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| author | pgww <pgww@lists.pglaf.org> | 2025-07-14 11:22:02 -0700 |
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| committer | pgww <pgww@lists.pglaf.org> | 2025-07-14 11:22:02 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/76502-0.txt b/76502-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..045c1e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/76502-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17072 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76502 *** + + + + + + 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.] + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76502 *** diff --git a/76502-h/76502-h.htm b/76502-h/76502-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..655d3b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/76502-h/76502-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,17276 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + The Lady's Mile | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } +hr.full {width: 95%; margin-left: 2.5%; margin-right: 2.5%;} +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +x-ebookmaker-drop {display: none;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.right {text-align: right;} + +.smcap { font-variant:small-caps; } + +/* Images */ +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + +div.titlepage { + text-align: center; + page-break-before: always; + page-break-after: always; +} + +div.titlepage p { + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + font-weight: bold; + line-height: 1.5; + margin-top: 3em; +} + +/* Poetry */ +.poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} +.poetry-container {text-align: center;} +.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3em;} +.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: -2em;} +.poetry .indent4 {text-indent: -1em;} +.poetry .indent8 {text-indent: 1em;} + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} + +table.autotable { border-collapse: collapse; } +table.autotable td, +table.autotable th { padding: 4px; } + +.tdl {text-align: left;} +.tdr {text-align: right;} +.tdc {text-align: center;} + +.ph1 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; } +.ph1 { font-size: x-large; margin: .83em auto; } + +.ph2 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; } +.ph2 { font-size: medium; margin: .83em auto; } + +.ph3 { text-align: right; text-indent: 0em; } +.ph3 { font-size: medium; margin: .83em auto; } + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76502 ***</div> + +<div class="titlepage"> + +<h1>THE LADY'S MILE</h1> + +<p>A Novel</p> + +<p class="ph1">By M. E. Braddon</p> + +<p>THE AUTHOR OF</p> + +<p>"LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "AURORA FLOYD"<br> +ETC. ETC. ETC.</p> + +<p>Stereotyped Edition</p> + +<p>LONDON<br> +JOHN AND ROBERT MAXWELL<br> +MILTON HOUSE, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET<br> +[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</p> + + +</div> + +<hr class="chap"> + +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<table> +<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">"<span class="smcap">He is but a Landscape-painter</span>"</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><span class="smcap">Lord Aspendell's Daughter</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><span class="smcap">Hector</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><span class="smcap">Love and Duty</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><span class="smcap">At the Fountains</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><span class="smcap">Wedding Cards</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">VII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><span class="smcap">The Great O'Boyneville</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">VIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><span class="smcap">The Dowager's Little Dinner</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">IX.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><span class="smcap">Laurence O'Boyneville's First Hearing</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">X.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_X"><span class="smcap">The Rich Mr. Lobyer</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><span class="smcap">At Nasedale</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><span class="smcap">Mr. O'Boyneville's Motion for a New Trial</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><span class="smcap">Cecil's Honeymoon</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XIV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><span class="smcap">Mr. Lobyer's Wooing</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><span class="smcap">Delilah</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XVI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><span class="smcap">At Home in Bloomsbury</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XVII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><span class="smcap">Poor Philip</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XVIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><span class="smcap">Too Late for Repentance</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XIX.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><span class="smcap">Things from India</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XX.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><span class="smcap">At Pevenshall Place</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XXI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><span class="smcap">Sir Nugent Evershed</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XXII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"><span class="smcap">Mrs. Lobyer's Skeleton</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XXIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">"<span class="smcap">How should I Greet Thee?</span>"</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XXIV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV"><span class="smcap">Between Carthage and Kensington</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XXV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV"><span class="smcap">The Easy Descent</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XXVI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI"><span class="smcap">A Modern Love-Chase</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XXVII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">"<span class="smcap">He Comes too Near, who Comes to be Denied</span>"</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XXVIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">"<span class="smcap">Were all thy Letters Suns, I could not see</span>"</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XXIX.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX"><span class="smcap">A Timely Warning</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XXX.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">"<span class="smcap">He's Sweetest Friend, or Hardest Foe</span>"</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XXXI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI"><span class="smcap">On the Brink</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XXXII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII"><span class="smcap">By the Sea</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">XXXIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII"><span class="smcap">A Commercial Earthquake</span></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr"></td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#THE_EPILOGUE"><span class="smcap">The Epilogue.</span></a></td></tr> +</table> + +<hr class="chap"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2>THE LADY'S MILE.</h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>"HE IS BUT A LANDSCAPE-PAINTER."</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>passe partout</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Out of which?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>that</i> 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."</p> + +<p>"What new imbecility has afflicted your feeble intellect?" asked the +painter indignantly. "I don't know what you're talking of."</p> + +<p>"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.'"</p> + +<p>The young painter gave a sardonic laugh.</p> + +<p>"I should be a fool to trouble my head about <i>her</i>," he said +contemptuously.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">'Odi et amo; quare id faciam, fortasse requiris:</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Nescio, sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.'</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>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——"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>was</i> that when the brains were out the man would +die,' says Macbeth; 'but <i>now</i>,' &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 <i>à la Russe</i>. Sir Balaam's +cashier has his dinners from the confectioner, and dines <i>à la Russe</i> +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 <i>Gazette</i>, 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 <i>Lui</i> +before you can have <i>Elle</i>. 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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, '<i>poupées aux camélias</i>.' 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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But, Phil, when you know I'm so glad to stand Sam—" remonstrated Mr. +Smythe.</p> + +<p>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!")</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>retroussé</i>, which seemed perpetually asking questions +of all humanity.</p> + +<p>Yes; Miss Crawford's nose was decidedly <i>retroussé</i>; 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>retroussé</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"If people knew as much about painting as I do, they wouldn't believe +in my pictures," said Mr. Crawford.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"I <i>will</i> succeed!"</p> + +<p>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 <i>entrée</i> in the West-end +mansions where Florence Crawford was to be met.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>LORD ASPENDELL'S DAUGHTER.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Times</i> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>entrèe</i>-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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>habitué</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"And there are people who like Dorset Square better than this," she +thought. "Oh, dear, dear lonely place, how I love you!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Cecil found her aunt in very high spirits.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>what</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It is only natural that you should be fond of him," she said.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"And now, my dear, I am going to surprise you. Hector Gordon will be +here to breakfast with us to-morrow morning——"</p> + +<p>"Auntie!"</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"But, auntie," said Cecil, heedless of the housekeeping details, "I +thought Captain Gordon was in India."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Lady Cecil's face was dyed with a hot, indignant blush.</p> + +<p>"I am not the sort of person to be fascinated by Captain Gordon's +money, Aunt MacClaverhouse," she said.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps not," answered the old lady, coolly; "but you may fall in love +with him."</p> + +<p>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 <i>his</i>, +and to be ignorant that there was any wrong in the association.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>tête-à-tête</i> +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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"He is an invalid, poor fellow," she thought; "I am sure it is very +wicked of me to think his visit a bore."</p> + +<p>She settled matters with her conscience by determining to be very +attentive to the physical comforts of her aunt's favourite.</p> + +<p>"I dare say he would like some salmon for dinner," she thought; "I'll +call at the fishmonger's as I go home."</p> + +<p>And then she took a volume of Victor Hugo's poetry from her pocket, and +began to read.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>For once in her life; Lord Aspendell's daughter, whose calm reserve was +so near akin to <i>hauteur</i>, was fairly startled.</p> + +<p>"And are you really Captain Gordon?" she asked, amazed.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>HECTOR.</h3> + + +<p>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 <i>cabinets particuliers</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She took up some books presently from the table near her, and looked at +the titles.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Bell's Life</i>, nor the <i>United-Service Gazette</i>; +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 <i>Mr. Sponge's Sporting-Tour</i> in a cupboard in +Dorset Square, and I dare say we could get them sent down by post; but +for to-day——"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Post and Paddock</i> 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 <i>Kitmutghar</i> looked! I think he fancied our +great Alfred's masterpiece was a volley of bad language; they're so +unaccustomed to hear any thing <i>but</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">"D'implacables faveurs me poursuivent sans cease,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Vous m'avez flétri dans ma fleur,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Dieux! donnez l'espérance à ma froide jeunesse,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Je vous rends tous ces biens pour un pen de bonheur."</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>have</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no, not until I marry."</p> + +<p>He took up the volume of poems which Cecil had laid down.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You like Cecil?"</p> + +<p>"Excessively. I think she is charming."</p> + +<p>Mrs. MacClaverhouse shrugged her shoulders.</p> + +<p>"You think every thing charming," she said.</p> + +<p>She was familiar with his sanguine temperament, and his faculty for +seeing every thing in its sunniest aspect.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I hope she will," answered the widow.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>insouciance</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>They were very happy together. All Lady Cecil's proud reserve melted +under the influence of the Scotchman's genial nature.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you will scarcely turn up your nose <i>now</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>Cecil blushed crimson.</p> + +<p>"I—I—don't understand you, auntie," she stammered.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"On my honour, auntie, Captain Gordon has never said a word to me which +the most indifferent acquaintance might not have said."</p> + +<p>"Then what in Heaven's name does the man mumble about?" demanded Mrs. +MacClaverhouse sharply.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"That will do. Then Hector Gordon has not made you an offer?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>aux petits soins</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>sotto +voce</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>"And now Cecil shall play us both to sleep," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse, +sinking into her own chair.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Sing the song, Lady Cecil," said Hector, in a low pleading voice. "Let +me hear you sing once more."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Do you really wish it?"</p> + +<p>"Really—and truly."</p> + +<p>What common words they were! and yet how thrilling an accent they took +to-night upon <i>his</i> lips!</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>Captain Gordon got up from the sofa and laughed pleasantly at his +aunt's scared face.</p> + +<p>"It seems very absurd for a man to be nervous or hysterical," he said; +"but I have <i>not</i> been myself to-day, and Lady Cecil's song quite +upset me."</p> + +<p>"What, that droning thing?" exclaimed Mrs. MacClaverhouse. "It sounded +to <i>me</i> like Young's <i>Night-Thoughts</i> set to music."</p> + +<p>"I think I'll wish you good-night, auntie," said the soldier.</p> + +<p>Cecil wondered whether it was the glare of the moderator lamp that made +him look so pale as he bent over his aunt.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>LOVE AND DUTY.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I have been exploring our favourite hills, Lady Cecil," he said; "I +hope you did not wait breakfast for me?"</p> + +<p>"No; auntie never waits for any one. Shall I order fresh tea or coffee +to be made for you?"</p> + +<p>"No, thanks; I have no appetite for breakfast this morning."</p> + +<p>Cecil went on writing.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Not at all important."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I don't think I have had enough experience of life to be a good +adviser."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I shall think of this cool, fresh English sea-shore very often when I +am in Bengal," Hector said.</p> + +<p>"You will go back to Bengal—soon?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Did I say so? Ah! but then that was so long ago."</p> + +<p>"So long ago! about five weeks, I believe."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"If you please."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent8">"Should my shadow cross thy thoughts</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Too sadly for their peace, remand it thou</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For calmer hours to memory's darkest hold,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">If not to be forgotten—not at once—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not all forgotten."</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>He paused once more, and then began again with an evident effort:</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>There was a brief pause before Cecil said,—</p> + +<p>"I am sure of it too, though I do not know her. But do you think she +would ever be happy again?"</p> + +<p>"I cannot answer for that. Ah, Lady Cecil, I know what you think my +friend's duty is."</p> + +<p>"There can be no question about it. He must keep his promise," she +answered firmly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>He lifted his hat, and the wind and rain drifted his hair away from his +face.</p> + +<p>"Cecil, I am going back to India, to do my duty, with God's help. Say, +God bless you, Hector, and goodbye."</p> + +<p>"God bless you, Hector, and——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"If you'll stop under shelter of that yacht, Lady Cecil," he said, +"I'll run on and get a shawl and umbrella."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>AT THE FOUNTAINS.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Poor Mary!" he murmured softly; "poor Mary! it will be something at +least to make you happy."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"He gave me to understand as much."</p> + +<p>"And engaged to whom, pray?"</p> + +<p>"A young lady in India."</p> + +<p>"A young lady in India. Is that all you know about her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes indeed, auntie."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, auntie! auntie!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>he</i> had read at Fortinbras—in all the music and dancing, +the impromptu charades, and carefully studied <i>tableaux-vivants</i> +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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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 <i>his</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Faust</i>, +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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>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 <i>must</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Now, when people offered him large prices for his pictures, he felt +half inclined to refuse their commissions in utter bitterness of heart.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>his</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>other one</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Lady Cecil felt a thrill of delight when the painter turned his easel +and revealed his finished picture.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>you</i> 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?</p> + +<p>"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 <i>leetle</i> out of drawing? +I'm sure I could never get <i>my</i> 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. <i>Why</i> 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 <i>ad +infinitum</i>."</p> + +<p>"<i>Ad nauseam</i>, perhaps," said the painter sadly.</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>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 <i>savant</i>, so nearly does it +copy nature.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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 <i>aplomb</i> +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 <i>protégé</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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,—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">"Why should a heart have been there,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the way of a fair woman's foot?"</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Flo insisted on making a confidante of Cecil.</p> + +<p>"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. <i>Nous avons change tout cela.</i> 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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Florence, I can't bear to hear you talk like this."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>did</i> 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."</p> + +<p>To this effect Miss Crawford would discourse in her own vivacious +fashion; and it was in vain that Cecil appealed to the unawakened heart.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>WEDDING CARDS.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Has any thing annoyed you while I have been away, auntie?" she asked, +gently.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You have heard from Captain Gordon, I suppose, auntie?" she said, +falteringly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I have heard from him," answered the dowager in her most snappish +manner.</p> + +<p>"I hope he is well?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, he is <i>well</i> 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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"God grant they may be happy!" she murmured softly.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>are</i> 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 <i>Landed +Gentry</i>, Cecil, and let me see if there are any respectable Cheshams."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>Lady Cecil carried the volume of Burke to her aunt, and Mrs. +MacClaverhouse set herself to discover the antecedents of Mrs. Hector +Gordon, <i>nèe</i> Chesham.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Lochiel was very discursive on the subject of millinery.</p> + +<p>"Dear Mary Chesham looked very <i>sweet</i>," she wrote. "She is not pretty, +but remarkably <i>interesting</i>, fair, with soft blue eyes, and a very +<i>winning</i> expression. I know you will be pleased with her when Captain +Gordon brings her to England, and they <i>do</i> 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 <i>some</i> people who +<i>insinuate</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>tulle illusion</i>, and a +large <i>tulle</i> veil, which covered her like a cloud. The dress was very +simple, and certainly <i>inexpensive</i>, but <i>quite Parisian</i> in style. +Mary has a very lovely arm,—those pale, insipid girls, with fair +hair, generally have lovely arms,—and she wore a <i>very superb</i> pearl +bracelet, given her by her uncle, Colonel Cudderley, who is, I believe, +expected to <i>leave her money</i>. So you see your nephew has not done so +<i>very badly</i> after all, though people here say he might have made a +<i>much better match</i>. 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 +<i>most attentive</i>."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>THE GREAT O'BOYNEVILLE.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>his</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I did not know <i>him</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>secrétaires</i>, +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>carte blanche</i> on these occasions, and sent in a bill some +six months afterwards, which was by no means a <i>carte blanche</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>tulle</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Read your speech in that breach of promise case," said one; "never +read any thing so jolly."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>thès dansantes</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>nisi prius</i>, +breach-of-promise, and divorce cases, it may be that Mr. O'Boyneville's +estimate of womankind was scarcely an elevated one.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't like to drive <i>her</i> 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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Mr. O'Boyneville shrugged his shoulders.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, she is here."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"The lady in black is your aunt," he said. "What's her name?"</p> + +<p>"MacClaverhouse," answered Cecil, looking with some wonder at this +uncivilised stranger who questioned her so coolly.</p> + +<p>"I suppose he is an American," she thought; "and yet he doesn't talk +like one."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"My name is Chudleigh," said the young lady, very coldly.</p> + +<p>"Why, that's the name of the Aspendell family; and you belong to that +family, I suppose, Miss Chudleigh?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; the late Lord Aspendell was my father."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"He was my brother," murmured Cecil, rising as if she would have made +her escape from this uncivilised monster.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>did</i> +contrive to make away with every acre of the Aspendell property, eh?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I am sorry I offended her," he thought, "for she really seems a nice +girl."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Introduce me to the old lady."</p> + +<p>Dr. Molyneux looked at him in some astonishment as he complied.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Cecil did not condescend to honour the Irishman by one glance as she +talked to her aunt.</p> + +<p>"Shall we go now, auntie? The rooms are very warm, and I am sure you +must be tired."</p> + +<p>"I suppose that means that <i>you</i> are tired," answered Mrs. +MacClaverhouse. "However, I'm quite ready to take my departure."</p> + +<p>"Shall I go and look for your carriage?" asked Mr O'Boyneville.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Captain Norris, the irreproachable gentleman who had walked the solemn +measures of a quadrille with Cecil, arrived at this moment, flushed, +but triumphant.</p> + +<p>"The carriage is there, Mrs. MacClaverhouse. May I offer you my arm?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What a horrible man, auntie!" she exclaimed, with something like a +shudder; "and how could you be so friendly with him?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>THE DOWAGER'S LITTLE DINNER.</h3> + + +<p>Lady Cecil was both surprised and annoyed when the dowager announced +Mr. O'Boyneville as one of the guests at her next little dinner.</p> + +<p>"How could you ask that dreadful man, auntie?" she said.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>ennui</i> of Hamlet—had come down upon her.</p> + +<p>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. "<i>Affection</i>," said the Queen, "<i>is false!</i>" And <i>yet</i> she +danced, remarks the historian with unconscious pathos.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I dare say he is clever—in his own way," she thought; "but what could +have induced my aunt to ask him to dinner?"</p> + +<p>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 +<i>something fabulous</i>; 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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>you</i>, 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 '<i>trimmings</i>.' (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 <i>of</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The dowager appeared presently.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>réglé</i> 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 <i>all</i> 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 +<i>so</i> 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 <i>that</i>.' 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 <i>don't</i> be technical."</p> + +<p>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 <i>à la Russe</i> is a splendid institution +for the economical housekeeper, and might on some occasions be called a +dinner <i>à la ruse</i>; 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The Indian judge and the Irish barrister talked <i>shop</i>; and there +was a very animated discussion of a great international-law case, +the details of which had filled the columns of the <i>Times</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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—<i>à +millions</i>, you know—<i>tout ce qu'il y a de plus Manchester</i>. 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."</p> + +<p>"But he must be a very stupid person, Florence. I cannot imagine your +taking any interest in him."</p> + +<p>"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 +<i>prénom</i>. 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>I</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."</p> + +<p>"But, Florence, you surely would never marry such a person?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And you would really marry for money, Flory?" said Cecil very sadly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Promessi Sposi</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>"Better to be Becky Sharpe than Amelia Sedley," she said "and the world +is full of Beckys and Amelias."</p> + +<p>She could find a very tolerable excuse for herself and her companions.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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 <i>attaché</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>au revoir</i>."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 +<i>her</i>."</p> + +<p>And then, after abandoning himself a little longer to this delicious +reverie, he roused himself with an effort, and opened his bag.</p> + +<p>But as he took out the first handful of papers, he exclaimed with a +sigh,</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>LAURENCE O'BOYNEVILLE'S FIRST HEARING.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>her</i>. 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?</p> + +<p>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 <i>not</i> been laid +down for his sole accommodation was a side of the question which Mr. +O'Boyneville had never taken the trouble to contemplate.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>She looked at him with a smile of utter incredulity.</p> + +<p>"Mr. O'Boyneville," she exclaimed, "you must surely intend this for a +jest! and believe me it is a very foolish one."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Are you really in earnest, Mr. O'Boyneville?" asked Lady Cecil.</p> + +<p>"I was never more in earnest in my life."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>Cecil Chudleigh shook her head gently.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"And that answer is 'No'?"</p> + +<p>"It is, Mr. O'Boyneville."</p> + +<p>"Irrevocably no?"</p> + +<p>"Irrevocably."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"No, there is no one else."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I dare say she'll think me a fool for my pains, but at any rate she +<i>will</i> 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."</p> + +<p>And at this point the barrister espied an approaching hansom, and +beckoned to the driver.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>THE RICH MR. LOBYER.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>fade</i> graces and courtesies of over-educated +young diplomatists and amateur <i>littérateurs</i>. 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 <i>crême de la crême</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"<i>I</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."</p> + +<p>Mr. Lobyer had a lodging in Jermyn Street—a <i>pied-à-terre</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>The <i>parvenu</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The time came before the death of his father, when there was no +alternative but to let him go his own way.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I don't wonder my father was always growling about <i>my</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>retrouseé</i> nose.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 +<i>valses du salon</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What do you think of him, Cecil?" she asked her friend.</p> + +<p>"You mean Mr. Lobyer?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course."</p> + +<p>"I don't think he is particularly agreeable, Flory. He seems to me to +be rather stupid and awkward."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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 +<i>distinguè</i>. However, I won't talk to you about him any more, Cecil. +You are as romantic as a girl in a novel."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>is</i> +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."</p> + +<p>In spite of Mr. Lobyer, poor Philip contrived to speak to Florence +before he left the Fountains.</p> + +<p>"So you are going to be married, Miss Crawford?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Who told you any thing so absurd?" cried Flo, with a disdainful little +laugh.</p> + +<p>"Every body tells me so."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>empressement</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>AT NASEDALE.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"We are to have a very nice party," wrote the judge's wife; "and +Horatio begs me to tell you that we shall expect <i>you</i> 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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I don't want to detain you here if you'd rather be in the +billiard-room, or making yourself sticky with <i>décalcomanie</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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.'"</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>shop</i>, +and he looks at the other fellows as if he'd like to cross-examine +them."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Cecil, sitting quietly at work under a reading-lamp, was rather +rejoiced when she heard the violent downpour of rain which succeeded +the storm.</p> + +<p>"Mr. O'Boyneville will scarcely come to-night, at any rate," she +thought.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Who the deuce can that be, at this time of night, and at this time of +such a night?" cried Mr. Mountjoy.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>There was a pause of some ten minutes, and then the drawing-room door +was thrown open, and the servant announced:</p> + +<p>"Mr. O'Boyneville."</p> + +<p>"I thought as much," said the dowager in an undertone, which was +intended only for the ear of her niece.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>bonhomie</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Then I am very sorry you should have come," answered Cecil gravely.</p> + +<p>"Are you still so hard-hearted?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The barrister looked at her pale proud face with an expression of +profound sorrow.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>MR. O'BOYNEVILLE'S MOTION FOR A NEW TRIAL.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I hope you are satisfied <i>now</i>, Lady Cecil Chudleigh," she said.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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,</p> + +<p>"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 <i>they'll</i> treat their mothers and +aunts. I suppose they'll take the story of the Grecian daughter out of +<i>those</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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 +<i>décalcomanie</i> and Berlin wool-work with their praises of the departed +barrister.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"But you'll come and play, Lady Cecil?" cried one of the young ladies.</p> + +<p>"No, thank you, dear; I, too, have got some letters to write."</p> + +<p>"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.'"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>She looked up as the door opened, and it was with unmitigated +astonishment that she beheld Laurence O'Boyneville.</p> + +<p>"Mr. O'Boyneville! I thought you had left us for good?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"For an hour?" echoed Cecil.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You are very good; but I don't want to see Mr. Mountjoy."</p> + +<p>"You don't?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The Irishman seated himself, and drew his chair close to hers.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Cecil, are you going to send me away again?"</p> + +<p>"Suppose I do not believe in your fatalistic theory?" she asked, with a +faint attempt at a laugh.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Mr. O'Boyneville had composed this little speech during his downward +journey, and was rather inclined to be proud of it.</p> + +<p>"Cecil, what is to be my answer?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Her voice trembled a little as she answered her lover.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And you still offer me your affection?"</p> + +<p>"I do. As heartily and as unreservedly as I offered it to you in the +first instance."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>CECIL'S HONEYMOON.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I must be a fool indeed if I can't teach her to love me, loving her as +I do," he thought.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Times</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>bandeaux</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It's the last but one that stupid extravagant Hector sent me, and if +I know <i>any thing</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You really wish to see Ireland?"</p> + +<p>"Really."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Briccawn</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>But even that genial evening amongst old friends could not quite +restore Mr. O'Boyneville's spirits.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Laurence," she said, "quite ready."</p> + +<p>And then, as they walked back to the carriage, she said, rather to +herself than to her husband:</p> + +<p>"I wonder who will buy Chudleigh Combe?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>MR. LOBYER'S WOOING.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>some</i> +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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Before the painter could reply, his daughter had planted herself before +the easel, and was contemplating his unfinished work.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>She stood looking at the picture for some minutes, and then shrugged +her shoulders impatiently as she turned to the painter:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>She did not make any reply to her father's remark, and yet he could +scarcely doubt that she had heard him.</p> + +<p>"Do you really mean to marry this Mr. Lobyer?" William Crawford asked +presently.</p> + +<p>"I wish you wouldn't call him <i>this</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Flo," answered the painter sadly; "God knows I had my hours of +remorse and bitterness."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>couldn't</i> +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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But Lady Cecil may be very much attached to Mr. O'Boyneville."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But he can change his coats and collars. And really O'Boyneville is a +very good fellow, and a very clever one."</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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 +<i>tête-à-tête</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>After this the young man departed triumphant, but with a certain air of +sulky discomfiture about him in the midst of his triumph.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>not</i> 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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p class="ph3">"Always truly yours,</p> + +<p class="ph3">"<span class="smcap">Georgina Champernowne</span>."</p> +</div> + +<p>"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. +<i>Nenni</i>, 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 +<i>burghers</i>, clamorous for their leader's blood. <i>Nenni</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>her</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>DELILAH.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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, <i>Memoria +in æterna</i>."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>fêtes</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>d'être +de Marly</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Saturday Review</i>, and would have fainted at the sight of a <i>Daily +Telegraph</i>.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>distrait</i>, I fancy she is thinking of Actium."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Champernowne glanced at the clock on the chimney-piece.</p> + +<p>"What time do you dine, Mr. Crawford?" she asked. "I mustn't detain you +here while Florence is waiting for you at the Fountains."</p> + +<p>"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?</p> + +<p>"I wonder whether she thinks I would leave her for the sake of the best +dinner the united <i>chefs</i> of all the London clubs could devise?" he +thought.</p> + +<p>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 <i>salons</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You are my prodigal son," she said. "I began to think that I was never +to see you again."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>then</i>?"</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>AT HOME IN BLOOMSBURY.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>v.</i> Spindleshanks, 30th Law Digest, Q.B., +page 102, and Capers <i>v.</i> 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——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>v.</i> Clithery, Shavington <i>v.</i> The Estremadura Soap-boiling +Company (limited), and many others, to Laurence O'Boyneville, Q.C.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Times</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>déjeûners</i>; 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.</p> + +<p>"My husband has no time for going out," she said, when her old friends +asked her to their houses.</p> + +<p>"But you can come, Cecil, and Mr. O'Boyneville can look in during the +evening."</p> + +<p>Cecil shook her head.</p> + +<p>"He is so tired after his day's work that it would be a cruelty to ask +him to go out," she said.</p> + +<p>"And you are going to lead this dull life always, Cecil?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>her</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>menu</i> of the feast; only in these latter days there were no +harassing calculations of ways and means, no balancing of <i>fricandeau</i> +against calves' head <i>en tortue</i>, no weighing of lobster-cutlets +against eels <i>à la tartare</i>. 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 <i>chefs</i> and <i>cordons +bleus</i> of Belgravia, the Bloomsbury confectioner is like "Todgers's," +and can do the thing handsomely when he pleases.</p> + +<p>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 <i>v.</i> Clithery, and Shavington <i>v.</i> The Estremadura +Soap-boiling Company (limited).</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>She met him, and went with him into the dressing-room, where he was +wont to make his brief toilet.</p> + +<p>"I want to thank you a thousand, thousand times!" she said.</p> + +<p>"Thank me, my dear! What for?" asked the barrister, washing his hands.</p> + +<p>"The piano—the beautiful Broadwood!"</p> + +<p>"What piano?"</p> + +<p>The great O'Boyneville's mind was either with Giddles <i>v.</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>v.</i> Clithery, or Jones <i>v.</i> Robinson, or Smith against Brown and +others, reigned paramount.</p> + +<p>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 <i>once</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Then why in goodness' name don't you ask him?"</p> + +<p>"Because he would be so ready to grant my request, and I don't wish to +impose upon his kindness."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I married him because I loved him," Cecil answered gravely, "and +because I hoped to make him a good wife."</p> + +<p>Flo's piquant eyebrows elevated themselves to their utmost extent as +her friend said this.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" she exclaimed, "of course that alters the case: but you really +<i>are</i> like the young woman in a novel, Cecil; and I could never quite +bring myself to believe in that young woman."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Cecil," cried Flo impatiently, "if you talk like that I shall begin to +think you repent having married Mr. O'Boyneville."</p> + +<p>"No, no, dear, I don't repent; but I know now that I did not think +seriously enough of the step I was taking."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>And then, after a little pause, Miss Crawford would continue the +discussion.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>POOR PHILIP.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>coterie</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I tell you she isn't worth the howling you make about her—<i>le jeu ne +vaut pas</i>—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 <i>soubrette</i>? +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:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">"'Should I, wasting in despai-air,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Die-ie becau-ause a woman's fai-air?'</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>By which, of course, I mean shall <i>you</i>," 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?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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—<i>she</i> 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 <i>her</i>, 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, <i>that</i> way madness lies! If St. Anthony had +been as good a draughtsman as William Crawford, he wouldn't have been +<i>Saint</i> 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."</p> + +<p>As the time when Miss Crawford was likely to become Mrs. Lobyer drew +nearer, poor Philip found his Sabbath evenings more difficult of +endurance.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Surely, Thomas, you know Mr. Foley? you must have met him here again +and again."</p> + +<p>The two men uttered unintelligible growls without looking at each +other, and Florence continued her conversation with her unhappy admirer.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Miss Crawford looked at her victim with the most charming expression of +bewilderment; and then after a brief pause she said sweetly:</p> + +<p>"I looked for something of yours at the British Institution and the +Academy, and was so disappointed to find nothing. How did it happen?"</p> + +<p>"My pictures were rejected. It is my destiny to be rejected," said +Philip, with tragical intensity.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What was that?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>all</i> 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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It was like her to delude me by a promise, on purpose to disappoint me +by breaking it," thought Mr. Crawford bitterly.</p> + +<p>"Come, Foley," he said at last, "let's hear what you have been doing. I +hope you are working honestly."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Mountain-scenery—an evening-storm."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yes, you can, Philip, if I lend you a couple of hundred pounds."</p> + +<p>"You, Mr. Crawford?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But—but this is too generous," stammered the landscape painter.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And that is——"</p> + +<p>"That you leave England at once. These long May-days are too good to +waste in lodgings at Islington."</p> + +<p>"I think I know why you do me this great kindness," said Philip.</p> + +<p>"First and foremost, because I believe in your genius."</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"And you accept my commission——"</p> + +<p>"As heartily as it is given. I shall start for Rotterdam by the next +steamer; and when I come back——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"When I come back here <i>she</i> 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 <i>she</i> 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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>TOO LATE FOR REPENTANCE.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>en +permanence</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Of course, on this Mrs. Bushby swooped down upon her brother-in-law, +and annihilated him with feminine argumentation.</p> + +<p>"When <i>I</i> was married, Madame Devy had <i>carte blanche</i>," 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 <i>trousseau</i> will be a subject of +conversation. The Wigmore-Street people have already asked permission +to exhibit the cambric and Valenciennes <i>peignoirs</i> 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."</p> + +<p>William Crawford groaned aloud.</p> + +<p>"And my daughter rides in Wellington boots!" he exclaimed. "Don't tell +me any thing more about the <i>trousseau</i> 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 <i>corbeille de mariage</i> is +one of them."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I wonder whether I am much better or wiser than the savages who are so +fond of beads and feathers," she thought.</p> + +<p>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 <i>blasé</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It is such an ugly name," she thought; "<i>nobody</i> could like to be +called Mrs. Lobyer."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Miss Crawford sighed heavily for the second time, and turned to the +book-shelves near her with an impatient gesture.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>my</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>The Bride of Lammermoor</i>; +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 <i>Lear</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Are you all alone, my darling?" asked the painter tenderly, as his +daughter laid aside her book, and rose to greet him.</p> + +<p>"Yes, papa; I have been alone all day."</p> + +<p>"But where is Aunt Jane?"</p> + +<p>"She has gone to the Square to see to the children's dresses for +to-morrow," answered Flo with a sigh.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Tell me that I have not been a <i>very</i> 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 <i>Père Goriot</i> all in one."</p> + +<p>"My pet, you have been a charming daughter," answered the painter, +smiling.</p> + +<p>"Yes, papa, but not a good one."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>tête-à-tête</i> to-day. You +must imagine yourself a woman of fashion, who has taken a fancy for +entertaining a popular painter."</p> + +<p>"I had rather be your loving daughter, papa, and forget all about +fashion," Flo answered sadly.</p> + +<p>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 <i>tête-à-tête</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"My darling," he said very softly, "you remind me of your mother."</p> + +<p>It was the first time he had ever said this in all his intercourse with +his daughter.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She laid a contemptuous emphasis on the word creature, as in the +extremity of self-humiliation.</p> + +<p>"But why, why, darling?"</p> + +<p>She did not reply to his question, but went on with her +self-upbraiding.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless it was very much like other weddings, except in the one +grand fact that the bride shed no tears.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>eau-de-Cologne</i> had alone prevented her appearing at +the fashionable altar with swollen red circles surrounding her pretty +grey eyes.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"I wonder whether the people who live in cottages marry for love?"</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>TIDINGS FROM INDIA.</h3> + + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Times</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>menus</i>, now figuring frequently +in the little banquets which the dowager provided for Mr. O'Boyneville +and his wife.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"My darling girl," exclaimed the barrister, "if you stay in London all +the summer you'll be ill."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"If you <i>won't</i> 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."</p> + +<p>"But indeed, Laurence, I shall be happier at home," Cecil pleaded; "I +had so much visiting in country-houses, you know, before our marriage."</p> + +<p>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 <i>versus</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Times</i>—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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Quite enough, dear aunt. Would you like me to play?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But, auntie, I am very grateful——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What would you like me to play, auntie?" Cecil asked presently.</p> + +<p>"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>I</i> should call them—which you were so fond of playing to +Hector at Fortinbras."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Cecil's music to-night was of the softest and tenderest character. +Her fingers glided over the keys in a dreamy <i>legato</i> 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.</p> + +<p>While Cecil was lingering fondly over a <i>piano</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"Ah, by-the-bye," said the dowager, "talking of Hector Gordon, I had +some news from India to-day."</p> + +<p>"Indeed, auntie!"</p> + +<p>The same faint shiver that had stirred the white-robed figure before +stirred it again. There are some things that can never be forgotten.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I had a letter <i>viâ</i> Marseilles. Of course, when people are +wallowing in gold they have no occasion to think of sixpence more or +less for postage. <i>My</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" she cried, with a vehemence that startled the +dowager; "is Hector Gordon dead?"</p> + +<p>She rose from before the piano, trembling from head to foot. Mrs. +MacClaverhouse caught her niece in her arms.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"If he were really dead," she thought, "what right should I have to +feel like that?"</p> + +<p>She recovered herself with an effort, and after a brief pause addressed +the agitated dowager very calmly.</p> + +<p>"Tell me all about it, auntie," she said; "it is very shocking—so +young—so happy."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It seems there was a baby," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse, "though <i>I</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."</p> + +<p>"It is very dreadful for him," murmured Cecil.</p> + +<p>"And worse for her, I should think, poor thing," said the +matter-of-fact dowager.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>you</i> ought to know the value of a +good home, and a generous husband; for you have known what it is to be +poor."</p> + +<p>"Do you think that I do not appreciate my husband's goodness?" said +Cecil earnestly. "Indeed—indeed, auntie——"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," answered the dowager promptly, "you appreciate his goodness +perhaps; but you don't appreciate <i>him</i>. 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She had never dared to acknowledge to herself that the something +wanting was a more genial companion than Laurence O'Boyneville.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>carte blanche</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>chef-d'œuvre</i> 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!</p> + +<p>After tea Mr. O'Boyneville looked at his watch, and then rang for the +waiter.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>The waiter bowed and departed. He returned in ten minutes, carrying a +bundle, at which Cecil gazed wonderingly.</p> + +<p>It was the barrister's crimson bag.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>versus</i> Brown, or Jones <i>versus</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Werter</i>?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Ah, my dear, that isn't possible," said the barrister, with a sigh of +resignation.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You like Mrs. Lobyer, don't you, Cecil?" the barrister asked, when the +perusal of the letter was finished.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, I like her very much indeed."</p> + +<p>"Then why shouldn't you accept her invitation?"</p> + +<p>"But can you go, Laurence?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The letter was written closely on two sheets of paper, both crossed, +and in an obscure corner Cecil found a postscript.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>AT PEVENSHALL PLACE.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>carte blanche</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The gorgeous creatures relinquished Lady Cecil's burden to meaner hands +immediately after taking them. They were attended by <i>aides-de-camp</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>It was Flo, brighter and more bewitching even than of old, with her +golden hair tortured into an edifice of puffs, <i>à la Pompadour</i>, and +sprinkled with glittering particles that sparkled in the lights.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What charming rooms!" cried Cecil.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"I hope Mr. Lobyer is well," she said.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You talk of things as lightly as ever, Flo," Cecil said, wonderingly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>improvisatore</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>SIR NUGENT EVERSHED.</h3> + + +<p>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 <i>bouts rimés</i>.</p> + +<p>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 <i>tête-à-tête</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>"You had a pleasant tour, I hope, Flory," she said one day when they +were alone for a few minutes.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear, I have every reason to be happy, for he is very kind to me."</p> + +<p>"And you really like him?"</p> + +<p>"I really like him very much indeed."</p> + +<p>This was the nearest approach to a confidential conversation that +occurred between Florence and her friend during the first week of +Cecil's visit.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>On the twenty-fourth of December a letter came from Mr. O'Boyneville, +announcing his inability to spend Christmas at Pevenshall.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You speak as if you wished to make him jealous, Flo."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>After this Florence apologised for her impatience, and embraced her +dearest Cecil after her wont.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You are going away?" asked Flo, politely.</p> + +<p>"Yes. I find I must run to Manchester this morning. I shall be back in +time for dinner to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"You will travel on Christmas-day?" exclaimed Flo, with a slight +elevation of her eyebrows.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>them</i>."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>He was the very pink and pattern of the <i>jeunesse dorée</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>blonde meesters</i> as well as the <i>blonde meess</i> of the +<i>brumeuse Angleterre</i>.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You will not find Mr. Lobyer till to-morrow," answered Flo; "he has +gone to Manchester."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>tête-à-tête</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"I think not. He talked about coming back to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I will ride over the day after to-morrow," answered Sir Nugent; "and I +will bring the piece with me."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>It was a clear moonlight night, and Miss Grace Evershed went to one of +the windows to watch her cousin's departure.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You are not sleepy, are you, Cecil!"</p> + +<p>"No, dear, not in the least."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>The question was asked very carelessly, and the questioner's eyes were +fixed upon the fire.</p> + +<p>"I really don't know him well enough either to like or dislike him," +Cecil answered.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Well, dear, I think he is very handsome."</p> + +<p>"Do you?" said Flo, lifting her eyebrows, and shrugging her shoulders. +"Well, yes, I suppose he is what most people would call handsome."</p> + +<p>"But you don't call him so?"</p> + +<p>"Well, no; I have seen handsomer men. But what do you think of +<i>him</i>—his manners—himself, in short?" Flo asked rather impatiently.</p> + +<p>"I think he is exactly like a great many other young men I have +seen——"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"And yet Sir Nugent and Mr. Lobyer are now quite intimate," she said +presently, feeling that she was called upon to say something.</p> + +<p>"Yes, that is the most singular part of the story. After that Eton +<i>fracas</i> 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, <i>he</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And you think that Mr. Lobyer really likes him?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>me</i>? Would you prefer a continuation of the +Guelph and Ghibelline feud?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But these private theatricals, Flo. I suppose you invited Sir Nugent +to take a part in them?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But you have so many elegant young men about the house."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>The Lady of Lyons</i> and +<i>Still Waters Run Deep</i>; 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."</p> + +<p>"Is the Marquis a very important character?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, he is the leading personage in the piece. Every thing depends +upon him."</p> + +<p>"Is Mr. Lobyer to take any part in your comedy?"</p> + +<p>"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——'"</p> + +<p>"Flo!"</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>MRS. LOBYER'S SKELETON.</h3> + + +<p>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 <i>jardinières</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I am afraid that grey shirtings were not lively," Florence whispered +to Cecil, as the two ladies were preparing themselves for a duet.</p> + +<p>At ten o'clock those splendid creatures, the matched footmen, were +summoned to wheel the <i>jardinières</i> and <i>étagères</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Jeffs must have been very rapid," she said. "He generally keeps me +longer when I send for any thing."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 +<span class="smcap">live</span> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>While Cecil was thinking of this, the talk was going on round her, and +presently she heard Sir Nugent Evershed talking of Hector Gordon.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>In the course of the letter she had expressed her desire to return to +London.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Florence peeped into her friend's room before retiring for the night, +and Cecil told her of the letter she had been writing.</p> + +<p>"I think if Mr. O'Boyneville cannot come down, I must go back to London +next week, dear," she said.</p> + +<p>But Florence declared such an arrangement utterly impossible.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But, my dear Florence, you must know that I ought not to be so long +away from home."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>tableaux +vivants</i>, 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:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">'And round and round the ghosts of beauty glide.'</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>School for Scandal</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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, <span class="smcap">successful</span>; and +the vulgar antecedents of the tailor's son are utterly forgotten.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But what does it matter how I am dressed?" Flo would inquire; "Mr. +Brownjohn knows how rich you are."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Flo shook her head in coquettish protestation, and drove away; the +bells jingling gaily in the frosty air as she went.</p> + +<p>"Isn't he nice, Cecil?" she asked presently.</p> + +<p>"Who, dear?"</p> + +<p>"Sir Nugent, of course."</p> + +<p>"Yes, he is very agreeable. But I think——"</p> + +<p>"You think what, Cecil? Pray speak out. I can't bear people to begin +sentences they can't finish."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you'll be offended if I speak frankly."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"I don't think you at all absurd. I know that I flirt with Sir Nugent +Evershed."</p> + +<p>"Flo!"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"But, Florence——"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>auprès de</i> 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."</p> + +<p>"But how do you know that Mr. Lobyer is not annoyed? Some men are so +reserved upon such points."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>They drove for some miles along a pleasant country road, and then +turned into a lane.</p> + +<p>"I think we had better go home by Gorsemoor," said Flo; "I know you +like that wild bleak open country."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I see two or three red coats coming across the common, and a +lady."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"If you like."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Did you hear her?" he cried triumphantly. "Say what you will, she'll +put a topper on it."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Is that lady in the white hat Mrs. Lobyer?" asked a country woman.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Did you know any thing about this before to-day, Flo?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>chic</i>."</p> + +<p>"Flory, for Heaven's sake, don't talk like that."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"How pale you are looking!" he said, with some alarm. "The air has been +too cold for you."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The room, bright and confused before, span round before Cecil's eyes +for a moment, a chaos of light and splendour.</p> + +<p>"Is Major Gordon here?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>petit-maître</i> 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 <i>relâche</i>, and devote their attention to the Major, who is a +widower, and enormously rich, I am told."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>versus</i> Tomkins by his lonely hearth, while she affected to +listen to Miss Evershed's vivacious chatter.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>"HOW SHOULD I GREET THEE?"</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The band-master waved his baton while Cecil was thinking this, and the +band began the overture to the <i>Bronze Horse</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>"How do you do, Lady Cecil O'Boyneville?" he said, with just the +faintest emphasis on the surname.</p> + +<p>"How do you do, Major Gordon?"</p> + +<p>Cecil would have been terribly perplexed had she been called upon to +say any thing more; but amidst the brazen prancings of the <i>Bronze +Horse</i> this was about as much as could be said.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>aristocrate</i> of the +old <i>régime;</i> such a nest as one might find nowadays in the <i>Champs +Elysées</i> or the <i>Rue Taibout</i>, occupied by a different tenant. The +comedy was called <i>On accorde à qui persévère</i>, and was one of those +airy fabrics which can only be constructed by the light hand of a +Gallic workman.</p> + +<p>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, <i>bien +sonnées</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>soupirants</i> must retire abashed.</p> + +<p>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—<i>le dernier des derniers</i>; 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 <i>lansquenet</i>, 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 +<i>lansquenet</i>—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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>And in all this there are involved those exquisite complications, +that delicious <i>èquivoque</i> 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 <i>does</i> +save the King's life, in a hunting party, almost by accident. He <i>does</i> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>rôle</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>chanson</i>—all about <i>laissons rire-er</i>, and <i>un beau +sourire-er</i>—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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"He makes himself at home in my house," thought the millionaire. "<i>He</i> +gives his orders to the upholsterers, I'll warrant, though they'll send +their bills to me. <i>He</i> chooses the piece that is to be played; <i>he</i> +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."</p> + +<p>The comedy came to an end at last. It had seemed <i>very</i> long to Cecil. +The German diplomatist had talked to her between the acts, and Major +Gordon had talked to Miss Evershed.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>rôle</i> of the Countess, so she coquetted now.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">"Now half to the setting moon are gone,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And half to the rising day:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Low on the sand, and loud on the stone,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">The last wheel echoes away,"</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You are sure that you are not sleepy, Cecil, and that I am not making +myself a nuisance?" she said at last.</p> + +<p>"Quite sure, dear. Shall I pour you out some tea?"</p> + +<p>"If you please: only it isn't fair that you should wait upon me."</p> + +<p>"You have so much more reason to be tired than I have."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"I think people enjoyed themselves extremely."</p> + +<p>"That is no answer, Cecil."</p> + +<p>"And I think you acted charmingly; indeed every one thought so; but——"</p> + +<p>"Ah, there it is! I expected the 'but.' What is it, Cecil?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, if you please," answered Flo, with a sigh of resignation. "I +have been doing something dreadful, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"I think you know what I am going to say as well as I do, Florence."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I do; but you shall say it notwithstanding. What is it?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>did</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Florence, for Heaven's sake don't talk like that!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And what is that?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But, my dearest Florence, was it wise to sacrifice your own +self-respect in order to gratify your pride?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>parlons toilette</i>; 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>And after this the conversation became general. Florence told Major +Gordon her difficulties with regard to the camellia japonicas.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Why, Cecil, you never told me that Major Gordon was related to you," +said Flo when that gentleman had departed.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Florence!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>This was said <i>sotto voce</i>, for Mrs. Vancourt was the sentimental widow.</p> + +<p>The lady in question looked up from her book five minutes afterwards to +expatiate upon a passage thereof.</p> + +<p>"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.'"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>BETWEEN CARTHAGE AND KENSINGTON.</h3> + + +<p>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 <i>menagé</i> stifling and oppressive.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>empressement</i> in +her manner to the great painter.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"At the worst she can only break my heart," thought the painter. And +having a good deal of the <i>laissez-aller</i> in his composition, he gave +himself up to the delights of the Hermitage, and shut his eyes upon the +darksome vision of the future.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>chasse</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Æneid</i> 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——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Oh, how lovely, Mr. Crawford!" cried this young lady; "your Dido is +a most exquisite creature, and I am sure your picture will be <i>the</i> +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?"</p> + +<p>"Go and amuse yourself in Mr. Crawford's garden, Helen," Mrs. +Champernowne exclaimed impatiently. "If <i>I</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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Are you satisfied?" he asked nervously.</p> + +<p>She turned to look at him with eyes that were dim with tears.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Do you know how dangerous it is for you to speak to me like that?" he +asked.</p> + +<p>"Dangerous? How or why dangerous?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I am very sorry," she said softly; "very, very sorry."</p> + +<p>"Sorry that I love you?"</p> + +<p>"I am sorry that you should speak so seriously."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"You are only equivocating with me, Mrs. Champernowne; you must have +known that I was in earnest."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Our friendship was very dear to me," answered Mrs. Champernowne; "I am +sorry that it must end."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Come, Mr. Crawford, let us talk seriously," she said.</p> + +<p>"I have been only too serious from first to last."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I am sorry you should think it necessary to defend yourself where I am +concerned."</p> + +<p>"Forgive me for thinking it barely possible you might do me wrong.—And +you really like the Dido?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Good-bye. I am coming to the carriage with you."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Is it really to be good-bye?" she asked, as Mr. Crawford pressed the +slender hand gently before releasing it.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And you are not angry with me?"</p> + +<p>"I have no right to be angry. What am I to tell your servant?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I have painted <i>that</i>," he thought; "and yet I am not happy!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>THE EASY DESCENT.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"However closely I may stick to my work, you must never lead such a +dreary life again, dear," he said.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Times</i>, the barrister seemed to be as familiar with the +Indian campaign as the man who had been through it.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"There might be some hope for a <i>parvenu</i>, 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 <i>nouveau riche</i> 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 <i>vieille roche</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>his</i> voice? Who could cling more wickedly to the memory +of the past than I have done since I have seen him?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>is</i> 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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But if your father were to hear one malicious word about you, Flo——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>élite</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Huguenots</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>"You will spoil it," she said; "those fragile flowers will not bear +being disturbed."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What of that?" she asked; "why should you have any thing of mine?"</p> + +<p>He did not answer her question, but continued, in a tone of reproach:</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"The last night?" said Cecil.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And you go to Japan?"</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"I am very sorry."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>All this was said in a half-whisper, amidst the crash of the orchestra.</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"Major Gordon!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"It is you who are cruel," cried Cecil.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You know that I love you."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Will you send some one to fetch my carriage, Major Gordon?" she said.</p> + +<p>"You are not going away, Cecil?" cried Flo; "there is the party at Mrs. +Hetherington's, you know. You promised to go with me."</p> + +<p>"I can't go any where else to-night, dear. The heat and the music have +made my head ache."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"God bless you!" he said; "God bless you, and good-bye!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Hector Gordon called twice during the week after that performance of +the <i>Huguenots</i> 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. <i>Il faut que je te voie.</i>" 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.</p> + +<p>"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.—<i>Il faut que je te voie</i>," repeated +themselves perpetually in her brain, like the scrap of a verse which +sometimes haunts one with absurd persistence.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"<i>Tu es bien cruelle</i>," 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.</p> + +<p>The pencil-scrawl and the "<i>tu</i>" 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.</p> + +<p>Mr. O'Boyneville espied the Major's card in the basket, as he took his +tea.</p> + +<p>"Ah, by-the-bye, I saw by the <i>Gazette</i> 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."</p> + +<p>The next day was wet and dismal. A wet summer day is the most +depressing of all days. Doleful organs alternated selections from the +<i>Trovatore</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Times</i> 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.</p> + +<p>The day came to an end; the hopeless rain always pattering on the +pavements of the square; the organ-man always droning his "<i>Ah che la +morte</i>" 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.</p> + +<p>"Thank God he is gone!" she thought; "can I ever be thankful enough for +that?"</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>A MODERN LOVE-CHASE.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you are right," she said; "and it is better for me not to stay +in town while you are away."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I think I would rather go to some little watering-place, where I could +have quiet and rest."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I should like that very much."</p> + +<p>"Then it shall be so."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Come to us by all means, dearest Flo," she wrote, "if you don't mind a +dull evening."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"A gentleman for me?" she said, without looking at the card.</p> + +<p>"Yes, my lady. The same gentleman who called twice before, Pupkin says."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I cannot see Major Gordon," said Cecil. "Tell Pupkin to say that I am +particularly engaged."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"He has not gone," she said to herself; "and he has left his regiment. +What does it all mean?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"He's never been here except those three times," thought the housemaid. +"Perhaps she knew him before she was married to master, pore thing!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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>I</i> +don't read the <i>Military Gazette</i>. He might have called upon <i>me</i>, +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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>She tried to despise him for the dishonour; but even the dishonour was +a sacrifice which he made to his love.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>She was roused from her reverie by Mrs. Lobyer, who came tripping into +the room with more than customary animation.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Is that your news, Flo?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>bonne bouche</i>. 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!"</p> + +<p>Cecil shrugged her shoulders.</p> + +<p>"I thought we were going to seclude ourselves from the world, in order +to carry out some philanthropic schemes, Flo."</p> + +<p>"Oh, the philanthropic schemes shall go on all the same; <i>ça ira!</i> 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 <i>this</i> gentleman is a friend of yours!"</p> + +<p>"What gentleman?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Flo!"</p> + +<p>"Is it wicked to say that? Mustn't I thank Providence for my blessings?"</p> + +<p>"And Major Gordon is really coming!"</p> + +<p>"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. <i>Filons!</i>"</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>"HE COMES TOO NEAR, WHO COMES TO BE DENIED."</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>She gave up all idea of flight. There was only one course which seemed +possible to her, and that was to make an <i>ad-misericordiam</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>ad-misericordiam</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>causerie</i>, 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 <i>rococo</i> nowadays; and the most sentimental of +damsels would stare in amazement at an admirer who should quote the +<i>Corsair</i> or <i>Lalla Rookh</i> for her entertainment.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"At last, Cecil!" he said.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"The sacrifice! what sacrifice?" cried Cecil.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Why were you so foolish—so mad, as to remain in England?"</p> + +<p>"Because I love you."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I know that. But I could not go—after——"</p> + +<p>He paused for a moment, and then said in a lower voice, "After what I +heard that night."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"It is my fate to be wicked and miserable," she thought.</p> + +<p>"I wish <i>I</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."</p> + +<p>"I tried to do my duty. And yet—I loved you so dearly!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I have married a man who is more than worthy of my affection and +gratitude."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Cecil dried her tears during these protestations.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"You are going in at once?"</p> + +<p>"Yes: I am very tired."</p> + +<p>"Let me take you back to the house, at least."</p> + +<p>"No, thanks; I would rather go by myself."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I like her very much, and I am very sorry to leave you, Flo; but I +must go."</p> + +<p>"Why must? give me an adequate reason, and you shall be worried no +more; but I must have a reason."</p> + +<p>"Mr. O'Boyneville wishes me to return."</p> + +<p>"Has he written to tell you so?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>It was the first deliberate falsehood Cecil had ever told, and she +blushed as she uttered it.</p> + +<p>"But I thought he was on circuit?"</p> + +<p>"His circuit work is just over."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And I am sorry to leave you, dear. There is a train leaves Chiverley +at three; I thought of going by that."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I am so glad," cried Flo. "And that letter!"</p> + +<p>"What letter?"</p> + +<p>"The letter asking Cecil to go back to town."</p> + +<p>"I wrote no letter asking Cecil to go back to town."</p> + +<p>"Oh Cecil!" said Mrs. Lobyer, "I am sorry you were so tired of us all."</p> + +<p>Cecil blushed crimson, and cast an imploring look at her friend, who +stared at her in supreme mystification.</p> + +<p>"I suppose I may send away the pony-carriage," said Flo. "You will not +think any more of leaving us."</p> + +<p>"Not till Mr. O'Boyneville goes."</p> + +<p>"And that will not be till after the races, I hope."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>"WERE ALL THY LETTERS SUNS, I COULD NOT SEE."</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>will</i> forget +Georgina Champernowne; I <i>will</i> paint a better picture than I have ever +painted yet."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The servants at the Fountains remarked the change in their master's +habits, and talked gravely of his haggard face and restless impatient +manner.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"If other men work six hours a day, I will work twelve," he thought. "I +have nothing to live for now but my work."</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"When Sheridan was slow to write a new comedy, they said he was afraid +of the author of the <i>School for Scandal</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>He had slept for a very long time as it seemed, for it was quite dark +when he awoke.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>The painter groped his way to the bell and rang violently.</p> + +<p>"What a night!" he muttered; "there must be a storm brewing. I haven't +known it as dark as this all the summer."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Lights, Dimond," he said impatiently, as the man opened the door.</p> + +<p>"Lights, Sir?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; of course. Why have you left the lamps till this time? Why isn't +that passage lighted?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Not much after five o'clock!" repeated the painter in a tone of utter +stupefaction.</p> + +<p>"No, Sir; just a quarter-past by your own clock, Sir."</p> + +<p>"And a bright afternoon?" he asked in the same tone.</p> + +<p>"Well,—of course, Sir, I don't presume to say as regards paintin'; but +in a general way a very bright afternoon."</p> + +<p>"Oh my God!" cried the painter suddenly.</p> + +<p>The servant ran to his master, alarmed by that sudden exclamation, +which sounded like a cry of agony.</p> + +<p>"Is anything the matter, Sir?"</p> + +<p>"No; go—go and get me a cab—immediately—I must go out—and I shall +want you to go with me."</p> + +<p>"Me, Sir?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you, Sir! Go at once, man, for God's sake—and lose no time about +it."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Blind!" he cried; "blind! blind! I said I had nothing but my art, and +now my art is lost to me."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Cab, Sir," said the man, presenting himself in the doorway.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>A TIMELY WARNING.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>attaché's</i> +wife, who has been surfeited with admiration, but who declares that +there never was such an absurdly-delightful creature as your husband."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"If I could get away to some quiet hiding-place at the other end of +the world, where he <i>could not</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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>I</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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The Major shrugged his shoulders with a deprecating gesture. He might +give his aunt Indian shawls and ivory caskets and <i>carte blanche</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Yes; he is very uneasy about me, auntie," said Cecil; "any one can +perceive that."</p> + +<p>Mrs. MacClaverhouse gave an impatient shrug and departed.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I want to have a little quiet talk with you as we go up to town," she +said.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I thank you very much," he said,—"very much. I am not afraid. No, +Mrs. MacClaverhouse, with God's help, I am not afraid!"</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>"HE'S SWEETEST FRIEND, OR HARDEST FOE."</h3> + + +<p>While Mr. O'Boyneville was parting with the dowager at the terminus, +Cecil walked with Hector Gordon on the terrace at Pevenshall.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You do not think that I can feel very happy, do you, Hector?"</p> + +<p>"If you love me as I——"</p> + +<p>"Does the thought of our future make <i>you</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Poor girl, poor girl! it is harder for her than for me," he thought +sadly.</p> + +<p>And then presently some brief awakening of conscience impelled him to +speak.</p> + +<p>"Cecil," he cried; "it is not too late! If you wish to retract—if you +repent your promise——"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But you, Hector—your career, your ambition——"</p> + +<p>"My career is finished, and I have no ambition except to be with you."</p> + +<p>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</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">"Honour rooted in dishonour stood."</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>ON THE BRINK.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Wherever you go, dear, I shall remember you and your goodness," she +said; "and oh, Florence, I hope you will be happy."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You will come to us at Christmas," cried Flo.</p> + +<p>"I fear not, dear. Good-bye."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I shall never again pass the threshold of such a house," she thought.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Oh Hector!" she cried piteously; "if you could know what I suffer for +your sake—for your sake!"</p> + +<p>Somehow or other the letter was written, sealed, and addressed; and +then she sat looking at it in a kind of stupor.</p> + +<p>"If it were really not too late—if I dared ask him to release me," she +thought.</p> + +<p>But in the next moment she remembered the solemn nature of her promise, +the sacrifice her lover had made to win it.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, no, no!" she cried; "it is too late! I am bound to him by my +promise."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Apollo had spoken; sorrow and shame lay before her, her inevitable +portion.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"My own darling!" said Hector, in a low tender voice.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Do you think so, Hector? Shall I ever forget—shall I ever forget?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Release me from my guilty promise! Have pity upon me, and set me free!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Laurence!" cried Cecil, starting to her feet, as she recognised the +stalwart figure in the doorway.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Pupkin told me of your return," he said to Cecil; "what brought you +back so unexpectedly?"</p> + +<p>It was some moments before Cecil answered, and even then she could not +reply without hesitation.</p> + +<p>"I was so tired of Pevenshall."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"For me?" he asked, advancing his hand towards the two packets.</p> + +<p>"No!" Cecil cried eagerly; "they are mine."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You scarcely expected me to-night, I suppose, Cecil?" said the +barrister.</p> + +<p>"No; I did not expect you."</p> + +<p>"I didn't think I should return so soon; but the business I am involved +in just now is a very serious one."</p> + +<p>"Indeed!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What poor woman?" asked Cecil; still because she felt herself obliged +to appear interested.</p> + +<p>"The poor deluded creature who has left her husband."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Why did she leave him?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Yes; I know the husband."</p> + +<p>"Was he so devoted to his wife?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You think so?"</p> + +<p>"Most assuredly I think so."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You are eloquent to-night, Mr. O'Boyneville."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And the husband," asked Cecil, with real interest this time, "was he +sorry?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Let the man who loves her bear the full burden of his guilt," said +Hector eagerly. "Let him be responsible for the issue."</p> + +<p>"God help him, poor creature!" cried the barrister.</p> + +<p>"You pity him?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"There can be no such thing as solitude with the woman he loves."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"A man must be a dastard who could count any sacrifice made for the +woman he loves," said the Major.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>This question was addressed to Hector, who had taken up his hat, and +was waiting to make his adieux.</p> + +<p>"Yes; it is ten o'clock. I will call upon Lady Cecil to-morrow. I—I +have something particular to say to her."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Good-night, Lady Cecil."</p> + +<p>"Good-night."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>Mr. O'Boyneville conducted his guest to the street door, and lingered +on the threshold with him a few moments talking pleasantly.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Shall you start early?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; by the eight-o'clock train."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"It's better that I should have them than any one else," he said, as he +transferred the letters to his own pocket.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXII">CHAPTER XXXII.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>BY THE SEA.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"We must wait," he said; "you must give me time."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Would <i>she</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Is the sun low, Dimond?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Sir."</p> + +<p>"And the sky? I'm sure the sky is very beautiful—isn't it, Dimond?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I may dream of pictures; but I shall never paint again!" cried William +Crawford hopelessly.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Champernowne!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Champernowne!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"My darling, can I believe—can I imagine——"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>made</i> the servants tell me your whereabouts."</p> + +<p>"My darling, my angel! Are you laughing at me, Georgina; or may I +really call you by these dear names?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"No, indeed, dearest."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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——"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>me</i>, William?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII">CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2> +</div> + +<h3>A COMMERCIAL EARTHQUAKE.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>chef-d'œuvre</i>, and to wonder about the painter as she looked.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>duchesse</i> glass in which her +slender little figure was reflected.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Thank you very much for all the civil things you've said to me, Mrs. +Lobyer. I think I know <i>you</i> pretty well after the charming candour +with which you have favoured me to-day but I don't think you quite know +<i>me</i> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>primi tenori</i> on the strength of their voices. I know a man who +can take Jones's place at a minute's notice."</p> + +<p>"But will he match?" exclaimed the despairing Flo; "that is the +question—will he match Tomkins?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, and I don't care," answered Mr. Lobyer coolly. "He'll +suit me, and that's enough."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>For a moment her breath seemed to fail her; but she recovered herself +presently, and replied with fitting dignity.</p> + +<p>"You may engage what servants you please, Mr. Lobyer; but I decline to +be waited upon by any one who does not match Tomkins."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>jardinière</i> +in one of the windows. Flo turned round from the piano to see what he +was doing.</p> + +<p>"Who told you to move those geraniums?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"One of the gardeners sent for them, Ma'am."</p> + +<p>The man performed his duty noiselessly, and retired.</p> + +<p>"I don't like that man!" exclaimed the baronet, as the door closed on +Mr. Lobyer's <i>protégé</i>.</p> + +<p>"He seems a very good servant; but he doesn't match Tomkins," sighed +Flo.</p> + +<p>"He does his work quietly enough," answered Sir Nugent; "but he is not +<i>like</i> a servant."</p> + +<p>"How do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"There's something in his manner that I don't like; a watchfulness—a +stealthy, underhand kind of manner."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Not a footman! What is he then? Surely not a gentleman in disguise!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Mr. Lobyer heard nothing of the baronet's objection to his <i>protégé</i>; +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>medias res</i>, and to +start his first chapter with "'<i>Ventre St. Gris</i>,' 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Flo gave that little look of innocent surprise which is always at the +command of a thorough-paced coquette.</p> + +<p>"You have brought me some new idea for my cottages," she said, pointing +to a roll of paper in the baronet's hand.</p> + +<p>"Yes; I have a friend in Oxfordshire who has built schools for his +poor, and I've brought you a sketch of his buildings."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Even at this point Flo's liveliness did not desert her.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I knew that man was a spy," he exclaimed, snatching his riding-whip +from the table.</p> + +<p>"What man?" cried Flo, alarmed by the unwonted fierceness in Sir +Nugent's face.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Why did he do that?" she thought. "I hope he is not going to make any +<i>esclandre</i>. What does it matter if the man did listen? I dare say many +servants are fond of listening."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>She had been waiting more than half an hour when he came back through +the palm-house.</p> + +<p>"Well;" she cried; "what does it all mean?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"A detective, set to watch <i>me</i>!" echoed Flo, with an air of +stupefaction.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"But what does it mean?" cried Flo; "what in Heaven's name does it all +mean?"</p> + +<p>"I am ashamed to tell you."</p> + +<p>"But I insist on knowing."</p> + +<p>"You insist?"</p> + +<p>"I do."</p> + +<p>"And you will not reproach me for any pain my revelation may cause you?"</p> + +<p>"No, no."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Evidence against <i>me</i>!—the divorce-court! Are you mad, Sir Nugent?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I don't understand," murmured Florence helplessly; "I don't +understand."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What does he know?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>roturier's</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"I must, must I?" Mrs. Lobyer repeated innocently; "but when, and how?"</p> + +<p>"To-night," whispered the baronet; "and with me."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"As you please, Mrs. Lobyer," answered the baronet with a stately +sulkiness.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"What a miserable, empty, frivolous life it is!" she cried; "and what a +despicable creature I am!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_EPILOGUE">THE EPILOGUE.</h2> +</div> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"I am so glad he has married again; and I hope he will be as happy—as +we are."</p> + +<p>The barrister looks up from his <i>Times</i> to reply with a vague murmur; +and then resumes his reading. But presently he looks up again with his +face radiant.</p> + +<p>"I knew Valentine would make a mess of his defence in Peter <i>versus</i> +Piper!" he exclaims; "that's a case I should like to have had the +handling of myself!"</p> + + +<p class="ph2">THE END.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="ph2">[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]</p> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76502 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/76502-h/images/cover.jpg b/76502-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1d8f745 --- /dev/null +++ b/76502-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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