and ran to the portico, beneath which
Mrs. Champernowne appeared with her niece in attendance. Charming as
she was always, she had never been more delightful than to-day, with
her pretty air of impatience, her bewitching assumption of sisterly
interest in the painter's triumph.
"Take me straight to the painting-room, please," she said, as Mr.
Crawford moved towards the open door of the drawing-room. He obeyed
her, and led her at once to the big tapestried chamber, where the
perfume of jonquils and hyacinths blew in under the open window.
The great picture stood opposite to the door, and Mrs. Champernowne
sank silently into a low chair which the painter had placed for her
at some little distance from the easel. It was a perfect feast of
colour, a banquet of beauty. The painter had chosen for his subject the
humiliation of the Carthaginian queen at the feet of her lover. Dido
has heard of the Trojan's intended departure, and the first storm of
passion has spent itself. She has come to implore him to remain; she
came to reproach him for his cruelty, but love has been stronger than
indignation, and in her tears and her passion she has fallen prostrate
at his feet, her hands clasped, her eyes uplifted to his thoughtful
face, her golden hair falling about her in a glittering shower, her
regal mantle of white and gold streaming on the ground as she kneels.
There are real tears in her blue eyes, so deep in their violet shadow,
so brilliant in their light. You see the traces of tears that she has
dashed away with an impassioned hand, still glittering on the golden
fringe of her lashes; and in every articulation of the intertwined
fingers, in the convulsive contraction of the lovely lips, the lines
that wrinkle the ivory brow, you behold the evidences of her despair.
William Crawford's Dido is no beautiful doll, but a living, breathing
woman, sublimely lovely in her womanly anguish.
Æneas, disturbed and compassionate, but still resolute, has only a
secondary interest in the picture. He is listening, and will speak
presently; and you feel that he will be courteous, and tender, and
gentlemanly, in his answer to that fond, appealing creature. But the
passion and the despair are Dido's and the interest of the picture is
hers.
In every detail of his great work William Crawford had shown himself
a poet as well as a painter. The atmosphere was not of Kensington,
but of Carthage. It was evening; and athwart barbaric pillars you saw
the sun going redly down behind a waveless sea, while far above dim
stars glimmered in an opal-tinted sky. A faint languorous mist crept
over the purple distance; but the foreground of the picture was one
glow of gorgeous colour. The tessellated pavement on which the queen
of Carthage knelt was inlaid with mother-of-pearl and gold, curtains
of strangely-mingled hues trailed from the cornices of the chamber,
revealing glimpses of a wall covered with broad bands of black and red.
The gaudy plumage of strange birds made a confusion of colour amidst
the purple cushions of a low couch that filled a niche in the curtained
wall, and the western sunlight was reflected redly on the water in
a shallow basin of jasper and onyx, over the margin of which hung a
woman's embroidered garment.
The widow sat before the picture in perfect silence. There was no
affectation in her love of art; and seated before the painter's work,
she seemed unconscious of the painter's presence. But it was not so
with her niece, who gave utterance to all those rapturous exclamations
peculiar to persons of her sex and age.
"Oh, how lovely, Mr. Crawford!" cried this young lady; "your Dido is
a most exquisite creature, and I am sure your picture will be _the_
picture of the year. I had no idea the Carthaginian costume was so
becoming, or that Carthaginians ever had that lovely golden hair. Isn't
she beautiful, Aunt Georgina?"
"Go and amuse yourself in Mr. Crawford's garden, Helen," Mrs.
Champernowne exclaimed impatiently. "If _I_ am to enjoy this picture,
I must see it in peace. Your 'how lovelys' and 'how beautifuls!' are
most distracting. You are always going into raptures about hyacinths;
you can look at Mr. Crawford's hyacinths and go into raptures about
them."
"I should very much like to see the garden," the young lady replied
discreetly; and having received the painter's permission, she flitted
away through the open window and disappeared in the trellised walk in
which Philip Foley had nursed his despair.
The widow sat for some minutes after her niece's departure still
silent, with her hands clasped in her lap and her eyes fixed on the
canvas in solemn contemplation. At last she drew a long breath, a sigh
of relief, as of one who had been held for a while breathless and
spell-bound: and then the painter ventured to speak to her.
"Are you satisfied?" he asked nervously.
She turned to look at him with eyes that were dim with tears.
"It is great," she said, in a voice so subdued as to be almost a
whisper; "it is worthy of you. I am proud of your triumph. I cannot
tell you how proud I am."
Never until that moment had he seen tears in the eyes of his siren;
never until that moment had he lost command of himself; never until
then had sober common-sense failed to pluck him backward with a
relentless hand when he faltered on the brink of folly; but the tears
in Georgina Champernowne's eyes were too much for common-sense. For the
last six months the painter had known that the moment must come sooner
or later when his own rash hand would destroy the airy fabric of his
folly. The fatal moment came to-day, and he was powerless to struggle
against his destiny. He gave one furtive glance towards the garden,
where Miss Vicary's light-silk dress glanced hither and thither among
the flower-beds, and then he laid his hand on the back of the widow's
chair and bent his head to speak to her.
"Do you know how dangerous it is for you to speak to me like that?" he
asked.
"Dangerous? How or why dangerous?"
She looked up at him with the very expression he had so often imagined,
the pretty air of unconsciousness, in which there was neither
displeasure nor alarm; only an innocent surprise. It seemed to him as
if he had acted this scene a hundred times before, and knew what the
end was to be--so constantly had he acted it in his day-dreams, so
often had he imagined its bitter termination.
"Dangerous for you, trebly dangerous for me, because when you assume
an interest in my work, a pride in my fame, you tempt me beyond my
strength. You tempt me to say that which may make us strangers from
the moment you leave this house to-day. My work and my fame are
yours,--yours to trample under your feet if you please; for you have
only to tell me to-morrow that my art is distasteful to you, and I,
who have been the slave of art for five-and-twenty laborious years,
will never touch a brush again. You have been fatally kind to me during
the past few months, Mrs. Champernowne. You have admitted me to a
friendship which must embitter the remainder of my existence--unless
you are prepared to make that existence unspeakably happy. You must
have expected this--or something like this. You could not imagine that
I could see you day after day, and be with you week after week, without
loving you, as I do love you; as I think only a man of my age and of my
concentrated life can love."
The widow sat with her face turned away from the painter, her eyes
fixed on his picture. The soft folds of her cashmere shawl were
slightly stirred by her hurried breathing, but her attitude was
statuesque as the attitude of Dido herself.
"I am very sorry," she said softly; "very, very sorry."
"Sorry that I love you?"
"I am sorry that you should speak so seriously."
"How would you have me speak? How can you expect that I should be
otherwise than serious? You must know that I love you--you must
know that I have loved you ever since you first admitted me to your
intimacy, ever since you first assumed a friendly interest in my
career. Yours is too sympathetic a nature for the coquette's heartless
ignorance. You could not have been unconscious of such love as mine."
"I never dreamt that you felt so deeply. If--if I fancied sometimes
that you valued my friendship more, far more than it was worth, I
thought you were only like some of my other friends, who are pleased
to think better of me than I deserve to be thought of; friends who
pay me pretty compliments whenever they come to see me, and forget my
existence half an hour after they have left my house. Why should you be
so much more in earnest than they?"
"You are only equivocating with me, Mrs. Champernowne; you must have
known that I was in earnest."
"I never thought about it. I knew that your society was very delightful
to me, but I never for a moment imagined that such a friendship as
ours could result in unhappiness to either of us. And why should our
friendship have any such result? Why should I not continue to be
interested in your career? why should not you come to see me whenever
you please? Is friendship impossible between a man and woman, even
when both have bidden adieu to youth? Promise me that you will never
again say the desperate kind of things you have been saying to-day; and
I will promise to take pleasure in your society to my dying day. Why
should we not be like Cowper and Mrs. Unwin? You are not mad, and I am
not evangelical, but I think that is rather an advantage. Promise, Mr.
Crawford, and let us be friends for ever and ever."
She held out her hand, and the painter took it tenderly in both his
own. Could he have refused to take that hand, even if it had held the
sentence of his death?
"I cannot make such a promise," he said gravely; "I love you too dearly
to be your friend. There is not an hour I have spent in your society
during the last two years in which I have not been on the brink of
telling you what I have told you to-day."
"Oh, but that is positively dreadful," cried the widow archly;
"friendship must be quite impossible if one's friends are always to be
on the brink of saying desperate things."
"Don't laugh at me, Mrs. Champernowne; my future life depends upon
the answer you give me to-day. Against my own reason, against my own
will, I have yielded myself up heart and soul to the fascination you
exercise over me. I had not been in your house half-a-dozen times
before I knew that if it was not my road to paradise, it was my road
to perdition--and yet I came. I knew that you had money, high family,
fashion; and that in your narrow world of the West-end I should be
laughed at for my presumption, if it was known that I hoped to win you
for my wife: and yet I came. I was quite prepared for what has happened
to-day. I never really hoped. I never in sober sadness believed that
you would answer me otherwise than you have answered me. I only let
myself drift. You asked me to come to you, and I came; and I should
have gone on and on, crawling to your feet like a lap-dog for ever
and ever, if the impulse of the moment had not been too strong for me
to-day."
"Our friendship was very dear to me," answered Mrs. Champernowne; "I am
sorry that it must end."
"I am sorry that it should ever have begun," responded he painter
passionately; "do you think a man has no more heart nor mind than one
of your Angora cats? Do you think you can play with his heart for a
year or two, and then give it back to him none the worse for your
year's amusement, and tell him to take it somewhere else? You have no
right to trifle with honest men as you have trifled with me. You have
no right to encourage my folly for your own amusement, and then tell
me that you never thought I was in earnest. You knew that I was in
earnest; and it was because of my earnestness that you found me more
amusing than your other admirers. Where they burned the conventional
flame that passes in society for real fire, I consume my heart and
soul; and now you affect unconsciousness. You offer me your friendship;
the right to go on being miserable, the privilege of sacrificing
my life and my heart for the sake of an occasional hour in your
drawing-room. You have been selfish and cruel, Mrs. Champernowne."
He walked to the window, turning his back upon the siren. But the siren
was not made angry by this discourtesy. She was sincerely sorry for his
grief and his passion. It was the story of Dido and Æneas over again;
only in this modern instance of the classic legend, it was the lady
who was cool and clear-headed, and the gentleman who was passionate
and unreasonable. The painter threw himself into a chair, by the
fire-place; and sat with his elbow resting on the arm of the chair, his
face hidden by his hand. Miss Vicary, who had been flitting restlessly
about the garden, came towards the window at this moment; but the widow
waved her back with a gesture which was unseen by William Crawford.
He had been sitting in the same attitude for some minutes, when his
visitor came softly to the hearth, and seated herself in the chair
opposite to him.
"Come, Mr. Crawford, let us talk seriously," she said.
"I have been only too serious from first to last."
"I believe that; and I am bound to speak frankly to you. You will think
me very cold-hearted, very unwomanly, very selfish, when I have spoken;
but it is better that you should think of me as I really am. Let me
first assure you that I truly value your friendship, and that I shall
be heartily sorry if I cannot retain it. But--but--I am selfish; and my
present mode of life is so agreeable to me, that I cannot bring myself
to change it. You, who have been your own master always, free to follow
your art, free to live your own life without question or hindrance,
can scarcely imagine what a precious thing liberty is to any one who
has suffered a long slavery. I am not going to tell you any piteous
story of my past life; it has been what people call a very fortunate
and favoured existence. But until I was thirty years of age I never
knew what it was to be my own mistress. Up to my eighteenth birthday
I was subject to the discipline of a convent. Very gentle, very wise,
that discipline was; but every book I read, every letter I wrote, every
country ramble or summer holiday, every garment I wore, was regulated
and arranged for me by others. I left my convent-school pining for
freedom, and found myself subject to the guardianship of a very strict
father and an uncompromising elder sister. In a twelvemonth a visitor
came; there was a little private discussion. I was summoned to my
father's study one summer morning, and was told that my fate had been
arranged for me; and that I had nothing to do but to thank Providence
for my good fortune. Six weeks afterwards I married a man old enough
to be my father, and began a new slavery. I had the best and kindest
of masters, and my bondage ought not to have been very irksome to me;
but it was bondage, and I thirsted for liberty. I ventured to hope that
I did my duty. My husband thanked and blessed me on his death-bed, in
words whose memory is very tender and precious to me. Since his death
I have been free; and I have lived my own life. A very simple life,
as you know; but, oh, so delicious to me in its untrammelled ease.
I read what books I like; I keep what hours I like; I choose my own
friends; I abandon myself to every caprice of the moment. If I want
to waste my time, I waste it, and there is no one to complain. If I
want to throw away money, I throw it away with open hands, and there
is no one to show me a long list of items in his banker's pass-book.
If I were seized to-night with a fancy for starting off to Naples, or
Cairo, or Constantinople, or the Caucasus, I should tell my maid to
pack a portmanteau, and be off by the first train to-morrow morning.
But a woman with a husband must employ the diplomacy of a Metternich
to obtain a trip to Brighton. Many men have asked me to abandon this
precious freedom; but I have never been so candid as I am with you
to-day. I know you must despise me for my selfishness; but I hope you
will try to forgive me. Accept me, if you can, for what I am worth, and
continue to be my friend."
"I cannot continue to be that which I have never been," answered the
painter sadly. "I have never been your friend. I am inclined to think
that friendship is only possible where any thing beyond friendship is
out of the question. I have always loved you; and I must go on loving
you till the end of my life. I think it will be better for us both
that all intimacy between us should end to-day. I thank you for your
candour. There are some men, perhaps, who would go on hoping against
hope, even after what you have said to me. But then I have never really
hoped. I spoke to you to-day because I was no longer able to keep
silence; not because I thought that any good could come of what I had
to say. There is one thing more that I am bound to speak of, and then I
have done for ever. I know that you are too generous to suspect me of
being influenced in the smallest measure by the consideration of any
worldly advantage to be derived from a union with you. But I am bound
to tell you, that had your answer been a different one--had it been
the answer which I never hoped it would be--I should have religiously
abstained from profiting in the most insignificant manner by any
superiority of fortune which you may have over me. My art brings me
four or five thousand a-year, and would, I am told, bring me double
that amount, if I cared to throw myself in the way of making larger
gains. I feel myself compelled to tell you this, Mrs. Champernowne; for
while there are fortune-hunters in the world, honest men must defend
themselves from the possibility of suspicion."
"I am sorry you should think it necessary to defend yourself where I am
concerned."
"Forgive me for thinking it barely possible you might do me wrong.--And
you really like the Dido?"
There was a long pause between the two sentences. Mrs. Champernowne
felt the full significance of that pause. She knew that in returning
to the subject of his picture, the painter had made an end for ever of
that other subject, so much nearer to his heart.
"I think you have surpassed yourself; and I shall look forward with
pride to your success.--Surely you have seen enough of those hyacinths,
Helen! You may come in and see the picture now, if you will promise to
moderate your raptures."
Thus appealed to, the young lady crossed the threshold of the window
with as unconscious an air as if she had been quite unaware of any
thing peculiar in the interview between her aunt and the painter. She
became straightway absorbed in the contemplation of Dido, while the
widow arranged her bonnet strings before the cheval-glass provided for
the accommodation of the "young persons" who sat to Mr. Crawford.
Mrs. Champernowne was some little time arranging her bonnet-strings;
and the face which the painter's furtive glance showed him reflected in
the glass was very pale.
"You will stop and take some luncheon," he said presently, when his
visitors were leaving the painting-room. "I have had it prepared for
you."
"You are very kind; but we dine at four; and it is half-past three now.
A thousand thanks for our private view; and good-bye."
"Good-bye. I am coming to the carriage with you."
When she was seated in her brougham, Mrs. Champernowne for the second
time offered her hand to the painter, while the most discreet of nieces
looked out of the opposite window.
"Is it really to be good-bye?" she asked, as Mr. Crawford pressed the
slender hand gently before releasing it.
"Believe me it is better so. I thank you much for your interest in
my work. I shall be hoping to please you when I am painting for other
people. Good-bye."
"And you are not angry with me?"
"I have no right to be angry. What am I to tell your servant?"
This inquiry had relation to the most discreet of footmen, who hovered
in attendance; second only to the most discreet of nieces in his
assumption of unconsciousness.
"Home, if you please," answered Mrs. Champernowne with a little sigh
or vexation. The siren had entertained a special penchant for this
particular victim, and she did not like to see him escape alive and
whole from amongst the corpses floating in the dim shades of her fatal
cavern. The most discreet of nieces found her aunt by no means easy
to please during the rest of that day; and the favourite Angora cat,
repulsed and discomfited, was fain to creep into his elegant lair of
quilted satin and wicker-work.
"It is very hard that at five-and-thirty a woman cannot have a friend,"
thought the widow, as she pretended to doze by the hearth where the
painter had so often found her in the dusky light, with her feet buried
in the fleecy depths of the Polar-bear skin, and a faint glow from the
fire glimmering here and there among the silken folds of her dress. "It
is really very hard, for I liked him so much."
* * * * *
William Crawford watched the widow's brougham drive away, and then
went slowly back to his painting-room. He carried a weary spirit to
the shrine of Art, the great consoler; but to-day even the face of the
serene goddess was darkened for him; as it had been years ago, when his
young wife's death left him desolate. He stopped before his picture for
a few minutes, looking at it wonderingly, lost in admiration of his own
work.
"I have painted _that_," he thought; "and yet I am not happy!"
It was no impulse of vanity that prompted the thought. The artist would
be something less than an artist if he did not recognise the beauty of
his own creations. Even in this picture, to which he had given so much
thought and labour, there were shortcomings which the painter's eye was
quick to perceive; but he was proud of his finished work nevertheless;
and he sat looking at it with a strange mixture of pride and sadness.
"I have nothing but my art now," he said, "nothing--nothing. My
daughter is a lady of fashion, too busy to spend a day in this quiet
house. The woman I love is selfish and heartless. I have nothing
but my art. Perhaps I ought to be very glad of that. I can make my
painting-room my pillar, and live in a solitude as complete as St.
Simeon Stylites found in his uncomfortable elevation. You shall have a
companion, Dido, before the year is done."
CHAPTER XXV.
THE EASY DESCENT.
Mr. O'Boyneville presented himself at Pevenshall early in the month
of February, in response to Cecil's renewed entreaty that she might
be allowed to return to her home and its duties. There was no small
sacrifice involved in his tearing himself from the delights of the
law-courts even for a few days; but having once turned his back upon
Westminster Hall, he abandoned himself freely to the pleasures of
social intercourse. He was delighted with his wife's improved looks,
and thanked Mrs. Lobyer in his heartiest manner for the change which
her influence had wrought.
"However closely I may stick to my work, you must never lead such a
dreary life again, dear," he said.
"She never shall," cried Flo eagerly. "We are coming to town in March.
Mr. Lobyer has taken a house in Mortimer Gardens--one of those new
houses overlooking Hyde Park--and I mean to be tremendously gay; and
Cecil must come to all my parties."
Lady Cecil declared that the gaieties at Pevenshall were sufficient to
last her a twelvemonth; but neither Mr. O'Boyneville nor Mrs. Lobyer
would hear of this; and there was a friendly compact concluded between
them, to the effect that Cecil was not to be permitted to bury herself
alive in Brunswick Square during the ensuing season.
Mr. O'Boyneville spent three days at Pevenshall, where he made himself
as completely at home as it was his custom to make himself wherever he
went. There was a dash of the Yankee in the character of the popular
Hibernian, and it was not in him to be constrained or ill at ease by
reason of any lurking doubts as to his own merits. Big, and hearty,
and genial, he stood with his back against Mr. Lobyer's own particular
mantelpiece, and talked down the best of the club-men and the grandest
of the county squires; careless whom he pleased or whom he offended.
Major Gordon dined at Pevenshall on one of the three days; and Mr.
O'Boyneville attacked him on the subject of the late war. Always well
posted in his _Times_, the barrister seemed to be as familiar with the
Indian campaign as the man who had been through it.
"And how about that affair at Allacapoodur, when Sir Tristram Belpier
made his fellows put their lances under their left arms, and job
downwards as they rode over the enemy? That lying down of the Sikhs
and firing after the charge was a clever move; but they got it hot
that day. And what of Colonel Menkinson's tactics at Bundlebad? was
that charge of the light infantry a wise thing or not?" demanded
Mr. O'Boyneville. This sort of conversation went on all through the
dinner. At first there was some slight reserve in the Major's manner
to Lady Cecil's husband; but the ice melted little by little beneath
the influence of Indian reminiscences; and before the evening ended, a
friendly familiarity had arisen between the two men.
The barrister begged that Major Gordon would make a point of visiting
Brunswick Square whenever he found himself in London; and the Major
responded with a vaguely-polite acknowledgment which committed him to
nothing.
"You are a kind of relative of my wife's, you know," said Mr.
O'Boyneville; "and we ought to know more of each other."
* * * * *
Very early in March, Mrs. Lobyer's thoroughbred chestnuts and powdered
footmen astonished the quiet inhabitants of Bloomsbury, and Cecil
found herself seated by her friend's side in the Lady's Mile. Whatever
preference she might have had for the dull tranquillity of her own
drawing-room she was obliged to forego; for her husband and her friend
conspired together in order to force her into the agreeable whirlpool
of West-end London. And then she was really attached to Flo. She was
really anxious about this frivolous, unstable creature, surrounded by
so many temptations, supported by so little moral strength. She was
really concerned for the tranquillity of Mrs. Lobyer's life; for Sir
Nugent Evershed had taken possession of chambers in St. James's Street,
and was to be met very frequently at the new house in Mortimer Gardens;
and where Florence Lobyer was concerned, Sir Nugent and danger were
associated in the mind of Lady Cecil.
In the new Tyburnian mansion all the glories of Pevenshall were
repeated on a smaller scale. There were more encaustic tiles, more
parqueterie floors, more bronze and or-molu balustrades, more
ceilings picked out in gold and colour, more monster Sèvres vases,
and tiger-skin rugs. The glittering freshness and brightness of the
rooms had an oppressive effect upon the senses of people accustomed to
ordinary dwellings.
"There might be some hope for a _parvenu_, if he could live long
enough to wear the edge off his wealth," said one of the clubmen, after
dining for the first time in Mortimer Gardens; "but the modern span
of life does not give a millionaire time to overcome the appalling
freshness of his possessions. He is like a working man in his Sunday
clothes. The Sunday clothes are always new. In such a house as this
you see the stamp of the _nouveau riche_ on every object, from the
virgin gilding on the ceilings to the untarnished lacquer on the letter
weights. Show me a man's carpets, and I will tell you the length of
his pedigree. The _vieille roche_ rarely indulges in fresh upholstery.
At Lord Scamander's you can poke your cane through the carpet; and if
any one attempted to draw the window-curtains, they would crumble into
ashes, like the draperies of a house in Pompeii. Old Lady Teucer will
have an action for damages brought against her some day, if she doesn't
take up her stair-carpets; for one runs the risk of breaking one's neck
every time one calls on her. If I were a millionaire, I would watch
the sales at Christie's, and buy up all the dilapidated buhl cabinets
and rotten tapestry, in order that I might swear they had belonged to
my great-grandfather. I wouldn't have an ounce of plate on my table
of a later date than the reign of Queen Anne, or a sound carpet on my
floors."
Mr. Lobyer was supremely indifferent as to what his guests might please
to say or to think about him. In London, as in Yorkshire, the cares of
the speculator had possession of him. That undying worm which torments
the rich man, who never knows when he has made enough money, and is
always trying by every tortuous and darksome process to make more,
had made its home in the breast of Mr. Lobyer; and for such a man
the frivolous pleasures which amuse ordinary people have very little
attraction. In London as in Yorkshire, Mr. Lobyer had amusements of his
own and companions of his own, and left his wife to amuse herself after
her own fashion, and amongst whatever acquaintance she might choose for
herself. For this helpless young creature--so lonely amidst so much
splendour, so friendless amidst so many friends--Cecil felt unbounded
compassion.
"But what am I, that I should be any comfort or protection to her?" the
barrister's wife thought sadly. "Who could be weaker than I was at the
first sound of _his_ voice? Who could cling more wickedly to the memory
of the past than I have done since I have seen him?"
At her husband's wish Lady Cecil went back amongst her old set. The
season was a brilliant one, and she went out two or three times a-week.
Sometimes with her aunt, often with Mrs. Lobyer; sometimes, but very
seldom, with Mr. O'Boyneville. He wished her to be gay and happy; and
she obeyed him. At first with reluctance; but by-and-by with a guilty
pleasure. The words which Ruth spoke to Naomi contain the epitome of a
wife's duty; and Cecil had long abandoned all hope of doing her duty
in such a spirit. Her husband's people were not her people; his home
was not her home. If she had been suffered to go her own way, she would
have observed the letter of her duty; and the spirit would perhaps have
come to her in due time. But a kind of fatality seemed to pervade her
life; and the hand which should have sustained her within the quiet
precincts of her home pushed her, with well-intentioned ruthlessness,
out into the world.
Hector Gordon came to London in April; and Lady Cecil met him very
often. There were so many places at which they were likely to meet,
and they were constantly meeting, though the Major paid no visit in
Brunswick Square; whereupon the barrister condemned him as a snob, who
did not care to risk his reputation by being seen in an unfashionable
neighbourhood.
Lady Cecil and Hector met very often. At first the icy reserve with
which they accosted each other seemed an insuperable barrier, not to be
broken down or worn away; but little by little this freezing coldness
of manner gave place to a gradual thaw. Some chance allusion to the
past, to a book read at Fortinbras, the subject of some old argument
worn threadbare in those idle autumn days, carried them back all at
once to something of the old intimacy; as it had been before the storm
cloud of passion disturbed the serenity of their friendship.
Mrs. MacClaverhouse was delighted to have her nephew with her again,
and he came to Dorset Square as he pleased. If by a series of
coincidences he happened generally to be there when Lady Cecil was
with her aunt, the dowager was too frivolous and too much absorbed by
her own pleasures and her own interests to be alarmed by the fact.
She was very fond of Hector; and she knew that his return to England
had brought her many things which were dear to her heart. Besides his
usual tribute of Indian shawls and ivory caskets, the Major made his
aunt many substantial and useful offerings. He begged her to recruit
her exhausted cellar from the stores of his wine-merchant; and with his
own pencil marked the choicer vintages in the merchant's catalogue. He
presented the dowager with a stylish landau in place of the phantom
chariot; and in divers manners enhanced that lady's comfort and
respectability by his generosity.
"He brings sunshine with him wherever he goes," said the incautious
dowager. "And to think that he should be a widower, with all the girls
in London setting their caps at him, I dare say! Oh Cecil, Cecil, what
a pity you were in such a hurry to marry that big blustering barrister!"
This was the most cruel blow which Mrs. MacClaverhouse had ever
inflicted on her niece. Cecil's reproachful look smote her with some
sense of shame.
"Well, I know I encouraged Mr. O'Boyneville," she said; "and of course
he's a very excellent fellow, and tolerably well off--only tolerably,
as things go nowadays. But still it _is_ a pity, you know, Cecil.
However, there is nobody to be blamed; for who could imagine that poor
namby-pamby wife of Hector's was going to die?"
"Auntie, you mustn't talk like that," Cecil answered hastily. "My
husband is good and kind and generous-minded, and I am very happy with
him."
This last statement was false; and what is worse, the speaker knew
it to be false. But she fancied that it was her duty to say it,
nevertheless. Perhaps she had some faint hope that by force of
repetition it would come in time to be true.
At what point did the path in which she was treading swerve from its
straight course and become a fatal and crooked way, leading she knew
not whither? Lady Cecil never knew when her footsteps first strayed
across the invisible border-line between right and wrong; but she did
know that a time came when her eyes met her husband's honest glance
with a gaze that was not altogether fearless, when a vague sense of
remorse oppressed her in her husband's presence.
Alas for that fatal whirlpool of West-end life, those dangerous
meetings on staircases and in conservatories, those idle mornings at
horticultural fêtes, those sunny afternoons on race-courses, where the
clamour of half-a-million voices drowns the insidious whisper of one
voice for all but the too eager listener! and the chance encounters in
the crowd, and the water parties, and the festal gatherings in shadowy
gardens by the rippling river! Alas for all the machinery which the
modern Mephistopheles finds made ready for his hand when he undertakes
the perdition of any given victim!
Before the season was over Cecil and Hector had drifted back into the
old companionship. No word had been uttered by the Major to which
the most fiery of Hibernian husbands could have taken objection. But
the friendship of a man and a woman who have at one period in their
lives been something more than friends is very apt to be a dangerous
friendship. In this whirlpool of West-end life Cecil had no time for
self-examination--even if self-examination were a process to which the
human mind is inclined. If she was doing wrong--if she had passed the
impalpable boundary-line, she shut her eyes to the fact, and would
not remember those hidden dangers towards which she was drifting. If
the days on which she met Hector Gordon were very pleasant to her,
she beguiled herself with the idea that her pleasure arose from other
causes than the soldier's presence. What was he but an element in the
crowd? And as a woman is not gifted with the faculty of logic, Cecil
did not take the trouble to ask herself why the crowd seemed so dull
and vapid without him.
She could see Mrs. Lobyer's danger, for that was a peril of a palpable
and obvious nature. It is impossible for a young matron to indulge
in a chronic flirtation with one of the most eligible single men of
the season unnoticed and unslandered. But Flo did not object to being
slandered a little. The furtive glances of dowagers and the whispers of
faded beauties gave zest to her life.
"It's no use talking to me, Cecil," she said when her friend
remonstrated with her. "You know that I care about as much for Sir
Nugent Evershed as I care for this parasol; but it gives me tone to
have him dancing attendance upon me. He brings me people whom Mr.
Lobyer's money would never beguile across my threshold; and I should be
a lost creature without him."
"But if your father were to hear one malicious word about you, Flo----"
"My dearest Cecil, that is just the kind of thing one's father never
does hear. If I were to commit a murder to-morrow, I should like to
know who would tell my father any thing about it. Unless he read the
affair in the newspapers, he might go down to his grave in happy
ignorance of my iniquity. And after I had been hung, his acquaintance
would shake their heads and say, 'That sad attack of bronchitis,--so
young--so lovely; but I always told Mrs. Lobyer that the throat was the
vulnerable part,--' and so on."
Between Florence Lobyer and Major Gordon there arose a very cordial
alliance. He as well as Sir Nugent had the power of bringing nice
people to Mrs. Lobyer's house; and to surround herself with such people
was now the supreme ambition of that lady's mind. All the substantial
glories and grandeurs of this life--all the splendours that can be
bought with money were hers--and she had now only to find eligible
guests for her brilliant drawing-rooms, the last fashionable lions to
roar at her crowded assemblies. Directly Aladdin has hung up his roc's
egg, he begins to spread his lures for the _élite_ of the city; and
will be miserable if they remember his father's trade, and are slow to
attend his parties. All the best military men in London were known to
Hector Gordon; and through his agency the heaviest of martial swells
were secured for Mrs. Lobyer's evenings. Her gratitude was boundless.
Her dear Major Gordon could not come to Mortimer Gardens too often.
"And you must come to Pevenshall in September," she said. "I believe
the woods swarm with hares and pheasants--if you care for that sort
of thing--and you shall bring as many people as you like; and dear
Mrs. MacClaverhouse must come, and Cecil of course. We shall not go
on the Continent this year. I couldn't go through another autumn of
picture-galleries and cathedrals without endangering the state of my
brain."
While Flo extended the circle of her acquaintance, and vied with
women of established position in the splendour and number of her
entertainments, William Crawford went his quiet way, and held himself
aloof from the parvenu grandeurs of Mortimer Gardens. The "Dido" was
an undisputed success, and Florence received the congratulations of
her artistic acquaintance on her father's triumph. There was another
success of the season, which she heard of with strangely-mingled
feelings of pleasure, pride, and shame--the achievement of a young
landscape-painter called Foley, whose "Sunset on the Danube" had raised
him at once to no mean position in the ranks of young painters. Flo
went to see the picture, and thought a little sadly of her old adorer.
There were two little bits by the same hand, hanging low down beneath
larger subjects; and finding both these bits unsold on the day of the
private view, Mrs. Lobyer secured them for Pevenshall. For some unknown
reason she did not choose that her own name should appear in the
transaction, and commissioned Sir Nugent to buy the pictures.
As the season advanced, Cecil spent less and less of her time in
Bloomsbury. If she contrived to dine at home three or four times
a-week, her mornings were generally spent in some fashionable
amusement, her evenings devoted to some fashionable assembly.
Mrs. Lobyer had her box on the grand tier at Covent Garden; and was
never happy unless her dearest Cecil accompanied her to hear every
new opera, and to criticise every début. So, when there were no other
engagements, there was always the opera; and it seemed as if Cecil was
never again to spend her evenings at home.
What did it matter? Mr. O'Boyneville had his after-dinner sleep, and
his papers; then his long evening in the seclusion of his study. He
received his cups of tea from the respected Pupkin, instead of from
the white hands of his wife; and beyond this, Lady Cecil's absence or
presence must have been the same to him.
This is how Cecil reasoned when her conscience smote her on the
subject of her perpetual gaieties. Of course she was quite ignorant of
that vague sense of satisfaction,--that dim consciousness of a dear
companionship,--which the barrister had been wont to derive from his
wife's presence even while he slept. And was not her husband always the
first to urge her acceptance of every tempting invitation?
"Enjoy yourself as much as you can while the season lasts, dear," he
said; "and don't trouble yourself about me. In a few years I shall have
made the future safe; and then you shall have a house at the West-end,
and I'll enjoy life with you."
At the opera Cecil almost always met Hector Gordon. He was one of the
privileged visitors to Mrs. Lobyer's box, and he availed himself of his
privilege very frequently; not dropping in for a few minutes between
the acts to murmur polite inanities, with his opera-hat in his hand,
but abandoning his stall altogether, and taking up his place behind
Cecil's chair.
One night when Sir Nugent Evershed was in attendance upon Mrs. Lobyer,
and when the two were too much engaged by their own conversation
to be observant of their companions, Hector Gordon spoke to Cecil
for the first time of that unforgotten interview at Fortinbras. The
frozen barrier that had separated them at first had long ago melted.
A dangerous friendship had arisen between them; but as yet no fatal
word--no actual transgression of the right, had sullied Cecil's life.
Her sin had been that she had wilfully shut her eyes to the perils
of such a friendship,--that she had obstinately refused to see the
gulf towards the brink of which her footsteps were straying. She had
loved him so dearly;--alas for her broken marriage-vow, she loved
him so dearly still!--and his companionship was so sweet to her. She
could not banish this charm from her life. This year, for the first
time since those autumn days at Fortinbras, she had known entire
happiness--dangerous happiness,--fatal happiness, perhaps; but that
all-absorbing delight of the present,--that brief intoxication of
perfect joy, which shuts out all thought of the future.
If she had sinned unconsciously until to-night, she must henceforward
sin with a full knowledge of her guiltiness: for to-night the flimsy
veil of a pretended friendship was rent aside, and Hector Gordon spoke
to her as he had no right to speak to another man's wife.
The conversation arose out of one of those accidental commonplaces from
which such conversations generally do arise. It began amidst the crash
of a chorus in the _Huguenots_. The Major had been admiring Cecil's
bouquet of white azalias. As he bent over the flowers, he tried to
draw one of the frail blossoms away from the rest, but Cecil took the
bouquet from his hand.
"You will spoil it," she said; "those fragile flowers will not bear
being disturbed."
"And you refuse me even that? Do you know that I have not a shred of
ribbon, a scrap of writing, a book, a flower, not the smallest object
that has belonged to you?"
She tried to look at him bravely, but the guilty throbbing of her heart
told her how weak she was, and her eyelids fell under his gaze; the
same gaze she remembered at Fortinbras, but with less mournfulness and
more passion.
"What of that?" she asked; "why should you have any thing of mine?"
He did not answer her question, but continued, in a tone of reproach:
"And now that I want to take away some relic of to-night--perhaps the
last night that I may ever spend in your society--you refuse me even a
flower--a flower that your hand has touched!"
"The last night?" said Cecil.
"Yes, in all probability, the last night. These are no times for
feather-bed soldiers. We have sailing orders for Japan, and we shall
leave London in a few days."
"And you go to Japan?"
"Naturally, I go where my regiment goes. Are you sorry that I am going?
Oh Cecil, for pity's sake tell me that you are sorry!"
"I am very sorry."
She would have recalled the words the moment they were spoken, but it
was too late. The soldier's head bent in the shadow of the curtain, and
his hand clasped hers. She drew it away from him indignantly; but she
was obliged to repress any overt expression of her indignation, since
Florence and Sir Nugent were so very close at hand.
"I am sorry on my aunt's account," she said; "for myself individually
your departure can make very little difference. If your regiment
were not ordered to Japan, I suppose it would be sent to Manchester,
or Edinburgh, or York, or Dublin. You would be quite as far away at
Manchester as you can be in Japan."
"Do you think the distance between London and Manchester would separate
me from you, Cecil? Do you think any distance--the whole width of the
world--would divide me from you if----But you talk to me as if I were
the most commonplace acquaintance on your visiting-list. You have
always been cruel to me:--cruel to-night; cruel at Fortinbras; cold
and cruel. You thought that what you did was for the best, but it was
not for the best; and if you had loved me you could never have done
it. I tried to do my duty, but I was never really happy with that poor
devoted girl. I was never really happy with her, though I was heartily
sorry for her untimely fate. At the best I was only resigned. And then
I come back to England, and find you married to a man who is utterly
unsuited to you----"
"Major Gordon," exclaimed Cecil, "it is cowardly of you to talk to me
like this, when you know that I am powerless to answer you. Do you wish
me to get up and go away in order to escape from you?"
All this was said in a half-whisper, amidst the crash of the orchestra.
"Cecil, I have a right to speak to you,--the right of the wrong you
have done me. My life was in your hands that day at Fortinbras. If you
had loved me, surely you would have helped me to escape from the tie
that had become so painful to me. A word from you that day would have
saved me. I should have written honestly to my poor girl, telling her
all the truth; and I know she was too generous to have withheld my
release. But you did not love me, and you sent me back to India to do
my duty. It is very easy for a woman who does not know what love is to
preach eloquently about honour and duty----"
"Major Gordon!"
"If you had loved me, you would not have married so soon after I left
England. If you had loved me, you would have been true to my memory a
little longer."
"It is you who are cruel," cried Cecil.
She turned to look at him as she spoke--she had been looking towards
the stage before, with her face hidden from him--and he saw that her
eyes were filled with tears.
"Cecil," he exclaimed passionately, "you have been crying. Tell me
that you loved me that day; confess that you love me, and I will never
torment you again; only tell me that you love me, and I will go away to
Japan. You shall never see my face again."
"You know that I love you."
The curtain fell upon Valentine's passionate despair; and there were
passion and despair elsewhere than on the mimic scene. Cecil rose
suddenly and wrapped her opera-cloak round her.
"Will you send some one to fetch my carriage, Major Gordon?" she said.
"You are not going away, Cecil?" cried Flo; "there is the party at Mrs.
Hetherington's, you know. You promised to go with me."
"I can't go any where else to-night, dear. The heat and the music have
made my head ache."
"That's the worst of Meyerbeer. He's delightful, but he is very apt
to make one's head ache. If there could be a fault in an orchestra of
Costa's, I should think there were too many trombones in the orchestra
to-night. And you really can't go to Mrs. Hetherington's?--You may
order my carriage too, if you please, Sir Nugent; I sha'n't stop for
the last act."
The two ladies left the theatre together, escorted by Sir Nugent and
the Major. It was Hector who handed Cecil into her brougham; and in
bidding her good-night he bent his head over the carriage-window and
kissed the gloved hand resting in his.
"God bless you!" he said; "God bless you, and good-bye!"
She saw him standing under the portico with uncovered head as her
carriage drove away; and she thought that she had heard his voice and
seen his face for the last time.
"How can I ever go home?" she said to herself; "how can I ever go home
and look into my husband's face after what I have listened to to-night?"
And then she began to wonder if it could indeed be that she had fallen
into the dreadful list of false and wicked wives, whose lives are
foul secrets to be hidden from the eyes of unsuspecting husbands. She
remembered the women whom she had met in society; the women whose sins
were suspected but not discovered; the women about and around whom
there hovered an impalpable cloud, but who faced the world boldly
notwithstanding, secure in the strength of their beauty, or rank, or
wit, and defiant of mankind.
Lady Cecil had met such women, and had contemplated them with that
morbid curiosity which all social mysteries inspire. But to-night she
thought of them with a shuddering horror.
"Shall I ever be ranked among them?" she asked herself; "or can I
hold myself any better than them henceforward? I have let a man talk
to me of his love; I have confessed my own mad folly. But he will go
away--thank God for that!--he will go away; and I will try to forget
all the folly and wickedness of this year."
She sat back in a corner of her carriage with her hands clasped upon
her knees. Could there be a stranger picture than this--of a woman
seated in her brougham in all her fashionable finery, praying for
strength to escape sin? Even as she prayed, the thought that Hector
Gordon was indeed going to leave England filled her soul with a dull
despair. She was never to see him any more. The sweet intoxication of
the bright summer-time had come to an end; the brief dream had been
succeeded by all the bitterness of the awakening.
"Why should he have spoken to me as he did to-night?" she thought: "we
were so happy,--and if our happiness was sinful, I was unconscious of
the sin. After to-night I can never look upon his face or hear his
voice again without deliberate treachery to my husband."
During the week succeeding this evening at the opera, Lady Cecil
withdrew herself entirely from that frivolous circle in which Mrs.
Lobyer reigned supreme. It was in vain that the devoted Florence sent
one of the matched footmen to Brunswick Square in a hansom day after
day with little perfumed notes of entreaty or reproach. Cecil withdrew
herself into her dingy back drawing-room as into a fortress, and
declined to yield to the advances of the enemy. She pleaded nervous
headache, and a general disinclination for society; and she implored
Mrs. Lobyer not to come to see her, as rest was all she wanted.
"In a few days I have no doubt I shall be able to come to you, dear.
In the mean time do not trouble yourself about me. I know how many
engagements you have, and I beg you to attend to them without thought
of me," she wrote, while the matched footman waited in the hall, and
wondered at the manners and customs of the faithful Pupkin.
"Such fellers hadn't ought to be allowed to live," said the superb
creature, in the confidential converse of the servants' hall; "which I
sawr him, while she kep' me waitin' for her note, washin' the glasses
in a little hole of a place over the ketching leads. And there was
boots on a mahogany slab waitin' to be took up stairs, which it's my
belief he'd cleaned 'em with his own hands. While there's sech fellers
as that in the world, you can't wonder if a man gets called a dam lazy
beggar for spendin' a quiet hour over his noospaper."
Hector Gordon called twice during the week after that performance of
the _Huguenots_ at which he and Cecil had assisted; but the barrister's
wife was denied to him on both occasions. There was a little scrawl
in pencil on the card which he left for her on the first visit.
"My regiment leaves on Wednesday. _Il faut que je te voie._" The
inestimable Pupkin brought the card on a salver and handed it solemnly
to his mistress. It seemed to her as if he had presented her with a
scorpion. She tore the flimsy pasteboard into half-a-dozen fragments,
and threw them under the empty grate directly the door had closed upon
the servant.
"He has no right to call here--he has no right to send me messages,"
she thought indignantly. And yet those two brief sentences, "My
regiment leaves on Wednesday.--_Il faut que je te voie_," repeated
themselves perpetually in her brain, like the scrap of a verse which
sometimes haunts one with absurd persistence.
On Tuesday Major Gordon called again, and again left a card with a
pencil-scrawl for the mistress of the house; and another card for the
barrister, with P. P. C. in the corner.
"_Tu es bien cruelle_," he had written on the card intended for
Cecil; and again Pupkin handed her the scorpion with all due
solemnity--although with by no means the cleanest of hands, having left
his blacking-brushes to attend the street-door.
The pencil-scrawl and the "_tu_" seemed to Cecil a supreme
impertinence; but when a woman has confessed to a man that she loves
him, he is apt to fancy himself privileged to employ that tender
pronoun. Lady Cecil destroyed this card as she had destroyed the first;
but she kissed the fragments before she cast them into the grate. She
had reached that stage in folly--or perhaps in wickedness--when a
woman's soul oscillates like a pendulum between right and wrong.
Mr. O'Boyneville espied the Major's card in the basket, as he took his
tea.
"Ah, by-the-bye, I saw by the _Gazette_ that your cousin's regiment
had the rout for Japan," he exclaimed as he examined the slim morsel
of pasteboard; "the Plungers haven't had much of a holiday after their
Indian exploits. And Gordon hasn't dined with us once, after all.
I suppose he has all the confounded impudence of your thoroughbred
military swell, and would consider he sacrificed himself if he came to
such a house as this."
The next day was wet and dismal. A wet summer day is the most
depressing of all days. Doleful organs alternated selections from the
_Trovatore_ with the "Old Hundredth," "Home, sweet home," and "I'm
leaving thee in sorrow, Annie"--with a dreadful emphasis upon the
Annie--below the windows of Brunswick Square, as Cecil sat in the
drawing-room trying to occupy herself; trying not to think of the
transport vessel which was to leave Southampton that day; trying not to
remember that it was just possible Hector Gordon might make one last
effort to see her before he left England.
If he had called in Brunswick Square that day, Cecil would have
resolutely refused to see him; and yet as the day wore on, a dreary
feeling took possession of her, which was something like the sense of
disappointment. The inevitable dinner-hour, the inevitable evening,
the disjointed scraps of information out of the _Times_ newspaper,
the joke that had convulsed a Westminster audience in the morning,
but which sounded so flat and vapid when recorded in the evening--all
the petty commonplaces which composed the dull routine of her married
life--seemed utterly intolerable to Cecil to-day. She had lived too
much with the butterflies of late; she had feasted on the intoxicating
perfumes of the rose-garden; and coming back to the hive of the working
bee, it was scarcely strange if she found his dwelling dreary and
darksome.
The day came to an end; the hopeless rain always pattering on the
pavements of the square; the organ-man always droning his "_Ah che la
morte_" somewhere or other within hearing. Mr. O'Boyneville came home
to his substantial commonplace dinner, and his after-dinner sleep; and
sitting under the dining-room lamp, with an unread novel lying open in
her lap, Cecil thought of the transport vessel which by this time must
have left Southampton Water and the green shores of the Wight behind
her.
"Thank God he is gone!" she thought; "can I ever be thankful enough for
that?"
CHAPTER XXVI.
A MODERN LOVE-CHASE.
Mr. O'Boyneville was to leave London for his circuit-work a week after
the departure of the 11th Plungers; and again there was a discussion
as to the disposal of Cecil's life during his absence. This time she
placed herself entirely in her husband's hands.
"Perhaps you are right," she said; "and it is better for me not to stay
in town while you are away."
"Will you go to the Mountjoys'? you know how often Mrs. Mountjoy has
asked you, I'm sure she'd be pleased if you went."
"I think I would rather go to some little watering-place, where I could
have quiet and rest."
"Rest! Ah, to be sure. I dare say you want rest. You have been going
about a good deal this year, and I suppose that sort of thing tires
even a woman in the long-run. For my own part, I have always found
one evening-party worse than a week's work; but I'm not a party-going
man. You shall go to Scarborough, if you like; and I'll try to spend
an occasional Sunday with you. I can get across from Manchester and
Liverpool."
"I should like that very much."
"Then it shall be so."
But it was not so; for a little note came from Mrs. Lobyer in the
course of the morning to say that that lady was coming to dine in the
evening, unless her heartless Cecil told her she was not to come.
"I know you are at home," wrote the lively Florence; "and I know your
nervous headache is only an excuse for shutting your doors upon me. So
I shall make a desperate attempt to force the citadel."
Cecil had no motive for excluding her friend. There was only one person
whom she had wished to avoid, and that person had now left England.
"Come to us by all means, dearest Flo," she wrote, "if you don't mind a
dull evening."
So at half-past six Florence's unapproachable chestnuts pawed the
macadam of Bloomsbury, and the barrister's dinner was enlivened by that
young lady's vivacious chatter.
"I have come to make a petition," she said; "and it is to you I shall
address myself, Mr. O'Boyneville. I have grown heartily tired of London
within this last week or two. I think the Ascot week is the season's
apogee, and after that every thing begins to fade. There are to be
cheap nights at the opera next week, and how can any decent person stay
in town when there are cheap nights at the opera? So I am going to rush
off to Pevenshall the day after to-morrow, and I want Cecil to go with
me. I know your circuit-work begins next week, Mr. O'Boyneville; and I
don't intend to accept a refusal. You can come to us from some of your
Northern towns whenever you please; and we shall always be glad to have
a flying visit."
It was in vain that Cecil told her friend of the plan that had already
been made for Scarborough. Mrs. Lobyer pooh-poohed Scarborough. Cecil
urged her desire for perfect rest and quiet; but Mrs. Lobyer declared
that Pevenshall would be a perfect hermitage during the month of July.
"None of my people are coming till the twelfth of August," she said.
"It is impossible to beguile a decent man into the country till
there is something for him to shoot. Sir Nugent is yachting in some
uncivilised Northern region, and Grace Evershed is going to Switzerland
with her father. Mr. Wilmot--that young clubbish man, you know, who
played so well in our comedy--is going on a walking expedition in
Brittany; and in fact every body worth having is engaged between this
and September. So, if you want quiet, Cecil, you shall have plenty of
it at Pevenshall. I have secured the dearest and deafest of matrons to
play propriety--a delightful old creature who dozes in a snug corner
half the day, and deludes herself with the belief that she is doing
Berlin-wool work--so we can live our own lives, and enjoy ourselves
thoroughly. I am going to try and do something for the good of my
fellow-creatures this year; and I shall want your advice about some
schools I wish to establish, and some cottages I mean to build near
Pevenshall."
Mrs. Lobyer was in the habit of pleading as earnestly as a spoiled
child for the gratification of her wishes, and on this occasion, as on
almost every other, she contrived to have her own way. It was arranged
that Cecil should go to Pevenshall, and that she and Flo should travel
together.
* * * * *
Cecil was busy with her packing next day, when a card was put into her
hand, and she was told that a gentleman was waiting for her in the
drawing-room.
"A gentleman for me?" she said, without looking at the card.
"Yes, my lady. The same gentleman who called twice before, Pupkin says."
Cecil looked at the card, and saw that it was Hector Gordon's; but over
the inscription in the corner--11th Plungers--the words "late of" were
written in pencil.
"I cannot see Major Gordon," said Cecil. "Tell Pupkin to say that I am
particularly engaged."
The servant stared, but obeyed. When the door had closed upon
her, Cecil sat with the card in her hand, staring blankly at that
half-written, half-printed sentence, "late of the 11th Plungers."
"He has not gone," she said to herself; "and he has left his regiment.
What does it all mean?"
Something like actual fear took possession of her as she thought that
Hector Gordon was in England--near her--ready at any moment to intrude
his presence upon her.
"He has betrayed me," she said; "he made me believe that he was going
away, on purpose to extort my secret from me. And now he will come, and
come, and come, until at last he forces me to see him; and then----!
Nothing but misery can come of our meeting; nothing but wretchedness
and remorse."
And then her mind went back to that subject of which she had thought as
she drove home from the opera. The images of women whom she knew and
had known arose before her; the women who hovered on the border-land
between the Eden of respectability and the region of outer darkness far
away. She began to understand the stories of many of these women; the
stories which had been such dark enigmas for her until to-day.
"They have been like me, perhaps," she thought; "they have believed in
their own strength of mind, their own honour; and all at once they have
sunk into a degradation as deep as mine. And my husband leaves me to my
fate; to take my own course, without help or care from him. I doubt if
he remembers my existence, except when I am with him; and I know he is
often unconscious of my presence even when I am sitting by his side."
For the first time in her life, Cecil felt a sense of resentment as she
thought of her husband's indifference. He was kind, he was generous.
She tried to remember this, and to be grateful; but to-day she could
remember only his indifference. She had long ago reconciled herself to
the idea that he loved his profession better than he loved his wife;
but to-day she was angry with him for the unflattering preference, and
argued that he must love his wife very little if the dry-as-dust work
of the law-courts could be dearer to him than she was. To-day for the
first time she was angry with him for not loving her better; for to-day
she felt herself in supreme need of his love.
She went on with her packing, mechanically enough; but still the work
was done. The housemaid, who assisted in the process, thought her
mistress just a little paler and a little quieter than usual: and was
rather inclined to wonder about that military gentleman who had called
three times, and had been refused admittance every time; and who,
according to Pupkin, was such a splendid and gracious creature.
"He's never been here except those three times," thought the housemaid.
"Perhaps she knew him before she was married to master, pore thing!"
When the packing was finished, Cecil ordered her brougham, and drove to
Dorset Square. She was feverishly anxious to know the meaning of those
two words--"late of"--on Hector Gordon's card. She found her aunt at
home, but that lady could throw no light upon the mystery.
"I fully thought he had sailed for Japan in the Satrap," said the
dowager. "He came to bid me good-bye a week ago; and he didn't say a
word then about the probability of his exchanging or selling out. _I_
don't read the _Military Gazette_. He might have called upon _me_,
I think, to tell me the change in his plans; but he has been very
mysterious in his manners of late. Perhaps he has seen some one who is
to be the second Mrs. Gordon. Those young men with too much money and
nothing to do are always falling in love."
Cecil could obtain no more than this from the dowager. She bade her
aunt good-bye, and went back to Brunswick Square, where she received
a little note from Mr. O'Boyneville, announcing that he found himself
suddenly compelled to dine at Blackwall with Sleghammer and two or
three others. So she was left alone all the evening, too preoccupied
to read, and with nothing to do but to sit in the summer twilight
listening to the fifes and drums in the quadrangle of the Foundling,
and the ebb and flow of hansom cabs.
* * * * *
The train by which Mrs. Lobyer was to travel left the Euston Station
at ten o'clock. There had been some talk of Mr. Lobyer accompanying
his wife; but on the eve of the journey that gentleman announced
the necessity of his immediate departure for Rouen to complete some
great cotton transaction, involving considerable strategy, and the
mystification of the calico trade in general, for the enrichment of
Lobyer and Co. in particular.
"It's a fluke," said the ardent young speculator; "and it's just one of
those affairs in which half-an-hour on the right or the wrong side may
make a difference of two or three thousand pounds. You can send what
servants you like to Pevenshall; and if I am obliged to stop in town
when I come back, I can use my club."
Cecil found Flo in the waiting-room with her maid in attendance, while
one of the matched footmen stood on guard at the door, holding a box
of books by a strap, and evidently suffering from an acute sense of
ill-usage. This dignified person was employed to secure a carriage for
the two ladies; and after ushering them to their seats, retired to a
second-class compartment with the maid.
Of course it was the fastest of express trains. Such people as Mrs.
Lobyer rarely consent to travel at less than sixty miles an hour.
Whirling northwards across the bright green country with the lively Flo
for her companion, Cecil felt as if she had been escaping from danger
and unhappiness. Major Gordon might call again in Brunswick Square; but
he would find her gone; and would abandon his persecution of her.
"It is persecution," she thought, "after the circumstances of that
night at the opera. He entrapped me into a confession, and he will be
worse than a traitor if he uses my guilty weakness against me."
She tried to despise him for the dishonour; but even the dishonour was
a sacrifice which he made to his love.
"My husband will not waste an hour from his profession for my sake,"
she thought; "and this man, who was once so true and honourable, is
ready to sacrifice truth and honour for love of me."
She thought this--not in set phrases, as it is written here. But some
such thought floated vaguely in her brain, as the express carried her
towards Pevenshall.
The rooms Cecil had occupied in the winter had been made ready for her
now, bright and gay with birds and flowers to-day, as they had been
bright with lights and fire of old. Flo sent a useful young person, who
did plain needlework and waited upon maidless visitors, to assist in
her friend's unpacking; and aided by this young person, Cecil dressed
for dinner, and found leisure to sit by the open window of her little
sitting-room, looking out at the broad expanse of hill and valley that
stretched beyond the gardens.
She was roused from her reverie by Mrs. Lobyer, who came tripping into
the room with more than customary animation.
"I have come to tell you some good news," she said, perching herself
upon the arm of Cecil's chair, like something frivolous and fashionable
in the way of birds;--"that mauve-and-white grenadine becomes you
admirably; and I like the sash worn across the shoulder that way--like
the Queen's blue ribbon. What darling cameo earrings! If there is any
thing in the world I adore, it is cameos."
"Is that your news, Flo?"
"Oh no; my news is something better than that. I was dying to tell you
all the time we were travelling; but I was determined to reserve it for
a _bonne bouche_. And now, shall I give it you in ten, shall I give it
you in twenty, shall I give it you in one of Mr. Lobyer's billions? I
have secured an eligible male visitor!"
Cecil shrugged her shoulders.
"I thought we were going to seclude ourselves from the world, in order
to carry out some philanthropic schemes, Flo."
"Oh, the philanthropic schemes shall go on all the same; _ça ira!_ But
Pevenshall entirely given over to the curates of the neighbourhood, and
two or three narrow-minded county squires, would have been insufferably
dull. And then _this_ gentleman is a friend of yours!"
"What gentleman?"
"Major Gordon. He has been wise enough to sell out just as his regiment
was going to sail for Japan. He called on me yesterday, and I told him
you were coming with me; and I made Mr. Lobyer ask him to come to us.
He accepted the invitation immediately; and it was all arranged on the
spot. This was before Mr. Lobyer knew that he would be obliged to go
to Rouen; but if he had known that, I don't suppose it would have made
much difference. I am blessed with the least jealous of husbands."
"Flo!"
"Is it wicked to say that? Mustn't I thank Providence for my blessings?"
"And Major Gordon is really coming!"
"Really and truly. He is here by this time, I dare say. There is a fast
train that leaves London at half-past twelve.--And now come and let me
introduce you to my deaf darling, Mrs. Henniker. Why, child, you stand
there with your eyes fixed as if you were in a trance!--and the second
dinner-bell has rung. _Filons!_"
CHAPTER XXVII.
"HE COMES TOO NEAR, WHO COMES TO BE DENIED."
Lady Cecil stayed at Pevenshall. Her first thought on hearing that
Hector Gordon was to be an inmate of the house had been to go straight
back to London, without having so much as seen the man she dreaded.
But a woman is very seldom free to follow her first thoughts. If a
man wishes to escape from any given place at a moment's notice, he
has only to declare himself called away on business, and lo! he is
free to spring into the first hansom he encounters and start for the
Antipodes, if he so pleases, without let or hindrance. But a woman
cannot take an unexplained morning's walk without the dread of question
and scandal. A few moments' reflection showed Cecil that escape from
Pevenshall was a moral impossibility. What motive could she allege for
such a proceeding? How account to the impetuous Flo, who would press
her closely for her reasons? How explain her return to London to her
husband, whose wonder would be aroused by her caprice? And if once
people began to wonder and to question, might they not arrive at the
miserable truth? An overwhelming terror seized her on the discovery of
her helplessness. She found herself hemmed in on every side, powerless
to fly from the pursuer she dreaded, run to earth like some hunted
animal; and with no resource but to stand at bay and defy the cruel
hunter.
A strong-minded woman would perhaps have made light of the difficulties
which surrounded the lawyer's wife. A real heroine would have bidden
her hostess a hasty adieu, and left the danger-haunted mansion without
explanation or delay. But Cecil was not strong-minded. She had lived
all her life in the dread of those little social laws which a woman
sometimes finds it more difficult to break than to violate the law of
Heaven itself.
She gave up all idea of flight. There was only one course which seemed
possible to her, and that was to make an _ad-misericordiam_ appeal
to Hector Gordon. A woman always hopes so much from the honour and
generosity of a man--until she has made her appeal and discovered how
frail a straw manly generosity may prove in the hour of peril.
So Cecil met Major Gordon in the drawing-room where the Pevenshall
guests had assembled. The party consisted of the deaf matron, who had
an aristocratic nose and a placid imbecility of countenance; the deaf
matron's husband, who was a retired half-pay colonel, with a very red
face, and that genius for gastronomy which seems the special faculty
of the middle-aged warrior who has retired on his laurels; two stylish
girls who had been schoolfellows of Flo's; and a brace of curates
from the neighbourhood. It was a very small assembly compared to the
brilliant gathering of the last winter; and the great drawing-room
looked almost tenantless.
Cecil was very pale when she followed Florence into the room. The
first glance told her that the man she dreaded was present. He was
standing by one of the open windows talking to Colonel Henniker, while
the curates entertained the two young ladies with mild local gossip;
during the progress of which the deaf matron assumed that amiable air
of interest which a man who has forgotten the French he learned at some
juvenile academy is apt to wear during the recital of some piquant
Parisian anecdote.
Mrs. Lobyer conducted her friend straight to the placid matron. "My
dear Mrs. Henniker, how shameful of me to be the last to come down,
and on the first day too! But I had no idea it was so late. How kind
of you and the dear Colonel to come to me at such a short notice! And
how have you left every one in York? I looked for my Yorkshire friends
in vain all the year. No one came to town except the Spaldings and the
Apperleys. Let me introduce my friend Lady Cecil O'Boyneville. You
were not with us last winter when she was here. And now I must go and
welcome the Colonel and Major Gordon. Take care, Lucy, Mr. Summerton is
dreadfully High-Church.--How do you do, Laura? I'll come and talk to
you presently," said the young matron to her sometime schoolfellows, as
she tripped away.
Cecil plunged at once into a laborious conversation with Mrs. Henniker.
How delightful the country was at this time of year! And how especially
beautiful the scenery about Pevenshall! and so on. It was weary work,
that stereotyped talk, while the sense of Hector Gordon's vicinity
exercised a bewildering influence on her thoughts, and rendered the
most commonplace conversation difficult. She was safe under shelter of
the matron's wing, when Hector came presently to greet her. She would
not see his outstretched hand, and received his greeting with freezing
coldness. A desperate kind of courage possessed her in this extremity,
and she determined all at once that she would humiliate herself by no
_ad-misericordiam_ appeal. She would compel him to leave Pevenshall.
She would awaken him to the sense of his own dishonour. Brave and
defiant for the moment, she looked up at him with a proud steady
glance, and silently challenged him with his baseness. He felt all the
significance of that cold gaze, and his eyelids fell beneath it.
"I have followed you, you see, Lady Cecil," he said in a very low
voice. She did not answer him, but turned to Mrs. Henniker and took up
the thread of her vapid talk.
"No, I never was in York; and I am really most anxious to see the
Minster. Papa used to say he thought it finer than Rouen Cathedral. But
I cannot fancy any thing--" and so on, and so on.
Hector Gordon placed himself opposite the two ladies; and sat looking
steadily at Cecil. She was conscious of that determined contemplation,
but did not flinch beneath it. And she went on perseveringly with her
disquisition upon the show-places and rural beauties of Yorkshire.
Major Gordon was obliged to offer his arm to Mrs. Henniker presently,
when dinner was announced; while the portly Colonel conducted his
hostess, and Cecil was relegated to the care of the High-Church curate.
All that evening and all the next day, and for many days and evenings
to come, Cecil preserved the same frigid demeanour towards Hector
Gordon; and yet he did not leave Pevenshall. Again and again he tried
to obtain a few moments' confidential conversation, but on every
occasion he found himself baffled and repulsed; and yet he did not
leave Pevenshall. A silent duel was always going on between these two.
The poor hunted victim was always on the defensive; the hunter was
merciless. By every possible stratagem Cecil avoided the explanation
she feared; but still the Major held his post obstinately, waiting for
the chance which must come sooner or later.
It came at last, when Cecil had been some weeks at Pevenshall, and when
the house was beginning to fill. The York Summer Meeting was close at
hand. Mr. Lobyer had returned from Rouen triumphant, and was happy in
the society of some of the choicer spirits of Manchester, renowned for
their achievements on the turf, and all full of their York engagements.
The Major's opportunity came at last. The nights were oppressively
warm; and all visitors at Pevenshall under forty years of age were in
the habit of abandoning the drawing-room soon after dinner for the
broad terrace in front of the open windows. Here, in the delicious
moonlight, the party broke up into pleasant groups to saunter up and
down the broad walk, or to gather in a knot at some angle of the stone
balustrade; and hence more adventurous spirits wandered away in twos
and threes and fours to circulate among the winding pathways of the
gardens, where the rarest specimens of the pine tribe imparted a spicy
odour to the night air.
The windows of the billiard-room, as well as those of the drawing-room,
opened on this delightful terrace: and a cluster of iron chairs
in the neighbourhood of these windows marked the spot where Mr.
Lobyer and his particular friends were wont to congregate, making a
little constellation with the luminous ends of their cigars. These
summer evenings in the open air were very agreeable to the guests at
Pevenshall, and the great clock in the quadrangle had generally struck
twelve before the last of the strollers left the terrace. It was the
place of places for flirtation; the place of places for that intimate
converse which the French call _causerie_, and which is the next thing
to flirtation. The eligible young men who had come down for the York
Summer and the marriageable young ladies found a good deal to say to
one another on these balmy moonlight nights; and appropriate couplets
from Tennyson, Owen Meredith, and Alfred de Musset were at a premium.
Byron and Moore are _rococo_ nowadays; and the most sentimental of
damsels would stare in amazement at an admirer who should quote the
_Corsair_ or _Lalla Rookh_ for her entertainment.
Sir Nugent Evershed was still yachting; but Florence seemed very little
affected by the absence of the chief of her worshippers. Other adorers
flocked round her shrine, and she was content to receive their homage.
To be admired was the only art she knew; and a life spent in the
perpetual excitement derivable from new millinery left little time for
serious thought.
"I really believe I am the happiest creature in the world, Cecil," she
said to the one friend whom she trusted with her secret thoughts; "for
I am only unhappy when I think; and as I may almost say that I never
think, it must follow that I am never unhappy."
It was while sauntering on the terrace with Cecil on one of the warmest
of the July nights that Florence thus addressed her friend. They had
wandered away from the rest of the party, who gathered chiefly about
the lighted windows of the drawing-room, whence an extra chair, or a
forgotten shawl, or a cup of tea, or a glass of water, or any one of
the trifles that womankind is always demanding from attendant man,
could be fetched at a moment's notice; and where some one was always
found willing to sing or play for the edification of the loungers
outside the windows.
Cecil and Florence had been walking up and down the deserted end of the
terrace for some time, when the voice of Mr. Lobyer, bawling "Flo, Flo!
come here; I want to speak to you," was heard from the distance; and
Cecil's companion hurried away to attend the bidding of her lord and
master.
Cecil was not sorry to find herself alone. Her life at Pevenshall
since the hour of her arrival had been one perpetual excitement. The
silent battle for ever being fought against the man who loved her, and
whose love had shown itself more pitiless than another man's hate, was
not without its agony. The helpless wild creature brought to bay, and
facing its hunter in the desperation of bitter despair, must suffer
anguish something akin to that which Cecil had endured in the daily
companionship of the lover she feared.
She feared him. In vain she called upon her womanly pride to help her;
in vain she supplicated better and surer help from that Heaven her
sin offended, even while she prayed. Day by day she fought her battle
bravely; but a dim consciousness of coming danger perpetually oppressed
her. The old simile of the precipice is the only comparison which
fits the state of her mind. She felt like a creature walking in outer
darkness near the verge of an abyss. She felt herself near the horrible
danger. It was not inevitable that she should fall over the precipice,
but the precipice was always there--always hidden by the thick
darkness, and at any moment her ignorant footsteps might stray too
near the fatal boundary. Thinking of that day of temptation and trial
at Fortinbras, and all that had occurred since then,--the young wife's
untimely death, the return of Hector's regiment, the chance that had
brought him to Pevenshall,--Cecil was inclined to yield to the weakest
theory ever propounded by an invisible Satan for the corruption of
womankind. The old classic machinery, the work of the Eumenides, seemed
to have had part in all this story of unhappy love. Hector Gordon's
return to England was Agamemnon's return over again,--only this time
the hero returned to destroy rather than to be destroyed; and it was
the heroine for whom the fatal net was spread. Surely, when beguiling
Eve to her ruin, the Miltonic Satan must amongst other arguments have
urged that the Fates had ordained her disobedience, and that she was
pro-destined to taste the forbidden fruit. A weak-minded woman is
always ready to mistake the action of a man's selfish obstinacy for the
handiwork of the Fates.
To-night Cecil fancied herself abandoned to the Eumenides; for, a few
minutes after Mrs. Lobyer had quitted her, a dark figure came between
her and the moonlight; and looking up, she recognised Hector Gordon.
"At last, Cecil!" he said.
She had been walking away from the animated assembly outside the
drawing-room windows, but at sight of her persecutor she turned
abruptly. He laid his hand upon her arm to stop her.
"I must speak to you, Cecil," he said. "You have avoided me as if I
were a pestilence ever since I came to this house; but do you think I
am likely to submit to be avoided after the sacrifice I have made in
order to come here?"
"The sacrifice! what sacrifice?" cried Cecil.
The barrier fell and the foe rushed to his triumph. Cecil's only
chance of defending the citadel had lain in a steady refusal to hold
parley with the enemy. Entrapped into a conference, her best strength
abandoned her.
"Is it possible that you do not know how much I have sacrificed in
order to be here by your side to-night? Oh Cecil, there is a meanness
in this affectation of ignorance. I have sacrificed my career--my
position as a soldier--for your sake. Do you know what it is for a man
to sell out of his regiment on the eve of a perilous service? If it
were not for what I have done in India, I might be branded as a coward.
As it is, in spite of what I did out there, there are men who will hint
the possibility of my cowardice. You don't know, perhaps, how dear a
soldier's career is to him. And yet, by the way men court dangerous
service, you must know how much dearer reputation is to them than life."
"Why were you so foolish--so mad, as to remain in England?"
"Because I love you."
"You had no right to remain. Do you remember what you said to me that
night? You were going away: we might never see each other again. After
that you were bound in honour to go."
"I know that. But I could not go--after----"
He paused for a moment, and then said in a lower voice, "After what I
heard that night."
"I wish I had died before that night!" cried Cecil passionately. She
felt the darkness growing thicker round her, her feet wandering nearer
to the precipice--and she was powerless; as powerless as a dreamer
fighting with shadows.
"It is my fate to be wicked and miserable," she thought.
"I wish _I_ had died before that night," repeated Hector Gordon. "I
wish I had died in India, or at Fortinbras. Oh Cecil, you claim a right
to blame me! It is I who have a right to reproach you for your coldness
that day. One word and we should have been so happy: not for a moment
only--and there are some moments of happiness worth a commonplace
lifetime--but for all our lives,--innocently, serenely happy. It wanted
only one word from you, Cecil--only one little word."
"I tried to do my duty. And yet--I loved you so dearly!"
The words were spoken unconsciously. She was thinking of that painful
struggle between love and duty, and of the useless victory which she
had gained. Utterly useless since the battle had to be fought over
again.
"No, no, Cecil! I cannot believe that you loved me," cried the soldier,
seizing the slender hand which struggled in vain to free itself; "you
could not have been so cruel if you had loved me."
They had walked away from the lights and the crowd, and were standing
at the end of the terrace, where there were vases full of flowers on
the broad balustrade, and a life-size marble figure of Pomona, which
cast its shadow over them as they stood looking down at the sloping
landscape, sublimely beautiful in the moonlight.
The sense of her own dishonour, and of the dishonour of the man who
loved her, was paramount in Cecil's mind; and yet she let him talk
to her. That feeling of perfect helplessness which holds the dreamer
in its spell possessed her as she stood by her lover's side in the
dreamlike light and shadow of the summer night.
"I have not been altogether base," pleaded Hector. "I spoke the truth
that night at the opera when I told you that I was going to leave
England. It was not till some days after that I resolved to sell out.
I should have held to my purpose--I firmly believe I should have left
England--if you had not so obstinately refused to see me when I called
in Brunswick Square. I think an interview with you would have given
me strength, Cecil; and I should have gone out yonder resigned to the
misery of our separation."
"You had no right to try to see me after that night. You call me
cruel;--what could be more cruel or dishonourable than your conduct
to me? You persecute me in my own house; you follow me here where I
am powerless to escape from you. Is this the conduct of a gentleman,
Major Gordon?"
"It is the conduct of a man who is ready to trample reputation, honour,
every thing under his feet in order to be near the woman he loves. But
how can I expect you to understand all this? You have never loved me.
If you had loved me, you would not have married O'Boyneville."
"I have married a man who is more than worthy of my affection and
gratitude."
"Yes; and who is about as capable of appreciating you as Mr. Lobyer is
capable of understanding that Leonardo da Vinci which he brought from
Rome."
"Major Gordon, I will not allow you to speak so of my husband. If you
cannot respect him as I respect him, it is better that his name should
never be mentioned between us."
"Much better; for I cannot speak of him with patience. Can you imagine
what I felt, Cecil, when I received my aunt's letter announcing your
marriage? I had married another woman--loving you, and you only,
all the time--because you had decided that I was bound to keep my
promise. I kept my word to my poor true-hearted girl at the cost of
my happiness. But you, Cecil, you were bound by no old contract; and
yet within so short a time of our parting, all memory of my love was
blotted from your mind, and you were ready to marry this O'Boyneville!"
"All memory of the past was not blotted from my mind. I had tried to
forget, honestly and truly, but I know now to my cost that I never
really forgot that time at Fortinbras. Oh, Major Gordon, why do you
force me to say these things? I hate myself for listening to you;
I hate myself for talking to you. You could never understand why I
married Mr. O'Boyneville. You could never have imagined the weariness
of my life and my bitter need of some friend and protector. My chief
unhappiness arises from the fact that my husband's profession will not
allow him to be the friend I hoped he would be; and you know this. You
know how lonely I am, and you take advantage of my defencelessness. It
is cruel and unmanly, Major Gordon."
She lost all self-command as she said this, and burst into tears;
whereupon Hector humiliated himself to the very dust, imploring her
forgiveness, and declaring that he would leave Pevenshall--he would
tear himself from her for ever and ever, rather than he would inflict
pain upon the woman he loved so dearly. And then came those perilous
promises which a man is apt to make on such occasions. He implored
her to trust him. What was there in all the world so precious to him
as her happiness? He confessed his own guilt. He had been reckless,
heedless of every thing, in his passionate desire to see her once
more, to speak to her once again; and now that he had spoken, he would
be content. He would go away resigned to the idea of their eternal
separation.
Cecil dried her tears during these protestations.
"I wish to believe in your sincerity," she said; "but there is no
occasion for you to leave Pevenshall; I shall go back to town to-morrow
morning. Good-night!"
"You are going in at once?"
"Yes: I am very tired."
"Let me take you back to the house, at least."
"No, thanks; I would rather go by myself."
She walked away, leaving him leaning against the balustrade under the
shadow of the marble Pomona. This time she believed the battle had been
won; but there was a keen sense of shame mingled with the triumph of
victory. She contrived to reach her own rooms without encountering any
one, and packed every thing ready for her departure before going to
bed. She announced her intention to Mrs. Lobyer before breakfast the
next morning, and encountered the opposition which she had expected
from that lady.
"You must stay for the York Summer," Flo said decisively; "Sir Nugent
Evershed's horses are to run, and he and all his set will be there in
full force. Grace is coming home from Switzerland, and is to give me a
week immediately; and you know you like Grace."
"I like her very much, and I am very sorry to leave you, Flo; but I
must go."
"Why must? give me an adequate reason, and you shall be worried no
more; but I must have a reason."
"Mr. O'Boyneville wishes me to return."
"Has he written to tell you so?"
"Yes."
It was the first deliberate falsehood Cecil had ever told, and she
blushed as she uttered it.
"But I thought he was on circuit?"
"His circuit work is just over."
"Oh, very well, Cecil; if your duty as a wife compels you to depart, I
suppose I must submit. But I am so sorry to lose you."
"And I am sorry to leave you, dear. There is a train leaves Chiverley
at three; I thought of going by that."
"Then we will take an early luncheon, and I will drive you to the
station.--Good-morning, Major Gordon," cried Mrs. Lobyer, as that
gentleman entered the room; "here is Lady Cecil going to run away from
us just as our party is beginning to be pleasant. Don't you think she
is very unkind?"
"I think there can scarcely be any real reason for Lady Cecil's
departure," answered the Major; "a lady is always mistress of her time.
It is another matter with us. I find by my letters of this morning that
I shall be obliged to leave Pevenshall in a day or two. I need scarcely
say how much I shall regret going away."
"There now!" cried Flo; "that is always my fate. If one nice person
goes away, other nice people begin to take fright directly. You army
men find that desertion is infectious, I believe, Major Gordon."
Cecil spent the morning in her own rooms under pretence of making
preparations for departure that had been made overnight. She was
feverishly anxious to be away from Pevenshall; and she went down to
luncheon in her travelling dress.
"The ponies are to be ready at half-past one," said Flo; "and one
of the men has taken your luggage already in a cart. You see I am
heroic enough to speed the parting guest when I am told departure
is inevitable. Major Gordon, will you give Lady Cecil one of those
cutlets?"
Cecil declined any thing so substantial as a cutlet; but took two or
three sips from a glass of pale sherry, for the satisfaction of her
hostess. In her eagerness to escape from the house that sheltered
Hector Gordon she felt an unreasoning dread of some hindrance to her
departure. Her eyes wandered to the clock on the chimney-piece every
now and then, while Flo was absent preparing for the drive: and it was
with difficulty that she went through the ordeal of bidding adieu to
Mrs. Lobyer's guests, who were all "so sorry" to find she was really
going, and "so anxious" to meet her again before long. "Though I am
sure we can never meet in such a pleasant house as this," said a genial
widow, who appreciated the liberty and luxury of Mr. Lobyer's mansion.
Flo came back to the dining-room at last, equipped for the drive; and
every body left the table to bid a last good-bye to Lady Cecil. The two
ladies went out together with a posse of people following them; and in
the hall they encountered a stalwart gentleman who had just alighted
from a lumbering fly, and who pounced upon Cecil and kissed her before
the assembled multitude.
"I have not forgotten your hearty invitation, you see, Mrs. Lobyer,"
said the stalwart gentleman, who was no other than the great
O'Boyneville. "My circuit work has been rather lighter than usual
this year, and I have come over from Carlisle to spend a few days at
Pevenshall."
"I am so glad," cried Flo. "And that letter!"
"What letter?"
"The letter asking Cecil to go back to town."
"I wrote no letter asking Cecil to go back to town."
"Oh Cecil!" said Mrs. Lobyer, "I am sorry you were so tired of us all."
Cecil blushed crimson, and cast an imploring look at her friend, who
stared at her in supreme mystification.
"I suppose I may send away the pony-carriage," said Flo. "You will not
think any more of leaving us."
"Not till Mr. O'Boyneville goes."
"And that will not be till after the races, I hope."
"I will stay for the races--I will stay for any diversion you please
to offer me, Mrs. Lobyer," cried the barrister cheerily. "I am my own
man for the next six weeks, and your devoted slave. What a delightful
place this is in summer; and what scenery!--Ah, Gordon, how do you do?
I thought you were off to Japan."
He seemed bigger and more boisterous than usual, Cecil thought, as she
went back with him to the dining-room, where the interrupted luncheon
began again, and where Mr. O'Boyneville entertained the company with
some delightful anecdotes of the provincial law-courts. So Lady Cecil
stayed at Pevenshall, trusting that Hector Gordon would keep his
promise and depart immediately.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
"WERE ALL THY LETTERS SUNS, I COULD NOT SEE."
While the butterflies of fashion enjoyed the bright summer time,
and brazen bands brayed their loudest in horticultural gardens, and
foreign glee-singers carolled in every imaginable European language at
morning concerts and lawn parties, William Crawford shut himself in his
painting-room, and worked as he had never worked since the old days in
Buckingham Street, when the world had yet to learn that there was a
painter called Crawford.
He had nothing left him now but his art. He reminded himself of that
fact very often as he stood before his easel in the balmy summer
weather, while suburban butterflies wheeled above his roses, and a
suburban bee boomed and bounced against the old stained-glass in his
bay-window. Time had been when the painter had found his art more than
sufficient for his life, and when his chief regret had been that life
was not long enough for art. But the elegant siren of the Hermitage
had disturbed the even current of his existence; and it was in vain
that he tried to coax the stream back into its old course.
"I begin to think that I shall never paint another picture," he said
to himself, after abandoning more than one design in despair. "I make
sketch after sketch, but my ideas lose their freshness before I am
ready to begin upon my large canvas. Have I lost my love for my art, in
loving her? or what is this restless, feverish uncertainty which takes
the power out of my hand? I will not be the slave of this folly. I have
outlived bitterer sorrows than the loss of Mrs. Champernowne's society.
I lived down the trouble of my young wife's death; I survived ten years
of perpetual failure and disappointment; and am I to succumb at the
very last because a woman is selfish and heartless? No; I _will_ forget
Georgina Champernowne; I _will_ paint a better picture than I have ever
painted yet."
After arriving at this resolution, Mr. Crawford abandoned his brushes
and palette for one entire day, and shut himself in his library. He
took down his favourite volumes,--the sweet familiar stories of the
Greek fairyland; and all the lovely images which had made the brightest
dreams of his inspired boyhood came back to him, and floated around
him once more, in spite of Mrs. Champernowne. His Psyche's enchanting
face bent over him as he sat dreaming in the drowsy summer noon; his
Cupid peered at him in all the godlike beauty of immortal youth; and
innumerable nymphs, innumerable sirens filled the room with their
aërial loveliness.
He went back to his painting-room the next morning with new enthusiasm,
and with all the details of his picture fully developed in his mind.
"Come, my divinity," he cried; "come, my bright incarnation of the
immortal soul, and put to flight all earthly follies by your divine
presence. As I am a man and a painter, I will forget you, Mrs.
Champernowne; and my new picture shall plant me a round higher on the
glorious ladder."
From the beginning of May to the end of July William Crawford worked
incessantly at the large canvas which he had set up for himself in
his despair. No hand but his own had any part in the work; for he was
possessed with a feverish delight in his labour which he had never,
even in his most industrious days, felt before. He worked all through
the long summer days, by good lights and bad lights; entering his
painting-room at eight o'clock in the morning, rarely to leave it till
seven in the evening. He took his hasty meals in that tapestried
chamber, amongst the black oak cabinets and trailing draperies.
The servants at the Fountains remarked the change in their master's
habits, and talked gravely of his haggard face and restless impatient
manner.
"He used to be the best of tempers," said the painter's
man-of-all-work; "but now it's as much as you can do to open your
mouth without getting your nose snapped off, which the young person
that comes to sit for his Fishky says his tempers about her attitoods
is somethink offul, and that he's got no more consideration for her
elbow-joints than if she was his wooden dummy; which I'm sure, up to
two or three months back, there wasn't a pleasanter gentleman or a
better master than Mr. Crawford."
It is good for a mortal to be reminded of his mortality at that moment
when his yearnings towards a brighter universe have lifted him away
from this dull earth, and are wafting him towards that serener region
in which dwell the perfect images of his fancy. There are limits beyond
which no man can go; and during the last three months of his life
William Crawford had been trying to overstep those limits. In the hope
of forgetting the woman he loved, he had thrown himself into his work
with a burning eagerness for success that was dangerous to him alike as
a man and an artist.
"If other men work six hours a day, I will work twelve," he thought. "I
have nothing to live for now but my work."
This was the refrain of his life nowadays. What had he to live for but
his art? and if he did not do great things in that, what purpose was
there left for his existence?
The subject of his new picture was only another chapter in his
favourite fable--the story of Psyche. She lay asleep under a tent, with
the young god by her side, sleeping like herself, divinely innocent in
the unconsciousness of slumber. A crowd of zephyrs, holding one another
by the hand, have come to peep at the sleeping lovers. They float
on a wandering ray of moonlight, they hover in aërial circles about
the lovely sleepers. Never had William Crawford achieved a greater
triumph than in the creation of these ethereal beings, transparent as
water-drops against a moonlit sky, with sweet arch faces and gauzy
wings. And the slumbering Psyche, with her fair infantine face, and her
veil of pale golden hair; and the divine moonlight, and the mysterious
depths of cool shadow,--every detail of the picture was a triumph; and
as the work neared its completion the painter began to feel that he had
at least surpassed himself.
"When Sheridan was slow to write a new comedy, they said he was afraid
of the author of the _School for Scandal_. And people have declared
that I should never equal the painter of the 'Aspasia;' but I think I
have beaten the Aspasia at last," mused Mr. Crawford as he stood before
his easel, and pondered on the aërial charms of his zephyrs.
He had worked by bad lights and good lights--in sunshine and shadow.
He had grappled with and mastered the difficulties to which he had
been wont to succumb. Not content with doubling the daily hours of
his labour, he had worked at his background at night. There had been
no reason for his abnormal industry except his own restlessness; but
that restlessness was unconquerable. The intoxication of success took
possession of him, and he allowed himself neither pause nor respite.
There came a time when under any other phase of circumstances he would
have laid down his palette and left his painting-room. There came a
time when he felt that his sight was beginning to suffer from unwonted
use; but still he went on.
"I can rest as long as I like when my zephyrs are finished," he said to
himself. "If I were to leave my picture, I might lose the freshness of
my ideas; I might even take a disgust for my lovely Psyche."
So the painter held on steadily, in spite of a curious languor which
made his eyelids heavy, and an occasional visitation from a strange
throbbing pain above his eyebrows. He went on; promising himself a
consultation with some distinguished oculist, and a long rest when
his "Psyche and the Zephyrs" was finished. He continued his work with
unrelenting industry, indomitable determination: but there were moments
in which the beautiful faces upon his canvas disappeared suddenly
behind a dazzling mist, until he was fain to lay down his brushes and
walk up and down the room for a little while with his hands before his
tired eyes.
It was the middle of August, and the picture wanted little more than a
week's work for its completion, when the painter yielded for the first
time to that languid feeling in the eyelids, and abandoned his work
in order to indulge in a brief siesta. All the clocks of Kensington
had just struck three, and the vibration of the different chimes came
floating across the painter's garden. It was an almost insupportable
summer day--sultry and oppressive--the day of all others on which the
hardest worker is apt to be seized with a distaste for his labour.
"It's no use," said Mr. Crawford, as he gave a last look at his canvas;
"I can scarcely see the colours I am using. I can't stand against this
drowsiness any longer."
He threw himself upon a sofa, a noble conch of strictly classic form,
upon which had erst reclined Aspasia the wise and beautiful, or at
any rate the dark-haired model who had sat for the Grecian beauty;
that maligned enchantress who sinned against poetry by descending
from a Pericles to a cattle-dealer. The painter fell asleep almost
immediately; but for some time after he had lain down he had a dim
consciousness of pain above his eyebrows. By-and-by, however, the
slumber grew deeper; he no longer heard the bees humming in his roses,
the subdued roll of distant wheels. He fell into a long dreamless
sleep, from which he awoke at last very suddenly, with a feeling that
he had slept for many hours.
He had slept for a very long time as it seemed, for it was quite dark
when he awoke.
"No more work to-day," he thought with a sigh. "I counted on getting an
hour between five and six. Why hasn't Dimond lighted my lamps?"
The painter groped his way to the bell and rang violently.
"What a night!" he muttered; "there must be a storm brewing. I haven't
known it as dark as this all the summer."
He stood by the mantelpiece waiting. The window was opposite him, and
he felt the warm summer air floating in upon him where he stood. But
he could not even define the broad opening of the window through the
profound darkness.
"Lights, Dimond," he said impatiently, as the man opened the door.
"Lights, Sir?"
"Yes; of course. Why have you left the lamps till this time? Why isn't
that passage lighted?"
"But it's so early, Sir--not much after five--and such a bright
afternoon. I didn't think you'd like me to light the gas yet awhile."
"Not much after five o'clock!" repeated the painter in a tone of utter
stupefaction.
"No, Sir; just a quarter-past by your own clock, Sir."
"And a bright afternoon?" he asked in the same tone.
"Well,--of course, Sir, I don't presume to say as regards paintin'; but
in a general way a very bright afternoon."
"Oh my God!" cried the painter suddenly.
The servant ran to his master, alarmed by that sudden exclamation,
which sounded like a cry of agony.
"Is anything the matter, Sir?"
"No; go--go and get me a cab--immediately--I must go out--and I shall
want you to go with me."
"Me, Sir?"
"Yes, you, Sir! Go at once, man, for God's sake--and lose no time about
it."
The servant departed in bewilderment of mind, and William Crawford
groped his way through the outer darkness to the nearest chair. He sunk
into the chair, covered his face with his hands, and burst into tears.
"Blind!" he cried; "blind! blind! I said I had nothing but my art, and
now my art is lost to me."
He sat with his head bent forward on his breast, staring hopelessly
into the darkness. Strain his eyeballs as he might, they could not
pierce that darkness. He saw no Psyche and the Zephyrs, no lovely
images created by his hand, no bright glimpse of summer sunshine on the
smooth green lawn, no changing light upon the summer flowers, no tender
shadows from the grand old cedars,--only darkness, utter darkness;
beyond which it might be that his eyes were never again to penetrate.
"Cab, Sir," said the man, presenting himself in the doorway.
"Come here, Dimond," William Crawford said very quietly; "come close to
me, and give me your arm, please. I beg your pardon if I was impatient
just now, but I have had a great shock. I have been working too hard
lately and have injured my sight. God only knows whether the injury
is to be a lasting one; but for the moment I am quite blind. I think
perhaps I shall manage better if you give me your hand to lead me to
the cab. I must go at once to an oculist, and I shall want you to go
with me."
CHAPTER XXIX.
A TIMELY WARNING.
Mr. O'Boyneville enjoyed himself amazingly at Pevenshall. The man
whose ordinary existence was one unceasing round of hard work was the
most social of creatures when once set free from the daily round of
labour. He enjoyed himself with a boisterous boyish delight in simple
pleasures, and the Pevenshall visitors found his gaiety contagious.
There are some people who succeed in society by mere force of animal
spirits, and who are pardoned for solecisms that would be the perdition
of a more timid blunderer. Laurence O'Boyneville did what he liked and
said what he liked, with the reckless impulsiveness of his nation, and
people forgave him and were pleased with him.
He gave himself up so thoroughly to the social delights of Mr. Lobyer's
mansion, which was made all the pleasanter by the frequent absence of
its master, that he had no leisure for morbid anxieties of a domestic
nature. The idea that he had any need to doubt the allegiance of the
wife he loved and honoured had never presented itself to him in any
shape, howsoever impalpable. She was his wife--a creature so much above
suspicion, that only the rudest of awakenings could disturb his perfect
confidence in her honour and truth. That he might leave her in one
moment bright, beautiful, and smiling, and return in the next to find
her dead, was a possibility within his power of conception; but that
he could awake from his trust in her to find her false to him was a
monstrous impossibility which his mind would have been unable to grasp.
So he gave himself up to the pleasure of the hour, and devoted himself
to the service of the fair sex with an indiscriminate and laborious
gallantry, which the gilded youth fluttering around Mrs. Lobyer, and
drawling some subtle half-implied compliment once in the twenty-four
hours, beheld with amazement from afar off.
"I had no idea that Mr. O'Boyneville was such a delightful creature,"
Flo remarked to Cecil. "I hope I shall never again be without
an Irishman in the house when I have a large party. That dear
good-tempered husband of yours contrives to keep all the women in
good humour. I'm sure that poor Miss Skairkrow had never had a civil
word said to her on the subject of her personal appearance till Mr.
O'Boyneville told her she was the image of the Empress of the French.
He assured Miss Skeechoule that her voice reminded him of Grisi in her
prime. And then there is pretty Mrs. Fitz-Cavendish, the _attaché's_
wife, who has been surfeited with admiration, but who declares that
there never was such an absurdly-delightful creature as your husband."
Cecil acknowledged these praises somewhat coldly. This noisy frivolous
Irishman, whom other people thought so delightful, was no nearer to
her than the overworked barrister of Brunswick Square. She was weak
enough to feel something like anger against him for his genial good
temper--for his utter blindness to her own deadly peril. Hector Gordon
had broken his promise. He had stayed at Pevenshall; and in the social
intercourse of that pleasant mansion it was impossible for Cecil to
avoid his companionship. Nor did Laurence O'Boyneville's presence
shield her in any manner from that dangerous association. Serene in
perfect confidence, the barrister amused himself noisily at one end of
the drawing-room, while Major Gordon talked to his wife at the other.
So perverse is the human heart that this placid trustfulness offended
the woman who was trusted. Cecil resented her husband's confidence
as an evidence of indifference, and was angry with him for not being
jealous.
"If I had a husband who loved me, he would come between me and my
danger," she thought bitterly; "but my husband does not know what love
is."
Unhappily there was some one at Pevenshall who did know, or who
pretended to know, all the mysteries of that fatal passion; some one
whose voice sounded very often in Cecil's ear, whose eyes were for
ever seeking hers. Heaven knows that she did her best to avoid him;
but her best efforts were very weak and futile as compared to the
machinery which the Eumenides employed against her. A thousand little
circumstances conspired to force her into the society of the man she
feared. At races, and picnics, and water parties, and rustic gatherings
of every description, she was always finding Hector Gordon by her side.
The old companionship of the Fortinbras time rose again; but now there
was always a guilty consciousness, a remorseful agony lurking amidst
the unhallowed happiness; and oh, the meanness, the deception, the
grovelling guiltiness, which was the everyday cost of that forbidden
joy! Balancing one against the other, Cecil knew how heavily the
perpetual remorse outweighed those brief moments of feverish gladness,
when the sound of Hector's voice lulled her with its fatal music, and
the tender pressure of Hector's hand lifted her above the common earth.
"If I could get away to some quiet hiding-place at the other end of
the world, where he _could not_ follow me, I might escape him, and be
innocent and happy once more," she thought. That escape for which she
yearned seemed every day more difficult. The poor frail rudderless
bark was hovering on the very brink of a whirlpool, and there was no
friendly hand to steer it back to safety. Sometimes Cecil resolved
that she would confess every thing to her husband, and demand the
shelter she needed; but the barrister's good humoured indifference was
more repellent to her in her present frame of mind than the fiercest
severity of a jealous husband could possibly have been. It would
have been a relief to her to be suspected. She wanted an occasion to
throw herself into her husband's arms, and cry, "Have pity upon my
wickedness, and save me from myself!" Perhaps in these latter days,
when the chronicles of the Divorce-Court furnish such piquant reading
for middle-class breakfast-tables, it would be well if husbands were
a little more inclined to jealous watchfulness, and somewhat less
disposed to believe implicitly in their own invincible claims to all
love and duty. More than once had Cecil nerved herself for the ordeal.
She had resolved on humiliating herself before the husband whose
indifference wounded her; but after waiting for an hour or more in the
loneliness of her own apartment until it should please her lord and
master to withdraw himself from some social masculine gathering in the
smoking-room below--after waiting with the words she meant to speak
arranging and rearranging themselves in her brain, the remorseful wife
found it impossible to begin her guilty story, and to open her heart to
a man who was chuckling over the capital things he had been saying, and
who insisted on relating the triumphs he had just achieved in argument.
Against that everyday joviality, that commonplace good-humour, the
flood-tide of passion dashed impotently, as storm-beaten waters
break against a groin of solid masonry. So the days went by, and Mr.
O'Boyneville enjoyed himself, while the Fates worked their worst
against helpless Cecil, who found herself day by day in more frequent
association with the man who loved her, and who persisted in reminding
her perpetually of his love.
Pevenshall was very full and very gay. Amidst so many people and so
much gaiety flirtations that would have made scandal in a quieter
household passed unnoticed, except by a few quiet watchers unengaged by
schemes of their own. Sir Nugent Evershed appeared at the York Meeting,
where one of his horses ran a bad second for the Great Ebor, and after
the races was almost a daily guest at Mr. Lobyer's mansion. The Irish
barrister had been some time at Pevenshall when Mrs. MacClaverhouse
arrived on a flying visit. She had been visiting further north, and she
took Mrs. Lobyer's house on her way homewards, in accordance with an
old promise made to Flo, who liked the lively dowager.
"I must only stay with you three or four days at the most, my dear,"
she said to her hostess; "for I am due in Hampshire next week, at a
dear old rectory which is supposed to be haunted; though I must confess
the ghosts have never come my way. But there are some people who may
spend their lives in tapestried chambers and not see any thing out of
the common."
Before Mrs. MacClaverhouse had been half-a-dozen hours at Pevenshall
she had taken occasion to interrogate her nephew respecting the sale
of his commission. She put him through so sharp an examination that
the Major was fain to confess the existence of motives which it was
impossible for him to explain.
"Then they must be bad motives," exclaimed the dowager, "and unworthy
of the true-hearted lad I used to be so proud of. You can't suppose
that _I_ wished you to go out to Japan to be killed by a herd of
horrible creatures with small eyes and pigtails; but I have heard
people speak sneeringly about your sudden selling out, and the
malicious wretches have made me feel quite uneasy."
"You needn't be uneasy, my dear aunt," answered Hector; "it's not a
case of 'the white feather,' if that's what you mean."
"That's not what I mean, and you know as well as I do that it is not. I
don't like those mysterious motives which you can't explain."
The Major shrugged his shoulders with a deprecating gesture. He might
give his aunt Indian shawls and ivory caskets and _carte blanche_ upon
his wine-merchant; but there were secrets which he did not hold himself
bound to reveal to that lady. She took his refusal very quietly.
"When people object to tell me things, I generally contrive to find
them out for myself," she said calmly; and from this time, though she
enjoyed the delights of Pevenshall to the uttermost, she kept a sharp
eye upon her handsome nephew, and an assiduous ear for all floating
gossip that accidental breezes wafted in her way.
She stayed a week; and on hearing that Mr. O'Boyneville had occasion to
run up to town on the day following her intended departure, she delayed
that departure in order to avail herself of his escort.
"I suppose you won't object to take care of an old woman between
this and King's Cross, Mr. O'Boyneville," she said after proposing
this arrangement. Of course the barrister declared himself delighted
to be of service; but Cecil, who knew her strong-minded kinswoman's
independent spirit, was not a little surprised by this sudden desire
for masculine protection. Mr. O'Boyneville was only to sleep one
night in Brunswick Square, and then go on to the west of England
where he had business of importance to transact for a friend. The
affair would not occupy him more than a week, he said, and he should
hurry back to Pevenshall directly he was free to do so. Cecil made no
objection to this arrangement. It pleased her husband to leave her
in order to attend to his business, and she let him go. A strange
calmness had taken possession of her during the last few days. She was
absent-minded, and frequently answered at random; more than once she
had complained of headache, and had kept her room; but when her husband
asked her if there was any thing serious the matter, and intreated
her to see a medical man, she assured him that her illness was only
nervous. The dowager visited her on this occasion, and questioned her
sharply; but, for the first time in her experience, that worthy matron
found herself repulsed by a sullen obstinacy on the part of her niece.
"Your questioning me won't cure my headache," Lady Cecil said; "believe
me it is much better to let me alone. I am not worth the trouble you
take about me."
"But, Cecil, if you are really ill, I must insist upon your having
advice; and if you are not ill, this shutting yourself up in your room
is very absurd. That dear good O'Boyneville is most uneasy about you."
The stentorian laughter of the dear good O'Boyneville floating upward
in the summer air made itself heard at this moment through the open
windows. The barrister was enjoying himself on the terrace with the
most lively of the Pevenshall visitors.
"Yes; he is very uneasy about me, auntie," said Cecil; "any one can
perceive that."
Mrs. MacClaverhouse gave an impatient shrug and departed.
"If I had been your mother in the days when George III. was a young
man, and pert chits like you were taught to respect their elders, how
soundly I would have boxed those pretty little ears of yours! A sound
box on the ear is what you want, Lady Cecil, and I only wish that
Laurence O'Boyneville were the man to give it to you."
Thus soliloquised the dowager as she lingered for a few moments at the
door of her niece's chamber. She encountered Hector Gordon by-and-by in
the lower regions, and treated him more cavalierly than that favourite
of fortune was wont to be treated. He bore her ill-usage very meekly,
and carefully avoided the severe glare of those hard grey eyes which
had been apt to soften when they looked at him.
On the next morning the dowager and Mr. O'Boyneville took their
departure. Cecil bade them adieu in a strange mechanical manner,
which the barrister was too busy and too hurried to notice. He did
indeed perceive that his wife was paler than usual, and that she drew
herself away from him when he would have embraced her at parting; but
the pallor was accounted for by the nervous headache, from which she
confessed herself still a sufferer, and the chilling refusal of the
embrace was attributed to the inconvenient presence of the matched
footmen, who were on guard in the hall, and of Mr. and Mrs. Lobyer,
who had emerged from the dining-room to speed their parting guests.
The generous-minded Othello needs a hint from Iago before he can see
flaw or speck in Desdemona's purity, though she may plead never so
persistently for Cassio's reinstatement; and the idea that his wife's
conduct had any hidden meaning was still far away from Laurence
O'Boyneville's mind.
"I shall come back for you in a week, Cecil," he said; and amid the
confusion of adieus and good wishes he had no time to perceive his
wife's silence.
At the station Mrs. MacClaverhouse suggested that the barrister should
secure a compartment for their own special use by the diplomatic
administration of a half-crown to the guard.
"I want to have a little quiet talk with you as we go up to town," she
said.
Mr. O'Boyneville complied, wondering. At the first junction the branch
train melted into an express, which tore London-wards at the rate of
fifty miles an hour; but Mrs. MacClaverhouse and her nephew-in-law had
their quiet talk in spite of the ponderous pantings of the giant that
was bearing them to their destination; and the quiet talk must needs
have been of a very serious nature, for the barrister was as pale as a
ghost when he alighted at King's Cross.
He conducted Mrs. MacClaverhouse to a cab nevertheless, and saw her
packages and her maid safely bestowed along with her in that vehicle.
On bidding her adieu, he bent his head to say something which was not
to be heard by the maid.
"I thank you very much," he said,--"very much. I am not afraid. No,
Mrs. MacClaverhouse, with God's help, I am not afraid!"
CHAPTER XXX.
"HE'S SWEETEST FRIEND, OR HARDEST FOE."
While Mr. O'Boyneville was parting with the dowager at the terminus,
Cecil walked with Hector Gordon on the terrace at Pevenshall.
The august afternoon was almost stifling in its sultry heat; and most
of the Pevenshall idlers had taken shelter in the drawing-room. A
group of young ladies were clustered under a great beech on the lawn
listening to the perusal of a new novel: and with the exception of this
party and the two promenaders on the terrace the gardens were deserted.
Cecil and Hector walked slowly up and down the terrace. For some time
they had been silent. It was one of those oppressive days which weigh
down the liveliest spirits; but on Cecil's face there was a profound
melancholy not to be accounted for by atmospheric influences. Nor was
the countenance of the Major much brighter of aspect. He seemed divided
between his own sombre thoughts and an anxious curiosity at to the
meditations of his companion.
"Tell me you are not unhappy, darling," he said at last; "for pity's
sake tell me that the idea of the step you have decided upon taking
does not make you unhappy."
"You do not think that I can feel very happy, do you, Hector?"
"If you love me as I----"
"Does the thought of our future make _you_ happy?" cried Cecil
passionately. "Oh Hector, you know as well as I do that henceforward
happiness must be impossible for you and me. It is agreed that we
cannot endure the miserable deception, the shameful degradation of our
lives any longer--that we must escape from this atmosphere of falsehood
at any sacrifice--at any cost to ourselves. We have discussed this so
often that there is no need of further discussion; and you have brought
me to see things as you see them. You have wrung a promise from me, and
I am prepared to keep it. But for mercy's sake do not talk to me of
happiness."
The soldier ventured no reply to this speech. The gloom deepened upon
his countenance as he watched the pale face of his companion. They came
to the end of the terrace presently, and paused under the statue of
Pomona, as they had done in the moonlight some weeks before. They stood
here side by side for some time, she looking straight before her at the
drowsy summer landscape, he keeping close watch upon her face.
She had promised to leave her husband with Hector Gordon. She had
promised to pass away with him into the outer darkness, beyond the
confines of the only world she knew. By what passionate pleading,
by what subtle argument, her lover had brought her to accept this
course as a fatal necessity, need not be set down here. When a man's
infatuation or a man's selfishness overrides his sense of truth and
honour, he can find arguments enough to serve him in such a cause. That
he loved her was beyond all question; that the penalty involved in his
dishonour was scarcely less than the sacrifice to be made by her was
also true;--but it was no less true that the passion which demanded so
cruel a sacrifice was a base and selfish one.
It is difficult to imagine how any woman can arrive at such a decision
as that made by Lady Cecil. The descent of Avernus is so gradual a
slope, that it is only when the traveller finds himself at the bottom
of the gulf that he perceives how terrible has been the rapidity of
his progress. Ample opportunity had been given Hector Gordon for
the pleading of his wicked cause. The Fates had conspired to assist
his evil work; and even when some short-lived pang of self-reproach
prompted him to abandon his relentless pursuit, some little
circumstance, too insignificant to be remembered, always occurred to
strangle the feeble resolution.
Little by little Cecil had learnt to believe that the tie between
herself and her husband must needs be broken. She had learnt to believe
that the daily and hourly deceptions of the last few weeks constituted
a more terrible sin than any open rupture with the man she had sworn to
love and honour. The seducer's fatal philosophy had done its work, and
she accepted the justice of his reasoning. It was surely better that
she should forfeit the place she had no right to hold in her husband's
confidence and esteem--better that he should know her for a false
wife, an outcast from him and from society, than that he should trust
her as a true one while her love and allegiance were really given to
another. This was the conviction which had taken possession of Cecil's
mind. She was prepared to leave her husband, and abandon her home and
station for the fatal protection of a lover; but she had no hope of
any future happiness to be won by this terrible sacrifice. She sought
only to escape from the daily falsehood that tortured and humiliated
her. It was within a very short period that this fatal conviction had
taken root in her heart. Before that time she had trusted in her own
honour--in Hector Gordon's forbearance--in her husband's power to save
her from herself. But her own sense of honour had been weak to sustain
her against a lover's subtle power of reasoning. Hector had shown no
forbearance; and her last hope in the protection of her husband had
been disappointed by reason of Laurence O'Boyneville's unsympathetic
joviality.
Looking at her this afternoon as they stood silently side by side,
Hector saw something like despair in the pale still face. It was not
a hopeful aspect of affairs for a lover who had sacrificed so much
in order to induce the woman he loved to break the bonds that bound
her to another man and plight her perjured faith to him. He had won
her promise to be his, but she had not promised to be happy; and a
chilling sense of terror thrilled through his heart as he fancied
that perhaps she had spoken the truth just now, and that henceforward
there could be no such thing as happiness for these two who loved each
other so dearly. He had not calculated upon this. Cecil might desire
only to escape from a miserable present, but Hector had believed in
a bright future. What could mar his happiness, if the woman he loved
was his companion, his own for ever and for ever? Loss of position,
tarnished honour, the memory of a great wrong done to an unsuspecting
man--what were these but trifles when weighed in the balance with an
all-absorbing love?
The ordeal through which he must needs drag the creature he loved so
dearly might indeed be a terrible one; but once passed, the future lay
bright and fair before them--a future in which they would be together.
But now all at once a new light dawned upon him. He might be happy--for
how could he be otherwise than happy with her?--but would she be
content? That calm despair in the pale face gave no promise of peace.
"Poor girl, poor girl! it is harder for her than for me," he thought
sadly.
And then presently some brief awakening of conscience impelled him to
speak.
"Cecil," he cried; "it is not too late! If you wish to retract--if you
repent your promise----"
"No, I will keep my promise. I never can go back to my husband any
more. If he loved me--if there were any sympathy between us, he might
have saved me from myself, Hector--and from you. Oh, I know how selfish
this must sound;--you have sacrificed so much for me--your career--your
future--I have learnt to understand the sacrifice since I have heard
people wonder why you took such a step. And it was for my sake. No,
Hector, I will not break my promise. I should be weak, dishonourable,
selfish beyond all measure, if I could break my promise after what it
has cost you to win it."
A woman has always more or less inclination for self-sacrifice. Let
her once be fully persuaded that it is her duty to throw herself away
for the welfare or the pleasure of some one she loves, and she is in
hot haste to take the fatal step that shall hurl her to destruction.
Cecil was not a woman who could entertain any hope of happiness from
such a course as that which she was about to take. If she could
make her lover happy, if she could atone to him in some manner for
the foolish sacrifice of his career, she would be content; but no
false glamour illumined her miserable pathway. She was going to her
destruction--blindly perhaps--but with a full knowledge that there was
darkness around her, and that no light could ever shine upon the way
she was treading.
Hector talked to her of their plans; and she listened quietly, and
acquiesced in all his arrangements. The details of their flight had
been settled before to-day. The Major was to leave Pevenshall in the
evening by the mail, on pretence of some sudden summons for which his
afternoon letters would furnish the excuse. Cecil was to leave the
next morning, in obedience to a letter from her husband. In the way
which they were going, there seemed to be nothing but falsehood and
deception; but Hector reminded his companion that this was only a brief
ordeal through which they must pass to perfect freedom.
"I know how painful it is for you, darling," the Major said tenderly;
"but in a few days we shall be far away from all this wretchedness,
in the dear little Brittany village I have told you of so often, with
the mountains behind us, and the sea before; and then we will go on to
Italy, and wander from place to place till you come some day to the
spot in which you would like to live. And there I will build you the
brightest home that a man ever made for his idol."
"But you, Hector--your career, your ambition----"
"My career is finished, and I have no ambition except to be with you."
He had said the same thing a hundred times, in a hundred different
fashions; but to-day the tender words could not bring the faintest
smile to Cecil's face. She knew that she was about to commit a terrible
sin; and she had none of the passionate recklessness which can alone
sustain the sinner. A stronger will than her own was carrying her along
the fatal pathway, and a perverted sense of honour kept her faithful to
the promise which had been extorted from her by her lover's despair.
She was like that unhappy knight whose
"Honour rooted in dishonour stood."
All the details of the flight had been planned by Hector before this
afternoon; but he had found some difficulty in explaining them to
Cecil. The paltry details seemed more detestable than the sin itself;
and the soldier's pride and delicacy alike revolted against the
necessities of his position. Yet in due course all had been arranged.
Cecil was to go straight to Brunswick Square, there to make hurried
preparations for her flight, and to write her farewell letter to her
husband, who would have started on his western journey before she left
the north. In Brunswick Square she was to see Hector, who would come
to her in the course of the day to assure himself of her safe arrival,
and on the following morning they were to meet at the station in time
to leave London by the Dover mail. Before Mr. O'Boyneville returned to
town they would be far away, and there would be little trace of them
left to mark the way by which they had gone.
CHAPTER XXXI.
ON THE BRINK.
Major Gordon left Pevenshall by the mail, and on the following morning
Cecil bade adieu to her friend, who was rather inclined to resent her
abrupt departure.
"I don't believe a bit in Mr. O'Boyneville's summons," said Flo; "you
are tired of us, and you want to go away, Cecil; you are deceiving
me just as you deceived me before. However, of course I cannot keep
you here against your will; and I can only regret that we have not
succeeded in making you happy."
Whereupon Cecil declared that Pevenshall was all that is delightful;
and that she should never forget Mrs. Lobyer's kindness and affection.
The impulsive Florence would upon this have embraced her friend; but
Cecil drew herself away from the embrace.
"Wherever you go, dear, I shall remember you and your goodness," she
said; "and oh, Florence, I hope you will be happy."
As the two women stood for a moment holding each other's hands, and
looking in each other's faces, Cecil would fain have uttered some
word of warning to the friend she never thought to see again. But she
remembered what a mockery any warning must seem hereafter from her
tainted lips; though who so well as this poor shipwrecked creature,
newly foundered on a rock, could tell of the dangers that beset a
woman's pathway? Holding Mrs. Lobyer's hand silently in her own, she
fancied how her friend would remember that parting when her own name
had become a byword and reproach.
"Will she have any pity upon me, I wonder, for the sake of our past
friendship; or will she be as merciless as the rest of the world?"
This is what Cecil thought in that parting moment, while her packages
were being put in the carriage, and the imperturbable footman attended
with her shawls and parasols.
"You will come to us at Christmas," cried Flo.
"I fear not, dear. Good-bye."
Cecil was seated in the carriage in the next minute, waving her hand to
Florence, and a little group of young ladies who had placed themselves
at the hall-door to witness her departure. Splendid Pevenshall swam
before her in a mist as she looked at that group of light-hearted girls
fluttering like a cluster of butterflies in the morning sunshine.
"I shall never again pass the threshold of such a house," she thought.
All through the homeward journey, she felt like a traveller in a
dream. She sat in a corner of the carriage with her eyes fixed upon
the changing landscape; but she saw only a confusion of undulating
corn-fields and summer verdure.
She went mechanically through the business of her arrival, and reached
Brunswick Square without accident; but the clamour of the London
streets sounded in her ears like the booming of a stormy sea.
An unearthly quiet seemed to pervade the Bloomsbury Mansion. The
respectful Pupkin uttered some faint exclamation of surprise on
beholding his mistress; but beyond this Cecil heard neither voice nor
sound. She avoided her own apartments while they were being prepared
for her reception, and went straight to the drawing-rooms, where every
thing remained exactly as she had left it five or six weeks before. The
birds set up a feeble rejoicing as they recognised their mistress; but
she did not approach the window where their cages hung in the London
sunshine.
She looked at her watch; her life to-day was a question of hours.
She had her packing to accomplish--a painful kind of packing, for it
involved the setting aside of every trinket her husband had ever given
her. She intended to take with her only the plainest dresses and the
absolute necessaries of her toilet; she doubted whether even these
things could be really hers when once she crossed the threshold of
that house. There seemed to be a kind of dishonesty in taking with
her the most insignificant trifle that had been bought with Laurence
O'Boyneville's money.
There was one task before Lady Cecil even more painful than the
preparations for her journey, and that task was the writing of the
letter which should tell Mr. O'Boyneville that his wife had decided
on leaving him. How could she do it? how could she put her wickedness
into words? what could she say to him? "You have never been unkind
to me; I have no accusation to bring against you; you have only been
unsympathetic; and a man whom I love better than truth and honour has
persuaded me to abandon you."
Never in all her life had Cecil suffered such anguish as the writing of
that letter cost her. It seemed a cold, hard, cruel letter when it was
written, so curtly did it announce her guilty design; but though there
was little trace of feeling in the written lines, the slow tears rolled
down her pallid cheeks as she wrote, and her hand trembled so violently
that it was with difficulty she could make her writing legible.
"Oh Hector!" she cried piteously; "if you could know what I suffer for
your sake--for your sake!"
Somehow or other the letter was written, sealed, and addressed; and
then she sat looking at it in a kind of stupor.
"If it were really not too late--if I dared ask him to release me," she
thought.
But in the next moment she remembered the solemn nature of her promise,
the sacrifice her lover had made to win it.
"Oh, no, no, no!" she cried; "it is too late! I am bound to him by my
promise."
And then she asked herself whether, if there had been no such promise,
she could have remained in that house as Laurence O'Boyneville's wife.
She had wronged him so much in word and in thought, that her innocence
of deeper and more irrevocable wrong seemed to be of little moment.
Could she look in his face without humiliation? Could she accept his
confidence without dishonour? No! a thousand times no; and this being
so, she was no wife for him.
"Come what may, I must leave my husband," she thought. "Oh, if I could
go alone! if I could only go away by myself to some quiet hiding-place,
and never be heard of any more!"
She thought this in all sincerity. Her love for the tempter had been
in a great measure annihilated by the horror of the temptation. The
sense of her guilt was so great an agony that there was little room in
her mind for any other feeling. It seemed as if the current of Fate
was drifting her along, and that she was no more than a weed, carried
onward by an impetuous torrent. She knew that destruction lay before
her; but she had no power to resist the force of the stream.
After the writing of the letter, she sat for some time in a listless
attitude, looking vacantly at the envelope with her husband's name upon
it. Her head ached with a dull pain, and there was confusion in her
thoughts. She could not ponder deliberately upon the step that she was
going to take. This inability to think quietly had possessed her ever
since she had arrived at the fatal conclusion to which her lover had
urged her. She had accepted the doctrine of necessity; she had allowed
herself to be persuaded that it was her destiny to do wrong; and once
having yielded to this unnatural creed, the false god she had created
was stronger than herself, and she became indeed a powerless creature
in the hands of Fate.
Apollo had spoken; sorrow and shame lay before her, her inevitable
portion.
The day crept on, and she knew that with every hour the current that
was drifting her gathered new strength. Hector was to devote this day
to the settlement of his own affairs; for a man has need to make some
little preparation on the eve of an exile that may last his lifetime.
The day crept on--a dull sultry day at the close of August--and still
Cecil kept her listless attitude by the table with her husband's
letter lying before her. She knew that she was not to expect any visit
from Hector until late in the afternoon, since the business he had to
transact would occupy the best part of his day. But though she was
lonely and wretched, she felt no eagerness for his coming. What relief
or consolation could he bring her? What was he but her accomplice in
wrong, with whom she had plotted a crime, and to whom she was pledged
for the due accomplishment of that evil deed?
Amid the many thoughts that succeeded one another in the confusion of
her brain, there was the thought that guilty wretches who had plotted
the details of a murder must feel very much as she felt to-day. She
could fancy them, when all had been planned, and the hour appointed,
waiting in weary idleness for the time to come. She could fancy them
watching the slow hands upon the dial, and wishing either that time
could come to a dead stop for ever and ever, or that the hour had
arrived and the deed were done. The stillness of the house seemed to
her like the stillness that precedes death and horror. She fancied her
husband coming home from his journey in a day or two to find the same
dull quiet in the house, and his wife's letter waiting for him on the
table.
"If he loved me, the blow would kill him," she thought; "but he does
not love me. His profession is all the world to him. If he had loved
me, I think it would have been easy for me to confess my wickedness
and ask his forgiveness. He will be sorry, perhaps,--more sorry for
me than for himself,--but his grief will not last long. He will have
Westminster Hall, and his hope of getting into Parliament. He is not
like Hector; he would never have allowed his love for me to interfere
with his career."
It was nearly five o'clock when she aroused herself from this miserable
apathy and went to her room to begin the preparations for to-morrow's
flight. She was to dine at half-past six, so she had brief leisure for
her work. One by one she set aside the jewels that her husband had
given her. They were not very numerous, but they were valuable, and in
a simple taste that did credit to Mr. O'Boyneville's judgment.
Like that wretched wife in Kotzebue's tragedy, Lady Cecil could not
fail to remember the occasion on which each gift had been presented.
The emerald-and-diamond bracelet on her birthday; the cameos in
Etruscan setting on the anniversary of her marriage; the suite of
turquoise rings and bracelets in solid bands of lustreless gold,
bestowed upon her in commemoration of some professional triumph of Mr.
O'Boyneville's, as grand in its way as Erskine's defence of Hardy. The
thought of her husband's quiet pleasure in these offerings came back to
her as she touched them.
"I think he must have loved me then," she murmured, as she remembered
the evening on which he had taken the case of cameos from his pocket
to lay it on the little table by which she sat at work. He had loved
her a little at that time, she thought! he had loved her a little when
he sought her as his wife; but always with that moderate and negative
affection for which alone there is room in the breast of a man who
devotes himself to an arduous profession. It had not been given to
Cecil to understand the possibility of hidden fires burning steadily
beneath the dull outward crust of the working man's nature. She did
not know the capacity for deep and passionate feeling which may exist
in the nature of a man whose daily labour leaves him no leisure for
the revelation of the better and brighter part of his mind. She had
expected to find a husband only an improved edition of a lover; and
finding him something altogether different--a creature who accepted her
affection as a matter of course, and was disagreeably candid on the
subject of an unbecoming bonnet,--she concluded all at once that she
was no longer beloved, and that her life was desolate.
The dismal dinner-hour had arrived by the time she had collected the
trinkets in her jewel-case, and had packed two or three dresses and her
most indispensable possessions in the one trunk which she was to take
with her. She went to the dining-room, and made a miserable pretence
of dining, with the inestimable Pupkin in attendance, and the evening
sunlight shining into the dingy pictures on the wall opposite to her.
Every thing in Brunswick Square looked unspeakably dull and faded and
dusty after the splendour of Pevenshall. She thought of the moonlit
terrace, and the fair summer landscape sanctified by the night. The
very tones of Hector Gordon's passionate pleading came back to her
ears; but they moved her with no answering thrill of passion; her
love had perished in the misery which it had brought upon her. She
thought of that little village in Brittany which he had described to
her so eloquently; the rustic retreat in which they were to spend the
first few months of their union--oh God, what a union! A vague horror
was mingled even with the thought of that pine-clad mountain and the
purple sea. Her lover had dwelt so fondly on the beauty of the scene;
and yet, in Brunswick Square, with the summer sunshine coming to her
on a slanting column of dust, and with a street-organ droning in the
distance, she thought of that far-away paradise with a shudder. In
this crisis of her fate, she felt like a creature standing between two
lives--the dull slow river of commonplace existence; the stormy ocean
of passion and guilt. She looked backward to the river with a vague
yearning; she looked forward to the ocean with an unutterable fear.
The shadowy banquet occupied less than half an hour, and it was only
seven o'clock when Cecil went back to the drawing-room. Seven: he would
be with her soon! He too would have made his pretence of dining, no
doubt, at one of his clubs. The crisis in a well-bred man's fate must
be desperate indeed when he abandons that pretence of dining, or faces
the universe with a reckless toilet. Seven. The windows were open; the
canaries were making a discordant scraping with their beaks against
the wires of the cages, and noisy children were emerging from the
square. Cecil looked down at them from her window, and remembered the
stories she had heard of women who had run away from such households
as those. She remembered one especial history,--the wretched story of
a woman who abandoned her husband and children under the influence of
an infatuation which remained an unsolvable mystery to the last. It
was from Brighton that the hapless creature took flight; and she told
one of the few friends who remained to her after that time, how at the
last, just as she had crossed the threshold of her husband's house,
she heard, or fancied that she heard, a cry from one of her children,
and would have gone back--would at that ultimate moment have repented
and returned--if a cruel wind had not closed the door in her face, and
set the seal upon her doom. She had not the courage to ring the bell.
She went away to keep her tryst with the man who had made himself her
master and to have her name a byword and reproach for ever after that
fatal day.
The wheels of an impetuous hansom ground against the curb-stone while
Lady Cecil stood at the window thinking of this dismal story; and her
lover alighted from the vehicle. He stopped to pay the driver--he
must have paid the driver even if he had been going to assist in the
execution of a murder--and the man drove away slowly through the smoky
summer gloaming, contented with his fare.
Cecil was still standing by the window when Pupkin announced Major
Gordon: she turned her head and waited for her lover; and even in that
moment of waiting, as he came towards her through the twilit room, she
thought how different would have been her greeting of him, if she had
been his wife--if she had had any right to be glad of his coming.
"My own darling!" said Hector, in a low tender voice.
She gave him her hand in silence, and he stood by her side in the
window, holding the poor cold hand, and looking down at her with
unutterable affection.
"My own dear girl, how pale you are in this dim light! I hope it is the
light, and that you are not really looking so ill as I fancy you look.
I have done every thing, dear. I have seen the lawyers, the bankers,
the stockbrokers, every body; and am free to go to the end of the
world,--to the very end of the world! look up, darling; let me see the
face I used to dream of on my way back to India, after our parting at
Fortinbras."
She lifted her head from its drooping attitude and looked at him with a
countenance in which there was a mournful resignation that sent a chill
to his heart.
"Oh my darling, if you could only look forward as happily to our future
as I do; I know that there is much for you to suffer--just at first;
but when once we are clear of England, and all the brightest countries
in the universe are before us, the miserable past will fade away like a
dream."
"Do you think so, Hector? Shall I ever forget--shall I ever forget?"
"Let it be considered my fault if you remember. I charge myself with
the happiness of your life. You cannot blame me too bitterly if you are
unhappy. And now, darling, let us discuss our plans for the last time.
I hope they won't bring us lights. It is so nice to sit in this dreamy
twilight. I shall always think tenderly of Brunswick Square, for the
sake of this one evening, Cecil."
They sat by the open window, and Hector talked about the future. He
talked about the future, which, by his showing, was to be one long
idyl; and while he talked, the woman who sat by his side would fain
have cast herself at his feet, crying:
"Release me from my guilty promise! Have pity upon me, and set me free!"
She would fain have done this, but she sat by his side and listened
quietly to hopeful words that jarred strangely with the dull anguish
which had possessed her all through the long wretched day.
They were still sitting in the summer dusk, when a firmer footstep than
Pupkin's sounded on the landing-place, and the door suddenly opened.
"Laurence!" cried Cecil, starting to her feet, as she recognised the
stalwart figure in the doorway.
It was indeed Mr. O'Boyneville, with the dust of travel upon him.
He took his wife in his arms and kissed her tenderly; and he gave
friendly greeting to Major Gordon, but he did not offer his hand to
that gentleman.
"Pupkin told me of your return," he said to Cecil; "what brought you
back so unexpectedly?"
It was some moments before Cecil answered, and even then she could not
reply without hesitation.
"I was so tired of Pevenshall."
"Tired of Pevenshall! I thought you were enjoying yourself so much
there. Well, dear, you were quite right to come back if you were tired.
Let us have the lights, and some tea."
The barrister went to the fireplace to ring one of the bells. He
happened to choose the bell nearest that angle of the chimneypiece on
which Cecil had placed two sealed envelopes addressed to her husband.
One contained the letter announcing her flight; the other the key of
her jewel-case and wardrobe. Mr. O'Boyneville's piercing gaze alighted
on these letters as he rang the bell.
"For me?" he asked, advancing his hand towards the two packets.
"No!" Cecil cried eagerly; "they are mine."
She snatched them from the mantelpiece and put them in her pocket, and
then she seated herself by the table on which she was wont to make tea.
Mr. O'Boyneville walked slowly up and down the room. Major Gordon kept
his place by the open window. Nothing could be more inconvenient than
this unlooked-for return of the barrister, which in all probability
would interfere with the arrangements of the next day. The Major felt
all the degradation of his position, but was determined to hold his
ground nevertheless. The barrister would most likely retire to his
study directly after tea, and thereby afford Hector the opportunity of
speaking to Cecil before he left. There was an unspeakable dreariness,
a palpable desolation in that Bloomsbury drawing-room, which oppressed
Hector Gordon as he stood by the window, looking sometimes out into
the square where the lamps burned dimly in the grey evening light,
sometimes into the dusky room, where the barrister's figure loomed
large athwart the shadows. Cecil sat in a listless attitude, waiting to
perform that simple house-hold duty which must seem such a mockery to
her to-night. The lamps came presently, and the big plated tea-tray and
old-fashioned urn, with impossible lion-heads holding rings in their
mouths. The light of the lamps was painfully dazzling to her aching
eyes. She began to pour out the tea mechanically, and the two men came
to the table to take their cups from her hands. As they stood side by
side doing this, the thought arose in her mind of that one treason
which stands alone amongst all the treasons of mankind; and the figure
of her lover bending over the cups and saucers blended itself horribly
with the image of Judas Iscariot dipping his hand into the dish.
Mr. O'Boyneville drank his tea after his usual absent-minded fashion,
staring into space as he slowly sipped the beverage. He rose after
emptying his second cup and began to pace the room again, while Hector
sat near the lamp-lit table watching Cecil with anxious earnest eyes.
"You scarcely expected me to-night, I suppose, Cecil?" said the
barrister.
"No; I did not expect you."
"I didn't think I should return so soon; but the business I am involved
in just now is a very serious one."
"Indeed!"
She spoke mechanically, feeling herself called upon to speak. Hector
did not even affect any interest in Mr. O'Boyneville's conversation. A
kind of sullenness had taken possession of him since the barrister's
entrance; and he kept his place silently with a dogged determination to
remain, knowing all the time that he had no right to be there, and that
Cecil's husband had good reason to wonder at his presence.
"Yes; it is a very unpleasant business--a painful business. Of course I
have only to consider the technicalities involved in it. I am consulted
on a question that has arisen respecting a marriage-settlement; but
when people want a counsel's opinion, they are obliged to tell him
other things besides technicalities. I am very sorry for the poor
woman."
"What poor woman?" asked Cecil; still because she felt herself obliged
to appear interested.
"The poor deluded creature who has left her husband."
If a thunderbolt had fallen through the roof of Mr. O'Boyneville's
house, Cecil could scarcely have experienced a greater shock; but she
gave no utterance to her feelings. She sat pale and motionless, like
some unhappy wretch at a bar of justice waiting the awful sentence.
"Ah, I forgot," said the barrister; "you don't know the story. As I
said just now, it's not a pleasant story, and perhaps I ought not to
talk to you about it; but I can't get it out of my head. And yet it's
common enough, Heaven knows; only it seems a little worse in this case
than usual, for the husband and wife had lived so happily together."
"Why did she leave him?"
This time it seemed to Cecil as if some unknown force within her
compelled the question, so painful was the nature of her husband's
conversation, so unwilling would she have been to continue it had she
possessed the power of bringing it to an end.
"Why did she leave him?" repeated the barrister. "Who can tell? There
are women in Bethlehem Hospital who believe themselves to be queens of
England, and there are miserable creatures in the same asylum who have
murdered families of helpless children in sudden paroxysms of madness;
but not one amongst them all could seem to me more utterly mad than
this woman."
"You know the husband?" said Hector Gordon. He had risen during the
barrister's discourse and was standing by the mantelpiece. He felt
himself in a manner called upon to take some part in this discussion,
and to defend the sinners if necessary.
"Yes; I know the husband."
"Was he so devoted to his wife?"
"I am not quite sure of your idea of devotion. You see, you are a
club-man, Major Gordon; you belong to the West-end and to a set of
men who can afford to be what you call 'devoted.' I don't suppose you
could realise the idea of a stockbroker's affection for his wife. Your
City-man has very little opportunity for playing the ideal lover or
the ideal husband. His wife's image may be with him even on 'Change.
The details of his business are dry and dull and sordid in the eyes
of other people; but he may be working for his wife all the time, and
his existence may be more completely consecrated to her welfare and to
her happiness than if he dawdled by her side all day on the margin of
some romantic Italian lake, and only opened his lips to protest the
singleness of his affection. Yes, Major Gordon, the City-man's devotion
is the nobler; for it takes the form of unremitting toil and unending
care, while the dawdler's love is only a shallow pretext for a sensuous
laziness amidst beautiful scenery."
"I confess myself sceptical on the subject of your stockbroking
Romeo," said Hector with a sneer. "With that sort of man a wife is
only a superior kind of housekeeper. I don't believe in the poetry of
Bartholomew Lane. Your City-man works hard because money-making is his
habit, his vice, like dram-drinking; not because he wants to make a
fortune for his wife and children."
"You think so?"
"Most assuredly I think so."
"And you do not believe that your hard-working man has his own bright
picture of an ideal home always before his mind? I don't think you
can have studied the habits of Englishmen, Major Gordon, or you
would understand the City-man better. Look about you, and behold the
incarnation of English prosperity in the Englishman's home. It is
for that he works. It is in order to achieve that luxurious haven
that he wastes the best years of his life in the smoke and dust and
heat and turmoil of the commercial battle-ground. And what does his
home represent, with all its splendour of pictures and furniture,
and gardens and stables, but his devotion to his wife and children?
Build what palace he may, his clubs will give him better rooms
than he can build for himself. Whatever salary he pays his cook,
there will be better cooks at the Reform or the London Tavern. But
the hard-working Englishman wants a home; a dining-room in which
his children may gather around him as he sips his famous claret; a
drawing-room where, amidst all the splendour, there will be a corner
for his wife's workbasket, a hiding-place for his baby's last new
toy. And you eloquent drones of the West-end see this poor working
bee--this dust-begrimed money-grub--and you say such a creature cannot
know what it is to love his wife; and if the wife happens to be a
pretty woman, you have neither pity nor respect for the husband. Poor,
miserable, money-earning machine, what is he that he should be pitied
or respected? It can be no sin to bring ruin and desolation upon such a
creature's home."
"You are eloquent to-night, Mr. O'Boyneville."
"Oh, you know it is my trade to be eloquent about other people's
business. I really do feel for this poor man. I have been in his house
to-day: such a house--I could have fancied there had been a funeral,
and that the coffin had only just been taken away; there was such
palpable desolation in the place."
"And the husband," asked Cecil, with real interest this time, "was he
sorry?"
"Sorry! Can you fancy the sorrow for a loss which is so much worse than
death that it would be happiness to the mourner it he could awake from
a dream to find his wife's coffin by his side? Sorry! Do you know what
a broken life is? I do, Cecil. There are three lives ruined and broken
by a woman's folly."
"Let the man who loves her bear the full burden of his guilt," said
Hector eagerly. "Let him be responsible for the issue."
"God help him, poor creature!" cried the barrister.
"You pity him?"
"How can I help pitying him? You read of such a case in the papers, and
think perhaps that the seducer is a very fine fellow. He has persuaded
a silly woman to make her name a public disgrace, and he has destroyed
an honest man's existence. All that sounds very heroic. People wonder
what diabolical charm the villain possessed. There are piquant
paragraphs about him in the papers: a social leader holding him up to
the execration of the million, but with a little flourish of poetry and
passion for his glorification notwithstanding; and if his photograph
could be published while his misdeeds had the gloss of novelty upon
them, it would sell by thousands. But have you ever thought about the
lives of these people after the nine-days' wonder is over, and they
slip out of the public mind? Then comes the chastisement: then comes
the old classic retribution: evil for evil, evil for evil. The man who
did not scruple to destroy the entire scheme of another man's existence
finds his own life wasted and broken. What is the universe for him
henceforward?--a solitude, with the one wretched creature whom he has
chosen for his companion."
"There can be no such thing as solitude with the woman he loves."
"The man who outrages honour and defies society will find his home
something worse than a solitude--a prison, in which two galley-slaves
pace to and fro, dragging at the hateful chain that links them
together. Let the seducer love his victim never so fondly, the time
too surely comes in which he learns to hate her. The time comes
when the voice of a forgotten ambition reminds him how much he has
sacrificed--for what? for the pale face of a penitent, whose wan eyes
are filled with involuntary tears at the sight of the humblest peasant
woman walking by her husband's side."
"A man must be a dastard who could count any sacrifice made for the
woman he loves," said the Major.
"The man who steals another man's wife is a dastard," answered Mr.
O'Boyneville. "Sooner or later he will count the cost of his folly; and
the woman who has staked her salvation against the love of this one
creature will awake some day to find that the game is lost. She will
see the reflection of her own remorse in her lover's face, blended with
something worse than remorse. She will watch his dreary, purposeless
life, spent in a foreign country, under a false name most likely; and
she will think what he might have been but for her. Heaven help her!
She must have a servile love of life for its own sake if she does not
creep quietly from the house some dusky evening to drown herself in
the nearest river. Nothing but her death can set her lover free; and
even her death cannot extinguish the disgrace she has inflicted on her
husband's name."
A half-stifled sob sounded through the room as the barrister came to
a full stop. He went to his wife and found her crying, with her hands
clasped before her face.
"Forgive me, my dear," he said gently; "I forgot that this sort of
story was not the thing to speak of before you. I let myself talk as
if I were in court.--Why are you going away, Major? my wife will be
better presently. We won't say any thing more about these miserable
runaways.--Look up, Cecil. There, you are all right now.--Must you
really go?"
This question was addressed to Hector, who had taken up his hat, and
was waiting to make his adieux.
"Yes; it is ten o'clock. I will call upon Lady Cecil to-morrow. I--I
have something particular to say to her."
"Then I'm afraid that you must defer the something particular for a
week or two. I'm going to take my wife to Devonshire by an early train
to-morrow. Good-night; but I'm coming down to my study, so I can let
you out myself."
"Good-night, Lady Cecil."
"Good-night."
The words were scarcely audible. She rose as she gave him her hand,
and they stood for a few moments face to face, while Mr. O'Boyneville
walked towards the door; Hector mutely imploring some sign, Cecil
looking at him with a blank stupefied expression. To leave her thus,
and on such a night--the night which was to have been the eve of a
new life--was unspeakable anguish. But he had no alternative; the
barrister's eye was upon him; and a word, a look might have betrayed
the woman he loved. He had no opportunity to ascertain whether
to-morrow's appointment at the railway-station was to be kept, or
whether Mr. O'Boyneville's return was to hinder Cecil's flight. He
could only take his departure after the fashion of the most commonplace
visitor, and must trust all to-morrow's schemes and to-morrow's hopes
to the chapter of accidents.
"Good-night, Lady Cecil," he repeated; and he tried to put as much
meaning into those two words as can be infused into any two syllables
of the English language.
Mr. O'Boyneville conducted his guest to the street door, and lingered
on the threshold with him a few moments talking pleasantly.
"You really think of going to the West of England to-morrow?" asked
the Major. There is no such thing as honour when a man is engaged in
a dishonourable cause; and not being able to talk to the wife, Hector
Gordon was fain to extract the information he required from the husband.
"Yes," answered Mr. O'Boyneville; "I have business in that part of the
country; and as my wife is not looking well, I shall take her with me.
A week or two at Clovelly, or some sea-coast village will set her up."
"Shall you start early?"
"Yes; by the eight-o'clock train."
Half-past eight was the hour for the Dover mail, and at a quarter-past
Cecil and Hector were to have met at the station. All had been planned
by the Major. She was to have told her servants that she was going
into Hampshire to join her aunt, and was to have ordered a hack-cab to
take her to the station. All had been thought of; but now delay was
inevitable, and Hector had a presentiment that in this case delay meant
the ruin of his hopes. He bade good-night to the barrister, and went
away from the quiet Bloomsbury quarter with a heavy heart.
Mr. O'Boyneville smiled as he closed the door upon the departing
visitor. "Thank God it's all over so quietly!" he muttered to himself.
"It was best to take matters coolly. It would always have been open to
me to blow his brains out."
The barrister did not go to his study: he went back to the
drawing-room, where he found his wife lying prostrate on the spot
where Hector Gordon had bade her adieu. He lifted her in his arms, and
carried her up stairs as easily as if she had been an infant.
He rang for one of the maids to attend on his unconscious wife; but
before doing so, and before making any effort to restore Cecil from
her fainting fit, he deliberately picked her pocket of the two letters
which she had taken from the mantelpiece. Rapid as her movement had
been when she took possession of these two packets, the barrister's
piercing glances had discovered that they were addressed to himself.
"It's better that I should have them than any one else," he said, as he
transferred the letters to his own pocket.
He left Cecil in the care of the housemaid, and sent for a medical
man who had occasionally attended his wife. All that night he sat by
Cecil's bed-side, and through the greater part of the next day he still
kept his post. There was no journey to Devonshire; and Hector Gordon,
calling day by day in Brunswick Square, with a desperate defiance of
appearances, was apt to find a doctor's brougham standing at the door,
and for some time received an invariable answer from Pupkin--"Lady
Cecil O'Boyneville was still very ill."
It was a long wearisome illness; a low fever, with frequent delirium,
and a most terrible languor of mind and body. But slow and wearisome
as the malady was in its nature, Laurence O'Boyneville knew no such
thing as fatigue. He nursed his wife as tenderly as ever mother nursed
her fading child; snatching his broken sleep or his hasty meal how and
where he could, and carrying a bag full of briefs for the coming term
to the sick chamber, there to read and ponder in the dead of the night,
with ears always on the alert for the faintest variation in the low
breathing of the beloved sleeper, and with his watch open before him
to mark the hour when medicines were to be administered. The hired
nurse who performed the commoner duties of the sick chamber, snored
peacefully in Cecil's dressing-room during the dismal night-watch, and
was loud in her praises of the husband's devotion,--"which if there was
more like him, our dooties wouldn't be that wearin' as they are, and
there'd be less complaints of givin' way to stimilants; and gentlemen
which should be above blackenin' a pore woman's character would have no
call to throw their Sairy Gampses and Betsy Prigses in a lone female's
face," said this member of the Gamp species.
CHAPTER XXXII.
BY THE SEA.
Psyche and the Zephyrs waited the last touches of the master's hand;
but William Crawford painted no more. The eminent oculist would not
give him any decided opinion as to the ultimate restoration of his
sight.
"We must wait," he said; "you must give me time."
The painter obeyed his medical adviser implicitly; and after pursuing
a certain course of treatment for a certain time, he went with his
servant Dimond to a little sea-coast village in Dorsetshire,--still
in accordance with the oculist's advice. Change of air,--change to a
better and purer air than the atmosphere of Kensington, could do no
harm, said the oculist, and might possibly effect some good.
William Crawford begged the oculist to select for him the loneliest
and quietest spot he knew of; and to that spot he went, travelling by
a night train, with a green shade over his poor useless eyes, and the
factotum who had served him since the beginning of his prosperity for
his sole companion and attendant.
As yet he had told his dismal secret to no one but the oculist and
the man-servant. Friends and acquaintances called at the Fountains,
and were told that Mr. Crawford was ill. Was it any thing serious? Oh
no,--nothing serious; he had over worked himself,--that was all. The
painter could not bring himself to reveal his sorrow even to his best
friend; he could not bring himself to confess that his career had come
to an end--that a living death had fallen upon him in the zenith of his
fame. All through the long, dark, empty days,--the perpetual night of
his existence,--he brooded upon his trouble; never any more to behold
the beauty of the universe; never again to be the mortal creator of
immortal loveliness. There are no words which can describe his despair
when he thought that his career had ended,--that his hand would never
again wield a brush, his eyes never more be dazzled by the splendour of
his own colour.
He prayed night and day; but he could not bring himself to repeat the
inspired words which had formed his nightly and daily supplication
before the hour of his calamity. He could not say, "Thy will be done."
He cried again and again, "Oh Lord, restore my sight--restore my sight!"
He thought of other men on whom the same calamity had fallen; but on
those men it had fallen so lightly. Milton's grandest thoughts found
their expression after the outer universe had become a blank to him.
Beethoven achieved that which was almost a triumph over the impossible
when his genius survived the loss of his hearing; but oh, what anguish
the musician must have endured when his fingers wove those divine
harmonies which he was never to hear! For the sightless painter what
hope remained? Henceforward there could be no light upon William
Crawford's pathway but the pale radiance of past glories.
While his misfortune was yet new to him, the painter gave way to utter
despair: he complained to no one--he demanded no mortal pity; but hour
after hour, day after day, he sat in the same attitude--dead in life.
He knew that he had many friends who would have been inexpressibly glad
to give him comfort in these bitter days; friends who would have done
their best to cheer his desolation with pleasant talk, grave reading,
music, poetry, the stirring news of the outer world, the airy gossip of
coteries. He could not bring himself to accept such consolation yet.
The very thought of friendly companionship made him shudder.
"I shall never paint any more," he cried; "I shall never paint any
more. The young men would talk and think of me as they talk and think
of the dead. They would be kind, and pity me; but I don't want their
pity. I want to show them that I have not emptied my sack, and that
there is progress for me yet."
One day the painter groped his way to the easel on which the Psyche
still stood, shrouded with dismal drapery. He plucked the veil from his
divinity, and passed his tremulous hands over the canvas. They were
hands as yet unused to groping in the dark, and he had none of the
subtle delicacy of the blind man's touch; but when he came to patches
of solid colour here and there, he fancied he recognised familiar
portions of his work.
"My Psyche's hair," he murmured; "I can feel the undulating touches of
the brush; and here are her shoulders, the rounded pearly shoulders.
Yes, yes, I remember; there was a thought too much of the palette-knife
hereabouts."
He laid his face against the canvas presently, and some of the
bitterest tears that ever fell from manly eyes dropped slowly on the
picture which he could not see.
He was very glad to leave his own house and to escape from the
inquiries of anxious friends and acquaintance. He had a nervous dread
of any revelation of his calamity.
"Would _she_ be sorry for me?" he thought; for even in this dark
hour of his life his fancy took a forbidden flight now and then, and
hovered about the lady of the Hermitage. "Would she be sorry? No; she
would only be interested in me as a new kind of lion. She would come
and beseech me to show myself at her parties. She would pet me, and
exhibit me to her friends as the blind painter--the last new thing in
drawing-room celebrities. No; I will not accept her pity--I will not
sink so low as that. I will go and hide myself in some quiet corner,
and let the world believe that I am dead, if it will."
Not even to his daughter had William Crawford confided his sorrow.
She was far away from him--at Pevenshall--surrounded by gaieties and
splendours; and what need had he to darken her young life with the
knowledge of his affliction? He dictated a letter to the factotum
Dimond, in which he informed Flo that he had hurt his hand, and was
for that reason unable to write himself, but that he was in excellent
health, and was on the point of starting for the seaside for a few
months' rest and quiet.
The sea-coast village chosen by the oculist was one of the
loneliest spots within the limits of civilisation. There was no
fear of any observant stranger recognising William Crawford in the
melancholy-looking gentleman who walked listlessly to and fro on the
sands, leaning on his servant's arm, and never looking to the right
or left. The little hamlet consisted of a cluster of fishermen's
cottages, a general shop, and a rude village inn, where the voices of
the fishermen might be heard sometimes after dark roaring the chorus
of some barbarous ditty. One of those speculative individuals who are
continually roaming the face of the earth, with a view to ruining
themselves and other people in the building-line, had discovered that
the air of Callesly Bay was the balmiest that ever restored healthful
roses to wan and faded cheeks, and had erected an hotel, which might
have had some chance of success at Brighton or Biarritz, but which was
about twenty times too large for the possible requirements of Callesly
Bay. Advertisements had appealed in vain to the British public.
The one sheep that leads the other sheep had not yet been tempted
to jump through this special gap in the hedge; and the Royal Phœnix
Hotel and Boarding-house, with every possible attraction for noblemen
and gentlemen, was a dreary failure. So much the better for William
Crawford. What did he care if the waiters were listless and the cooking
execrable? For the last four or five months of his life he had been in
the habit of eating without knowing what he ate; and just now the most
perfect achievement of culinary art would have been as dust and ashes
in his mouth.
Callesly Bay suited the painter. His servant informed him that, with
the exception of an invalid lady, who went out daily in a Bath-chair,
and a paralytic gentleman, who took the air at his bed-room window, he
was the only occupant of the great barrack-like hotel. This knowledge
brought a sense of tranquillity to the painter's mind. In this quiet
retreat he was safe. Here at least there were no prying eyes keeping
watch at his gate; no journalists, eager for information about
every body and every thing, and ready to dip their pens into their
ink-bottles to spread the tidings of the painter's calamity in less
than five minutes after those tidings reached their greedy ears.
Day after day, day after day, William Crawford paced the sand of the
bay upon his servant's arm, and felt the soft ocean-breezes on his
face. There is no calamity so terrible, no affliction so bitter, that
habit will not temper its anguish to the sufferer. Little by little,
sweet Christian resignation began to take the place of dogged Pagan
despair. The grief which had fallen upon him lost the first sharpness
of its sting. The past, with all its artistic pride and triumph,
drifted away from the present; until it seemed to the painter that his
blindness was an old familiar sorrow, and the days of his work and
ambition strange and remote. Sweet fancies began to visit him as he
walked slowly to and fro amid the scene of tranquil beauty which he
could imagine but not see, and the subtle sense of the painter melted
into the subtler sense of the poet. It is impossible for the mind of
such a man to remain barren. There is in such a soul a divine light
that cannot be extinguished. If the painter did not see that calm
English bay in all its glory of sunrise and sunset, he saw a fairer
bay, and a brighter sun going down behind enchanted waters. All the
splendours of dreamland unfolded themselves before those sightless
eyes. The peerless mistress of Praxiteles arose from a sunlit sea,
beautiful as when Apelles beheld in her the type of his goddess. The
shadows of the past grew into light in the blind painter's fancy. He
forgot himself and his own loss while thinking of fairer creations
than his own. The very breath of the ocean brought divine images to
his mind. It was not the coast of Dorsetshire which he trod: the sands
beneath his feet were the golden sands of fairyland; the sea whose
rolling waves made music in his ears was the sea that carried Æneas to
Dido, the fatal ocean that bore Telemachus to Calypso; the wave that
licked the white feet of Andromeda; the waste of waters on which a
deadly calm came down when Agamemnon launched his Troy-bound fleet, and
offended Diana visited the impious hunter with her wrath.
"If I ever live to paint again, I will do something better than Dido or
Psyche," said William Crawford; for as the deep gloom of his despair
vanished before the divine light of poetry, he felt a wondrous power
in his fettered hands; and brooding hour after hour on the pictures
which yet remained to be painted, it seemed to him as if new lights had
dawned upon him in the day of his darkness--lights that would abide
with him for the rest of his existence, and guide him in his future
work--if God were pleased to give him back his eyesight.
He had been at Callesly Bay for more than a month, and the
ocean-breezes were beginning to lose their balmy summer warmth. He
had grown accustomed to his affliction, perfectly resigned, very
tranquil. Day by day he took the same walks, picturing to himself the
changing beauties of the scene, and sometimes even questioning the
matter-of-fact Dimond as to appearances in the sea and sky. Within
the last two or three weeks he had begun to take some faint interest
in that outer world to which he had once belonged; and the factotum,
who read a little better than the majority of his class, beguiled the
evenings by the perusal of the newspapers, and sometimes even tried his
hand upon a pocket-edition of Shakespeare, borrowed from the landlord
of that splendid failure, the Royal Phœnix.
On one especially beautiful autumn afternoon the painter more keenly
than usual felt the want of some companion a little more refined--a
thought more sympathetic than Dimond the factotum.
He had paced the sands till he was tired, and had seated himself on a
low rock, on which it had been his habit to sit since his first coming
to that quiet shore. Sitting here, with the faithful Dimond by his
side, Mr. Crawford abandoned himself to the influence of the balmy
air. He knew that at such an hour and with such an atmosphere there
must be unspeakable beauty in the western sky--delicious gradations of
colour which he was never more to see; and he would fain have wrung
some translation of that unseen beauty from the prosaic lips of the
factotum.
"Is the sun low, Dimond?" he asked.
"Yes, Sir,--uncommon low. I never did see any thing like the sunsets in
these parts--they've got such a sudden way with them."
"I thought the sun was low. I can feel a light upon my face; there is a
light upon my face,--a red light, isn't there, Dimond?"
"Yes, Sir."
"And the sky? I'm sure the sky is very beautiful--isn't it, Dimond?"
"Well, yes, Sir; it's a very fine afternoon; but, if my corns don't
deceive me--asking your pardon for talking of 'em, Sir--there'll be
some rain before long," added the prosaic Dimond.
"Never mind your corns, Dimond," exclaimed the painter impatiently; "I
want you to tell me about the sky. I have always fancied one might do
something good with an Andromeda standing out in sharp relief against
an evening sky; with nothing but the rock, and the low line of purple
sea, and with one white sea-gull hovering on the edge of the water," he
soliloquised; while Dimond looked doubtfully to windward and pondered
on the prophetic shootings of his corns.
"Tell me about the sky!" cried Mr. Crawford; "a broad band of deep
rose-colour melting into amethyst; and then a pale transparent
opal--eh, Dimond?"
"I don't know about opal, Sir; but there's a bluish and greenish way
with it--something like that bad lumpy glass you see sometimes in
wash-house windows."
"Wash-house windows! Oh Dimond, go home and get me Shakespeare,--the
second volume of the tragedies,--and I'll give you a lesson in reading.
You shall read me the description of Cleopatra before we go back to
dinner."
The factotum obeyed, nothing loth to escape from that trying
cross-examination about the sky; and the painter sat alone by the sea,
listening to the low harmonies of the waves and pondering that possible
picture of Andromeda. He could fancy every curve of the beautiful
rounded form, sharply defined against a sombre background of rock; the
dark streaming hair; the white, lovely face faintly tinged with the
last rays of sunset; the sad despairing eyes looking seaward for the
monster. Andromeda's pale beauty filled the painter's mind. He heard
the dull moaning of the pitiless waves, the sighing of the night winds
amidst the victim's hair; he could almost fancy he heard the swooping
wings of the deliverer's steed; and thus beguiled by sounds that were
not, it is scarcely strange that he did not hear sounds that were,--the
silken rustling of a woman's dress, the soft fluttering of a woman's
shawl.
"I may dream of pictures; but I shall never paint again!" cried William
Crawford hopelessly.
A gentle hand was laid upon his arm as he spoke; and he awoke from that
vision of Andromeda to know that there was a living, breathing woman by
his side.
"Oh yes, you will paint again, Mr. Crawford. The trial is a bitter one;
but please God, it will not be enduring. Why did you leave me to find
out what had happened?"
"Mrs. Champernowne!"
"Yes; the woman whose friendship you rejected so cruelly last April,
and who comes now to offer it once more--on her knees, if you like.
I think one might almost venture to fall upon one's knees in this
delightfully lonely place."
"Mrs. Champernowne!"
"Call me Georgina," said the widow, in her lowest and most harmonious
accents. "I have come to offer you my friendship; and to-day friendship
means any thing you like. I have learnt to hate my own selfishness
since that day at Kensington. I have learnt to know that a woman cannot
live her own life; that the time will come sooner or later when the
presence of one dear companion will be necessary to her existence,
when the loss of one friend will take every charm from her life. I
have missed you so cruelly, William--so cruelly. You don't know what a
dreary season this summer just departed has been to me."
"My darling, can I believe--can I imagine----"
This waking dream,--the tender words sounding in his ears, the tender
hands clinging round his arm, seemed to the painter to constitute a far
wilder vision than any dream of Andromeda. And yet it was all a sweet
reality; the tender hands were warm with life, and sent a magnetic
thrill to the very core of his heart.
"My darling, do you want to make me mad? Oh, Georgina, your presence
here is like nothing but a dream. But if I wake presently to find that
you have been trifling with me, I shall die. The anguish of such a
disappointment would kill me."
"Do you know that you have behaved very badly to me?" said the widow.
"You must have known that I loved you. Remember how humbly I besought
your friendship: and you scorned me and sent me away, just because I
was not ready to renounce my precious liberty at a moment's notice for
your pleasure. I think you might have had patience with me a little
longer, Mr. Crawford. Rubens would never have had three wives, if he
had not shown a little more forbearance to womanly caprice. But I
forgive you that offence. What I cannot forgive is your cruelty in
letting me remain ignorant of this sorrow that has come upon you
lately. You ought to have known that the more uncertain and hard to
please a woman may be in a general way, the more fitted she is to play
the ministering angel on occasions. Yes, Mr. Crawford, it was very
cruel of you. All through the summer I have been thinking of you, and
wondering about you,--wondering what you were doing, wondering why
you did not relent and come to see me. It was only this morning that
I learned what had happened from a little gossiping paragraph in a
newspaper. I ordered my carriage, and drove straight to the Fountains,
where I _made_ the servants tell me your whereabouts."
"My darling, my angel! Are you laughing at me, Georgina; or may I
really call you by these dear names?"
"You may call me any thing you please, if you will call me your wife
by-and-by. Helen Vicary is with me. I only gave her twenty minutes'
notice about the journey. Do you know what I said to her?"
"No, indeed, dearest."
"I am going down to Dorsetshire, Helen, to ask Mr. Crawford to marry
me. Pack your things immediately, and be sure you put a white dress
in your trunk; for in all probability I shall want you to be my
bridesmaid."
"Mrs. Champernowne, this is pity! I will not accept such a sacrifice.
My calamity has fallen upon me by God's will, and I will bear it
bravely. I will not trade upon it in order to win from a woman's
generosity that which I could not obtain from her love."
"Was there ever such a provoking creature?" cried Mrs. Champernowne.
"Must I reiterate the confession of my folly? I did not know what I was
doing that day when I rejected your love. It was only afterwards, when
the days and weeks went by and I was obliged to endure my existence
without you--it was only then that I knew I had lost something without
which life was worthless to me. Am I to tell you again and again how
dearly I love you? I have loved you so long that I cannot tell you when
my love began. But it is possible that my humiliation comes too late.
You have learnt to forget me, or worse, perhaps you have learnt to love
some one else as you once loved me."
"To forget you--to love another woman after having known you--my
idol--my goddess! I love you to distraction. My only fear is that
compassion, generosity, self-abnegation----"
"Self-abnegation! You ought to know that I am the most selfish of
women. But here is your servant. Will you take my arm to go back to the
hotel? I have apartments in the same hotel, and poor Helen is waiting
for her dinner. Will you tell your servant to follow us, and trust
yourself to _me_, William?"
Would he? The sweet magnetic thrill went to the core of his heart
once more as Georgina Champernowne slipped her wrist under his arm.
How gently she guided his footsteps! How easy the walk was to him by
her side! He was no longer blind. He possessed something better than
eyesight, in the protection of the woman he loved.
Before the month was out, there was a quiet wedding in Callesly Bay;
and the letter which gently broke to Florence the tidings of her
father's affliction was no ill-spelt missive from the factotum, but an
affectionate feminine epistle, signed "Georgina Crawford," and written
when the painter and his wife were on the eve of a journey to Italy.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A COMMERCIAL EARTHQUAKE.
The autumn wore away, and the Pevenshall coverts afforded sport for
a succession of visitors. This second autumn of Mr. Lobyer's married
life was very much like the first. The only change worthy of record was
the fact that day by day Flo saw less of her husband, and more of Sir
Nugent Evershed. Howden Park was so near the millionaire's handsome
dwelling-place, and Sir Nugent was such a popular person, that it was
scarcely strange if the young mistress of Pevenshall deferred to him in
all her arrangements, and considered no dinner-party complete without
his presence. If Mrs. Lobyer had elected the elegant young baronet as
her chief friend and adviser, there was no one to gainsay her election.
Vague murmurs and piquant little whispers might circulate freely within
a given radius of Pevenshall; but Florence was, of course, the last
person likely to hear the little whispers, and not by any means a
person to be warned or affrighted by the first breath of scandal if it
had reached her.
Cecil was ill in London; Mr. Crawford was loitering on a sweet
honeymoon ramble in the fairest pathways of Italy; and Mr. Lobyer was
absorbed in gloomy watchfulness of the money-market and the cotton
trade, on the horizon of which prosaic world a great cloud had been
gathering during the last few months. There had been awful crashes in
the commercial world: thunderbolts falling suddenly in the fairest
places. Mr. Lobyer and his Manchester friends held solemn conclave in
the millionaire's snuggery, and discoursed of the failures amongst the
mighty with grave ominous faces, but with a certain unction and relish
nevertheless.
Florence did not even pretend to be interested in the commercial crisis
or the commercial earthquakes. "Every body in our way is being ruined,
I understand," she said gaily to her intimates at the breakfast-table.
"Grey shirtings are obstinately bent on being dull, and those foolish
people in America are putting us to all sorts of inconvenience; and
every body who sells cotton is going to be ruined--at least, that's
what I gather from the gloomy tenor of Mr. Lobyer's conversation. But
that sort of thing is a monomania with very rich people, is it not?
The more billions a man possesses, the more obstinately he broods upon
the idea that he must ultimately die in a workhouse. I have heard of
men with billions cutting their throats under the influence of that
idea about the workhouse. But seriously I do hope that we shall not be
ruined. It would be so dreadful to have one's carpets hung out of the
up stair windows, and dirty men making inventories of one's china."
Thus discoursed Mrs. Lobyer in her gayest and most delightful manner,
to the extreme amusement of her chosen friends, to whom the cabala of
the cotton-trade was as dark a mystery as to herself. But there were
one or two grave business men seated at that sumptuous breakfast-table
to whom Mrs. Lobyer's frivolous talk seemed like the twittering of some
innocent bird, which is premonitory of a tempest.
The painter's daughter went her own way, and there was no friendly hand
to stay her progress on that dangerous path which a woman is apt to
take when she wanders at her own sweet will. She was not happy. Already
the glories and splendours of her life were beginning to grow flat
and stale. She had sold herself for a price, and the price had been
freely paid to her; but of late she had begun to wonder whether the
barter of womanly pride and maidenly purity had been made on the most
profitable terms within the possibilities of the matrimonial market.
Pevenshall Place was a most lordly mansion; but it seemed a poor thing
to be mistress of a parvenu's dwelling-place, when in the remote depths
of her inner consciousness lurked the conviction that she might have
reigned in the quaint old tapestried chambers of Howden, and held her
place among the magnates of the land, by the indisputable right of
rank, instead of the half-contemptuous sufferance accorded to money.
She was not happy; that faculty for womanly tenderness and devotion
which constitutes woman's highest charm and most perilous weakness had
not yet been awakened in this young wife's heart. Sir Nugent Evershed's
companionship was very agreeable to her; his devotion was the most
delicious food supplied to that all-devouring monster, feminine
vanity. But no pulse in Florence Lobyer's heart beat the quicker for
the baronet's coming; no blank place in her life bore witness to his
absence when he left her. She liked him; and she bitterly regretted
not having met him in the days when she was Florence Crawford. But if
there was indeed one tender spot in her heart, one remnant of girlish
romance still lingering in her breast, it was not this elegant baronet,
but a dark-eyed, bearded young painter, whose image was enshrined
in that one sacred corner of the worldly soul. Sitting alone in her
room, Mrs. Lobyer was apt to look pensively at Philip Foley's little
_chef-d'œuvre_, and to wonder about the painter as she looked.
"I dare say he is married by this time," she thought, "and has set up a
house for himself somewhere in that dreadful Islington. I can fancy his
wife one of those gigantic creatures whom vulgar men call fine women,"
mused Flo, as she lifted her eyes to the _duchesse_ glass in which her
slender little figure was reflected.
But if the one green spot in the arid waste of a worldly nature was
given to the landscape-painter, it was no less certain that Sir Nugent
Evershed's presence was eminently calculated to endanger the domestic
peace of Pevenshall. If his delicate consideration, his quiet homage,
his apparently unselfish devotion did not imperil Flo's position as
a wife, they had at least the effect of rendering her husband day by
day more hateful in her eyes. She had never liked him, but she had
married him with the honest intention of trying to like him; just as
some people go through their lives with the intention of learning the
German language or thorough bass. She had tried perhaps a little, but
had speedily given up the attempt in despair. And from the hour of her
rencontre with Miss de Raymond she had considered herself privileged to
dislike and despise the man whom she had married.
She had quarrelled with him for the first time in her life during the
last few weeks; and though the dispute had arisen out of some trifle
scarcely worthy of remembrance, it had not been the less bitter. Hard
words had been uttered on both sides; the hardest perhaps by the
impetuous Flo, who was apt to say even more than she meant when she
felt herself aggrieved and injured.
"Thank you very much for all the civil things you've said to me, Mrs.
Lobyer. I think I know _you_ pretty well after the charming candour
with which you have favoured me to-day but I don't think you quite know
_me_ yet. You are very young and very inexperienced, and you have a
lesson or two to learn before you are much older. I hope I may have
the satisfaction of teaching you one of those lessons."
This was Mr. Lobyer's parting-speech as he left his wife's apartment.
The vague threat occasioned Florence neither alarm nor anxiety. She
would have been ready to apologise to her husband, if he had given her
the opportunity of doing so; but any thing in the nature of a threat
was eminently calculated to steel her heart against the lord and master
whom at the best she had only tolerated.
After this domestic storm there came a deadly calm, during which the
husband and wife treated each other with frigid politeness; but little
by little the storm-cloud passed away from Flo's sunshiny nature, and
she drifted back into the good-humoured nonchalance of manner with
which she had been wont to accept Mr. Lobyer, and all other necessary
evils.
Of late Mr. Lobyer had been, if possible, even less agreeable than
usual. A dense gloom had come down upon him; and systematically as
his guests were wont to ignore his presence, there were times when he
brought a chilling influence into the brilliantly-lighted drawing-room,
as of a man newly arrived from some frozen region, and bearing the
icy blasts of that region in the folds of his garments. Flo made one
or two feeble attempts to penetrate this gloom--merely as a matter
of duty--but found herself rudely repulsed. So she concluded that
the monomania which is the peculiar chastisement of millionaires had
attacked her husband, and that his gloomy musings were darkened by
the shadow of a workhouse. After having come to this conclusion, she
troubled herself with no further anxiety on a subject which was foreign
to the usual current of her thoughts. Mr. Lobyer went his way, and
his wife went hers; and that delightful calm which generally reigns
in households where husband and wife are utterly indifferent to each
other reigned for a while at Pevenshall, and might have continued,
if a most insignificant event had not occurred to cloud the serene
horizon. The insignificant event was the resignation of one of those
superb creatures the matched footmen. How the calamity arose Mrs.
Lobyer was unable fully to ascertain; but it appeared that the master
of Pevenshall had expressed himself to the superb creature in language
which such a creature, knowing his own value, could not and would not
brook from any master living. The footman had immediately tendered his
resignation, had received his salary and departed, leaving his brother
lackey in lonely grandeur, and as much deteriorated in value as a
Sèvres vase which has lost its companion vase.
Flo did not hear of her loss till the man had left Pevenshall. On
receiving the dismal tidings she abandoned herself for the moment to
despair.
"They were so exactly the same height," she cried piteously, "and the
same breadth across the shoulders. One might get two men the same
height easily enough, I dare say; but what is the use of that, if one
man is a lifeguardsman and the other a thread paper? And now Jones is
gone Tomkins is positively useless, unless I can match him. Oh Sir
Nugent, you really must assist me to find a decent match for Tomkins."
"Nonsense!" said Mr. Lobyer; "I'll have no more of your matched
footmen; fellows who are as insolent on the strength of their legs as
your _primi tenori_ on the strength of their voices. I know a man who
can take Jones's place at a minute's notice."
"But will he match?" exclaimed the despairing Flo; "that is the
question--will he match Tomkins?"
"I don't know, and I don't care," answered Mr. Lobyer coolly. "He'll
suit me, and that's enough."
Florence opened her eyes to their widest extent, and remained for
some moments staring fixedly at her husband, as in a trance. Brutal
though the man was by nature, he had chosen heretofore to let his wife
exercise unquestioned authority in all household arrangements; and that
he should interfere with her now, that he should come between her and
those sacred symbols of her state, the matched footmen, was something
more than she could understand.
For a moment her breath seemed to fail her; but she recovered herself
presently, and replied with fitting dignity.
"You may engage what servants you please, Mr. Lobyer; but I decline to
be waited upon by any one who does not match Tomkins."
After which Mrs. Lobyer summoned the housekeeper, and requested that
functionary to make arrangements for the earliest possible filling-up
of the hiatus in the servants'-hall; and having so far asserted her
position, Flo resumed the occupation of the moment, and dismissed the
subject of the twin lackeys from her thoughts.
At dinner, however, she was reminded of her bereavement by the
appearance of a stumpy, pale-faced man, in a livery which was a great
deal too large for him; but who moved about amongst the other servants
with a quiet self-possession and a noiseless footfall which spoke well
for his past training.
She saw no more of this man till the following day, when he came into
the morning-room, where she happened to be for a few minutes alone with
Sir Nugent, trying a new song which he had brought her. The strange
footman came into the room to remove some flowers from a _jardinière_
in one of the windows. Flo turned round from the piano to see what he
was doing.
"Who told you to move those geraniums?" she asked.
"One of the gardeners sent for them, Ma'am."
The man performed his duty noiselessly, and retired.
"I don't like that man!" exclaimed the baronet, as the door closed on
Mr. Lobyer's _protégé_.
"He seems a very good servant; but he doesn't match Tomkins," sighed
Flo.
"He does his work quietly enough," answered Sir Nugent; "but he is not
_like_ a servant."
"How do you mean?"
"There's something in his manner that I don't like; a watchfulness--a
stealthy, underhand kind of manner."
"Is there? I haven't noticed it. He might be as stealthy as an assassin
in an Italian opera--so far as I am concerned--if he only matched
Tomkins."
After this Mrs. Lobyer took no further notice of the servant who had
been hired by her husband in place of the splendid Jones. She submitted
to his presence very patiently, relying on the ultimate success of
her housekeeper's researches amongst magnificent creatures of the
Tomkins stamp. But Sir Nugent Evershed--who had no right to take
objection to any arrangement in the house at which he was so constant a
visitor--could not refrain from expressing his dislike to the strange
footman; while that individual, by some fatality, seemed always to be
on duty during the baronet's visits.
"I think you must have a mystical attraction for the man, as strong in
its way as your antipathy to him," said Flo; "for I very seldom see him
except when you are here. Really the prejudice is so absurd on your
part that I can't help laughing at you."
"I never could endure a sneak," answered Sir Nugent; "and that man is a
sneak. I will tell you something more than that, Mrs. Lobyer--he is not
a footman."
"Not a footman! What is he then? Surely not a gentleman in disguise!"
"Decidedly not; but he is no footman. There is an unmistakable stamp
upon a footman--a servants'-hall mark--which is not on that man."
Mr. Lobyer heard nothing of the baronet's objection to his _protégé_;
for Mr. Lobyer had absented himself from Pevenshall of late, and was
heard of now in Manchester, now in London, anon in Paris. There were
vacant chambers now in the luxurious mansion; for as her guests of
August and September dropped off, Mrs. Lobyer did not care to invite
fresh visitors without the concurrence of her husband. Even while going
her own way, she had always made some shadowy pretence of deferring
to his wishes; and he was in a manner necessary to her--a social lay
figure without which her drawing-room was incomplete. His spasmodic
departures to Manchester had not interfered with the arrangements of
the mansion; but now that he was absent day after day and week after
week, Mrs. Lobyer felt herself called upon to maintain a certain
sobriety in the household over which she presided.
Visitors who had been staying in the house dropped off; and no other
guests came to fill the vacant chambers. No invitations were issued
for dinner-parties or hunting-breakfasts in the millionaire's absence.
Major and Mrs. Henniker, and one inane young lady, were now the only
guests; and Florence would have found the spacious rooms very dreary if
it had not been for the perpetual droppings-in of Sir Nugent Evershed,
whose horses spent the best part of their existence between Howden and
Pevenshall.
He came perpetually. There was always some pretext for his
coming--some reason for his loitering when he came. He had turned
architect and philanthropist, and was intensely interested in these
schools and cottages which Flo was going to build; and the plans,
and specifications, and estimates for which were the subjects of
interminable discussion. Sometimes deaf Mrs. Henniker, sometimes the
inane young lady, played propriety during these long visits of the
baronet. Sometimes, but very rarely, Sir Nugent and Mrs. Lobyer sat
alone in the drawing-room or morning-room, or strolled up and down
the terrace on some fine autumnal morning, discussing the schools and
cottages.
It was upwards of a month since the new footman had replaced the
splendid Jones; and during the best part of the man's service Mr.
Lobyer had been absent from home. Flo's spirits drooped in the empty
house. She suffered acutely from that dismal reaction which is the
penalty that must be paid sooner or later by all who have tried to
create for themselves a spurious kind of happiness from perpetual
excitement. The long dreary evenings sorely tried Mrs. Lobyer's
patience. Mrs. Henniker's Berlin-wool work, the inane young lady's
performances on the piano, the Major's long stories of Indian warfare,
were all alike vanity and vexation to her; and she must have perished
for lack of some distraction, if it had not been for her schools and
cottages and Sir Nugent Evershed.
He came to Pevenshall one cold October afternoon, when Major Henniker
had driven his wife and the inane young lady to Chiverley on a
shopping expedition, leaving Florence alone in the drawing-room with a
very ponderous historical work newly arrived from the London librarian;
a work which the young matron set herself to read with a desperate
resolution.
"I really must improve my mind," she said; "my ideas of history have
never soared above Pinnock, and I have all sorts of old-fashioned
notions. I don't want any thing at Chiverley; so I shall stay at home
this afternoon, dear Mrs. Henniker, and devote myself to the Tudors. I
am going to read about that dear, good, high-principled Henry VIII.,
who has only been properly understood within the last few years."
When the pony-phaeton had started with her three guests, Mrs. Lobyer
ensconced herself in one of the most luxurious of the easy chairs and
opened her big volume in a very business-like manner. The day was cold
and windy, and fires burned cheerily at both ends of the spacious
apartment.
Perhaps no historical work has ever yet been written in which the first
half-dozen pages were not just a little dry. The grave historian has of
late years borrowed many hints from the novelist, but he has not yet
been bold enough to make a dash at his subject in _medias res_, and to
start his first chapter with "'_Ventre St. Gris_,' said the king, 'I
have heard enough of this matter, and will brook no further parley;
the man dies to-morrow!'" Nor has he yet deigned to wind himself
insidiously into his theme under cover of two travellers riding side by
side through the sunset.
Mrs. Lobyer was beginning to yawn piteously over a grave disquisition
upon the merits and demerits of feudalism and villeinage, when a
servant announced Sir Nugent Evershed.
"My dear Sir Nugent, this is kind of you," cried Flo, closing the big
volume with a sigh of relief: "I didn't expect to see you again for an
age after the dreary evening we gave you on Tuesday."
"I have never spent a dreary evening in this house," answered the
baronet, as he laid his hat and riding whip on a little table, and
seated himself in a low chair very near Flo's; "you ought to know that,
Mrs. Lobyer."
There was some shade of intention in his tone; but Florence Lobyer was
accustomed to that tone, and knew how to parry all such impalpable
attacks.
"Indeed, I do not know any thing of the kind," she said in her
liveliest manner; "I thought you might possibly be a little tired of
Major Henniker's Indian stories. You must have heard some of them
several times. But he certainly tells them well."
"I confess to being heartily tired of them notwithstanding. But the
attraction which brings me to Pevenshall, in spite of myself sometimes,
is not Major Henniker."
Flo gave that little look of innocent surprise which is always at the
command of a thorough-paced coquette.
"You have brought me some new idea for my cottages," she said, pointing
to a roll of paper in the baronet's hand.
"Yes; I have a friend in Oxfordshire who has built schools for his
poor, and I've brought you a sketch of his buildings."
After this there was a good deal of discussion about the merits of
Tudor architecture as opposed to the Swiss-cottage or Norman-tower
style of building. And then the baronet and Mrs. Lobyer began to talk
of other things; and by some subtle transition the conversation assumed
a more interesting and a more personal character; and Flo found herself
talking to Sir Nugent more confidentially than she had ever talked to
him before, in spite of their intimate acquaintance. They had been so
much together, and yet had been so rarely alone, that there had been
little opportunity for confidential converse between them. This October
afternoon, with the early dusk gathering in the room, and the fires
burning red and low, seemed the very occasion for friendly confidence.
Flo talked with her usual candour of her father, herself, her husband,
the empty frivolity of her life; and all at once she found that the
conversation had assumed a tone which every experienced coquette knows
to be dangerous. Sir Nugent was beginning to tell his companion how
terrible a sacrifice she had made in marrying Thomas Lobyer, and how
bitterly he above all other men mourned and deplored that sacrifice.
Even at this point Flo's liveliness did not desert her.
"Please don't call it a sacrifice, Sir Nugent; nothing annoys me so
much as for my friends to take that tone about me," she said. "I
married Mr. Lobyer with my eyes open, and I have no right to complain
of the bargain. He has given me every thing he ever promised to give
me."
"But can he give you the love you were created to inspire? No,
Florence; you know he cannot give you that. There is not a
field-labourer on this estate less able to comprehend you or less
worthy of your love than the man you call your husband."
Before Florence could reprimand her admirer's audacity he had pounced
on the little hand lying loosely on the cushion of her chair, and had
lifted it to his lips. As she drew it indignantly away from him, and
as he raised his head after bending over the little hand, he uttered
a sudden exclamation and started to his feet, looking across Mrs.
Lobyer's head at the great glass-doors of the palm-house, which opened
out of the drawing-room.
"I knew that man was a spy," he exclaimed, snatching his riding-whip
from the table.
"What man?" cried Flo, alarmed by the unwonted fierceness in Sir
Nugent's face.
"Mr. Lobyer's footman. He has been amusing himself by listening to our
conversation. I recognised his agreeable face flattened against one of
those glass-doors just this moment. Don't be frightened: there is not
the least occasion for alarm; but I must ascertain the meaning of this
man's insolence."
The baronet went into the palm-house, and closed the doors after him.
Flo followed him to the doors, but could follow him no farther; for she
found that he had bolted as well as closed them.
"Why did he do that?" she thought. "I hope he is not going to make any
_esclandre_. What does it matter if the man did listen? I dare say many
servants are fond of listening."
She looked through the doors, but it was very dark in the palm-house;
and if Sir Nugent and the footman were there she could not see them.
There were other glass-doors opening on to the terrace, and in all
probability the man had made his escape by that way.
"I hope Sir Nugent won't be so absurd as to follow him," thought Flo.
"He is getting very tiresome. I suppose he has been allowed to come
here too often. I shall have to be dignified and make a quarrel with
him."
She stood peering into the darkness for some time, but she could
neither hear nor see any thing in the palm-house. She went to one of
the windows and looked out upon the terrace, but she could see nothing
there; so she seated herself by the fire and waited very impatiently
for Sir Nugent's return.
She had been waiting more than half an hour when he came back through
the palm-house.
"Well;" she cried; "what does it all mean?"
"It means that the man is a private detective set to watch you by your
husband," answered Sir Nugent quietly. "I dare say a person in that
line of life gets a good many thrashings; but I don't think he can ever
have received a sounder drubbing than the one I have just given him."
"A detective, set to watch _me_!" echoed Flo, with an air of
stupefaction.
"Yes, Florence. I made the man acknowledge his calling, and name his
employer. If you doubt me, he shall repeat his confession for your
satisfaction. These sort of fellows think nothing of going over to the
enemy. I have made him anxious to serve me by the promise of handsome
payment; and I have made him afraid to disoblige me by the threat of
another thrashing. The proceeding is worthy of your husband, is it not?"
"But what does it mean?" cried Flo; "what in Heaven's name does it all
mean?"
"I am ashamed to tell you."
"But I insist on knowing."
"You insist?"
"I do."
"And you will not reproach me for any pain my revelation may cause you?"
"No, no."
"Then if you ask me what I really think of this detestable business,
I will tell you my thoughts in the plainest words. I think your
husband is a scoundrel, and that he has placed that wretched sneak in
this house in the hope that he might be able to trump up some flimsy
evidence against your truth and honour as his wife; evidence that would
serve Mr. Lobyer in the divorce-court."
"Evidence against _me_!--the divorce-court! Are you mad, Sir Nugent?"
"No, Florence; I am only telling you the naked truth in all its
hideousness. Forgive me if the truth is horrible to you. I wrung the
worst part of that truth out of the spy's throat just now, when I
caught him and grappled with him yonder. He spoke pretty plainly; for I
think he knew he had never had a nearer chance of being strangled than
he had at that moment. Mrs. Lobyer, your husband's conduct has been an
enigma to me from the first day in which we met in Switzerland; but
in the happiness I found in your society I was content to leave that
enigma unsolved. To-day, for the first time, I read the riddle. Thomas
Lobyer hated me as a boy; Thomas Lobyer hates me as a man. He has
chosen to cultivate my acquaintance down here because my acquaintance
happened to be useful to him amongst people with whom wealth does
not stand for every thing. He has made use of me, hating me while
he did so, and holding himself in readiness for the first chance of
vengeance. And now he thinks the chance is in his hand; and you are to
be sacrificed to the meanest spite that ever festered in the heart of a
villain."
"I don't understand," murmured Florence helplessly; "I don't
understand."
"It is difficult for a woman to understand such baseness. Your husband
has set his spy to watch you. He knows that you are good, and true,
and pure; but he knows something else besides that."
"What does he know?"
"He knows that I love you, Florence. Yes, the time has come in which
I must speak plainly: the time has come in which you must leave this
house, which is no longer a fitting shelter for you. Mr. Lobyer knows
that I love you,--has known as much, in all likelihood, for some time
past; but he has waited very patiently for his opportunity, and the
opportunity, as he thinks, has arrived. He has set his spy to watch us,
and no doubt the spy is by this time well up in his lesson."
"What lesson? What has the man to discover?" cried Flo indignantly.
"You must know, Sir Nugent Evershed, that if you had dared to speak to
me before to-day as you have spoken now, you would have been forbidden
this house."
The fragile little figure seemed to grow taller by two or three inches
as Mrs. Lobyer reproved her admirer. She felt as much outraged by his
audacity as if no spice of coquetry had ever tainted the purity of her
nature. She was just one of those women who may balance themselves for
ever upon the narrow boundary-wall between propriety and disgrace and
never run the smallest risk of toppling over on the wrong side.
"If this man is a spy, I have no fear of him," she exclaimed
resolutely. "Let him go back to his employer to tell of his wasted
labour."
"Such a man as that will not allow his labour to be wasted. Your
husband does not want to hear the truth: he is ready to accept
any falsehood that will serve his purpose; and that man is a
less-accomplished rogue than I take him for, if he cannot get enough
out of the tittle-tattle of the servants' hall to make a case for some
pettifogging lawyer; a case that will break down ignominiously perhaps,
but which will be strong enough to tarnish your name for ever and ever."
Florence looked at her lover with a colourless, bewildered face, in
which there was a brave expression of defiance nevertheless. Sir Nugent
Evershed was not a good man; and if Thomas Lobyer the parvenu had
basely plotted the disgrace and ruin of his young wife, Sir Nugent the
country gentleman was not above profiting by the _roturier's_ baseness.
He did not think there was any infamy in his conduct. He admired
Florence very much. He loved her as much as it was natural to him to
love any body except himself, and he felt most genuine indignation
against her husband. But he felt at the same time that this shameful
business came to pass very conveniently for him, as it was eminently
calculated to bring matters to a crisis; just as he was beginning to be
rather tired of a flirtation which had pursed its even tenor for the
last twelve months without giving him any firmer hold upon the heart of
the woman he loved.
The crisis had come; and he discovered all at once that he, the
accomplished courtier, the experienced Lovelace, had been very much
mistaken in his estimate of this pretty, frivolous, coquettish young
matron. He had expected to find Florence Lobyer utterly weak and
helpless in the hour of trial; and lo! to his surprise and confusion,
she turned upon him resolute and defiant as a heroine, and he felt his
eyelids droop under her fearless gaze.
"Why do you tell me this?" she asked. "If the tittle-tattle of the
servants'-hall can injure my good name, it is you who have brought that
injury upon me. If your visits here in my husband's absence have been
too frequent, the blame lies with you, who have had twice my experience
of the world, and should have protected me against my own imprudence.
I have trusted you as a gentleman and a man of honour, Sir Nugent
Evershed. Am I to think that you are neither?"
"Think nothing of me, except that I love you, Florence, and that I
am only anxious to protect you from a scoundrel. The presence of a
hired spy in this house, and the confession I wrung from the spy, are
sufficient evidence of a deep laid scheme. You must leave this house,
Florence."
"I must, must I?" Mrs. Lobyer repeated innocently; "but when, and how?"
"To-night," whispered the baronet; "and with me."
Flo made her lover a low curtsey. "I ought to be very much flattered
by your desire to burden yourself with me at the very moment when it
seems my husband is trying to get rid of me," she said; "but I have no
intention of leaving Pevenshall, Sir Nugent. If my husband has been
pleased to set a spy over my actions, it shall be my business to show
him that I am not afraid of spies. But it is a quarter to seven, and
I must run away to dress. Good-afternoon, and good-bye, Sir Nugent.
Perhaps, so long as the detective remains, and Mr. Lobyer stays away,
it will be just as well for you to discontinue your visits."
"As you please, Mrs. Lobyer," answered the baronet with a stately
sulkiness.
He retired from the apartment, and waited in the portico while his
horse was being brought round to him. He had known what it was to fail
in his character of a Lovelace before to-day; but he had never before
experienced a failure so ignominious and unexpected.
Flo tripped off to her room, smiling defiance upon insolent admirers
and private detectives; but when the door of her dressing-room was
closed behind her, and she found herself alone in that sacred chamber,
she buried her face in the pillows of a low sofa and burst into tears.
"What a miserable, empty, frivolous life it is!" she cried; "and what a
despicable creature I am!"
The private detective disappeared from Pevenshall after his encounter
with Sir Nugent Evershed. Flo made some inquiries about the man next
day, and was informed by her housekeeper that he had left in a most
mysterious manner without a word of warning.
"But I never liked the man, Ma'am," said the housekeeper; "there was
something underhand in his manner, and I always used to feel a cold
shivery sensation when he came near me."
* * * * *
Sir Nugent Evershed came no more to the splendid mansion on the hill;
and Mrs. Lobyer waited very quietly for whatever Fate had in store for
her. There was no sign of Mr. Lobyer; neither letter nor message to
announce his coming. The inane young lady returned to her relatives;
and Flo was fain to entreat her dear Major and Mrs. Henniker to remain
with her, lest she should be left quite alone in that spacious dwelling.
"I might send for my Aunt Jane," she thought, when she brooded upon her
position; "but I think a very little of Aunt Jane would be the death of
me just now."
A change came over the spirit of the young matron. She was no longer
the airy volatile creature who had wasted her days in skipping from
one amusement to another, in exchanging an extravagant toilette of the
morning for a more extravagant toilette of the afternoon. She undertook
a gigantic enterprise in the way of Berlin-wool work, and sat hour
after hour by her dear Mrs. Henniker's side, counting stitches and
picking up glittering beads on the point of her needle. She listened
with sublime patience to the Major's Indian Stories; and yet all this
time the traditionary fox was gnawing its way to her heart,--emblem of
all hidden care courageously endured.
She knew that a crisis in her life had come. She knew that there was
something ominous in Mr. Lobyer's long absence, his obstinate silence.
She remembered the foolish recklessness with which she had provoked
and defied scandal. Above all, she remembered Mr. Lobyer's vague
threat on the occasion of her one serious misunderstanding with him;
and connecting that threat with the spy's presence, and Sir Nugent
Evershed's positive assertions, Florence Lobyer saw herself menaced by
no small danger.
Her husband was a scoundrel; she had known that for a long time. False
to her from first to last himself, he was yet quite capable of wreaking
some terrible revenge upon her for the shadow of falsehood to him.
"I know that he can be pitiless," she thought; "I remember his face
that day after our quarrel; and I know that I have no mercy to expect
from him. I have not been a good wife, and I can scarcely wonder if he
wishes to get rid of me; but if he had loved me when he married me,
honestly and truly, as I believed that he did, I think I should have
done my duty."
Mrs. Lobyer waited very patiently for the unknown danger which she
dreaded from her husband's vengeance; but the days and weeks drifted
by, and no prophetic cloud darkened the quiet horizon. This dull period
of suspense was the most painful ordeal she had ever been called upon
to endure in all her thoughtless life; and it is to be recorded to her
credit that she endured it bravely.
The cloud appeared at last--a big black cloud, but not prophetic of
that social tempest which Flo had dreaded. The cloud was the shadow of
commercial failure. At first faint rumours came to Pevenshall; then
more definite reports; at last the fatal tidings. The greatest of all
the great crashes of the year was the crash with which the master of
Pevenshall went to ruin. The pitiless Money Article recorded the great
man's destruction very briefly: Mr. Lobyer, of the Lobyer Cotton-mills,
and King Street, Manchester, of Mortimer Gardens, Hyde Park, and
Pevenshall Place, Yorkshire, had failed for half-a-million.
* * * * *
The next tidings that came to Pevenshall were of even a darker nature;
so dark and terrible indeed, that Major Henniker felt himself called
upon to despatch two telegrams in Mrs. Lobyer's interest,--one to Rome,
where Mr. Crawford and his wife had newly arrived; the other to Russell
Square, summoning Mrs. Bushby post-haste to the succour of her niece.
Before Mrs. Bushby could arrive, Florence had discovered that some new
calamity had befallen her, and had extorted the dismal tidings from the
lips of the Major himself.
The commercial crash had only been the first act of the social tragedy.
There had been a second and more terrible act. While the news in the
Money Article was still fresh upon men's lips, Thomas Lobyer had shot
himself through the head in his Manchester counting-house.
The details of his ruin are not worth recording here. By what false
moves upon the chessboard of commerce, by what mad lust for gain, by
what sudden impulses of caution at moments when rashness would have
been prudence, by what reckless speculation in the hour when timidity
would have been salvation, by what fatal steps upon the speculator's
downward road he had hurried to his destruction, can have little
interest here. It may be set down to his credit as a thoroughly
practical and business-like person, that no act of generosity had ever
made him the poorer by a sixpence, and that no honourable scruple
had ever hindered him from enriching himself at the expense of other
people. His iron hand had closed relentlessly upon every chance of
profit, his iron heart had been adamant to every plea. If the end of
all was failure, he had at least some title to the respect of the
practical; and no man could insult his memory by that half-contemptuous
pity which a money-making world bestows on the good-natured
ne'er-do-weel, who has been no one's enemy but his own.
THE EPILOGUE.
After the terrible crash which ended her brief married life, Florence
Lobyer took shelter with her Aunt Bushby until such time as her
father should return to England and be able to receive her at the
Fountains. Tender letters, dictated by that generous father, and
written in Georgina's elegant Italian hand, came to comfort the poor
terror-stricken young widow.
No Aladdin palace floating skyward through the thin air ever vanished
more completely from its sometime possessor than the splendours of
Pevenshall vanished from her who had once been the queen of that
gorgeous mansion. Of all the grandeurs of her married life Mrs.
Lobyer did not carry away with her so much as a trinket. Iron-hearted
functionaries swooped down upon the noble dwelling which honest,
hard-working Thomas Lobyer the elder had created to be an abiding
monument of an industrious and honourable career, and the widow was
given to understand that the gown upon her back and the wedding-ring on
her finger were about the only possessions she had any right to carry
away with her.
Poor Florence was glad to part with the costly frivolities for which
she had sold herself; she was glad to separate herself from every
evidence of that ill-omened bargain. She looked back upon her past life
with unspeakable horror. The letters found in her husband's desk had
confirmed Sir Nugent Evershed's suspicions of that husband's baseness.
They contained ample proof that Thomas Lobyer had been engaged in the
attempt to get up evidence against his wife's honour at the moment when
commercial ruin overtook him, and that he had plotted a vengeance that
should involve the enemy of his boyhood and the wife of whom he had
grown weary in the same destruction.
It was scarcely strange, therefore, if Florence was glad to escape from
Pevenshall, and from every thing associated with her married life. She
secluded herself in one of the remoter chambers of her aunt's house,
and would see no one except Lady Cecil, who had early tidings of her
friend's affliction, and who came to see her, looking very pale and
weak after that tedious illness through which Mr. O'Boyneville had
nursed her so patiently.
The two women embraced each other tenderly. For some minutes Cecil sat
in silence with Flo's slender black-robed figure folded in her arms.
Then they talked a little in low suppressed voices of the dreadful
event which had occasioned the wearing of that dismal black raiment.
"You must come to Chudleigh Combe with Laurence and me," Cecil said
by-and-by. "Mr. O'Boyneville has bought the dear old place where I
spent my childhood, Flo. It was the negotiation about the purchase
which took him away from Pevenshall that time. Oh Florence, I can never
tell you how good he has been to me. I shall never dare to tell you how
unworthy I have been of his goodness. But we are very happy now--thank
God, we are completely happy now. He nursed me all through my long
illness; and I used to wake and see him watching me in the dead of the
night, when I was too languid to speak, and powerless to tell him that
I was conscious of his goodness. It was in those long night-watches
that I learnt to understand him; and now I think there is nothing in
the world that could come between us."
This was all that Cecil said about herself. She stopped with her old
friend for some hours; and in the course of their conversation it
transpired that Major Gordon had gone to Spanish America with a party
of savans and explorers, on a mission which involved as much peril as
could be found on any battle-field.
Flo accepted her friend's invitation, and spent some weeks in the
old-fashioned house surrounded by Devonian woodland, and within sound
of the low murmur of the sea. She stayed with Cecil till she was
summoned to the Fountains, where her stepmother received her with quiet
tenderness that was infinitely soothing, and where she found her father
just beginning to hope that he might live to paint his Andromeda.
"I am equal to either fortune," he said, turning his face towards his
wife, illumined by a more beautiful smile than even his pencil had ever
transferred to canvas; "for in Georgey I have something better than
mortal eyesight. I have been so happy as the poor blind slave of my
Delilah, that I am almost afraid I may lose something by regaining my
sight."
In that bright peaceful home, with all fair and pleasant images around
her, Florence found it easy to forget the past. Sometimes when she
lingered before the glass, arranging the bright rippling tresses under
her widow's-cap, the image of Sir Nugent Evershed flitted through her
brain.
"I was weak enough to think that he really loved me, and that if I had
been free, he would have been at my feet," she thought with a blush;
"and though I have been a widow nearly a twelvemonth he has never come
near me, or made the faintest sign of any interest in my fate. It was
very pleasant to flirt with the foolish mistress of Pevenshall Place,
but Sir Nugent is too wise to marry a bankrupt cotton-spinner's widow.
I begin to think there is only one person in the world who ever truly
loved me."
That one person is an individual who is rising gradually in the
estimation of his fellow-men as a landscape-painter, and who comes
to the Fountains now and then on a Sunday evening, and seems always
glad to find his way to the quiet corner where Florence sits in
her widow's-weeds. If the sombre dress--invested with a grace by
the artistic hands of Mrs. Crawford's milliner--happens to be very
becoming, it is no fault of the young widow, who owes her present charm
to no coquetry of manner, but rather to a pensive gravity, which the
dismal close of her married life has left upon her. She is so young and
so pretty that no one looking at her can doubt for a moment that the
hour must come sooner or later when a new life will begin for her, and
a bright future open itself before her thoughtful eyes like a sunshiny
vista in one of Philip Foley's landscapes. There are people who venture
to prophesy that the landscape-painter will be the happy individual for
whose enchantment those dismal draperies of black will be transformed
into the white robes of a bride.
Meanwhile life glides smoothly by at the Fountains. Never was
ministering slave more devoted to an idolised master than the elegant
Georgina to her husband. The bronzes, and cabinet-pictures, and Persian
carpets, and Angora cats have been removed from the Hermitage to Mr.
Crawford's dwelling; and the little retreat in the lane near Hyde Park
is again in the market, at the moderate rent of 700l. per annum. It
is scarcely necessary to say that Mrs. Champernowne's admirers were
surprised and indignant when the tidings of her marriage fell like a
thunderbolt amongst the ranks of her victims: but Time, which brings
resignation to all earthly mourners, has consoled the idolaters of
the widow, and they flock to the Fountains, as they flocked to the
Hermitage, to burn incense at the shrine of the most charming woman in
London.
The one trouble of Mr. Crawford's married life has been but of brief
duration, for the painter has regained the use of his eyes in time to
see his daughter in her widow's-cap, and in time to begin his Andromeda
before the success of his Dido has been forgotten by the most fickle of
his admirers.
Amongst the Sunday-evening visitors at the Fountains appear very often
Mr. and Lady Cecil O'Boyneville. The barrister has fought his way into
the House of Commons; and there is some talk of his speedy elevation to
the bench. He has removed his household goods from Bloomsbury to sunnier
regions within sight of the verdant vistas of Kensington Gardens; and
Mrs. MacClaverhouse tells her niece that she has reason to be thankful
to the Providence that has given her so good a husband and so handsome
an income.
* * * * *
Cecil lives to look once more upon Hector Gordon's wedding-cards; but
this time the sight brings her no pang of regret. She hands the little
packet to her husband with a smile and says:
"I am so glad he has married again; and I hope he will be as happy--as
we are."
The barrister looks up from his _Times_ to reply with a vague murmur;
and then resumes his reading. But presently he looks up again with his
face radiant.
"I knew Valentine would make a mess of his defence in Peter _versus_
Piper!" he exclaims; "that's a case I should like to have had the
handling of myself!"
THE END.
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]
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