Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  But, in spite of Mr. Raymond, he contrived to sit next Isabel at dinner, which was served by-and-by in a lovely sheltered nook under the walls, where there was no chance of the salt being blown into the greengage tart, or the custard spilt over the lobster-salad. Mr. Lansdell had sent a couple of servants to arrange matters; and the picnic was not a bit like an ordinary picnic, where things are lost and forgotten, and where there is generally confusion by reason of everybody’s desire to assist in the preparations. This was altogether a recherché banquet; but scarcely so pleasant as those more rural feasts, in which there is a paucity of tumblers, and no forks to speak of. The champagne was iced, the jellies quivered in the sunlight, everything was in perfect order; and if Mr. Raymond had not insisted upon sending away the two men, who wanted to wait at table, with the gloomy solemnity of every-day life, it would scarcely have been worthy the name of picnic. But with the two solemn servants out of the way, and with Sigismund, very red and dusty and noisy, to act as butler, matters were considerably improved.

  The sun was low when they left the ruins of the feast for the two solemn men to clear away. The sun was low, and the moon had risen, so pale as to be scarcely distinguishable from a faint summer cloud high up in the clear opal heaven. Mr. Raymond took Isabel up by a winding staircase to the top of a high turret, beneath which spread green meads and slopes of verdure, where once had been a lake and pleasaunce. The moon grew silvery before they reached the top of the turret, where there was room enough for a dozen people. Roland went with them, of course, and sat on one of the broad stone battlements looking out at the still night, with his profile defined as sharply as a cameo against the deepening blue of the sky. He was very silent, and his silence had a distracting influence on Isabel, who made vain efforts to understand what Mr. Raymond was saying to her, and gave vague answers every now and then; so vague that Charles Raymond left off talking presently, and seemed to fall into as profound a reverie as that which kept Mr. Lansdell silent.

  To Isabel’s mind there was a pensive sweetness in that silence, which was in some way in harmony with the scene and the atmosphere. She was free to watch Roland’s face now that Mr. Raymond had left off talking to her, and she did watch it; that still profile whose perfect outline grew more and more distinct against the moonlit sky. If anybody could have painted his portrait as he sat there, with one idle hand hanging listless among the ivy-leaves, blanched in the moonlight, what a picture it would have made! What was he thinking of? Were his thoughts far away in some foreign city with dark-eyed Clotilde? or the Duchess with the glittering hair, who had loved him and been false to him long ago, when he was an alien, and recorded the history of his woes in heart-breaking verse, in fitful numbers, larded with scraps of French and Latin, alternately despairing and sarcastic? Isabel solemnly believed in Clotilde and the glittering Duchess, and was steeped in self-abasement and humiliation when she compared herself with those vague and splendid creatures.

  Roland spoke at last: if there had been anything common-place or worldly wise in what he said, there must have been a little revulsion in Isabel’s mind; but his talk was happily attuned to the place and the hour; incomprehensible and mysterious, — like the deepening night in the heavens.

  “I think there is a point at which a man’s life comes to an end,” he said. “I think there is a fitting and legitimate close to every man’s existence, that is as palpable as the falling of a curtain when a play is done. He goes on living; that is to say, eating and drinking, and inhaling so many cubic feet of fresh air every day, for half a century afterwards, perhaps; but that is nothing. Do not the actors live after the play is done, and the curtain has fallen? Hamlet goes home and eats his supper, and scolds his wife and snubs his children; but the exaltation and the passion that created him Prince of Denmark have died out like the coke ashes of the green-room fire. Surely that after-life is the penalty, the counter-balance, of brief golden hours of hope and pleasure. I am glad the Lansdells are not a long-lived race, Raymond; for I think the play is finished, and the dark curtain has dropped for me!”

  “Humph!” muttered Mr. Raymond; “wasn’t there something to that effect in the ‘Alien?’ It’s very pretty, Roland, — that sort of dismal prettiness which is so much in fashion nowadays; but don’t you think if you were to get up a little earlier in the morning, and spend a couple of hours amongst the stubble with your clogs and gun, so as to get an appetite for your breakfast, you might get over that sort of thing?”

  Isabel turned a mutely reproachful gaze upon Mr. Raymond, but Roland burst out laughing.

  “I dare say I talk like a fool,” he said; “I feel like one sometimes.”

  “When are you going abroad again?”

  “In a month’s time. But why should I go abroad?” asked Mr. Lansdell, with a dash of fierceness in the sudden change of his tone; “why should I go? what is there for me to do there better than here? what good am I there more than I am here?” He asked these questions of the sky as much as of Mr. Raymond; and the philosopher of Conventford did not feel himself called upon to answer them. Mr. Lansdell relapsed into the silence that so puzzled Isabel; and nothing more was said until the voice of George Gilbert sounded from below, deeply sonorous amongst the walls and towers, calling to Isabel.

  “I must go,” she said; “I dare say the fly is ready to take us back. Goodnight, Mr. Raymond; goodnight, Mr. Lansdell.”

  She held out her hand, as if doubtful to whom she should first offer it; Roland had never changed his position until this moment, but he started up suddenly now, like a man awakened from a dream. “You are going?” he said; “so soon!”

  “So soon! it is very late, I think,” Mrs. Gilbert answered; “at least, I mean we have enjoyed ourselves very much; and the time has passed so quickly.”

  She thought it was her duty to say something of this kind to him, as the giver of the feast; and then she blushed and grew confused, thinking she had said too much.

  “Good night, Mr. Lansdell.”

  “But I am coming down with you to the gate,” said Roland; “do you think we could let you go down those slippery stairs by yourself, to fall and break your neck and haunt the tower by moonlight for ever afterwards, a pale ghost in shadowy muslin drapery? Here’s Mr. Gilbert,” he added, as the top of George’s hat made itself visible upon the winding staircase; “but I’m sure I know the turret better than he does, and I shall take you under my care.”

  He took her hand as he spoke, and led her down the dangerous winding way as carefully and tenderly as if she had been a little child. Her hand did not tremble as it rested in his; but something like a mysterious winged creature that had long been imprisoned in her breast seemed to break his bonds all at once, and float away from her towards him. She thought it was her long-imprisoned soul, perhaps, that so left her to become a part of his. If that slow downward journey could have lasted for ever — if she could have gone down, down, down with Roland Lansdell into some fathomless pit, until at last they came to a luminous cavern and still moonlit water, where there was a heavenly calm — and death! But the descent did not last very long, careful as Roland was of every step; and there was the top of George’s hat bobbing about in the moonlight all the time; for the surgeon had lost his way in the turret, and only came down at last very warm and breathless when Isabel called to him from the bottom of the stairs.

  Sigismund and the orphans appeared at the same moment.

  Mr. Raymond had followed Roland and Isabel very closely, and they all went together to the fly.

  “Remember to-morrow,” Mr. Lansdell said generally to the Graybridge party as they took their seats. “I shall expect you as soon as the afternoon service is over. I know you are regular church-goers at Graybridge. Couldn’t you come to Mordred for the afternoon service, by the bye? — the church is well worth seeing.” There was a little discussion; and it was finally agreed that Mr. and Mrs. George Gilbert and Sigismund should go to Mordred church on the following afternoon; and then there was a good deal
of hand-shaking before the carriage drove away, and disappeared behind the sheltering edges that screened the winding road.

  “I’ll see you and the children off, Raymond,” Mr. Lansdell said, “before I go myself.”

  “I’m not going away just this minute,” Mr. Raymond answered gravely; “I want to have a little talk with you first. There’s something I particularly want to say to you. Mrs. Primshaw,” he cried to the landlady of a little inn just opposite the castle-gates, a good-natured rosy-faced young woman, who was standing on the threshold of her door watching the movements of the gentlefolks, “will you take care of my little girls, and see whether their wraps are warm enough for the drive home, while I take a moonlight stroll with Mr. Lansdell?”

  Mrs. Primshaw declared that nothing would give her greater pleasure than to see to the comfort of the young ladies. So the orphans skipped across the moonlit road, nowise sorry to take shelter in the pleasant bar-parlour, all rosy and luminous with a cosy handful of bright fire in the tiniest grate ever seen out of a doll’s house.

  Mr. Lansdell and Mr. Raymond walked along the lonely road under the shadow of the castle wall, and for some minutes neither of them spoke. Roland evinced no curiosity about, or interest in, that unknown something which Mr. Raymond had to say to him; but there was a kind of dogged sullenness in the carriage of his head, the fixed expression of his face, that seemed to promise badly for the pleasantness of the interview.

  Perhaps Mr. Raymond saw this, and was rather puzzled how to commence the conversation; at any rate, when he did begin, he began very abruptly, taking what one might venture to call a conversational header.

  “Roland,” he said, “this won’t do!”

  “What won’t do?” asked Mr. Lansdell, coolly.

  “Of course, I don’t set up for being your Mentor,” returned Mr. Raymond, “or for having any right to lecture you, or dictate to you. The tie of kinsmanship between us is a very slight one: though, as far as that goes, God knows that I could scarcely love you better than I do, if I were your father. But if I were your father, I don’t suppose you’d listen to me, or heed me. Men never do in such matters as these. I’ve lived my life, Roland, and I know too well how little good advice can do in such a case as this. But I can’t see you going wrong without trying to stop you: and for that poor honest-hearted fellow yonder, for his sake, I must speak, Roland. Have you any consciousness of the mischief you’re doing? have you any knowledge of the bottomless pit of sin, and misery, and shame, and horror that you are digging before that foolish woman’s feet?”

  “Why, Raymond,” cried Mr. Lansdell, with a laugh, — not a very hearty laugh, but something like that hollow mockery of merriment with which a man greets the narration of some old Joe-Millerism that has been familiar to him from his childhood,—”why, Raymond, you’re as obscure as a modern poet! What do you mean? Who’s the honest-hearted fellow? and who’s the foolish woman? and what’s the nature of the business altogether?”

  “Roland, let us be frank with each other, at least. Do you remember how you told me once that, when every bright illusion had dropped away from you one by one, honour still remained, — a poor pallid star, compared to those other lights that had perished in the darkness, but still bright enough to keep you in the straight road? Has that last light gone out with the rest, Roland, my poor melancholy boy, — my boy whom I have loved as my own child? — will the day ever come when I shall have to be ashamed of Anna Lansdell’s only son?”

  His mother’s name had always something of a spell for Roland. His head, so proudly held before, drooped suddenly, and he walked on in silence for some little time. Mr. Raymond was also silent. He had drawn some good augury from the altered carriage of the young man’s head, and was loth to disturb the current of his thoughts. When Roland did at last raise his head, he turned and looked his friend and kinsman full in the face.

  “Raymond,” he said, “I am not a good man;” he was very fond of making this declaration, and I think he fancied that in so doing he made some vague atonement for his short-comings: “I am not a good man, but I am no hypocrite; I will not lie to you, or prevaricate with you. Perhaps there may be some justification for what you said just now, or there might be, if I were a different sort of man. But, as it is, I give you my honour you are mistaken. I have been digging no pit for a woman’s innocent footsteps to stray into. I have been plotting no treachery against that honest fellow yonder. Remember, I do not by any means hold myself blameless. I have admired Mrs. Gilbert just as one admires a pretty child, and I have allowed myself to be amused by her sentimental talk, and have lent her books, and may perhaps have paid her a little more attention than I ought to have done. But I have done nothing deliberately. I have never for one moment had any purpose in my mind, or mixed her image with so much as a dream of — of — any tangible form. I have drifted into a dangerous position, or a position that might be dangerous to another man; but I can drift out of it as easily as I drifted in. I shall leave Midlandshire next month.”

  “And to-morrow the Gilberts dine with you at Mordred; and all through this month there will be the chance of your seeing Mrs. Gilbert, and lending her more books, and paying her more attention; and so on. It is not so much that I doubt you, Roland; I cannot think so meanly of you as to doubt your honour in this business. But you are doing mischief; you are turning this silly girl’s head. It is no kindness to lend her books; it is no kindness to invite her to Mordred, and to show her brief glimpses of a life that never can be hers. If you want to do a good deed, and to elevate her life out of its present dead level, make her your almoner, and give her a hundred a year to distribute among her husband’s poor patients. The weak unhappy child is perishing for want of some duty to perform upon this earth; some necessary task to keep her busy from day to day, and to make a link between her husband and herself. Roland, I do believe that you are as good and generous-minded a fellow as ever an old bachelor was proud of. My dear boy, let me feel prouder of you than I have ever felt yet. Leave Midlandshire to-morrow morning. It will be easy to invent some excuse for going. Go to-morrow, Roland.”

  “I will,” answered Mr. Lansdell, after a brief pause; “I will go, Raymond,” he repeated, holding out his hand, and clasping that of his friend. “I suppose I have been going a little astray lately; but I only wanted the voice of a true-hearted fellow like you to call me back to the straight road. I shall leave Midlandshire to-morrow, Raymond; and it may be a very long time before you see me back again.”

  “Heaven knows I am sorry enough to lose you, my boy,” Mr. Raymond said with some emotion; “but I feel that it’s the only thing for you to do. I used sometimes to think, before George Gilbert offered to marry Isabel, that you and she would have been suited to each other somehow; and I have wished that—”

  And here Mr. Raymond stopped abruptly, feeling that this speech was scarcely the wisest he could have made.

  But Roland Lansdell took no notice of that unlucky observation.

  “I shall go to-morrow,” he repeated. “I’m very glad you’ve spoken to me, Raymond; I thank you most heartily for the advice you have given me this night; and I shall go to-morrow.”

  And then his mind wandered away to his boyish studies in mythical Roman history; and he wondered how Marcus Curtius felt just after making up his mind to take the leap that made him famous. And then, with a sudden slip from ancient to modern history, he thought of poor tender-hearted Louise la Vallière running away and hiding herself in a convent, only to have her pure thoughts and aspirations scattered like a cluster of frail wood-anemones in a storm of wind — only to have her holy resolutions trampled upon by the ruthless foot of an impetuous young king.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIX.

  WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN!

  Mrs. Gilbert spoke very little during the homeward drive through the moonlight. In her visions of that drive — or what that drive might be — she had fancied Roland Lansdell riding by the carriage-window, and going a few miles out of his way
in order to escort his friends back to Graybridge.

  “If he cared to be with us, he would have come,” Isabel thought, with a pensive reproachful feeling about Mr. Lansdell.

  It is just possible that Roland might have ridden after the fly from Graybridge, and ridden beside it along the quiet country roads, talking as he only in all the world could talk, according to Mrs. Gilbert’s opinion. It is possible that, being so sorely at a loss as to what he should do with himself, Mr. Lansdell might have wasted an hour thus, had he not been detained by his old friend Charles Raymond.

  As it was, he rode straight home to Mordred Priory, very slowly, thinking deeply as he went along; thinking bitter thoughts about himself and his destiny.

  “If my cousin Gwendoline had been true to me, I should have been an utterly different man,” he thought; “I should have been a middle-aged steady-going fellow by this time, with a boy at Eton, and a pretty fair-haired daughter to ride her pony by my side. I think I might have been good for something if I had married long ago, when my mother died, and my heart was ready to shelter the woman she had chosen for me. Children! A man who has children has some reason to be good, and to do his duty. But to stand quite alone in a world that one has grown tired of; with every pleasure exhausted, and every faith worn threadbare; with a dreary waste of memory behind, a barren desert of empty years before; — to be quite alone in the world, the last of a race that once was brave and generous; the feeble, worn-out remnant of a lineage that once did great deeds, and made a name for itself in this world; — that indeed is bitter!”

  Mr. Lansdell’s thoughts dwelt upon his loneliness to-night, as they had never dwelt before, since the day when his mother’s death and cousin’s inconstancy first left him lonely.