Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  * * * * *

  Denzil lingered at the Manor, urged again and again by his host to stay over the day fixed for departure, and so lengthening his visit with a most willing submission till late in June, when the silence of the nightingales made sleep more possible, and the sunset was so late and the sunrise so early that there seemed to be no such thing as night. He had made up his mind to plead for a hearing in the hour of farewell; and it may have been as much from apprehension of that fateful hour as even from the delight of being in his mistress’s company that he acceded with alacrity when Sir John desired him to stay. But an end must come at last to all hesitations, and a familiar verse repeated itself in his brain with the persistent iteration of cathedral chimes —

  ”He either fears his fate too much,

  Or his desert is small,

  Who fears to put it to the touch,

  And win or lose it all.”

  Sir John pushed him towards his fate with affectionate urgency.

  “Never be dastardised by a girl’s refusal, man,” said the Knight, warm with his morning draught, on that last day, when the guest’s horses had been fed for a journey, and the saddle-bags packed. “Don’t let a simpleton’s coldness cow your spirits. The wench likes you; else she would scarce have endured your long sermons upon weeds and insects, or been smiling and contented in your company all these weeks. Take heart of grace, man; and remember that though I am no tyrannical father to drag an unwilling bride to the altar, I have all a father’s authority, and will not have my dearest wishes baulked by the capricious humours of a coquette.”

  “Not for worlds, sir, would I owe to authority what love cannot freely grant—”

  “Don’t chop logic, Denzil. You want my daughter; and by God you shall have her! Win her with pretty speeches if you can. If she turn stubborn she shall have plain English from me. I have promised not to force her inclination; but if I am driven to harsh measures ‘twill be for her own good I am severe. Ventregris! What can fortune give her better than a handsome and virtuous husband?”

  Angela was in the garden when Denzil went to take leave of her. She was walking up and down beside a long border of June flowers, screened from rough winds by those thick walls of yew which gave such a comfortable sheltered feeling to the Manor gardens, while in front of flowers and turf there sparkled the waters of a long pond or stew, stocked with tench and carp, some among them as ancient and as greedy as the scaly monsters of Fontainebleau.

  The sun was shining on the dark green water and the gaudy flower-bed, and Angela’s favourite spaniel was running about the grass, barking his loudest, chasing bird or butterfly with impotent fury, since he never caught anything. At sight of Denzil he tore across the greensward, his silky ears flying, and barked at him as if the young man’s appearance in that garden were an insufferable impertinence; but, on being taken up in one strong hand, changed his opinion, and slobbered the face of the foe in an ecstasy of affection.

  “Soho, Ganymede, thou knowest I bear thee a good heart, plaything and mere pretence of a dog as thou art,” said Denzil, depositing their little bundle of black-and-tan flossiness at Angela’s feet.

  He might have carried and nursed his mistress’s favourite with pleasure during any casual sauntering and random talk; but a man could hardly ask to have his fate decided for good or ill with a toy spaniel in his arms.

  “My horse is at the door, Angela, and I am come to bid you good-bye,” he said in a grave voice.

  The words were of the simplest; but there was something in his tone that told her all was not said. She paled at the thought of an approaching conflict; for she knew her father was against her, and that there must be hard fighting.

  They walked the length of flower border and lawn in silence; and then, when they were furthest from the house, and from the hazard of eyes looking out of windows, he stopped suddenly, and took her unresisting hand, which lay cold in his.

  “Dearest, I have kept silence through all those blessed days in which you and I have been together; but I have not left off loving you or hoping for you. Things have changed since I spoke to you in London last winter. I have a powerful advocate now whose pleading ought to prevail with you — a father whose anxious affection urges what my passionate love so ardently desires. Indeed, dear heart, if you will be kind, you can make a father and lover happy with one breath. You have but to say ‘Yes’ to the prayer you know of — —”

  “Alas! Denzil, I cannot. I am your true and faithful friend. If you were sick and alone — as his lordship was — I would go to you and nurse you, as your friend and sister. If you were poor and I were rich, I would divide my fortune with you. I shall always think of you with affection — always take pleasure in your society, if you will let me; but it must be as your sister. You have no sister, Denzil — I no brother. Why cannot we be to each other as brother and sister?”

  “Only because from the hour when your beauty and sweetness began to grow into my mind I have been your lover, and nothing else — your adoring lover. I cannot change my fervent hope for the poor name of friend. I can never again dare be to you what I have been in this happy season last past, unless you will let me be more than I have been.”

  “Alas!”

  Only that one word, with a sorrowful shake of the graceful head, covered with feathery ringlets in the dainty fashion of that day, so becoming in youth, so inappropriate to advancing years, when the rich profusion of curls came straight from Chedreux, or some of his imitators, and baldness was hidden by the spoils of the dead.

  “Alas!”

  No need for more than that sad dissyllable.

  “Then I am no nearer winning this dear hand than I was at Fareham House?” he said heartbrokenly, for he had built high hopes upon her kindness and willing companionship in that Arcadian valley.

  “I told you then that I should never marry. I have not changed my mind. I never can change. I am to be Henriette’s spinster aunt.”

  “And Fareham’s spinster sister?” said Denzil. “I understand. We are neither of us cured of our malady. It is my disease to love you in spite of your disdain. It is your disease to love where you should not. Farewell!”

  He was gone before she could reply. The livid anger of his face, the deep resentment in his voice, haunted her memory, and made life almost intolerable.

  “My sin has found me out!” she said to herself, as she paced the garden with the rapid steps that indicate a distempered spirit. “What right has he to pry into the depths of my mind, and ferret out all that there is of evil in my nature? Well, he goes the surest way to make me hate him. If ever he comes here again, I will run away and hide from all who know me. I would rather be a farm-servant, and rise at daybreak to work in the fields, than endure his insolence.”

  She had to bear worse pain before Denzil had ridden far upon his journey; for her father came to the garden to seek her, eager to know the result of his protégé’s wooing.

  “Well, sweetheart,” he began, taking her to his bosom and kissing her. “Do

  I salute the future Lady Warner?”

  “No, sir; I am too well content with the name I inherit to desire any other.”

  “That is gracefully said, chérie; but I want to see my ewe lamb happily wedded. Has thy sweetheart stolen away without finding courage to ask the question that has been on the tip of his tongue for the last six weeks?”

  “He has been both importunate and impertinent, sir, and he has had his answer. I hope I may never see him again.”

  “What! you have refused him? You must be mad!”

  “No, sir; sober and sane enough to know when I am happy. I told you before this gentleman came here that I did not mean to marry. Surely I am not so unloving a daughter that I must be driven to take a husband, because my father will not have me.”

  “Angela, it is for your own safety and welfare I would see you married. What have you to succeed to when I am gone? An impoverished estate, in a country that has seen such rough changes within a score of ye
ars that one dare scarcely calculate upon a prolonged time of safety, even in this sequestered valley. God only knows when cannon-balls may tear up our fields, and bullets whistle through the copses. This Monarchy, restored with such a clamorous approval, may endure no longer than the Commonwealth, which was thought to be lasting. His Majesty’s trivial life and gross extravagance have disgusted and alarmed some who loved him dearly, and have set the common people questioning whether the rough rule of the Protector were not better than the ascendency of shameless women and dissolute men. The pageantry of Whitehall may vanish like a parchment scroll in a furnace, and Charles, who has tasted the sours of exile, may be again a wanderer, dependent on the casual munificence of foreign states; and in such an evil hour,” continued the Knight, his mind straying from the contemplation of his daughter’s future to the memory of his own wrongs, “Charles Stuart may remember the old puts who fought and suffered for his father, and how scurvy a recompense they had for their services.”

  He reverted to Denzil’s offer after a brief silence, Angela walking dutifully by his side, prepared to suffer any harshness upon his part without complaining.

  “I love the young man, and he would be to me as a son,” he said; “the comrade and support of my old age. I am poor, as the world goes now; have but just enough to live modestly in this retreat, where life costs but little. He is rich, and can give you a handsome seat near your sister’s mansion; and a house in London if you desire one; less splendid, doubtless, than Fareham’s palace on the Thames, but more befitting the habits and manners of an English gentleman’s wife. He can give you hounds and hawks, your riding-horses, and your coach-and-six. What more, in God’s name, can any reasonable woman desire?”

  “Only one thing, sir. To live my own life in peace, as my conscience and my reason bid me. I cannot love Denzil Warner, though of late I have grown to like and respect him as a friend and most intelligent companion. Your persistence is fast changing friendship into dislike; and the very name of the man would speedily become hateful to me.”

  “Oh, I have done!” retorted Sir John. “I am no tyrant. You must take your own way, mistress. I can but lament that Providence gave me only two daughters, and one of them an arrant fool.”

  He left her in a huff, and had it not been for an astonishing event, which convulsed town and country, and suspended private interests and private quarrels in the excitement of public affairs, she would have heard much more of his discontent.

  The Dutch ships were at Chatham. English men-of-war were blazing at the very mouth of the Thames, and there was panic lest the triumphant foe should sail their fire-ships up the river to London, besiege the Tower, relight the fire whose ashes were scarce grown cold, pillage, slaughter, destroy — as Tilly had destroyed the wretched Provinces in the religious war.

  Here, in this sheltered haven, amidst green fields, under the lee of the

  Brill, the panic and consternation were as intense as if the village of St.

  Nicholas were the one spot the Dutch would make for after landing; and,

  indeed, there were rustics who went to the placid scene where the infant

  Thame rises in its cradle of reed and lily, half expectant of seeing

  Netherlandish vessels stranded among the rushes.

  The Dutch fleet was at Chatham. Ships were being sunk across the Medway, to stop the invader.

  Sheerness was to be fortified. London was in arms; and Brill remembered its repulse of Hampden’s regiment with a proud consciousness of being invincible.

  The Dutch fleet saved Angela many a paternal lecture; for Sir John rode post-haste towards London, and did not return until the end of the month.

  In London he found Hyacinth, much disturbed about her husband, who had gone as volunteer with General Middleton, and was in command of a cavalry regiment at Chatham.

  “I never saw him in such spirits as when he left me,” Lady Fareham told her father. “I believe he is ever happiest when he breathes gunpowder.”

  * * * * *

  Sir John’s leave-taking had been curt and moody, for Angela’s offence rankled deep in his mind; and it was as much as he could do to command his anger, even in bidding her good-bye.

  “Did I not tell you that we live in troubled times, and that no man can foresee the coming evil, or how great our woes and distractions may be?” he asked, with a gloomy triumph. “Whoever thought to hear De Ruyter’s guns at Sheerness, or to see the Royal Charles led captive? Absit omen! Who knows what destruction may come upon that other Royal Charles, for whose safety we pray morning and night, and who lolls across a basset-table, perhaps, with his wantons around him, while we are on our knees supplicating the Creator for him? Who knows? We may have London in flames again, and a conflagration more fatal than the last, thou obstinate wench, before thou art a week older, and every able-bodied man called away from plough and pasture to serve the King, and desolation and famine where plenty now smiles at us. And is this a time in which to refuse a valiant and wealthy protector, a lover as honest as ever God made; a pious, conforming Christian, of unsullied name; a young man after my own pattern; a fine horseman and a good farmer; one who loves a pack of hounds and a well-bred horse, a flight of hawks and a match at bowls, better than to give chase to a she-rake in the Mall, or to drink himself stark mad at a tavern in Covent Garden with debauchees from Whitehall?”

  Sir John prosed and grumbled to the last moment, but could not refuse to bend down from his saddle and kiss the fair, pale face that looked at him in piteous deprecation at the moment of parting.

  “Well, keep a brave heart, Mistress Wilful. Thou art safe here yet awhile from Dutch marauders. I go but to find out how much truth there is in these panic rumours.”

  She begged him not to fatigue himself with too long stages, and went back to the silent house, thankful to be alone in her despondency. She felt as if the last page in her worldly life had been written. She had to turn her thoughts backward to that quiet retreat where there would at least be peace. She had promised her father that she would not return to the Convent while he wanted her at home. But was that promise to hold good if he were to embitter her life by urging her to a marriage that would only bring her unhappiness?

  She had ample leisure for thought in one summer day of a solitude so absolute that she began to shiver in the sultry stillness of afternoon, and scarce ventured to raise her eyes from her embroidery frame, lest some shadowy presence, some ghost out of the dead past, should hover near, watching her as she sat alone in scenes where that pale spirit had been living flesh. The thought of all who had lived and died in that house — men and women of her own race, whose qualities of mind and person she had inherited — oppressed her in the long hours of silent reverie. Before her first day of loneliness had ended, her spirits had sunk to deepest melancholy; and in that weaker condition of mind she had begun to ask herself whether she had any right to oppose her father’s wishes by denying herself to a suitor whom she esteemed and respected, and whose filial affection would bring new sunshine into that dear father’s declining years. She had noted their manner to each other during Denzil’s protracted visit, and had seen all the evidences of a warm regard on both sides. She had too complete a faith in Denzil’s sterling worth to question the reality of any feeling which his words and manner indicated. He was above all things a man of truth and honesty. She was roaming about the gardens with her dog towards noon in the second day of her solitude, when across the yew hedges she saw white clouds of dust rising from the high-road, and heard the clatter of hoofs and roll of wheels — a noise as of a troop of cavalry — whereat Ganymede barked himself almost into an apoplexy, and rushed across the grass like a mad thing.

  A great cracking of whips and sound of voices, horses galloping, horses trotting, dust enough to whiten all the hedges and greensward! Angela stood at gaze, wondering if the Dutch were coming to storm the old house, or the county militia coming to garrison it.

  The Manor Moat was the destination of that clamorous tro
op, whoever they were. Wheels and horses stopped sharply at the great iron gate in front of the house, and the bell began to ring furiously, while other dogs, with voices that resembled Ganymede’s, answered his shrill bark with even shriller yelpings.

  Angela ran towards the gate, and was near enough to see it opened to admit three black-and-tan spaniels, and one slim personage in a long flame-coloured brocatelle gown and a large beaver hat, who approached with stately movements, a small, pert nose held high, and rosy upper lip curled in patrician disdain of common things, while a fan of peacock’s plumage, that flashed sapphire and emerald in the fierce noonday sun, was waved slowly before the dainty face, scattering the tremulous life of summer that buzzed and fluttered in the sultry air.

  In the rear of this brilliant figure appeared a middle-aged person in a grey silk gown and hood, and a negro page in the Fareham livery, a waiting-woman, and a tall lackey, so many being the necessary adjuncts to the Honourable Henrietta Maria Revel’s state when she went abroad.

  Angela ran to receive her niece with a cry of rapture, and the tall slip of a girl in the flame-coloured frock was clasped to her aunt’s heart with a ruthless disregard of the beaver hat and cataract of ostrich plumage.

  “Prends garde d’abimer mon chapeau, p’tite tante,” cried Henriette, “’tis one of Lewin’s Nell Gwyn hats, and cost twenty guineas, without the buckle, which I stole out of father’s shoe t’other day. His lordship is so careless about his clothes that he wore the shoes two days and never knew there was a buckle missing, and those lazy devils his servants never told him. I believe they meant to rook him of t’other buckle.”

  “Chatterer, chatterer, how happy I am to see thee! But is not your mother with you?”

  “Her ladyship is in London. Everybody of importance is scampering off to London; and no doubt will be rushing back to the country again if the Dutch take the Tower; but I don’t think they will while my father is able to raise a regiment.”