MILES TREMENHERE.
"For such a love, O Rachel! years are few,
and life is short!"--LOPEZ DE VEGA.
BY ANNETTE MARIE MAILLARD.
AUTHORESS OF "THE COMPULSORY MARRIAGE," "ZINGRA THE GIPSY," ETC., ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
G. ROUTLEDGE & CO., FARRINGDON STREET.
1853.
M'CORQUODALE AND CO., PRINTERS, LONDON.
WORKS--NEWTON.
TO
ERASMUS WILSON, ESQ., F.R.S.
IT IS ONE OF THE HIGHEST PRIVILEGES OF AUTHORSHIP,
TO BE ENABLED TO OFFER A PUBLIC TRIBUTE,
HOWEVER HUMBLE,
TO THOSE WHO CLAIM OUR RESPECT:
THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED TO ONE--THE PATRON OF STRUGGLING TALENT,
THE FRIEND OF THE POOR--
ONE, WHOSE FRIENDSHIP IS AN ESTEEMED HONOUR.
THE AUTHORESS.
[Illustration: Departure of Tremenhere]
MILES TREMENHERE.
CHAPTER I.
"Tick tack, tick tack, tick tack--for ever goes the large hall clock,
until my heart (imitative thing!) plays at pendulum with it! Seventeen
long years that clock has been the monitor of Time in this old house. It
commenced its career the day I came into this world, and, faithful to
its trust, not for one hour can I remember its pausing. They say it
ceased its vigilance one day; I do not remember it, but Aunt Dorcas once
told me--only once, for she cried so bitterly that I never liked asking
more about it. It was the one in which I became an orphan! My poor
mother died, and they stopped it because its ticking reminded them of
the day of my birth, when she bade them open her door to let her hear
the friend whose career commenced with my life--the friend who was to
lead me to be good and happy, warning me of every passing hour! Poor,
dear mamma! I wish I had known her--oh, how I wish that _now_!--for
though my aunts and uncle Juvenal are very kind and loving, yet 'tis not
like a mother's love, I feel that--I feel so much yearning for that
unknown thing; it must be so beautiful, but one step below divinity in
its hallowing power; and I, wicked girl, have been chiding the old hall
clock, which she had a fanciful thought to make my twin!" Here the girl
(for such was the speaker) paused awhile in her soliloquy; after a few
moments, she continued:--"But _'tis_ wearisome to sit for days and days,
with only the same routine of events which you have known for years;
even the variety of the past six months offers no amusement. The lawyer,
the parson, and the squire--the squire, the lawyer, and the parson--with
my aunts Dorcas, Sylvia, and uncle Juvenal, each one chanting the
praises of his or her pet. I daresay it is very wrong of me to think all
this; but I don't love them less, my dear aunts, my kind uncle. Oh!
especially him and aunt Dorcas; but I cannot like--rather I should say
_love_--the squire and the young clergyman, even for their sakes. I
didn't want to think of love yet; but they have set me thinking, and now
I am always dreaming of the sort of man I should like. If there be
heroes in the world I should like to find one--such a one as I _could_
love, tall, handsome, dark, dark! Yes, dark raven hair, and Spanish
eyes, pale and thoughtful, especially"----Here the soliloquy was
disturbed by a shrill voice beneath the window, calling upwards from the
garden, "Minnie, Minnie, child!"
"That's aunt Sylvia," said the soliloquist quietly. "I will not answer,
for if I do, I know she will want to go for a ramble somewhere, and we
shall assuredly meet the lawyer."
The voice below continued its summons, but in the distance; the caller
evidently was seeking through the garden.
"I wonder when my cousin Dora will come," said the Minnie of Sylvia's
seeking again. "And I wonder if she is _very_ handsome; they say
so:--though only three years older than myself, I was always afraid of
her, even as a child. She was so tall and commanding, though but a girl
of fifteen then--now she's twenty; and she looked so stern, with her
proud curling lip which never smiled; even at play, her play was queenly
and condescending. I see her now, when she was at her gymnastic
exercises; how graceful she looked flinging upwards the hoop, which
always returned unerringly to the stick, as if it durst not disobey her
will. _Mine_ often rebelled, and fell yards off; and, whilst I put
myself in a fever to catch it, _she_ was calm and pale, and if she
involuntarily sprang upwards to meet it, with what a calm grace she
lighted on the toe of one of her tiny feet with the obedient toy in her
keeping! There was pride even in that action, for her foot seemed to
disdain the earth. It was the only thing I disliked in Dora, her pride
as a child; it awed me. I hope it will not do so now. I want to love
her. We cannot love where we fear, and I hope she will love me whenever
she comes; and yet I feel so nervous at the thought of seeing her,
though"----Here another voice arose on the ear; this, too, came from
the garden. "Minnie, Minnie; where are you, Minnie?" it said.
"That's my uncle Juvenal," whispered the girl, peeping through the
window, with its antique panes and narrow casement, "and he's not alone.
I guessed as much. How he _can_ like Marmaduke Burton, _the_ squire, I
cannot imagine."
"Minnie," cried a soft voice, evidently in the direction of the great
hall clock, "are you up-stairs, dear?"
"Dear aunt Dorcas," whispered the girl softly; "shall I go to her?" She
moved towards the door of her chamber. At that moment, from beneath her
window, arose a hum of voices, and Sylvia's shrilly tones called,
"Minnie;" then a man's, but a very weak one, and rougher accents,
syllabled her name; these latter ones not calling, but in conversation,
and they said, "Miss Dalzell." The one so anxiously sought sat down, and
laughed gently to herself. "My aunt and uncle, and their pets! Which
shall be mine? Whom shall I marry? Fate, direct me!" and, with a playful
air, she took up a bracelet of large coral from her table, and commenced
counting. "The last must be my choice, I suppose: let's see, coral! Whom
will you favour?" And thus she ran on, a bead for each name: "The
squire, the lawyer, the parson; the squire, the lawyer, the"--here the
string broke, and her lovers rolled in confusion on the floor! "Alas!
and alas!" she cried, with much gravity, surveying the scattered beads,
"none of them? Well, when I _have_ a lover, I'll string him on the
chords of my heart; and when they fail and let him down to earth, why,
_I_ shall be there too, in my grave, my heart's strings broken: that's
how _I_ understand love!"
"My dear child, why did you not answer me?" asked a quiet-looking,
elderly woman, entering her room. "I have been seeking you every where."
"Dear aunt Dorcas," said Minnie, throwing her arms tenderly round her
neck; "I was afraid to reply, for my uncle and aunt Sylvia are in the
garden--_not_ alone either--and they would have heard me."
"Who is there with them at this early hour, dear?" As she spoke she
released the girl's arms, and seated her beside herself on a couch,
affectionately holding both her little white hands.
"Oh!" rejoined Minnie, "that horrid Marmaduke Burton, and Mr. Dalby, the
lawyer; and I dislike them both so much, _as they appear now_."
"How do you mean, child?"
"Oh! why--as--as--lovers. No, not lovers--suitors."
"Where's the distinction, Minnie?" asked her aunt, smiling.
Minnie looked down and blushed; then, looking up half timidly in the
other's face, replied, "I think a man may take it into his head to pay
you attention, wishing to marry you, but he does not love you for all
that; and I think, if a man _really_ loved you, he wouldn't talk so much
about it. Mr. Burton says he's dying for love,"--here she smiled
roguishly, and peeped up in her aunt's face; "and he certainly has
nothing of death from grief about him!"
"Well, the lawyer--what is your objection there?"
"Oh, he's ten thousand times more objectionable! Mr. Burton is only a
commonplace squire, looking like one in his top-boots, talking like one,
and with a loud voice proclaiming himself lord of the manor, rooks,
hounds, horses, and whippers-in! I don't think he's a bad man, yet there
is something unreadable too about him, which debars confidence in his
goodness; but he's a very disagreeable person, always reminding me of
aunt Sylvia's glass of bark in the morning--an amiable invention, but
most unpleasant to the palate. But Mr. Dalby,--oh! he's quite another
thing!--_thing_ he is; too finical to be a man, too useless to be a
woman, he is a compound of mock sentiment and unamiability; he drawls
out his words, looking you sideways in the face, never giving you a
bold, earnest look; he treats you like a sugar-plumb, and seems afraid
of melting you by the fervour of a full-face regard, and he never has a
kind or charitable word for any one; he's an insinuating creature, but
not _in my case_, as he endeavours to be."
"Hush, Minnie, you must not judge hastily or harshly."
"I don't, dear aunt," and she loosed one gentle hand, and put her arm
round the other's neck; "but I have noticed so many unamiable traits in
his character--but aunt Sylvia thinks him perfection."
"I suppose I must not now speak of my protegé--our young clergyman?"
Minnie looked embarrassed. "Dearest aunty," she said at last, "I don't
want to marry; I'm very happy: why so earnestly seek for one to take me
away from you all? Mr. Skaife is sincere, I believe, in saying, he
likes me; I like him as an acquaintance, but I shouldn't like to marry
him. He's very good, kind, and charitable, I daresay; but I think he
wants that sacred fire which, in his sacred calling, makes the chilly
approach, to cheer themselves by the glowing warmth."
"Oh, my dear child! your heart has not spoken, this is the truth; when
it speaks, may it be for a worthy object--that's all I pray. _I_ like
Mr. Skaife: for my sake, dear, try and do so likewise."
Before a reply could be given, the bedroom door opened with fracas, and
aunt Sylvia suddenly appeared. She was totally different in appearance
to her sister. Dorcas was plump, good-tempered, meek-looking, about
forty-five years of age. Sylvia was some five years her senior; a
little, thin, sharp-faced woman--one whose very dress looked meagre; not
the richest brocade could appear rich on so shapeless an anatomy; it
would trail on the ground, limp, and disheartened from any attempt to
look well. She had the strangest eyes in the world--a dark, dingy,
chestnut brown, of which the pupil was certainly not larger than a pin's
head; thin nose, thin lips, thin hair, hands, and voice, completed aunt
Sylvia--with the addition of the very thinnest mind in the world. It was
like a screw-press; put any thing bulky within it, it was compressed
_instanter_ to a mummy, and thence doled out in such small particles,
that it was inevitably lost in the general mass of which aunt Sylvia was
formed.
"I declare, Minnie," she whistled forth in her shrilly tone, "you would
provoke a saint; here have I been calling you at the top of my voice
this hour, and you must have heard me! Really, Dorcas, it is too bad;
you always encourage the child--you, too, must have heard me."
"I have only been here a few moments," placidly answered her sister.
"Then your conversation must have been most engrossing, for such
deafness to have fallen upon you!" and she looked suspiciously from one
to the other.
"We were speaking of----"
Before Minnie could complete her sentence, her door opened a third time,
and admitted uncle Juvenal. We will only say of him, that he was the
bond of union between the two sisters; not stout, not thin, not cross,
not quiet; older by three years than Dorcas, younger by two than Sylvia,
being forty-eight; prim, snuff-coloured, and contented, having but one
desire in the world--the one common to the three, to see Minnie a wife.
A warm discussion ensued between him and Sylvia, relative to some words
which had passed between the squire and doctor, fostered by their mutual
hopes of gaining Minnie, which hope was encouraged--nay, the niece
promised to each--by his patron and patroness. Now, Juvenal came to seek
the cause, and chide her propensity for loneliness; and while he and
Sylvia were warmly debating their disputed points, Dorcas and Minnie
crept out of the room, and the former gained the day this time, for she
and her niece, this latter with only her garden hat on, left the hall by
a side door, accompanied by Mr. Skaife, who had been quietly waiting--it
might have been by Dorcas's cognizance--in a shrubbery through which
they passed on a visit of benevolence. Juvenal and Sylvia, finding the
birds escaped, descended to the garden, when they discovered that the
same thing had occurred respecting the squire and lawyer; both had
disappeared. So the brother and sister sat down to talk it quietly over,
which terminated as all previous talkings on the same subject had done
before--by their completely disagreeing in their respective views, and
consequently falling out; in other words, having a violent quarrel. And
poor little Minnie--the subject of all these commotions--was quietly
walking towards the village with her aunt Dorcas, and _her_ selection of
a suitor, Mr. Skaife, who, to do him justice, was the most sincere lover
of the three; he cared but little whether Minnie were rich or poor,
provided she could be brought by any means to look smilingly upon him.
He was only a poor curate, 'twas true; but then some day he hoped to be,
perhaps, a bishop--Who might say? And in either or any case, he would
have chosen her to share all with him. Perhaps she had been correct in
saying he did not possess the sacred fire necessary for his calling; but
that fault lay to the account of his parents, who had possibly brought
him up to the church as a mere profession, when it should be a voluntary
choice. If, as she supposed, he did not possess the fire necessary for
martyrdom, if summoned to that glory, he certainly _did_ the fire of
love for the fair girl beside him; and while she wished he were any
thing but a lover, both for the sake of a certain pleasure she felt in
his company, and for her aunt's sake, he was wondering whether he ever
should win her?--when?--and how?--and in this mood they walked on. Many
long years before our tale commenced, a certain country gentleman named
Formby and his wife were the residents at Gatestone Hall, the fine
old-fashioned place we have just quitted; they were homely and
primitive, and withal majestic as the oak-panelled walls of the
hospitable home which gave a welcome to many a guest in that portion of
her Majesty's domains called Yorkshire, where the "canniness" of its
inhabitants consists most in the almost unparalleled method they
possess, of winning the way to the heart by kindness and genuine homely
hospitality, of which Mr. and Mrs. Formby were well-chosen
representatives. They had five children--four daughters and one son.
They never troubled themselves as to whether these would marry--that was
an affair of nature, and nature was handmaiden at Gatestone Hall.
However, art--or some adverse god or goddess--crept in, and marred her
course. Of five, only two obeyed her law. Juliana, the eldest, a fine
dashing girl, attracted the attention of the Earl of Ripley at a race
ball; and, six weeks afterwards, became his Countess. The youngest of
all, Baby, as they called her (Jenny was her name, to the amazement of
her family, which appeared impressed with the idea, that baby she was,
and ever would remain), married, at seventeen, a poor half-pay officer
for love; and true love it was. The little god likes poverty best, after
all; he generally nestles there, though the song says otherwise. The
only change this marriage made at the Hall was, the addition of another
inmate to its cheerful circle. Lieutenant Dalzell became located there
for seven months--very short ones they were, too--with his sweet, loving
wife; and there, poor fellow! he died of an old wound won in India,
which shattered an arm, and obliged him to quit the service. Poor Baby
cried like one; nothing could console her, not even the birth of Minnie
some months afterwards: so she cried herself into the pretty green
churchyard, beneath a yew-tree, beside Dalzell; for, poor girl!--almost
a child still when he died--begged so earnestly that they wouldn't shut
up her William in the cold stone family vault, but put him where the sun
might shine upon him, and the green grass grow, that he had a grave
under the bright canopy of heaven, and there, beside him, Baby lay; and
only that day, and the one of his death, did the old hall clock cease
its rounds by her desire. Then Mr. Formby soon followed, and his wife,
leaving three unmarried children, and these three we have seen as
bachelor and spinsters still. Whatever the two sisters may have thought
of matrimony, assuredly Juvenal had given it no part of his dreams by
day or night. _Their_ spinsterhood might have been involuntary of their
inclinations, but there was no law to prevent his asking; and, had he
done so, assuredly he might have had some one at all events, for, though
not a rich man, he was Lord of Gatestone, which would only pass away
from the grasp of himself or heirs should he die childless, of which
there seemed now every chance. Caps of every possible colour, like
fly-traps, were set to catch him, by all the spinsters and widows of
the neighbourhood; carriages of every description drove up to the Hall,
with inmates perfectly free, able, and willing; but when they left, the
only impression behind them was of their carriage-wheels on the
gravelled drive. Now all these attacks had become considerably
diminished, as time had shown their inefficacy. Strange to say, though
Juvenal had evinced no desire to marry on his own part, all his energies
(they were not legion) were called into play to effect an union for his
much-loved niece; and still stranger, that the three, loving her as they
did love her, should have one only thought in common, and be all equally
bent on the same scheme, which might probably separate her from them for
ever. But it is the course of a Christopher Columbian current in our
blood, to be always desirous of exploring some unknown territory. Such
was matrimonial ground to them, and they felt curious to watch its
effect upon others, personal experience being denied, or not desired by
themselves. Minnie was sadly perplexed among them;--they forced her to
think of marriage, when she otherwise would have been much more
innocently employed; and, unfortunately for them, she had not the
slightest idea of condensing all her thoughts on any one of those whom
they had chosen. The lawyer pressed her hand--the squire conferred the
same honour on her toe, as she stepped on his hand to mount her horse;
and the most sincere, as it is ever the case, stood half awkwardly
aloof, and sighed as he whispered to the winds, which blew it heaven
knows where--"Pretty Minnie Dalzell! I shall never win her; she's too
fair for a poor curate's home!"
Pretty she certainly was, and fair--fair as the brightest lily tinged by
a sunbeam dancing across, but not staining, its purity. Such was the
tint that flew over her cheek, every moment new and changing; the
prettiest lip, such a short upper one that the mouth scarcely closed
upon teeth of shining whiteness, like a mother-of-pearl shell wet from
the spray, so fresh they looked. Her eyes were of dark violet, with
lashes and brows darker than the hair, the former so long and thick they
were like a setting round a gem; beautiful eyes, which you lost yourself
in looking into, wondering whence came the pure, clear light, which lent
them so much chaste fire--yet they were full of soul too. In the
forehead, the blue veins wandered like silvery streams through a daisied
meadow, giving life to all;--there was the bloom, grace, and poetry of
the rarest and brightest bouquet of flowers ever collected together, in
that noble brow, and in the ever-changing expression of her sweet face;
and above all, her coronet of magnificent hair clustered in rare
brightness;--it was not golden, yet it shone like it; nor flaxen--it had
too much _expression_ in it for that. It was such hair as only a
creature like Minnie could have. It seemed as if an angel had spun it in
the sun, and waved it by moonlight. 'Twas fair, chaste-looking hair, fit
for dew spirit's gems to hang upon. You took it in your hand, and it was
flossy as unspun silk, and this unbound fell to Minnie's heel, and yet
so pliant and soft, that her little hand could bind the mass round the
beautiful head with ease and grace. She was not tall, but about middle
height, perhaps a trifle more; slight, a mere fairy in figure, and the
springing foot scorned the earth like a flying gazelle. Talk of her
marrying a mere mortal--she should have lived when angels are said to
have loved the sons of men. The curate thought of this; so no wonder he
sighed, even encouraged as he was by----Aunt Dorcas.