I laughed, but the button-maker was a secret trouble to me; and I would have given I know not what that Captain Oakley were one of the company, that I might treat him with the refined contempt which his deserts and my dignity demanded.
Cousin Monica busied herself about Milly’s toilet, and was a very useful lady’s maid, chatting in her own way all the time; and, at last, tapping Milly under the chin with her finger, she said, very complacently —
‘I think I have succeeded, Miss Milly; look in the glass. She really is a very pretty creature.’
And Milly blushed, and looked with a shy gratification, which made her still prettier, on the mirror.
Milly indeed was very pretty. She looked much taller now that her dresses were made of the usual length. A little plump she was, beautifully fair, with such azure eyes, and rich hair.
‘The more you laugh the better, Milly, for you’ve got very pretty teeth — very pretty; and if you were my daughter, or if your father would become president of a college of magicians, and give you up to me, I venture to say I would place you very well; and even as it is we must try, my dear.’
So down to the drawingroom we went; and Cousin Monica entered, leading us both by the hands.
By this time the curtains were closed, and the drawingroom dependent on the pleasant glow of the fire, and the slight provisional illumination usual before dinner.
‘Here are my two cousins,’ began Lady Knollys: ‘this is Miss Ruthyn, of Knowl, whom I take the liberty of calling Maud; and this is Miss Millicent Ruthyn, Silas’s daughter, you know, whom I venture to call Milly; and they are very pretty, as you will see, when we get a little more light, and they know it very well themselves.’
And as she spoke, a frank-eyed, gentle, prettyish lady, not so tall as I, but with a very kind face, rose up from a book of prints, and, smiling, took our hands.
She was by no means young, as I then counted youth — past thirty, I suppose — and with an air that was very quiet, and friendly, and engaging. She had never been a mere fashionable woman plainly; but she had the ease and polish of the best society, and seemed to take a kindly interest both in Milly and me; and Cousin Monica called her Mary, and sometimes Polly. That was all I knew of her for the present.
So very pleasantly the time passed by till the dressing-bell rang, and we ran away to our room.
‘Did I say anything very bad?’ asked poor Milly, standing exactly before me, so soon as our door was shut.
‘Nothing, Milly; you are doing admirably.’
‘And I do look a great fool, don’t I?’ she demanded.
‘You look extremely pretty, Milly; and not a bit like a fool.’
‘I watch everything. I think I’ll learn it at last; but it comes a little troublesome at first; and they do talk different from what I used — you were quite right there.’
When we returned to the drawingroom, we found the party already assembled, and chatting, evidently with spirit.
The village doctor, whose name I forget, a small man, grey, with shrewd grey eyes, sharp and mulberry nose, whose conflagration extended to his rugged cheeks, and touched his chin and forehead, was conversing, no doubt agreeably, with Mary, as Cousin Monica called her guest.
Over my shoulder, Milly whispered —
‘Mr. Carysbroke.’
And Milly was quite right: that gentleman chatting with Lady Knollys, his elbow resting on the chimneypiece, was, indeed, our acquaintance of the Windmill Wood. He instantly recognised us, and met us with his pleased and intelligent smile.
‘I was just trying to describe to Lady Knollys the charming scenery of the Windmill Wood, among which I was so fortunate as to make your acquaintance, Miss Ruthyn. Even in this beautiful county I know of nothing prettier.’
Then he sketched it, as it were, with a few light but glowing words.
‘What a sweet scene!’ said Cousin Monica: ‘only think of her never bringing me through it. She reserves it, I fancy, for her romantic adventures; and you, I know, are very benevolent, Ilbury, and all that kind of thing; but I am not quite certain that you would have walked along that narrow parapet, over a river, to visit a sick old woman, if you had not happened to see two very pretty demoiselles on the other side.’
‘What an ill-natured speech! I must either forfeit my character for disinterested benevolence, so justly admired, or disavow a motive that does such infinite credit to my taste,’ exclaimed Mr. Carysbroke. ‘I think a charitable person would have said that a philanthropist, in prosecuting his virtuous, but perilous vocation, was unexpectedly rewarded by a vision of angels.’
‘And with these angels loitered away the time which ought to have been devoted to good Mother Hubbard, in her fit of lumbago, and returned without having set eyes on that afflicted Christian, to amaze his worthy sister with poetic babblings about wood-nymphs and such pagan impieties,’ rejoined Lady Knollys.
‘Well, be just,’ he replied, laughing; ‘did not I go next day and see the patient?’
‘Yes; next day you went by the same route — in quest of the dryads, I am afraid — and were rewarded by the spectacle of Mother Hubbard.’
‘Will nobody help a humane man in difficulties?’ Mr. Carysbroke appealed.
‘I do believe,’ said the lady whom as yet I knew only as Mary, ‘that every word that Monica says is perfectly true.’
‘And if it be so, am I not all the more in need of help? Truth is simply the most dangerous kind of defamation, and I really think I’m most cruelly persecuted.’
At this moment dinner was announced, and a meek and dapper little clergyman, with smooth pink cheeks, and tresses parted down the middle, whom I had not seen before, emerged from shadow.
This little man was assigned to Milly, Mr. Carysbroke to me, and I know not how the remaining ladies divided the doctor between them.
That dinner, the first at Elverston, I remember as a very pleasant repast. Everyone talked — it was impossible that conversation should flag where Lady Knollys was; and Mr. Carysbroke was very agreeable and amusing. At the other side of the table, the little pink curate, I was happy to see, was prattling away, with a modest fluency, in an undertone to Milly, who was following my instructions most conscientiously, and speaking in so low a key that I could hardly hear at the opposite side one word she was saying.
That night Cousin Monica paid us a visit, as we sat chatting by the fire in our room; and I told her —
‘I have just been telling Milly what an impression she has made. The pretty little clergyman — il en est épris — he has evidently quite lost his heart to her. I dare say he’ll preach next Sunday on some of King Solomon’s wise sayings about the irresistible strength of women.’
‘Yes,’ said Lady Knollys,’ or maybe on the sensible text, “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour,” and so forth. At all events, I may say, Milly, whoso findeth a husband such as he, findeth a tolerably good thing. He is an exemplary little creature, second son of Sir Harry Biddlepen, with a little independent income of his own, beside his church revenues of ninety pounds a year; and I don’t think a more harmless and docile little husband could be found anywhere; and I think, Miss Maud, you seemed a good deal interested, too.’
I laughed and blushed, I suppose; and Cousin Monica, skipping after her wont to quite another matter, said in her odd frank way —
‘And how has Silas been? — not cross, I hope, or very odd. There was a rumour that your brother, Dudley, had gone a soldiering to India, Milly, or somewhere; but that was all a story, for he has turned up, just as usual. And what does he mean to do with himself? He has got some money now — your poor father’s will, Maud. Surely he doesn’t mean to go on lounging and smoking away his life among poachers, and prizefighters, and worse people. He ought to go to Australia, like Thomas Swain, who, they say, is making a fortune — a great fortune — and coming home again. That’s what your brother Dudley should do, if he has either sense or spirit; but I suppose he won’t — too long abandoned t
o idleness and low company — and he’ll not have a shilling left in a year or two. Does he know, I wonder, that his father has served a notice or something on Dr. Bryerly, telling him to pay sixteen hundred pounds of poor Austin’s legacy to him, and saying that he has paid debts of the young man, and holds his acknowledgments to that amount? He won’t have a guinea in a year if he stays here. I’d give fifty pounds he was in Van Diemen’s Land — not that I care for the cub, Milly, any more than you do; but I really don’t see any honest business he has in England.’
Milly gaped in a total puzzle as Lady Knollys rattled on.
‘You know, Milly, you must not be talking about this when you go home to Bartram, because Silas would prevent your coming to me any more if he thought I spoke so freely; but I can’t help it: so you must promise to be more discreet than I. And I am told that all kinds of claims are about to be pressed against him, now that he is thought to have got some money; and he has been cutting down oak and selling the bark, Doctor Bryerly has been told, in that Windmill Wood; and he has kilns there for burning charcoal, and got a man from Lancashire who understands it — Hawk, or something like that.’
‘Ay, Hawkes — Dickon Hawkes; that’s Pegtop, you know, Maud,’ said Milly.
‘Well, I dare say; but a man of very bad character, Dr. Bryerly says; and he has written to Mr. Danvers about it — for that is what they call waste, cutting down and selling the timber, and the oakbark, and burning the willows, and other trees that are turned into charcoal. It is all waste, and Dr. Bryerly is about to put a stop to it.’
‘Has he got your carriage for you, Maud, and your horses?’ asked Cousin Monica, suddenly.
‘They have not come yet, but in a few weeks, Dudley says, positively— ‘
Cousin Monica laughed a little and shook her head.
‘Yes, Maud, the carriage and horses will always be coming in a few weeks, till the time is over; and meanwhile the old travelling chariot and posthorses will do very well;’ and she laughed a little again.
‘That’s why the stile’s pulled away at the paling, I suppose; and Beauty — Meg Hawkes, that is — is put there to stop us going through; for I often spied the smoke beyond the windmill,’ observed Milly.
Cousin Monica listened with interest, and nodded silently.
I was very much shocked. It seemed to me quite incredible. I think Lady Knollys read my amazement and my exalted estimate of the heinousness of the procedure in my face, for she said —
‘You know we can’t quite condemn Silas till we have heard what he has to say. He may have done it in ignorance; or, it is just possible, he may have the right.’
‘Quite true. He may have the right to cut down trees at Bartram-Haugh. At all events, I am sure he thinks he has,’ I echoed.
The fact was, that I would not avow to myself a suspicion of Uncle Silas. Any falsehood there opened an abyss beneath my feet into which I dared not look.
‘And now, dear girls, goodnight. You must be tired. We breakfast at a quarter past nine — not too early for you, I know.’
And so saying, she kissed us, smiling, and was gone.
I was so unpleasantly occupied, for some time after her departure, with the knaveries said to be practised among the dense cover of the Windmill Wood, that I did not immediately recollect that we had omitted to ask her any particulars about her guests.
‘Who can Mary be?’ asked Milly.
‘Cousin Monica says she’s engaged to be married, and I think I heard the Doctor call her Lady Mary, and I intended asking her ever so much about her; but what she told us about cutting down the trees, and all that, quite put it out of my head. We shall have time enough tomorrow, however, to ask questions. I like her very much, I know.’
‘And I think,’ said Milly, ‘it is to Mr. Carysbroke she’s to be married.’
‘Do you?’ said I, remembering that he had sat beside her for more than a quarter of an hour after tea in very close and lowtoned conversation; ‘and have you any particular reason?’ I asked.
‘Well, I heard her once or twice call him “dear,” and she called him his Christian name, just like Lady Knollys did — Ilbury, I think — and I saw him gi’ her a sly kiss as she was going upstairs.’
I laughed.
‘Well, Milly,’ I said, ‘I remarked something myself, I thought, like confidential relations; but if you really saw them kiss on the staircase, the question is pretty well settled.’
‘Ay, lass.’
‘You’re not to say lass.’
‘Well, Maud, then. I did see them with the corner of my eye, and my back turned, when they did not think I could spy anything, as plain as I see you now.’
I laughed again; but I felt an odd pang — something of mortification — something of regret; but I smiled very gaily, as I stood before the glass, unmaking my toilet preparatory to bed.
‘Maud — Maud — fickle Maud! — What, Captain Oakley already superseded! and Mr. Carysbroke — oh! humiliation — engaged.’ So I smiled on, very much vexed; and being afraid lest I had listened with too apparent an interest to this impostor, I sang a verse of a gay little chanson, and tried to think of Captain Oakley, who somehow had become rather silly.
CHAPTER XLIII
NEWS AT BARTRAM GATE
Milly and I, thanks to our early Bartram hours, were first down next morning; and so soon as Cousin Monica appeared we attacked her.
‘So Lady Mary is the fiancée of Mr. Carysbroke,’ said I, very cleverly; ‘and I think it was very wicked of you to try and involve me in a flirtation with him yesterday.’
‘And who told you that, pray?’ asked Lady Knollys, with a pleasant little laugh.
‘Milly and I discovered it, simple as we stand here,’ I answered.
‘But you did not flirt with Mr. Carysbroke, Maud, did you?’ she asked.
‘No, certainly not; but that was not your doing, wicked woman, but my discretion. And now that we know your secret, you must tell us all about her, and all about him; and in the first place, what is her name — Lady Mary what?’ I demanded.
‘Who would have thought you so cunning? Two country misses — two little nuns from the cloisters of Bartram! Well, I suppose I must answer. It is vain trying to hide anything from you; but how on earth did you find it out?’
‘We’ll tell you that presently, but you shall first tell us who she is,’ I persisted.
‘Well, that I will, of course, without compulsion. She is Lady Mary Carysbroke,’ said Lady Knollys.
‘A relation of Mr. Carysbroke’s,’ I asserted.
‘Yes, a relation; but who told you he was Mr. Carysbroke?’ asked Cousin Monica.
‘Milly told me, when we saw him in the Windmill Wood.’
‘And who told you, Milly?’
‘It was L’Amour,’ answered Milly, with her blue eyes very wide open.
‘What does the child mean? L’Amour! You don’t mean love?’ exclaimed Lady Knollys, puzzled in her turn.
‘I mean old Wyat; she told me and the Governor.’
‘You’re not to say that,’ I interposed.
‘You mean your father?’ suggested Lady Knollys.
‘Well, yes; father told her, and so I knew him.’
‘What could he mean?’ exclaimed Lady Knollys, laughing, as it were, in soliloquy; ‘and I did not mention his name, I recollect now. He recognised you, and you him, when you came into the room yesterday; and now you must tell me how you discovered that he and Lady Mary were to be married.’
So Milly restated her evidence, and Lady Knollys laughed unaccountably heartily; and she said —
‘They will be so confounded! but they deserve it; and, remember, I did not say so.’
‘Oh! we acquit you.’
‘All I say is, such a deceitful, dangerous pair of girls — all things considered — I never heard of before,’ exclaimed Lady Knollys. ‘There’s no such thing as conspiring in your presence.’
‘Good morning. I hope you slept well.’ She was addressing the lady and
gentleman who were just entering the room from the conservatory. ‘You’ll hardly sleep so well tonight, when you have learned what eyes are upon you. Here are two very pretty detectives who have found out your secret, and entirely by your imprudence and their own cleverness have discovered that you are a pair of betrothed lovers, about to ratify your vows at the hymeneal altar. I assure you I did not tell of you; you betrayed yourselves. If you will talk in that confidential way on sofas, and call one another stealthily by your Christian names, and actually kiss at the foot of the stairs, while a clever detective is scaling them, apparently with her back toward you, you must only take the consequences, and be known prematurely as the hero and heroine of the forthcoming paragraph in the “Morning Post.”’
Milly and I were horribly confounded, but Cousin Monica was resolved to place us all upon the least formal terms possible, and I believe she had set about it in the right way.
‘And now, girls, I am going to make a counter-discovery, which, I fear, a little conflicts with yours. This Mr. Carysbroke is Lord Ilbury, brother of this Lady Mary; and it is all my fault for not having done my honours better; but you see what clever matchmaking little creatures they are.’
‘You can’t think how flattered I am at being made the subject of a theory, even a mistaken one, by Miss Ruthyn.’
And so, after our modest fit was over, Milly and I were very merry, like the rest, and we all grew a great deal more intimate that morning.
I think altogether those were the pleasantest and happiest days of my life: gay, intelligent, and kindly society at home; charming excursions — sometimes riding — sometimes by carriage — to distant points of beauty in the county. Evenings varied with music, reading, and spirited conversation. Now and then a visitor for a day or two, and constantly some neighbour from the town, or its dependencies, dropt in. Of these I but remember tall old Miss Wintletop, most entertaining of rustic old maids, with her nice lace and thick satin, and her small, kindly round face — pretty, I dare say, in other days, and now frosty, but kindly — who told us such delightful old stories of the county in her father’s and grandfather’s time; who knew the lineage of every family in it, and could recount all its duels and elopements; give us illustrative snatches from old election squibs, and lines from epitaphs, and tell exactly where all the old-world highway robberies had been committed: how it fared with the chief delinquents after the assizes; and, above all, where, and of what sort, the goblins and elves of the county had made themselves seen, from the phantom postboy, who every third night crossed Windale Moor, by the old coach-road, to the fat old ghost, in mulberry velvet, who showed his great face, crutch, and ruffles, by moonlight, at the bow window of the old court-house that was taken down in 1803.
Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu Page 244