She laughed, but not unkindly.
“If I liked you, or were at all near liking you, you should know it by a certain sign,” she says, with a smile, though a sad one.
“How? Do tell me how — how I should know it?” And he works off a great piece of the old bark with his sinewy hand as he talks.
“By my instantly leaving you,” she answered. “And now we have talked sufficiently, haven’t we, on this interesting theme? One day or other you’ll say, if, by chance, you remember this talk under the ruins of Wybourne, ‘That wise but threadbare young lady was right, and I was wrong, and it is very well there was some prudent person near to save me from an irreparable folly;’ and having made this prediction, and said my say on what seems to me a very simple question, the subject is, for me, exhausted, and becomes a bore, and nothing shall tempt me to say or listen to another word upon it. What a sudden curious fog there was yesterday evening!”
Mr. Marston talked of the fog, as well as he was able, and of the old city of Chester, and whatever else this young lady pleased; he was hardly half thinking of these themes. His mind was employed, in an undercurrent, upon far more interesting matter.
“Suffering,” he thinks, “is the parent of all that is fine in character. This girl thinks, resolves, and acts for herself. How different she is from the youthful daughters of luxury! What originality — what energy — what self-reliance!”
Perhaps he is right. This young lady has a will of her own; she is a little eccentric; she thinks, without much knowledge of the world, very resolutely for herself. I don’t know that she is more jealous than other women. But she is an imperious little princess.
While she is trifling in this cruel way, Miss Max comes through a little gate in the hedge at the foot of this sloping field. Urged apparently by the shortness of the time that remained, the young gentleman made one other venture.
“And do you mean to say, Miss Maud, that you, for instance, could never love a man whose rank you thought above your own?”
This was a rather abrupt transition from Carl Maria von Weber, about whose music the young lady was talking.
“You don’t keep treaties, it seems,” said the young lady; “but as only two or three minutes remain, and we may never meet again, I’ll answer you. Yes, perhaps I could. All the more readily for his superiority, all the more deeply for his sacrifices. But in some of my moods, vain or ambitious, I might marry him without caring a pin about him. There are the two cases, and I am never likely to be tempted by either, and — pray, let me say the rest — if I were, no one should ever suspect it, and I should, assuredly, accept neither.”
“You said we were never likely to meet again,” said the young man. “Is that kind? What have I done to deserve so much severity?”
He glanced down the slope. Miss Max was toiling up. She was stumbling over the twisted roots that spread under the great trees, and seeing a man conversing with her young cousin, she had put up her parasol to keep the slanting sunlight from her eyes, and aid her curious scrutiny.
She could not reach them well in less than four minutes more.
Four minutes still. Precious interval.
“You go to the ball at Wymering?” she asked in a tone that had something odd in it; a strange little sigh, and yet how much apathy.
“Anywhere — yes, certainly,” he replies, in hot haste. “Is there a chance — the least hope?”
He remembered that she was not a very likely person to figure at a ball, and so he ended, “I have often intended going there; any hope of your being in the neighbourhood of Wymering about that time?”
“You see, I don’t pretend to be a great person. No fairy has bedizened me for an occasion. I have no magnificence to dissolve at a fated hour,” she said, with a sad little laugh. “Those balls are not such ill-natured things after all. They help poor girls who work at their needles. Yes, I always go to that, at least as far as the cloak-room.”
“Wherever you go, Miss Maud, there will be no one like you; no one like you, anywhere, in all the world; and remember — though you can’t like me now — how I adore you.”
“Stop — don’t talk so to me,” she replied. “You are rich. I am, what I am; and language that might be only audacious if we were equals, is insult now.”
“Good Heavens! won’t you understand me? I only meant, I can’t help saying it, that I care to win no one else on earth, and never shall. If you but knew — — “
“What need I know more than I do? I believe, rather from your looks than from your words, that you talk your folly in good faith. But I have heard too much of that, for one day. One thing more I have to say, you must leave this immediately; and, if from Miss Max, or any other person, you try to make out anything more, ever so little, about me, about my story, name, business, than I have told you, you never speak to me one word more. That’s understood. Here now is my cousin.”
Miss Max, smiling pleasantly, said:
“Dear me, Mr. Marston, who could have fancied that you would have been here! I could not think who it could be, as I came up the hill. Were you at Wybourne Church?”
“Oh, no! I wai — — “ He was going to say, “waited outside,” but he corrected himself. “I arrived too late. A pretty little church it seems to be.”
“Oh! quite a beautiful little church, inside. Some one showed you the path here, I suppose; those up there are the ruins of old Wybourne Hall: what an awful fog we had last night! Do you know, it was really quite frightful going through it at the fearful speed we did. You must come and drink tea with us, Mr. Marston.”
“No, dear, we must not have any one to tea tonight; I have particular reasons, and besides, Mr. Marston has to leave this immediately,” said Miss Maud, inhospitably.
He looked at her ruefully.
“You told me you were going immediately?” said the young lady, gently, but with a slight emphasis.
“But I dare say you can manage to put it off for an hour or so, Mr. Marston — can’t you?” asked Miss Max.
He glanced at the inexorable Miss Maud, and he read his doom in that pretty face.
“I’m afraid — it is so very kind of you — but I’m really afraid it is quite impossible,” he answers.
“I don’t like to bore you, Mr. Marston; but if you can stay to tea, just an hour or two — can’t you manage that? I shall be so glad,” urged the old lady.
“Mr. Marston, I believe, made a promise to be at another place this evening,” said the girl; “and Mr. Marston says he prides himself on keeping his word.”
Though she was looking down at the grass, and said this with something like a smile, and in a careless way, Mr. Marston dares not disobey the reminder it conveys.
“That is perfectly true, what Miss Maud says. I made that promise to a person whom I dare not disappoint, whom I respect more than I can describe,” and he added in a low tone to Maud, “whom it is my pride to obey.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Marston,” she says, with a smile, extending her pretty hand very frankly.
How he felt as he touched it!
“Goodbye, Miss Max,” he says, turning with a sigh and a smile to that lady.
“Goodbye, since so it must be, and I hope we may chance to meet again, Mr. Marston,” said the old lady, kindly giving him her thin old hand.
“So do I — so do I — thank you, very much,” says he, and he pauses, looking as if he was not sure that he had not something more to say.
“Goodbye, Miss Max,” he repeats, “and goodbye,” he says again to the girl, extending his hand.
Once more, for a second or two, he holds her hand in his, and then he finds himself walking quickly under the straggling hawthorns. The sprays are rattling on his hat as he crosses the stile. He is striding through the first narrow field over which his walk from the church had been. Lifeless and dimmed the hedges are, and the songs of the birds all round are but a noise which he scarcely hears. There is but one thought in his brain and heart, as he strides through this cloistered solit
ude, as swiftly as if his rate of travel could shorten the time between this and the ball at Wymering.
This Mr. Marston was not so much a fool as not to know that, being a man of honour, he had taken a very serious step. The young lady — for be her troubles and distresses what they might, a lady she surely was — whom he had pursued so far, and to whom he had spoken in language quite irrevocable, had now, in her small hand, his fate and fortunes.
There seemed to walk beside him, along his grassy path, an angry father, and the sneers and gabble of kindred, who had a right to talk, were barking and laughing at his heels. He knew very well what he had to count upon, and had known it all along. But it did not daunt him, either then or now.
Here was his first love, and an idol not created by his fancy, but, undoubtedly, the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. A first love devouring material so combustible; a generous fellow, impetuous, sanguine, dominated by imagination, and who had delivered eloquent lectures upon the folly of political economy, and the intrinsic tyranny of our social system.
These things troubled him, no doubt; but thus beset, he had no more notion of turning about than had honest Christian and Hopeful as they plodded through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He felt, I dare say, pretty much as a knight when riding into the lists to mortal combat for the mistress of his heart.
He held himself now, so far as his own personal case went, irrevocably betrothed to his beautiful but cruel mistress; and so far from halting between two opinions, if what had passed this evening had been still unsaid, he would have gone round the world for a chance of speaking it.
Literally abiding by his promise, he left Wybourne as suddenly as he came.
Miss Max looked after him as the underwood hid him from view, with the somewhat blank and ruminating countenance which belongs to the lady about whose ears a favourite castle in the air has just tumbled.
“Well,” said she, turning to her young companion, nodding, and looking wise, “that gentleman is gone on a fool’s errand, I venture to say. Have you any idea where he’s gone?”
“Not the least.”
“I liked him very much. I hope he’s not going to make a fool of himself. I really thought he liked you. He is so full of romance. See how you blush!”
“I always do when I think I shall, and when I particularly wish not,” she said, with a smile, but a little vexed.
“Well, I suspect, from what he said, that he is going to ask some young lady an interesting question; or, perhaps, he is actually engaged; goodness knows.”
Miss Max was walking under the lordly trees towards home and tea, with her young cousin beside her.
“That’s a blackbird,” she says, listening for a moment. “What a delicious evening!”
“Has your mother set out again upon her usual mysterious journey?” inquired Miss Max.
“I fancy not — not yet, at least,” answered the girl, listlessly.
“Well, I may say to you, I can’t understand your mother the least, my dear.”
The girl made no answer: she was looking up, with a listless and sad face, toward the fleecy clouds that now glowed in the tint of sunset, and the rooks, that make no holiday of Sunday, winging homeward, high in air, with a softened cawing.
CHAPTER XI.
ROYDON.
Next day, about noon, the young lady, with an embrace, and a little shower of kisses, took a loving farewell of her cousin, stepped into a fly, with her boxes on the roof, and, with a sad heart, began her journey homeward.
It was a good way, some twenty miles and upwards. She had borrowed Miss Max’s novel, grew tired of it a dozen times, and resumed it as often, and as she neared home, with the restlessness that accompanies the conclusion of a journey, she threw her book on the opposite cushion, and looked out of the window, greeting, as it were, the familiar objects that in succession presented themselves to view.
Now they are passing the windmill on the little hillock overlooking the road. The day is sultry. There is not a breath to stir its sails, and the great arms stand bare and motionless. Mill and hillock glide backward, and are gone.
The road descends a little. They are between files of old elms. It grows broader; there stands the old village tree, with a rude wooden bench encircling its trunk. The time-honoured tree sails back, and is lost, and quaint old diamond-latticed houses float into view, and pass. Here and there a familiar face is seen at door or window, or peeping from the shade over the hatch; and the girl, from the fly-window, nods and smiles. They are now midway in the quiet little street, but they have not yet reached the home that she loves not.
At the other side are the stained walls of an antique church; the gilded vane, the grey tombstones, spread over the thick emerald grass, and the yew-tree, go slanting off, hurry-scurry, as the fly-wheels whirl, by a wide circuit, through the piers of a great iron gate, which has just given egress to an oldfashioned family coach.
It is going the other way. It does not pass her. It and its liveried footmen are fast getting into perspective under the boughs of the trees that line the road. Through the window of the fly, as it turns, she has a momentary peep.
“Brown and gold,” she says, as listlessly she leans back again in her humble conveyance. “The Tinterns. And so here I am, a black sheep, a scamp, and a reprobate, come home again, as curses do!”
There was not much remorse, but a good deal of bitterness in her tone, and the girl yawned, with her fingertips to her lips, and looked for a moment a little peevish.
There is what is termed technically an “approach” to the house up to which she is driving, a serpentine road, two miles long at least, through a wooded demesne. But, wisely, the old owner of Roydon, when consulting his new lights, and laying out, according to picturesque principles, the modern approach, would not allow them to obliterate or alter the old avenue of the mansion — broad and straight, something more than a quarter of a mile long, with a double line of trees at each side, wide enough apart to admit the entire front of the building.
It is up this broad, straight avenue she is driving now.
A lazy man, with a mind at ease, entering here for the first time, looking down the solemn lines of enormous boughs to the old-world glories that close the perspective, escaping from the vulgar world of dust and rattle into shorn grass and clear, silent air, and the luxurious and melancholy grandeur of all that surrounds him, might fancy himself in the “delicious land” once visited by the enchanted Sir Jeofry.
In the distance rises a grand Elizabethan structure — broad, florid, built of white stone, yellowed and many-tinted by time. A vague effect fills the eye of pinnacles and bell-mouthed chimneys, and curved and corniced gables, balustrades, a front variously indented and projecting; multitudes of stone-shafted windows, deep-curved scrolls, and heraldic shields and supporters; a broad flight of steps, and then another balustrade running at both sides the whole length of the base. All this rises before her, with its peculiar combination of richness, lightness, and solidity, basking drowsily in the summer sun.
As you approach, you discern a wide courtyard in front, with a second line of balustrade nearer to you.
On the summit of this, here and there, are peacocks sunning themselves, some white, others plumed in their proper gold and purple. They nod their crested heads as they prune their plumage, and hang their long tails to the grass, disturbing the slumbrous air, now and then, with a discordant scream.
As you draw nearer still, before you enter the court, two oblong ponds reveal their spacious waters, at the right and the left; you may hear the shower of the fountains playing in the middle, snowy coronals of water-lilies are floating near their banks, and swans are grandly gliding round and up and down.
Now the homely “fly” is in the courtyard. A great Russian dog lies sunning himself on the dazzling gravel, near the steps, and whacks the ground twice or thrice with his tail, in lazy recognition, as he sees the young lady look from the window of her homely vehicle.
“I suppose that is
the way of the world, Bevis,” she says; “you know whom to get up for.”
Her attention is arrested by a carriage waiting a little way from the steps.
“That’s the dean,” comments the young lady as she sees that very neat equipage, at the window of which a tall footman, in light blue and gold livery, with flowered hair, is standing. He has just descended the broad flight of steps under the great shield which overhangs the door, and which displays in high relief all the heraldic insignia of that branch of the Vernons. He is delivering a message from Lady Vernon — Barbara Vernon — I give you the christian name of this famous widow at once, as it is mentioned often in the sequel — to an old lady sitting in the carriage.
Old Miss Wyvel, the dean’s sister, as usual, with her feet on a pan of hot water, sits in the carriage reading her novel, and nursing her rheumatism, while her brother, the dean, makes his visit, with an apology from her for not coming in.
“We’ll not mind Miss Wyvel this time. She’ll be all the happier that I don’t disturb her, and so shall I.”
Another tall footman, seeing who is in the fly, descends the broad steps quickly, and opens the door.
“The Dean of Chartry is here?” inquires the young lady. “How long has he been here?”
“About ten minutes, please, miss.”
“Any other visitor?”
“No one, miss, at present, please.”
“Where is her ladyship?”
“In the library, please, miss.”
“Will you tell somebody, please, to tell my maid that I want her in my room?” said the young lady.
And she ran up the steps lightly, and entered the great hall. It runs back into space, almost into darkness, with oak panelled walls and tall pictures. She turned to the right, where the broad oak staircase ascends.
Up she runs. There are more portraits in this house, one must suppose, than the owners well know what to do with, for you can hardly turn a corner without meeting a gentleman with rosettes in his shoes, a ruffround his neck, and a rapier by his side, or a lady in the toilet of Queen Elizabeth. All ages, indeed, of English costume, from the court of Harry the Eighth down to George the Second, are represented here; and, I suspect, there is now not a soul on earth who could tell you the names of all these magnificos and high dames, who are fain to lurk behind corners, or stand in their frames, with their backs against the walls of galleries, passed, back and forward, by gabbling moderns, who don’t care twopence about them or their finery.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 572