CARNABY COURT.
The baronet's country seat was popular among his 'set,' and in the
county generally. The ladies were attractive, Sir Carnaby was fond
of society, and was undeniably hospitable: the preserves were good,
the corn-fed pheasants were among the best in the land, and
partridges abounded in the coverts and thickets; the stud and cellar
were good, and his French cook was a genius. The oak-studded chase,
where the deer lay deep amid the fern, showed trees that were of vast
antiquity--remnants, perhaps, of the days when Bucks was all a
forest, as old historians tell us.
The Collingwoods had been lords of Collingwood ever since tradition
could tell of them. They were, it was said, old as the chalky
Chiltern Hills and the woods of Whaddon Chase, and stories of their
prowess had been rife among the people since the days when Edward was
murdered at Tewkesbury, when 'bluff King Hal' burnt Catholics and
Protestants together with perfect impartiality at Smithfield, when
Mary spent her maudlin love on Philip, and Queen Bess boxed the ears
of her courtiers: all had figured in history somehow; and everywhere,
over the gateway half hidden by ivy, in the painted oriels, on the
gables, and on the buttons of the livery servants, were three eels
wavy on a bend, indicating a heraldic portion of the tenure by which
they held their land, like the lord of Aylesbury in the same
county--'By the sergentry of finding straw for the bed of the
Defender of the Faith, with three eels for his supper, when he should
travel that way.'
Built, patched, and repaired in various ages, the Court is one of the
most picturesque old mansions in the county. In one portion, chiefly
inhabited by crows and bats, there was a half-ruined remnant left by
the Wars of the Roses, on which the present Tudor, or, rather,
Elizabethan mansion, with its peaked gables, oriel windows, and
clustered chimney-stacks--square, twisted, or fluted--had been
engrafted. Hawthorn, holly, and ivy grew out of the clefts of the
ruinous portion; and there in childhood had Clare and Ida made baby
houses; and there they had devoured in secret many a fairy and ghost
story, and thrilled with joy over that of the 'Ugly Duckling.' The
terrace balustrades were mossy and green, and though Carnaby Court
had an old and decayed aspect, there was a lingering grandeur about
it.
The plate in the dining-hall was famous in the county for its value
and antiquity, though many a goblet and salver had gone to the
melting-pot when King Charles unfurled his standard at Nottingham.
We have said that stories had been rumoured about of a figure seen in
the garden and elsewhere; and Sir Carnaby, who loathed scenes,
excitement, worry, 'and all that sort of thing,' as he phrased it
(though he had undergone enough and to spare), was intensely provoked
when the old butler gave him some hint of the shadowy addition to the
family at the Court.
'A ghost!' he exclaimed, with his gold glasses on his long, thin nose.
'Yes, sir--so they say.'
'They--who? Stuff! If this absurd story gets abroad, we shall find
ourselves a subject for the speculation of the vulgar here and the
spiritualists everywhere; and the house may be beset by all manner of
intruders. And what is it like?'
'Nobody knows; a tall man in black, I have heard,' replied the butler.
'Black! How do ghosts or spirits get clothes?'
'I don't know, Sir Carnaby.'
'Of course you don't, how should you? _Your_ spirits are in wood,'
chuckled the baronet. 'I have heard of tables spinning about, of
bells ringing, banjos playing, of sticks beating on a drum-head by
unseen hands, and even of people flying through the air at _séances_,
but I'll have none of that nonsense at Carnaby Court. It's bad
style--vulgar--very! We'll send for the disembodied police, and have
your ghost taken up as a rogue and impostor.'
Quite a gay party had assembled for the Christmas festivities at the
old Court; there were Major Desmond, and two of his brother officers,
with his intended, one of the belles of the last season at Tyburnia,
Colonel and Lady Rakes, Lord Brixton, and many more, including old
Lord Bayswater and Charley Rakes, a mere lad, steeped already in
folly or worse, yet very much disposed to lionise and patronise the
pretty Violet.
When Trevor Chute and Vane first arrived they were both shocked--the
latter particularly so--to find a great and fatal change had come
over Ida, and it had come suddenly too, as Clare asserted. Jerry had
begun to feel the sweetness of cheated hope, but this was fading now.
She seemed in a decline apparently; large dark circles were under her
eyes, and their old soft sweetness of gaze was blended with a weird
and weary look of infinite melancholy at times; and when Clare had
expressed to Sir Carnaby a hope that she might yet wed Jerry out of
pity--
'Let her wed him for anything, for--by Jove, this sort of thing is
great boredom,' sighed or grumbled the baronet.
'The idea of you, Captain Chute, eloping with our new mamma,' said
Violet, when she met him.
'That led to my being of service to your father, Violet--to my being
here to-night,' he added, in a tender whisper to Clare, as the ladies
left the dining-table, and Sir Carnaby changed his seat to the head
of the table.
'Ugh!' said he, in a low voice, 'unless poor Ida brightens up a
little, a doleful Christmas we are likely to have of it; but I am
glad to see you, Vane--the wine stands with you--pass the bottles,
and don't insult my butler by neglecting to fill your glass.'
With all his affected breeze of manner, his desire to appear juvenile
before Lady Evelyn, and all his inborn selfishness, both Vane and
Chute could perceive that the failing health of his favourite
daughter had affected him. The unwelcome crow's-feet were deeper
about his eyes; his general 'get-up' was less elaborate; his whiskers
were out of curl, and like what remained of his hair, showed, by an
occasional patch of grey, that dye was sometimes forgotten.
The first quiet stolen interview of Clare and Trevor Chute was one of
inexpressible happiness and joy. They were again in the recess of
that oriel near which he had first said he loved her, and she had
accepted him. The moon shone as bright now as then, but in the clear
and frosty sky of a winter night, and the flakes of light threw down
many a crimson, golden, and blue ray of colour on the snowy skin and
white dress of Clare, as she nestled her face on Trevor's breast,
while his arm went round her.
Clare loved well the woods of the old Court--the lovely, leafy
woods--with trees round and vast as the pillars of a Saxon
cathedral--loved them in their vernal greenery, their summer foliage,
and their varied autumnal tints of russet, brown, and gold, for there
had Trevor told her again and again the old, old story, the story of
both their hearts, hand locked in hand; and there she had first
learned how sweet and good our earthly life may be, how full of hope,
of sunshine, and glory to the loving and the loved; but never did she
love them as when she saw them now, though standing black and
leafless amid the far-stretching waste of snow that gleamed in the
distance far away under the glare of the moon, for Trevor was with
her once more, and never to be separated from her again!
'Oh, Trevor, Trevor! I thank kind Heaven,' she whispered for the
twentieth time, 'that you and papa are friends now--and such friends!
Lady Evelyn has told me again and again all the debt we owe. If the
poor old man had perished----'
'Had I saved a nation, Clare, my reward is in you,' said he,
arresting effectually further thanks or praises.
He had dreamed by day of Clare, and loved her as much as ever man
loved woman; he had undergone all the misery of separation, of
hopelessness, doubt, and even of groundless jealousy; and now, after
all, she was his own! For the most tranquil time of all his past
life he would not have exchanged the tumultuous and brilliant joy of
the present; yet that joy was not without a cloud, and that cloud was
the regret and perplexity caused by Ida, for whom he had all the
tenderness of a brother.
On the day after his arrival he was writing in the library, and had
been so for some time, before he discovered that Ida was lying fast
asleep in an easy-chair near the fire, her slumber being induced
either by weariness and languor, or the cosy heat of the room, with
its warmth of colour and its heavy draperies, which partly hid the
snowy scene without. For a few moments he watched the singular
beauty of the girl's upturned face, the purity of her profile, and
the sweetness of her parted lips, as her graceful head reclined
against the back of the softly cushioned chair, over which, as they
had become undone, bright masses of her auburn hair were rippling.
Suddenly she seemed to shiver in her sleep, and to mutter, as terror
and sorrow hardened the lines of her face. She was dreaming; and
starting with a low cry, she awoke, and sprang almost into the arms
of Chute. Her lips were white and parched--white as the teeth within
them; her eyes, with a wild, hysterical, and overstrained expression,
were fixed on the empty air, while the veins in her delicate throat
were swollen; and then she turned to Chute, who kissed her forehead,
caressed her hands, and besought her to be calm. She drew a long,
gasping sigh, and said, while swaying forward, as if about to fall:
'Oh, Trevor, Trevor! I have had a dream of Beverley--and such a
dream! Hold me up, or I shall fall!' she added, pressing her
tremulous hands upon her thin white temples. 'In this dream,
Beverley said--said----' Tears choked her utterance.
'_What_ did you think he said?' asked Chute, tenderly.
'Think? I heard him as plainly as I hear you!'
'Well, do speak, Ida.'
'He said, "We are never to be parted, Ida, even by death. Fate has
linked my soul to yours for ever; and though unseen, I am ever near
you." Then a cry escaped me, and I awoke. Had you not been here, I
should have fainted.'
'This is--heavens! what shall I call it--morbid!' exclaimed Chute.
'Such dreams----'
'Come to me unbidden--uncontrolled,' continued Ida, sobbing heavily.
'There seems to be a strange, half sad and sweet, half fearful and
subtle, influence at work around me! I am sure that there is a world
beyond the grave--an unseen world that is close, close to us all,
Trevor.'
As she spoke, Chute, who was regarding her with the tenderest
sympathy, became deeply pained to see the grey, death-like hue that
stole over her lovely face, and the droop that came into her--for the
moment--lustreless eyes; and as he gazed he almost began to imbibe
some of her wild convictions. 'It is a matter of knowledge,' says a
writer, 'that there are persons whose yearning conceptions--nay,
travelled conclusions--continually take the form of images which have
a foreshadowing power: the deed they do starts up before them in
complete shape, making a coercive type; the event they hunger for or
dread rises into vision with a seed-like growth, feeding itself fast
on unnumbered impressions. They are not always the less capable of
argumentative process, nor less sane than the commonplace calculators
of the market.'
'Whenever I _think_ of Beverley, I seem to feel that he is, unseen,
beside me; and this startling and oppressive emotion I can neither
control, analyze, or conquer,' said Ida, wearily, as Chute led her to
another room.