“And if I marry anyone else, or refuse to marry this apothecary’s son, I lose the fortune?”
“Every farthing of it.”
A sweet smile brightened her face as she rose hurriedly from her chair, and stood before the table at which the lawyer was seated.
“So be it,” she said resolutely. “I will forfeit the fortune. I have a hundred a-year from my poor mother’s estate — enough for any woman. I will forfeit the fortune, and—” she paused for a moment, “and marry the man I love.”
It has been said that Horace Margrave had a pale complexion; but as Ellinor Arden said these words, his face changed from its ordinary dark pallor to a deadly ashen hue, and his strongly-marked black eyebrows contracted painfully over his half-closed eyes.
She stood with her small gloved hand resting lightly on the table, and her dark lashes downcast upon the faint crimson of her cheeks, so she did not see the change in Horace Margrave’s face. She waited a minute or two, to hear what he would say to her determination; and, on his not speaking, she turned from him impatiently, and resumed her seat.
Nothing could have been more indifferent than Mr. Margrave’s manner, as he looked lazily up at her, and said, “My poor romantic child! Throw away a fortune of three thousand a-year, to say nothing of Arden Hall, and the broad lands thereto appertaining, and marry the man you love! My sweet, poetical Ellinor, may I venture to ask who this fortunate man may be for whom you are prepared to make such a sacrifice.”
It seemed a very simple and straightforward question, emanating as it did from a man of business, many years her senior, her dead father’s old friend, and her own guardian and trustee; but Ellinor Arden appeared painfully embarrassed by it. A dark flush spread itself over her face; and her lips trembled faintly as she tried to speak, and failed to utter a word. She was silent for some minutes, during which Horace Margrave played with a penknife, opening and shutting it absently, and not once looking at his beautiful ward. The elderly lady by the fireplace turned the crackling sheets of the Times more than once during the short silence, which seemed so long.
Horace Margrave was the first to speak.
“My dear Ellinor, as your guardian, till this very day possessed of full power to control your actions — after to-day, I trust, still possessed of the right to advise them — I have surely some claim on your confidence. Tell me, then, candidly — as you may tell a middle-aged solicitor like myself — who is this most happy of mankind? who is it whom you would rather marry than Henry Dalton, your uncle’s adopted son?”
For once he looked at her as he spoke, she looking full at him; so it was that their eyes met. A long, earnest, reproachful, sad look was in hers; in his a darkness of gloomy sorrow, beyond all power of description.
His eyelids were the first to fall; he went on playing with the handle of the penknife, and said, “You are so long in giving me a candid and straightforward answer, my dear girl, that I begin to think this hero is rather a mythic individual, and that your heart is free. Tell me. Ellinor, is it not so? You have met so few people — have passed so much of your life in the utter seclusion of a Parisian convent — and when away from the convent you have been so protected by the Argus-like guardianship of your respected aunt — that I really cannot conceive how you can have lost that dear, generous heart of yours. I suspect that you are only trying to mystify me. Once for all, then, my dear ward, has anyone been so fortunate as to win your affection?”
He looked at her as he asked this decisive question with a shrinking upward glance under his dark eyelashes — something like the glance of a man who looks up, expecting a blow, and knows that he must shiver and close his eyes when that blow falls.
The crimson flush passed away from her face, and left her deadly pale, as she said, with a firm voice, “No!”
“No one?”
“No one.”
Horace Margrave sighed a deep sigh of relief, and proceeded in his former tone — the tone of a thorough man of business.
“Very well, then, my dear Ellinor, seeing that you have formed no prior attachment, that it is your uncle’s earnest request, nay, solemn prayer, that this marriage should take place; seeing, also, that Henry Dalton is a very good young man—”
“I hate good young men!” she said impatiently. “Dreadfully perfect beings, with light hair and fresh-coloured cheeks. Men who sing in church, and wear double-soled boots. I detest them.”
“My dear Ellinor! — my dear Ellinor! Life is neither a stage-play nor a three-volume novel; and, rely upon it, the happiness of a wife depends very little on the colour of her husband’s hair, or the cut of his coat. If he neglects you, will you be happier, lonely and deserted at home, in remembering the haughty grace of his head, at that very moment, perhaps, bending over the green cloth of a club whist-table? If he wrings your heart with the tortures of jealousy, will it console you to recall the splendour of his hazel eyes, whose gaze no longer meets your own? No, no, Ellinor; dispossess yourself of the schoolgirl’s notion of Byronic heroes, with turn-down collars, and deficient moral region. Marry Henry Dalton. He is so good, honourable, and sensible, that you must ultimately learn to esteem him. Out of that esteem will grow affection; and, believe me, paradoxical as it may sound, you will love him better in the future from not loving him too much in the present.”
“As you please, my dear guardian,” replied Miss Arden. “Henry Dalton by all means, then, and the fortune. I should be very sorry not to follow your excellent, sensible, and business-like advice.”
She said this with a simulation of his own indifference; but, in spite of herself, betrayed considerable agitation.
“If we are to dine at six—” interposed the faded lady by the fireplace, who had been looking over the top of the newspaper every three minutes, hopelessly awaiting a break in the conversation.
“We must go home directly,” replied Ellinor. “You are right, my dear Mrs. Morrison. Pray forgive me. Remember the happiness of a life,” — she looked not at Mrs. Morrison, but at Mr. Margrave, who had risen and stood leaning against the mantelpiece in an attitude expressive of supreme listlessness,—”the happiness of a life, perhaps, depended on the interview of to-day. I have made my decision, at the advice of my guardian. A decision which must, no doubt, result in the happiness of everyone concerned. I am quite at your service, Mrs. Morrison.”
Horace Margrave laid his hand on the bell by his side.
“Your carriage will be at the entrance to the Inn in three minutes, Ellinor. I will see you to the gate. Believe me, you have acted wisely; how wisely, you may never know.”
He himself conducted them down the broad panelled staircase, and, putting on his hat, led his ward through the quiet inn to her carriage. She was grave and silent, and he did not speak to her till she was seated with her elderly companion and chaperone in her roomy landau, when he leaned his hand on the carriage-door, and said:
“I shall bring Henry Dalton to Hertford-street this evening, to introduce him to his future wife.”
“Pray do so,” she said. “Adieu!”
“Only till eight o’clock.”
He lifted his hat, and stood watching the carriage as it drove away, then walked slowly back to his chambers, flung himself into a luxurious easy-chair, took a cigar from a small Venetian casket standing on a table at his side, lit it, wheeled his chair close to the fire, planted the heels of his boots against the polished steel of the low grate, and prepared for a lazy half hour before dinner.
As he lit the cigar, he looked gloomily into the blaze at his feet, and said:
“Horace Margrave, if you had only been an honest man!”
CHAPTER II. IN WHICH A SECRET IS REVEALED.
THE hands of the ormolu clock, in the little drawing-room in Hertford-street occupied by Ellinor Arden and her companion, chaperone, and dependent, Mrs. Morrison, pointed to a quarter-past eight, as Mr. Margrave’s quiet brougham rolled up to her door.
Horace Margrave’s professional position was no inconsidera
ble one. His practice was large and eminently respectable; lying principally amongst railway companies, and involving transactions of a very extensive kind. He was a man of excellent family, elegant, clever, and accomplished; too good for a lawyer, as everybody said; but a very good lawyer for all that, as his clients constantly repeated. At two-and-thirty he was still unmarried; why, no one could guess; as more than one great heiress, and many a pretty woman, would have been proud to say “Yes” to a matrimonial proposition from Horace Margrave, of Gray’s Inn, and the Fir Grove, Stanleydale, Berkshire. But the handsome lawyer evidently preferred his free bachelor life; for if his heart had been very susceptible to womanly graces, he would most inevitably have lost it in the society of his lovely ward, Ellinor Arden.
Ellinor had only been a few weeks resident in London; she had left the guardianship of a maternal aunt in Paris, to launch herself upon the whirlpool of English society, sheltered only by the ample wing of an elderly lady, duly selected and chartered by her aunt and Mr. Margrave. The world was new to her, and she came from the narrow circle of the convent in which she had been educated, and the quiet coteries of the Faubourg Saint Germains, in which her aunt delighted, to take her position at once in London, as the sole heiress of John Arden, of Arden.
It was then to Horace Margrave — to Horace Margrave, whom she remembered in her happy youth among the Scottish mountains, a young man on a shooting expedition, visiting at her father’s house — Horace Margrave, who had visited her aunt, from time to time, in Paris, and who had exhibited towards her all the tender friendship of an elder brother — to him, and to him alone, did she look for counsel and guidance; and she submitted as entirely to his influence as if he had indeed been that guardian and father he by law represented.
Her cheek flushed as the carriage-wheels stopped below the window.
“Now, Mrs. Morrison,” she said with a sneer; “now for my incomparable futur. Now for the light hair and the thick boots.”
“It will be very ill-bred if he comes in thick boots,” replied her matter-of-fact chaperone. “Mr. Margrave says he is such an excellent young person.”
“Exactly, my dear Mrs. Morrison — a young person. He is described in one word — a ‘person.’”
“O, my dream, my dream!” she murmured under her breath.
She had but this day passed wisdom’s Rubicon, and she was new to the hither bank. She was still very romantic, and perhaps very foolish.
The servant announced “Mr. Margrave and Mr. Dalton,” In spite of herself, Ellinor Arden looked up with some curiosity to see this young man, for whom she entertained so profound a contempt and so unmerited an aversion. He was about three years her senior; of average height. His hair was, as she had prophesied, light; but it was by no means an ugly colour, and it framed a broad and massive forehead. His features were sufficiently regular; his eyes dark blue. The expression of his face was grave, and it was only on rare occasions that a quiet smile played round his firmly-moulded lips. Standing side by side with Horace Margrave, he appeared anything but a handsome man; but to the physiognomist his face was superior in the very qualities in which the countenance of the lawyer was deficient — force, determination, self-reliance, perseverance; all those attributes, in short, which go to make a great man.
“Mr. Dalton has been anxiously awaiting the hour that should bring him to your side, Miss Arden,” said Horace Margrave. “He has been for a long time acquainted with those articles in your uncle’s will which you only learned to-day.”
“I am sorry Miss Arden should have ever learned them, if they have given her pain,” said the young man quietly.
Ellinor looked up in his face, and saw that the blue eyes, looking down into hers, had a peculiar earnestness.
“He is not so bad, after all,” she thought. “I have been foolish in ridiculing him; but I can never love him.”
“Miss Arden,” he continued, dropping into a chair by the sofa on which she was seated, while Horace Margrave leaned against the opposite side of the fireplace—” Miss Arden, we meet under such peculiar circumstances, that it is best for the happiness of both that we should at once understand each other. Tour late uncle was the dearest friend I ever had; no father could have been dearer to the most affectionate of sons than he was to me. Any wish, then, of his must to me be for ever sacred. But I have been brought up to rely upon myself alone, and can truly say I have no better wish than to make my own career, unaided by interest or fortune. The loss, then, of this money will be no loss to me. If it be your will to refuse my hand, and to retain the fortune to which you alone have a claim, do so. You shall never be disturbed in the possession of that to which you, of all others, have the best right. Mr. Margrave, your solicitor and executor to your uncle’s will, shall to-morrow execute a deed abnegating, on my part, all claim to this fortune; and I will, at one word from you, bid you adieu this night, before,” he added slowly, with an earnest glance at her beautiful face,—” before my heart is too far involved to allow of my being just to you.”
“Mr. Dalton,” said Horace Margrave, lazily watching the two from under the shadows of his eyelashes, “you bring Roman virtue into May Fair. You will purify the atmosphere.”
“Shall I go or stay, Miss Arden?” asked the young man.
“Stay, Mr. Dalton.” She rose as she spoke, and laid her hand, as if for support, upon the back of a chair that was standing near her. “Stay, Mr. Dalton. If your happiness can be made by the union, which was my late uncle’s wish, let it be so. I cannot hold this fortune, which is not mine; but I may share it. I will confess to you, and I know your generous nature will esteem me better for the confession, that I have ventured to cherish a dream in which the image of another had a part. I have been foolish, mistaken, absurd; as schoolgirls often are. The dream is over. If you can accept my uncle’s fortune and my own esteem; one is yours by right, the other has been won by your conduct of this evening.”
She held out her hand to him. He pressed it gently, raised it to his lips, led her back to the sofa, and reseated himself in the chair by her side.
Horace Margrave closed his eyes, as if the long-expected blow had fallen.
The rest of the evening passed slowly. Mr. Margrave talked, and talked brilliantly; but he had a very dull audience. Ellinor was absent-minded, Henry Dalton thoughtful, and Mrs. Morrison eminently stupid. The lawyer found it hard work to be brilliant in such dull company. When the clock, on which an ormolu Pan reclined amidst a forest of bronze rushes, chimed the half-hour after ten, he carried away Mr. Dalton; and Ellinor was left to ponder upon the solemn engagement into which she had entered on the impulse of the moment.
“I had better take a cab to the Temple,” said young Dalton as they left the house. “I’ll wish you good-night, Mr. Margrave.”
“No, Mr. Dalton, I have something to say to you that must be said, and which I think I’d rather say by night than by day. If you are not afraid of late hours, come home with me to my chambers, and smoke a cigar. I must have an hour’s conversation with you before you see Ellinor Arden again. Shall it be to-night? I ask it as a favour; let it be to-night.” Henry Dalton looked considerably astonished by the lawyer’s words and manner; but he merely bowed, and said, “With great pleasure. I am entirely at your service. If I returned to my chambers I should read for two or three hours, so pray do not be afraid of keeping me up.”
Henry Dalton and Horace Margrave sat talking for nearly three hours in the chambers of the latter; but no cigars were smoked by either of them, and though a bottle of Madeira stood on the table, it was untouched. It was to be observed, however, that a cellaret had been opened, and a decanter of brandy taken out; the stopper lay beside it, and one glass, which had been drained to the dregs.
The clocks were striking two as Horace Margrave opened the outer door for his late visitor. On the threshold he paused, laid his hand, with a strong grasp, on Dalton’s arm, and said in a whisper, “I am safe, then! Your promise is sacred!”
Henry Dalton tur
ned and looked him full in the face — looked fall at the pale face and downcast eyes.
“The Daltons of Lincolnshire are not an aristocratic race, Mr. Margrave; but they keep their word. Good-night.”
He did not hold out his hand at parting, but merely lifted his hat and bowed gravely.
Horace Margrave sighed as he locked the doors, and returned to his warm study.
“At least,” he said, “I am safe. But then I might have been happy. Have I been wise to-night? I wonder whether I have been wise,” he muttered, as his eyes wandered to a space over the mantelpiece, on which were arranged two pairs of magnificently-mounted pistols, and a small dagger in a chased silver scabbard. “Perhaps, after all, it was scarcely worth the trouble of this explanation; perhaps, after all, so miserable a game is scarcely worth the candle that lights it.”
CHAPTER III. AFTER THE HONEYMOON.
THREE months had elapsed since the midnight interview in Horace Margrave’s chambers — three months, and the Opera House was opened for the season, and three new tenors, and two sopranos, and a basso-baritono had appeared under the classic proscenium of her Majesty’s Theatre; the novel of the season was in full circulation; Rotten Row was gay with Amazonian equestrians and blase lifeguardsmen; moss-roses were selling on the dusty pavements of the West-end streets; and Covent Garden was all a-bloom with artistically-arranged bouquets, and all a-glow with Algerian fruits; — London, in short, was in the full flood-tide of the season, when Mr and Mrs. Henry Dalton returned from their honeymoon visit to the Cumberland lake-district, and took up their abode in the small house in Hertford-street famished by Ellinor before her marriage.
Hers has been a short courtship; all the sweet uncertainties, the doubts, the dreams, the fears, the hopes which make up the poetical prologue to a love-match, have been wanting in this marriage ordained by the will of her late uncle — this marriage, which is founded on esteem and not on affection? this marriage, into which she has entered on the generous impulse of an impetuous nature, which has never submitted itself to the discipline of reason.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1061