ACCIDENTAL.
When dinner was over, Lady Theobald rose, and proceeded to the
drawing-room, Lucia following in her wake. From her very babyhood Lucia
had disliked the drawing-room, which was an imposing apartment of great
length and height, containing much massive furniture, upholstered in
faded blue satin. All the girl's evenings, since her fifth year, had been
spent sitting opposite her grandmother, in one of the straightest of the
blue chairs: all the most scathing reproofs she had received had been
administered to her at such times. She had a secret theory, indeed, that
all unpleasant things occurred in the drawing-room after dinner.
Just as they had seated themselves, and Lady Theobald was on the point of
drawing toward her the little basket containing the gray woollen mittens
she made a duty of employing herself by knitting each evening, Dobson,
the coachman, in his character of footman, threw open the door, and
announced a visitor.
"Capt. Barold."
Lady Theobald dropped her gray mitten, the steel needles falling upon the
table with a clink. She rose to her feet at once, and met half-way the
young man who had entered.
"My dear Francis," she remarked, "I am exceedingly glad to see you at
last," with a slight emphasis upon the "at last."
"Tha-anks," said Capt. Barold, rather languidly. "You're very good, I'm
sure."
Then he glanced at Lucia, and Lady Theobald addressed her:--
"Lucia," she said, "this is Francis Barold, who is your cousin."
Capt. Barold shook hands feebly.
"I have been trying to find out whether it is third or fourth," he said.
"It is third," said my lady.
Lucia had never seen her display such cordiality to anybody. But Capt.
Francis Barold did not seem much impressed by it. It struck Lucia that he
would not be likely to be impressed by any thing. He seated himself near
her grandmother's chair, and proceeded to explain his presence on the
spot, without exhibiting much interest even in his own relation of facts.
"I promised the Rathburns that I would spend a week at their place; and
Slowbridge was on the way, so it occurred to me I would drop off in
passing. The Rathburns' place, Broadoaks, is about ten miles farther on;
not far, you see."
"Then," said Lady Theobald, "I am to understand that your visit is
accidental."
Capt. Barold was not embarrassed. He did not attempt to avoid her
ladyship's rather stern eye, as he made his cool reply.
"Well, yes," he said. "I beg pardon, but it is accidental, rather."
Lucia gave him a pretty, frightened look, as if she felt that, after such
an audacious confession, something very serious must happen; but nothing
serious happened at all. Singularly enough, it was Lady Theobald herself
who looked ill at ease, and as though she had not been prepared for such
a contingency.
During the whole of the evening, in fact, it was always Lady Theobald
who was placed at a disadvantage, Lucia discovered. She could hardly
realize the fact at first; but before an hour had passed, its truth was
forced upon her.
Capt. Barold was a very striking-looking man, upon the whole. He was
large, gracefully built, and fair: his eyes were gray, and noticeable for
the coldness of their expression, his features regular and aquiline, his
movements leisurely.
As he conversed with her grandmother, Lucia wondered at him privately. It
seemed to her innocent mind that he had been everywhere, and seen every
thing and everybody, without caring for or enjoying his privileges. The
truth was, that he had seen and experienced a great deal too much. As an
only child, the heir to a large property, and heir prospective to one of
the oldest titles in the country, he had exhausted life early. He saw in
Lady Theobald, not the imposing head and social front of Slowbridge
social life, the power who rewarded with approval and punished with a
frown, but a tiresome, pretentious old woman, whom his mother had asked
him, for some feminine reason, to visit. "She feels she has a claim upon
us, Francis," she had said appealingly.
"Well," he had remarked, "that is rather deuced cool, isn't it? We have
people enough on our hands without cultivating Slowbridge, you know."
His mother sighed faintly.
"It is true we have a great many people to consider; but I wish you would
do it, my dear."
She did not say any thing at all about Lucia: above all, she did not
mention that a year ago she herself had spent two or three days at
Slowbridge, and had been charmed beyond measure by the girl's innocent
freshness, and that she had said, rather absently, to Lady Theobald,--
"What a charming wife Lucia would make for a man to whom gentleness and a
yielding disposition were necessary! We do not find such girls in society
nowadays, my dear Lady Theobald. It is very difficult of late years to
find a girl who is not spoken of as 'fast,' and who is not disposed to
take the reins in her own hands. Our young men are flattered and courted
until they become a little dictatorial, and our girls are spoiled at
home. And the result is a great deal of domestic unhappiness
afterward--and even a great deal of scandal, which is dreadful to
contemplate. I cannot help feeling the greatest anxiety in secret
concerning Francis. Young men so seldom consider these matters until it
is too late."
"Girls are not trained as they were in my young days, or even in yours,"
said Lady Theobald. "They are allowed too much liberty. Lucia has been
brought up immediately under my own eye."
"I feel that it is fortunate," remarked Mrs. Barold, quite incidentally,
"that Francis need not make a point of money."
For a few moments Lady Theobald did not respond; but afterward, in the
course of the conversation which followed, she made an observation which
was, of course, purely incidental.
"If Lucia makes a marriage which pleases her great-uncle, old Mr. Dugald
Binnie, of Glasgow, she will be a very fortunate girl. He has intimated,
in his eccentric fashion, that his immense fortune will either be hers,
or will be spent in building charitable asylums of various kinds. He is a
remarkable and singular man."
When Capt. Barold had entered his distinguished relative's drawing-room,
he had not regarded his third cousin with a very great deal of interest.
He had seen too many beauties in his thirty years to be greatly moved by
the sight of one; and here was only a girl who had soft eyes, and looked
young for her age, and who wore an ugly muslin gown, that most girls
could not have carried off at all.
"You have spent the greater part of your life in Slowbridge?" he
condescended to say in the course of the evening.
"I have lived here always," Lucia answered. "I have never been away more
than a week at a time."
"Ah?" interrogatively. "I hope you have not found it dull."
"No," smiling a little. "Not very. You see, I have known nothing gayer."
"There is society enough of a harmless kind here," spoke up Lady Theobald
virtuously. "I do not approve of a round of gayeties for young people: it
unfits them for the duties of life."
But Capt. Barold was not as favorably impressed by these remarks as might
have been anticipated.
"What an old fool she is!" was his polite inward comment. And he resolved
at once to make his visit as brief as possible, and not to be induced to
run down again during his stay at Broadoaks. He did not even take the
trouble to appear to enjoy his evening. From his earliest infancy, he had
always found it easier to please himself than to please other people. In
fact, the world had devoted itself to endeavoring to please him, and win
his--toleration, we may say, instead of admiration, since it could not
hope for the latter. At home he had been adored rapturously by a large
circle of affectionate male and female relatives; at school his tutors
had been singularly indulgent of his faults and admiring of his talents;
even among his fellow-pupils he had been a sort of autocrat.
Why not, indeed, with such birthrights and such prospects? When he had
entered society, he had met with even more amiable treatment from
affectionate mothers, from innocent daughters, from cordial paternal
parents, who voted him an exceedingly fine fellow. Why should he bore
himself by taking the trouble to seem pleased by a stupid evening with an
old grenadier in petticoats and a badly dressed country girl?
Lucia was very glad when, in answer to a timidly appealing glance, Lady
Theobald said,--
"It is half-past ten. You may wish us good-night, Lucia."
Lucia obeyed, as if she had been half-past ten herself, instead of nearly
twenty; and Barold was not long in following her example.
Dobson led him to a stately chamber at the top of the staircase, and left
him there. The captain chose the largest and most luxurious chair, sat
down in it, and lighted a cigar at his leisure.
"Confoundedly stupid hole!" he said with a refined vigor one would
scarcely have expected from an individual of his birth and breeding. "I
shall leave to-morrow, of course. What was my mother thinking of? Stupid
business from first to last."