HURDELL HALL.
'Welcome to Hurdell Hall! My sister Lucretia--Lady Puddicombe and
Sir Paget, Lucretia--Sir Paget, our mutual friend Poole, you know.'
Thus did Sir Harry Hurdell introduce Eveline and Sir Paget, with much
_empressement_ and effusiveness, to his home in Hampshire, when the
carriage duly deposited them, with Mademoiselle Clairette, Sir
Paget's valet, and 'no end' of trunks and boxes in a van, at the
porte cochère.
Situated in the northern district of the shire, where the woods are
chiefly hazel, birch, alder, and willow, where flocks of deer scour
the coppice, Hurdell Hall is a fine example of the old Tudor
architecture, and, as Eveline saw it for the first time with the rays
of the evening sun casting dashes of golden light upon its ogee
gables, mullioned bay-windows, its long gravelled approach, and
stately terrace, she thought what a charming picture it would make,
with its background of oaks, which in Hampshire seldom rise into
lofty stems, but have branches that are usually twisted into
picturesque outlines.
Below the terrace lay a kind of pool, in which a couple of swans were
floating lazily, each with one leg tucked up under a wing, and where
the snow-white water-lilies gleamed in the sunshine.
Nor was the inside of the Hall--which was to be associated with
events never to be forgotten by Eveline--any way inferior to the
outside. There were stately apartments furnished with every modern
luxury in the way of upholstery, and others where the furniture spoke
of an old, old past, and of generations of Hurdells who had long
since been gathered together in the old family vault; panelled
corridors adorned with busts of Roman emperors and gods; stuffed
tropical birds and horns of gigantic size; cabinets, swords, daggers,
helmets, and armour; and where portraits were hung of knights and
dames in brilliant colours; one of Sir Harry, who accompanied the
Royal Bluebeard to the field of cloth of gold; another who had been
the comrade of Sir Horace of Tilbury in many a field in Flanders; and
the Hurdells of later times in powdered wigs, toupees, and long
stomachers.
There was also a charming little Gothic private chapel, which had now
a luxurious divan around it, as the present Sir Harry, not being much
addicted to devotions, had turned it into a billiard-room, and a most
commodious and excellent one it was, as the niches were tall enough
to hold cues and the basin of the font was admirably calculated to
hold the balls.
Sir Harry was rather handsome, but _blasé_ in aspect and bearing;
there was an indolent and rather lascivious expression in his eyes,
the light colour of which it is difficult to define; he had a
transparent nostril and short upper lip, with long tawny moustache,
and a face which, though difficult to say why, was not a pleasing one.
His sister Lucretia, his senior by several years, was somewhat his
counterpart in appearance, and, nearer her fortieth than her
thirtieth year, was still very handsome, but handsome in a faded way;
and she received the young wife of old Sir Paget with considerable
effusiveness, kissing her on both cheeks _à la Francaise_; though
Eveline, fair, soft, and timid even in friendship, felt oppressed
rather than soothed or pleased by the society of this somewhat
_blasé_ and disappointed woman of the world, with her cold, steely
eyes, ashy-tinted hair, thin lips, and caressing manner; and Eveline
soon discovered she was vain, shallow, selfish, and not unaddicted to
white lies when they suited her purpose.
Perhaps the creature she cared most for in this world, after herself
and her brother, was a little, wheezy 'King Charles,' with a blue
ribbon and silver bell adorning its neck.
While the gentlemen were smoking and idling in the billiard-room--the
same place where Philip of Spain, _en route_ from Southampton to
marry Mary, had made his devotions--she entertained Eveline with
afternoon tea in a charming little room dark with oak-panelling, with
rare old oak furniture, and hangings of ancient tapestry that
testified to the industry of white-handed Hurdells in generations
past.
Something of _ennui_, at least, in the young face of her new
acquaintance did not fail to catch the attention of the sharp
Lucretia, who knew from the first that Eveline's marriage had been an
ill-assorted one; yet, she said, after a pause,
'You long to join the gentlemen, I think; they are not far off--only
at the end of the corridor.'
'Pardon me, I am more pleased to be with you.'
'Thanks, dear; but I fear that you and Sir Paget are a pair of
regular love-birds, and must go through a systematic amount of
billing and cooing every day.'
Eveline smiled faintly, but made no response. Did Miss Hurdell mean
this as a sneer? she thought; it seemed so.
'Dear Sir Paget!' said Miss Hurdell again, a little irrelevantly. 'I
thought love-matches were out of fashion now.'
'She _is_ mocking me,' thought Eveline, yet the rather aristocratic
face of Lucretia was as inscrutable as her manner was suave to
sweetness.
'All who know Sir Paget respect him--he is a thoroughly good man,'
said Eveline, feeling the necessity of saying something.
'"Women always like wicked fellows," says Lefanu, in one of his
novels. It is contrast; but it has been my experience that they do.'
'No right-minded woman would endorse this opinion of our sex, I am
assured.'
Miss Hurdell laughed at Eveline's gravity, and refilled their cups of
dragon-blue china.
'I always hated the idea of being married,' said she.
'Why?' asked Eveline.
'Because it would make life--I thought--so tame.'
'How odd!'
'Ah, no doubt you think so. I didn't care about being engaged and
all that sort of thing; but no, I never would have married.'
Sooth to say, she had never had an offer, or been engaged, in her
life.
'It is so nice to be a _fiancée_--the object of daily attention.'
'Then you must have been engaged to know all this, Miss Hurdell.'
'Like yourself, dear, of course--but call me Lucretia. A girl has
more freedom when engaged than before it; though the envy of her
female friends, she can be more natural with her gentlemen friends,
and may say many a merry and rantipole thing she dared not have said
before. Goldsmith was right when he makes Dr. Primrose declare that
courtship is generally a happier state than marriage. To me it seems
to turn the butterfly into a caterpillar.'
Eveline knew what to think of these novel views, but she sighed as
she thought of what her own existence was now.
'To me,' resumed the fair Lucretia, 'it always seemed as if, when the
wedding-ring was slipped on my slender finger, I should have nothing
left to live for; that my existence would belong wholly to another
person.'
Eveline set down her tea-cup and looked at the speaker with something
of mute wonder. In society she had met with many strange persons,
but none who had such odd views as the mature chatelaine of Hurdell
Hall.
'But you would have your husband to live for,' she urged gently, but
certainly not thinking of her _own_.
'A very commonplace style of living, I should think.'
'Not if one marries for love,' said Eveline softly.
'As you married' (old was on her lips) 'as you married dear Sir
Paget.'
Eveline felt her colour rise, yet she only said, 'But--but to marry
with any doubt in one's heart would be deception.'
'Well,' said Miss Hurdell, raising her eyebrows, 'if a woman may not
deceive her own husband whom has she a right to deceive?'
This was a new view of the matter to poor Eveline, who began to have
rather a horror of her hostess.
'There goes the dressing-bell, dear--we dine at eight,' said
Lucretia, rising; 'let me conduct you to your room.'
Once there, Eveline was free to give full vent to her own thoughts.
She would never see that lonely grave in the desert where Evan
Cameron lay; but to her mind it was sacred, as of old was the place
whereon the angel of the Lord alighted.
'Oh for some news--news of how it all came about! If Allan would
only write to me--or to Olive; he surely will tell her. This is more
than I can bear!' and interlacing her slender white fingers--a way
she had contracted now when alone--she pressed them with palms
outward, against her throbbing forehead, as if she meant to break
them.
Alas! she was to learn too soon tidings of another dire calamity, and
_why_ Allan was unable to write to any one.
There was no trace of all this deep emotion in her soft face when she
descended to the drawing-room, with a velvet dress of that blue which
so suited her pale complexion, cut square at the neck, and having
elbow sleeves with lace, and rich mosaics set in gold clasping her
white neck, and exquisitely rounded arms that were so white and taper.
There could be no two opinions about her rare beauty, and Sir Harry
Hurdell and his fast friend--fast in more ways than one--both
acknowledged it at a glance, as their sharp and critical eyes took in
every detail of her witching face, her rounded girlish cheek, her
sweetly curved mouth, with its short upper lip, her nose and delicate
nostrils.
Sir Harry Hurdell was very sceptical of the purity of all women. He
would not have believed in that of his own mother had she been alive;
so he was perhaps to be pardoned for deeming that Lady Puddicombe
'was just like the rest,' whatever that might mean.
He was intensely gratified and glad that the girl was so young and
lovely, and that her husband was so old and so common-place: thus he
resolved, in his own phraseology, 'to enter stakes for the filly--to
make his innings if he could, or the devil was in it!'